D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Malmuria]

But that's not always the case. In a procedurally generated hex crawl there may stocking of hexes on the fly. And in this case, I don't think random is fundamentally different to GM choice in terms of railroading (in other ways yes, but that's a different discussion). Now not every location will fit in every direction, but as you say that's the same for monsters, so I don't see a fundamental distinction here.

There's maybe a difference in the dm having a set of possible locations and then stocking on the fly vs the dm only have 1 possible location, and that being the thing the players encounter. So if the hills are riddled with kobold caves, then maybe any hex has a 1 in 6 chance of there being such a cave (basically an elaborate random encounter). This is all on the dm side, but in my experience it's not too hard to tell what kind of game you are in.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

because in this case the GM in question is telling us so. But like I said you don’t notice it in one instance. Over time though I find it often becomes clear what is going on

There's maybe a difference in the dm having a set of possible locations and then stocking on the fly vs the dm only have 1 possible location, and that being the thing the players encounter. So if the hills are riddled with kobold caves, then maybe any hex has a 1 in 6 chance of there being such a cave (basically an elaborate random encounter). This is all on the dm side, but in my experience it's not too hard to tell what kind of game you are in.

Completely agreed--that's a key part of my argument, in fact. An illusion is only effective as an illusion so long as you don't question it. The illusionism-heavy DM is continuously presenting that illusion to the players. The players only need one reason to question things for the illusion to start failing. Statistically, in the long run, that's not sustainable. Most things that depend on never making any mistakes will fail eventually.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I admit, this is diving right into the grey area, as Don Durito said, but I still see some major differences here. A fairy grove makes sense as a thing you could just sort of...randomly run into wherever. It fits as a random thing, in part because it's a very simple, straightforward location: a grove, where fairies live. Likewise for "monster lair" (very simply, "a monster sleeps here") or "planar thin place" (which could be almost anything).

A haunted house, by comparison, is a much more involved thing. I mean, purely from the brute facts, it had to be built by someone, or in some other way created (magic, illusion, whatever). And it's almost certainly going to be filled with a lot more stuff than "a fairy grove" or "a monster den" is going to be. The whole point of this haunted house example is that it was, in essence, a mini-adventure being forced into the players' path, no matter what they choose. Having a fairy grove, monster den, or other small surprise crop up along the journey...that's pretty well expected, if you're travelling through Dangerous Wilderness.

Again, there is no proper formula for avoiding railroading. But it seems pretty clear to me that a "haunted house" is in a different category from these small, simple, natural phenomena. It's much more complicated and implies far more stuff about the world around it than the fairy grove or the monster den does.

I agree it is very much a gray area. And I think it is fine if you want these things as encounters. The issue with the haunted house though is a little different because it's definitely a larger adventure site and of the kind of adventure it is. I've run them a lot. And it is the kind that is easy to railroad if you want (its storming and the players need shelter and you plop the haunted house where it needs to be so they are likely to go in). But those other types of geography are things not always on a map at a macro level, but things you often might flesh out at a micro level.

 

[Don Durito]

There's maybe a difference in the dm having a set of possible locations and then stocking on the fly vs the dm only have 1 possible location, and that being the thing the players encounter. So if the hills are riddled with kobold caves, then maybe any hex has a 1 in 6 chance of there being such a cave (basically an elaborate random encounter). This is all on the dm side, but in my experience it's not too hard to tell what kind of game you are in.

There's a difference, but there's not really a difference on the level of player choice.

There could be, mind. If the players are exploring knowing there is a chance of stumbling across something either extremely dangerous or extremely valuable, then the use of a randomiser is meaningful, because exploring itself is a risk or gamble.

You need something beyond the simple fact that the dice decide rather than the GM to make the difference matter. (There's other differences in letting the dice decide such as a world with random chance that the DM weaves into what already exists possibly feeling more like a real world than a purely authored one, but I don't really see that as having bearing on railroading).

 

[Cadence]

I think one non railroad moment doesn’t cancel out the railroad moment. It would maybe make it less of a railroad that I can at least try to avoid it. But having it be me my path no matter what seems to me the text book definition if railroad

It feels like the size of the moment should matter. In regards to @EzekielRaiden 's post below, I wasn't picturing a haunted mansion that was a major adventure, but something more equivalent to the Ogre (an old farm house with one or two rooms with a few undead, not the Munsters or Adams Family). That feels more like a brief interlude than a railroad.

because in this case the GM in question is telling us so. But like I said you don’t notice it in one instance. Over time though I find it often becomes clear what is going on

How are they telling you? What percent of paths between two interesting points have no encounters?

I admit, this is diving right into the grey area, as Don Durito said, but I still see some major differences here. A fairy grove makes sense as a thing you could just sort of...randomly run into wherever. It fits as a random thing, in part because it's a very simple, straightforward location: a grove, where fairies live. Likewise for "monster lair" (very simply, "a monster sleeps here") or "planar thin place" (which could be almost anything).

A haunted house, by comparison, is a much more involved thing. I mean, purely from the brute facts, it had to be built by someone, or in some other way created (magic, illusion, whatever). And it's almost certainly going to be filled with a lot more stuff than "a fairy grove" or "a monster den" is going to be. The whole point of this haunted house example is that it was, in essence, a mini-adventure being forced into the players' path, no matter what they choose. Having a fairy grove, monster den, or other small surprise crop up along the journey...that's pretty well expected, if you're travelling through Dangerous Wilderness.

Again, there is no proper formula for avoiding railroading. But it seems pretty clear to me that a "haunted house" is in a different category from these small, simple, natural phenomena. It's much more complicated and implies far more stuff about the world around it than the fairy grove or the monster den does.


I don't run a hex crawl, so this is hard for me to comment on. I imagine it might depend in part on the group.

Perhaps I should ask a question: Is the house being put there purely IN ORDER to be in the party's way? Or is it being put there, alongside many other things, so that there is a "there" to go to? Because I'd definitely argue that intent and purpose matter a LOT for this situation. If the intent is "I'm trying to passive-aggressively make the party do this thing I made," then...it's soft railroading where the DM permits an out but is really really trying to make it happen. If the intent is, "Ooh, this could be fun, let's plunk it down over here and see what the players do," then it's not railroading, it's just painting the background and giving the players their own paints to add to it.

It's a lot like trying to deal with Mary Sue/Gary Stu as a writing problem. No matter what description you give based on the specific implementation, it is almost always possible for an author to still squeeze out something that gets a false negative. Because the problem isn't "OC inserted into an existing universe," nor "character with tons of special abilities," nor "character everyone likes," it's "character that causes the whole narrative to be about them," and that's an inherently abstract concept. Like the Mary Sue, railroading is a problem with a nigh-infinitude of specific implementations, because the problem doesn't exist at the implementation level.

I see a world of difference between "populating a location so that the party has interesting things to do or see" and "making sure that, whatever the players choose, my DM plan goes off without a hitch." The former is, as I said earlier, invention: you're inventing things to populate the space. The latter is illusionism: making the players believe they're calling shots that they just, flat, aren't. Every DM employs invention regularly. I don't believe any DM needs to employ illusionism--and that the risks and costs of doing so outweigh the benefits.

I was thinking smaller. Thank you for a very nice post.

I agree it is very much a gray area. And I think it is fine if you want these things as encounters. The issue with the haunted house though is a little different because it's definitely a larger adventure site and of the kind of adventure it is. I've run them a lot. And it is the kind that is easy to railroad if you want (its storming and the players need shelter and you plop the haunted house where it needs to be so they are likely to go in). But those other types of geography are things not always on a map at a macro level, but things you often might flesh out at a micro level.

I agree that big things they're forced into feel different. A lot of fiction has that though (the Hobbits and the Barrow, old man Willow, a lot in Cugel's adventures, a lot in well...just about anything). So, you never use a haunted inn that the party doesn't have time to prepare for and think about?

I also have a question about random encounter tables. If you use them, do they change by party level?

 

[Don Durito]

Part of the problem with some of these examples has to do with the issue of journeys in games.

Journeys can become problematic because once the PCs have decided to make a journey they have already often made the most significant decision of the journey.

If there's multiple routes from A to B then there's some decisions to made. But if they are taking the most obvious route by road then any encounter that then occurs on the road is pretty much unavoidable, whether then rolled or GM authored. This requires really that any encounters themselves offer the players significant agency.

It also requires the GM to read the room somewhat. If the players are really eager to get to Fallcrest, then if the GM takes the fact of a journey to constantly delay that and throw encounters at them along the road, this can feel like railroading.

Given that the players have already made the decision of their destination, then the GM can offer them alternative adventure hooks, but forcing them into a different adventure, even if it is only theoretically delaying the original choice, can feel like a loss of agency too.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I admit, this is diving right into the grey area, as Don Durito said, but I still see some major differences here. A fairy grove makes sense as a thing you could just sort of...randomly run into wherever. It fits as a random thing, in part because it's a very simple, straightforward location: a grove, where fairies live. Likewise for "monster lair" (very simply, "a monster sleeps here") or "planar thin place" (which could be almost anything).

A haunted house, by comparison, is a much more involved thing. I mean, purely from the brute facts, it had to be built by someone, or in some other way created (magic, illusion, whatever). And it's almost certainly going to be filled with a lot more stuff than "a fairy grove" or "a monster den" is going to be. The whole point of this haunted house example is that it was, in essence, a mini-adventure being forced into the players' path, no matter what they choose. Having a fairy grove, monster den, or other small surprise crop up along the journey...that's pretty well expected, if you're travelling through Dangerous Wilderness.

Again, there is no proper formula for avoiding railroading. But it seems pretty clear to me that a "haunted house" is in a different category from these small, simple, natural phenomena. It's much more complicated and implies far more stuff about the world around it than the fairy grove or the monster den does.


I don't run a hex crawl, so this is hard for me to comment on. I imagine it might depend in part on the group.

Perhaps I should ask a question: Is the house being put there purely IN ORDER to be in the party's way? Or is it being put there, alongside many other things, so that there is a "there" to go to? Because I'd definitely argue that intent and purpose matter a LOT for this situation. If the intent is "I'm trying to passive-aggressively make the party do this thing I made," then...it's soft railroading where the DM permits an out but is really really trying to make it happen. If the intent is, "Ooh, this could be fun, let's plunk it down over here and see what the players do," then it's not railroading, it's just painting the background and giving the players their own paints to add to it.

It's a lot like trying to deal with Mary Sue/Gary Stu as a writing problem. No matter what description you give based on the specific implementation, it is almost always possible for an author to still squeeze out something that gets a false negative. Because the problem isn't "OC inserted into an existing universe," nor "character with tons of special abilities," nor "character everyone likes," it's "character that causes the whole narrative to be about them," and that's an inherently abstract concept. Like the Mary Sue, railroading is a problem with a nigh-infinitude of specific implementations, because the problem doesn't exist at the implementation level.

I see a world of difference between "populating a location so that the party has interesting things to do or see" and "making sure that, whatever the players choose, my DM plan goes off without a hitch." The former is, as I said earlier, invention: you're inventing things to populate the space. The latter is illusionism: making the players believe they're calling shots that they just, flat, aren't. Every DM employs invention regularly. I don't believe any DM needs to employ illusionism--and that the risks and costs of doing so outweigh the benefits.

A hut in the woods with some ghostly things attached to it is a huge and different thing requiring intent so much more than a fairy grove? Either I have way more extensive fairy groves (which isn't untrue) or you have rather high bars for a hut in the woods.

To me, though, even a mansion with grounds that moves is cool and evocative stuff that really brings out the fantasy. YMMV.

 

[Bedrockgames]

How are they telling you? What percent of paths between two interesting points have no encounters?

The poster has stated this is what he is doing in the hypothetical

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think you're overthinking the trees and missing the forest here.

It's always a mistake to focus on the ogre rather then what it's supposed to represent.

Edit:
1) How much you can get away with reskinning depends on how much you reskin and what exactly it was the players wished to avoid.
2) If you roll a random encounter for an ogre, it should probably be at least connected to the previous ogre. Maybe it's the ogre's partner or another ogre that hates that ogre, or something. In any case the random encounter is within the agreed upon parameters of the game. It is not GM fiat.
3) If the players were specifically avoiding the ogre, then they can probably avoid the next encounter too. Then they can make a choice between the two or take a different direction entirely, or backtrack to where they started.

My example was an ogre, but the ogre isn't required -- substitute anything you want, it's about reskinning things anyway. I don't see how a reskin, which avoids direct reuse, somehow ends up worse than a random result giving you exactly the same thing. From the player perspective, 1 is very likely not noticeable but it is reusing the same encounter (mostly), while 2 is 100% clear of intent, but has the appearance of being even worse than 1 because there's no effort to disguise it. The claim you put up in 2) is the same palette shifting you're talking about but even less effective -- "this ogre isn't the same one you'd find on path A, it's a different ogre." I mean, yeah, that looks like what you're talking about even though the GM knows it is.

Player perception is really the thing that matters, here. A game full of Illusionism that the players never detect and thoroughly enjoy is a good game, is it not? A game that never touches the stuff but is dull and boring is still a dull and boring game. GM Force isn't bad ipso facto, it's a tool in the kit, and talking about how it can actually be used effectively -- or avoided effectively -- is way better than worrying about the details of "palette shifting" -- which seems to me to be a pretty useful tool to maximize prep, if a terrible name.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I agree that big things they're forced into feel different. A lot of fiction has that though (the Hobbits and the Barrow, old man Willow, a lot in Cugel's adventures, a lot in well...just about anything). So, you never use a haunted inn that the party doesn't have time to prepare for and think about?

I also have a question about random encounter tables. If you use them, do they change by party level?

It isn't about them having time to prepare and think about it. It is about whether I am railroading them to them inn.

Changing them by party level is a preference issue. I personally don't. I like having threats that can be all over the map in terms of power levels. I never cared for dungeon levels being keyed in that way either.