D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Bedrockgames]

As I've already asked, why is this any different from choosing the colour of the PCs' cloaks - this latter is a choice the players make, and it almost never makes a difference to anything that happens next. So why isn't that railroading?


Well of course the choice will drive where they end up - if you sail east across the Mediterranean you're going to get closer to Dalmatia than Ireland. But that doesn't mean it will determine what challenges the PCs confront.


You're assuming that choosing where to go should be different from choosing what colour cloak to wear. But why? That's just convention, inherited from dungeon crawls and hex crawls, and to treat it as more than that is just begging the question! I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that in a campaign in which the GM treats the direction of travel as mere flavour, the players choosing which direction to go is not much different from choosing the colour of cloak to wear; and is not supposed to determine what encounter takes place!



I can't tell if you're saying that it is always railroading but you don't think it's wrong, if you're saying that it isn't railroading because of some "mitigating reason". (And I don't really get your use of normative language ("mitigating") here - your preferences aren't normative for RPGing in general.)

And I don't understand your assumptions. If someone is presenting this sort of thing and saying it is not railroading, why would assume they're talking about a game where it would be railroading? Isn't it more likely that they're imaging a game where it wouldn't be, because the table doesn't assume that choices about geography and direction of travel are all that important?

I mean, there's nothing special about imaginary geography that means it has to matter in RPGing. In The Dying Earth RPG your clothes matter more than where you go. In Agon 2nd ed the GM just tells you, at the start of each session, which island your ship has been brought to. What matters is which gods you upset or propitiate.

Now if the GM is lying that's a different thing, but why are we assuming the GM is pretending the choice matters as more than just a bit of colour?

Because choosing your cloak doesn’t normally lead to the encounter. Choosing to go north instead of south should shape whether you cross paths with a haunted house. If choosing the red cloak instead of the black one meant the difference between an encounter with a cloaked (EDIT: Cloaker] , and the GM made you encounter the cloaker anyways regardless of your choice, then it would be more similar. But the cloak is clearly just flavor here, whereas being presented with your cardinal directions, two doors or a fork presents the players with a choice that normally should impact where they end up, and if you are using planned encounters, what you actually encounter. If the house is in all four directions, if the ogre is on all forms [EDIT: forks] in the road, if the wolf is behind doors A and B, that is railroading because you have presented a decision point you have no intention of honoring

 

[TheSword]

As I've already asked, why is this any different from choosing the colour of the PCs' cloaks - this latter is a choice the players make, and it almost never makes a difference to anything that happens next. So why isn't that railroading?


Well of course the choice will drive where they end up - if you sail east across the Mediterranean you're going to get closer to Dalmatia than Ireland. But that doesn't mean it will determine what challenges the PCs confront.


You're assuming that choosing where to go should be different from choosing what colour cloak to wear. But why? That's just convention, inherited from dungeon crawls and hex crawls, and to treat it as more than that is just begging the question! I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that in a campaign in which the GM treats the direction of travel as mere flavour, the players choosing which direction to go is not much different from choosing the colour of cloak to wear; and is not supposed to determine what encounter takes place!



I can't tell if you're saying that it is always railroading but you don't think it's wrong, if you're saying that it isn't railroading because of some "mitigating reason". (And I don't really get your use of normative language ("mitigating") here - your preferences aren't normative for RPGing in general.)

And I don't understand your assumptions. If someone is presenting this sort of thing and saying it is not railroading, why would assume they're talking about a game where it would be railroading? Isn't it more likely that they're imaging a game where it wouldn't be, because the table doesn't assume that choices about geography and direction of travel are all that important?

I mean, there's nothing special about imaginary geography that means it has to matter in RPGing. In The Dying Earth RPG your clothes matter more than where you go. In Agon 2nd ed the GM just tells you, at the start of each session, which island your ship has been brought to. What matters is which gods you upset or propitiate.

Now if the GM is lying that's a different thing, but why are we assuming the GM is pretending the choice matters as more than just a bit of colour?

This person gets it!

 

[TheSword]

Because choosing your cloak doesn’t normally lead to the encounter. Choosing to go north instead of south should shape whether you cross paths with a haunted house. If choosing the red cloak instead of the black one meant the difference between an encounter with a cloaked, and the GM made you encounter the cloaked anyways regardless of your choice, then it would be more similar. But the cloak is clearly just flavor here, whereas being presented with your cardinal directions, two doors or a fork presents the players with a choice that normally should impact where they end up, and if you are using planned encounters, what you actually encounter. If the house is in all four directions, if the ogre is on all forms in the road, if the wolf is behind doors A and B, that is railroading because you have presented a decision point you have no intention of honoring

In The Eye of the World (an excellent best selling book frequently in top fantasy book lists) the protagonist visits the city of Caemlyn.

Dissent in the city has been stirred up by fanatics nicknamed whitecloaks because of the fastidiousness and puritanical beliefs. The city has split into factions. Supporters of the queen were red armbands for the Rose of Andor. Supporters of the whitecloaks wear white armbands (obviously). People without an armband are treated with suspicion for not picking a side…

… what you wear can definitely affect what you encounter.

Spoiler: Events in Eye of the World

The protagonist chooses a red band… because it’s cheaper and not knowing the difference. He has an altercation with whitecloak thugs. A royalist innkeeper takes him under his wing and introduces him to several important characters. He later accidentally ends up in the palace in front of the queen and the red armband saves his life.

 

[pemerton]

The question is formed under the assumption that the only reason behind Random Encounters are to expend the party's resources through combat/conflict.

That is not the only reason to use Random Encounters. In fact, outside of resource expenditure, the DMG lists these reasons to use Random Encounters:

• Create Urgency: Incentivize pushing forward with the threat of an encounter.
• Establish Atmosphere: Help create a consistency in tone of adventure.
• Provide Assistance: Instead of hurting the party, the encounter helps them.
• Add Interest: foreshadow future events or instill worldbuilding.
• Reinforce Campaign Themes: Reminds players of the overall tone of the campaign.

To me, the first, third, fourth and fifth of those dot points looks like invitations to railroading. And the second looks like time-wasting.

The way I create urgency is by having the players pursue matters that their PCs care about. For instance, in my Classic Traveller campaign what created urgency for the PCs on Zinion was that they knew, from fiction actually established in the course of play (roughly via PbtA-type soft/hard move techniques), that in due course Imperial agents were likely to come and invesigate the alien site they (the PCs) had uncovered. The response to the urgency wasn't to engage a GM-foisted random encounter with a random ogre. It was to use a grenade to blow up most of the immediate witnesses! Some of the players were shocked by this cold-blooded murder by one of the PCs; but the PCs in a position to do anything went along with it.

The way the players obtain assistance is to declare actions that will generate it: in MHRP/Cortex+ this will typically be a Resource (eg when negotiating with the Giant Chieftain in his Steading, one of the players created a Resource in the form of a Giant Shaman who agreed with his PC, which was then instrumental in persuading the Giant Chieftain to support the PCs' efforts); in 4e D&D this might be via a skill challenge; in our Classic Traveller game this is determined by the way the players have their PCs invoke the social resolution rules in dealing with NPCs.

As far as establishing atmosphere, adding interest and reinforcing themes, every moment of play should do this. The idea that random encounters would have some special role here is very strange to me.

To me, this is a completely different question (and one I’ve personally grappled with). My response has been to make such randoms encounters interesting.

What does that mean? This depends in part on the players. But an encounter with a memorable NPC can provide world-building or allow a player to add characterization to their PC. A combat, even if it is a 1 per day, can be interesting if it introduces new monsters, monsters have interesting abilities, or the DM goes through the effort to make the encounter dynamic. And of course, there is always the possibility that the encounter will result in treasure the PCs might find interesting.

The result has been tables of fewer random encounters but more time spent designing each one.

Consistent with what I've posted just above, I don't really understand the point of mediating this through random encounters during a journey.

One day taking the train to work I decided to write up an AD&D-style dark (spirit?) naga in Burning Wheel terms. I then decided to incorporate it into my Burning Wheel game. As it happened, a new PC was introduced into the game around the same time, who was a spirit-summoning snake-handler living as a hermit in the hills; and so it was easy to introduce the naga in a way that connected to that PC as well as other PCs' already-established Beliefs. The PCs' actual encounter with the naga took place on a journey through the hills - it was living in the caves not too far from a Keep on the Borderlands east of Hardby and west of the Cairn Hills/Abor-Alz. But it wasn't a random encounter - it was a component of a framed scene.

None of this post is to disparage random encounters on journeys. They play an obvious role in hexcrawl play. In my Classic Traveller game I will use random encounters in accordance with the game rules because as a type of content introduction/pacing device - that's part of the distinctive feel of Traveller. Equally, I don't use them in systems in which they have no role - BW, Prince Valiant, MHRP/Cortex+, 4e D&D (when I adapted Night's Dark Terror to 4e, I used the random encounter table to supply the content for a skill challenge used to adjudicate the PCs' search for the goblin cave), in fact most systems!

What I'm saying is that I don't understand why meaningful play (in terms of interest, atmosphere and/or theme) would be mediated via this technique, because these are concerns for every moment of play.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Because choosing your cloak doesn’t normally lead to the encounter. Choosing to go north instead of south should shape whether you cross paths with a haunted house. If choosing the red cloak instead of the black one meant the difference between an encounter with a cloaked, and the GM made you encounter the cloaked anyways regardless of your choice, then it would be more similar. But the cloak is clearly just flavor here, whereas being presented with your cardinal directions, two doors or a fork presents the players with a choice that normally should impact where they end up, and if you are using planned encounters, what you actually encounter. If the house is in all four directions, if the ogre is on all forms in the road, if the wolf is behind doors A and B, that is railroading because you have presented a decision point you have no intention of honoring

And I would say it need more context than that, if the player choose a random direction but with no prior knowledge or if the inevitable encounter are something met along to way but the final destinations are different then I have no problem with the haunted house or the ogre or both appearing along the journey. If it was me running both encounters would be at the discretion of the party unless they were reckless in their travel security.

 

[Maxperson]

I think it's just that some people don't think it's worth the effort to worry about whether the players' decisions affect everything after it, instead they only worry about the parts the players were aware of, players were concerned with, and parts that were already established in game lore finalized through revelation to the players -- whereas other people worry about all of it. The only problem I see is when some people label the former as not role-playing or construe rail-roadings definition to have been bestowed from on high to apply to both equally -- instead of merely being things they don't like or things they wouldn't want to participate in or there definition of it.

Railroading is simply rending player choice moot. Whether they are aware of it or not isn't relevant. If all roads lead to ogre, they had no real choice in the matter. Left, right, center, teleport, go backwards are all moot. The players believe that the different directions will lead to different things, so when they all lead to the ogre, the choice of direction up to that point was rendered invalid. It was a railroad.

I understand that some here don't see a problem with railroads that players are not aware of. And small incidents of railroading don't make the campaign a railroad campaign. It's just that without player buy in, if they find out that they've been railroaded, and it can become apparent if the DM isn't careful, then it can destroy trust in the DM which is crucial to the health of the game.

I'm in the former camp. Part of that might be that it feels really hard for me for someone to have written down every possible encounter the players could have anywhere in advance -- and that if one is made up on the spot it feels like it is probably related to what was already in the DMs head.

I'm a DM that improv's probably half of the game, sometimes more if the players go wildly out of what I anticipate that they'll do. I understand the difficulty of not having the time, and in my case ADD which makes it hard to prep for long periods of time(or even remember to prep sometimes), so I get where you're coming from there.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And I would say it need more context than that, if the player choose a random direction but with no prior knowledge or if the inevitable encounter are something met along to way but the final destinations are different then I have no problem with the haunted house or the ogre or both appearing along the journey. If it was me running both encounters would be at the discretion of the party unless they were reckless in their travel security.

More context is always going to be useful. But again the original example was there are two doors to choose from: one has a monster behind it, the other does not. The poster stated this, so clearly there is a note on the page or an idea in the GM's head that something is behind door A and not door B or vice versa. The issue is the players are presented with this choice, they make it, but it never mattered which door they went through, the GM is railroading the encounter and making it happen anyways. I am certain that in most campaigns if this situation arose, then after the fact the GM told them the creature was behind the other door but he or she moved it after they made their decision about which door to go through the majority of players are both going to cry foul and say they were being railroaded.

There can be added layers to this, like what happens once something emerges in the game, and if the players decisions after it emerges are also being thwarted. Railroading is an ongoing process. It is possible the only thing railroaded is the decision to move the create behind whichever door, but perhaps the GM then gives them freedom to run away, to negotiate with it, to fight it, to do whatever. The original choice is still railroading though, and if the GM doubles down and forces encounters to play out how he or she wants then its even more of a railroad.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes but this is the inn the PCs chose to stay in. There was no adventure until the DM started events happening. The adventure is triggered by the PCs staying in the inn, that’s the adventure. It’s not triggered in their absence by flower picking.

So if they leave the inn, why couldn't they come back to an inn whose barroom was destroyed by an ogre while they were out? Or perhaps the ogre left them a message? Why do you have to railroad the ogre in?

 

[Maxperson]

So, this has gotten reported as sounding pretty edition-warring. You might want to consider that going forward.

That wasn't my intention at all, since I never played 4e and really have no idea how it played out. I was only going by what @pemerton said about 4e in the post I was responding to. His description was of a railroad. But again, railroading isn't bad if it's opted into, so even if 4e was a railroad, my post wasn't a negative mark against 4e.

 

[Umbran]

Agency is being exercised, though. The group is picking left over right, because they think it makes a difference. That left will be different from right.

Human life is full of stuff that we think is true, but isn't.

Yes, it does impinge, and that impingement affects my choices. If I choose to get to work on time, somebody hitting their brakes a mile ahead of me and cause a chain reaction slowdown is negating that choice by making me late to work.

Okay, that's fine. We can work with that stance.

It happens in real life - by your approach to this, it happens frequently. Perhaps even nigh constantly. Time and again, no matter what you want, the universe frames situations that constrain you, and negate your choices.

The question then becomes if, when, and how we do this in our games, and why or why not. Do we remove this nigh-ubiquitous real-life experience form our games?