D&D General Why defend railroading?

[pemerton]

Those games like 4e ARE railroads. The players are on rails with no chance to avoid by choice, but they have chosen to get on that train with full knowledge that they will be railroaded.

Which games are you talking about?

The scene-framed games that I have GMed are 4e D&D, Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, and MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. Probably the most influential scene-framed game is Dogs in the Vineyard.

None of these played in accordance with the instructions is a railroad except some possible approaches to Cortex+ Heroic.

A minimum requirement for something to be a railroad is that someone knows, in advance, what is coming up next. Given that none of these games (with the possible exception noted just above) has that property, they can't be railroads!

Telling the players You see a knight in a clearing, mounted on a horse- he looks like he's ready to joust isn't railroading any more than telling the players The sun is shining and a breeze is blowing. It is more interesting, but I don't think being interesting is a marker of being a railroad.

The point isn't making EVERY choice matter. The point is making choices that seem to matter actually matter. Sometimes, the player knows they're making choices that don't matter. What color their character's hair is, for example, is very likely to not matter very much. What color armor they wear or how they spell their name or a host of other aesthetic choices often don't matter at all. The player is given no illusion of these choices mattering when they truly don't.

Why, then, assume that people are imagining a choice of direction to matter, or to seem to matter, if they're telling you that it doesn't?

I have a fairly plot-centric world. It's just not railroaded. Events happen. Things do not simply manifest out of the aether, they're well-grounded in fiction--and since I don't do anything unless it is well-grounded, I'm not allowed to just invoke whatever I like whenever I like. The players can, and do, research and prepare and investigate.

<snip>

I don't make them do much of anything, but I do dangle new hooks in front of them or have NPCs act in rationally-appropriate ways, both on and off camera. It's on them to capitalize on opportunities, prioritize threats, and accept that they can't be everywhere at once.

See, to me this sounds like a game that I wouldn't enjoy, because from this description it sounds like everything in the shared fiction that matters is decided by the GM, and the role of the players is to declare various sorts of actions that will bring to light what exactly the GM has decided. If I was in this game I think I would describe it as a railroad, because the choices the players get to make - which bit of the GM's fiction to bring to light and foreground in play - aren't that meaningful to me as a RPGer. My interest is more in pursuing the goals/themes I've established for my PC and finding out (via the action resolution rules) how the world pushes back against that.

Presumably, though, the sorts of choices your game provides for are ones that your players do regard as meaningful.

The setting fluff is both (a) absolutely essential, as in without it I would NEVER do this no matter how bored the players might seem, and (b) not something I can just change on a dime whenever I want to whatever degree I want. I have actual constraints on what I'm allowed to do. Yes, I can invent new things and proceed to demonstrate them in the fiction. But that's not the same as "the haunted house is EXACTLY wherever the players go, because I've decided that's where the players are going." It takes effort on my part, sometimes a lot of effort, to make these additions (or changes) happen--even in a world following the Dungeon World DM principle, "Draw Maps, Leave Blanks."

<snip>

As an example: if the party is looking bored while, say, on a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean? Nope, not gonna spring a random encounter on them, no matter how convenient that would be for me as DM, because there's literally nothing I've done that would establish that as a possibility. I would have to do real, serious work to establish it, and leave some breadcrumbs for the PCs to learn about it, and very specifically give them time to choose to follow up on that if it isn't just stated out in the open. E.g., openly stating it could be the captain of the ship they're on inviting them to a private dinner, regaling the party with tall tales...and then getting more serious and explaining how there are Things that come from the deep, such that the best sailors always carry a cutlass even on routine voyages...and a holy symbol just in case. Leaving breadcrumbs could be mentioning that there's been a sharp increase in demand for mercenaries on trading vessels, or that Waziri mages (who normally avoid the docks) have been spotted dockside, collecting reports from sailors about unusual phenomena. Stuff that's noticeable, and that the party could spend a little time investigating as long as they aren't on a super-tight time budget. That would give me a foundation to build on.

Again, this seems to be describing a game I wouldn't enjoy. The notion of "breadcrumbs" to me seems very railroad-y (as metaphors they are hard for me to really distinguish). And I don't find the idea that play might be boring very appealing either.

I can think of three water voyages that have figured in my games in the past dozen years. One was the river voyage in Night's Dark Terror: as per the module, the PCs had to defend against an attack from the Iron Ring. There were boats, and a sand-bar, and NPC ranged attacks from the safety of the shore. It wasn't boring.

One was a voyage on the Woolly Bay in a Burning Wheel campaign. I used an adaptation of the Penumbra module Maiden Voyage for this. When the PCs failed to save the ship from its haunting, they ended up in the drink. One of the players - playing an Elven Princess - made a successful Circles check, and by good fortune the Elven vessel that was searching for the missing Princess was able to find them (it had spotted the sorcerer PC flying above the ocean in falcon form, which mechanically had augmented the Circles check). Subsequent failed Duels of Wits between a couple of the PCs and the Elven captain resulted in him depositing them on the shore of the Bright Desert.

The third was the PCs trip from Britain to Cyprus in Prince Valiant. The trip across the Channel was narrated in a minute or so until they foundered on the French coast (my framing of the Bilgewater Brigands episode from the Episode Book). After overland travel to Marseilles, they then sailed to Sicily - the players were keen for a naval encounter and so I had them attacked by pirates sailing from islands off the North African coast, and the PCs' victory in this clash led into the The Feast of Sir Ainsel episode (as written, Sir Ainsel's motivations are pretty weak; I had him allied with pirates). After establishing a small outpost of their military order in Sicily the PCs then sailed east again, landing on the Dalmatian coast as I mentioned upthread - again that was probably a minute of narration. I've already mentioned the "dragon" encounter on the Black Sea. And after crossing Anatolia overland, they sailed to Cyprus which again would have been a few sentences of narration.

I've sketched these episodes of play because - while all involving the special case of a water voyage - they all illustrate my general thoughts on GMing: if in doubt, frame the PCs into conflict. As I see it, the meaningful decisions aren't about "finding the plot" or avoiding challenges - they're about what happens when conflict occurs. In 4e D&D this is a bit more 4-colour gonzo than in BW, where it can be pretty thematically laden (Prince Valiant sits somewhere in between in terms of tone). But the notion that I would hold back from framing into conflict because I have to do something else first in order to make it permissible is quite foreign - doubly so if that something else is laying "breadcrumbs" or dangling "hooks" for the players to follow. I prefer the players to hook the GM and lay the trails, rather than vice versa.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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?

I was responding to a specific example where there are two doors and an encounter placed behind one of them (so door A or B is established by the GM as having an encounter the other door is not). And once the players go through, and it is the door without an encounter, the GM changes it so that door now has the encounter. This is clearly a situation where the choice was supposed to matter. I responded by introducing the example of the haunted house (saying it is like moving the house around after they choose directions). Since I introduced the example, I can tell you my working assumption was it was a campaign where choosing the cardinal directions matters. And I've said if the direction or the door are just color in a campaign, fair enough, it is probably not a problem, and I would even say it may not be railroading (I would need to see the specific situation to know). But again that is an exception. In most campaigns this sort of move, where you present a choice, and then don't honor the choice you presented, so you can force what you want to happen on the party, would be railroading

 

[pemerton]

Frankly, sometimes it is actually good idea for the GM to make the player misconceptions true or at least make something related to them. If players get weirdly obsessed about some thing the GM meant just to be a meaningless throwaway detail (as they sometimes do,) then the GM might as well make the thing to have at least some meaning. It is far more satisfying to the players than letting them to waste hours of their time on something that will lead absolutely nowhere. And yes, this is illusionism, and yes, I think that if used sparingly this is a good idea.

For my part, I think there is a more straightforward approach: let the players decide what is meaningful or throwaway; and have every moment of play lead somewhere.

This sort of RPGing ethos has probably reached its fullest expression in non-D&D contexts, but 4e D&D shows that it can be embraced within D&D. 5e hasn't quite got all the tools that 4e uses in this respect, but I don't think it has to be actively inimical to this ethos.

 

[TheSword]

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?

Sure if they disengaged from the scenario they could opt out. Though this is the same in any adventure. Ultimately if the players don’t want to engage then they can choose not too. It has been made clear though that choosing to engage is not the same as being railroaded.

The point is, that the PCs don’t have to go anywhere. Adventure can come to them, even without warning and it still isn’t railroading.

To echo @pemerton ’s point. All decisions are ultimately forks in a road and not all paths need to be plotted in space. Plenty of encounters can be decision neutral or causally related to other elements.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

I don't disagree. That is why I mentioned the cloaker encounter. But Pemerton was presenting a situation where choosing your clothes are specifically just color and not meaningful. If that is the case, it is different from choosing one of the four cardinal directions where the GM has a haunted house placed in one of those directions (and different from having two doors, one of which has an encounter behind it). But if what you choose to wear would impact things, yes it is a meaningful decision. And if the GM disregards your choice, like forcing a character who chose to wear a white band to still have a hostile encounter with the white cloak thugs because that is what he had planned, then that encounter is a railroaded encounter.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

For my part, I think there is a more straightforward approach: let the players decide what is meaningful or throwaway; and have every moment of play lead somewhere.

This sort of RPGing ethos has probably reached its fullest expression in non-D&D contexts, but 4e D&D shows that it can be embraced within D&D. 5e hasn't quite got all the tools that 4e uses in this respect, but I don't think it has to be actively inimical to this ethos.

Sure that can work if the players are into it. But some players (many, in my experience) don't want actively and knowingly decide this sort of stuff. As you surely remember, we had a looong thread about this. But yeah, it's just a matter of taste.

 

[pemerton]

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.

This is where you seem to be treating your preferences - you like games where geography matters but are largely indifferent to fashion - as normative.

There's no a priori reason why the players choice to describe their PCs' direction of travel should carry weight that their choice to describe their choice of fashion doesn't. Nor vice versa. Different people like games that put different elements of the fiction front-and-centre.

 

[FrozenNorth]

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.

Why limit it to two doors? I think there should be 3 doors: one with an ogre behind it, one with nothing behind it, and one with treasure behind it.

After the PC chooses their door, the DM should open the door with nothing behind it than ask the player if they want to switch.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't disagree. That is why I mentioned the cloaker encounter. But Pemerton was presenting a situation where choosing your clothes are specifically just color and not meaningful. If that is the case, it is different from choosing one of the four cardinal directions where the GM has a haunted house placed in one of those directions (and different from having two doors, one of which has an encounter behind it). But if what you choose to wear would impact things, yes it is a meaningful decision. And if the GM disregards your choice, like forcing a character who chose to wear a white band to still have a hostile encounter with the white cloak thugs because that is what he had planned, then that encounter is a railroaded encounter.

The point is that you don't always know which decisions are meaningful. Sometimes what you though was meaningless turned out to be meaningful and vice versa.

 

[Bedrockgames]

To echo @pemerton ’s point. All decisions are ultimately forks in a road and not all paths need to be plotted in space. Plenty of encounters can be decision neutral or causally related to other elements.

We were just using those as examples because the two doors came up. But this is definitely true. Choosing what to say to someone can also be a fork in the road. It doesn't have to be pegged to geography. The point is if you the GM establish this is a fork in the road, a figurative one, and the player chooses fork A then Y should happen, if the player chooses fork B then X should happen, but then when the player actually chooses fork B you make Y happen anyways because that is what you want, then you are railroading. And even if you aren't, even if we agree that somehow falls outside the definition of railroading, you aren't honoring the choice the player made. The player might not know, because you may be the only person who is aware that the fork was there, but I think even lying to yourself that way as a GM undermines the choice the player made (especially if there was a logical reason for A to connect to Y and B to connect to X)