D&D General Why defend railroading?

[TheSword]

but a game isn't a movie. A movie can railroad its characters and the audience will not get annoyed. Still though the sense that the outcome isn't predestined, even in a movie is important to maintain. In a game, if I start to feel like no matter where I go, I am always going to bump into Biff Tannen and have to deal with him, then that definitely feels railroady and it feels like my choices aren't making any difference. Again if the issue is you need something interesting, by all means put something interesting down that other path, but make the choice between going left or right, north or south, through door A or door B, have a meaningful difference. Yes the GM is supposed to improve the game for the players, but going too far to make the game good is exactly where railroading becomes problem. Railroading isn't a product of trying to make the game dull or not fun, it is a byproduct of heavy handed methods to ensure something is going on, and to make things easier for the GM in terms of prep (i.e. making sure what the GM has planned happens).

And obviously there are shades of gray here. If I antagonize Biff and he starts hounding me, following me wherever I go, that is fair. But there are going to be moments when it seems I am presented with a choice, and if those choices don't really matter because the GM just decides X happens regardless (or worse, as per the example literally moves Biff from where he was supposed to be to the place I chose to go) then I would definitely say it qualifies as railroading and it lessens the game for me.

Context is King. If I’m playing Back to the Future the RPG I’m gonna be disappointed if I don’t see Doc Brown at some point, and equally Biff Tanner.

If I don’t meet them I’m gonna wonder as a player what is this franchise based world where Biff Tanner isn’t interested in me? Am I pointless to this back to the future world.

Context is king.

 

[TheSword]

Ha.

You do realise that was my reformulation of the original situation the quantum ogre was meant to describe right?

I don’t know what you mean by this? Are you saying the ogre is irrelevant to the problem? In which case I happily accept your agreement that floating encounters like the ogre that appear on the PCs first path out of the city are fine… and only DM changes that directly and intentionally invalidate conscious player choice constitute railroading.

To elaborate, the ogre is innocent your honor. He was stiched up!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Oh for gods sake. How exactly am I enforcing something by pointing out the term has a history?

As for 'obvious' I think you will find if you see enough of these discussions that it is anything but obvious. People always talk past each other because the idea of the quantum ogre is just too vague to be useful. It always turns out, as it has iin this thread, that people are discussing on the basis of unstated assumptions that they have brought into the situation.

Because the nomenclature came up after the after the ogre appears, after the path is chosen example was posited and discussed for several pages. The term is out in the wild and mutating as all such terms do and is being applied to all cases where the location of the ogre is undetermined.
The original meaning may have been narrow but the fundamental issue in these discussions is that people are always bringing their assumptions to the discussion.
We cannot even agree on a narrow meaning for railroading. Some people want it to mean only when the players object and other to apply it to any DM Force situation, and others to any instance of a linear plot even where the player are aboard the train.

 

[TheSword]

Because the nomenclature came up after the after the ogre appears, after the path is chosen example was posited and discussed for several pages. The term is out in the wild and mutating as all such terms do and is being applied to all cases where the location of the ogre is undetermined.
The original meaning may have been narrow but the fundamental issue in these discussions is that people are always bringing their assumptions to the discussion.
We cannot even agree on a narrow meaning for railroading. Some people want it to mean only when the players object and other to apply it to any DM Force situation, and others to any instance of a linear plot even where the player are aboard the train.

The reality is that there is Macro-Railroading, where DMs forces PCs to stay on a predetermined plot path despite the fact that they want to do other things.

There are also micro-Railroads. Where DMs invalidate PC actions by making difficulties impossible or changing outcomes to suit themselves.

Both are rare and don’t really impact on the floating encounters/NPCs/Treasure/plot hooks/locations which are totally independent of player choice.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What's more important, perhaps, is DM intent in the moment: does the DM know it's an intentional railroad even if the players don't; and is the DM doing so in good faith intending to provide a better game or in bad faith intending to screw over the players. The former is excusable, the latter is not.

There's a third case: self-centered issues, where the GM is not doing it with malevolent intent but simply for his own convenience, as he doesn't think it'll make the game worse, but thinks it'll make his job easier.

 

[Don Durito]

I don’t know what you mean by this? Are you saying the ogre is irrelevant to the problem? In which case I happily accept your agreement that floating encounters like the ogre that appear on the PCs first path out of the city are fine… and only DM changes that directly and intentionally invalidate conscious player choice constitute railroading.

To elaborate, the ogre is innocent your honor. He was stiched up!

I mean the example you are telling me is a better formulation of the underlying issue is the one that I originally gave.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh for gods sake. How exactly am I enforcing something by pointing out the term has a history?

As for 'obvious' I think you will find if you see enough of these discussions that it is anything but obvious. People always talk past each other because the idea of the quantum ogre is just too vague to be useful. It always turns out, as it has iin this thread, that people are discussing on the basis of unstated assumptions that they have brought into the situation.

I think it was still useful as it revealed that some posters view of character volition is, effectively, deontological, in that it matters to them even if the result is indistinguishable whether in terms of result or even observable properties under most circumstances. I think that's important because its very hard to bridge the gap between that and a more consequentialist approach.

 

[Don Durito]

Because the nomenclature came up after the after the ogre appears, after the path is chosen example was posited and discussed for several pages. The term is out in the wild and mutating as all such terms do and is being applied to all cases where the location of the ogre is undetermined.
The original meaning may have been narrow but the fundamental issue in these discussions is that people are always bringing their assumptions to the discussion.
We cannot even agree on a narrow meaning for railroading. Some people want it to mean only when the players object and other to apply it to any DM Force situation, and others to any instance of a linear plot even where the player are aboard the train.

You were accusing ,e, (rather ridiculously I might add) me of trying to enforce the discussion.

On the basis of that it seems pretty clear you are trying to continue an argument with me without even remembering where this interaction even began.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

You were accusing ,e, (rather ridiculously I might add) me of trying to enforce the discussion.

On the basis of that it seems pretty clear you are trying to continue an argument with me without even remembering where this interaction even began.

My apologies, I misinterpreted what you were doing.

 

[pemerton]

If I have a choice between drinking beer and water at the inn, and it turns out the beer was poisoned all along. That is a fun interesting thing, where I didn't know I was making a meaningful choice but my decision to have a beer meant something. However if the GM just decides to make whatever I choose be the one that was poisoned, and the other one isn't, then that is the kind of issue I am talking about here in terms of railroading.

The bolded bit is no different between pick a number from 1 to 6, with the GM having decided that on (say) 4+ your PC is poisoned. The beer vs water is just colour laid over the gamble.

Now, two thoughts about that:

(1) There's a difference between a gamble and fiat, but I think a gamble is generally more fun if I know I'm engaged in it.

(2) There's no denying that the colour of choosing what to drink makes the whole thing more fun! But then that can be equally true of choosing whether to go north or south.