D&D General Why defend railroading?

[pemerton]

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.

Well, I think if we are talking about defending railroading then railroading must have a non-pejorative use. I think that would be play where the GM decides what happens next, and what flows from the players' action declarations for their PCs, pretty much independently of what those actions are. The players' contribution, in this sort of play, will typically be providing characterisation.

This will probably require GM Force, as least in the sense of manipulating the fiction "behind the scenes" so as to maintain the sequence of events. As I've posted upthread (I think), techniques here include providing extra "breadcrumbs" or hooks" if the players miss the first lot; replacing dead villains with new villains to keep the evil plot moving along; having NPCs react in pre-determined ways regardless of the details of PC-NPC interaction; etc.

I get the impression that this way of playing RPGs is fairly common. If there's a group of players who don't like it, then it would seem pathological for them to nevertheless play a game like that!

So, then a question. What about mysteries, in which whodunnit is known to the GM. Rather than breadcrumbs, you have clues. Is this a railroad?

Before you answer that - we can consider Ashen Stars, a Gumshoe-based game, in which the standard concept is the PCs are a team of freelance troubleshooters, hired to find out what's really going on and deal with the situation. The GM is encourage to have "deal with it" include some important ethical or strategic choices. The GM knows whodunnit. The GM does NOT know how the PCs are going to deal with it.

Is this a railroad?

Maybe. Maybe not. I think it would depend on the extent to which the set-up is (extended) framing and the extent to which the climax and decision matters. This is not said flippantly - an extended reply follows. I can't give an example of the contrast I'm drawing using Gumshoe scenarios. But I will try and describe two Prince Valiant scenarios that mark the distinction I'm drawing, both found in the Episode Book.

The Crimson Bull, by Jerry Grayson, unfolds over multiple events in place as the PCs lead the bull of the title to the Vale of Mud. But these are really just extended framing - they don't presuppose particular prior decisions by the players other than to lead the bull to the Vale; and they provide colour and enrich the situation concerning the bull. The actual moment of crunch is in the finale, when the players (as their PCs) have to decide what to do with the bull and the pagan sacrifice of it by the wise woman of the Vale. I think it's a really well-conceived scenario.

A Prodigal Son - in Chains, by Mark Rein-Hagen, has some interesting elements but, as presented, is a railroad in the sense I've tried to set out above. The tell-tale in the writing is stuff like this:

At this point the Adventurers’ actions can have a direct impact on the story. They can meet with the yeomen leaders of the peasant army, try to sneak into the castle, run to get help from nearby nobles, or attack or harass the peasant army. Bryce does what they ask, but strongly requests that they let him speak with the peasant army.

Whatever happened, you need to have things end up with Bryce’s father, the duke, dead. . . .

Just as things seem to be winding down (one way or another) Bryce steps out of the crowd . . .

At this point you need to have things wind up with someone trying to kill someone else as a result of the heated argument over what to do. It can be a peasant trying to kill a yeoman, Alia trying to kill Samson, Samson trying to kill an Adventurer; but no matter what happens, Bryce throws himself in the way . . .​

In other words, there are moments of choice that are thematically weighty (how do the PCs deal with the politics and associated dynamics between the "prodigal son", his father the duke and his sister Alia) which have to come out a certain way for the scenario to play out as presented. When I used the scenario I picked up some of the key story elements but just ignored all of Rein-Hagen's sequencing and railroading.

I've gone into this level of detail because I think we have to look very closely at the details of how situations and events are being presented, how they relate to thematic framing and resolution, etc, before we can start to identify whether or not we're looking at a railroad.

Also, I think what Jerry Grayson has done is not only better as RPG design (at least relative to my preferences) but displays more ingenuity as a RPG writer. I think it takes a lot of cleverness to set out an extended framing that builds up the pressure in the overarching situation but without forcing resolutions on the way through that then force railroading if the whole scenario is to be used. I can think of a few other published scenarios that pull this off - at least some of Robin Laws's in the Hero Wars Narrator's Book; and as a site-based version, some of those in a 3E-era d20 supplement called Wonders Out of Time (I can't remember the publisher).

Most published adventures have to engage in some amount of railroading by their nature (at least most mainstream adventures).

Published adventures that set out mazes for exploration don't involve railroading (eg ToH, WPM). And published scenarios that are really just story elements don't have to be railroading either - I'm thinking of two Classic Traveller scenarios I've used, Annic Nova and Shadows. What I have had to do with those is add to them to turn them from bare descriptions of (respectively) a starship and an installation into thematically salient elements of our game.

If the published scenario is meant to be a "story" scenario, then I agree that these overwhelmingly are railroads, but they don't have to be as per what I've posted just above.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Published adventures that set out mazes for exploration don't involve railroading (eg ToH, WPM). And published scenarios that are really just story elements don't have to be railroading either - I'm thinking of two Classic Traveller scenarios I've used, Annic Nova and Shadows. What I have had to do with those is add to them to turn them from bare descriptions of (respectively) a starship and an installation into thematically salient elements of our game.

If the published scenario is meant to be a "story" scenario, then I agree that these overwhelmingly are railroads, but they don't have to be as per what I've posted just above.

Sure, most is probably an overstatement. Though even a non-railroad can be a railroad in the hook. For example you can have a dungeon adventure that is pure exploration but the hook is presented in a way where it pushes the players to get in the adventure itself (I don't think railroad is just about structure, it is also about the GM insisting the adventure he or she has in mind will occur, and pushing the players back 'on track'). But like I said it also boils down to execution. Though I was thinking more about modules that have paths or events. Even there I think sometimes the railroadiness is a product of how the medium needs to be structured and packaged. I've had plenty of modules that offer up an overview of likely course of events, and it is easy to read that, and think these events are supposed to happen in this order, in this way, and it is the GMs job to make sure they do so. But if you examine the text more closely it is obvious this is just one way, the most likely way, that the adventure could play out, but the GM is expected to be flexible land adapt more to choices the players make.

Speaking of hook railroads, I think there are also certain types of adventures where you almost have to have some railroad to get to them. Or at least where I think the buy in makes it justifiable. This is possibly where I would defend railroad as okay as long as the players know and are buying into it. When I run monster of the week campaigns, this is how I tend to do things. There is an adventure. The players will go to the Temple of the Phoenix Spirit, or they will end up facing the werewolf of Moondale; but once there the structure is very non-railroad. Once the adventure starts, they can approach it however they want, I usually don't have a set list of things that have to happen in any particular order, and they can engage or disengage as much as they want (running away and escaping with their lives is a perfectly fine ending to the adventure). You could argue this isn't railroad because the players are buying in (but the structure does mean they are being railroaded into each adventure effectively).

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

I agree on 1. If the GM just decides you are poisoned or you are not, that is different from a situation where only one is poisoned or one where the GM rolls after you drink to determine if you were poisoned.

I think 2 isn't just fun, I think it taps into something that resonates strongly with peoples experience in the world. We've all probably had that experience of either meeting with disaster or avoiding it because of a choice we made. And by having the GM objectively decide "the beer is poisoned, the water is not", I think creates a much better sense of that than if I chose a beverage and the GM just rolled randomly to decide if it was poisoned. In terms of probability it is the same, but there is something much more impactful about it having been in the beer the whole time and me choosing either the beer or the water. It is that, if I had only taken a left instead of a right, my life would be totally different experience that it taps into.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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?

Because they explicitly say so? They call it "illusionism," and explicitly advocate for a style where the players are presented with a situation that looks like a choice, but which secretly isn't, and the DM keeps up this illusion indefinitely.

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.

It absolutely is NOT all decided by me. I think the problem here is that I've been talking only about one narrow portion (things I present to my players) because that's what's been talked about as examples (of railroading), whereas you've taken that as me describing the entirety of my game. That is absolutely NOT the case. I work very hard to support whatever it is my players want to do--and absolutely love it when they pursue their own goals, or even insert their own additions into the fiction. Rahim the prince of thieves (as mentioned in the "trickster" thread) was invented by the party Bard--I just gave him a voice. The party Battlemaster has pretty much single-handedly brought to light the culture of rigorous study regarding tactics and warfare that has spanned centuries. The Ranger has spearheaded (pun intended) the development of his own city-state from a secret base, hoping to outdo even his illustrious grandmother (leader of his orc/half-orc tribe, whose leadership position he intends to claim by right).

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.

Breadcrumbs are only necessary when I insert things into the fiction, because I as DM have direct access to the world, while the players only have indirect access to it through me. If I insert something into the fiction, it may go unnoticed unless the players are given a real opportunity to find out about it. That is, it's very easy for me to "slip something past them" and pretend it was "there all along," which I'm very concerned to avoid. I see it as my responsibility to furnish them with the chance to find out. When they insert things into the fiction, though? It's public, for all to see, because they do it at the table, as part of speaking their characters' voices and revealing their characters' pasts, interests, drives, etc. It is literally only a thing I do so that I'm not cheating my players.

Some of my players have attention deficit disorders or other issues with keeping focused, so things that keep play dynamic and changing can mitigate some of their concerns. Further, one of my players is very very new to TTRPGs, and generally his gaming is in high-action, twitch-reflex computer games. Between those two concerns, I try to "spice things up" in those rare occasions where the players seem to be getting a little scattered. In general, however, my players have described my game as engaging, thought-provoking, and surprising--sometimes surprising in ways they never expected could be surprising.

I do feel you're being a little overly harsh in your judgments of my game, of course, but of course I understand that since it's mine I have rather a lot of bias on that front. Edit: Since there's not a lot of charitable reading going on right now, to be clear, I obviously do not mean that the game "belongs to only me" when I say it's "mine." I merely mean that, because I run it and have invested a lot of effort into it, I'm obviously going to be a bit defensive when, more or less, frankly told that my game just doesn't sound like it could even potentially be fun (for a given poster).

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.

Reading this, I feel like you're describing how I go about things. You described the players as "keen for a naval encounter." That seems like a perfectly valid description of what I'd said. Keep in mind, that was purely hypothetical--the party has taken trips on the ocean exactly twice, one of which did include a fight as a way to establish a link in advance)

Perhaps I overstated the "plot" of the world? I have known what the various Evil Things are, and what they intend to do. As the players thwart enemy plans or make changes in the world, those enemies must change--sometimes radically. As an example of the latter, when the party defeated and destroyed the Song of Thorns (an infectious mind-virus spirit), they accidentally caused a crisis within the Raven-Shadows assassin cult (already established as actively fighting Song activity). This led to outright (well, shadowy) sectarian warfare between those who see the Bard as the prophesied savior, and those who revile him as a pretender. I never planned any of this civil war stuff. It rose from different parts of the established fiction fitting together, and the Bard's player enthusiastically embracing the mystery of the Bard's "double" tiefling heritage (demon ancestor is known, but devil ancestor is not).

Ouch… so you have to foreshadow every single encounter you present to the PCs. That sounds like a lot of extra work. Don’t you like to surprise them sometimes? Don’t you like an encounter to be the foreshadowing sometimes?

"Foreshadow" is a strong word. I do, occasionally, surprise them--but usually only when there's a reason. E.g., they've been hired for a mission to go recover something, and the captain of the ship they're on expresses thanks that competent people are on board. That's enough "foreshadowing" for an encounter, which itself can be indicator for future things.

<examples snip> Is there not an element of excitement in confronting the unexpected and the unknown every so often. Particularly when you’re strangers in a strange land.

I really really think people are taking me as being FAR more strident than I said, and I'm kinda frustrated at this, considering how much latitude has been expected for anyone pro-illusionism. Yes, I do include the unexpected. I'm not creating an ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY RIGID world where NOTHING CHANGES unless I, DM-Emperor of Gamekind, Officially Decree it. Please, man, give me a little credit?

I have absolutely surprised my players in tons of ways. I'm talking about scrupulously avoiding gotchas, not "never ever ever ever ever EVER do ANYTHING even REMOTELY unexpected." Please, please cut me a little slack?

 

[Don Durito]

Sure, most is probably an overstatement. Though even a non-railroad can be a railroad in the hook. For example you can have a dungeon adventure that is pure exploration but the hook is presented in a way where it pushes the players to get in the adventure itself (I don't think railroad is just about structure, it is also about the GM insisting the adventure he or she has in mind will occur, and pushing the players back 'on track'). But like I said it also boils down to execution. Though I was thinking more about modules that have paths or events. Even there I think sometimes the railroadiness is a product of how the medium needs to be structured and packaged. I've had plenty of modules that offer up an overview of likely course of events, and it is easy to read that, and think these events are supposed to happen in this order, in this way, and it is the GMs job to make sure they do so. But if you examine the text more closely it is obvious this is just one way, the most likely way, that the adventure could play out, but the GM is expected to be flexible land adapt more to choices the players make.

Speaking of hook railroads, I think there are also certain types of adventures where you almost have to have some railroad to get to them. Or at least where I think the buy in makes it justifiable. This is possibly where I would defend railroad as okay as long as the players know and are buying into it. When I run monster of the week campaigns, this is how I tend to do things. There is an adventure. The players will go to the Temple of the Phoenix Spirit, or they will end up facing the werewolf of Moondale; but once there the structure is very non-railroad. Once the adventure starts, they can approach it however they want, I usually don't have a set list of things that have to happen in any particular order, and they can engage or disengage as much as they want (running away and escaping with their lives is a perfectly fine ending to the adventure). You could argue this isn't railroad because the players are buying in (but the structure does mean they are being railroaded into each adventure effectively).

Certainly, railroad techniques, or "GM Force" are more justified in some circumstances than others.

I will force things quite aggressively in a one shot, because I need it to get somewhere and be over and done with in one night. So I will step in if the whole thing slows down and everyone starts dithering and make something happen a lot faster than I would in a long-term campaign.

Likewise, if I start a game without the PCs all knowing each other, I will force things along quite a bit, because I want to get the PCs together as quickly as possible so that everyone can join the game, and I have no patience for players dithering in such a circumstance and holding the spotlight when other players are waiting for a chance to participate at all.

 

[TheSword]

I really really think people are taking me as being FAR more strident than I said, and I'm kinda frustrated at this, considering how much latitude has been expected for anyone pro-illusionism. Yes, I do include the unexpected. I'm not creating an ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY RIGID world where NOTHING CHANGES unless I, DM-Emperor of Gamekind, Officially Decree it. Please, man, give me a little credit?

I have absolutely surprised my players in tons of ways. I'm talking about scrupulously avoiding gotchas, not "never ever ever ever ever EVER do ANYTHING even REMOTELY unexpected." Please, please cut me a little slack?

That’s fair enough.

I suppose on the flip side, I’m not talking about every single encounter being pre-scripted and inevitable. Just occasional ones where it is appropriate.

Surely a balance of prescriptive and freeform encounters are the way to go. Most adventures have some encounters determined by locations and some encounters determined by events. Some random encounters and some predetermined. Some at the DMs choice and some at the players’.

 

[pemerton]

It absolutely is NOT all decided by me. I think the problem here is that I've been talking only about one narrow portion (things I present to my players) because that's what's been talked about as examples (of railroading), whereas you've taken that as me describing the entirety of my game. That is absolutely NOT the case. I work very hard to support whatever it is my players want to do--and absolutely love it when they pursue their own goals, or even insert their own additions into the fiction. Rahim the prince of thieves (as mentioned in the "trickster" thread) was invented by the party Bard--I just gave him a voice.

<snip>

Breadcrumbs are only necessary when I insert things into the fiction, because I as DM have direct access to the world, while the players only have indirect access to it through me. If I insert something into the fiction, it may go unnoticed unless the players are given a real opportunity to find out about it. That is, it's very easy for me to "slip something past them" and pretend it was "there all along," which I'm very concerned to avoid.

<snip>

I do feel you're being a little overly harsh in your judgments of my game, of course, but of course I understand that since it's mine I have rather a lot of bias on that front.

<snip>

Reading this, I feel like you're describing how I go about things. You described the players as "keen for a naval encounter." That seems like a perfectly valid description of what I'd said.

<snip>

Perhaps I overstated the "plot" of the world? I have known what the various Evil Things are, and what they intend to do. As the players thwart enemy plans or make changes in the world, those enemies must change--sometimes radically.

I'm having trouble reconciling "I feel like you're describing how I go about things" with "the players only have indirect access to to [the gameworld] through me". It's that second bit which I picked up in your earlier posts, and which prompted my remarks - which were intended to be honest, but not as a "harsh judgement" - my statements of my preferences are not normative for you, any more than vice versa is the case!

As a general rule, I expect my players to have direct access to the gameworld, both in the PbtA-ish "questions and answers" way (eg in our Traveller game it was one of the players who suggested that the starting world was a gas giant moon; in our 4e game the player of the wizard/invoker used to do a lot of the explanation of how magic works in the world; I generally expect players of religious characters to handle the gods; etc); and also via action declaration if we're talking not about backstory but about resolving a situation here-and-now (that can be anything from punching things to finding things to meeting people to befriending them, etc, depending on the system in use).

And if I insert something into the fiction it won't go unnoticed because it will be part of the framing! I don't think I've used a haunted house since the early 90s (the RM module Orgillion Horror) - in that case the PCs passed through some sort of teleportation gate or event (I can't remember the details) and I told the players where they were and what they saw. The most recent house-related situation I remember is the giant steading in our Cortex+ Vikings game. The campaign started with me having written up pre-gens that could work either for Vikings or Fantasy Japan; the players voted for Vikings, and chose their PCs, and came up with the reasons why they were being sent out on a mission to the north, and then I narrated their travels for maybe a minute or so and told them they could see the steading - at which point we started the first action scene of the campaign.

I don't really get what you mean by "slipping things past [the players]" and "pretend[ing] it was 'there all along'". Do you mean all along in the fiction? Well of course I'm pretending the steading was there all along in the fiction - it's not a spontaneous appearance - although I hadn't thought of it until I started narrating it (obviously drawing on a more famous Steading of the Giant Chief). Do you mean you've thought of it all along in the real world? In that case, I'm a bit puzzled - why exactly does it matter when you think of something, and why are your players worrying about the time at which you engage in authorship?

Is there a premise that's important to what you say that I'm missing? Eg are you using map-and-key resolution, and you're talking about when these are authored? Or are you using secret fiction (ie stuff you're making up but that hasn't yet been established at the fiction) to make fiat determinations in response to action declarations? Something like that would make sense, to me, of how you talk about the gameworld and "the 'plot'" - but again wouldn't fit with "I feel like you're describing how I go about things", as I don't use map-and-key resolution very often (and not at all in any of the water voyages I described) and don't use secret fiction to resolve action declarations.

 

[pemerton]

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>

I run DW

Following up on this: I don't really get how you're running DW without introducing new fiction into the game all the time.

Probably the most generic soft move is to reveal an unwelcome truth (I might be mixing some DW with AW terminology here), and that's probably going to be or to signal a new bit of fiction all the time. You see a foreboding house ahead of you down the road would be one example. Or a hard move might be anything from a scything blade to falling in a pit to slipping through the veils of reality into a haunted shadowfell analogue of the PC's current location.

Similar ideas apply in other non-PbtA but "story now" games - eg in BW a new framing (which may be consequence narration) will often be (in PbtA terms) a flagging of an unwelcome truth that builds on where things are at (eg the PCs are fleeing an important wizard's tower at night, carrying a decapitated body and its head; I tell the players they have come crossed path with the night watch); in Cortex+ Heroic the PCs had encountered a Crypt Thing in a dungeon, the Doom Pool grew to 2d12, and I spent that to end the scene, which meant - in the fiction - that the Crypt Thing had teleported them deep into the dungeon. That wasn't a haunted house, but it could have been.

As I said: In this sort of play it seems as if it's the GM's job to establish new fiction all the time. Which leaves me a bit confused by your remarks about doing so.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That’s fair enough.

I suppose on the flip side, I’m not talking about every single encounter being pre-scripted and inevitable. Just occasional ones where it is appropriate.

Surely a balance of prescriptive and freeform encounters are the way to go. Most adventures have some encounters determined by locations and some encounters determined by events. Some random encounters and some predetermined. Some at the DMs choice and some at the players’.

I appreciate your positivity and friendliness. My request was a bit melodramatic, so your gracious response is genuinely appreciated for helping turn down, rather than up, the temperature of the discussion.

And yes, I agree that a mixture is desirable. Sometimes, for example, the fiction requires either bringing conflict to a head, or letting an issue go. That can verge into the "predetermined" category because the weight of past decisions and current values is too great to simply let it lie unresolved. I mentioned the Song of Thorns earlier; the party knew, after digging into things, finding allies, etc. that they couldn't allow the Song to act with impunity, and that the Song wouldn't (indeed, couldn't) be persuaded to change its ways without force. That meant a fight--and I drafted up what I considered an interesting sequence for it, with the possibility of both horrible failure and superlative success. (They rolled very well and exploited their resources well, so they hit the superlative success zone--but the option WAS there for a Really Bad Time if they had not rolled well or used their resources poorly.)

I'm having trouble reconciling "I feel like you're describing how I go about things" with "the players only have indirect access to to [the gameworld] through me". It's that second bit which I picked up in your earlier posts, and which prompted my remarks - which were intended to be honest, but not as a "harsh judgement" - my statements of my preferences are not normative for you, any more than vice versa is the case!

I appreciate the honest critique, but again feel it is somewhat misplaced.

Before I dig into the other parts of this post: Are you saying your players can, at any time, determine any desired part of the game world on their own, with no input from you whatsoever? Because that's what I mean by "only indirect access through me." That is, even in something like DW, the players are dependent on what I tell them about the world. They have to ask Discern Realities questions. They have to prove to me that they have leverage for Parley. They have to turn to me to tell them what "worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice" results from a partial success on Defy Danger. When they enter into a new space, they don't start narrating its contents to me; I narrate the contents to them. If they have a zany idea, they have to sell me on it; I do not "have" to sell them on anything (though I choose to do so as I see great value in it).

They have some direct access, sure. But it's always gated by mechanics (Spout Lore, Bardic Lore, Bonds)--they never have absolute direct access the way I as GM, and the vast majority of the time, whatever access they have depends on me as GM. As the Agendas say, it's my job to "portray a fantastic world," to "show the players the wonders of the world they’re in and encourage them to react to it." In Dungeon World (and D&D, and most other TTRPGs with a central GM role), the players only ever have mediated access--that is, mediated by what words I tell them, what I "allow" them to see. It is thus incumbent on me to make sure that that mediated access is genuinely fair to them, otherwise I'm robbing them of the ability to actually explore that space.

Perhaps my "breadcrumbs" are what you refer to as "framing"? I'm absolutely not at all familiar with most of the technical terms of art in the GM sphere; this is literally only the second game I've ever run (and the first petered out after only a few sessions). I don't know precisely what "framing" means, and some of the ways you've described it sounded...well, really railroady, "you'll do this because I'm the one telling you this story" level control. It'd be unfortunate but not unexpected if vocabulary were the central difference between us.

Following up on this: I don't really get how you're running DW without introducing new fiction into the game all the time. <snip> As I said: In this sort of play it seems as if it's the GM's job to establish new fiction all the time. Which leaves me a bit confused by your remarks about doing so.

....I do introduce new fiction. Quite often. I had thought I had expressly said so. I just have very strict limits on how I'm allowed to introduce that fiction, so that I'm not pulling "gotchas" on my players. I know for a fact I explicitly said that this was about avoiding "gotcha" issues. How could I have even the possibility of a "gotcha" if I wasn't introducing something new?

And on the players' side, I am actively enthusiastic about them introducing things into the fiction. I LOVE it when the Bard tells us about his Bestiary of Creatures Unusual, or the tales he heard while living among the desert nomads. I encourage the Ranger to tell us who from his vast extended family is helping us today. Etc. Those things are automatically "in the open" because the players must insert them into the fiction while playing. The stuff I insert into the fiction is, by definition, invisible unless I either explicitly tell the party, or provide them with an opportunity to find out.

But a lot of so-called "opportunities to find out" are really rather poor ones, because they don't give the players a fighting chance. How do you know to ask a question about something you have no idea is there? My "breadcrumbs" are merely my effort to make "unknown unknowns" into "known unknowns," as the saying goes--but sometimes those "breadcrumbs" are incredibly subtle, like mentioning that the winds have changed a lot lately, or have only recently uncovered long-buried secrets, stuff that very very very subtly invites inquiry. I always try to leave at least one little thing, one loose end, that the players could pull on to begin unravelling the mystery, and that loose end gets at least a teeny tiny reference, no matter how subtle, in my actual descriptions of things. That way, if the players figure it out early, they can legitimately feel smart for having tracked down the mystery early, and if they don't figure it out until the reveal, they can look back and honestly say, "Wow, I totally could've seen that coming, I just didn't!"

 

[TheSword]

It feels like this debate is winding down. I think the biggest learning for me is that just because I don’t see something as railroading doesn’t mean other people don’t either. Which is definitely worth knowing.

I also think I’ve reached the conclusion that for something to reach the pejorative state of railroading there has to be repetition. You can’t look at elements in isolation. One sleeper doesn’t make a railroad, it’s just a log. 10 sleepers in a row though unmistakenly looks like one, even if you can’t see the rails.

One quantum ogre isn’t a problem. Neither is one PC targeted magic item, or one difficult skill check. The problem (the railroad) arrises when the PCs then also find the McGuffin isn’t there, and there is a second encounter behind another door, and possibly a third. Or every encounter automatically finds the party irrespective of where they go. Or every item is selected and just happens to be in every treasure.