D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[jmartkdr2]

Conversation like this are why I reserve the term "railroading" for the most pejorative definition: when the players feel arbitrarily constrained in their agency. If the players aren't annoyed, it's not railroading, no matter how much choice they do or do not have. If the annoyance isn't rooted in reducing meaningful player choices, it's not railroading.

I do acknowledge there's a huge gap between not that and wide-open sandboxes, but any definition of railroading that doesn't assume it's all evil will create long, boring, pointless semantic arguments rather than any kind of discussion of how someone might dm better.

 

[el-remmen]

There is a further railroading technique I would refer to as Tailoring. Whereby the DM tailors encounters to the capabilities of the party. If the party contains a rogue they add in a few locked doors/chests and traps. If there is a ranger they add some survival/wild animals etc.

Another version of tailoring is where magic items are selected to maintain party balance or appeal to a particular PC that magic studded leather foe the rogue. A magic axe because that’s what the barbarian likes to use.

I feel tailoring is on the whole positive and makes the game more fun. Though I accept there is a downside when it comes to player choice mattering… hence me including it in a conversation about railroading.

I usually tailor rewards but not challenges. I just make "(hopefully) interesting challenge" and it is up to the PCs to figure out how to overcome it with whatever resources they have left. I mean, how do I know if the party wizard will have happened to prepare fireball (or will not have already cast it even if he had) when I am planning the big room with a dozen tightly packed ice creatures vulnerable to fire? That way lies madness to me.

 

[aco175]

I tailor some as well. My wandering encounters are not from a table, but it would be worth some time making some. I just tend to group some cool monsters together and have that be the wandering encounter if the player rolls for one. It is generally around the party level(ish).

I do tailor items some in that if the fighter is using a spear and the item in the book is a sword, I may make it a spear instead. I like giving powers to items as well and would give the fighter's spear a 1/day healing-type spell or such. Thinking that it would help them the most. Sometimes the players give the item to another PC though. I also put items in that I think would go to certain people and find the players only mostly do what I thought.

In an upcoming game, I inserted a pearl of power that I think the warlock would take and like the most, but the players may want to give it to the cleric or the ranger.

 

[niklinna]

So, uh, you're wrong, and your mother was a bard.

True story: Me & a pal were playing obnoxious frat-boy wood elves in a 4e session, and the topic of half-elves came up, so I asked the other fellow where they came from anyhow. He started to reply, and of course I immediately interrupted with "YOUR MOM!"

 

[Composer99]

Apropos of instigation:

By my reckoning, strange and random events happen all the time, in our world as much as in fantasy gaming worlds - of course, in fantasy gaming worlds, such events will perforce often be all the stranger.

What is more, by my reckoning the actual illusion is that these events seem to happen exclusively in the presence of the player characters. They don't - they only come across that way because, for the most part, the player characters are often the exclusive viewpoint characters during gameplay.

Finally, apropos of how such events might tie into railroading, the answer is, most of the time, they don't (so I would say at any rate). By my reckoning, railroading requires nonconsensual negation of player agency. (I find myself largely in agreement with jmartkdr2 here, methinks.) Events in the fiction that happen orthogonally to the players' exercise of their agency do not, by definition, abrogate same, and therefore by definition cannot constitute railroading. (By "orthogonally" I mean that, regardless of how the event came to be, it's not meaningfully related to any decisions the players made, nor to any consequences or outcomes thereof). Even events that either bestow the opportunity or obligation to make meaningful decisions, or that might constrain the "decision space", so to speak, would not necessarily constitute railroading if they follow logically from what has been established in the fiction. [*]

With that in mind, I daresay most instigation events in a game will not constitute railroading, although some may well do so.

[*] Here I daresay that we have to rely to some extent on "I'll know it when I see it" to ascertain that a GM is abusing their privileges with respect to establishing the fiction. A blizzard rolling in might constrain the players' "decision space" just because it's a blizzard, and that's well and good as far as it goes, but it would be highly suspicious when such weather has a habit of turning up precisely so as to head them off at the pass (possibly both figuratively and literally within the context of the fiction.)

 

[overgeeked]

I’m sceptical. Are you honestly saying the events of your world happen independently of the PCs and you track what happens in each place irresepctice of whether the PCs are involved - which seems extremely labour intensive for little game effect.

Sort of.

I do precisely that for the limited region the PCs can access within a few days' travel. I do not do that for the entire world. That would be insane. I also fill things out as the PCs move through the world. If they pick up a job that takes them somewhere new, I fill in the world around them, just in case. I use wandering monsters to determine what random stuff they come across and then give those things details and integrate them into the world.

So the PCs are going south to a new place, what's east and west along their journey gets filled in as they move. What's there is then given goals and plans and set against the other things in the area. I randomly rolled two tribes of lizardfolk in a small area as the PCs moved somewhere else, so now they exist in the setting and the PCs are none the wiser. I don't go down to the level of naming everyone or giving them detailed backstories. Right now my notes on them are literally "Lizardfolk tribe A was pushed out of their swamp home by lizardfolk tribe B. Tribe A wants revenge". That's it.

But monsters move and migrate so other monsters will know about this and a rumor of the warring lizardfolk tribes may filter back to the PCs and they may engage with that hook...or they'll leave it and it will never be more detailed than that.

Or do you forgo event based encounter design completely?

Of course not. Events just aren't triggered by the PCs' presence.

If someone poisons the water supply the PCs can engage with that or not, at their pleasure. The water supply will not be poisoned when the PCs are fully rested, with nothing on their plate, and looking to me for the next bit of "content"...it will be poisoned with the faction that wants to poison the well gets to that part of their plan. There are other stages first. Consequences for the PCs not engaging will be fairly harsh though.

But the PCs entering a room doesn't trigger the monsters therein to spring to life. Or the PCs entering the square doesn't cause the manticore to get loose. If the manticore gets loose it's going to be when it can, whether that's midnight or noon...whether that's when the PCs are six blocks away or six miles. I don't treat the PCs as danger magnets.

I make use of a calendar and have things that will happen on given days. So, for example, on July 17th there will be an earthquake centered a few miles away from the starting town. What the PCs do in response is up to them. Where they are when it happens is up to them. When the calendar rolls over to that date I'll roll a random time for it to happen. So if the PCs are asleep, in the middle of a fight, far away from the town, or standing on the epicenter...it will exist entirely independent of their choices.

 

[niklinna]

Gee this door is locked... the rogue misses the DC, yea the rogue can roll again, or the wizard (swiss army win button) can cast knock or the barbarian can kick the door/lock... but here is the thing... why CAN'T the rogue roll again on the locked door?
If I have a basic idea how to pick a lock (I don't my sister does so and has) she can spend a minute and get lucky, or an hour and swear and get annoyed but finally get in... unless there is a time restraint. I would say the checks are more "how long it takes you" then "if you do or not" now the perception one is a bit better...
do I see the clue or not? well if I don't spend more time looking I don't get another roll, and if I am not sure if I am wasting my time why would I keep checking (maybe one double check makes sense)

I recall Fate (specifically, Spirit of the Century) making explicit provision for a roll governing how long an action takes to succeed, not just whether it does.

 

[loverdrive]

I'm quite amazed that there are still arguments or misunderstandings about what railroading is. When did Alexandrian write his Railroading Manifesto? Six years ago?

 

[overgeeked]

Ahh, in the absence of information to the contrary (ogres are more prevalent in the forest dontcha know) the direction is completely independent of ogre sighting and therefore the DM hasn’t created an illusion that it is. There are an infinite number of directions a PC could take from a given point. Unless the DM artificially limits this by grouping into types or provided natural barriers the PCs aren’t ever going to be likely to walk directly into the path of a given ogre. Fate has to intervene to place challenges in the path of a Pc

Even random encounters assume that the encounter does cross the path of the PC - based on a set probability .

Ouch. There’s a line between fudge and why-bother-rolling-dice. I hope the tweet has a context that doesn’t just suggest combats last until Daniels had enough.

Weird.

So it's perfectly acceptable for the DM to...whenever they feel like it...force an encounter on the PCs despite whatever choices the PCs make...but it's totally unacceptable to end an encounter whenever the DM feels like it despite whatever choices the PCs make and the dice determine.

This is somehow bad. If the fight ends whenever the DM feels like it, regardless of the dice, then why bother rolling dice? The dice don't matter, the DM will just decide.

But this is somehow good. If the fight happens whenever the DM feels like it, regardless of the PCs' choices, then why bother making choices? The players' choices don't matter, the DM will just decide.

I can only assume that you think the random element of the dice is somehow a more valid and untouchable thing than the players choices. That doesn't make sense to me. The players are other people with preferences and minds. The dice are inanimate objects, not the gods of fate. The players and their choices should be respected. The dice are inanimate objects.

 

[loverdrive]

The thatched roof is half-rotten, and you're uncertain if the crumbling mortar in the stone walls could withstand a heavy rain. (Pause to see if anyone has anything to say. No characters act, so the GM continues.) Entering the structure, you see the Mad Hermit himself..."

Right there, the GM usurped player agency to narrate. The players are probably fine

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see where in this example GM fudges or changes anything.

I think it's more of an "implicit action declaration" than anyone usurping anyone's agency.