D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[niklinna]

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.

Reminds me of an interview I read/heard with World of Warcraft dungeon developers, about how they designed encounters with specific classes and their abilities in mind—not as requirements, of course, but as different ways to for players to handle the encounter. They used ghosts and demons in Dire Maul as an example, which priests and warlocks can use their crowd-control abilities on, and something else for druids.

 

[payn]

Glad we could clear this all up. Oh wait... here comes 30 more pages of questions and debates on this topic.

 

[niklinna]

Im not sure what it would be called maybe the Twist of Fate, but essentially it’s the narrative conceit that the action just happens to take place as the PCs are traveling through.

- The PCs are traveling down the Main Street just at the moment the manticore in the market escapes it’s cage.

- The PCs are walking through the sewers at the same moment the thief is returning to their hideout.

- The inn the players choose to stay at has various hijinks and capers occur throughout the night that the PCs can participate in as they choose.

These examples all involve putting encounters in front of the PCs arbitrarily, irrespective of when (or in some cases even where) they choose to go. Nevertheless I think they are useful techniques for improving pace, adding plot hooks and driving the story forward.

Come now, everybody knows that when Jessica Fletcher shows up to a dinner party, somebody's gonna die.

 

[TheSword]

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.

Well an encounter is not necessarily a threat… really it’s just an event. It might result in combat, but it also might result in negotiation, sharing information, a reward, protect etc.

Three farmers passing you on the road sharing news about the besieged town over the next hill is no different in principle than that ogre. In my examples they also had nothing to do with player choices so nothing was being invalidated.

In the case of a fight ending when the DM feels enough is enough, well that’s a bit much for my taste. If I’m a wizard and use my fireball to end the fight, but the enemy has enough hp to last 7 rounds, then my fireball is wasted and I might as well use firebolts… or better yet… hide.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Seems like that rapscallion @Snarf Zagyg is behind all the big threads despite his mild and inoffensive posting style. Stirring up the gamers with his old school wisdom.

I did nothing to those gamers! Those people did it to themselves. I just helped them along.

I have to start these threads, you see. I just can't believe that people take this stuff seriously. About half way through that last one, I suddenly realized that all these poor commenters out there reading about railroads and authority believed this madness.

Mind you- I never said anything about railroads. I said there was a rumor in another thread that railroading was awesome, and we should all hop aboard, CHOO CHOO!


.....which was true, because I started the rumor.

 

[overgeeked]

Three farmers passing you on the road sharing news about the besieged town over the next hill is no different in principle than that ogre. In my examples they also had nothing to do with player choices so nothing was being invalidated.

If you put the three farmers at every road out of town, then player choice is invalidated...in exactly the same way as the quantum ogre. The DM decides that no matter which direction/door the players choose, the exact same encounter is behind that choice. So it's no choice at all.

In the case of a fight ending when the DM feels enough is enough, well that’s a bit much for my taste. If I’m a wizard and use my fireball to end the fight, but the enemy has enough hp to last 7 rounds, then my fireball is wasted and I might as well use firebolts… or better yet… hide.

Why is that choice more sacrosanct than which direction to travel or which door to open?

 

[TheSword]

If you put the three farmers at every road out of town, then player choice is invalidated...in exactly the same way as the quantum ogre. The DM decides that no matter which direction/door the players choose, the exact same encounter is behind that choice. So it's no choice at all.

Why is that choice more sacrosanct than which direction to travel or which door to open?

Direction doesn’t have to be a choice. Leaving town can be the choice in and of itself. You seem to be suggesting that deciding to leave by the north road or caravan gate is different than traveling north or south… or NNW or NNE… or 46 degrees or 47 degrees… or 47.5 degree or 47.6 degrees.

By your argument you expect the players leaving town to make choices that would affect whether their path intersects with the ogre/farmers. Uninformed choices by the way. That’s only because your considering the encounter as being in a specific location rather than at a specific time.

When some has a choice of two things… the right door or left door it’s reasonable to have simple consequences - bound to locations because those locations are easily determined. Once you step outside the easily bounded area of a dungeon then things become harder. The wilderness or a city of hundreds/thousands of locations has an endless number of possible decisions. It is very difficult to map consequences to these the same way.

That’s why event based encounters become far more attractive in a non-dungeon setting. There needs to be another method of advancing action than opening the next door.

The farmers don’t therefore need to be 1 mile NNE of town, plotted on a map. They can be after lunch the day the players leave.

 

[RangerWickett]

I have run a lot of adventures that have mysteries, in the Sherlock Holmes sense. You naturally want the players to figure out the mystery, but the game does not have mechanics that are quite as strong for solving mysteries as it does for stabbing goblins.

This means that a lot of the time I have to decide whether a choice by a player that I did not plan for can still be useful in the investigation. Generally, I lean in the direction of making the players' investigation be on the right track.

For instance, last night in my game, the party decided to look for clues at the site of a street brawl. I had previously thought of a location where they could get useful clues to identify one of the bad actors in the adventure, but it was not at the site of this street brawl. But because they went there, I moved the clue so that their investigation would provide some forward momentum.

Is that a railroad?

 

[TheSword]

I have run a lot of adventures that have mysteries, in the Sherlock Holmes sense. You naturally want the players to figure out the mystery, but the game does not have mechanics that are quite as strong for solving mysteries as it does for stabbing goblins.

This means that a lot of the time I have to decide whether a choice by a player that I did not plan for can still be useful in the investigation. Generally, I lean in the direction of making the players' investigation be on the right track.

For instance, last night in my game, the party decided to look for clues at the site of a street brawl. I had previously thought of a location where they could get useful clues to identify one of the bad actors in the adventure, but it was not at the site of this street brawl. But because they went there, I moved the clue so that their investigation would provide some forward momentum.

Is that a railroad?

Yes… it’s a good one.

 

[TheSword]

Railroads are great... so many possibilities!

Ticket to Ride… Great game if a session gets cancelled by the way! All about making choices when laying railroads