D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[tetrasodium]

But this assumes that the player has information about the ogres, odds etc, and that's usually not the case. It's just 'there are two doors' or 'do you go left or right?' etc.

I want to add to this because it feels like discussion is getting hung up on the concept of the "door" as if it were always players standing before two physical doors deciding if they go left or right. Yes that can be the situation, but the "door" can be created organically based on making informed choices resulting from the eyes wide open application of free willed agency at the table.

This could be as simple as the gm showing up with a "dungeon" created to a session where the players expect to arrive at the town they were traveling to. The GM has no freaking clue what the players are going to do once inside the city & frankly doesn't care.

• Players faff about for a session of shopping? ok that dungeon is still good next week.
• Players Look at the map & notice mountains. As a dwarf Bob is "interested in seeing mines" so deliberately ushers the group to the mining guild that just now exists or not the moment he asked to go find it i a fit of proactive agency. Even if they needed to travel a few hours down the road to the mining guild in the nearby speck of a village that likewise just got created because that seemed the best place for whatever reason. Bob gets there & tells the mining guild's guildmaster that this band of adventurers are looking for work... Tada!: the dungeon is an old semiprofitable mine that was taken over by magebred warbeasts during The Last War & there has been a standing offer of reward if anyone cleans it out so it can be brought back into use.
• Players Proactively declare they are going to march up to the mayor & ask if there are any jobs in & around town that need the application of a heavily armed band of serial killers (adventurers). Tada: The dungeon is a bandit hideout that has been plaguing trade from the east & the players need to go see the merchant guild for the details they have on the bandits because they know more about their problem (like where the dungeon is!) than he could possibly keep tabs on.
• Players passively demonstrate an abdication of agency by going to the bar & listen for nonspecific rumors to be spoon fed to them as passive observers? snore...: Most of the talk is about some monsters in the mountains
• Players actively demonstrate agency by going to a bar & buying some drinks for folks to search for contacts in the local thieve's guild with the expectation that they might need to prove their worth... Tada!: Dungeon is the hideout of a former guildmember who stole a bunch of sentimental stuff from VeryImportantPeople that violate the secret peace. Unfortunately him & his guys are quite powerful but have inconvenient ties to important people that would be problematic if the guards are allowed to solve the problems being caused by the violation. Tada!: The dungeon is reskinned with thieves & a pile of macguffins with a reward on them is planted... oh yea bring back the head of the former member & make sure the other bodies are burned to being unrecognizable because $GuildStuff.
• Players for some reason get a wild hair up their ass & seem certain that this town probably has a cult problem... sure whatever... Dungeon is good another week if not this one with some reskinning & the players need to do some investigative gumshoe work to find a cult that only exists because coincidentally the town is named similarly to one in a novel the GM never even heard of. A couple weeks later players are in awe over how incredibly well planted all of the clues were ahead of time since some of them even trace back to plotpoints ten sessions ago before they took a ship across the ocean to this town.

But the question is - shouldn't the choice itself matter, informed or not?

Did the DM actually set up a fair choice? Or did he have a whatever you choose, oops there's an ogre scenario. I agree with @Maxperson that if it's the latter - that's railroading.

If the DM wants the PCs to fight the ogre - just have one door, that's linear but it's not railroading.

Informed choice is critical. All of the examples above have some level of players being aware of what they are getting into & nearly all of them even allow them a great deal of leeway to ask questions about the dungeon itself before they leave town. Without being informed to some degree it's just a random guess.

I can give an example of uninformed choice from a Frostmaiden game I'm in. For whatever reason the players didn't encounter one faction of the arcane brotherhood in $town while they were there. Months later a second faction show up to help the players with transportation somewhere they need to go fast & tags along till they spring their own quest to raid the necropolis but never really knows anything & is unable to answer any player questions. Players wander around netherese ruins cluelessly pointing at "lets try here" shapes on a map with no information about them & in frustration declare they are goin to nope out hoping to find some clues by doing something they heard about but never got to because of their useless npc "guide". Players start to leave & run into the first faction they never met who seems equally but differently useless & their original guide is now even more useless than before the two factions want the players to murder the other. Players watch one of their own turn into an aberration before their eyes & just declare a hard pass on the shitshow of uninformed blindness by teleporting out well outside the ten towns with a started goal of gathering information in $town that the GM states does a lot of trade in netherese artifacts. Players find nothing.. not even someone to speak to that doesn't know anything so continue on & try again in the next town. Players are chased by duergar they can't fight because of things they did. Players will eventually get back to the necropolis & seem to be leaning towards just slaughtering everyone to end the pain of a railroad where they need to find the right question to ask at the right time in the right place by sheer luck.

edit: This thread is moving quite fast & there were a lot of posts made while I was writing this to read through. In case it wasn't clear in the bullet points both the dungeon & in more than one case how the creatures inside it were reskinned were the quantum ogre.

 

[TheSword]

And as far as I know, the gaming community has ALSO decided that linear is not good...

Some people in the community. Paizo have built the worlds second most successful TTRPG company on the premise that linear can be very good!

 

[Amrûnril]

So, the DM tells you that there are three doors, and that there's an ogre behind one of them. You pick a door, and then the DM opens another door and tells you that you can stay with the same door, or change to the third one, still closed. Should you change the door that you selected ?

Justify your answer, in particular taking into account that it's a good or bad DM....

This sounds like a good DM, provided the adventure also features an exceedingly generous supply of magic items.

 

[Umbran]

More seriously, of course not all actual life choices matter in the grand scheme of things.

But this isn't life. This is being presented with an apparent choice and thinking it matters (even if it's random) when it not only doesn't, but it's the DM actively making it not matter. I think that's different enough to merit comment.

Meh.

Any game with hidden information, or a random element in task or conflict resolution will result in times when the players thinking their choice matters, but having it turn out not to matter. The dice rob us of certainty in our agency. Indeed, we require a lack of absolute agency - a game in which the players got everything they wanted would be widely regarded as no fun - why bother if you know how it is going to turn out.

So, we are really arguing over the difference between dice cancelling agency, and another person removing that same agency.

It seems to me that if you (generic, not you Mort) don't trust your GM to make some choices, that's about you, and your human reliationships, not the game. Your lack of trust in your GMs really does not speak to what anyone else should do at their tables.

 

[Maxperson]

It's not MY personal preference. Linear and Railroad are not the same thing. One involves no choice (other than maybe reversing course), and one involves the illusion of choice. That's 2 very different things.

I'm going to disagree with you a bit here. Linear with no choice still = railroad. You are forced along the rails. Linear as modules present them do have choice. I can go through that one door, or I can go back and leave. I still have a choice, but if I choose to go forward there is but one option.

 

[TheSword]

I tend to structure campaigns through two methods. They seem to be opposite but in reality they both seem to have similar effects.

Method 1: The Adventure Path. (a la Paizo)
You have discreet chunks of adventure that can be completed in whatever way you like. Provided the chunk behind and ends in the intended place. So you can raid the castle room by room, burn it to the ground, make peace with the inhabitants, take it over as your own or shunt it via arcane ritual into the fry wild. But either way you have to go to the castle and you have to reach the top tower meet the BBEG to find the clue to the next part.

This method is simple, offers huge amounts of choice along the way but does require PCs to be bought into the premise of the Path. They almost need to design PCs with a reason to get involved which is no bad thing.

Method 2: The Modular Approach
Your players can go where they like in whatever order they like, but they will come across set pieces as they do. When they stay at an appropriate inn you’ll run a module that features a night time caper. When they a visit a temple for healing you present them a temple based mystery you’ve written. When they are on the road at some point the next village has been raided by a mysterious monster. There can still be mapped encounters but a lot of the campaign happens irrespective of where they are next.

This method give PCs more freedom but the action goes to where they are. It usually doesn’t matter how the set pieces begin or end and so it can feel less linear. This is the way I approach WFRP whose published materials generally include lots of bite sized scenarios.

To my mind both methods include railroading (for practical time saving reasons) but they are both a lot of fun. They allow plenty of choice (agency) whilst restricting it in some ways.

 

[Lanefan]

But the question is - shouldn't the choice itself matter, informed or not?

Did the DM actually set up a fair choice? Or did he have a whatever you choose, oops there's an ogre scenario. I agree with @Maxperson that if it's the latter - that's railroading.

If the DM wants the PCs to fight the ogre - just have one door, that's linear but it's not railroading.

Or better yet, put the Ogre in the room that has the two doors so he can guard them both.

 

[Maxperson]

Admittedly, there can be game worlds that do care - the PCs can have a special place within the world, and that may impact events ("I'm sorry, you are The One. You attract encounters like carrion attracts vultures.")

This is my default view of the game. If all the deadly monsters that the PCs encounter were as common in general as they seem, the civilized world would be dead. PCs just encounter them much more frequently for whatever reason, "I'm sorry, you are The One" being as good a reason as any.

 

[Lanefan]

And then maybe it was a nasty dungeon created by Grimtooth, in which there is a spell that channels the sounds and smells of the ogre to the next room, who knows ? Maybe if the PCs had detected magic ?

The Grimtooth version might go more like: opening either door causes an Ogre to be immediately summoned to the space just behind that door. Which means if you open both doors you're gonna get two Ogres. Double the fun!

 

[Lanefan]

And as far as I know, the gaming community has ALSO decided that linear is not good...

Not quite, I don't think. There's still a whole bunch o' gamers out there who are quite happy with linear campaigns and-or adventures.

And though in general I'm not a fan of 'em, even I'll admit that once in a while a linear adventure can be good. Boring when it comes to choice-making, sure, but if the encounters on the string are themselves engaging and entertaining it can be fun.