D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Helpful NPC Thom]

Look, I get that players exhibit negative behaviors at the table, but it's not railroading. Railroading refers to GMing behavior, not player behavior. It's like saying that a referee plays the game. Referees officiate the game. Players play.

 

[Campbell]

@Helpful NPC Thom

The nature of the GM role is going to vary from game to game, even games within the D&D family. Here's what Pathfinder Second Edition has to say on Player and GM roles as an example:

THE PLAYERS​

Everyone involved in a Pathfinder game is a player, including the Game Master, but for the sake of simplicity, “player” usually refers to participants other than the GM. Before the game begins, players invent a history and personality for their characters, using the rules to determine their characters’ statistics, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. The GM might limit the options available during character creation, but the limits are discussed ahead of time so everyone can create interesting heroes. In general, the only limits to character concepts are the players’ imaginations and the GM’s guidelines. During the game, players describe the actions their characters take and roll dice, using their characters’ abilities. The GM resolves the outcome of these actions. Some players enjoy acting out (or roleplaying) what they do as if they were their characters, while others describe their characters’ actions as if narrating a story. Do whatever feels best! If this is your first experience with a roleplaying game, it is recommended that you take on the role of a player to familiarize yourself with the rules and the world.

THE GAME MASTER​

While the other players create and control their characters, the Game Master (or GM) is in charge of the story and world. The GM describes all the situations player characters experience in an adventure, considers how the actions of player characters affect the story, and interprets the rules along the way.

The GM can create a new adventure—crafting a narrative, selecting monsters, and assigning treasure on their own— or they can instead rely on a published adventure, using it as a basis for the session and modifying it as needed to accommodate their individual players and the group’s style of play. Some even run games that combine original and published content, mixed together to form a new narrative.

Being the GM is a challenge, requiring you to adjudicate the rules, narrate the story, and juggle other responsibilities.

But it can also be very rewarding and worth all the work required to run a good game. If it is your first time running a game, remember that the only thing that matters is that everyone has a good time, and that includes you. Everything else will come naturally with practice and patience.

GAMING IS FOR ALL​

Whether you are the GM or a player, participating in a tabletop roleplaying game includes a social contract: everyone has gathered together to have fun telling a story.

For many, roleplaying is a way to escape the troubles of everyday life. Be mindful of everyone at the table and what they want out of the game, so that everyone can have fun.

When a group gathers for the first time, they should talk about what they hope to experience at the table, as well as any topics they want to avoid. Everyone should understand that elements might come up that make some players feel uncomfortable or even unwelcome, and everyone should agree to respect those boundaries during play. That way, everyone can enjoy the game together.

This is a game for everyone, regardless of their age, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identities and life experiences. It is the responsibility of all of the players, not just the GM, to make sure the table is fun and welcoming to all.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Look, I get that players exhibit negative behaviors at the table, but it's not railroading. Railroading refers to GMing behavior, not player behavior. It's like saying that a referee plays the game. Referees officiate the game. Players play.

I understand what you're saying. And I agree that railroading as you're describing it is typically something a GM does to the players. I don't necessarily agree about the division of referee and player as it relates to the GM in an RPG, but that's maybe unrelated.

All I'm saying is that the thing we refer to as railroading....the feeling of having no choice as a player....can be caused by another player.

For example, I had a recent experience where a GM disregarded an ability that I used to avoid a fight and had the fight occur anyway. I felt that was a bit of railroading.

If I make attempts to avoid fights and another player just ignores that and charges in, that'll result in the same feeling.

It's a case of "I'd like the game to go this way" and someone else stepping in and saying "It doesn't matter what you want, THIS is what's happening".

I don't even think that it must involve negative behavior. Maybe that player just enjoys combat and is playing someone who's prone to violence. He may not realize that he's ignoring how I'd like the game to go.

 

[Maxperson]

Well players always have a choice in that regard. Even if the GM is railroading them, they can call it out or leave the game, etc.

Calling it out doesn't do anything. They either follow the rails or leave the game. Neither of those involves the players choosing what the PCs do. With the jerk, the player still has the choice to do what he wants with his PC, even if that is choosing to do what the jerk says.

What I'm talking about is not really so much about influencing what another player does except in the sense that all players are part of the group, and it's one person deciding what the group does. I've been in games like that, and I've found them to be very frustrating.

What would have happened if you said no? And did you agree in advance that one person would be the leader who decided what the group did?

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Good question, what are the implications? I'm very keen to hear your insight on the matter.

I lost the point a couple pages back which is why I asked. Maybe you or Thom are building towards something?

I think that there is perhaps a discussion around the best systems/RPGs that allow for a decent amount of player skill and character skill to co-exist in all "pillars" of the game and not just combat.

But I can't really relate that back to the last couple pages of back and forth.

 

[pemerton]

The game doesn't end because the PC got a vorpal sword.

Two things.

(1) Maybe it does. Or maybe it ends because the PCs reached 30th level and achieved their Epic Destiny. Or reached 9th level and built their strongholds. Or recovered the treasure from the Tomb of Horrors. I remember playing X2 Castle Amber (a long time ago) and we didn't win because we didn't make it out of Averoigne. Had we done so, we would have won.

(2) Being a potentially open-ended pastime doesn't mean there are no win conditions. The game of 500 doesn't end because someone won a hand, or even because (if scores are being kept at all - they need not be) one partnership reached 500. We can keep dealing and playing.

I've already posted that it is not typical to use the word "win" in relation to RPGing. That's a fact about usage. But I don't think that fact about usage tells us what is actually happening in the play of the game. I think it's clear that some RPGing involves establishing win conditions, even if they're not described as such.

 

[pemerton]

On railroading by players:

To me, railroading - the linear-in-advance "choo choo" tracks that @Helpful NPC Thom has referred to - has two interlocking components.

One is about action resolution. Railroading involves not using either of the following approaches to the adjudication of action resolution, and establishing outcomes

(i) Following the logic of the immediate fiction (as I think, in their different ways, both Moldvay Basic and Apocalypse World tend to);

(ii) Honouring success or failure based on player intent.​

Instead, railroading uses one or both of these two approaches:

(iii) Drawing on unrevealed backstory, and/or two inventing and deploying newly conceived of backstory, to bring the results of the action into conformity with a pre-conceived fiction;

(iv) "Fudging" or otherwise manipulating or sidestepping mechanical processes, to bring the result of the action into conformity with a pre-conceived fiction.​

The second component is about scenes/situations: railroading involves framing scenes that have already been pre-conceived - typically these are the "stations" on the "railroad".

The two components interlock, because in order to ensure the pre-conceived scene-framing can come to pass, it is necessary to ensure that declared actions don't change the fiction so as to make the pre-conceived scenes impossible. A couple of well-known examples that illustrate the point: the GM fudges the combat with the BBEG so that they escape, and hence can turn up later on as per a pre-conceived sequence of events for the module (maybe @hawkeyefan's recent hag experience is an example of this?); the players declare that their PCs go from A to B with an eye towards achieving goal X, and the GM uses fictional devices (weather, impassable forest, or even "relocating" people and places) to ensure that Y still comes to pass.

In a lot of RPGing players don't enjoy the sort of authority over the narration of outcomes of declared actions, or over the framing of scenes, or over the as-yet-unrevealed backstory, to do the things I've just described GMs as doing. So in that sense I can see where @Helpful NPC Thom is coming from.

But a player can certainly suggest or request that a GM use their authority in those respects so as to circumvent what would otherwise be outcomes of action declaration that might result from (i) or (ii) above: ie a player can request (either expressly, or implicitly via puppy-dog eyes) that the GM not follow the fiction, or request that the GM not honour a failure, because doing so would be an obstacle to having the player's pre-conceived scene or "story arc" unfold. And in this sense I can see where @Campbell is coming from.

 

[pemerton]

Given they were 28th level, I have to ask whether the teleport-while-grappled rule had ever come up before and thus whether you'd already set that precedent sometime earlier during the campaign? If yes, and if this event agrees with that precedent, then carry on sir!

If yes, and this event disagrees with that precedent, your players might justifiably raise a few eyebrows at you.

This isn't about secret/not secret, it's about precedent and consistency.

This whole discussion is bizarre: people who were not at the table, and who (in @Lyxen's case) deny the role of p 42 of the DMG, and (in your case) are unfamiliar with it but regularly advocate completely different, GM-centric, approaches to action resolution, are trying to school my on my 4e D&D adjudication!

I've already posted that I don't recall, nearly 7 years after the event, exactly how it was established that the paladin clung onto Ygorl. Perhaps the players did something - in which case they would know what they did and how it was resolved. I know that I rolled Ygorl's Arcana checks, and perhaps that was what established that the paladin was being dragged along (the paladin's player was certainly keen enough to hang on if he could).

I'm pretty confident that no one at the table was confused about what was happening, either in the fiction or in the resolution processes.

 

[Maxperson]

Two things.

(1) Maybe it does. Or maybe it ends because the PCs reached 30th level and achieved their Epic Destiny. Or reached 9th level and built their strongholds. Or recovered the treasure from the Tomb of Horrors. I remember playing X2 Castle Amber (a long time ago) and we didn't win because we didn't make it out of Averoigne. Had we done so, we would have won.

Those are personal reasons to choose to stop, not win conditions that end the game regardless of what you want. Chess ends at checkmate, regardless. Checkmate is a win condition. Reaching 30th level is not a win condition, so ending the game requires a choice beyond hitting 30th level. It requires the players and DM to say, "We've reached 30th level. Let's stop."

(2) Being a potentially open-ended pastime doesn't mean there are no win conditions. The game of 500 doesn't end because someone won a hand, or even because (if scores are being kept at all - they need not be) one partnership reached 500. We can keep dealing and playing.

The hand has a win condition and ends immediately upon it happening. It's a game within a greater game. The game of 500 ends immediately upon hitting 500, or you aren't playing 500. If you opt to continue on, you are playing a different game. You have engaged a house rule to change the game, which as has been pointed out in this thread, can also add win conditions to D&D. D&D just doesn't have any win/loss conditions built into it.

 

[Scott Christian]

No, because railroading refers to a campaign being "on rails," as in, you're on a train and it's on the tracks, and the intracontinental express running from New York to California is fixed, unchangeable, choo-choo, all-aboard. A loud player can't "railroad" others because it's the GM who sets the tracks, not the players. If the players defer to someone because he's bossy, it's voluntary. They don't have to do so. But in D&D, the players must defer to the GM. The only way they can defy his authority is by refusing to play.

Going to have to disagree here. If player agency is real, then they are the ones creating the tracks.

There's a lack of game assigned authority, though. For the situation you're describing, that's more of a social dynamic and exists outside the game -- it's meta-channel railroading, if you will. I think that railroading, to be a useful descriptor of game play rather than social interaction, needs to reference some kind of authority within the game. This is one of the reasons I think that player-side railroading is not a thing for 5e -- there's no authority in the game that would allow for it.

Just going to state this, players do have some type of authority in the game. A very real authority - they can attempt any action they want. Any action. That is authority in-game. The reference to another player bullying other players or leading them is not the argument.

I agree with the identified phenomenon, but, again, I'm not sure I'd use the term railroading without some kind of additional qualifier.

Railroading describes GM behavior, not player behavior. This is a misappropriates of terminology. Players cannot "railroad" because they lack the power to do so. They can be disruptive, they can be jerks, they can derail the game, but they cannot railroad.

Dogs bark. Cats meow. GMs railroad. Players derail.

I am not sure why the definition variations exist. A DM playing and NPC is still roleplaying the NPC, just as a player playing their PC is still roleplaying. A DM using dialogue is the same as a player using dialogue. A DM using rolls to attack, see who goes first, or see what treasure is in the chest is still the same as a player who rolls to attack, see who goes first, or see what treasure is in the chest.
I think it comes from the need to criticize a DM's choice of playstyle. It is applying a new word to make sure the DM knows how naughty they are.
For forty years, players have been able to "derail" the game. Only lately, have DMs been railroading.

Perhaps it is best to stop with the negative terms and simply state - they are plot driven or episodic or freestylers or sandboxers.