D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Bedrockgames]

I think you're missing the point here.

Who establishes that the character has that trait? Why is it established so?

This is what I mean when I say the absoluteness of DM power in (some) D&D-alike games gets in the way. If the DM wants a specific situation to come about, they merely have to only allow things into the fiction that only permit that, and don't permit other things. The act of "staying true to the established character trait" is not and cannot be protection from railroading because the railroading is part of establishing the character trait in the first place.

but I addressed this. If the GM is just staying true to a character, and isn’t using it to steer the players towards a situation, it isn’t railroading. You are taking a worst case scenario, the GM establishing a character trait in order to railroad, to argue for GM constraints. But this is just something that can happen. Not something that will happen. And it is generally fairly self corrective: if a GM is doing that, I am going to either bring up the issue or find a GM who runs NPCs better than that.

 

[AlViking]

The point--going back to the original use of the analogy--was that someone else had asserted that the rules are "just one element" of the game, and that it is incorrect, or even harmful, to say that those rules do not have primary significance.

If the rules of 5e did not "work just fine for a sandbox", would you not have to build your own? Would a 5e stripped of all travel rules, for example, not cause you to either look for a different system that did have such rules, or to invent your own travel rules, rather than relying purely on, as you said originally, "non-prescriptive guidelines and advice"? I don't think "non-prescriptive guidelines and advice" would be adequate to carry a sandbox campaign. Some rules have to be in place before you can focus your attention on guidelines and advice. Guidelines and advice can still be critical. Every game I play and enjoy has them. But they only operate when there's already rules to work with.

That you think the 5e engine works just fine isn't in question. You need a car that can drive before it matters whether that car has any safety features or not--for exactly the same reason that "a structured framework that integrates adjudication tools, referee coaching, and worldbuilding techniques" cannot produce a sandbox campaign without there already being a foundation of rules for that "structured framework" to stand on.

The rules are the engine that makes the car go. That doesn't mean nothing else can ever possibly be important. But it is still most certainly the first thing you need in order for a car to be more than a badly-made, overly-heavy Radio Flyer. First--primary. Hence, primacy. Rules happen first. Advice, coaching, best-practices, guidelines, etc. happen second. That doesn't make them bad, wrong, pointless, or any other negative words I'm sure folks will try to stuff in my mouth. It simply means they happen second in sequence.

If 5e did not work for a sandbox I wouldn't run sandboxes or I'd find something else. Just like I wouldn't use the motor from a motorcycle to power my car. On the other hand the engine is just one aspect of a vehicle, many engines are designed for basically one purpose others are used in many different types of vehicles. So the same engine may be used for a standard sedan, a sports car, a pickup truck, even a speed boat or other unexpected variations.

I'm not going to use chess rules to play an RPG but I don't see that it matters because there are many other factors, the rules are just one element.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Okay, we're getting lost in the weeds here.

Whatever system you do use, does it have rules? I assume it isn't FKR so it has rules beyond "DM says." What do those rules do? Do they fight you tooth and nail every step of the way? Or are they useful to you?

I use my own system presently, and it doesn’t fight me tooth and nail. The rules are useful to me. What do the rules do? The rule book is like 500 pages. Now much of that is setting. But they cover a lot of ground. What the rules do not micromanage are GM and player interaction. They cover things like combat, travel, skills, Kung fu techniques, reputation, armies and war, etc. and it has tools, things I would consider different from hard rules. For example I see encounter tables as tools, not as straight jackets for the GM. I also think I am looking for something very different than what you are looking for in a rule set. But I also found most versions of D&D didn’t either (possible exception being 3E).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This seems such an expansive definition of railroading as to not be useful.

Howso? The DM is making the players follow a course. They are simply doing so by exercising their sole and absolute authority over what is allowed to be fiction and what is not, so that the only things allowed, the only things that make sense, are the ones the DM permitted and nothing else. Depending on how many paths are permitted, we get varying degrees of railroad: only one is obviously a railroad, allowing points of divergence over time is a branching path but still a fixed set of possible paths, etc. The more flexibility you allow, the further you get from railroading, but the point remains that a DM with an iron grip on what gets permitted to enter the fiction-space can literally railroad by accident, intending to promote freedom but actually limiting things so heavily that there is little to none.

The classic example of a railroad is party arrives at a destination and needs to take a specific means to get out of it. The clumsy railroader invents new obstacles as the party comes up with new approaches until the party finally picks the right one, like invisible walls in a video game. The slightly less clumsy railroader builds obstacles in advance for all the expected routes out, like visible impassable barriers at all exits but the correct one, but might miss some and still resort to clumsy technique. The subtle railroader builds the world so that going off the rails is never reasonable in the first place, and these efforts can be quite extensive. Again, I cited two entire threads talking about invisible railroads, so this isn't some weird thing nobody ever does, it's a common technique, also going by the name "illusionism", for the illusion of free choice. A port town where the roads are destroyed and occupied by marauding orcs, where a disease is spreading and food is scarce but a few ships haven't left port yet etc., etc.: purely the DM "staying true to the setting", but in a way that constrains the PCs to one and only one future course, get on a ship to get out of here.

If all roads literally do lead to Rome because that's how the DM wrote the world, the players are on rails, they're just rails made of setting-contents rather than clumsy rejection or overt blockades.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think you're missing the point here.

Who establishes that the character has that trait? Why is it established so?

The GM. And this isn’t a problem. It is a feature. It helps with sandboxing if the GM is free to make interesting characters, some of whom could have strong traits like ‘will not drink alcohol out of a religious belief’. Why is up to the GM. And that isn’t a problem either. It is completely okay in a sandbox for the GM to establish NPC character traits because he simply finds them interesting for example. If the GM is doing that to railroad, sure that is an issue but it is also a very terrible way to design NPCs. Players will get sick of that behavior, and in my experience most sandbox GMs don’t abuse this

This is what I mean when I say the absoluteness of DM power in (some) D&D-alike games gets in the way. If the DM wants a specific situation to come about, they merely have to only allow things into the fiction that only permit that, and don't permit other things. The act of "staying true to the established character trait" is not and cannot be protection from railroading because the railroading can be any that trait was established in the first place. And, at least in some cases, the DM may not even realize they're doing this.

No it doesn’t. For some reason it gets in the way for you. But most sandbox GMs aren’t trying to make a specific scenario come about. That isn’t the point of play. Now if you want systems that ensure the GM never ever railroads. That is totally cool. But many of us are perfectly happy with systems that allow for Gm authority and we even think it is extremely helpful for the kinds of sandboxes we want to play

Again, no one is saying railroading can’t happen. It can. But you don’t have to build every game out of a fear that it will arise. Some games trust the GM and that works for many people playing sandboxes

 

[EzekielRaiden]

but I addressed this. If the GM is just staying true to a character, and isn’t using it to steer the players towards a situation, it isn’t railroading. You are taking a worst case scenario, the GM establishing a character trait in order to railroad, to argue for GM constraints. But this is just something that can happen. Not something that will happen. And it is generally fairly self corrective: if a GM is doing that, I am going to either bring up the issue or find a GM who runs NPCs better than that.

But "just staying true to the character" can accurately describe either thing. That was @pemerton's point. This isn't a defense. It doesn't in any way forestall or interfere with railroading if you can just as easily be railroading as not railroading.

But you brought this up as a method that is supposed to not railroad. If it doesn't actually conflict with railroading in the slightest, where is the thing that gets in the way of that?

 

[AlViking]

...

For instance, if the players are trying (via the play of their PCs) to persuade a NPC to do something, and the GM has decided in advance, and secretly, that the NPC will never do that thing, that can clearly be an instance of railroading. I've experienced it, and I imagine so have others posting in this thread.

Did you stop the character from attempting to persuade the NPC? If a character can never succeed (or fail depending on what is being attempted) unless it follows the predetermined path the GM has chosen then it's a railroad. A character can state that they climb a rainbow if they want but it's not going to work unless magic is involved.

There's no guarantee of a chance of success to any action a person in real life takes, I don't see why it would be any different in a game. Once again it looks like you're just adding things to the definition of what is required to play a sandbox because of your preference for a specific type of game.

 

[The Firebird]

Howso? The DM is making the players follow a course. They are simply doing so by exercising their sole and absolute authority over what is allowed to be fiction and what is not, so that the only things allowed, the only things that make sense, are the ones the DM permitted and nothing else. Depending on how many paths are permitted, we get varying degrees of railroad: only one is obviously a railroad, allowing points of divergence over time is a branching path but still a fixed set of possible paths, etc. The more flexibility you allow, the further you get from railroading, but the point remains that a DM with an iron grip on what gets permitted to enter the fiction-space can literally railroad by accident, intending to promote freedom but actually limiting things so heavily that there is little to none.

The classic example of a railroad is party arrives at a destination and needs to take a specific means to get out of it. The clumsy railroader invents new obstacles as the party comes up with new approaches until the party finally picks the right one, like invisible walls in a video game. The slightly less clumsy railroader builds obstacles in advance for all the expected routes out, like visible impassable barriers at all exits but the correct one, but might miss some and still resort to clumsy technique. The subtle railroader builds the world so that going off the rails is never reasonable in the first place, and these efforts can be quite extensive. Again, I cited two entire threads talking about invisible railroads, so this isn't some weird thing nobody ever does, it's a common technique, also going by the name "illusionism", for the illusion of free choice. A port town where the roads are destroyed and occupied by marauding orcs, where a disease is spreading and food is scarce but a few ships haven't left port yet etc., etc.: purely the DM "staying true to the setting", but in a way that constrains the PCs to one and only one future course, get on a ship to get out of here.

If all roads literally do lead to Rome because that's how the DM wrote the world, the players are on rails, they're just rails made of setting-contents rather than clumsy rejection or overt blockades.

Railroading is concerning (to me) because it results in less verisimilitude. You want to have freedom to make choices, but on a railroad many reasonable choices are not actually options.

But the world often does constrain our choices to a large extent. So a game aiming for verisimilitude should also do this. In these cases, "not railroading" by your definition results in a game world that seems less real. It constantly bends to the players whims in the name of agency, in a way that imo feels artificial.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I use my own system presently, and it doesn’t fight me tooth and nail. The rules are useful to me. What do the rules do? The rule book is like 500 pages. Now much of that is setting. But they cover a lot of ground. What the rules do not micromanage are GM and player interaction. They cover things like combat, travel, skills, Kung fu techniques, reputation, armies and war, etc. and it has tools, things I would consider different from hard rules. For example I see encounter tables as tools, not as straight jackets for the GM. I also think I am looking for something very different than what you are looking for in a rule set. But I also found most versions of D&D didn’t either (possible exception being 3E).

Okay, cool. So your system has rules for various things. Awesome.

I want you to imagine that system, completely stripped of rules for travel, reputation, and armies. Would you find that it suits your needs, and just requires "structured frameworks" and "referee coaching" to take care of those things instead? Or would you find that it is inadequate, and begin looking for rules for those things?

 

[AlViking]

I think you're missing the point here.

Who establishes that the character has that trait? Why is it established so?

This is what I mean when I say the absoluteness of DM power in (some) D&D-alike games gets in the way. If the DM wants a specific situation to come about, they merely have to only allow things into the fiction that only permit that, and don't permit other things. The act of "staying true to the established character trait" is not and cannot be protection from railroading because the railroading can be any that trait was established in the first place. And, at least in some cases, the DM may not even realize they're doing this.

Also, having the following things in sequential order...


...kinda shows exactly what @pemerton is talking about. To Bedrock, this is so strange as to be almost alien. To Firebird, it's par for the course. If two people can understand the exact same thing to be weird to the point of almost inapplicable and common to the point of universal, surely you can both see how just "guidelines" and "coaching" and "structured frameworks" might not be enough to achieve a particular end.

If a GM always predetermines a result it's a railroad. But as the DMG states you can't hit the moon with an arrow so sometimes there is no chance of success. It does not mean that the GM making judgement calls on what is possible makes it a railroad.