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

[Maxperson]

Again, all of it seems to boil down to a presumption that DMs do no wrong unless they're outright villainous people, but players who speak up are presumed to be hostile, disruptive elements unless they meet extremely exacting standards and sign their forms in triplicate. A player doing a single, merely mildly disruptive thing is enough for any DM to summarily kick them out, while a DM must have committed a consistent pattern of egregious abuse before player action is even remotely warranted.

I've not seem that presumption by a single person in other than those speaking out against DM authority. Not one person on my side of this discussion has said that. At least not in the posts that I've read. Admittedly, I've missed about a few dozen pages.

Can you link someone saying those things?

 

[Maxperson]

Railroading is, fundamentally, rejecting logically sound, reasonable approaches to a situation (problem, challenge, question, etc.) because only a single solution, or a very small set of solutions, will be accepted as valid/correct/whatever, even though multiple options do exist. Classic example is a party wanting to escape a town, where the DM repeatedly vetoes every possible escape route except escape by ship. Usually railroading occurs because the DM has a single specific goal/path/event in mind, but sometimes it occurs simply because the DM has a fixed idea of what a situation "needs" and rejects other options.

That is incorrect. Railroading is forcing a party down rails no matter what the players may wish. If there's one solution to get through a particular door, unless the DM is forcing them to go through that door when they want to just ignore it, it's not railroading.

Even if that door is the only way forward, it's still not railroading if the party can turn around and leave. In that case it's just linear. It seems like you are conflating linear(only has forward and back) with railroading(must do this thing even if you don't want to).

 

[zakael19]

That the game was designed as a railroad, doesn't cause it to cease being a railroad. Classic D&D was just a railroad that everyone signed on to ride. When everyone knows the game is going to be a railroad and agrees to ride, that's the one circumstance I can think of where a railroad isn't a bad thing.

A post-Jacquays designed dungeon is a miniature sandbox. The premise of play is "we're playing a game about exploring dungeons to get treasure." Once you're in there, the direction of play is on the players. THere's no plot hooks, no NPCs dropping quests to new areas, no DM reshaping the world on the fly (apart from map and key results around like, traps and stuff) to block or redirect your desires.

Like l get that the word has kinda gotten thrown about willy-nilly, but if we accept this degree of usage then we're on the "now literally all D&D play is a railroad" and I don't think you intended that (since the difference between a zone-crawl sandbox and an interconnected dungeon w/factions & hidden stuff and tons of map and key play is a question of scale really).

 

[robertsconley]

Which is why I qualified it with "more often than not."

Edit: to make it clear, I'm of the opinion after having watched this dynamic in a lot of places over the years that far more GMs tell themselves every complaint is someone just holding up the game than it actually is, because they've been passively or actively taught some things about GM authority that I don't think are at all benign. And a lot of the responses I see to that statement just reinforce the opinion.

I’ve seen this too. While we may disagree on how often it occurs, I agree it does happen. Having been involved in organized gaming and talked with others, your experience makes sense. But applying that experience to a specific referee or conversation commits an ecological fallacy. Just because something happens more often than not doesn’t mean it applies to that individual. Averages describe trends, not people. It’s a mistake to treat a common pattern as a prediction.

Earlier in the thread, I talked about different creative goals and how those goals can involve splitting authority between players and the referee in different ways to support different styles of play. I strongly believe people should pursue the goals and designs that support the kind of campaign they enjoy, not out of fear of referee authority, but because they like how the game plays.

 

[Maxperson]

A post-Jacquays designed dungeon is a miniature sandbox. The premise of play is "we're playing a game about exploring dungeons to get treasure." Once you're in there, the direction of play is on the players. THere's no plot hooks, no NPCs dropping quests to new areas, no DM reshaping the world on the fly (apart from map and key results around like, traps and stuff) to block or redirect your desires.

Like l get that the word has kinda gotten thrown about willy-nilly, but if we accept this degree of usage then we're on the "now literally all D&D play is a railroad" and I don't think you intended that (since the difference between a zone-crawl sandbox and an interconnected dungeon w/factions & hidden stuff and tons of map and key play is a question of scale really).

I see what you are saying, but those two things are not quite the same.

With the classic D&D dungeon crawl you MUST go into a dungeon for the purpose of finding treasure and getting XP. There is only one choice for them and they have no goal other than what was chosen for them.

With a sandbox setting, the players can choose to go to a dungeon, or choose never to enter one. Choose to stay in cities, or never go into one, staying in the wilds. They can set their own goals for their characters that have nothing to do with what the DM has set up in advance.

There is a ton of agency in a sandbox setting that is not present in the classic dungeon crawl. The differences are not merely that of scale.

 

[zakael19]

That is incorrect. Railroading is forcing a party down rails no matter what the players may wish. If there's one solution to get through a particular door, unless the DM is forcing them to go through that door when they want to just ignore it, it's not railroading.

Even if that door is the only way forward, it's still not railroading if the party can turn around and leave. In that case it's just linear. It seems like you are conflating linear(only has forward and back) with railroading(must do this thing even if you don't want to).

That's "Railroading (pejorative)" as in "I felt railroaded."

Sitting down and agreeing to play an AP/plotted campaign, which goes from plot point and consequential adventure location A-> B -> C -> D (Final boss!) is a railroad in that you're on tracks. I do think the Bioware "Lakes and Rivers" context is a little more descriptive (in that B might be a town that's a "lake" with some exploration / side quests / player options), but then you get back on the river and follow the flow of the story or you're breaking the social contract. It's not really intended for significant player choice that affects the overall flow of the game. The vast majority of current D&D play I see is this, including pretty much everything I ran. We had a ton of fun doing it, even if "keeping people on track" can be super exhausting!

A full sandbox like @robertsconley is running is a very different animal in that context.

 

[zakael19]

I see what you are saying, but those two things are not quite the same.

With the classic D&D dungeon crawl you MUST go into a dungeon for the purpose of finding treasure and getting XP. There is only one choice for them and they have no goal other than what was chosen for them.

With a sandbox setting, the players can choose to go to a dungeon, or choose never to enter one. Choose to stay in cities, or never go into one, staying in the wilds. They can set their own goals for their characters that have nothing to do with what the DM has set up in advance.

There is a ton of agency in a sandbox setting that is not present in the classic dungeon crawl. The differences are not merely that of scale.

Again, "agency" is kinda a hard term to really nail down. Dungeon crawling to get treasure is consequential in that the rules of the game position in as how you get XP to advance, and most other procedural carrots are built around it (domain play, renown, whatever).

Some descriptions of sandbox play in this thread read more like "freeform RP within the context of D&D" which is fine, but not really consequential within the bounds of a game design. It may be meaningful for the people involved in play, but that's something so subjective we can't really talk much about it (much like "fun").

 

[thefutilist]

Again, "agency" is kinda a hard term to really nail down. Dungeon crawling to get treasure is consequential in that the rules of the game position in as how you get XP to advance, and most other procedural carrots are built around it (domain play, renown, whatever).

Some descriptions of sandbox play in this thread read more like "freeform RP within the context of D&D" which is fine, but not really consequential within the bounds of a game design. It may be meaningful for the people involved in play, but that's something so subjective we can't really talk much about it (much like "fun").

Exactly this. A sandbox where the GM is making up what happens in response to the players going somewhere is faux agency because it's entirely inconsequential. To have consequence there must be CHANGE, not just revealing the world. As soon as you create the conditions for change, an established fictional element, then you're back to being at the metaphorical 'start of the dungeon.'

So why not just start at the Dungeon?

 

[Bedrockgames]

The Pope and (I believe) the King of England were the two actual comparisons made via analogy earlier in the thread.

Again, "agency" is kinda a hard term to really nail down. Dungeon crawling to get treasure is consequential in that the rules of the game position in as how you get XP to advance, and most other procedural carrots are built around it (domain play, renown, whatever).

Some descriptions of sandbox play in this thread read more like "freeform RP within the context of D&D" which is fine, but not really consequential within the bounds of a game design. It may be meaningful for the people involved in play, but that's something so subjective we can't really talk much about it (much like "fun").

Sandbox isn’t about game design. It is about adventure structure. You can make or have a system intended to be more sandbox friendly but it ultimately comes from play style and adventure/campaign structure

 

[nevin]

Why do you assume that the one the DM hopes will happen is the only interesting option?

why do you assume the DM railroad is being authoritarian? I've seen many a game where the DM had an hour or so to come up with a game and literally had no other place to go if they players decided to "rewrite the game". Not all DM's are good at improv. Not all DM's are experienced. I've also seen a table pull the we are going south instead of north and then troop out like sad puppies 30 minutes into the game because the new DM had to stop the game and go home and start a whole new one. Your comment comes across as very selfish and very narcississtic. It takes a lot of work to prep games prepare for the characters and some of us can pivot on a dime weave a whole new story or at least pretend too while we recover and some just can't. DM your own games instead of complaining about others.