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

[Maxperson]

I mean, that was a hur hur moment, but it was done in poor taste. You know very well he was saying that he approaches the conversation from that perspective, but he absolutely does not insist that other folks have to earn a right to be in the conversation or the hobby.

 

[Maxperson]

Even in those approaches to GMing which make impartiality a virtue, it's impartiality at the point of adjudication. Inviting people to play <this thing> with you because you think it will be fun isn't adjudication. Similarly, telling people "Hey, this thing over here will probably be fun" isn't railroading. It's just being up front.


Telling the players, at the start of the first session of a classic D&D game "You're at the entrance to the dungeon", isn't "pushing the players in a direction that they did not choose". Presumably the players turned up to play a game of classic D&D. And that's how the game works!

Likewise, when I write up my Burning Wheel PC Thurgon - a knight of a religious order, whose backstory includes that he has been dispatched on a mission by the Knight Commander of his order - the GM is not "pushing me in a direction I did not choose" by starting things with Thurgon patrolling the border between Ulek and the Pomarj. That is just starting the game.

Classic D&D isn't a railroad, though. Dungeon-crawling, of the classic style, is a type of semi-freeform wargame. It has the basic structure that I described above: the players, who start somewhat blind, make "small" moves to obtain information about the situation, and then - having obtained that information - make "big" moves to obtain treasure, and thus progress in the game.

The GM doens't need to pretend that raiding the dungeon is just one option among many - raiding the dungeon is the game! What the GM does have to do is (i) present a situation in which obtaining and deploying information is meaningful (so multiple paths, engaging puzzles/tricks, etc); and (ii) make transparent decisions in the freeform elements of play, so that players can grasp what is going on, and on that basis make informed moves.


Even if I accepted your definition of railroading, your account of classic D&D here shows that it is not a railroad!

The players choose to play the game. They know what it entails. Playing the dungeon-crawl game is no more railroading than sitting down to play bridge or chess or Mastermind (another asymmetric puzzle-solving game).

At this level of description, all that is established is that the players can make some choices about colour. It doesn't show that they exercise significant control over the consequences of the actions that they declare, or the content of the shared fiction more generally.

That they sign on to the railroad does not render it not a railroad. Classic D&D forces Dungeon Crawling. As you say, it's the game. It's all you can do. If there's no other option, then it's a railroad. Not a bad railroad, but we are stuck on those rails no matter what.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, if it follows that bit of advice, yes. "You have to do this because that's the only way you can adventure" is textbook railroading. I don't know about the "whole of classic D&D." My table tried to run through the GDQ series updated to 5e and got incredibly bored and stopped halfway through because it had so little focus on RP and so much focus on combat,

Easy enough to see how that happened: it's the expected outcome when a combat-centric series of modules is updated for a combat-centric edition.

You'll have to do the conversion yourself, and it's for much lower level than the GDQ series, but maybe look at something like L1 Secret of Bone Hill for something with a bit more variety.

I think you're confusing railroading with "invariably a bad thing at all times and under all circumstances." If everyone agrees to the premise, that's OK. Some people enjoy that sort of game. Some people enjoy that sort of game all the time; some people only enjoy it on occasion. Some people hate even the tiniest hint of GM direction.

And some who, while railing against any DM direction, also don't know what to do when no such direction is forthcoming; and that's a no-win situation.

 

[Lanefan]

@Bedrockgames

The way you are boxing us in is by addressing all RPG play via reference to conventional D&D play and treating any breaks from that as something unusual that bears special inspection rather than as thoroughly normal play that deserves as much respect. You are placing the burden on us to describe less conventional play via conventional mores. You are also using definitions of railroading, agency and especially system that are not inclusive and do not consider less conventional play. It basically makes conventional D&D play the standard for what an RPG is (which I think is horse hockey).

It is, horse-hockey or not. D&D, because it's the best-known system out there, is the baseline game to which all other games are compared; with the arguments arising mostly when different people use different D&D editions as their more specific baseline.

It's the same principle as, when designing the game, taking Humans as the baseline species to which all other playable species are compared and balanced. You gotta start with some sort of baseline, and using the best known or most familiar example as that baseline just seems sensible.

 

[pemerton]

That they sign on to the railroad does not render it not a railroad. Classic D&D forces Dungeon Crawling. As you say, it's the game. It's all you can do. If there's no other option, then it's a railroad. Not a bad railroad, but we are stuck on those rails no matter what.

This is like saying that your D&D game is a railroad because it doesn't support Napoleonic miniatures play. Or because it doesn't allow wizards to use Cure Wounds as a first level spell.

Railroading is about who controls the shared fiction. It has nothing to do with agreements to play <this game> rather than <that game>.

 

[Maxperson]

Railroading is about who controls the shared fiction. It has nothing to do with agreements to play <this game> rather than <that game>.

No it isn't. It's about forcing the players. The DM can in fact control most of the fiction without it being a railroad.

 

[Lanefan]

Only thing I don't like from DMs are arbitrary rules changes as you go along in effect nerfing classes.

Agreed.

The only time I'll do any serious on-the-fly nerfing is if someone finds a broken exploit or loophole that'll ruin the game if left as is.

 

[Lanefan]

This is a metaphorical map ("the quest giver's map that got you to this point"). I put them at the start of the dungeon (first exterior map area of the module), and then asked what they did and adjudicated the flow of play per the map & key and procedures of the game from there.

Worked great! I think we had 3 sessions of dungeon exploration before they had everything they wanted and headed back to town to secure the treasure & start exploring the world.

Aimless first session play is one of the least enjoyable things for me to GM or play in.

Who said anything about aimless?

For my current campaign, I told them at the start that I'd be running KotB as the first adventure. From there, two of the players came up with - entirely on their own - a brilliant way of forming the party and getting things going: they were playing a Bard and a Cavalier, and their idea was to have the Bard stop in every little village on the way to the mountains, singing (entirely fictitious!) stories of the heroism and derring-do of these two, then say "We're off to the mountains to find adventure, who's with us?!" and gathering the rest of the PCs as recruits through this process.

22 sessions, a stupid number of character deaths, and a lifetime of hilarious memories later they finished KotB and rolled into the rest of the much-more-open-field campaign.

 

[zakael19]

Who said anything about aimless?

For my current campaign, I told them at the start that I'd be running KotB as the first adventure. From there, two of the players came up with - entirely on their own - a brilliant way of forming the party and getting things going: they were playing a Bard and a Cavalier, and their idea was to have the Bard stop in every little village on the way to the mountains, singing (entirely fictitious!) stories of the heroism and derring-do of these two, then say "We're off to the mountains to find adventure, who's with us?!" and gathering the rest of the PCs as recruits through this process.

22 sessions, a stupid number of character deaths, and a lifetime of hilarious memories later they finished KotB and rolled into the rest of the much-more-open-field campaign.

I’m not talking about whatever you’re doing, I’m talking about the specific treasure hunting / dungeon exploration play you were taking issue with. Often first session stuff in OSR land is a lot of like visiting taverns for rumors and muddling around and such. Because of this, a lot of the advice I saw said “skip that first Dolmenwood in particular and either give them one of the concise modules that has lots of town stuff going on, or drop them at the dungeon.” They picked the latter, so that’s what we did.

If this is a railroad, then all D&D is a railroad if the GM is giving the player‘s options that they’ve already built. I don’t think that’s true, so I don’t think “the premise of play is to start at a dungeon and see what you get, let’s go!” Is a railroad.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Interesting hearing that from someone who seems to have experience with only one kind of game.

Is anything that isn't Narrativist-leaning one kind of game?