D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[NN]

I am absolutely convinced that it is always better for the GM to say

“OI !

The next adventure is “Perils in Pengewich”

You are ****ing going to Pengewich”


Than pull ingame shennanigans to force the party there.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A big thread for everything Railroading.

So far there is no single true definition of “Railroading” out there, which is probably the reason for many heated debates among GMs.

It's one part. Another is that, even when two people completely agree about what "railroading" means, one will say it is a completely good and wonderful thing, and the other will say it is a horrible awful thing. I tend toward the latter camp myself.

So what is Railroading? Well, big open question. At the most generic: A railroad is when the DM disallows the Players, from taking action outside what the DM wants to have happen. You are being railroaded when the DM, as the controller of the game, tells you what happens without your taking action, or he prevents you from taking action. Railroading means the DM doesn't give the Players a choice, at all. Your actions are dictated.

It's colloquial, but as a starting point, not bad.

Of course the above definition is not really all that useful. Like a lot of destinations it is just too generic. In nearly every game, nearly every couple of minutes a DM will "prevent a PC from taking an action". This is normal. The idea that players must be given some perfect choice always is just silly. If the players "choose" to never be attacked by any foe, is that okay?

I mean, it's only generic because you spoke casually. Had you spoken less casually, it would have been fine. E.g.:

"Railroading occurs when the GM (or author) forbids a player's character to take an action that is reasonable, warranted, and within the system's scope, simply because the GM (or author) does not wish the character to take that action." This, of course, depends on "reasonable" and "warranted" (I should hope that "within the system's scope" is reasonably clear on its own?), but I think we can appeal to a common-sense use of these terms. A reasonable action is one that, if you suggested it to some random bystander, said bystander would agree that it has a sensible, well-founded reason for being done, even if that bystander wouldn't do it themselves. A warranted action is one that follows from the situation at hand and the information available--so a character defending herself against what looks like a threatening monster is warranted, but a character brazenly and unexpectedly attacking a king who is surrounded by his retinue, in his throne room, is probably not warranted.

Now, it's possible that the GM might know things the player doesn't that make an action unreasonable. (I don't think that's possible for being unwarranted--knowledge the player doesn't, or shouldn't, have is specifically what makes many actions unwarranted, e.g. "metagame" actions like knowing that trolls are weak to fire.) If so, the onus is on the GM to explain why the player is mistaken. If they cannot do so in a satisfactory way, that's still railroading, even if there "really is" an explanation. It is quite possible to railroad while trying not to!

Telling a story is not railroading.

Telling a story is not a situation where players make choices.

Setting up an adventure is not railroading.

Au contraire, it absolutely can be. I've had a GM who had pretty significant issues with how a particular adventure was, in fact, extremely railroady because it slams the players into action immediately and then basically at every turn your only "choice" is "fail, or immediately go do the thing so you don't".

Having consequences to action/inaction is not railroading.

Only in principle. In practice, the GM is the origin of all consequences, and thus it is quite possible for "having consequences" to be VERY VERY much railroading, if the GM is adjudicating in a biased or deceptive manner.

“Linear” adventures are not railroading.

They can be, if: (1) the players have been deceived into thinking a linear adventure isn't; (2) the linear adventure has a significant hole or holes, where reasonable, warranted actions are forbidden without due consideration; or (3) the GM has been arbitrary and/or heavy-handed in "keeping" the players rigidly attached to the line, rather than allowing at least a little bit of wiggle-room.

Many players forget that most "stories" and "plots" in D&D are really just a convenient excuse for adventuring. People generally want a game that is a bit deeper than "we are people who kill things and take their stuff" (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Not in my experience. Rather, I find that many players have seen too many GMs who are not very good writers, and thus said GMs have to resort to a lot of force, arbitrary/capricious/deceptive GMing tactics, because the GM forgot to close several major loopholes.

So the DM thinks of some plot hook to get you adventuring. If you deviate from this course of action, the DM will, of course, resist, because he put in all that effort making the dragon cave or goblin mines or wizard tower or city of ghouls or what have you.

Plot hooks may or may not be railroading. That's all in the execution. But if the GM is "resist"ing, solely because of the effort she invested, that tells me she's getting a little too precious about her time investment and maybe needs to reevaluate some things. Especially "why are you doing so much prep work for things that have a high chance of failure/breakdown and then blaming your players for not reading your mind?"

1.Suppose the characters enter a city, and find a riot or similar event. The most sensible choice would be to get the hell out of there immediately. If the players choose this strategy, and the DM needs their participation in the riot for the plot to develop, characters will find the city door closed, or a mob in front of it which prevents them to leave.

So, first off here I don't see this as "railroading" all that much, the big thing here is Clumsy Dming. Definition: Clumsy Dming is when a DM takes an action in a game, with all the grace of a bull in a china shop. The action(s) are crude, rude, obnoxious and very obvious. Clumsy Dming is common with Casual DMs, Careless DMs, and most of all new, inexperienced DMs.

"Clumsy Dming" as you call it, is the cause of a great deal of railroading, yes. A lot of GMs are clumsy. That's part of what makes them mediocre, rather than good or bad. (Few outright bad GMs are clumsy; bad GMing generally requires more skill than that. The irony, that to do the greatest bad, you must have some virtue!)

It is important also to point out the Metagame Aspect here. The Metagame is anything in real life that effects the game. The easy one is "all the characters must be and stay in a group together because they are all PCs of players in the game." Even if "dwarves and elves hate each other", the two PCs have to get along in character for the sake of the game. So when the players see the riot, they will know that it is a Inciting Incident. An Inciting Incident is the initial event that disrupts the PC's ordinary world and introduces the central conflict. If your a player in a game where an Inciting Incident happens, you must follow through with it. To "run" from the Inciting Incident is saying you don't wish to play the game.

I would not use such a limited definition of "metagame". As noted, a player knowing that trolls are weak to fire would be metagame knowledge, but it has nothing to do with things in real life affecting the game. Likewise, the "character creation metagame" is entirely within the game, it just isn't within this specific world until the character actually progresses.

Pro Tip: Never make an Inciting Incident, or really any major plot point, dependent on the PCs actions. This is simple enough. In the example, don't have a riot that needs the PCs participation to develop the plot.

This I can agree with 95%--it just needs two little caveats to be perfect.

First: Use something like "progress step" or "event" rather than "plot point". "Plots" almost always get GMs thinking too hard in railroad-y directions. Creating steps or events, on the other hand, helps to keep GMs focused on what matters: there is a situation in the world, which invites the players to respond. A good GM prepares situations--"frames scenes"--that are inviting in ways that the players will innately, spontaneously want to respond. They don't have to be led by the nose, they do it because it excites them, or intrigues them, or challenges them, or whatever.

Second: Remember the important exception: "...unless you have the players' buy-in out of character." This is most obvious with a campaign pitch. In most cases, the very very very start of a campaign kind of needs something to just be declared to be true, or needs to just spontaneously happen around the PCs in a way that gets things rolling. Out of the Abyss, for example, needs characters born or sold into slavery under the Drow. Can't really do the campaign if that doesn't happen. Similarly, if a homebrew game ends one adventure and the GM says, "Hey, how do you guys feel about doing a swashbuckling pirate adventure? I just got a cool module we could run", that's not railroading if the players explicitly buy into it. It would be railroading to force the players to get on a ship and thus have a pirate adventure--but it isn't railraoding to have an adult conversation with your players and ask if they think a pirate adventure would be interesting to play. In other words, don't do things that rely on the PCs' unprompted participation--either make something that they'll innately just WANT to do, or tell them what you're aiming for, so they're going in eyes-open, understanding your goals.

So, amended, I would say this pro tip reads...

Pro Tip: Never make an inciting incident, or really any major progress step, dependent on the PCs' actions, unless you have their buy-in out of character. In this example, don't have a riot that depends on the PCs' unprompted participation to develop into an actual adventure.

 

[NN]

its not the station entrance that makes a railroad, its the rails.

 

[Zardnaar]

You'll recognize it when you see it.

 

[aco175]

I am absolutely convinced that it is always better for the GM to say

“OI !

The next adventure is “Perils in Pengewich”

You are ****ing going to Pengewich”


Than pull ingame shennanigans to force the party there.

I would rather the DM ask where I would like to go next. If the group wants to go to Pengewich, then the planned adventure should happen and the players should get on board with it unless something drastic happens to change things. If we tell the DM we all want to go to the Castle of Arrrgh, we should not arrive mysteriously at Pengewich without something really cool explaining things. The DM should plan something for the Castle and we should play that.

The DM and players should meet halfway.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I really should post this in the, "what I thought a thread title said" but, this is what I thought the thread title was:


Maybe people can just listen to it while they read the thread.

 

[FrogReaver]

Like most of these terms we spend so much time arguing about, railroading is fairly easy to define. Most of the arguments come from people not wanting their preferred style of play called railroading, not the actual definition.

Does the referee negate player agency to preserve their preferred outcome?

That’s railroading.

Next up you’ll tell me player agency is easy to define. I’ve been to that rodeo before.

 

[NN]

The DM and players should meet halfway

There is no halfway between “prepped adventure” and “nonexistent adventure”

 

[Seramus]

I personally prefer the Hydra method. There are three or four major paths the party can follow, and the player chooses which path and how to resolve it. When they resolve it, that path branches off into two more, and the party can then choose to follow down one of the new paths, or circle back to investigate an older path.

Sometimes those older paths have gotten more dangerous as the villain advances their agenda. Sometimes the path is gone entirely. Ultimately they have genuine choice, but not a true sandbox.

 

[DEFCON 1]

At the end of the day, whether any style works or does not work comes down to the DM and the players being on the same page and playing the game for the most part the same way. If they all play in the same style and enjoy the same style of game... then 9 times out of 10 the game is going work, regardless of what kind of game it is. A completely railroady game can be absolutely the greatest game ever if the players are 100% in favor of following the tracks the DM lays down. The same way a completely sandboxy game can be absolutely the greatest game ever if the players are 100% in favor of wandering around an open landscape just looking for things to do, and the DM has a map of that landscape with various events and encounters placed down to find.

But if you ask some of the players in the first group to play in the second game (or vice-versa)... the games will have a much harder time working out effectively for everyone involved. More often than not, someone is going to be annoyed by how things are run and how things progress. And even a DM that splits the difference between these two game styles and has facets of both in their game will still find the game having issues unless the players are also ones who want to see that split in difference. Even a 50-50 game will stumble if half the players are ones who are 100% preferring railroads and the other half 100% want sandboxes. It just means that half the players will be annoyed 50% of the time.

So to me the answer is simple-- find like-minded players. Because then you will all be on the same page throughout most of the game, and even if there are the occasional bumps in the road (which is always going to happen for any number of different minor reasons)... the group will get past them pretty quickly because that's just what bumps are. But if you CAN'T find like-minded players... either because you play online and are thus beholden to whatever random shmoes sign up... or you live in an area where your player pool just isn't big enough to get a wide enough selection of types of players... or you desire to play a specific game that just doesn't have enough interested parties in that game and you're stuck taking whomever you can get... then that player has no choice but to lower their expectations and accept the fact that they are going to be bothered or annoyed with the game for a certain amount of time. And at that point needs to make the choice for themselves of whether gaming in that occasionally-annoyed way is better or worse than not gaming at all.