D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[bloodtide]

11.
Here's an example of bad railroading I experienced back in the day. We were playing a game, a friend of a friend was the DM. We were in a town, helping out the towns folk and getting established. We were planning on making this our base. The DM kept giving hints that something was going on on the other side of the woods, well out of town. We wanted to get some more stuff done in town before heading out to who knows where. Well, the next session, our characters wake up and there has been a time skip. The town is dilapidated and abandoned, we are the only living things around. Oh, but hey, there's a mysterious light leading to the woods....

This is Railroading, sure, but really it is just far beyond it. For the DM to do a time skip and change things is so bad. It’s controlling.

Don’t do this in your games.

The main problem here is Downtime. What the players are doing, establishing a town and base, is a Downtime activity. The DM clearly wants to do active Adventure gaming. So, much like above, the players here should not be sitting down to play an active adventure type game and then in the game play doing only Downtime activities. This is something that should be talked about before the game, not an in game “gottha”.

If the players do really wish to do hours of Downtime activities, they should tell the DM and have the DM agree. An all Downtime game can be fun, but only if everyone including the DM, whats to do that. And, most games are only 2-3 hours, maybe 5-6 if your lucky. And a lot of groups can only get together every couple of weeks or less. But even if the group can get together every week, taking most or all of a game session for Downtime is a lot.

On a bit of the other side, the DM should not require all the Downtime activities. You don’t need to play through in an active game with rolls to do every task. If the players want to make a wooden wall, you don’t need to roll a d20 to chop down every tree. The DM also needs to allow the players downtime often. Maybe not every game session, but at least every couple.

In my games, for example, I strive to end game sessions at safe points where most active events have been brought to a conclusion. Not the whole story arc, just whatever was active for that game session. Also having the PCs get to a relative safe place, often a town or city. This way we can use the last half hour or so of the game session to wrap things up and the players can do Downtime activities. This often adds a time skip to the next session.

This gives players plenty of opportunity to do Downtime activities.

 

[Celebrim]

This is Railroading, sure, but really it is just far beyond it. For the DM to do a time skip and change things is so bad. It’s controlling.

No, it's not far beyond railroading. It's just bad railroading. Time skips are one of the most important railroading techniques. All time skips are in fact railroading. But how would you have felt if the GM had time skipped you forward to the point you are now somewhat established in the town, have the base of operations you desire and some relationships with the townsfolk, and then set up some scene whatever is going on in the woods now threatens your base and allies? That's also controlling and changing things, but would you have objected as strongly?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

All time skips are in fact railroading.

I don't think so.

 

[bloodtide]

No, it's not far beyond railroading. It's just bad railroading. Time skips are one of the most important railroading techniques. All time skips are in fact railroading. But how would you have felt if the GM had time skipped you forward to the point you are now somewhat established in the town, have the base of operations you desire and some relationships with the townsfolk, and then set up some scene whatever is going on in the woods now threatens your base and allies? That's also controlling and changing things, but would you have objected as strongly?

Odd, I never really put time skips as 'railroading'. And I don't hear many complaints about it.

But all Time Skips can't be Railroading. Like Downtime Time Skips sure are not Railroading. The PCs want to take a year to build a base, and everyone agrees to skip forward a year to when the base is done and the PCs are a year older. No Railroading there. Same way if a pc wants to visit a library for a week, that can just be skipped during the 'downtime'.

I'm much more a fan of a Time Skip Downtime. I don't want to waste game time with things like "I roll a d20 to cut down a tree".

Time Skips, during a game, are no different then any other thing that happens. A good game keeps time flowing world wide, no matter what the PCs do. It's silly video game stuff to have the kingdom "Freeze" as soon as the PCs leave the border.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think so.

Ok. You'd be wrong, but OK.

 

[Celebrim]

Odd, I never really put time skips as 'railroading'. And I don't hear many complaints about it.

Yes, because it's why its so easy to get away with it. Most of the time you have consent. They board the train willingly, because they want to reach the destination quickly. See the parallel now?

The trouble of course is that almost never could a player know what they are actually skipping when they board the time skip train. They are actually trusting the GM isn't using it to violate their agency in a way that they don't want. But all time skips do take away agency because playing them out and giving the player full choice to decide what to do almost invariably will result in a different result than a time skip would. And its really easy to meta game this consciously or unconsciously to rush players past choices you don't want them to make (for whatever reasons good or bad).

Which is why I make a point of always getting verbal consent to a time skip. Because it is rail roading, even if everyone consents to be on the train.

The PCs want to take a year to build a base, and everyone agrees to skip forward a year to when the base is done and the PCs are a year older. No Railroading there. Same way if a pc wants to visit a library for a week, that can just be skipped during the 'downtime'.

Absolutely this is railroading. It's just railroading with the consent of the players because they feel that the loss of their agency in those scenes is worth it to skip ahead "to the good stuff". People ride the rails willingly for all sorts of reasons. Not everyone has been so traumatized by bad GMing that they cling to every scrap of agency they can. Lots of player prefer a game with strong rails to follow to open sandboxy stuff. Railroading techniques aren't bad until you misuse them or overuse them. Or to put it another way, the problem with a railroad only really presents itself when the players try to get off and the GM won't let them.

Thread 'Techniques for Railroading'

Dec 17, 2010

Railroading refers to a variety of techniques use to limit player freedom of choice. Some distinction should be made in my opinion between the act of limiting player choice (“railroading”) and a game which has limited or no player choice as its most salient feature (a “railroad”). Virtually all games depend on some amount of railroading, and at least miniscule amounts of railroading is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that no simulation is perfect (and probably wouldn’t be much fun if it was) and no referee can be without bias, and many forms of minor railroading are accepted...

• Celebrim
• Replies: 18
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

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[Crimson Longinus]

Ok. You'd be wrong, but OK.

I don't think I am, at least by how I understand railroading, and I think definition of railroading which includes any and all time skips must be sufficiently broad to be practically useless.

Outside LARPs, no RPG runs in real time. Similarly like the GM cannot describe every physical detail of the world, they cannot describe every since moment. Such omissions are literally a required part of the game to function at all.

Railroading is overriding player agency. If the players use their agency to initiate or agree to a time skip, their agency is obviously not violated!

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think I am, at least by how I understand railroading, and I think definition of railroading which includes any and all time skips must be sufficiently broad to be practically useless.

The definition that I'm using was adopted precisely because I got tired of the "I know it when I see it" definitions that rely on subjective statements.

Outside LARPs, no RPG runs in real time. Similarly like the GM cannot describe every physical detail of the world, they cannot describe every since moment. Such omissions are literally a required part of the game to function at all.

Agreed. Railroading to some extent is a part of all games. It's not possible to railroad 0% of the time. This is something I discuss, and is an important part of the discussion. Fundamentally it comes down to that no RPG runs without some GM fiat.

Railroading is overriding player agency. If the players use their agency to initiate or agree to a time skip, their agency is obviously not violated!

That's not obvious at all, and in fact that's obviously wrong in the general case. I discuss this as well. Your argument here would be correct if and only if the players had full knowledge of everything that might happen during the time they agree to skip. And this is obviously not the case. You can and I have on occasion use a time skip to jump the players into a trap that they agreed to jump into, but where they didn't fully understand the consequences of their action and where they would not have jumped if they had known what they were jumping into. This is the question, "Is there anything anyone wants to do before the morning?" or "Is there anything anyone wants to do before nightfall?" type question, where I know as a GM that there might be all sorts of things that they might want to do but because I can see they are running out of ideas or because I think the play will be dull if we don't time skip or for whatever reason, I'm luring the players into consenting to loss of agency so that I can get what I want to happen (something I think will be more fun than just having the players sit around and argue or speculate without taking meaningful action).

 

[Deset Gled]

Every time the party goes to sleep at night there's a time skip. Typically ~8 hours, unless there's an ambush or something that wakes them up.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's not obvious at all, and in fact that's obviously wrong in the general case. I discuss this as well. Your argument here would be correct if and only if the players had full knowledge of everything that might happen during the time they agree to skip. And this is obviously not the case. You can and I have on occasion use a time skip to jump the players into a trap that they agreed to jump into, but where they didn't fully understand the consequences of their action and where they would not have jumped if they had known what they were jumping into.

But would they have known that if it was fully played either? Players basically never have full knowledge, as their characters do not either.

This is the question, "Is there anything anyone wants to do before the morning?" or "Is there anything anyone wants to do before nightfall?" type question, where I know as a GM that there might be all sorts of things that they might want to do but because I can see they are running out of ideas or because I think the play will be dull if we don't time skip or for whatever reason, I'm luring the players into consenting to loss of agency so that I can get what I want to happen (something I think will be more fun than just having the players sit around and argue or speculate without taking meaningful action).

They are not losing agency. You asked them if there is something they want to do, and they used their agency to say "no."

Now if your point is that you should not skip obvious and important decision points, then I'd agree. Like when players say that they do not want to do anything noteworthy before the nightfall, this decision is based on assumption that nothing significant they would know of happens before then. Like it is midday, and they say they do nothing until nightfall, but on afternoon a dragon attacks the village they're in, then obviously that changes things and they can revise their decision. But the GM can safely skip time till until a significant decision point occurs without violating player agency. There is literally no point of playing in real time of the four hours of the characters doing nothing until the dragon attack happens and skipping it is not railroading by any sensible definition of the term.