D&D 5E What does "Railroading" actually mean!? Discount Code on Page 8

kieran_of_the_dark_peaks said:

My God, this made me laugh so much! I'm so tempted to start a one-shot adventure like this.

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Out of the Abyss is right there for you! A whole campaign build on this premise...

At my table, with the type of players I have, a railroad is a positive thing.

A railroad, in this specific case, is a guarantee for my players that the story will go on, no mater their bad choices or their lack of grasp of the rules or lack of initiative. There will always be a next mission, a NPC to point in the right direction, a lost delver journal with the answer to the riddle.

Is it my favorite style of play? Absolutely not, it feels like they cant fail (but then again, they are able to be TPKed, even with all the padding) and I'm depriving them of choices. Then I remember: they do not want those choices, they want me to point them toward the next step of the story where monsters to slay dwell. So I do just that.

Wow! Thank you everyone for the on-going conversation - by far one of the best conducted debates I've seen on this subject. It's really appreciated.

To add something to the OP, what I've been aiming to do is describe environments and the actions of enemies within certain parts of the environments. If the PC's encounter them, this is how they will start acting, but the meat of the encounter, how it goes, the resolution to it, is up to the DM's. I've tried to describe that mix of place and people, rather than a specified outcome. That way, the encounter can spin in exactly the way the players want.

There's no-one suggesting one fixed solution (though killing Torrfin is probably going to be the outcome) because I've not tried to imagine how the players might go about doing that. Given that the chapters consists of larger area maps and then smaller battle maps for particular encounters, I'm hoping that players will feel like they have the freedom to deal with these challenges as they see fit.

I don't want to say more, because it might be spoiler territory .... but shall I break down a mid-campaign encounter for everyone, to explain how it was designed?

[mandatory advert]

I’d say we are missing one important part of the railroading definition. A DM can design a dungeon or scenario that blocks many potential courses of action. That’s not railroading. It’s when he does it for the purpose of forcing the PCs on a single predetermined path that it’s rail roading.

A true instance of railroading will require the GM to come up with an excuse for any action taking the party away from the predetermined path.

Helldritch said:

What you say has some truth. But it is not the whole picture. A DM puts a lot of work in prep. Sometimes, that DM does not want that prep to go down the drain. A campaign is a story told by both players and DM. Not only by one or the other but by both sides. What a DM should never ignore is the preferences of his players. What players should not forget is that the DM worked a lot to give them a story to build. If, for some reasons, the players reject the story to do something else, it is unrespectful of the DM's work. Sometimes the benefits of a story isn't obvious from the start and the players should give the benefits of the doubt and play along.

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This has some truth to it... but I will add that I think a "level up" on DM skill is when the DM is able to run their story prep in the background and give hints at what the world is doing while the players are off doing other things. So if a DM has the idea that the main thrust of this tale they are putting together is the summoning of a demon lord and the players don't take the bait to follow it... the DM doesn't need to railroad the players into following the plot they've prepped, but instead just keeps dropping breadcrumbs about this story into whatever else the group wants to pursue. The DM never has to force the players to pick them up, but at some point.... the players will either decide on their own "You know, we've been hearing a lot about this thing happening up in the mountains, maybe we should check it out"... or they completely ignore it, and then the DM just gets to have the demon lord get summoned and then start rampaging across the land (at which point the players either get drawn into a much worse situation, or get the hell out of dodge.) Which then allows the DM to play out the scenario which was always a possibility, which was the PCs failing to stop the summoning had they actually taken the bait in the first place. Plus you as the DM get to have the fun after the fact of pointing out all the hints of the greater story the players all chose to ignore when they ask "What the hell, why has Juiblex showed up?!?"

Paul Farquhar said:

That just looks like a railroad with three tracks to me!

A railroad is any situation where players don't have any choice about what to do next.

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Get out!

No, seriously, the funny thing is that you've hit on the base of my fear - anxiety, maybe. I'm worried that, by saying to the players "your choice is these three different environments and each of them has a different set of challenges which you can approach anyway you like." is ... railroading, because I'm not giving them a completely free choice? Does ... that make sense?

kieran_of_the_dark_peaks said:

Get out!

No, seriously, the funny thing is that you've hit on the base of my fear - anxiety, maybe. I'm worried that, by saying to the players "your choice is these three different environments and each of them has a different set of challenges which you can approach anyway you like." is ... railroading, because I'm not giving them a completely free choice? Does ... that make sense?

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they do have free choice though. They can choose to not go on any adventure.

FrogReaver said:

I’d say we are missing one important part of the railroading definition. A DM can design a dungeon or scenario that blocks many potential courses of action. That’s not railroading. It’s when he does it for the purpose of forcing the PCs on a single predetermined path that it’s rail roading.

A true instance of railroading will require the GM to come up with an excuse for any action taking the party away from the predetermined path.

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PCs and players are often more inventive or creative than a DM plans. If the DM designs a dungeon or scenario that blocks many potential courses of action, the question arises as to what happens when the PCs work around the design and come up with an approach that bypasses the blockage.

Common example: Tim the Enchanter is designed to be the BBEG. He is a member of the City Council in a large city. He is intended to work behind the scenes and manipulate enemies so that they hunt down the party. Only after the PCs rise to high level will they uncover his evil machinations, confront him, and foil his plans.... or so that plan states.

During the first encounter with an agent of Tim, the PCs capture the agent and use mental control magics and divinations in well crafted ways that will uncover a loophole inn the DMs plans and reveal that Tim is the BBEG. What does the DM do? Does he contrive a way for those magics to fail? Does he let the PCs discover this, knowing that confronting Tim at that level would be suicide?

In my sandbox games, I let the PCs discover the information. In many others, the DM would contrive a way (often just saying the magic doesn't work without explanation) to keep the identity secret.

In truth, Railroad and Sandbox are a spectrum. I try to go as far to the sandbox side as I can for a CAMPAIGN, but verge more and more towards railroading as I shrink things down to an ADVENTURE (5 or so levels of action), a MODULE (2 to 4 levels of action), or a DELVE (1 level of action or less).

FrogReaver said:

I’d say we are missing one important part of the railroading definition. A DM can design a dungeon or scenario that blocks many potential courses of action. That’s not railroading. It’s when he does it for the purpose of forcing the PCs on a single predetermined path that it’s rail roading.

A true instance of railroading will require the GM to come up with an excuse for any action taking the party away from the predetermined path.

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This is why I always go with a subjective definition for railroading (despite the complications thereof): it's not the existence of boundaries per se that's a problem. It's the narrowness (boundedness?) of them and how dissonant they are when you encounter them. A giant, impassible mountain range keeping the pc's in the valley for now will probably go over well enough if the pc's can't fly, but an invisible wall preventing them from crossing will likely annoy them. Likewise if the mountains reduce all movement to "go north," that will annoy layers but if the valley is big enough that they can travel for a day or more in any direction they'll be cool with that until they've explored the whole place.

FrogReaver said:

they do have free choice though. They can choose to not go on any adventure.

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I suppose so! I guess if they get to a point in the adventurer where they are just like 'naughty word it, this is too dangerous, I retire' ... maybe the adventure is a little bit too difficult? :O