D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

soviet said:

I think what you're describing here is what's known as 'pawn play'. You don't seem to have any particular investment in your character as a person or their ties to the gameworld, your investment is in not losing the game by having your playing piece die.

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I was thinking that myself, but wanted to avoid going there because a lot of people consider pawn/token play a degenerate play-style in RPGs (it absolutely wasn't considered such at one time, but a lot of water has gone under the bridge there) and the poster seemed to have some attachment to their character internally (as in the character as a character), but they do seem to find that attachment, from lack of a better term, ends at their skin.

Maxperson said:

You have yet to prove that the players choosing something it is a loss of agency.

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I don't claim that in the general case the players choosing something is a loss of agency. I do claim that time skips (or hand waves generally) are a technique for railroading.

The idea behind a time skip is (ideally) that everyone at the table agrees that they want to move past the "scenary" and get to a certain destination because that is the "good stuff". So yes, the player is in the ideal case choosing something. But what they are choosing to do is willingly board the choo choo train. I suppose we could make an exception for time skips that were specifically to a destination the GM didn't want the players to go to, but even that is questionable. It could be that the GM is agreeing to that time skip precisely because it shortens the amount of game time that is wasted before the players are back on the railroad he wants them to be on.

I'm not saying either as a player or a GM that willingly getting aboard the choo choo train is a bad idea. It could be that when you get to where you are going you are dropped into some sort of environment where you have and are allowed to have agency. But the whole point of a time skip is to get you from point A to point B without being derailed, and that's a hugely powerful railroading technique.

Railroading isn't just a loss of agency. Railroading is negating player choice specifically to achieve the DMs ends and push the players to where the DM wants them to be.

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Yes, I absolutely agree. I think it should be telling that if the GMs "ends" require things to happen on the journey that the time skip won't hold, but fundamentally getting players to agree to a time skip is a hugely powerful way to ensure players get to a particular place in the fictional game state.

If they choose to go to a city and they choose play out every second of every day, there is no lost agency there.

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Agreed. (Well, mostly, there are other techniques you could probably use to railroad them even then, but they'd be a lot more subtle.)

They have made the choices(agency) and they are going where THEY, not the DM wants to go.

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Agreed. But did you even notice that what you just proved in the last two sentences was "not time skipping is not railroading". And why shouldn't I agree to that?

You can use an personal definition of agency for your game, but if you assert that your personal definition is the general definition of railroading on a forum like this, you're going to get a lot of pushback like you've gotten in this thread.

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The thing is that I actually haven't done this. I was fully willing to use your definition that you offered here: "Railroading is negating player choice specifically to achieve the DMs ends and push the players to where the DM wants them to be."

And I'm not understanding how you don't understand that a time skip is a powerful way to do that.

soviet said:

I think what you're describing here is what's known as 'pawn play'. You don't seem to have any particular investment in your character as a person or their ties to the gameworld, your investment is in not losing the game by having your playing piece die.

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Thomas Shey said:

I was thinking that myself, but wanted to avoid going there because a lot of people consider pawn/token play a degenerate play-style in RPGs (it absolutely wasn't considered such at one time, but a lot of water has gone under the bridge there) and the poster seemed to have some attachment to their character internally (as in the character as a character), but they do seem to find that attachment, from lack of a better term, ends at their skin.

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I don't know, I think you might be on to something. I mean, I'm in the GM seat FAR more often then I play. I also play (and GM) in an "emergent" mindset, in that I don't have a storyline in mind, I just want to see what's going to happen. If "bad things" happen to key NPCs, or other PCs, or to the fictional world...well...it's what happened! I mean, I do feel good when my PC is able to save the princess or whatever, but I don't get like depressed if the princess gets eaten instead, that's just what happened. Perhaps it's a side effect of only GMing for the first decade of my time in the hobby? I'm not joking! I literally started out being the GM for my hometown friend group, and no one else ever wanted to GM, so I was always GM. It wasn't until I moved away from my hometown that I finally had the opportunity to be a PLAYER in a TTRPG game. Same as the whole "immersion" thing folks talk about. I believe I have witnessed players get deeply immersed in their PC in games I am running, as they display emotional responses to the things their PC is experiencing. I am not sure if I've ever really been immersed. I tend to "see" everything, including my PC, in the third person. I also don't get upset over bad things happening to my PC, as that is just what happened in the story. I DO feel some tension over goal oriented events in a game, especially time sensitive ones. It's just the no-death blow by blow combat encounter that feels totally empty and pointless, and completely lacks tension. Chase my PC down a hallway with a Xenomorph, or send my PC to investigate a seaside town where the locals are a "little off" and I'll be a giddy with excitement. Give my PC an Ironman suit and tell me to fight Thanos to save the world and I'm instantly bored.

zarionofarabel said:

I don't know, I think you might be on to something. I mean, I'm in the GM seat FAR more often then I play. I also play (and GM) in an "emergent" mindset, in that I don't have a storyline in mind, I just want to see what's going to happen. If "bad things" happen to key NPCs, or other PCs, or to the fictional world...well...it's what happened! I mean, I do feel good when my PC is able to save the princess or whatever, but I don't get like depressed if the princess gets eaten instead, that's just what happened. Perhaps it's a side effect of only GMing for the first decade of my time in the hobby? I'm not joking! I literally started out being the GM for my hometown friend group, and no one else ever wanted to GM, so I was always GM. It wasn't until I moved away from my hometown that I finally had the opportunity to be a PLAYER in a TTRPG game. Same as the whole "immersion" thing folks talk about. I believe I have witnessed players get deeply immersed in their PC in games I am running, as they display emotional responses to the things their PC is experiencing. I am not sure if I've ever really been immersed. I tend to "see" everything, including my PC, in the third person. I also don't get upset over bad things happening to my PC, as that is just what happened in the story. I DO feel some tension over goal oriented events in a game, especially time sensitive ones. It's just the no-death blow by blow combat encounter that feels totally empty and pointless, and completely lacks tension. Chase my PC down a hallway with a Xenomorph, or send my PC to investigate a seaside town where the locals are a "little off" and I'll be a giddy with excitement. Give my PC an Ironman suit and tell me to fight Thanos to save the world and I'm instantly bored.

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I don't think its from being a Forever GM; I'm a Forever GM, but as you might gather, I'm as or more attached to the context and events going on than the character itself. If I'm in a game where there's a significant chance of death and I'm in a battle to save the town and I lose my character but we save the town, I'm much more fine with that than the inverse.

That said, if it is mostly token play, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Its just far from a common play approach these days.

soviet said:

I think what you're describing here is what's known as 'pawn play'. You don't seem to have any particular investment in your character as a person or their ties to the gameworld, your investment is in not losing the game by having your playing piece die.

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This isn't how I've read @zarionofarabel's posts. After all, those posts have referenced (among other RPGs) Mouse Guard and Burning Wheel, neither of which is well-known for pawn stance play!

To me, it seems that the objection is to extended, tactical combat resolution where (i) all that the extended resolution puts at stake, in its processes, is survival (eg hp ablation, if the game is D&D), but (ii) survival is assured. @zarionofarabel has expressed a preference for simple, one-roll resolution rather than the combination of (i) and (ii).

This is why, in my replies, I've been pointing to RPGs - like Torchbearer 2e, Marvel Heroic RP and (in my experience of it) 4e D&D - that depart from (i): the extended resolution can contribute, not just in its outcome but in its process, to determining other stakes.

Celebrim said:

I don't claim that in the general case the players choosing something is a loss of agency. I do claim that time skips (or hand waves generally) are a technique for railroading.

The idea behind a time skip is (ideally) that everyone at the table agrees that they want to move past the "scenary" and get to a certain destination because that is the "good stuff". So yes, the player is in the ideal case choosing something. But what they are choosing to do is willingly board the choo choo train. I suppose we could make an exception for time skips that were specifically to a destination the GM didn't want the players to go to, but even that is questionable. It could be that the GM is agreeing to that time skip precisely because it shortens the amount of game time that is wasted before the players are back on the railroad he wants them to be on.

I'm not saying either as a player or a GM that willingly getting aboard the choo choo train is a bad idea. It could be that when you get to where you are going you are dropped into some sort of environment where you have and are allowed to have agency. But the whole point of a time skip is to get you from point A to point B without being derailed, and that's a hugely powerful railroading technique.



Yes, I absolutely agree. I think it should be telling that if the GMs "ends" require things to happen on the journey that the time skip won't hold, but fundamentally getting players to agree to a time skip is a hugely powerful way to ensure players get to a particular place in the fictional game state.



Agreed. (Well, mostly, there are other techniques you could probably use to railroad them even then, but they'd be a lot more subtle.)



Agreed. But did you even notice that what you just proved in the last two sentences was "not time skipping is not railroading". And why shouldn't I agree to that?



The thing is that I actually haven't done this. I was fully willing to use your definition that you offered here: "Railroading is negating player choice specifically to achieve the DMs ends and push the players to where the DM wants them to be."

And I'm not understanding how you don't understand that a time skip is a powerful way to do that.

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What you seem to be missing is that railroading requires the DM to force the players down the rails. Absent DM force, there is no railroad. Not in the standard definition of RPG railroad anyway.,

pemerton said:

This isn't how I've read @zarionofarabel's posts. After all, those posts have referenced (among other RPGs) Mouse Guard and Burning Wheel, neither of which is well-known for pawn stance play!

To me, it seems that the objection is to extended, tactical combat resolution where (i) all that the extended resolution puts at stake, in its processes, is survival (eg hp ablation, if the game is D&D), but (ii) survival is assured. @zarionofarabel has expressed a preference for simple, one-roll resolution rather than the combination of (i) and (ii).

This is why, in my replies, I've been pointing to RPGs - like Torchbearer 2e, Marvel Heroic RP and (in my experience of it) 4e D&D - that depart from (i): the extended resolution can contribute, not just in its outcome but in its process, to determining other stakes.

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The problem is that they don't seem to find any other stakes as important as character survival, so its not clear even if every combat had attached stakes that it'd matter. As best I can tell, their character's loss in combat would have to directly contribute to a major campaign loss before it would weigh in even close to losing their character (if I'm misrepresenting you, @zarionofarabel, feel free to correct me; I'm going as best I can from what you've said).

As best I can tell, and again they can correct me, that "dangerous" events that aren't actually dangerous to their character are just, well, boring.

Maxperson said:

What you seem to be missing is that railroading requires the DM to force the players down the rails. Absent DM force, there is no railroad. Not in the standard definition of RPG railroad anyway.,

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If you want to be hard and fast about that claim, that is, it's not a railroad if the players consent to ride the rails, then we are at a point where we no longer have anything to argue about.

I did address this explicitly earlier, in that I said I contended that it was still a railroad if the players never realized they were on the rails. If I'm fudging but you don't catch me, it doesn't mean I didn't fudge. If every choice created the same outcome, it doesn't matter that you never realized that because you don't do two playthroughs, it was still a railroad. If the players believe that they are doing creative and unexpected things, when in fact they are doing exactly what the GM plotted for them to do, then I don't accept that no GM force was used even if the players brought consent to every choice. The presence of GM force or not doesn't depend on whether it is noticed or whether it is rebelled against. Just because you don't try to get off the choo choo doesn't mean you aren't on one.

One of the first examples of a model explicitly written with heavy reliance on GM force to ensure the story goes as planned is "DL1: Dragons of Flame". It has pretty much everything - tiny world, obdurium walls, hand waves, time skips, invincible NPCs. Yet because it's written in a fairly naturalistic manner with plausible problems (like massive invading armies), a player who can't see the text of the module might not be aware that they are on rails through a good portion of the module. They might be like a player early in Half-Life 2 that hasn't quite realized yet that there is only ever one path forward, because the hooks are so good for pulling you forward. Yet the fact that they haven't yet realized that they are on a rail doesn't mean that the adventure isn't linear.

But if you don't accept that and require that the GM force has to be obvious in order for it to exist, then we're stuck at the level of definitions.

Celebrim said:

If you want to be hard and fast about that claim, that is, it's not a railroad if the players consent to ride the rails, then we are at a point where we no longer have anything to argue about.

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No. It's not a railroad if there are no rails. Rails = cannot get off.

If I narrate that 3 days pass as you get closer to Monomonomp, the players can stop me and say, "I wanted to look for herbs as we pass through the Forest of Lots of Herbs. If I say, "Okay, and back things up to the forest," there is no railroad. If I say, "No. I want you to get to Monomonomp, so you can't search," I am removing their agency and forcing them down the rails to the location of my choice. This last one is where you go wrong. If I narrate that and they don't stop me, but COULD have if they wanted, there are no rails even if they don't say anything. They were still able to go in any direction they liked, but opted not to. Rails simply do not exist in that situation.

Celebrim said:

I did address this explicitly earlier, in that I said I contended that it was still a railroad if the players never realized they were on the rails. If I'm fudging but you don't catch me, it doesn't mean I didn't fudge. If every choice created the same outcome, it doesn't matter that you never realized that because you don't do two playthroughs, it was still a railroad. If the players believe that they are doing creative and unexpected things, when in fact they are doing exactly what the GM plotted for them to do, then I don't accept that no GM force was used even if the players brought consent to every choice. The presence of GM force or not doesn't depend on whether it is noticed or whether it is rebelled against. Just because you don't try to get off the choo choo doesn't mean you aren't on one.

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Yes. Illusionism is a railroad, but that is also not what I'm describing. Hidden force is still force.

Maxperson said:

No. It's not a railroad if there are no rails. Rails = cannot get off.

If I narrate that 3 days pass as you get closer to Monomonomp, the players can stop me and say, "I wanted to look for herbs as we pass through the Forest of Lots of Herbs. If I say, "Okay, and back things up to the forest," there is no railroad. If I say, "No. I want you to get to Monomonomp, so you can't search," I am removing their agency and forcing them down the rails to the location of my choice. This last one is where you go wrong. If I narrate that and they don't stop me, but COULD have if they wanted, there are no rails even if they don't say anything. They were still able to go in any direction they liked, but opted not to. Rails simply do not exist in that situation.

Yes. Illusionism is a railroad, but that is also not what I'm describing. Hidden force is still force.

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I don't have a problem with the DM using hidden force to nudge the players along a predetermined path, whether it's called railroading or something else. If the players are enjoying themselves, then the results validate the approach.