What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

hawkeyefan · 2026-03-07T15:15:07+0000

bsss said:
I see systems much like a contract, in the sense of "this, at least, is allowed". That Pendragon does social things way X or that D&D does them way Y is part of the agreement. Those may be unsatisfying ways, of course, but I think when we wonder about where agency lives and pick our lines to defend, we need to be more specific in the system contract in use. Pendragon allows the dice to test a character's vice directly, and D&D does not, yet D&D allows the dice in general defintions of skills to affect... someone. I think I know, but it doesn't seem like everyone here has had the same experiences as me. How much is that getting in the way for everyone, I don't know, but some of these situations being debated seem unmoored to me in a way that I have not been able to form an opinion.

Yeah, agency needs to he looked at based on the specific game in question. Sure, a game like Spire may have more consequences that take away agency than D&D… but it grants agency in other ways that D&D does not.

Examining and judging a single rule or instance of play in Spire by the same criteria one would judge D&D doesn’t lead to very reasonable conclusions.

Fenris-77 · 2026-03-07T15:33:49+0000

hawkeyefan said:
Yeah, agency needs to he looked at based on the specific game in question. Sure, a game like Spire may have more consequences that take away agency than D&D… but it grants agency in other ways that D&D does not.

Examining and judging a single rule or instance of play in Spire by the same criteria one would judge D&D doesn’t lead to very reasonable conclusions.

Spire actually assumes a lot more agency for the players in terms of making broad societal changes a potential outcome of their actions. This could happen in other games of course, but mostly not as direct a consequence of the game's design goals as is the case with Spire.

hawkeyefan · 2026-03-07T19:56:27+0000

Fenris-77 said:
Spire actually assumes a lot more agency for the players in terms of making broad societal changes a potential outcome of their actions. This could happen in other games of course, but mostly not as direct a consequence of the game's design goals as is the case with Spire.

For sure. That it’s incentivized by the rules in how characters advance is no coincidence!

pemerton · 2026-03-07T21:02:09+0000

RPGs are games of shared imagining. The agency of those who participate in the game, therefore, is about how they can shape that shared imagining.

Because, typically, most of the participants in a RPG are in the "player" role, engaging and affecting the fiction via the medium of a particular character within the fiction, that agency becomes about how the play of that character affects the shared imagining.

Because it's also fun, at least for many RPGers, for unexpected stuff to happen - stuff that no one would just choose here and now, if left to their own devices - we use mechanical systems to constrain our imagining and introduce stuff into it. Social mechanics are a way of doing that, just like any other mechanics are.

Bill Zebub · 2026-03-08T00:02:20+0000

pemerton said:
Because it's also fun, at least for many RPGers, for unexpected stuff to happen - stuff that no one would just choose here and now, if left to their own devices

I agree about the fun of unexpected things, but I very much disagree that amazingly wonderful unexpected stuff doesn't happen if you just leave people to their own devices. I've been enjoying it full-agency RPGs for decades.

(I was just posting in another thread about AI, and I have to say your argument almost seems like the opposite from the ones there: as if humans aren't creative enough on their own, so we need to rely on algorithms.)

pemerton · 2026-03-08T00:43:11+0000

Bill Zebub said:
I agree about the fun of unexpected things, but I very much disagree that amazingly wonderful unexpected stuff doesn't happen if you just leave people to their own devices.

I referred to unexpected stuff that no one would just choose here and now, if left to their own devices. I think it's definitional that stuff that someone chooses, left to their own devices, isn't the sort of stuff I was referring to.

For some RPGers - not all - the incorporation of stuff that no one would choose here and now, if left to their own devices, is part of what distinguishes playing a RPG from simply authoring a story.

Bill Zebub · 2026-03-08T01:13:52+0000

pemerton said:
I referred to unexpected stuff that no one would just choose here and now, if left to their own devices. I think it's definitional that stuff that someone chooses, left to their own devices, isn't the sort of stuff I was referring to.

For some RPGers - not all - the incorporation of stuff that no one would choose here and now, if left to their own devices, is part of what distinguishes playing a RPG from simply authoring a story.

Can you give me an example of something that no one would ever choose to do do if left to their own devices?

soviet · 2026-03-08T01:16:31+0000

Bill Zebub said:
Can you give me an example of something that no one would ever choose to do do if left to their own devices?

Note that you've added two things to pemerton's words - you've added 'ever' when he said 'here and now', and you've added 'choose to do' when he just said 'stuff' (which could incorporate things that happen but are not actions).

Bill Zebub · 2026-03-08T01:31:16+0000

soviet said:
Note that you've added two things to pemerton's words - you've added 'ever' when he said 'here and now', and you've added 'choose to do' when he just said 'stuff' (which could incorporate things that happen but are not actions).

Huh. You're right, and it wasn't intentional (I was typing from short-term memory) but...does it really make that much difference to the point? Other than to give a possible escape hatch to the responses? ("I didn't say that wouldn't ever choose to do that..."). What significant difference are you seeing between 'choosing stuff' and 'choosing to do (stuff)?'

But I'm happy to rephrase, this time cutting and pasting for accuracy: what is an example of unexpected stuff that no one would just choose here and now, if left to their own devices?

And it's not a gotcha. I'm just puzzled by claim.

soviet · 2026-03-08T02:04:01+0000

Bill Zebub said:
Huh. You're right, and it wasn't intentional (I was typing from short-term memory) but...does it really make that much difference to the point? Other than to give a possible escape hatch to the responses? ("I didn't say that wouldn't ever choose to do that..."). What significant difference are you seeing between 'choosing stuff' and 'choosing to do (stuff)?'

But I'm happy to rephrase, this time cutting and pasting for accuracy: what is an example of unexpected stuff that no one would just choose here and now, if left to their own devices?

And it's not a gotcha. I'm just puzzled by claim.

Not pemerton so I can't speak for him, but one difference between 'choosing stuff [that happens]' and 'choosing to do stuff' might include characters feeling a certain way or knowing certain things but not acting on it.

Surely you can see that anything the player chooses to happen, by definition was chosen by the player. So such choices cannot ever be truly unexpected or surprising. They are an internal, not an external, factor.