Avoiding Railroading - Forked Thread: Do you play more for the story or the combat?

[Hella_Tellah]

So lets get this totally, completely accurate. Because I want to make absolutely sure that you really mean what you said.

You are saying that the only way to avoid illusionism in the example he gave would be to destroy the first dungeon you made. When you next need a dungeon, you can't use that one, because that would make the PCs choice not to visit it meaningless. Instead, you have to write an entirely new dungeon. You can never use the first dungeon again. It is dead now.

That is what you are saying. It is possible that it is not what you mean. Please clarify.

If all of the players' choices lead them to go to the same dungeon with the numbers filed off and new fluff applied, that's Illusionism. If you don't scrap the dungeon, you're using Illusionism. It's not evil, it doesn't make you a bad GM for doing it, but that's what it's called.

 

[Mallus]

If all of the players' choices lead them to go to the same dungeon with the numbers filed off and new fluff applied, that's Illusionism. If you don't scrap the dungeon, you're using Illusionism.

I'd like to suggest that the choices leading up to finding "the next dungeon" aren't meaningful at all. Of course the PC's find the next dungeon, this is Dungeons and Dragons, after all. It's a given. Unless the dungeon is somehow plot-critical, and there is a dramatic reason for pursuing the ramifications of not finding it, then recycling it is the smart things to do. It's not like the parts of the game world exist before the players come into contact with it. The world's in flux until the DM speaks it into being.

We should reserve the term "meaningful choice" --and thus the use of the term "illusionsism"-- for things that can result in different dramatic outcomes: do the PC's back the tyrannical rightful heir or the just usurper? Do the PC's rescue the princess or pursue the villain who masterminded the plot before he escapes overseas?

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I'd like to suggest that the choices leading up to finding "the next dungeon" aren't meaningful at all. Of course the PC's find the next dungeon, this is Dungeons and Dragons, after all. It's a given. Unless the dungeon is somehow plot-critical, and there is a dramatic reason for pursuing the ramifications of not finding it, then recycling it is the smart things to do. It's not like the parts of the game world exist before the players come into contact with it. The world's in flux until the DM speaks it into being.

Well, first off, not all games are D&D, and D&D doesn't have to be a series of dungeon crawls. I do not, nor never have, run a game about going from one dungeon to another. But I agree that if you spent tons of time making up a dungeon, recycling it is the smart thing to do. It's still called "Illusionism," because the GM is giving the players the illusion that they've rejected the dungeon, when in fact they are going to that same dungeon no matter which dungeon they choose.

I do not think this is bad, and you don't need to defend it. It's probably the easiest way to DM a game of D&D if you're going to make the dungeons ahead of time. It's the most effective use of prep time. It's only a problem if your players figure it out and dislike it.

We should reserve the term "meaningful choice" --and thus the use of the term "illusionism"-- for things that can result in different dramatic outcomes: do the PC's back the tyrannical rightful heir or the just usurper? Do the PC's rescue the princess or pursue the villain who masterminded the plot before he escapes overseas?

Well, from a narrative perspective, those choices are more important. But from a gamist perspective, the layout of the dungeon and the tactical situations involved are more important. Either way, you've denied the players a choice and covered it up. I think Illusionism applies whenever the GM negates player choice in such a way that the players don't know it has happened.

 

[apoptosis]

I'd like to suggest that the choices leading up to finding "the next dungeon" aren't meaningful at all. Of course the PC's find the next dungeon, this is Dungeons and Dragons, after all. It's a given. Unless the dungeon is somehow plot-critical, and there is a dramatic reason for pursuing the ramifications of not finding it, then recycling it is the smart things to do. It's not like the parts of the game world exist before the players come into contact with it. The world's in flux until the DM speaks it into being.

We should reserve the term "meaningful choice" --and thus the use of the term "illusionsism"-- for things that can result in different dramatic outcomes: do the PC's back the tyrannical rightful heir or the just usurper? Do the PC's rescue the princess or pursue the villain who masterminded the plot before he escapes overseas?

Your point is a good one. Which dungeon they go in is probably not a meaningful choice in many circumstances unless it is as you picking which dungeon to go in really impacts the overall plot.

This of course begs the question as to why are they going in the dungeon (if it is to kill things and take their stuff then it is probably irrelevant what dungeon they go in).

Now if they had a choice between White Plume Mountain and the Tomb of Horrors and had some information that allowed them to make a meaningful choice between the two, then that would be a meaningful choice with meaningful consequences (a basically killer trap dungeon vs a more hack n slash dungeon that rewards with 3 cool treasures).

 

[Cadfan]

I think Illusionism applies whenever the GM negates player choice in such a way that the players don't know it has happened.

Hmm.

I think you're using "illusionism" a little differently than others in this thread, but I understand what you're saying.

The only qualification I'd add is this- rarely do these issues come up in such simplistic ways. Its not as if I'm out there telling the pcs, "You spring down the hallway, fleeing the guards! But oh no! It branches! Which way do you go, left or right?" and then sending them to exactly the same room no matter which way they choose. In that sort of case, I wouldn't branch the hallway at all.

Really, there are three bits of DMing practice that get attacked as denying player choice, when I really think that they're just wise dungeon mastery. I'll explain by example, using things that come up when I DM.

First

The PCs are investigating a mystery. There are three primary clues which, once gathered, will solve the mystery. There are three secondary clues, which lead to encounters during which the PCs will uncover the primary clues. So all told there are a minimum of six scenes which will have to happen for the PCs to solve the mystery.

The PCs enter the first scene. The clue they need to uncover here is that Lord Schmoe is cheating on his wife, which will let them interogate his mistress, who will turn out to have witnessed events important to the mystery. That is, Lord Schmoe is an encounter that provides a secondary clue, which leads to an encounter that provides a primary clue.

So, they're questioning Lord Schmoe. Unfortunately, the PCs bomb their skill checks.

Everyone agrees that the adventure shouldn't end here. That would be lame.

The question is, what should be done?

What I'd do is provide some other way that the PCs could uncover the secondary clue. Perhaps a servant lets slip some detail. Perhaps they spy on Lord Schmoe and see him meeting his paramour. Perhaps one of the other staging encounters where secondary clues are uncovered involves someone who lets slip a detail that sends them back to Lord Schmoe, this time better prepared to catch him in a lie. They can come up with whatever they like, or else I'll queue them with something. Either way, eventually they uncover the secondary clue, and the adventure moves on.

Now, some people say that this makes it so that success or failure "doesn't matter," because you get the clue either way. To these people I would respond: You are insane. Its like saying that a football game where one side sets an early lead and maintains it the whole game is somehow "the same" as a game that is neck and neck, with each team pulling ahead momentarily only to fall behind again, with one team finally squeaking out a victory. It doesn't matter if both games end with the same team winning. The way it happened is important. Roleplaying games are similar. No one would say that it "doesn't matter" whether you fight zombies in a crypt or battle pirates on the high seas, even though both routes might lead your character to advance a level. The journey inherently matters.

Second

Imaginary World A: In it, I am preparing for a session. I know that I have a player character in my party who can cast the hypothetical ritual "Speak With the Dead." So, I put an important clue in the mouth of a dead NPC, knowing full well that the PCs will find it.

Imaginary World B: In it, I am preparing for a session. I consider giving an important clue to a dead NPC, but then reject that plan, because I suddenly remember that none of my players chose to create a character with the ability to cast rituals, so such a clue would go uncovered.

Some people have argued to me in the past few days that this is a bad decision on my part. They have claimed that I am somehow making the decision of whether or not to take Ritual Caster meaningless, because the PCs get the clue either way. Again, to this I say: You are insane. If you truly mean this argument, you are telling me that my only proper course of action is to... to what, exactly? Put the clue in the unfindable location anyways, so that the PCs can fail to find it, thereby making their decision not to take a feat into a meaningful one? That is crazy. I submit that not even the people who are making this argument actually run their games that way.

Before you call the above two arguments straw men, they're... not. They might be responses to unclearly stated positions, but if that is the case, the fault lies with the unclear positions, and not with my response to them.

Third

This is the only one on which I'm prepared to give even the slightest ground.

We'll use a generic example.

The PCs are headed for an encounter. This encounter is expected to be tough, but the PCs do not know its exact constituent components- ie, they don't know exactly what monsters they'll be fighting or under what conditions the fight will take place. I don't either, as the DM- its a few sessions out, so I haven't written the details yet. I know a few generalities: it will feature the Big Bad Guy, his lieutenant, and a bunch of his allies. It will be difficult. But it won't be impossible. Probably player character level +3 or something.

Now, the PCs come up with a clever plan. This plan will kill off the lieutenant before the encounter. They enact the plan, and the lieutenant is killed.

Now its time for me to write the actual encounter. I have a choice. I can create a player character level +3 encounter that includes the lieutenant, and then delete him, and have the PCs fight what's left. Or, since this is the climax of my campaign, I can write a player character level +3 encounter that doesn't include the lieutenant, and run with it.

Some people believe that choosing the latter makes the player character's choices meaningless. They killed the lieutenant, and the final fight "didn't change." They ask, "why come up with the clever plan at all, if the DM is just going to make things harder to put you back where you started?"

To them I have several responses.

1. Things DID change. The fight would have had a lieutenant. Now it doesn't.

2. The journey still matters. Killing the lieutenant DID have an effect- it advanced the plot line. That's part of it, too. Things which help write the game's plot line matter, even if they don't have a direct effect on mechanical matters.

3. It should really bother you that the logic of whether or not I've made my PCs decisions meaningless changes based on how far in advance I plan. There's a weird Schroedinger's Effect in this reasoning. I can instantly make this not a railroad by not having firm plans about the Big Bad Guy and the Lieutenant both being present in the final battle.

4. If a railroad is absolutely invisible, intangible, silent, odorless, and impossible to detect or interact with in any way, is there really a railroad? The PCs don't know how exactly tough the final fight was going to be. They don't know that it would have been the Big Bad, his Lieutenant, and 6 mooks, and that now its the Big Bad and 8 mooks. Maybe the plot line I had planned was one where the PCs would have been overpowered and possibly forced to retreat, but now they won't have to thanks to their efforts. Maybe the plot line was one where I expected the PCs to come up with plans to weaken the bad guys before the Big Fight, and I intentionally planned the Big Fight to be impossible without some sort of plan before hand. Who knows? The players have no way of knowing the answer to that. They just know what they see, and what they see is no railroad at all- there were a number of enemies arrayed against them, they killed one of them, and now that one's gone and they can fight the remainder.

5. The entire concept of trying to look into the DMs mind and determine what would have been, and then arguing that the PCs have been denied meaningful choice based on what the DM might have done if things had been different, is highly, highly questionable. If I was going to make a hallway branch, with two possible outcomes based on each branch, as mentioned at the top of this post, and then I decided not to bother and made the hallway a straight, unbranching line, have I denied the players a meaningful choice? I guess you could kind of argue that I have, but I'd argue that my denial itself wasn't meaningful. Or at the least, that this argument proves too much- it would imply that every time I could have added a choice to the game, but didn't, I was denying my players meaningful choices. Every second I don't spend fleshing out my campaign world therefore becomes an attack on player autonomy. This line of reasoning gets outlandish fast.

I'd argue that instead the only forms of "denying player choice" or "railroading" that really matters are 1. forms the players can tell are happening, and 2. forms that do so in a way the players don't enjoy. If those two criteria aren't both met, no one has any reason to complain. And in real life, as opposed to this forum, no one WILL complain.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I'd argue that instead the only forms of "denying player choice" or "railroading" that really matters are 1. forms the players can tell are happening, and 2. forms that do so in a way the players don't enjoy. If those two criteria aren't both met, no one has any reason to complain. And in real life, as opposed to this forum, no one WILL complain.

I agree completely. I think that when you railroad, and the players don't know the difference, it's Illusionism--or at least, that's what I've gathered from this thread, since I hadn't read the term before. I do not think this is bad. Like you, I think it's only a problem if the players see through the illusion. I think some level of it is necessary if the GM doesn't want to wing the whole thing or spend countless hours planning for every possible contingency.

You'd be crazy to prepare stuff the players never see. I remember the frustration and temptation to railroad from my days when I planned everything out perfectly, and got a new set of players who didn't play along with my carefully made railroads. At first, my response was to push back harder, and show them just how cool my plots were, which turned out as poorly as one might expect. Then, I tried to prepare for every contingency. I filled up a binder full of information on a setting, with motivations for every NPC, hundreds of plot hooks, and a thick handout of information for every player. Then I watched as I used 3% of it. I think Illusionism could be a really good way to bridge the gap for GMs who like doing all that prep work (in D&D 3.5, I found that stuff really entertaining).

Really, I just want to see if I'm getting the term right, because as I understand it, it's a handy term for a useful tool in a GM's toolbox.

 

[Greg K]

. It's not like the parts of the game world exist before the players come into contact with it. The world's in flux until the DM speaks it into being

Maybe, not in your games. In my campaigns, deities, cultures, countries,major organizations, many major NPCs are all worked out before a PC is ever generated as are key historical and current events. Similarly notes on major cities and ruins that starting characters from specific cultures (or even several cultures) are already written up and placed on the map (even if not fully fleshed out).

 

[LostSoul]

So lets get this totally, completely accurate. Because I want to make absolutely sure that you really mean what you said.

You are saying that the only way to avoid illusionism in the example he gave would be to destroy the first dungeon you made. When you next need a dungeon, you can't use that one, because that would make the PCs choice not to visit it meaningless. Instead, you have to write an entirely new dungeon. You can never use the first dungeon again. It is dead now.

That is what you are saying. It is possible that it is not what you mean. Please clarify.

What I'm saying is that if the players decide that their PCs don't want to go into the Tomb of the Ancient Lich King and decide to head to the Haunted Forest to deal with the ogre threat, putting the Tomb of the Ancient Lich King in the Haunted Forest is taking that choice they made and ignoring it.

Illusionism enters the picture when you pretend that the choice the players made had an impact on the game when it didn't. It wouldn't be Illusionism if you said, "Hey guys, I don't feel like making another dungeon. I'm going to run this one for you no matter where you go."

edit: Let's use an example from my game.

We're playing Thunderspire Labyrinth and I drew up a little dungeon in it. It's dangerous but high reward. It's an old minotaur crypt dedicated to Baphomet in the Shadowfell.

The PCs encountered the gate and the players decided that the PCs wanted to pass by. They did not want to go in there - not yet, at any rate.

In prep for the last game, I drew up a lair - three encounters - and inserted it on the Random Encounter table. When that lair came up on the random encounter roll, I started running it. The players had the choice to just walk on by, though their quarry was within, so they chose to engage it. (The random encounter was the result of a failed tracking check.)

If I had put the tomb there, despite the fact that the players decided they did not want to go into the tomb, and I didn't tell them that I was going to run the tomb no matter what, that's Illusionism. (It wouldn't be if I told them that I wrote up the tomb and I was going to use it no matter what.)

I think Illusionism is bad and I think it makes you a bad DM if you use that technique. It might not be bad if the players know that you are using illusionist techniques and are okay with it, but I don't know if I'd call that Illusionism.

 

[Obryn]

So lets get this totally, completely accurate. Because I want to make absolutely sure that you really mean what you said.

You are saying that the only way to avoid illusionism in the example he gave would be to destroy the first dungeon you made. When you next need a dungeon, you can't use that one, because that would make the PCs choice not to visit it meaningless. Instead, you have to write an entirely new dungeon. You can never use the first dungeon again. It is dead now.

That is what you are saying. It is possible that it is not what you mean. Please clarify.

It's a poor sandbox DM who doesn't keep a few generic dungeon & ruin floorplans handy.

-O

 

[Cadfan]

What I'm saying is that if the players decide that their PCs don't want to go into the Tomb of the Ancient Lich King and decide to head to the Haunted Forest to deal with the ogre threat, putting the Tomb of the Ancient Lich King in the Haunted Forest is taking that choice they made and ignoring it.

But the reason that's bad isn't illusionism. Or at least there's a far bigger, far more obvious reason that's bad that obscures any point you might want to make about illusionism. That call is a bad one because it doesn't make logical sense for the Tomb of the Ancient Lich King that used to be over there to now be over here when the players already know the Tomb's location, and because it creates potential plot holes as a general matter to have the Tomb of the Ancient Lich King pop up where the ogres were expected.

It also runs afoul of my two rules for when illusory choices are bad- the players can tell you're doing it, and there's a fair chance that they won't be happy about it.

Why don't you take on more reasonable propositions?

1. You've drafted up an NPC blacksmith that lives in Hereshire in anticipation of the PCs going there. He's a plot relevant NPC, who the PCs will have the option of assisting with an important task. But the PCs don't go to Hereshire. They go to Thereford. You decide to use the NPC in Thereford instead, and offer the PCs the sub plot in Thereford. Is this bad, and if so, why?

2. You could make an important clue to the plot available to the PCs by means of a puzzle that is easily solved with teleportation. But, your wizard, the only party member who can teleport, just retrained his only teleportation spell into something else. So you instead decide to make a different puzzle. Alternately, your player just learned teleportation, so you immediately make a puzzle based on it. Had he not, you would have made a puzzle based on a different set of skills possessed by a different character. Alternately, you've already made a puzzle based on teleportation, but your player retrains his teleportation spell into something else, and you choose to rewrite the puzzle. Is this bad, and if so, why? Are the examples different in any way? Why?

3. The PCs are about to have an encounter of level appropriate difficulty. They come up with a sweet plan to beat the encounter. You realize this plan will really work, so you increase the encounter difficulty to compensate. Is this bad? Is it bad if the party actually receives experience based on the new encounter level? Is it bad if they don't, and if so why? What if your game doesn't use experience points, and all they get are "cool points" for trashing a really tough encounter? Alternately, you were going to have the PCs ambushed that evening by assassins, but they take a bigger beating during an encounter than you expect. You're worried that your old plan of 5 assassins might kill them. You either delay the assassins until tomorrow, or you reduce the number of assassins to three. Is this bad, and if so, why?

These are the forms of so called "illusionism" that actually exist outside of examples of obvious plot holes and DM errors. I mean them as serious questions.