Can you railroad a willing player? (Forked from "Is World Building Necessary?")

[Hussar]

No worries Lief.

I still stand by my porn analogy really. I know railroading when I see it.

We can come up with example after example, but, it's not going to create a consensus on what railroading means. For some, it's any restriction on player actions. For others, it's restriction by the DM solely for the purposes of forcing the players to do what the DM wants.

Heck, I'm pretty sure we can agree on the extremes. The problem comes when we try to come up with one single catch-all definition. It really doesn't work.

 

[pawsplay]

RC, I hope this doesn't look like I'm picking on your posts, but I'm trying to tease out the key distinction here.

Suppose the DM decides that dangerous monsters lurk in a few areas of the world, and every time the PCs enter those areas, they meet dangerous monsters. Suppose that those areas also contain campaign secrets that the DM does not intend to reveal to the PCs until some time has passed in the campaign world (presumably, enough time for them to become powerful enough to defeat those monsters). Would that be railroading? Why or why not?

I'm going to say, no, it's not railroading. The PCs have a real choice of being hideously slaughtered by monsters attempting to find out stuff that many people have tried finding out about. In a railroading scenario, the PCs might, despite the GM's expectations, actually defeat some of the monsters but bullheadedly push on; rather than let the PCs live with their choice, the GM then either causes a giant force field to cut off that part of the campaign world, or the encounters start multiplying in size by double or ten times, despite it having been established previously that there are no standing armies in the area. Ordinary encounters with creatures turn into encounters with much more advanced versions of the creatures, with only the flimsiest explanation, and the creatures seem more interested in scaring the PCs back the way they came, Scooby-Doo style, than actually killing them. Attempts to simply sneak past the monsters are met with invisible, flying, incorporeal spies dogging them every step of the way, and the man bad guy's caster level suddenly shoots up to allow him to scry them at all times.

 

[Janx]

From what Hussar said, agree folks aren't seeing eye to eye. For myself, it's as plain as day.


This quote probably sums up what I call a railroad warning sign. It could be refined, but it's the gist

For others, it's restriction by the DM solely for the purposes of forcing the players to do what the DM wants.

This one, I disagree with, because there are too many valid reasons to restrict player actions that it makes this criteria meaningless.

For some, it's any restriction on player actions.

Here's the silly extreme restriction scenarios that make it useless:
1st level fighter who wants to cast fireball
player wants to kill every NPC he meets, GM brings in threat of law-enforcment
player doesn't want to save the world, whines when the world is going to be destroyed
player is mad because he wants to be mayor, but not enough people voted for him

I don't buy restrictions being a "railroad flag". There's too many things a player could call a restriction, but are really just logical consequences for in game actions (or inaction). There are things a player can want to do, that the GM is under no obligation to allow happen. There are things a player can want to do, that aren't in the scope of the campaign (and potentially unfun for other people). These are all restrictions, but that's got nothing to do with railroading.

 

[pawsplay]

Kind of, but what I was trying to get across was that it's the DM, and entirely the DM that is the rails. Just like the rails actively force the train in a particular direction, the railroad DM is actively forcing the PCs in a particular direction.

It's only a railroad if the DM forces the PCs to do a particular thing for no other reason then he wants them to do it. (Which is why it's hard to point to any particular scenario as ALWAYS being a railroad.)

Exactly. I think people are conflating railroading with at least other things that are not railroading:

1. Scenario design - The GM is in charge of this. The PCs are allowed, although not necessarily encouraged, to do whatever they want. But the GM is allowed, though not necessarily encouraged, to set up the initial scenario in whatever way the GM wants. World design, events already in motion, attributes of various characters, all of those things, the GM decides. Not railroading, however much it might contrain the PCs' reasonable choices. It's only railroading if the GM constrains the PCs' actual choices.

2. Carrot-and-Stick - Ordinary carrot-and-stick attempts to guide the players are not railroading. Considering the game world as though it were the GM's character, the GM can have the world behave in any reasonable fashion. if it is sensible for terrible monsters to lurk in the Spooky Woods, there is no good crying foul when terrible monsters attack you in the Spooky Woods. See #1, scenario design, above. Even some elements of deus ex machine have their place, as long as they logically follow, though of course the GM should, from an artistic standpoint, make sure the PCs still have a useful role to play in events.

Railroading departs from both expectations. There is no actual scenario design; there may appear to be at first, but as time goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that there is no life outside the game map, and events are transpiring on a moment to moment basis because of the GM's inclination, not because of a coherent back story. In a railroaded game, the scenario design is a cardboard cutout thinly disguising the fact that the entire game takes place in a box.

Second, there is no carrot-and-stick. Instead, you have Aladdin's treasures and the A-bomb. The GM may attempt to bribe you, but of course taking the bribe is going to almost certainly cause you to play into a trap. The A-bomb option is always present, because there is no proportionality to the GM's actions, no cause, only the unlimited desire to constrain the PC's choices.

 

[Leif]

No worries Lief.

I still stand by my porn analogy really. I know railroading when I see it.

We can come up with example after example, but, it's not going to create a consensus on what railroading means. For some, it's any restriction on player actions. For others, it's restriction by the DM solely for the purposes of forcing the players to do what the DM wants.

Heck, I'm pretty sure we can agree on the extremes. The problem comes when we try to come up with one single catch-all definition. It really doesn't work.

Agreed, Sir!
xp 4u, ka-ching! Oooops, can't do that again yet, since I just gave you xp yesterday. Just attribute that point to this post as well! Sorry.

 

[Oryan77]

I thought railroading was the term for wielding 2 sledge hammers and racing against a steam powered hammer to prove that humans can lay tracks faster than any machine. John Henry, the Steel Drivin' Man, proved it....but then he died.

So technically, railroading means that you can do anything that you want, but you'll die.

Which means, it's really the players that are railroading when they try to go off course. The DM is just trying to keep them from dying by not allowing them to do what they want...probably because we learned a thing or two from John Henry.

 

[Scribble]

I thought railroading was the term for wielding 2 sledge hammers and racing against a steam powered hammer to prove that humans can lay tracks faster than any machine. John Henry, the Steel Drivin' Man, proved it....but then he died.

So technically, railroading means that you can do anything that you want, but you'll die.

Which means, it's really the players that are railroading when they try to go off course. The DM is just trying to keep them from dying by not allowing them to do what they want...probably because we learned a thing or two from John Henry.

Dude John Henry is Skynet's brother. We learned that last Friday.

 

[lin_fusan]

I had a situation in which two party members (a rogue... and was it a cleric?) got separated from the rest of the party.

The rest of the party was knee deep in a titanic battle, while the two party members were unwilling to wade into the battle because they perceived themselves as disadvantaged. The rogue, for example, couldn't hide and sneak attack in the open battlefield. The cleric(?) had the wrong spells or something.

Essentially, the rogue and cleric(?) were out of the game. Those players would be sitting there waiting for the others to be uber smashing heads and winning the day.

I decided to change the situation and sent some low-level mooks to sneak up on the cleric(?) and rogue. Of course, the rogue had high Spot, warned the cleric, and went into hiding. The mooks went after the cleric(?), and the rogue sneak attacked them to bloody death.

(In a different thread with another poster named Varis, a similar situation happened to his game, but in his case, the separated characters encountered nothing, was a little bored, and demanded that something exciting should have happened.)

From some posters on this thread, the fact that I changed the situation to have the rogue and cleric(?) encounter something would be considered railroading. However, all of the players were entertained, the rogue player got a chance to show off his Combat Reflexes l33tness, and the cleric felt that he had participated in the overall narrative/fight. My players told me that it was a fun session.

I

 

[Leif]

My players told me that it was a fun session.

In that case, YOU WIN! Who cares what anybody else thinks?

 

[Raven Crowking]

From some posters on this thread, the fact that I changed the situation to have the rogue and cleric(?) encounter something would be considered railroading.

Mildly so, yes. And also, appropriately so. If there are some other "folks" who defined railroading as such and disagree, they may contradict me, but I also said that railroading is sometimes useful/necessary.

Also

In that case, YOU WIN! Who cares what anybody else thinks?

Leif makes a very good point.

For the record, though, pawsplay's post about what is/isn't railroading wins the thread AFAICT, and I officially adopt his definition as my own.


RC