DM Issues: Railroading

[Vespucci]

We all owe Gary XP for this carry-on.

I'm pretty sure this is a style debate, and the sides correspond roughly to New School and Old School.

This. THIS IS RAILROAD! Dragonlance is a Railroad because as you point out it does not support player freedom in any significant dimension, the players are essentially just along for the ride. Where there is significant player freedom in any of the dimensions you have identified, it is not a railroad.

So, if Hickman had just given the players cool powers and advised the ref with something like, "you should be guided by the dice, not mastered by them - if it comes down to throwing out a bizarre dice roll, or the same plot, the die has to go!", rather than Answers To Their Tactical Problems - Dragonlance wouldn't be a railroad? What would you call it - a railshooter?

This is something of a distraction, anyway. The OP's question is about how to deal with a ref who's being a bit tight on downtime - I'm reluctant to call that railroading at all. The debate that's since developed from Starfox's thought experiment is more about scripting than railroading. I can railroad you into a non-scripted event. For example:

It's 8pm, and we're on to day 3 of a wilderness expedition. I roll on a weather table for the day, get a freak roll, it's a storm! Glancing at the notes for the hex the party happens to be in, I see that a witch's cottage is there. I figure that the storm can set in midday and the players can take shelter in the cottage. But oh no, you miserable miscreants want to create a makeshift camp where you are, and build a fire! Well, too bad! The high winds prevent you from getting it started. You can smell woodsmoke coming from upwind. What's that? You try to create a windbreak? Uh... it catches fire, then the winds put out your campfire before it really gets started! There's a smell of delicious food accompanying the woodsmoke!
​

WARNING: this is ham-fisted and not something I'd recommend. If I'm really keen on the witch's cottage as a scene, I should have the party pass it by before the rail really starts to come down, but accept their decision if they decide not to backtrack. (They're not necessarily being silly: traveling during a storm can be very dangerous, and a makeshift shelter is better than none at all.) When they're setting up the fire, all that needs to be said is, "Yeah, you get your fire started and huddle in. It's a cold and uncomfortable way to spend the afternoon. The weather still hasn't let up as dusk approaches - it's going to be an unpleasant night." Short of any more player action, they'll just wear some minor penalty from fatigue the next day.

One point to note, however, is that when I hit the characters with penalties for not taking better shelter during the storm, I am merely interpreting the rules to them. The weather wasn't my decision (it surprised me, too). According to the setting notes I'd prepared independently of the weather, there was a possibility for shelter - it could just as easily have been a burned-out watchtower, a traveler's shrine, the base camp of a band of robbers, or nothing at all.

By scripting the exact same session, I own it. If the characters take penalties for not doing what I expect them to do (go to the witch's cottage for the scene I wanted to run), I am punishing them for not following my script.

 

[Bedrockgames]

We all owe Gary XP for this carry-on.

I'm pretty sure this is a style debate, and the sides correspond roughly to New School and Old School.



So, if Hickman had just given the players cool powers and advised the ref with something like, "you should be guided by the dice, not mastered by them - if it comes down to throwing out a bizarre dice roll, or the same plot, the die has to go!", rather than Answers To Their Tactical Problems - Dragonlance wouldn't be a railroad? What would you call it - a railshooter?

This is something of a distraction, anyway. The OP's question is about how to deal with a ref who's being a bit tight on downtime - I'm reluctant to call that railroading at all. The debate that's since developed from Starfox's thought experiment is more about scripting than railroading. I can railroad you into a non-scripted event. For example:

It's 8pm, and we're on to day 3 of a wilderness expedition. I roll on a weather table for the day, get a freak roll, it's a storm! Glancing at the notes for the hex the party happens to be in, I see that a witch's cottage is there. I figure that the storm can set in midday and the players can take shelter in the cottage. But oh no, you miserable miscreants want to create a makeshift camp where you are, and build a fire! Well, too bad! The high winds prevent you from getting it started. You can smell woodsmoke coming from upwind. What's that? You try to create a windbreak? Uh... it catches fire, then the winds put out your campfire before it really gets started! There's a smell of delicious food accompanying the woodsmoke!
​

WARNING: this is ham-fisted and not something I'd recommend. If I'm really keen on the witch's cottage as a scene, I should have the party pass it by before the rail really starts to come down, but accept their decision if they decide not to backtrack. (They're not necessarily being silly: traveling during a storm can be very dangerous, and a makeshift shelter is better than none at all.) When they're setting up the fire, all that needs to be said is, "Yeah, you get your fire started and huddle in. It's a cold and uncomfortable way to spend the afternoon. The weather still hasn't let up as dusk approaches - it's going to be an unpleasant night." Short of any more player action, they'll just wear some minor penalty from fatigue the next day.

One point to note, however, is that when I hit the characters with penalties for not taking better shelter during the storm, I am merely interpreting the rules to them. The weather wasn't my decision (it surprised me, too). According to the setting notes I'd prepared independently of the weather, there was a possibility for shelter - it could just as easily have been a burned-out watchtower, a traveler's shrine, the base camp of a band of robbers, or nothing at all.

By scripting the exact same session, I own it. If the characters take penalties for not doing what I expect them to do (go to the witch's cottage for the scene I wanted to run), I am punishing them for not following my script.

I think there are all different kinds of ways to railroad. As a player, I consider it railroad when the GM clearly coerces us, or alters things so we get on track. I don't mind if the GM has anticipated a series of events, and if there are naturual consequences that flow from how we react to those events. It is when the GM deliberately imposes negative consequences on you for not going where he wants you to that it is a problem in my experience.

And I agree, railroading can crop up in instances of an adventure that is otherwise pretty open (if that is what you are saying)----and I must admit I don't mind it in brief instances, so long as it isn't as heavy handed and imposing as your example above. I get that the GM only has so much time, a little nudge here and there is fine. But at the end of the day the PCs should be free not to bite.

I haven't been following this thread too closely so forgive me if I misunderstand how this next point was dealt with, but consequences on their own aren't a bad thing. In my mafia campaigns, players have total liberty to pursue whatever rackets, alliances, personal goals, etc they want. And because I have a fully fleshed out set of characters in the underworld they inhabit, I can generally react with realistic consequences (good or bad) when the players do things---I also have a lot of NPCs in motion doing their own things.

There is nothing wrong with presenting a meaningful situation to the players, as long as they can engage it how they wish or ignore it if they wish to do so. Things like this crop up in real life (you mother calls and says your sister is in the hospital, your friend offers a chance to join him on a business venture, etc).

Example From my own campaign:
In my last campaign, the players set out to impress their capo, and succeeded by making money with some innovative rackets. The capo had been secretly plotting against the boss from the beginning. After they interacted with him a bit, I decided he would try to bring them into the conspiracy. He propositioned them, offering them good positions, and assuring them he had other capos lined up behind them.

This scenario wasn't something I originally intended them to participate in. Originally the family war was going to be more of a backdrop, but because they impressed the capo and played it smooth, he brought them in. However, they chose to act like they were going along, and then immediately told the boss what was up. This moved them from the periphery of a mob war to the center.

 

[Vespucci]

I haven't been following this thread too closely so forgive me if I misunderstand how this next point was dealt with, but consequences on their own aren't a bad thing. In my mafia campaigns, players have total liberty to pursue whatever rackets, alliances, personal goals, etc they want. And because I have a fully fleshed out set of characters in the underworld they inhabit, I can generally react with realistic consequences (good or bad) when the players do things---I also have a lot of NPCs in motion doing their own things.

There is nothing wrong with presenting a meaningful situation to the players, as long as they can engage it how they wish or ignore it if they wish to do so. Things like this crop up in real life (you mother calls and says your sister is in the hospital, your friend offers a chance to join him on a business venture, etc).

Example From my own campaign:
In my last campaign, the players set out to impress their capo, and succeeded by making money with some innovative rackets. The capo had been secretly plotting against the boss from the beginning. After they interacted with him a bit, I decided he would try to bring them into the conspiracy. He propositioned them, offering them good positions, and assuring them he had other capos lined up behind them.

This scenario wasn't something I originally intended them to participate in. Originally the family war was going to be more of a backdrop, but because they impressed the capo and played it smooth, he brought them in. However, they chose to act like they were going along, and then immediately told the boss what was up. This moved them from the periphery of a mob war to the center.

As far as I can tell, we agree about "railroading".

For the rest: I'm not arguing against consequences. My sensible version of the storm example has consequences for the players decision to stay in a makeshift shelter. The debate is over scripting, with particularly emphasis on what that means about consequences for PC decisions. There's clearly a scale. Stormfox's example was one of scripting, from day 0 of the campaign, an end-of-the-world event to occur in two game years and expecting the players to deal with it, on pain of - the end of the world!

Interestingly, what looked to me like a bit of a straw man has actually attracted defenders. Because their approach is so radically different to mine, I don't think an intelligible debate can take place - all I can really do is explain why I don't like playing in strongly scripted games.

For completeness: I probably wouldn't play in your current game because I don't find the mafia to be particularly compelling. But a different genre under the same style would be interesting.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As far as I can tell, we agree about "railroading".

For the rest: I'm not arguing against consequences. My sensible version of the storm example has consequences for the players decision to stay in a makeshift shelter. The debate is over scripting, with particularly emphasis on what that means about consequences for PC decisions. There's clearly a scale. Stormfox's example was one of scripting, from day 0 of the campaign, an end-of-the-world event to occur in two game years and expecting the players to deal with it, on pain of - the end of the world!

Interestingly, what looked to me like a bit of a straw man has actually attracted defenders. Because their approach is so radically different to mine, I don't think an intelligible debate can take place - all I can really do is explain why I don't like playing in strongly scripted games.

Scripted isn't a term (within the context of RPGs) I am terribly familiar with. It sounds like what I encountered a lot in the 90s (and correct me if I am wrong) where the GM sees the game as a movie or book. Kind of like railroading, but where he actually has a lot of dramatic beats planned out as well (The Ending of the Ravenloft Module, the created, felt like this for me). If I remember a lot of modules back then actually used the script format for organization (Scene I, etc).

I am curious, if you consider a major world event scripting (correct me if I am wrong), how would you distinguish between scripting and world in motion (just curious, not criticizing).

For completeness: I probably wouldn't play in your current game because I don't find the mafia to be particularly compelling. But a different genre under the same style would be interesting.

Yes mafia isn't popular as a gaming genre. I've loved mafia stuff since I saw goodfellas as a kid. Some players wouldn't mind this same scenario set in a fantasy campaign using guilds (my campaign is essentially a modern day city adventure). In my own group we tend to prefer modern campaigns, so mafia is a good fit.

 

[Vespucci]

Scripted isn't a term (within the context of RPGs) I am terribly familiar with. It sounds like what I encountered a lot in the 90s (and correct me if I am wrong) where the GM sees the game as a movie or book. Kind of like railroading, but where he actually has a lot of dramatic beats planned out as well (The Ending of the Ravenloft Module, the created, felt like this for me). If I remember a lot of modules back then actually used the script format for organization (Scene I, etc).

I'm trying to coin it as a term of art. Glad to see that it's fairly easy to understand!

I am curious, if you consider a major world event scripting (correct me if I am wrong), how would you distinguish between scripting and world in motion (just curious, not criticizing).

I don't think there's a blanket answer to that one. In the heroic adventure genre that D&D dominates, you don't really need major world events (those that you do need, the players will create or provoke). In published campaigns, such events really just exist to move new editions of the campaign. It's not entirely clear to me why home-brewing refs see fit to add such events to their own campaigns. Imitation surely comes into it, but can't be the whole answer.

In other genres, major world events may be part of the setting. That question about games set in the first half of the 20th Century takes a couple of examples of such. In the examples, deleting or altering the major events without any input from the players would be a bait-and-switch on the setting (whatever the characters might expect is going to happen, the players have definite conceptions about a game starting in Belgium 1914).

All the best with your game - I'm sure your players are having a blast.

 

[pemerton]

Nagol and S'mon, thanks for the replies - can't XP Nagol again yet, though.

In my case the starting situation would remain exactly the same.

<snip>

I constantly rework the forestory and the current situation by adding previously undefined elements. Once an element is in play, its nature remains constant.

We differ on the first of these - I fit the starting situation to the players and their PCs.

I'm not sure about the second - once an element is in play in my game, its revealed nature remains constant, but stuff that has not yet been revealed about it (eg perhaps its origin, or where it was/what it was doing 5 years ago) is still up for grabs. Often I'll have a loose notion of what some of these things might be, but will often precisify or change them on the fly as seems best-suited to push the game forward.

if a PCs long-lost mother is known to be in an orcish camp for sacrifice and the PCs leave without interrupting the ritual then the mother is sacrificed.

Good example. I could imagine handling this in different ways. Thus, in my game the players had a chance to rescue the mother of one of the PCs from a goblin fortress, but left her in a room on her own while they searched for a way out. When they came back, I explained that they found her dead. (I'd already decided that this would be the outcome unless very affirmative steps were taken to prevent it - and they weren't.)

But in circumstnaces where the PCs failure to protect his mother had a different cause - for example, he was doing something equally heroic elsewhere - then how I resolved the matter might be different.

Perhaps the players wants the angst of knowing he failed to save her? Perhaps the player originally had her long-lost because he doesn't want to interact with the mother at all? Allowing the players to author the story by respecting their choices -- both good and bad -- is a form of empowerment.

I strongly agree with this. Relating it back to Starfox's scenario, the reason why the GDS trio ignored the world-ending issue is therefore crucial. If the players actively decided to continue planting, dancing and gazing in the knowledge that the world is soon doomed, then ending the world affirms those choices. But if - as Starfox seemed to have in mind - they are just not interested in the world-saving thing and treat it as an irrelevant distraction to the game they actually want to play, then I think that the GM insisting on his/her plot and ending the gameworld would tend to be the disempowering way of proceeding.

If the GM tells the players about the looming shadows of disaster, and that their PCs will have the opportunity to confront it, and the players create PCs who won't confront it, I don't see it as bad DMing if the disaster still occurs. For one thing, the players may *want* to experience being swept up in disaster. If the players actually wanted a no-disaster game, they should have told the GM that up front and he could run a different game or get different players.

This works for me - the stuff on the right-hand side of "for one thing" especially. As I read Starfox and Vespucci, what you say there accords with what they're saying, namely, that the setting/timeline etc have a metagame as well as ingame significance, which a GM can't repudiate just by saying "But that's what is happening in the gameworld!"

What the actual metagame significance is, for whom, and how the play group as a whole should best respond to it, is going to be a particular matter for each group. I don't think any general rules - such as "stick to your prepared timeline or you'll invalidate player choices" or "always apply natural consequences to PC actions" - can be given here, because of the range of variation in interests, dynamics etc across groups.

As a player my interests are ecletic and best known by me not the DM. I'll engage those things that catch my fancy and drop them again just as quickly if they don't keep my interest. Having someone rebuild to feed my apparent interest would be disconcerting

I'm not sure what you mean here by "rebuild", so I'm not sure what you're describing.

But my general experience as a GM has been that players don't object when the parts of the gameworld that reach out to grab them are mostly the sorts of things that they are interested in engaging with (so, to give a very simple example, when the party contains a lot of Raven Queen worshippers they encounter more than the population average of Orcus cultists).

The PCs do not instigate all actions; they may not appreciate all developments; but the PCs can affect any outcome.

In my game the PCs do not appreciate all developments, but I try hard to ensure that the players do.

 

[pemerton]

Dragonlance is a Railroad because as you point out it does not support player freedom in any significant dimension, the players are essentially just along for the ride. Where there is significant player freedom in any of the dimensions you have identified, it is not a railroad.

Example: I'm playing Great Britain in Axis & Allies. I only have one kind of freedom - to direct my forces in the struggle with the Axis powers. That's a very limited freedom, but enough that the game is not a railroad. Snakes & Ladders or Ludo, by contrast...

I guess I don't think that board games provide an especially useful comparitor to RPGs in this respect. For example, it's not a failure of Snakes & Ladders that it is a railroad. I play Snakes & Ladders from time to time with my young daughter and it's kind of fun, in a "let's see who can roll highest the most" kind of way.

But I'm not sure what is gained by saying that an RPG scenario is a railroad only if no player with any sort of interest in freedom could enjoy it, which is what I take you to be saying. Given that any given scenario is typically being experienced by some actual players who have actual preferences, I tend to think of it as a railroad if it denies those actual players freedom in the dimension(s) that matter(s) to them.

Which is to say that I think being a railroad is a relational property, relative to a given player's (or groups) interests and expectations - although in some cases (like Dragonlance) we can perhaps say that it is a property that will be instantiated in respect of nearly any conceivable play group.

 

[pemerton]

I'm pretty sure this is a style debate, and the sides correspond roughly to New School and Old School.

I'm not sure about this, because I'm not sure what counts as New School - it seems to include both (what I would consider) the worst of Dragonlance/2nd ed/White Wolf style metaplot and heavy-handed GMing, but also indie-ish style player-focused and thematically driven games of the Burning Wheel etc variety, where the GM is expected to follow the players' leads as much as, or even more than, vice versa. But these two versions of the New School are implacably opposed - the Forge is one of the strongest sources of hostility to Dragonlance/White Wolf/2nd ed-style play.

if Hickman had just given the players cool powers and advised the ref with something like, "you should be guided by the dice, not mastered by them - if it comes down to throwing out a bizarre dice roll, or the same plot, the die has to go!"

I thought that this was roughly what Dragonlance did - maybe I've been misinformed?! Unless I've misread you, what you're stating here is the White Wolf Golden Rule - which is one of the starting points for the sort of GM-storyline-dominated play that the Forge (and I) are very hostile towards.

If I'm really keen on the witch's cottage as a scene, I should have the party pass it by before the rail really starts to come down, but accept their decision if they decide not to backtrack.

I'd make it even clearer than that! - have the rain start to pelt down as the cottage comes into view. This makes it unambiguous to the players that you are offering them something interesting.

If they decline it, well that's their lookout. (And if they do decline it, then whether having the witch come chasing them through the rain would be unreasonably railroady, or a reasonable complication, will depend on a lot of other details of the situation, the reasons the players have for ignoring the cottage, etc.)

 

[JamesonCourage]

In my view, these discussions seem to gravitate towards what looks like the issue coming down to immersion versus meta.

Some players will not be happy at the "please the players in a meta sense" type game, as it draws the immersion out of the game. Such a take would be self-defeating.

Some players will not be happy at the opposite. As that's not my preferred play style, I'd feel bad phrasing it, especially by incorporating quotes.

At any rate, play what you like

 

[Vespucci]

I'm not sure about this, because I'm not sure what counts as New School - it seems to include both (what I would consider) the worst of Dragonlance/2nd ed/White Wolf style metaplot and heavy-handed GMing, but also indie-ish style player-focused and thematically driven games of the Burning Wheel etc variety, where the GM is expected to follow the players' leads as much as, or even more than, vice versa. But these two versions of the New School are implacably opposed - the Forge is one of the strongest sources of hostility to Dragonlance/White Wolf/2nd ed-style play.

I agree that there are more than two schools of roleplaying, just as there are more than two schools of music. When I talk about the Old School and the New School in music, I mean styles in hip-hop. When I talk about the Old School and the New School in roleplaying, I mean styles in D&D and clones. (Carrying the analogy further: there could even be more than two schools in D&D and clones.)

To treat with the specific example: while White Wolf did make the ref into a storyteller, they were very slow to let the player be an optimizer (it's arguable that they still haven't done this). The New School had a certain lag between storytelling and optimization, but both had been absorbed into its paradigm by the start of the 90s.

(You could express that in several different ways. Some folks would say that the New School wasn't going until both trends had been brought through, some might quibble on the timing, etc. But the distinction between New School D&D playstyle and Storyteller playstyle is a fairly clean one.)

I thought that this was roughly what Dragonlance did - maybe I've been misinformed?! Unless I've misread you, what you're stating here is the White Wolf Golden Rule - which is one of the starting points for the sort of GM-storyline-dominated play that the Forge (and I) are very hostile towards.

Dragonlance went further than that. I'm assuming a softer version of the module, not a complete revamp.