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<blockquote data-quote="ST" data-source="post: 4866242" data-attributes="member: 14053"><p>I'm a broken record, I know, but I think this is a social, group contract issue. It's not specifically a gaming issue.</p><p></p><p>I define railroading as "GM taking control over an aspect of the game <em>I expected</em> to have authority over." As in, it's always totally subjective. Nothing that someone's agreeing to do can be coercive.</p><p></p><p>I know this is kind of a fuzzy definition, but I've personally heard it used that way. Heck, I've heard people label GM descriptions of how their character acts (stuff like "You're frozen in fear") as railroading, even though that's not much to do with the classic definition. It's a sense that you thought you'd have X control over your character, agency to play so to speak, and now the GM is telling you X instead of letting you do it.</p><p></p><p>It means the group has to have a bit of a chat before the campaign starts about what their expectations are. Are the PCs going to be expected to follow a sequence of events? Are they all going to be expected to act together, as a party? That's pretty linear. Is everybody at the table cool with that, as in they're thinking "Okay, sounds like fun for this campaign"? Then it's not railroading, even if it's fully linear.</p><p></p><p>This means there's no way the argument as to what is railroading can be settled -- it varies from group to group. </p><p></p><p>So any level of GM input from "It's raining" to "This guy has a quest and I'm going to assume you're all going to agree to it" to "Your character's in the market shopping for goods and someone pickpockets you and runs off, what do you do?" might be totally fine, or might be excessive control ("railroading"), but that line has to be set group by group.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ST, post: 4866242, member: 14053"] I'm a broken record, I know, but I think this is a social, group contract issue. It's not specifically a gaming issue. I define railroading as "GM taking control over an aspect of the game [I]I expected[/I] to have authority over." As in, it's always totally subjective. Nothing that someone's agreeing to do can be coercive. I know this is kind of a fuzzy definition, but I've personally heard it used that way. Heck, I've heard people label GM descriptions of how their character acts (stuff like "You're frozen in fear") as railroading, even though that's not much to do with the classic definition. It's a sense that you thought you'd have X control over your character, agency to play so to speak, and now the GM is telling you X instead of letting you do it. It means the group has to have a bit of a chat before the campaign starts about what their expectations are. Are the PCs going to be expected to follow a sequence of events? Are they all going to be expected to act together, as a party? That's pretty linear. Is everybody at the table cool with that, as in they're thinking "Okay, sounds like fun for this campaign"? Then it's not railroading, even if it's fully linear. This means there's no way the argument as to what is railroading can be settled -- it varies from group to group. So any level of GM input from "It's raining" to "This guy has a quest and I'm going to assume you're all going to agree to it" to "Your character's in the market shopping for goods and someone pickpockets you and runs off, what do you do?" might be totally fine, or might be excessive control ("railroading"), but that line has to be set group by group. [/QUOTE]
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