Gaming Style Assumptions That Don't Make Sense

[Celebrim]

Assuming the sandbox is supposed to emulate the sort of adventures seen by Conan, or Elric, or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, I'm not sure that's necessary (if it's done well). One of the feature of their adventures is that wherever they went there was adventure to be found.

There is another way to look at this. By the rule that any story about a hero is only a story of the most interesting chapters of their life, we aren't actually hearing any of the stories of Conan not having adventures. That isn't to say Conan has no down time. Conan has many adventures, but the short stories we have span probably 40 years of his life. Conan actually only has an adventure or two per game year, and the rest of the time is more boring 'down time'. Granted, some of that down time is somewhat interesting stuff like being a pirate, being a soldier, or ruling a kingdom but generally we pick up the story of Conan as some less interesting chapter of his life is coming to a close - he's been ship wrecked, he ran out of money and needs a new job, he's minding his own business in a new job when a naked woman suddenly throws herself at him and begs his protection, the nation he's been fighting for is defeated in battle or won't pay him, he's enduring a coup or assassination attempt, and so forth.

If we assume our sandbox is something like a Conan sandbox, we'd be justified in hand waving away long stretches of game time until the PC's find an adventure (or it finds them).

How dense you want to make the sandbox is something you can control with frequency of random encounters or random events. A good sandbox is capable of generating or suggesting context to a random event, and a good DM will eventually try to link random events to ongoing themes or prior encounters. So you don't actually need as much density as an encounter in every hex. What you do need is enough understanding of the setting to have an idea what this random encounter means. A good example of that on a micro-scale is the random encounter tables in the old Judges Guild module Caverns of Thracia, where each random monster was linked to some lair in the dungeon.

You don't need to go that far, but you do need to have an idea why the random encounter might be in this location, what their goals are, whether they have a lair, how far it is to the lair, what knowledge the creature may have of the surrounding area. Create backstories on the fly, and start populating the 'empty' hexes as needed. Yes, that means that you can improvise new content as needed, but it also means that the more you know - the more islands (or continents!) of content you have already created in your ocean - the more granular and interesting your new content is likely to be and the more sources of inspiration you are likely to have.

Random doesn't have to mean arbitrary and disconnected from the rest of the setting.

I'd also suggest that until the PC's are immersed in the setting, you are fully justified to engage in some artful railroading techniques. If there is ever a time to offer railroads up, it's early in the game. You can make the initial setting a very detailed 'small world' with an initial mini-campaign. You can give the player's false choices - the 'Desert of Desolation' campaign begins with one that can be made more artful with a bit of effort. You can make judicious use of Schrödinger’s Map so that those islands of prepared content that help orient the players and get them involved are found regardless of the hex they step into. It's perfectly ok to have a 'fixed' encounter keyed to the "third desert hex the players enter", or "the second time they enter a this city", or "if the players travel 1 day to the north".

 

[delericho]

Loads of good stuff in this post. One thing, though...

'd also suggest that until the PC's are immersed in the setting, you are fully justified to engage in some artful railroading techniques.

Railroading isn't necessarily needed: the PCs could simply be allowed to pick a general direction, with the DM redirecting that to whatever the nearest adventure site is. The players thus get the choice (no railroad) - it's just you skip the "boring chapters".

Edit: even better, of course, would be if the PCs had some context about what lies in each direction so that it's an informed choice. But it's still a choice between eight interesting hexes, rather than a multitude of dubious interest.

 

[Celebrim]

Railroading isn't necessarily needed: the PCs could simply be allowed to pick a general direction, with the DM redirecting that to whatever the nearest adventure site is. The players thus get the choice (no railroad) - it's just you skip the "boring chapters".

I have defined 'railroading' in an Aristotelian fashion (with a list), because the satisfying Socratic definition escapes me.

The two techniques you describe are both forms of railroading.

The first you mention "the DM redirecting that to whatever the nearest adventure site is" is Schrödinger’s Map. When you use vagueness in the map to steer the PC's into finding what you want them to find, that's Schrödinger’s Map. You haven't really given them a choice but to find the thing that you want, which most people will recognize as a railroad at least from the outside perspective. An equivalent note would be something like, "Regardless of the specific direction that they set out in, if the party journeys a day in a generally northward direction, they'll find the Dragon Mount. Read boxed text for area #3, and place a note of the location on your campaign map." Clearly railroading once you read the note.

It's not really a bad technique, and like most railroading techniques, everyone uses it just a little without thinking about it - which is why a complete but simple definition of railroading evades me. For example, one way to do this is make your hexes like 24 or 36 miles across, but whenever they are entered the PC's invariably stumble on the 100 yard wide detailed encounter area out of all the possible places they could go in the hex. In this case, the vagueness in the simulation allows you to justify what you want the PC's to find and you can get away with having rather small islands in your large ocean because the islands are so unavoidable. If you were to employ the same rule that a hex contains a fixed encounter with 1 mile hexes, chances are that encounters with the same spatial density would never be found. You'd need more 'road signs' saying, "This way to the content."

The second you mention is "the handwave". The handwave to a certain extent is to time what Schrödinger’s Map is to space. You are steering the players to the temporal content - "the good stuff'

How bad railroading is depends on whether or not you are removing real agency from the players. If all you are doing is making the informed choice to skip contentless activity that the player's aren't or need not be invested in, then I don't have a problem with it.

What's even better is that you can use railroading techniques to keep players informed, especially early on when they have zero information to go on. Much like the author of a novel may determine that he needs to spend a few early pages or chapters on exposition so that the reader will have understanding, and will disguise that exposition through some art to make it seem natural to the story, you can railroad players into expository encounters rather than dumping a load of dry background on them and monologue a long introduction. It's worthwhile study to look at published modules and see which authors are doing interesting exposition through play in their introduction, and which are info dumping pages and pages of monologue and background on the players with no expectation of interaction. Both are a sort of railroading - player's generally don't have a choice but to have at least the first encounter - but one is artful and the other isn't.

With a little practice at railroading, player's won't see the rails, and you'll actually get a better indication of where the player's want to go by what 'ticket' they buy, than you would with them randomly rowing about lost. The later is painful for everyone.

Now if I could figure out how to inform the players without the players receiving the signal that this is what they are 'supposed' to do...

Sometimes its a bit frustration when your players act like they are on rails, when really, they aren't.

 

[delericho]

The first you mention "the DM redirecting that to whatever the nearest adventure site is" is Schrödinger’s Map. When you use vagueness in the map to steer the PC's into finding what you want them to find, that's Schrödinger’s Map. You haven't really given them a choice but to find the thing that you want, which most people will recognize as a railroad at least from the outside perspective. An equivalent note would be something like, "Regardless of the specific direction that they set out in, if the party journeys a day in a generally northward direction, they'll find the Dragon Mount. Read boxed text for area #3, and place a note of the location on your campaign map." Clearly railroading once you read the note.

It's not, because you've omitted the other seven notes about what happens if they make other choices. Additionally, if they choose to set out for a specific location, you'd take them there; it's only if they set out "to see what's out there" that you'd take them to a prepared location. And, finally, it says nothing about what they do when they get there - if the players choose not to engage with that material, that's entirely up to them.

If that constitutes a railroad, then so too does every dungeon crawl ever published, because from any given room there is a finite set of rooms the PCs can move to. And if that's the case, the definition of railroad is so broad as to be useless.

 

[Celebrim]

If that constitutes a railroad, then so too does every dungeon crawl ever published, because from any given room there is a finite set of rooms the PCs can move to. And if that's the case, the definition of railroad is so broad as to be useless.

Yes, but I've not yet given the definition of "a railroad". I've only given the definition of "railroading". The definition of "a railroad" is some thing like a campaign or adventure marked by heavy-handed and consistent use of railroading techniques. The definition of railroading though is simply, a list of techniques.

Because "a railroad" involves a measurement of things that are hard to quantify, it makes precisely defining "a railroad" difficult. But having a list of techniques at least lets us be conscious of when we are doing things that might turn our game into a railroad, even if exactly when we've gone to far is harder to define.

You provide a list of situations which if present you argue that this particular railroading technique would not turn the whole adventure or campaign into "a railroad", and for my part if I want I'm free to agree with you without quibble and without it harming my point. Yes, it may be true that with those additional details player agency is not sufficiently constrained to make this "a railroad" (noun), but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be conscious of the fact that you have "railroaded" (verb) the players to get them to the destination.

As for whether or not dungeon crawls constitute a railroad, there are plenty who have argued before that they do, in cases where features that they feel give the players enough agency are missing. For example, some sand box purists I've heard argue what amounts to, "If you have to go into the dungeon, then its a railroad." It's worth noting that even if the have the choice to not enter the dungeon, if the only island of content that exists until the dungeon is entered is the dungeon (common in cRPGs which almost invariably are railroads), chances are it is either Small World or False Choice technique. Likewise, many sand box purists have noted that many published dungeons are constructed as a linear series of rooms to advance through, though they may take steps to disguise that fact by making the path crooked or appear to fork with a meaningless side excursion. For them, that's enough to make the dungeon a sort of railroad. Your only choices are to advance to the next room or else do nothing, with the latter not being a real choice since it is equivalent to not playing.

And for that matter, these complaints echo what you yourself have advanced. In your own terms.

If the players can choose not to engage with the dungeon, and instead engage with different meaningful content, it's not a railroad.
If the players can choose from sufficiently large number of different paths and approaches to navigating the dungeon, then it's not a railroad.
If the players can choose to advance to a specific location out of some explicit order, then it's not railroad.

But while all of that may be true, the converse - labeling something a railroad when it lacks all these features is trickier. Some people will claim that a linear dungeon you just have to explore to the end is a railroad, others will claim it is not because if it were many dungeon crawls would be railroads. This later group will point to different features, like the fact that there might be more than one way to 'solve' each room.

 

[Bagpuss]

Settings that have Polytheism - Yet often the individual people or whole locations/countries seem to only follow one of the many Gods.

 

[delericho]

Yes, but I've not yet given the definition of "a railroad". I've only given the definition of "railroading".

Okay, allow me to restate:

It's not, because you've omitted the other seven notes about what happens if they make other choices. Additionally, if they choose to set out for a specific location, you'd take them there; it's only if they set out "to see what's out there" that you'd take them to a prepared location. And, finally, it says nothing about what they do when they get there - if the players choose not to engage with that material, that's entirely up to them.

If that constitutes railroading, then every dungeon crawl ever published is guilty of the same, because from any given room there is a finite set of rooms the PCs can move to. And if that's the case, the definition of railroading is so broad as to be useless.

As for whether or not dungeon crawls constitute a railroad, there are plenty who have argued before that they do, in cases where features that they feel give the players enough agency are missing. For example, some sand box purists I've heard argue what amounts to, "If you have to go into the dungeon, then its a railroad."

And they're wrong - provided the choice exists to not engage with that adventure and instead do something else.

If the players can choose not to engage with the dungeon, and instead engage with different meaningful content, it's not a railroad.
If the players can choose from sufficiently large number of different paths and approaches to navigating the dungeon, then it's not a railroad.
If the players can choose to advance to a specific location out of some explicit order, then it's not railroad.

Not quite: if the players have a sufficient number of meaningful choices, it is not a railroad. The meanings of "sufficient number" and "meaningful" are open to debate, of course.

 

[Celebrim]

Settings that have Polytheism - Yet often the individual people or whole locations/countries seem to only follow one of the many Gods.

That's one of my biggest pet peeves.

To a certain extent I don't mind that players take very modern (or modernist) approaches to religion in the game world. But the fact that the settings themselves are so anachronistic annoys me to no end. The NPCs at least ought to clearly be products of their culture.

Why do these polytheists always and only have single patron deities... and absolutely no other religious connections?
Why do these polytheists pray to only one god all the time, especially given how limited each gods sphere actually is?
Why do these polytheists only worship or propitiate deities that they love?
Why do these polytheists only worship or propitiate deities that they morally agree with?
Why do these polytheists only worship things that are clearly gods as gods, as opposed to also some fairies, ancestors, trees, rivers, springs, and mortal kings?
Why are these polytheists so apparently irreligious despite the abundantly evident and involved power of the gods?
Why are there clearly separate sacred and secular spheres?
Why is faith remotely important in this polytheistic setting, or why would anyone in the setting equate religion with faith?
Why would any of these deities care if they had 'believers' or if someone had 'faith' in them?
Why are each of the cults or religions so darn exclusive?
Why aren't more pairs, groups and families of gods jointly worshiped?

Rather than analyzing why D&D religion is so badly done, I'll just give some pointers on how I think you fix it.

1) The best done 'religion' book in the history of D&D is 'The Book of the Righteous' by Aaron Leob. It should be on everyone's shelf, if only for provoking DMs to rethink what they are doing.
2) In particular, one area most invented religions and particular D&D religions fall down completely is believably deep and interesting deities. If you are looking for a different well done polytheistic pantheon, I'd suggest the novel 'Curse of Chalion' by Lois Bujold. Bujold does with 5 deities more than most writers do with dozens. The theology for me starts to show holes by the third novel, but the overall approach is really well done and would make for a great cosmology for a DM that just wanted to boot up something simple, easy to explain to the players, and get going.
3) The second best done books 'religion' books for D&D are the 2nd edition "Faiths & Avatars" books, but unfortunately these are done for the Faerun deities which are some of the least interesting ever published. The understanding of what is needed in a game supplement to add depth is spot on. The understanding of what makes for depth in the actual subject matter is wholly lacking. Even if you only wanted religion to serve a gamist purpose (god of good fighters, god of evil fighters, god of thieves, god of magic-users, god of good clerics, god of paladins, god of rangers, god of druids, various gods of BBEG's, etc.), I think even Nethack hits the gamist sweet spot in religion better than the Forgotten Realms does.
4) Gygax's general treatment of religion is I think deliberately shallow (though occasionally alternatingly personal and provocative), but one area that he's absolutely astounding in is the real depth he shows in his iconography. As settings, his temples are without peer in the literature, and as a full blown egyptophile his later work in fantasy Egyptian settings is really worth your time as a DM if you want to do either Egyptian pantheons or pastiches of them. The Greyhawk deities show some of the same flaws as the Forgotten Realms deities (they hardly could do otherwise starting from personages like St. Cuthbert), but are generally a cut or two above them in originality and scope.
5) Cordell's "Bastion of Faith" is a very interesting Gygaxian 'good' temple (something Gygax didn't really explore in published works) and which is I think a good example making religion more believably integral to the daily life of a community, particularly in a world of daily miracles and unquestionably involved and active deities. It still vaguely Catholicism in fantasy drag though, like pretty much all D&D religions.
6) Far and away the best thing each DM could do if they wanted a believably ancient pastiche of polytheism was make a real study of pre-Christian religion and how it impacted peoples daily lives. In particular, my personal feeling is that the implied cosmology of D&D makes the Etruscan and early Greek religious model more functional than the Roman/late Greek model, and its interesting to sort of imagine what the ancient world might have been like with the Etruscans ruling the Mediterranean, perhaps with the Phoenicians as their great early rival instead of Carthage.
7) A good example of the problem is that in a typical D&D setting, pastiche Sparta would have the patron god Ares and that would be about it. Everyone would worship Ares, the church of Ares (note, he'd have a 'church') would be detailed as 'The Catholic Church partially reimagined as if Ares was monotheistically worshipped'. While actual Sparta had only 1 of 150 temples devoted to Ares, where his statue was kept in chains to keep him from ever leaving the city to help its enemies, and most of its rites that revolved around Apollo, Athena, Artemis and various forms of ancestor and hero worship often in joint celebrations devoted to multiple deities.

 

[Celebrim]

Okay, allow me to restate:

There is no need. I got what you are saying the first time. Rather than restating it to you, let me start over and go in a different direction. First of all, what I'm writing is in the context of this essay. Reading that may clarify my position.

Secondly, although I admit it might not be obvious, I'm not actually off topic. I'm actually describing what I think is a core set of assumptions about gaming style that don't make sense. I have an agenda here.

One core assumption I see people make is that there are things called 'sand boxes' and things called 'railroads' and that these things are qualitatively rather than quantitatively different. In order words, they think 'sand box' is a category and 'railroad' is a category, and that the two are diametrically opposed things you can put in boxes. In reality, even things like 'light' and 'dark' or 'red' and 'blue' are categories defined by quantitative differences. We have really good ways now to measure 'redness' or 'blueness' and see that they differ 'only' by quantifiable qualities (as if measurable qualities weren't real differences!).

My agenda is that railroad and sandbox are actually idealized forms that can't or at least usually aren't realized in play, and everything we have is actually only 'mostly a railroad' or 'largely a sandbox', and as a practical matter most things are complex mixed and in between.

Along with that assumption is the idea that one of these categories is 'good' and the other category is 'bad'. For example, it's common to assert that 'sandbox is good' and 'railroad is bad'. In fact, this is not true and is a style assumption that doesn't make sense. The 'goodness' or 'badness' of a railroad or a sandbox is actually an entirely different axis, and much of the confusion here is similar to trying to treat 'law' as 'good' and 'chaos' as 'evil'. In fact we can have both functional and dysfunctional railroads and functional and dysfunctional sandboxes. We call the functional 'mostly railroading' 'Adventure Paths'. We call the dysfunctional 'mostly railroading' 'Railroads'. In fact however, we have impoverished language. We don't have a good commonly understood word for the quality of making a story more linear that doesn't carry a negative connotation. We tend to call that thing 'railroading' as if it was always dysfunctional. We don't have a good commonly understood term for a dysfunctional sandbox, and so consequently there is a very low degree of recognition that such a thing is even possible.

As such, it's not my definition of railroading that I think is useless, but yours. It's your idea of what 'railroading' means that I'm trying to hijack and make more nuanced, and its you that I think aren't examining your assumptions.

And they're wrong - provided the choice exists to not engage with that adventure and instead do something else.

There wrong about a subjective quality? How can I assert that in fairness? Keep in mind that the amount of linearity and the amount of choice removal that a player is willing to tolerate varies from player to play as a preference. It's a continuum here and not two boxes, and the continuum isn't actually a spectrum from good to bad. It's not an objective fact that more linearity or less linearity is necessarily bad. It's a preference whether you prefer 'Adventure Path [Functional Railroad]' over 'Functional Sandbox'. Neither is more good than the other. If you can't tolerate the linearity, the tendency will be to treat all linearity as dysfunctional and 'bad', and act as if that is an objective fact and not a subjective preference.

Not quite: if the players have a sufficient number of meaningful choices, it is not a railroad. The meanings of "sufficient number" and "meaningful" are open to debate, of course.

That is the closest you are getting to understanding me.

One thing is clear. If I'm really going to explain what I thinking here, I'm going to have to coin a bunch more terms. 'Railroad' is just too loaded, and there are lots of other pieces of this I don't have good words for.

 

[delericho]

There is no need. I got what you are saying the first time.

If you're going to nitpick when I say a railroad instead of railroading...

That is the closest you are getting to understanding me.

Gee thanks.