TSR How Did I Survive AD&D? Fudging and Railroads, Apparently

[Campbell]

My personal litmus test is what is the response at the table when a player has their character go off book. Is it embraced? Does everyone groan a little? Does the GM try to bring everything back on track or do they let things play out? The real-world response by the players and the GM here are much more important to me than what transpires in the fiction after. If there is a sense that we should follow along with the adventure/plot/whatever that's fine, but then we're not really playing an open-ended game. That's fine by the way. We should all just understand what we are doing and embrace it.

 

[bloodtide]

As best I can tell, what works for the majority of D&D players is a pretty railroad-y game, in which the players' main job is (i) to embellish scenes with colour, via some relatively non-impactful play of their PCs, and (ii) to move from combat to combat by following moderately oblique clues provided by the GM.

Agreed here.

Literally never met a player who enjoys being railroaded. Referees on the net love it and claim their players can’t tell or love it. In 40 years of playing and running, never met one player who liked it.

I have. There are a lot of players in the world.

Right. It’s no longer a collaborative experience and is simply the referee telling the players a story as some kind of dinner theater with dice. That’s why players hate it and it’s only talked about negatively.

Many players would think not having any collaborative experience is a good thing. And a lot of players really like being told a story.

If railroading doesn’t completely eliminate the collaboration it reduces it to irrelevance. Like when you’re a little kid and “helping” a parent do a chore. You “helped” dad fix the car by holding the flashlight. You “helped” mom make dinner by getting the milk out of the fridge. That’s the level of collaboration involved for players in a railroaded game. It’s a pat on the head, not actual participation.

Again, plenty of players don't want to collaborate, so again this is a good thing. Your "helps" don't really fit. It's a lot more like hosting a get together at your house. I'd plan out the whole thing myself: the meal, the entertainment, the decorations, things to do, and drinks. Everyone coming to the get together does not have to do anything, except show up and have fun.

For me, Railroading is negative because it HAS TO involve the illusion of choice and deceiving the players into thinking they have choice when none is actually there. I've always had that part hard baked into the definition, and that's negative.

This is not true. For most game events there is little choice. If the gold key is in the royal vault: then you have to get it out of the vault somehow. You can't just do a random thing and say "ok, so I find the gold key".

Remove the illusion of choice and it's a linear adventure, where for the stated adventure to happen the players just follow the adventure along willingly. And this, I have seen many players not just like, but actively prefer.

This is just mixing words around.

Like most things it's the degree of rail roading. And if the players even notice.

As a Railroad Tycoon, I can say it is all about how clumsy the DM is with the game play.

When the players are going "off the rails" the clumsy DM offen just does the "oh, um, you can't do that as I say so". And naturally many players don't like this type of clumsy action. Some Clumsy DMs will do a poor job in game where they will just "say something is or is not". And again, many players don't like this clumsy game play.

But with much more style and grace showmanship a good DM can keep the players "on the rails".

A great generic way is: greed. If the player character is offered a great reward for a task, then amazingly the player will stay on the rails and do that task. Works every time.

 

[Lanefan]

The real surprise is PCs surviving low level games given low hp, little healing, and frequent combat.

"Frequent combat" means either a) you're all happy fighting a war of attrition and are thus all willing to roll up new characters on a regular basis or b) you're doing something wrong, as combat should be the last resort.

 

[Mort]

This is not true. For most game events there is little choice. If the gold key is in the royal vault: then you have to get it out of the vault somehow. You can't just do a random thing and say "ok, so I find the gold key".

1. There is absolutely a choice, the characters can say "royal vault, forget that - where going to do something else..." and not bother with the gold key.

2. Forgetting that, the players have only 1 choice ok. But let's say you present 3 different choices, but they actually all lead to the same place, no matter what the players actually do - that's railroading.

This is just mixing words around.

Not at all. In one, players are given the truth - "this is what you're doing if you want to follow the adventure...". In the other, railroading, the DM pretends there are multiple choices, but there really are not. The situation is not the same.

 

[Lanefan]

As a Railroad Tycoon, I can say it is all about how clumsy the DM is with the game play.

When the players are going "off the rails" the clumsy DM offen just does the "oh, um, you can't do that as I say so". And naturally many players don't like this type of clumsy action. Some Clumsy DMs will do a poor job in game where they will just "say something is or is not". And again, many players don't like this clumsy game play.

Once in an extremely rare while, the gigantic hand of god coming down from the sky to block the path while saying "You can't go that way, I haven't designed it yet!" can make for a humourous and very memorable in-game moment.

 

[teitan]

• Convince the party their characters have an incurable disease so they have no choice but to go on the quest for the NPC organization to get the cure.

This one reads more to me like an adventure hook than railroady.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This one reads more to me like an adventure hook than railroady.

I'd say it depends on whether this is:
(a) the premise you start off the campaign with
(b) a new adventure hook following up after a major resolved plot (e.g. "we just stopped Dagnast McBadguy")
or
(c) inflicted upon the players in order to ensure that they do, in fact, go to where they're "supposed" to go

A & B are fine. Good, even. The first is simply expecting that players be engaged with the game you've offered to run. The second is a natural starting premise for a new adventure; not necessarily one the players explicitly signed up for, but they kinda get the idea that yes, whenever they've completed some major objective, there will need to be a new adventure, and thus a new hook, even if this one is slightly heavy-handed.

C, on the other hand, is not okay. It is (effectively) saying, "Unless you play the game the way I want you to, I'll take everything away." It's a crappy, petty way to control player behavior.

And this illustrates an important point: context matters. It's incredibly important to know WHY and HOW something is happening. There's sort of a sliding scale between "perfectly reasonable no-problems DMing choices" on one end and "blatant bullcrap" on the other, and this specific thing, inflicting a disease on the party out of the blue? Yeah that falls in the grey-est of grey areas.

 

[S'mon]

A great generic way is: greed. If the player character is offered a great reward for a task, then amazingly the player will stay on the rails and do that task. Works every time.

Linear adventures and campaigns (like most APs) work best when player and PC goals are aligned, and when both can feel good about what they're doing. Greed and altruism both tend to be good motivators, the latter is why we get so many "save the world" plots. Coercion is a bad motivator, eg "Save the World from the Giants or we kill you" in G1-3. The reason being that the players & PCs would often rather target/defeat the coercive force than do what the coercive force (& adventure) wants. And especially at high level the PCs often really should be able to defeat the coercive force. But "Against Geoff" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

 

[pemerton]

"Against Geoff" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

At least it still fits within the G-series.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We're back to the "multiple definitions of railroad" problem, which always comes up when that term enters discussion.

Then look at how it is used as a verb in real life:

verb
railroad (verb) · railroads (third person present) · railroaded (past tense) · railroaded (past participle) · railroading (present participle)

1. informal
   rush or coerce (someone) into doing something:
   "she hesitated, unwilling to be railroaded into a decision"
   • cause (a measure) to be passed or approved quickly by applying pressure:
     "the Bill had been railroaded through the House"
   • NORTH AMERICAN ENGLISH
     send (someone) to prison without a fair trial:
     "they know I was railroaded and falsely accused"

It's pretty clear that it implies a denial of choice. If the players choose to follow a plot then it is not a railroad. And as it happens we have terms for that, such as "Adventure Path". A path is a recommended route, but you can wander off a path, and you can re-join a path later on.