I like being railroaded

[Castellan]

As mentioned earlier, I think there's a difference between being given a plot direction and being railroaded.

In one of my games where I'm a player, it's become painfully clear that the party will just not be permitted to do certain things. We're consistently kept poor in XP and in gold, and if there's a plot element we miss (or it was bone-headedly put into a puzzle that only the DM can solve) we're not permitted to move on until the obstacle has been cleared.

Once you've been told that you can change what you're doing once you declare why your character thinks it's OK that dracoliches rule the world (i.e. the adventure we're stuck in, now), let me know what you think about railroading then. I suspect you'll hate it as much as most people do.

 

[Li Shenron]

There's a difference between being railroaded and having plot hooks... AFAIK a "railroad" is when the DM has a line of events to follow, and no matter how much the players tend to change the events, the DM always finds a mean to "put the game back in track".

For example, the DM has decided since the start that the party must be robbed in their sleep, or that the princess must to be kidnapped under the party's eyes? He'll always give the NPC the perfect tools to beat any precautions the group decides to take, no matter how careful you plan.
That's at least what I think RRing is.

It's not that the only alternative to railroading is a world where nothing happens and the party just roams around choosing a locale to explore among hundreds.

 

[arche]

There are times obviously when you have to railroad as a DM. Sometimes games go long and your players aren't on top of their game. It's nice to be able to lead by the nose a bit to help spark some interest. The real key is that when the players begin to show independant thought again, you don't want to discourage that. If players want to go in a wierd direction, I just make sure they know that it'll take more time for my 386 processor of a brain to stock the dungeon as we go , otherwise, I don't mind.

On the other side, I've been a player and been happy to be lead as I have at many times just run out of ideas/inspiration, but the game session's still on. Why call off a session if players want to be a little more passive this time?

The key is to always have fun as many have said here. If you're not having fun, then talk over how you could have more fun. It's just a game.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I, too, subscribe to the "there's a difference between moving the plot along and railroading" camp.

I hate to railroad my players, but sometime's it's necessary to nudge them in one direction or another, ever so gently.

If you want a really REALLY bad example of railroading, try running through the Devil's Tower Trilogy for Deadlands, particularly the second adventure.

 

[fusangite]

"Railroading" is being used in a funny way here. Every GM, to some extent, collapses possibilities and narrows choices in one way or another to channel the characters towards events and places he wants them to go. Every GM, to some extent, offers his players a sense of free will.

To me, railroading is about a feeling not a practice. For me, "railroading" is when the GM collapses possibilities and narrows choices in a way that reduces player enjoyment. All GMs employ tools to restrict the portion of time and space their games take place in.

 

[Buzzardo]

Hmm. The issue isn't railroading per se. From my point of view, all prepared adventures are railroads. By definition when a dm prepares (whether his own work, or a published adventure) that dm expects the story to move in a particular direction.

For that matter... a dungeon itself is a railroad. "You come to a "T" intersection. You can go right or left. Straight ahead, or down, are not options."

In my mind it is not a question of whether the adventure is a railroad or not... they all are to some degree.

The real question is does a DM's style and execution give the players the ILLUSION of choice.

The only truly non-railroad sessions are sessions where the DM doesn't prepare and everyone just extemporizes as they go along. Not everyone likes these types of sessions however.

Is it choice? Or the illusion of choice? That is the question.

 

[Insight]

Players who have not DMed much, or those who have a very low opinion of their DM, commonly don't understand all the work that goes into creating a planned adventure.

If there were truly free will in an RPG, DMs would not be able to plan anything! That's fine for DMs who prefer to improv everything, but most of us prefer to do some preparation for our games.

The fact of the matter is that any prepared adventure is going to feel like railroading on some level, but that really depends on your defintion of railroading.

For me, railroading is when you have absolutely no options other than to follow a pre-defined path. A good DM will no doubt come up with a plot for his or her game, but have more than one way to get there. The best thing is when the players come up with a way that the DM didn't even consider!

So, to respond to the initial post, I sincerely doubt you really like railroading, at least according to the definition I use. What you like is being presented with options that appeal to you and/or your character. That is what all good DMs should be doing!

 

[Dr Simon]

Probably in these discussions on rail-roading we are being hampered by inefficient language.

Most RP adventures start with a hook of some sort, right? As a campaign matures that hook can come from the characters, but I've found that campaigns that start with the GM saying "So what do you want to do?" tend to be tricky, as the parameters of what there is to do have not yet been set.

So, a DM opening a session with "The local Lord wants some adventurers to clear the nearby mines of goblins" (etc...) isn't rail-roading, at least in the pejorative sense. 99% of players will realise that they will probably get the best game that evening if they agree to go to the mines and kill goblins. There's always one who decides it would be better to assassinate the local lord and get to his gold that way, or set fire to the local tavern, or run off and ask to join the goblins.

Rail-roading would be when the GM deals in a high- or over-handed fashion so that such a player's character could not do such things, no matter what (even going so far as to say "You can't and I say so").

Different groups have different levels of acceptability of off-tangent play. If everyone else in the group was playing LG retainers of the local lord, I think the group would be justified in having and OOG discussion to say that, yes, it might be a laugh but it's going to bog the game down or take it in a direction that we don't want to go. That's the sort of thing that requires a sensible approach and a lack of DM vs. Player mentality (on behalf of either party).

There is a subset of rail-roading, and that is the situation where the DM devises a trap or puzzle with only one solution (so he thinks) and then comes up with inventive ways to thwart any other plan that the players might concoct. *That* is probably more annoying and destructive than assuming that the players will take the adventure hook.

If you find that you may as well be playing an old text-based computer adventure game "I'm sorry I don't understand", "You can't go that way", "That doesn't work", then you can be pretty sure you are being railroaded!

 

[The_Gneech]

*dorky joke*
I thought one of Eberron's key features was its railroads!
*/dorky joke*

Actually, my players also seem to prefer things to be linear if at all possible. One of them described a previous campaign (favorably, in his opinion) as "You say, 'Here's the task,' and we go do it."

I wasn't thrilled by that description, to say the least. But whenever I say, "So ... the glittering cities of Oerth are yours to explore ... what would you like to do?" they just blink at me until I sigh and say, "Okay, a merchant walks into the tavern and says, 'I have a goblin problem. Anybody here looking for a job?'"

The flipside of this is, as a player, I hate being spoon-fed the scenario. I'm one of those "Let the local wizard's tower stay haunted, I want to find the Heart of Ahriman and conquer the west!" types who has an agenda of his own -- which drives the other DM in the group crazy.

Le sigh.

-The Gneech

 

[Desdichado]

I agree with fusangite; to me, by definition, railroading is restricting options at the expense of player fun. If you enjoy it, then you're not being railroaded, you just like a DM who presents a clear path for you to follow.

Railroading is when the DM takes your PCs, ties them up and chucks them in a boxcar, and then starts the train.