Is railroading sometimes a necessary evil?

[buzz]

It's open to misinterpretation, though. For example - the PCs get jumped by assassins and thieves in the inn they're staying at. They have no choice in the matter; it just happens. IMO this isn't railroading, but by your definition it is.

You're not describing railroading. You're describing an encounter. Framing a scene, aka presenting a situation, is not railroading. It's the GM's job.

The key word here is meaningful. As long as you haven't pre-determined the outcome of that encounter, the players can make meaningful choices. They can run, they can fight, they can try and talk their way out, etc.

That's why I go for the rather narrower definition of railroading as something like "presenting adventure hooks that cannot be rejected", or even, "presenting a campaign arc which has no opportunity for meaningful player choice with regard to it's direction"...

Sure, but I think it's about more than plot hooks. It's not railroading to say, "We're going to play City of the Spider Queen." It's railroading when you present the players with what seems like a meaningful choice, but really isn't. I.e., you pre-determine an outcome about which the players can do nothing. "This is the adventure I have prepped tonight" is not railroading.

Thing is, assuming you talk to your players, railroading is a non-issue. E.g., the common example of trying to get the players, via their PCs, to actually play the adventure the DM has prepped for the evening. Assuming no one at the table is a dickweed, and that everyone knows, "Hey, we're going to play Laura's D&D adventure tonight," this kind of thing should be a non-issue. If Laura starts with the PCs standing at the mouth of the dungeon-cave (instead of a tavern where an NPC will try and get the PCs (i.e., the players) to agree to that night's adventure) that's not railroading... that's playing the dang game everyone showed up to play.

It's when Laura is running that adventure, narrating scenes, inclusive of the PCs' actions/reactions, regardless of their input... then you have railroading.

 

[marune]

Thing is, assuming you talk to your players, railroading is a non-issue. E.g., the common example of trying to get the players, via their PCs, to actually play the adventure the DM has prepped for the evening. Assuming no one at the table is a dickweed, and that everyone knows, "Hey, we're going to play Laura's D&D adventure tonight," this kind of thing should be a non-issue. If Laura starts with the PCs standing at the mouth of the dungeon-cave (instead of a tavern where an NPC will try and get the PCs (i.e., the players) to agree to that night's adventure) that's not railroading... that's playing the dang game everyone showed up to play.

It's when Laura is running that adventure, narrating scenes, inclusive of the PCs' actions/reactions, regardless of their input... then you have railroading.

Thanks for saying it with betters words than me.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Sandbox games are not for everyone. I had players who griped and complained that they wanted a sandbox supers game. I reluctantly agreed. It was a mess. We adjourned after a few sessions and I came back and did things differently in a more traditional style. That told me that the group wanted all this freedom but they did not have the spontaneous creativity that would make for a good game.

I feel that superhero is a very poor fit with the sandbox style for two reasons:

1) Superheroes are reactive. Bad stuff happens and the heroes, being good guys, try to stop it. There's seldom any choice about what bad stuff to stop, unless it's one of those moral dilemma bits where the hero has to choose between saving a falling cable car or his girlfriend.
2) Very little in the game universe can challenge the PCs. If they just go wandering, they're likely to miss the few potential threats.

You did say supers rather than superhero so (1) might not have applied. For (2) not to apply it could be a very super heavy universe (much moreso even than Marvel or DC's) or the supers could be low powered.

 

[LostSoul]

It's open to misinterpretation, though. For example - the PCs get jumped by assassins and thieves in the inn they're staying at. They have no choice in the matter; it just happens. IMO this isn't railroading, but by your definition it is.

Well, it is my definition, so I'll step in.

I don't think it is railroading. What the DM is doing is providing the players with choices to make. Whether or not they are meaningful depends on the group. The players suddenly get to make a whole range of choices: Do I cast my only remaining Web spell now, or are more guys going to jump us? Do I power attack for all I have or use Expertise? Do I run into the fray and flank or stay back? Do I want to disable one of the assassins to question them for information, or kill them all because they are evil bastards? Do I side with the assassins against my fellow party members?

And on and on.

Say the assassins fail, but the thieves steal the mcguffin from the PCs.

From one point of view, even if the assassins have no chance but to succeed, it may not be railroading. (For this type of play, I would prefer the DM to say, "The assassins are going to steal the MacGuffin, no question. But..." + whatever is at stake.) The players get to make the tactical choices that they came to the game to make. They might not care that they can't get the MacGuffin; they want the MacGuffin to be stolen in order for the adventure to continue. But they might want their characters to live; they might want to conserve their resources (HP, spells, wand charges) for the next battle; etc.

And others might not care a whit for the MacGuffin, but want to play out how their characters react to built-up tensions within the party now that they are in the fight; the fact that the MacGuffin is stolen just provides them with the excuse to explore those choices.

With other groups/players/campaigns, it might be railroading. Some players might want the choices that they make to affect the assassin's ability to take the MacGuffin. I'll take a leap and say most people want this, but that doesn't mean that everyone does. A definition of railroading must include people who don't see this as railroading, as well as those who do.

 

[Marshal Lucky]

Railroading is the biggest blight to ever afflict gaming. If the events and outcomes are predetermined, it's no longer a game. If, during the last Super Bowl, the NFL had told the Colts and Bears what plays they could run, and what the final score would be before the opening kickoff, would that be a game? NO! It would be a big pair of clownshoes like pro wrestling.

If railroading is good for D&D, it must be wonderful for chess, poker, blackjack, backgammon, dominoes...

Of course anyone who tried to "script" (i.e. rig) any of those games would be lucky if he escaped with just scathing ridicule.

 

[Felix]

Railroading is a necessary GOOD!

*ahem*. Heh. Sorry. I've may be reading TwentySided too often lately.

 

[rounser]

Well, it is my definition, so I'll step in.

I don't think it is railroading. What the DM is doing is providing the players with choices to make. Whether or not they are meaningful depends on the group. The players suddenly get to make a whole range of choices: Do I cast my only remaining Web spell now, or are more guys going to jump us? Do I power attack for all I have or use Expertise? Do I run into the fray and flank or stay back? Do I want to disable one of the assassins to question them for information, or kill them all because they are evil bastards? Do I side with the assassins against my fellow party members?

And on and on.

By that argument, adventure paths aren't railroads because they include choices to make in the combats they present. I don't buy that at all.

 

[buzz]

By that argument, adventure paths aren't railroads because they include choices to make in the combats they present. I don't buy that at all.

I think you're stretching things semantically to the point where, by your definition, it's railroading for the DM to run a D&D game, period, because, hey, what if the player really wants to play Scrabble?

I think we have to reach a certain context before we can talk about railroading in a useful way. There has to be some base agreement in place among the group. Either everyone is on board with playing through a published product or prepped homebrew, or else it's been established that the players are free to go off in any direction and the DM will improv in a reactive role. Issues with the violation of either of these agreements, by the DM or the players, isn't really about railroading, per se. It's about a fundamental communication (or maturity) issue within the group.

IMO, Railroading, usefully defined, is about DM technique. We can't talk about DM technique until we're actually talking about the context of a scenario being played. How the group came to the agreement as to what scenario they were going to play that night is a separate issue, IMO.

To bring the train metaphor more prominently into discussion, railroading implies a destination about which the players have no meaningful input. They get on the train, probably unwittingly, and are going towards X whether they want to or not. I.e., the DM is making it look like they have input, when really they don't.

Now, whether published product, like an Adventure Path, does this depends on what product you're talking about. Some do, some don't. It's probably easiest to avoid railroading with dungeon scenarios, as they're pretty much a goal + environment, and the end result is up tot he players. Ergo, they're the most common published adventure type.

 

[gizmo33]

IMO, Railroading, usefully defined, is about DM technique.

I agree. I don't think railroading is so much about published products. An adventure module "The Keep of Doom" might just describe a keep, and some DMs might take this to mean that the PCs must be forced to enter the keep and proceed through all of the encounter areas there. But that's the DM technique. It's not a module's job to necessarily present all of the options that the players should have - that can't really be done with limited space. IMO it's the DMs job to incoporate adventure modules in the campaign - so a module isn't a complete enough entity on it's own. If the players want to lay siege to the keep, and reduce the thing to rubble with a magical battering ram rather than enter the dungeon and proceed through the encounters in numerical order, it's the DMs job to judge it.

That being said, there are times when published products encourage railroading. Using the hypothetical "Keep of Doom" above, the module could say something like "no matter what force the PCs bring to bear, siege techniques will NEVER work against the keep. To defeat the BBEG, PCs must enter the keep and proceed through the encounter areas as expected." I've seen stuff to this effect in published modules. I'm not sure if I'd call it "railroading" or "bad rules adjucation".

That's not to say that designing the Keep to resist siege techniques is bad design. Keep builders living in a fantasy world should have to pretend that they've never heard of the passwall spell. Nor is it unreasonable that keep builders would have developed counter-measures to common magics used against a keep. But a good module IMO would take into account the possibility of the PCs laying siege to the keep, and at least talk about what would work and what wouldn't - rather than a blanket statement of "anything that you try to do except X won't work". Granted though, there are limitations of space and ultimately the DM's judgement has to pick up where the module leaves off.

So IMO it's up to the DM to decide how to judge "Keep of Doom" as a siege rather than a dungeon crawl if that's the way his players want to play it. And so the responsibility for railroading or not rests with the DM.

 

[LostSoul]

By that argument, adventure paths aren't railroads because they include choices to make in the combats they present. I don't buy that at all.

Remember, for some people. For some people APs are railroads, and for others they aren't.