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Is railroading sometimes a necessary evil?
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<blockquote data-quote="buzz" data-source="post: 3677883" data-attributes="member: 6777"><p>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 <em>Scrabble</em>? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>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 <em>or the players</em>, isn't really about railroading, per se. It's about a fundamental communication (or maturity) issue within the group.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="buzz, post: 3677883, member: 6777"] 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 [I]Scrabble[/I]? :) 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 [I]or the players[/I], 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. [/QUOTE]
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