Players: Does anyone else not mind railroading?

[Lord Mhoram]

I think it gets a bad rap, and in general it is my preferred playing style. I loathe Sandbox style gameplay where the DM says "Here's the world, what do you do?"
Give me a solid story to latch on to, and play along with and I'm a happy camper.

I also tend like to a re-active style of play. Something the bad guys are doing, and my character does things to counter/stop them. I also tend to prefer classic supers as a setting and approach... but it works for epic fantasy too.

 

[Nightson]

Yeah, I don't think that's a good definition of railroading. The thing that makes railroads generally considered to be bad isn't the goal/destination, it's not allowing deviation from a single path.

Say you toss a goal at the players. Kill this corrupt and secretly evil noble. Presumably you'll have good hooks so the players want to do it. And so you set up a number of clues they can find when they investigate which they can then turn into the guards and have him arrested, and so you sit down all prepared and play.

Five minutes after learning the situation, the players have decided assassination is definitely the answer. Now this is where we find out if it's a railroad. In a railroad you can't get off the tracks, in this case the tracks are finding the information and getting him arrested, so any assassination attempt, no matter how clever, well thought out and lucky it is, is going to fail.

And generally, that's considered bad.

 

[Fifth Element]

So, I want a GM to present the PCs with an interesting problem, but I don't want the GMs to dictate how the PCs attempt to solve it. If the players don't have meaningful choices about how they approach the adventure, then I think you're playing more of a combat sim than a RPG. Some WotC modules come a little too close to this for my taste, but there's usually enough to let the players think outside the box.

That's a good way of putting it. And that's probably a fair comment about many WotC adventures.

 

[amysrevenge]

I've got my first-class ticket. All aboard! You can find me in the lounge car. I'll be ride the railroad all day long.

Look at it this way:

I'd trust a good DM with a railroad anyday. I'd also trust that good DM with a sandbox (if those indeed are the two opposing options, which I'm not so sure about).

For a moderate or poor DM, though, what are the choices? I'd rather play a moderate or poor railroad than a moderate or poor sandbox any day of the week.

 

[Crothian]

Railroads are fine. I use them in my game and I tell the players when I do. Now that I'm back in college I have less time to prepare during certain weeks and those are the ones they will most likely be railroaded if they don't make a decision on their own. I do try to warn them by telling them finals are in two weeks so you need to make this decision or else I'm just going to plan ahead for you. If they wait until I'm in the middle of finals to decide I won't have time to prepare what they want so they either get to decide earlier or we skip a week.

That's one way I use rail roads.

 

[ArghMark]

I try to mix the two, though my current game obsession is Ars Magica which doesn't lend itself to truly railroady play.


I generally run games like this. Adventure 1, I hit them with something strait out of the box. After they deal with it, things get a little more relaxed. After adventure 1, I ask my players if they want to do something in particular, either for the group, the story, or their characters. If I get no answer, I hit them with another story. By adventure 3 I generally get players interested enough in their PC's that they want to pursue at least some personal goals. By the point when personal goals become available, I run a story and a single personal goal every session, with different PC's each time.

Eventually, the PC's dictate the action and I should have enough personal information on enemies, friends, and plot arcs that the next step is logical.


As a small example;

A player in my game is playing a mage (Maga in parlance) named Parvula or Mercere. This character played a few sessions of the story, but found that she desired a familiar. So, created and ran a small story about her finding the familiar, but a small dragon is in control of the forest and the magical talking owl she desires is in fact sworn to its service for protection. The events of finding the owl I had planned and prepared before the previous game, and the things I wanted to happen happened. When the players got horribly lost, I gave them large, obvious clues to get back to the plot.

This is somewhat railroady, but comes from the players initiatives; I find its the best of both worlds.

As well as this, the dragon is squatting in a cave in a forest nearby, and often raids the farmers that supply the characters. This creates a plot that the PC's can achieve on their time; I simply hit them with the dragon when I want them to follow that plot.


As opposed to making a world and saying "What do you do?" I put them in a story, and try to make the story theirs as much as mine over time.

 

[Rechan]

As a player, sure, give me a railroad.

With two caveats.

1) I can see the tracks. If there's one solution, but the party can't figure out what it is, then the game comes to a screeching halt and it's frustrating. Same if everything we try just Isn't THe Thing Needed.

2) I can ride the rails. This involves a spoiler to the first adventure of WotBS.
[sblock]The first adventure's big crux is: Escape the city to Save the Country. Getting out appears relatively easy. But a hefty amount of the module consists of "But here's a lot of things you COULD do on your way". All my character cared about was getting the hell out, as that was the clear objective, but the rest of the content is "Here's a side mission to save/stop/bla".

I wanted to just jump up and down and say "Can we LEAVE? That's our mission!"[/sblock]
Running me through a DM created story is actually what I EXPECT. I expect most Dms to do it. I am not going to get into a Sandbox fight here, but needless to say, bring out your plots. I'll dance to your plot. But the plot better be interesting, exciting, or different. Boring and trite I do not like.

 

[LostSoul]

I like that kind of "railroad" if I'm playing a specific type of game. Call of Cthulhu springs to mind. The GM/Keeper has a story he wants to run us through; that's great, that's what we want - a Lovecraftian horror story! We kick the tires, poke around at the scenery to see how it all holds up, and ride the train to its inevitable and mind-blasting conclusion.

I don't like it in D&D.

 

[steenan]

Railroad, even defined as positively as in the first post, is not something I like. While I have no problems with being unable to do something for in-setting reasons, I become easily frustrated if I'm prevented from doing something that seams reasonable due to the GM not liking such option. If I'm going to passively participate, I may as well read a book or watch a movie. I'm playing an RPG to have my choices matter. Thus, railroading is a quick way to lose me as a player.
It's not that I very often do things the GM did not predict. I usually go with what he's got. But even a single time I hit the invisible wall of railroading means most of fun from the game is lost to me.

There are, however, several specific cases:

- In a game that has a strong genre, I'm perfectly willing to stay within its boundaries, as long as the GM does too. In a horror game I won't leave the shady motel as soon as strange things start happening, even if it is the most reasonable thing to do - but I will also expect not to be killed in the first hour of game because I made such choice. In a fantasy game I won't try to invent black powder (unless I'm playing an alchemist and the GM agreed to it before game), but I also expect noone else to do it.

- I will bite the first plot hook the GM throws at me. I have nothing against being railroaded a little at the beginning of an adventure, to get me to where the interesting things happen (and, as we mostly play one-shots, I prefer to do it quickly). But when I get there, I want to engage things in my own way.

- I have nothing against a linear plot, if it is this way because the GM is good at predicting my decisions. Being able to foresee my choices instead of limiting them is a sign of a good GM. But such GM will also be able to improvise if he was mistaken in his predictions and I get off the path.

- I'm perfectly fine with a game having a direction. I don't demand (and even don't like too much) total sandboxes. I just want to choose my own path, decide who I perceive as a friend or an enemy and make my own mistakes instead of falling into GM's traps.

 

[sev]

I've been in one genuine Railroad game that I more-than-happily played. The GM made it pretty clear, only a few sessions in, that we weren't the main characters. We were there to facilitate the journey of one of the NPCs. While we could affect some of the bits and pieces on the side, the broad strokes of her journey were going to happen, with or without us.

I loved it. But that's because the GM in this case is an incredibly talented storyteller. A year or so after we finished the game, I got to see the same story enacted on stage (Behind the absurdity, sci-fi mystery takes on serious questions about God and faith) and it was brilliant then, too. Even though I'd already experienced the story once.

Other than that? I'm not interested in a real live railroad. I'm a very well-behaved player; I bite when the GM puts bait in front of me. But I do still consider myself autonomous, and if I say, "No, my character would not accept that," then I expect the GM to work with that.

And as a GM, it's way more fun for me when the players participate. That way, I get to experience a story that's different than the one I have in my head. As I am not a brilliant screenwriter, the stories in my head have plenty of room for improvement.