Players: Does anyone else not mind railroading?

[amysrevenge]

Otherwise I want nothing to do with your plots. You provide the world, and the other players and I will supply the adventure.

I love that this hobby is big enough to hold both you and me (we're pretty much exact opposites).

 

[Treebore]

Here is an example of what is not RR, and my players whined and cried that it was.

I think this is in the "Fingers of the Forsaken Hand" module by Goodman Games.

There is an area/room where you CANNOT get into it unless: A) your far more powerful than the level recommended for the module, or B) your resourceful enough to go around and locate the magical keys that allow you entry.

My players cried that this was RR because they HAD to go find the magical keys. Thats RR, sure, but its RR because the mage who designed and built the crypt was smart enough to make sure only powerful people or very resourceful determined people would ever be able to get in.

Even so, you still have choices. You may not like those choices, but you have them. So it was good RRing.

 

[Wik]

I like to make the choo choo noises.

It's true. He does.

 

[firesnakearies]

"A process in which the gamemaster of a tabletop RPG has a predefined story for a session, adventure or campaign, and either makes minimal allowance for significant deviation, or makes significant efforts to ensure the players follow the story as planned."

I don't mind that at all, and in fact I greatly prefer it, most of the time.

As long as the story is COOL, and the train is headed to Awesome Town.

 

[fjw70]

Turning to the great Grand-Daddy Railroad of them all, let's look at DragonLance DL-1, Dragons of Despair.

Macro acceptable railroad. There is an adventure where you are going to escape capture in the Inn of the Last Home and ultimately rescue this barbarian princess and her magic staff from capture and find out where it came from and what it means.

This is acceptable railroading on a macro scale.

The module progresses to more heavy-handed tactics. As the armies advance, they tightens the noose across the lands of Ansalon, forcing all player movement to a choke point at Xak Tsaroth - where the "dungeon" is.

This is heavy-handed, but might be objectionable to some players and 'okay" to others.

Lastly, there is an encounter with the elves where they take you prisoner and forcibly bring you to the Forest Master - an encounter which is, in turn, a one way trip via pegasi to the swamps of Xak Tsaroth.

In fairness to Dragonlance the encounter with the Forest master only happens if the players choose to enter the forest (and if memory serves me its the Centaurs that capture the players). Eventhough you must end up at Xak Tsaroth to really play the adventure there are many ways to get there.

Any group that plays the DL series should be aware that it is a story driven epic and you are expected to play the heroes and try to save the world if you play it.

This last bit is over the top micro rail-roading and is at a level of overtness where the design is no longer acceptable by the majority of players given present day standards of adventure design.

1- The Adventure itself? "Ok" to most but the most ardent sandbox players;
2- Limiting Options for Overland Movement and Overtly Channelling the PCs to a specific Area? Grudgingly Accepted - but the strings are beginning to be seen too clearly now...;
3- Marching the PCs at Sword Point to a one way, no save Sleep plus airline trip to the dungeon locale? Unacceptable.

We will leave aside here the whole issue of obscure death and unkillable Plot NPCs in DragonLance, which can work in some cases as long as the strings are not overtly seen. Once the unkillable NPC is revealed as unkillable - verisimilitude tends to breakdown and the unacceptable railroad is on.

The unkillable NPCs are only unkillable up to a certain point and the PCs typically don't encounter those NPCs before they can be killed (if I remember correctly).

 

[rogueattorney]

Here's what I don't like:

1. I don't like feeling like I'm having a story read to me.

2. I don't like feeling like the numbers on the dice have no significance, that the same general result is going to occur regardless of the result of the roll.

3. I don't like feeling that the decisions I make as a player have no effect on the direction of the game and that the same general result is going to occur regardless of what I decide my character does.

If the DM can "railroad" (however you want to define it) without me feeling this way, fine.

 

[Rekka360]

I think you needs bits of both railroading and freedom for the PC's. If they are free all the time, they might end up doing nothing...as long as they always feel that their destiny is in their own hands they'll like whatever you throw at them.

If my players want to run from "group X" that wants to kill them, fine, get on your ship, your horses or whatever and get out of town. They should keep in mind however that "group X" might very well be interested in hunting them down.

 

[Raven Crowking]

My general viewpoint is: If you sign on to play an AP (Savage Tide, say), then you have an obligation to follow that path (to some degree at least). A player who agrees to an AP and then tries to "break" it isn't abiding by the social contract.

As long as everyone knows what kind of game is being played, and as long as everyone agrees to play it, there shouldn't be any problem.


RC

 

[pemerton]

It's not railroading just because the GM frames a scene. We need to know more.

If the GM frames a scene that connects to something the players have indicated they want to do in the game (eg one of them has as her PC's backstory "My parents were cultists" and the GM starts the adventure with "You hear a strange and disturbing noise coming from the basement") then it is not a railroad.

If the GM frames a scene that reflects only his/her interests, and then manipulates the game, whether mechanically or at the metagame level to make sure the players engage with it, that's a railroad.

And of course, once the scene is underway it is railroading if the GM manipulates things so that the players choices have no impact on what happens.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I've found that, by and large when I stick to those two principles, most railroads are fun. The ones that haven't been have generally been run by DMs who were simply bad, and who I'd not want to play in a sandbox with either.

I don't agree with the OP's definition of the term "railroad." What he calls railroading I would call sensible story-based GMing (and I'm all in favour of it, as player or GM). I tend to define railroading a bit more narrowly, and more in line with its disparaging use.

Which takes me to the quote above. The bad experience associated with railroading is, IMO, simply a particular expression of bad GMing. In other words, it's not the presence of story within the game that's ruining it, it's the crappy job the GM is doing.

Unfortunately, many people have that bad experience, and conflate the bad GMing with the presence of story. Even in this thread, some posters have mentioned that they hate story-based adventures because of a specific experience with a specific bad GM.