D&D 5E Players railroading dungeonmasters

[Blue]

This is not world building. Its give my PC an edge that they cannot otherwise have.

But again, I am the one who usually ends up having the fun, so I guess we agree.

So? Here's an 18 - does that make the table have more fun?

Conflating character success with player success happens often in D&D because the penalty for failure in combat can be very not fun for the player. But character success or failure when it doesn't come with character death are just different forks of the story. You can have fun on both.

In other words, "an edge" doesn't help the table have more fun. It doesn't bring you closer to player success conditions of having more fun, unless you have fun outshining the others at the table.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Might as well throw my 2 cp in as well.

Do backstories railroad the GM? Eh ... no, not in my experience. Can they help me try and make the adventures more relevant to your character? Yes, absolutely. One of the best pieces of advice I'd ever gotten as a GM was to ask my players what their character's goal is. What do they do when there are no monsters to slay or dungeons to delve? Are they trying to find their missing sister? Are they trying to become a lord? What is it they want to do?

If a player comes to me with "I'm Bob the Fighter and I'm adventuring to make my fortune!" Ok ... Why? When? Where? How? There's not much to work with there.

Compare that to "I'm the daughter of a failing noble household and was sent to live at the temple of St. Cuthbert as a child. I am estranged from my older sisters and my mother. My brother was murdered five years ago and his killer was never brought to justice. I still hope to right this wrong." Now I've got lots to work with as a GM. I don't feel constrained by anything the player has given me and there's plenty of wiggle room to fill in details as the campaign progresses. As a GM I am going to feel encouraged to work with the player to integrate it into the campaign.

If we take the first example of Bob the Fighter and change it to "I'm adventuring to make my fortune because an ancient red dragon is demanding tribute" suddenly I have much more to work with. It doesn't take much to give the GM plot hooks and I feel that adds a lot to the game.

 

[Emerikol]

But the game doesn't do that. Instead it just handwaves away the other 650 years of an elf's life wherein the elf doesn't "earn XP", just so that they can play the game along with, next to, and the same way human PCs do. Which to me... is ridiculous and stupid and I refuse to jump through hoops to try and justify in the narrative why that happens. So I don't. To me... the narrative of the story and the world have virtually nothing to do with any sort of comparison to the D&D board game. All the board game does is give us something different to play while we are creating the narrative and story, and some ideas of what we adapt and repurpose from the results of the board game for additional details to the narrative and story. But almost nothing in the board game actually "happens for real" in the story, because the D&D board game make little narrative sense. (And all we have to do is just re-read the hundreds of "What are hit points?" threads to see exactly time and time again why that's the case.)

Actually 1e did address this issue but I agree 5e just doesn't care anymore. In 1e there were level caps. For whatever reason, demi-humans could not advance beyond a certain point.

 

[hopeless]

When I established my Rothenel game I ended up with a Fallen Aasimar Paladin with the Folk Hero background, a Dawnfather Cleric Acolyte and a pair of half elves (a Shadow Sorceror Performer and eventually an Arcane Trickster Rogue).
Using the Paladin's very brief background story that didn't explain his background had the murder of his parents be the crux that founded an order of Free Knights in response to the Royal Guard trying to cover up their murder.
The guard who saved his life ended up training him as his squire as the orphan was raised at the Everlight Shrine as a Paladin in training with his mentor actually a Paladin of another deity but one friendly with the Everlight.
Eventually using the little information he provided would have revealed his father has a twin brother who he was mistaken for resulting in their ambush killing his parents.
His personal nemesis who he would recognise if he ever bothered to pay attention turned up a number of times but never close enough for him to get a good look at him.
The Cleric's mentor was intended to explain his failure to act is why the Paladin's parents were killed, revealing a former priest was behind the attack.
The other two were survivor's of an orc attack on their village, when the brother stole a cloak they were hunting and is still openly wearing it meaning eventually the same nemesis is going to come after them once he recognizes it!
The Paladin player accused me of rewriting his back story despite it being mostly used his complaint ignored the fact his character would have undoubtedly be killed by the starving peasants who murdered his parents when simply asking me about the setting background would have made it clear his idea wouldn't have resulted in a Folk Hero.
I actually asked about certain details using his answers to develop the above sub plot something unlikely in a rail road.

 

[Istbor]

I think my opinion is very much colored by one particular player back in college.

Always, and I mean always, his characters were either an up and coming mover and shaker of the world, or his family/parents were. Typically nobility.

Typically a long and dry recitation of that families history of deeds to the world at large and how they fit in there and are the next up and coming scion of this great house.

Now, I wasn't always the DM. So I can't say how my friends who were enjoyed a multi-page backstory. All I can say was, it got old. Both as the DM trying to manage said character and the players expectations, and as a fellow player who had a backstory about growing up on a farm, and had killed a baby ooze once.

To me, less is more. What are the key points? Did they mention past experience or conflict? Did they mention some friends, family, enemies? I find that stuff the important and useful stuff.

 

[pemerton]

Much like GMs I prefer to have GMs focus on situation instead of deciding how things should go before hand I have a fairly strong preference for players to focus on situation over story when it comes to defining who their characters are. I feel like railroading only enters the picture when people have strong expectations for how things should go.

The contrast between situation and how things should go is not always clear-cut, in at least the following sense: if a particular situation is going to arise in the future then, in the present, that sets a constraint on how things should go.

Here's an example from the Burning Wheel Revised Character Burner (p 34) that shows what I mean:

Instincts are the most primal, compact way of telling everybody at the table what your character is about. . . . If my Dwarf has the Instinct, "If there's a cave-in, I push the youngest to safety," that tells the entire group a lot about who my character is and what he values. First, he's careful and aware of the dangers that come with being underground. Second, his first thought is to protect someone else, not himself. And third, that someone else is the "youngest" - meaning that he puts some sort of value in youth. . . .

Finally, there's the story level. On this level, an Instinct is a direct statement to the GM, "I want to showcase this aspect of my character." If I have the cave-in Instinct, I'm telling the GM that I want at least some of the game to happen underground in caves or tunnels, and I want to have a cave-in.​

D&D doesn't use an Instincts mechanic, but in 5e at least there are elements of PC build that play a similar sort of role. In choosing a Bond, Flaw or Ideal a player might send a direct statement to the GM about what s/he wants in the game. The same thing might be done by choosing a particular background.

My reading of this thread, and my sense of D&D play more broadly, is that a lot of D&D GMs aren't happy with the idea that a player - via PC build - might impose these sorts of constraints on the fiction that the GM establishes in playing the game. I assume that's where this notion of "railroading the DM" comes from.