Railroading is bad?

[The Shaman]

Lots of escaped convicts in your game world?

Yes - we call them "adventurers."

You just reminded me of one of my favorite road signs. Crossing over a bridge from Arkansas to Oklahoma on I-40, you encounter two signs: the first reads, "Welcome to Oklahoma!" - the second reads, "Warning: Hitchhikers may be escaped convicts."

Welcome to Oklahoma, indeed.

 

[RIPnogarD]

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't the title of "Dungeon MASTER" entitle you with control? (or should I say "railroading".) If a DM doesn't have control, who does? If you let the players or a player have the control then they are not a player, they're the DM. Any DM worth his salt has a plot line, maybe several.



As far as arch enemies are concerned, where would Batman be without the Joker or Spiderman without Doc Oc? Arch enemies are the NPC's players love to hate...

 

[sniffles]

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't the title of "Dungeon MASTER" entitle you with control? (or should I say "railroading".) If a DM doesn't have control, who does? If you let the players or a player have the control then they are not a player, they're the DM. Any DM worth his salt has a plot line, maybe several.



As far as arch enemies are concerned, where would Batman be without the Joker or Spiderman without Doc Oc? Arch enemies are the NPC's players love to hate...

I don't think anybody's saying there shouldn't be a plot, just that it shouldn't run roughshod over the players. As I think someone else remarked earlier, if the plot is all-important and the players' desires are of no consequence, then the DM might as well quit DM-ing and start writing fiction.

 

[RIPnogarD]

I don't think anybody's saying there shouldn't be a plot, just that it shouldn't run roughshod over the players. As I think someone else remarked earlier, if the plot is all-important and the players' desires are of no consequence, then the DM might as well quit DM-ing and start writing fiction.

I agree, and I think any DM would agree with your statement. I think we're splitting hairs here though. Weather you call it railroading or plot line, a rose by any other name still smells as sweet as a rose. And all DM's are just that, "Dungeon Masters". As soon as a player says, "I'm choosing", or "I'll do this" or "I take door number three", they've been what everybody in this thread calls railroaded...
There is no game without a DM...

 

[SweeneyTodd]

This is what some people call "The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast": the idea that the GM is all-powerful and provides the story, but that the players have full freedom of action.

Obviously there's some sort of compromise between the two, it's just that (as we see in this thread) it's often left up to personal preference. I think it'd be great to see more in-depth discussion, as in this thread, about how people can decide as a group where the lines should be for their game.

As for me? Honestly, I don't have a plot anymore. I have a situation that changes according to the actions and goals of PCs and NPCs alike.

Just wanted to throw in a quick note about armageddon scenarios:

In our game, we've got to a point where the climax will lead either to the PCs stepping in and saving the day, and risking their lives, or to them leaving town and letting the Big Bad have his fun.

And either one is going to be interesting, because of what it says about the characters and the moral decisions the players have had them make. They're everyday people thrust into a terrible situation, and we're wrapping up the campaign regardless. Heck, I'd almost like to see the bad guy win for once, although I doubt that's what they'll choose.

 

[The_Universe]

Yes - we call them "adventurers."

You just reminded me of one of my favorite road signs. Crossing over a bridge from Arkansas to Oklahoma on I-40, you encounter two signs: the first reads, "Welcome to Oklahoma!" - the second reads, "Warning: Hitchhikers may be escaped convicts."

Welcome to Oklahoma, indeed.

HAHA!

How true!

As I think someone else remarked earlier, if the plot is all-important and the players' desires are of no consequence, then the DM might as well quit DM-ing and start writing fiction.

Very, very true. As long as we remember that if the players want to have a say in every consequence for their actions, *they* might as well go quit playing and write fiction. Either extreme is no good.

 

[Agamon]

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't the title of "Dungeon MASTER" entitle you with control? (or should I say "railroading".) If a DM doesn't have control, who does? If you let the players or a player have the control then they are not a player, they're the DM. Any DM worth his salt has a plot line, maybe several.



As far as arch enemies are concerned, where would Batman be without the Joker or Spiderman without Doc Oc? Arch enemies are the NPC's players love to hate...

It's not control you give the players, it's choice, within the world that the DM effectively controls.

That said, the one thing the DM doesn't control is the PCs. Each PC is under the control of its player. Railroading is basically controlling what the PCs do, the DM should never do that. I'm sure you may have heard that "DMs should never say 'You can't do that.'". This becuse the player should be allowed to do with his PC as he wants. If he does silly things, of course, there would be repercussions...

 

[Jupp]

Methinks sometimes people forget what the true task of a DM actually is. He is the referee, the judge of the game. Dungon Mastering has nothing to do with absolute power and control over the game and its players.

If you take this as the main purpose of the DM in a PnP session then I think it should be obvious what he has to do and what not. He is there to watch over the game so the rules are kept and that in case of misunderstandings he will provide advise or he will have the last word in a dispute. He will also lay out the game world for the players so they have an environment to play in. It is also his task to provide the players with enough !sources! of adventure and !possibilities! to test their skills, to get more experience and to advance in the game world.

So the DM is like a mix between an info point on a train station and a referee on the soccer field. If the players have questions they can ask him, if they do something that is not possible rules-wise he will tell the players and will provide a solution to the problem.

That's all. There is not need to control the players. I think the DM already has enough to do to control the game world, to watch the rules, to look up stats, etc, etc...

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think this is a good time for more concrete examples. In an adventure I planned a while back, I came up with a plot.

The villian was a baron, but eager for more power. He wanted to rule the entire kingdom. He came up with a plan, he would pay the local orcs to attack his own villages. Since he'd be completely unable to repel these sort of attacks, he'd have to ask the King for further troops under his command. He could then use these troops to attack the King and take over the kingdom as he was going to convince them that he was the rightful ruler through a combination of magic and outright lies.

Being an intelligent man, he knew there was a couple of threats to his plan, adventurers for one are good at figuring out plots like this. Plus, the King might get suspicious if it didn't look like he was TRYING to get rid of the orcs on his own. So, he put up a bunch of posters asking for adventurers to help him out.

All the PCs started at 1st level and this is where I started them out, saying they were all out of work adventurers and this was the only job they'd found in a couple of weeks. So they all went to the Duke's keep in order to get the mission.

The plan was to send them to kill the orcs, but warn the orcs they were coming in advance and pay them extra to ensure the PCs deaths.

That was the first adventure. However, I already had a basic outline of the rest of the campaign. The PCs would "defeat" the band of orcs as the orcs would underestimate them. They would find a clue, a coffer of gold with the crest of the duke on it. The duke would claim that it was stolen from him, of course.

The duke would then proceed to hail them as heroes and request that they go on more and more suicidal missions. And I'd drop hints that they might be being set up until they decided to challenge him.

If they decided to decline a mission given to them by the duke, he would start hiring assassins to kill them so they couldn't be any more threat to him.

The duke also had a powerful wizard in on the plan with him who was using magic to hide the duke's alignment and help to make sure the plot remained undetected.


So, given all of this was decided before the first session began, and I pretty much knew the general outline of the campaign (even if I didn't know the exact enemies they'd be fighting after the first adventure), and the PCs were going to be going on these quests through a combination of creative manipulation of their egos, appealing to their lawful sides, and making it sound like the missions were for good, and paying them money, and attempting to kill them if they didn't go along with it. I mean, the PCs had choice, within the confines of my planned adventure. However, the adventure was designed to steer people or BEAT them back onto the path I had planned. They could figure out the plot and take things into their own hands at any time, but if they did it too soon, they couldn't prove anything and the duke would be too powerful to them, likely ending in their own deaths.

The question is, is this sort of thing considered railroading or not?

 

[The Shaman]

The question is, is this sort of thing considered railroading or not?

Well, let's go to the tape...

I mean, the PCs had choice, within the confines of my planned adventure.

In any game-world with some semblance of verisimilitude there will be many instances in which the adventurers are faced with limited options as a consequence of circumstances – “there are goblinoids massing in the forest but if we don’t make the pass before the first snow we’ll be trapped in the valley all winter.” That in and of itself isn’t railroading AFAIC.

What is railroading is this:

However, the adventure was designed to steer people or BEAT them back onto the path I had planned.

You have a story you want to tell, complete with the outcomes of encounters already decided – “the orcs will be defeated.”

THAT is railroading.