"Railroading" is just a pejorative term for...

[Sorrowdusk]

One way to describe it, is the player is breaking verisimilitude of the campaign. There's plenty of places for doing crazy, unpredictable things. Then there's times to not do stupid stuff for the sake of doing stupid stuff.

Kind of like how I hate in anime when they flip a character to a goofily drawn, large-mouthed, spazz. What the smurf is up with that? People like that should be the first to die before 1st level due to some orc attack or falling down a well.

Face Fault - Television Tropes & Idioms

There are more.

Your thinking about what is possible seems extraordinarily narrow.Now we're getting into the realm of pure silliness.

Imprisonment. Branding. Loss of a digit or a limb. Forced servitude. Enslavement. Chained to a galley oar. Exile. Laugh it off for the pure brazeness of it.

Now that's my kind of king. Heh, could probably do it with a high enough bluff check to play it off as a joke or as if you were really doing something else.

 

[FireLance]

You do if you're the typical PC!

I don't care how high a Heal check you rolled. That's still not going to work*.

* Unless, of course, you have a feat, power or class ability that allows you to heal someone by setting him on fire**.

** Not to be confused with a feat, power or class ability that allows you to heal someone by setting someone else on fire.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Creating a story and a progression of adventures to tell it. Coercing the players (as with the high DC for the pickpocket-the-king attempt) or engaging in a meta-discussion to keep the "story" in order.

He did say he built his story based on the character hooks, though, if I am not mistaken.

If I create a PC who craves vengeance for his parents and the DM comes up with a story that involve chasing down their murderers, of course I am following every plot points!

Concerning the thief example; I can see his point. It's highly disruptive behavior for the group.

That being said, if it occured in game and I was one of the other PCs, I'd apologize profusely for his behaviour, urge the king to hang the jackass and then move on with the mission.

The other player wants to roleplay a rogue so 'ballsy' he'd try to pickpocket a king? Well, I want to roleplay a sensible man who does not associate with complete morons. Let him roll a new character while we move on with the story and let's hope this one actually wants to work with the party. Otherwise... well, get used to making new characters. It's harsh, but I have the same right to control my characters as the disruptive player and if the DM wants to avoid such conflicts pre-emptively, it's not half a bad idea.

Yeah, I have some experience with players who roleplay PCs in ways that puts them at odds with the other PCs. It's highly annoying because if allowed, it forces the other players to either bend their own roleplaying to accomodate the guy taking the asocial actions or else get into PvP. I don't think handling this OOC by putting the stop on an action that would sabotage the session is unreasonable, though it's the only way to handle it.

 

[pemerton]

(5) The Hook:

<snip>

Railroading: Total. The players have no input in this whole introduction.

This is in part a terminology issue, but not entirely.

I don't agree that this is railroading. It is scene-framing, in that it presents the players with a situation in which their PCs find themselves.

Crucial to the distinction drawn here between railroading and scene-framing is that railroading is an approach to play. It is the GM exercising determinative power over the course of play. In this example from the Isle of Dread, no play has occurred yet, and so no power has been exercised.

What would be railroading would be if, having framed this scene, the GM then told the players "So you find yourselves at the docks, looking for a boat to take you to the island on the map."

Having identified what is taking place as scene-framing rather than railroading doesn't mean I particularly like it as it stands. Unless the players have already indicated that their PCs are nautical treasure-seeking types, there is nothing about this introduction that links it to something compelling in a PC's backstory. But that could be fairly easily remedied - for example, the map could be signed by a former mentor (or nemesis) of one of the PCs, or the city could be described as having a shrine to some friendly or enemy god.

 

[pemerton]

pemerton directs his efforts from behind the screen at the inner life of the adventurers while I prefer to manage their external circumstances.

That sounds right to me - I think we have a reasonable sense of one another's games.

I'd add two glosses to the "inner life" description of my game.

First, because I'm still running D&D - a fantasy adventure game - the "inner life" has a lot of external manifestation. So there are lots of conflicts with demons, devils, gods, cultists etc - antagonists the opposition to which is expressive of the inner life of the PC.

Second, there's no literary greatness in what we're doing at the table! I think that RPGing stories - certainly the ones I GM - are far less compelling for non-participants than for participants. My theory as to why this is so is the one I stated upthread - the dialogue is poor, the plot often slow and meandering, and the inner lives somewhat attenuated - so as a performance it's not that engaging. But for the participants there is an overlap between PCs and players that generates tension and resolution that can be pretty engaging.

 

[Beginning of the End]

"Um, listen," Joss Whedon says to Sara Michelle Gellar, "Buffy can shoot Willow in the face with the shotgun, but you will all regret it if she does." He turns to face Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, and Anthony Stewart Head. "Your characters don't know this yet, but Willow is going to be needed in a couple of years. The point of the story isn't just to stop Willow, but to also save Willow. Okay? Does anyone have any questions?"

Just one: Can you e-mail me the story when you're done writing it? Or would you prefer my snail mail address so that you can send me a hardcopy?

If I write a detailed plot for an adventure, using up a lot of my spare time, then I think I have a right to "railroad" the PC's in a way that keeps them from wasting the effort I put in...

Better solution: Stop prepping your games like that.

Non-linear prep is easier, takes less time, and is generally less wasteful.

The best part is you don't have to spend a lot of time trying to guess what the players will enjoy doing, because players tend to know what they'd like to do and then they go and do it.

IMO, using linear plots as a tool to deal with disruptive and obnoxious players is generally pretty ineffective. It's like trying to put out a fire by throwing dry tinder on it or concluding that the best way to clean-up all that kryptonite is to send Superman out to pick it up. Not only are you using the adventure structure most susceptible to disruption, but quite a few players are obnoxious and disruptive specifically BECAUSE they want to derail your pre-designed plot.

Some of them are doing it because they're just jerks. But some are doing it because they don't like being railroaded. And quite a few are subconsciously doing the only meaningful action they have (because the railroad has made any other action irrelevant).

I've found that most players like that, once they realize there's no predetermined plot to disrupt, will stop trying to disrupt it and settle down into productive members of the group.

 

[Lanefan]

Second, there's no literary greatness in what we're doing at the table! I think that RPGing stories - certainly the ones I GM - are far less compelling for non-participants than for participants.

HEY!!! Stop bringing reality into my fantasy! Stop it right now, I say!

My theory as to why this is so is the one I stated upthread - the dialogue is poor, the plot often slow and meandering, and the inner lives somewhat attenuated - so as a performance it's not that engaging. But for the participants there is an overlap between PCs and players that generates tension and resolution that can be pretty engaging.

Sadly, all true - though occasionally random chance will allow a really good story to somehow rear its ugly head long enough to get noticed before being dragged back down into the murk...

Lan-"do I get experience points for killing the ugly head?"-efan

 

[The Shaman]

Silliness? When an execution would be the most likely historical outcome?

Sorry, bill, but I have to call shenanigans there. Historically 'kings' ranged from the absolute monarchs of powerful nation-states to elected caretakers with little authority and even less power to local warlords with grand pretensions. There's no way you can reasonably claim 'historical accuracy' without qualifying it with a big bag of caveats and exceptions based on time, place, and culture.

Perhaps more importantly, if we're not talking about a historical game in particular, then really what we're looking at is whether or not the king's reaction is genre-appropriate and setting-appropriate.

Frex, the set-up was the king wants the adventurers to establish a dominion in his name. If the thief gets caught - and that could be a damn big 'if,' which is something only The Jester seemed consider, with everyone else assuming that the thief would be caught - then his punishment could be exile to the new land with the paladin supervising the thief's parole.

The assumption that every king is unfailingly bloodthirsty and vindictive is malarkey, in my humble opinion.

 

[The Shaman]

Better solution: Stop prepping your games like that.

I can find no fault in your logic.

Nor can I give you experience again at this time.

 

[nedjer]

'a right to railroad'

I'm starting play at 1. I'll open the session with that one. Tell everyone I've had a major rethink about my GM style, that I'm running the show from now on and that rules are rules. £20 says I get at least five expletives and two items of food thrown at me