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

[Remathilis]

It can be hard to have an end goal for the sandbox and respond to player choices without continually guiding them toward it. Railroading is the extreme form of such guidance. My preference is to not guide the PC decisions save through the use of the gaming contract as I described above.

Few end goal plans will survive contact with player choices otherwise!

There is a point where stagnation occurs though; the PCs through whatever reason feel they have no place to go next to further their goals. Perhaps the group who has decided to fight Orcus needs some clues as to ways to stop his plans or perhaps a group of mercenaries need a few leads to find the next job. Here I think the DM has an obligation to jump in with a big red arrow to point to the next...something.

My rule of thumb is always give the PCs something to do. Even if it doesn't pertain to any long term goal. Have orcs raid a nearby town, or a treasure map enter into the hands of thief. NEVER, EVER let them sit at the tavern drinking and wenching for hours on end.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

For many of us, that is acceptable play. For me, the only unacceptable part is the last one. If you signed onto a set of expectations, you should follow through.

Well by now my players know what to expect when they sign up for one of my games. They get story, not a very heavy story but one that makes sense and ties things together. They get good encounters with interesting monsters that will do their darndest to live as well as a tactical challenge. And they get fun, like when I pop things into games just for the lols like the gazebo.

But how would you feel if you have brought your players to a huge battle, that you have spent 80% of the game getting them to, and a few of them want to go skiing. :|
My response to that was to let their characters go skiing, but they're not in the battle.

 

[Remathilis]

I'm talking about strange things like hanging around in the pub for hours, going to planet X when you need to go to Y or a general "let's not go to the dungeon we expected to go through in this game when we signed up for it".

You are combining three different phenomenons here.

1.) Stagnation: The PC don't know what to do next. I think its perfectly fine to RR them into doing SOMETHING, even if its just a random encounter.

2.) Course Correction: Having them go to Planet Y because its vital to the plot is railroading. Having them go to Planet Y because the guy who hired them to pick up cargo stationed there is not.

3.) Idontwanna: A problem where the players refuse to bite the campaign hook tossed down. This CAN LEAD to Stagnation (screw the module, lets go get drunk) or Course Correction (He wants us to go to Y? Lets go to X instead) but usually there is another problem underneath.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

The second option you have a point, except when this is a combination of the other two. "We go to planet Y as we just want to sit around and get drunk".

And how about this:

GM sends the players to planet Y from planet X to pick up a passenger they are supposed to return to planet X. They instead decide to go to Planet Z because the guy who hired them on planet Y already paid them before they completed the job, and people on Planet Z will give them more money for this person.

GM then sends a star destroyer out of nowhere so the players will go to planet X.

 

[the Jester]

I'm talking about strange things like hanging around in the pub for hours, going to planet X when you need to go to Y or a general "let's not go to the dungeon we expected to go through in this game when we signed up for it".

As a dm, I am totally cool with any of those, though I find the last one irksome if I've done a bunch of prep for that dungeon. But I let my prep be guided by the pcs- I ask them what they are likely to do and try to prep with that in mind.

Using your definition of a sandbox DM:

Just because a sandbox DM is okay if the end goal isn't achieved, it doesn't necessarily follow that a sandbox DM can't have an end goal.

Sure, I suppose.

My style is more like throw an unending succession of different factions with goals, monstrous plots, etc. at the pcs and let them choose which ones to bite at and follow up on. The rest evolve on their own, usually in the background or with another group that follows up on them [eventually].

And how about this:

GM sends the players to planet Y from planet X to pick up a passenger they are supposed to return to planet X. They instead decide to go to Planet Z because the guy who hired them on planet Y already paid them before they completed the job, and people on Planet Z will give them more money for this person.

Sounds like the dudes on planet Y need to learn about paying for services rendered upon delivery.

GM then sends a star destroyer out of nowhere so the players will go to planet X.

I would say that a better approach is to wait until the pcs have forgotten about this and then spring the bounty hunters. Also, they have a harder and harder time getting good-paying jobs because of their reputation.

YMMV etc.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I think what needs to be accepted is that railroading can be fun. It can work.

Absolutely.

A published scenario is a railroad.

Not necessarily. There are lots of published scenarios that aren't railroads. Masks of Nyarlathotep, Keep on the Borderlands, Isle of Dread, and the Banewarrens all leap to mind (with varying degrees of non-linearity).

First, we assume the PCs actually WANT to go to the caves, because quite easily here the DM could use the power of the choo-choo to force them there. (...) Have we hit our first railroad: the assumption that since the adventure is based around the Caves of Chaos, we are actually GOING to the caves of chaos?

The ability to choose which opportunities to pursue is pretty much the definition of a sandbox campaign. So, yes, if the DM predetermines what scenario the PCs are going to engage with each week then you are not, in fact, running a sandbox campaign.

With that being said, most people consider enforced scenario selection to be the lightest form of railroading and pretty much inoffensive (assuming you didn't promise a sandbox campaign).

Pretty much everything else you described isn't a railroad (although it's not really a sandbox, either), with one possible exception.

I mean, the DM has an end-point in mind (stop the cultists before Armageddon) and the PCs are going to follow the bread-crumbs to get to it. At any point, they can deviate from the trail to do other things (slay a dragon, start a keep, marry the princess, etc) and possibly even give up altogether (and face the consequences of an evil army marching on the realms of man).

The "Armageddon scenario" is kind of a tricky one to judge.

If I said: "I totally gave them a choice: They either do what I want them to do or their PC will definitely die." Then it's not particularly difficult to see that I'm not really offering any sort of legitimate choice.

The Armageddon scenario similarly says: "I totally gave them a choice: They either do what I want them to do or I blow up the entire world with them in it." It seems like a similar dishonest is being manifested in this so-called "choice".

OTOH, I don't think "I'm threatening something you care about" automatically equates to "I'm railroading you".

There's a legitimate grey area here. But if you sat me down and forced me to pass judgment on some hypothetical example the first thing I'd look at is the specificity of the action being "forced". There's a scale between

(1) "you've found the One Ring, Sauron is seeking it"

(2) "you've found the One Ring and Frodo, specifically, must carry it to Mt. Doom"

(3) "you've found the One Ring, Frodo must carry it, and he must go to Bree, Rivendell, Moria, and Lothlorien in that order"

With less (or no) railroading at one end and a lot of railroading at the other.

What I will say is that Armageddon scenarios tend to preclude sandbox play specifically because the priority demanded by the Armageddon scenario tends to preclude freedom in scenario selection. (Although this doesn't necessarily have to be true: For example, World War II can be going on in the background without the PCs feeling as if they're personally responsible for stopping Hitler.)

They may want to go south and explore swamps, check out Quasequenton (which the module strictly tells the DM to railroad the PCs away from if he's not prepped for it)

Huh? I don't remember that in B2 nor can I seem to find any reference to it now that I'm reviewing the module. Is this something from Return to the Keep on the Borderlands perhaps?

Final note: I think part of your confusion is probably stemming from treating "sandbox" as being the polar opposite of "railroading". This isn't particularly true. The defining trait of a sandbox campaign is freedom in scenario selection; but, as I noted above, this is generally considered the lightest form of railroading, not the most severe form.

The other source of your confusion may lie in trying to determine whether something is a "railroad" by trying to identify whether it has a "plot"; and then specifically trying to identify the "plot" by describing the sequence of events as it occurred at the game table. The problem here is that everything has a plot after the fact. Railroading happens when the GM attempts to enforce a sequence of events which has been pre-plotted.

 

[pemerton]

That assumes everyone supports his actions. The scenario I presented is one where the others, or some of them, do not. As previously mentioned, I supposed two anti-thetical PCs. a lawless rogue, and a lawful paladin. Supposed the rogue has stolen from the king, by lawful good standards, the PC must return it, and turn in the rogue.

I think the idea was the GM would ask the players, not the PCs.

Even the player of the paladin might still have an interesting idea as to what it would be fun for the rogue to find in the king's pocket.

Someone, must, at the end of the day, have final say on what does, or does not happen. Pure democracy is either mob rule or permanent lockdown.

This assertion isn't especially convincing in Hobbes, where it is put in the context of governing a state, and thus where something important is actually at stake. In relation to a leisure passtime it's even less convincing.

In many non-traditional RPGs, for example, authority over the backstory, or scene framing, rotates from player to player as the game is played.

I think we're using different terms for "world", for me, "world" is the setting, the overall design, where the mountains are, where the kingdoms are, what kind of societies exist.

You seem to be referring to "the world" as the individual actions and events that take place within it around the PCs.

If I'm wrong, then we are indeed at an ideological impasse, and will go no further.

I don't see any ideological impasse. It's not about ideology - it's about facts. RPGs actually exist, and are played by people, which don't work in the way you are describing - that is, they don't rely upon a GM who has the sort of authority over backstory, scene framing, action resolution and so on that you are asserting is a necessary feature of a roleplaying game.

 

[pemerton]

Having them go to Planet Y because its vital to the plot is railroading. Having them go to Planet Y because the guy who hired them to pick up cargo stationed there is not.

I don't really feel the force of this distinction. Did the GM decide that the guy in question is on planet Y?

Either the players may or may not choose to go to planet Y. If they have no choice, then force is being exerted. If the GM exerts that force by manipulating the action resolution system, or by vetoing the choices the players make in the course of play, whether via ingame or metagame techniques, then we have a railroad.

If, as GM, you want the players on planet Y then why not just drop the railroad and start things on planet Y. This will make it clear to the players where you think the game's action is. It negates any need for illusionism or manipulation. And if the players object, you can then have a genuine conversation with them about what you're all hoping to get out of the game. If you've really got good reasons for starting the action on planet Y, presumably you'll be able to explain them to your players!

To put it another way: for those who aren't interested in sandbox play, aggressive scene framing by the GM seems to give all the benefits of railroading without the need to faff around with plot hooks, illusions and manipulation. I think the endurance of railroading is a symptom of some conviction that ingame events must appear to unfold naturally from one another without any obvious metagame inteference. Hence instead of just scene framing, the GM asks the players "So what do your PCs do now?" and then manipulates the outcome of their choices (including perhaps fudging action resolution mechanics) to get things to the desired scene. Like I said, why not just drop the pretense, admit that there is a metagame agenda at work, and proceed accordingly?

GM sends the players to planet Y from planet X to pick up a passenger they are supposed to return to planet X. They instead decide to go to Planet Z because the guy who hired them on planet Y already paid them before they completed the job, and people on Planet Z will give them more money for this person.

GM then sends a star destroyer out of nowhere so the players will go to planet X.

In my view, a classic example of bad GMing that is wasting the players' time. If the GM wants them on planet Y, just start the action there!

 

[Nagol]

Well by now my players know what to expect when they sign up for one of my games. They get story, not a very heavy story but one that makes sense and ties things together. They get good encounters with interesting monsters that will do their darndest to live as well as a tactical challenge. And they get fun, like when I pop things into games just for the lols like the gazebo.

But how would you feel if you have brought your players to a huge battle, that you have spent 80% of the game getting them to, and a few of them want to go skiing. :|
My response to that was to let their characters go skiing, but they're not in the battle.

I don'r bring my players anywhere. They take me. If the PCs are at a huge battle, it's because they wanted to be there or it formed around due to circumstances.

What they do in the scenario is up to them.

 

[Nagol]

There is a point where stagnation occurs though; the PCs through whatever reason feel they have no place to go next to further their goals. Perhaps the group who has decided to fight Orcus needs some clues as to ways to stop his plans or perhaps a group of mercenaries need a few leads to find the next job. Here I think the DM has an obligation to jump in with a big red arrow to point to the next...something.

My rule of thumb is always give the PCs something to do. Even if it doesn't pertain to any long term goal. Have orcs raid a nearby town, or a treasure map enter into the hands of thief. NEVER, EVER let them sit at the tavern drinking and wenching for hours on end.

The world is not a static place and world-altering situations are rarely invisible. The march of time will usually reveal further symptoms of trouble for the PCs to react towards should they wish. My worlds typically have too many loose threads/possible activities rather than too few. Every so often the players feel overwhelmed with choice and have to make some hard decisions about where to focus.