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

[Hussar]

Celebrim does bring up an excellent point. Gaming externalities will have an enormous impact on how your game works. How many players, how long and how often do you play, how experiences are the players and DM, etc. etc. etc. Things that are not covered in the rules at all will likely have at least as much impact on how the game runs as the rules themselves.

For example, we're doing a round robin, Adventure of the Week type of campaign right now. We're all busy people, and no one has found the time to build a detailed campaign, or even a rather emaciated skeletal campaign for that matter. So, we take turns running scenarios, using a roughly stable set of characters. Once a given scenario is done, the reins get handed to the next person in line.

Now, to keep things going, the table has pretty much agreed that we won't strike off into the wilderness. The DM of the day has a scenario and we're going to play that scenario. Not that the scenarios themselves are railroads, but, the initial set up is entirely dictated by the DM of the day. On my turn, I started the adventure after the party had already agreed to the employment offer, traveled for several days and came upon the scene of an ongoing attack on a farmstead.

After that point, the players had a great deal of freedom in how they tackled things, but, the initial set up was entirely on me.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Celebrim does bring up an excellent point.

I've found that he does that a lot. Even when I disagree with him, I find his posts worth reading.

And it is a pleasure to continue reading posts from you which are worth reading, in this thread and others. Keep up the good work in 2011!


RC

 

[Janx]

Now, to keep things going, the table has pretty much agreed that we won't strike off into the wilderness. The DM of the day has a scenario and we're going to play that scenario. Not that the scenarios themselves are railroads, but, the initial set up is entirely dictated by the DM of the day. On my turn, I started the adventure after the party had already agreed to the employment offer, traveled for several days and came upon the scene of an ongoing attack on a farmstead.

After that point, the players had a great deal of freedom in how they tackled things, but, the initial set up was entirely on me.

That's comparable to how our group agrees to bite the plot hook, providing it makes sense to do so.

the only time we got bit by it was when the gm ran "3 Days to Kill", rather than a self-wrote adventure. That adventure cratered the campaign, and we all didn't like the hook, but given the GM was newer, we wanted to get things moving only to find the only successful path was to not have gone on the adventure.

Some people only like sandboxes. I don't like published adventures.

 

[The Shaman]

I can't tell if it is or isn't, but as best as I can tell if it does avoid it, it's because he's got only two players and he's running a successful Small Drama campaign heavy on theatrics and concern for the daily hardships and interpersonal conflict.

I don't know what "Small Drama" means in this context, nor am I entirely sure how you're using "theatrics" here.

"Daily hardships" aren't a big deal, really, but interpersonal conflict is definitely the order of the day.

Basically, it's a soap opera set in 17th century France . . .

To the extent that The Three Musketeers and Captain Alatiste and Bardelys the Magnificent and Under the Red Robe are soap operas, yes, I think that's fair.

. . . possibly run with only one player at a time allowing the DM to lavish time on the players.

This Saturday will be the first time I actually have two of three players in the same room at the same time. I'm looking forward to it.

The fewer players you have, the more you can personalize the game and the more you can make the small stuff like making camp, shopping, small talk with NPCs and the like interesting.

I think there are some genres which work better with a small number of players - espionage is one, swashbuckling another, Arthurian knights-errant a third.

Plus, he's a history buff and if he's got writerly skills its probably like getting immersed in a good historical novel.

First and foremost, it should be a fun roleplaying game, but to the extent creating an imaginary world that feels like a Rafael Sabatini or Alexandre Dumas novel helps facilitate that, then yes, that is one of my goals.

I can't say however that the game he runs appeals to me as a player. I find the whole thing terribly boring as described . . .

Exactly the way I feel about most fantasy roleplaying games - dungeoncrawling is the only appeal holds D&D for me, and I'm good with a once-a-year fix of that.

. . . I always try to run the game that I as a player would enjoy.

Same here.

 

[The Shaman]

I'm not sold on the idea that a sandbox has to explicitly be non-level appropriate.

The goal of most sandboxes is to create a world of diverse denizens and challenges - restricting that to a narrow range of options may fail to achieve that as the adventurers gain experience.

Just as GMs in non-sandboxes don't literally make every encounter and every entity level appropriate.

No, but in my experience the range of encounter difficulty is proscribed much more than in a status quo setting. Some linear adventures feature the express goal of getting the adventurers from one range of levels to another range of levels in anticipation of the next adventure, so often there is considerable focus on level appropriate encounters throughout.

A GM in the adventure path style writes content that is appropriate to levels needed to the adventure, and stuff that's not involved (and thus not assumed to be directly attacked) could be wildly varying in level.

A 'sandbox,' status quo referee makes no presumption that something will not be involved - it's all in play and in motion from the giddyup.

Contrast that to the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion sandbox. Wherein everything levels up with the PC. So much so, its a valid strategy to play the game and never sleep (so you never level up), thus making the end encounters easier.

Yeesh.

Basically, nobody has a campaign world where every encounter, every NPC, every place is literally level appropriate.

I don't know if I agree with that. Referees who only run adventure paths or other canned adventure fare run games where the range of challenge ratings are pretty proscribed.

Its a style choice of whether the GM gives a hoot if the PCs go into too dangerous parts or parts he hasnt planned on.

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Likewise, there are no rules to break when determining the reactions of NPCs, the level of the encounters, or any other event or entity in the game.

Last time I checked, reaction rolls are in fact based on rules of the game, modified by player character attributes and skills in some cases.

There seems to be an assumption here that if a referee can break the rules and the verisimilitude of the setting, then that will happen. I don't think that's true at all.

Any GM who deliberately counters players choices to force them through his content when they deliberately chose to avoid it is a crap DM. When the players say, "we ally with the giants", or "we go south to avoid the giants" then the GM has to react to enable that, not actively try to make it fail so he can force them back into fighting with the giants like his adventure says they should. That is such obviously bad GM behavior, they invented a term for it, "Railroading" that it shouldn't bear discussing or debating with any experienced GM such as would appear in this thread.

Agreed.

The questions to be pondered should not be the obvious stuff, as if that proves anything else is also bad. The question should be what ideas from other gaming styles could be adapted to your own to avoid unfun situations and to enhance your game, not replace your game style with somebody else's.

A worthy goal.

 

[pemerton]

The DM of the day has a scenario and we're going to play that scenario. Not that the scenarios themselves are railroads, but, the initial set up is entirely dictated by the DM of the day. On my turn, I started the adventure after the party had already agreed to the employment offer, traveled for several days and came upon the scene of an ongoing attack on a farmstead.

After that point, the players had a great deal of freedom in how they tackled things, but, the initial set up was entirely on me.

That's comparable to how our group agrees to bite the plot hook, providing it makes sense to do so.

I see an interesting difference between what Hussar and Janx describe in these paragraphs.

Hussar, as I read him, is not describing "agreeing to bite the plot hook" - which would be the players having their PCs do something according to the dictates of the GM. Rather, he seems to be describing "hard scene framing" - the GM describing a situation in which the PCs find themselves, and which presupposes prior activity and choices on the part of the PCs.

Provided that in scene framing in this way the GM doesn't foreclose a meaningful choice on the part of the players, I personally prefer Hussar's way of doing it. It saves time and "searching for the fun", and tends to help make clear from the get-go what is at stake in the situation the PCs find themselves in.

The typical clue that the players feel that meaningful choice has been foreclosed in framing a scene would be a complaint from them to that effect. The most obvious sort of player preference that would pretty forseeably produce such a complaint would be a game that emphasises geographic exploration, such as much traditional D&D play.

One feature of typical published D&D adventures that I find irritating is the plot hook that seems to presuppose both (i) that the campaign is a traditional exploration campaign and (ii) that the players are happy to be more-or-less led by the GM in respect of a good chunk of that exploration (ie are happy to bite the GM's plot hooks). This combination of presuppositions seems a bit incoherent to me.

 

[Janx]

Provided that in scene framing in this way the GM doesn't foreclose a meaningful choice on the part of the players, I personally prefer Hussar's way of doing it. It saves time and "searching for the fun", and tends to help make clear from the get-go what is at stake in the situation the PCs find themselves in.

I'm wary of hussar's approach as may abrogate my right to decline to pursue the hook. Granted, I have started games in "media res", already in the middle of action, but I try to limit the framing to a state that I think the PCs would realistically be in and minimize assumption of players actual choice.

Thus, forcing acceptance of being hired is risky to me. My PC may have no interest in being a hired guard. Though as a player, I might be resigned to accept it, for the sake of getting the game going. I'm certainly wary of a starting situation of "being in jail" as the DM's asssumption of my behavior on how I got there may contradict with my own view on what would get me incarcerated.

It's a catch-22, I may not be happy with Hussar's starting me in a scene I didn't actually make a prior decision to accept, versus pemerton's dislike of being presented with a hook that it is implied that you should accept.

When I'm GMing, IF you reject my hook and there is no reasonable way to re-use the material, I must aquiesce and make up stuff (possibly pausing the game). I guess pretty good, and I haven't had that happen, but if it does, I chalk that up to a bad GMing decision.


On Shaman's reply:
Its a style choice of whether the GM gives a hoot if the PCs go into too dangerous parts or parts he hasnt planned on.
I'm not sure what you mean here.

What I mean is a GM who doesn't care if the 1st level PCs decide to walk the 20 miles to kill the 20th level Lich because he's bad and he's there. I think there's some GMs who put that stuff in there, hoping the party gets killed, under the argument of "it's realistic that the world has dangers you should avoid". When its really just idiot bait.

Contrasted with a GM who is also vested in the PCs and would like to see them succeed, or fail as a genuine, non-idiot failure, and not because they wandered onto the double-black slopes.

There's valid arguments for both styles, and I think it comes down to what the players and GM's goal for the campaign is.

 

[Nagol]

I see an interesting difference between what Hussar and Janx describe in these paragraphs.

Hussar, as I read him, is not describing "agreeing to bite the plot hook" - which would be the players having their PCs do something according to the dictates of the GM. Rather, he seems to be describing "hard scene framing" - the GM describing a situation in which the PCs find themselves, and which presupposes prior activity and choices on the part of the PCs.

Provided that in scene framing in this way the GM doesn't foreclose a meaningful choice on the part of the players, I personally prefer Hussar's way of doing it. It saves time and "searching for the fun", and tends to help make clear from the get-go what is at stake in the situation the PCs find themselves in.

The typical clue that the players feel that meaningful choice has been foreclosed in framing a scene would be a complaint from them to that effect. The most obvious sort of player preference that would pretty forseeably produce such a complaint would be a game that emphasises geographic exploration, such as much traditional D&D play.

One feature of typical published D&D adventures that I find irritating is the plot hook that seems to presuppose both (i) that the campaign is a traditional exploration campaign and (ii) that the players are happy to be more-or-less led by the GM in respect of a good chunk of that exploration (ie are happy to bite the GM's plot hooks). This combination of presuppositions seems a bit incoherent to me.

The other three major reasons for player balking at this type of framing is if the scenario is one they would actively avoid such as a situation where they would be actively harming those they wish to aid (robbing the dead of a associated religion), the situation is one where the PCs are particularly uncomfortable (heavy armour hydrophobics being put on a deep water ship), or the players have a goal they wish to pursue immediately (chase the princess' kidnappers).

 

[pemerton]

I'm wary of hussar's approach as may abrogate my right to decline to pursue the hook.

<snip>

It's a catch-22, I may not be happy with Hussar's starting me in a scene I didn't actually make a prior decision to accept, versus pemerton's dislike of being presented with a hook that it is implied that you should accept.

My way of trying to handle this is to build the scene framing as much as possible expressly on what the players have already introduced into the game (either via PC backstory or via the resolutions of previous encounters). But this is in the context of what is meant to be an unfolding, "epic" campaign.

What Hussar has described sounds more like (for example) the way The Dying Earth is written to be played, where there is comparatively little linking episodes of play other than the common PCs. In that sort of campaign (which I guess is probably less "epic" and maybe a bit more light hearted - that's certainly true of The Dying Earth, and I hope I'm not defaming Hussar's game here) then the players probably don't have plans like "rescue the princess" that Hussar's hard scene framing will thwart. (Conversely, if they did, then I'm confident that Hussar is a good enough GM not to frame scenes that thwart such player desires.)

 

[Janx]

(Conversely, if they did, then I'm confident that Hussar is a good enough GM not to frame scenes that thwart such player desires.)

This is a good point, that I think is forgotten when any of us nitpick at somebody's statement.

A good GM deals with exceptions as they occur and is acting in a more sensical way than a broad statement they may make about how they handle things.

In short, none of us are idiots and while we each have general methodologies, we don't stick to them so rigidly that we destroy our game. Therefore, we shouldn't assume the worst in how somebody else says their game works.