D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Hussar]

I would be one. It’s no different than fudging dice rolls or padding hit points or adding monsters to a fight. If that’s what I prepped, that’s what’s there. Emergent story. Let the dice fall where they may.

I don’t think that’s a reasonable way to determine things. The group will not always...or hardly ever, really...have enough info to make a perfect choice. If the door is trapped and the never looked for traps, it’s still fair to hit them with the trap. If they look but fail the check, it’s still fair to hit them with the trap. The players can’t expect perfect knowledge for every choice.

What's the difference between moving the ogre and a random encounter though? Why does what I happen to have prepped have any bearing on what's going on in play? I frequently have barely anything prepped beyond a vague idea of what's where. That the dungeon says, Room 2 Ogre, Room 3 Empty doesn't actually mean anything.

And, frankly, all this does is lead to the DM becoming somewhat more elaborate - well, the monsters wander around the dungeon right? So, it happened to be there instead of here. Heck, lots of adventures specifically STATE that a particular NPC might be encountered a various locations and often leave it to a random roll or leave it up to the DM.

Putting the ogre behind a different door can be a bad thing if the DM is doing it to screw over the players. IE. acting in bad faith. But, adding monsters to a fight? Again, that's often right there in the adventure. Random encounters don't only happen after the PC's have cleared a room. And, monsters typically do have ears and do wander around their home. It's certainly not unreasonable.

Like I said, arguing that you must never do something like this is ridiculous because there are all sorts of very good reasons why you might. But, what we can agree on is if the DM is doing it in bad faith, THEN the players have an issue.

 

[Aldarc]

View attachment 145485
Ticket to Ride… Great game if a session gets cancelled by the way! All about making choices when laying railroads

But even a game about railroading has more paths to achieving one's goals than some D&D adventures.

 

[overgeeked]

What's the difference between moving the ogre and a random encounter though?

One's random and one is not.

Why does what I happen to have prepped have any bearing on what's going on in play? I frequently have barely anything prepped beyond a vague idea of what's where. That the dungeon says, Room 2 Ogre, Room 3 Empty doesn't actually mean anything.

Why does what the dice happen to show have any bearing on what happens in play? What does it matter if you add a dozen extra hit points to a monster or add a dozen extra monsters to a fight? The DM has infinite dragons, why not simply use them?

And, frankly, all this does is lead to the DM becoming somewhat more elaborate - well, the monsters wander around the dungeon right? So, it happened to be there instead of here. Heck, lots of adventures specifically STATE that a particular NPC might be encountered a various locations and often leave it to a random roll or leave it up to the DM.

Difference being that wandering monsters aren't static. They are designed to be randomly encountered. A planned encounter is planned to take place at a given location as a result of the PCs going to that location. Unless you built a teleportation circle or a secret door between where you planned for the ogre and where it ends up, you're moving the monster based on what you want to happen.

Putting the ogre behind a different door can be a bad thing if the DM is doing it to screw over the players.

You can justify almost anything. That doesn't mean it's a good practice.

IE. acting in bad faith.

And some people here clearly think moving the ogre at all is in-and-of-itself acting in bad faith. Just like padding hit points, fudging die rolls, and adding or subtracting monsters because the DM thinks the fight it too easy or too hard.

Random encounters don't only happen after the PC's have cleared a room.

No, they generally happen when traveling the hallways connecting rooms or out in the wild.

And, monsters typically do have ears and do wander around their home. It's certainly not unreasonable.

Sure. But again, your ability to justify doing whatever you want doesn't mean quantum ogres and other bad practices are actually good.

Like I said, arguing that you must never do something like this is ridiculous because there are all sorts of very good reasons why you might.

Being able to justify a harmful convenience doesn't make it a good practice.

But, what we can agree on is if the DM is doing it in bad faith, THEN the players have an issue.

No, we can't. Doing it at all is acting in bad faith, therefore the players have an issue. That it might be common doesn't make it good practice. As this and quite a few other threads show, the DM in D&D has basically infinite power and authority to change, control, alter, and do whatever they want, basically on a whim. The only thing stopping them is the social contract and the DM's individual sense of honestly and fair play. Doing things like the quantum ogre, fudging die rolls, padding hit points, padding fights with extra monsters...all undermine the players' trust in the DM. Simple as. Whatever benefit you might gain in the short term, you more than make up for in the long term when the players absolutely lose trust in you when they find out. And they will. It's mostly trivial to spot. However important you think that one ogre, roll, monster, or fight might be, it's not worth forcing in the game in exchange for the players' trust in you as a DM.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Are there any products out there that can reduce railroadiness? I hear hexcrawls have plenty of PC options and can be purchased. Any cool open adventures that have little railroadiness?

 

[Hussar]

The DM has infinite dragons, why not simply use them?

That's an easy one to answer.

Because using them would not be any fun for the table.

And, frankly, if the players are bored and checked out because they've just randomly wandered through the dungeon, avoiding most of the encounters and we need some excitement to get people back into the game, then, it is not bad practice to move the encounter.

A DM's primary goal is to ensure that his or her game is fun. That's the first and foremost goal. If moving an encounter will help with that, if adding three more monsters will help, if padding out the HP a bit will help? Then, more power to the DM.

 

[Hussar]

Are there any products out there that can reduce railroadiness? I hear hexcrawls have plenty of PC options and can be purchased. Any cool open adventures that have little railroadiness?

Again, see, this is the problem. You can railroad just as easily in a hexcrawl as the most linear of adventures. It's incredibly easy to railroad.

The opposite of sandbox is not railroad. It's linear. Railroad is a DM acting in bad faith. Linear is simply a different style of adventure.

 

[Lyxen]

The opposite of sandbox is not railroad. It's linear. Railroad is a DM acting in bad faith. Linear is simply a different style of adventure.

I still have difficulty with this proposal that linear does not involve railroading. If, by construction, you are moving from one stage to the next, and there is absolutely no other path, how is it not railroading ? It completely removes any choices from the players about what the next stage would be, even if it allows some freedom within a given stage. Moreover, as the next stage is fixed, it means that, in a sense, whatever the PCs are doing in a stage has limited impact on the scenario anyway.

Anyway, my biggest problem about all these discussions is that, as usual, people are dealing only in absolutes "railroading is a DM acting in bad faith", "sandbox is good", etc... Especially when you consider that there can be much more subtle ways of "railroading", along the manipulation line. Some DMs don't forbid a path, but they for example have an NPC tell the player that it's a really bad idea, which usually has the right effect of steering the PCs back onto some sort of path, or at least to close off some avenues of thinking.

The reality is that along each of the dimensions of scenario making, there is an infinity, a continuity of possibilities, and the appropriate one does not depend on the theory of what is good or bad, it really depends on the expectations around the table, both for the players and the DM.

I honestly don't care if the DM railroads me, as long as he is doing it with good intentions in mind. It might not be the most appropriate way of doing things, it might not be the way I would do things in his shoes, but he is the one in charge, and I trust that he is doing the best that he can for the game. And I will help him along the way, even if it requires me to adjust the way my PC thinks (and who cares, he is just a figment of my imagination, I am the one in charge, not the character).

And, by the way, as a player, I have no way to know if what the DM is doing is railroading or not, because I certainly do not have all the information that he has. So the best a player can have is suspicions of railroading, because there are things that he does not understand, or does not see, or simply does not know. And where does suspicion come from ? Again, the core problem is lack of trust, nothing more.

 

[Lyxen]

I would be one. It’s no different than fudging dice rolls or padding hit points or adding monsters to a fight. If that’s what I prepped, that’s what’s there. Emergent story. Let the dice fall where they may.

It might be your way of thinking, and I respect that, but you do realise that there is nothing anywhere in the rules or advice that requires a DM to stick to what has been prepped ?

For me, the only thing that matters is what the players will have the most fun with. And the answer is completely local. On some evenings, I might decide that a quick scuffle with the ogre might be the one thing that would be nice, or that it would enforce the bad luck of the party (which is a fun trope to play with sometimes). On other evenings, I might think that the fun might rather be had in the rest of the adventure and the realisation by the adventurers that they have avoided a fight, possibly by being lucky (which is another fun trope sometimes).

It is no different than looking at the table of random encounters and choosing not to roll, or chosing to roll and ignore the result, or just choosing an encounter because it might be cool, or choosing to have no encounter, or just seeing the monsters from afar and cleverly avoiding them, etc.

I repeat, Maximum Game Fun is what is important here, for the players. And of course, having their decisions being impactful is fun, but it's only fun when it's a reasoned one, that they happen to have taken the right one. With the quantum ogres, there is no reasoning anyway, the dooes look the same.

And even then it's something that can be played with. Sometime it's fun to have taken the right decision for the right reason, but sometimes it's even more fun to have taken the right decision for the wrong reason, and sometimes it's fun to have taken the wrong decision while it was still the right reason, and sometimes it's fun to have taken the wrong decision but for the wrong reasons.

I think that some DMs just create too much problems by imposing unnecessary constraints on themselves. I usually run fairly free campaign, but rarely complete sandboxes because our table like it when there are plots running around that they can mess with or participate in. I do prepare, but not too much, because otherwise it's often wasted, and I improvise, sometimes little, sometimes a lot. But what I never do is stick 100% to what I had prepared, because this is at least at our tables, the way to lesser fun. I can't predict what the players are going to do anyway and how they will take on the situation. I will just do whatever is necessary for them to have fun...

 

[AtomicPope]

Are there any products out there that can reduce railroadiness? I hear hexcrawls have plenty of PC options and can be purchased. Any cool open adventures that have little railroadiness?

A GM in my group introduced hexcrawling to a game he was actively working on, Shadowrun Anarchy. We absolutely loved his rules for hexcrawling, but the company (Catalyst?) wasn't keen on it. Anyway, he used them in his D&D game which might have turned out even better. If I remember right, the rules were pretty basic.
1) Fog of War - you don't know what's in a non-adjacent hex without using an ability: scouting, scrying, familiars, beasts, etc.
2) Forked Path - each hex gives you choices, usually either terrain or monsters, and each choice has a drawback.
3) One Hex Move - unless you're teleporting, you're moving one hex at a time.
4) No Skipping Hexes - unless you use powers that negate both choices (you can't fly over an area of wyverns or walk over an area with water).

I don't remember exactly how he populated the hexes but I think he made them up ahead of time. First drawing a map and then putting down the army of monsters (there was a war). I do remember it was a lot of fun. Anarchy was a little more loose and the movement was easier since the hexes represented rooms, hallways, alleys, etc. I have to bring up the hexcrawling at our next session.

 

[Hussar]

I still have difficulty with this proposal that linear does not involve railroading. If, by construction, you are moving from one stage to the next, and there is absolutely no other path, how is it not railroading ? It completely removes any choices from the players about what the next stage would be, even if it allows some freedom within a given stage. Moreover, as the next stage is fixed, it means that, in a sense, whatever the PCs are doing in a stage has limited impact on the scenario anyway.

Why? A simple dungeon with three rooms, in a chain A---B---C. That's as linear as it gets. But, it's in no way a railroad. A travel scenario where you have to escort the caravan from A to B is 100% linear but is not, in any way, a railroad. Linear adventures abound. Any adventure with time pressure becomes linear. Most mystery scenarios are linear - you have to have a mystery first and the trail of breadcrumbs leading to the reveal can be pretty straight forward. There is a shopping list of great adventures that are linear.

Anyway, my biggest problem about all these discussions is that, as usual, people are dealing only in absolutes "railroading is a DM acting in bad faith", "sandbox is good", etc... Especially when you consider that there can be much more subtle ways of "railroading", along the manipulation line. Some DMs don't forbid a path, but they for example have an NPC tell the player that it's a really bad idea, which usually has the right effect of steering the PCs back onto some sort of path, or at least to close off some avenues of thinking.

I tend to call what you are talking about shepherding. And, sure, we all do it. Sometimes you need that big neon sign that says "ADVENTURE IS THISAWAY!!" And that's fine. Generally not really a problem I think and not really a railroading issue. Mostly, again, because this sort of thing is just basic DMing 101. Without any input from the DM, you wind up with what I've seen called a rowboat sandbox. You're in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Sure, you can go any direction you want, but, since there is pretty much the same as here, it's all just random chance.

The reality is that along each of the dimensions of scenario making, there is an infinity, a continuity of possibilities, and the appropriate one does not depend on the theory of what is good or bad, it really depends on the expectations around the table, both for the players and the DM.

I honestly don't care if the DM railroads me, as long as he is doing it with good intentions in mind. It might not be the most appropriate way of doing things, it might not be the way I would do things in his shoes, but he is the one in charge, and I trust that he is doing the best that he can for the game. And I will help him along the way, even if it requires me to adjust the way my PC thinks (and who cares, he is just a figment of my imagination, I am the one in charge, not the character).

And, by the way, as a player, I have no way to know if what the DM is doing is railroading or not, because I certainly do not have all the information that he has. So the best a player can have is suspicions of railroading, because there are things that he does not understand, or does not see, or simply does not know. And where does suspicion come from ? Again, the core problem is lack of trust, nothing more.

I'm going to disagree here. I've seen some very egregious examples of railroading that were blatantly obvious to everyone at the table. In one case the entire group up and quit on the spot because it got so bad. So, no, it's not a lack of trust. Player's are not stupid, and, if you're like me, you play with a lot of players who also run games of their own. It's not that hard to spot when it's being done in bad faith.

The subtext here of "just trust your DM" is not something I can really get behind when the DM is acting in bad faith. Granted, as you said, if the DM is doing it with good intentions and the group is largely happy with the rails, then, no problems. That's fine. But, again, I don't consider that to be railroading since the DM is not acting in bad faith.