D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Lyxen]

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.

Honestly, all this just comes from your (personal) definition of railroading, right ? If I loop at the OP's definitions (themselves debatable, I agree), a scenario when you can only go A=>B->C is railroading:

Spoiler

(1) GM behavior when the planned scenario requires a particular sequence of events/scenes leading to a particular ending. The GM ensures that it arrives there by a variety of means. This is generally pejorative, but is sometimes defended as valid as long as it is not overused. (2) On the Forge, a purely negative term for GM behavior that breaks the Social Contract via the GM controlling a player-character's decisions or opportunities for decisions.

The scenario requires you to go to C, passing by A then B, so it satisfies the first definition, and it controls the decisions and opportunity for decisions as it provides no alternative.

And it's the same with the "bad faith", it's your perspective that it needs to be done in bad faith.

I'm not saying that your definition is wrong, but, as often, it's the terminology which is causing trouble with the discussion more than the basis of the topics themselves.

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.

It doesn't have to be as bad as that, although I agree that it's one of the problems of "extreme sandboxing", unless the DM is really good at improvising. Some people like it when marauding, for example, but my perspective is that you should not expect great intrigue.

It's all a question of degree.

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.

But again, "bad faith of what" ? Why do you suppose the DM is doing it ?

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.

See above about the definition causing problems probably more than the act itself.

 

[tetrasodium]

The other thread about railroading is getting pretty incendiary, and there's a bit of confusion over terminology used. "Railroad" is very vague and not well-defined, so let us instead discuss participationism and illusionism, which are specific modes of play. The definitions of these terms are a bit muddy, and there's not an "official" RPG lexicon, but Darkshire.net has a fairly comprehensive glossary.

Railroading:

The term is used interchangeably to describe moving a scenario from Point A to Point B to Point C, which is typical of adventure path design, and it is likewise used as a descriptor of GM behavior that usurps player agency. In the RPG community at large, this has strongly negative connotations, whereas the other two terms less so. But the basic gist of railroading is that the players don't get to do much beyond what the GM deems acceptable. Because this term spans a host of behaviors and rouses tempers, I don't think it's particularly useful when discussing GMing techniques.

Illusionism:

The term is used to describe the "magic trick" of providing the illusion of player agency yet performing trickery to ensure that the game proceeds as he has envisioned it. A style of railroading.

Participationism:

The interesting part here is the players-aspect. I'm sure we've all had GMs who fudge the dice and script encounters, yet participationism relies on the acceptance and participation of the players. The GM is given the authority to control character actions and deny player agency, within reason. We have all done this, and it's pretty normal. I'll give an example I'm sure we can all relate to: the party is talking amongst themselves about their next course of action, and they've decided to visit some location, say the Mad Hermit's Hut. They stop and stare at the GM at this point, which is the GM's cue to say, "You travel to the Mad Hermit's Hut, a residence of dubious quality. The thatched roof is half-rotten, and you're uncertain if the crumbling mortar in the stone walls could withstand a heavy rain. (Pause to see if anyone has anything to say. No characters act, so the GM continues.) Entering the structure, you see the Mad Hermit himself..."

Right there, the GM usurped player agency to narrate. The players are probably fine with it, though, so that's participationism.

By these definitions, we can talk about good, better, and best gamemastering.

Tools of the Trade
The GM's arsenal is filled with tools to enable these styles of gameplay. Most of us have done them at some point or another.

Fudging
The act of changing dice outcomes to achieve a preferred result. The characters defeat the climatic end-of-story boss in two rounds? The GM gives him another round or two worth of hit points to keep the tension up. The players missed an important roll by 1 or 2 points? The GM gives them the success anyway. The newbie takes a sneak attack critical hit in the first encounter and is about to be insta-gibbed? Turns out that the natural 20 was really a natural 19 all along.

Try, Try Again
The characters fail an important roll, but this roll is necessary for the story to proceed. Solution: try again until you make it! The single door behind which the MacGuffin resides is locked, and the rogue biffed it. Roll again until that lock comes loose. The clue upon which the investigation hangs is hidden due to a failed Perception or Investigate check? Test again...and again...and again until they find it.

Roll Calibration
The characters are trying something that isn't supposed to succeed, but it feels like the GM should offer them a roll, even if it's impossible. The solution is to set an arbitrarily high DC so the players feel like they have an opportunity to influence things, but gosh-darnit, they failed anyway. Alternatively, the characters are trying something that is theoretically risky but they're supposed to succeed? Give them a roll so it feels risky, but drop that DC to ground level so success is nigh-guaranteed.

The GM may also simply deny the option to roll when he feels it is vital. The players want to talk down the Evil Overlord into changing his ways and accepting the goodness and light of Pelor? No way, Jose.

Scripting
Scripting outcomes, events, and plot points is commonly seen in adventure paths, for both good and ill. The NPC refuses to barter with the players. The ritual completes at midnight. The bandits are gambling in their lair and don't notice the player characters. The villain will kidnap the princess when the players return from fighting the dragon. Etc., etc., and etc.

Dice Fishing
This one's a form of probability manipulation that's not quite the same as Roll Calibration. Similar to Roll Calibration, Dice Fishing seeks to enforce particular outcome, but it uses a multitude of dice rolls to manipulate probability. The GM calls for multiple dice rolls for something, and a single roll (success or failure) shapes the entire skill check. You might have six players rolling, but if one succeeds, they all succeed (or vice-versa). In d20-based games, natural 1s and 20s are exceptionally sought after as they provide justification for the results, as many groups than play these as special successes and failures. (Other games that specifically include critical success and failure mechanics are utilized in a similar capacity.)

Players can also do this, GM permitting, when cycling through characters to succeed at a skill check. If Gandalf fails his Intelligence check to guess the password to enter Moria, Frodo gives it a roll. Related to Try, Try Again, but relies on GM's willingness to permit it.

Accepting the Validity of Illusionism and Participationism
Some groups thrive on these styles of gameplay. The players want the GM to act as a story-weaver, telling a story in which their characters participate. They expect him to fudge dice, waive rolls, ignore mechanics, and alter outcomes as a normal part of the game. Personally, I chafe against this and detest it, but many players adore it. They have the opportunity to playact their characters in a grand story and be entertained for a few hours every week.

Adventure paths often rely on this. They state unequivocally that A > B > C progression happens, and the players are ushered along this path. It's called an adventure path, not an adventure off-the-beaten-path. Many GMs don't have the time required to plan out detailed adventures with battlemaps and interesting foes. They need the RPG equivalent of a takeaway dish, and adventure paths provide this option. Likewise, many players are more interested in the characters and story than forging their own paths, so they're happy to share the takeaway dish with the GM. They know he's ordering it and serving it, and they're content with that.

For many players and GMs, this style of gameplay serves them well.

It's good to see this thread taking a more nuanced/evolved spin on "the other thread" where things were (imo) too heavily focused on a style of gming I dislike where the gm is a cog in enabling the player's main character syndrome novel & ignoring problems that o5e design causes for anything else. There are a couple of tools that I'd add to the ones listed though so I wanted to bring those up.

* The quantum ogre. I don't think it's coincidence that so many posts in this thread mention an encounter with an ogre being predetermined & it should be mentioned. The basic premise of the quantum ogre us that the players have two doors and whichever the players choose leads to the ogre. The gm only needs to prepare one fight and doesn't need to worry too much about "what if the players dont do what I expect". It can take some skill to do this covertly without it seeming obvious, but with on the fly reskin/refluff of things you can make entire dungeons & plot threads quantum without players noticing or even suspecting but the next tool helps.

*fate style aspects. Call them what you want, but they allow a gm the ability to quickly and easily extrapolate things like motive means & reactions of NPCs to player activity. That includes making new NPC/places/groups feel like they are organic things there from the start even when just how only coming into enoufh relevance to mention because of player actions.

When you combine these two together a GM winds up looking like A grandmaster twelve-D Chess champion who somehow planned every move the players would make right down to that nest one & epic crit against the bbeg ten sessions ago for a game that started way more than ten sessions back. The players never feel considered so never notice the jujitsu going on behind the screen leading up to the point where the quantum waveform of a campaign finally collapses into a finale even if that finale is because the gm declares that they are starting a new campaign after x because PCs have grown so powerful or whatever. A gm can even build on thst last campaign to make the players feel like what they do really matters by using the updated aspects and marks in the world that resulted from the last campaign.

@muchaelsomething I'd look at some of the fate adventures/settings like Morts & secret of cats or timeworks from one of the fate worlds books for examples of that kind of adventure structure in premade form. For D&d type adventures though dread metrol comes close by including things like what do they want/what do they know on NPCs but d&d provides little guidance or rules structure to help a gm skill up on taking advantage of that kinda stuff.

 

[Lyxen]

Roll Calibration
The characters are trying something that isn't supposed to succeed, but it feels like the GM should offer them a roll, even if it's impossible. The solution is to set an arbitrarily high DC so the players feel like they have an opportunity to influence things, but gosh-darnit, they failed anyway. Alternatively, the characters are trying something that is theoretically risky but they're supposed to succeed? Give them a roll so it feels risky, but drop that DC to ground level so success is nigh-guaranteed.

The GM may also simply deny the option to roll when he feels it is vital. The players want to talk down the Evil Overlord into changing his ways and accepting the goodness and light of Pelor? No way, Jose.

I really like the post, but this sort of bugs me. Does this mean that deciding that the PCs have no chance to "talk down the Evil Overlord into changing his ways and accepting the goodness and light of Pelor" is Roll Calibration ? Isn't a DM allowed to decide that it's not only impossible but even a stupid thing to do ? As far as I know, the DM is absolutely allowed to decide even automatic failure on things that he deems impossible, so why is this a negative thing ? Do you think that Luke could convince the Emperor and that he really should have had a chance, however slim ?

 

[Oofta]

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.

There's no such thing as perfect. On the other hand, there's "give people real options" or "give them the illusion of choice". I think choosing between door A and B if there is no reason to choose one over another is just a different form of illusion of choice. Oftentimes I see people being given a choice between a blue pill and a red pill but not being told what the different pills do, it's not really a choice at that point it's just a flip of the coin.

I would say that in general I run node based adventures where certain nodes are decision points, frequently with multiple branches including the possibility of branches I didn't think of ahead of time. Does the group decide to follow the BBEG or let them go so they can recuperate and fight another day? Do they try to get ahead of the BBEG to set an ambush? Decide that this particular BBEG isn't has high a priority as something else? Think of another option I hadn't even considered?

I want to give the players options. But I want their choices to be based on at least a general idea of cost and reward.

 

[Oofta]

It's very different from the quantum ogre. With the quantum ogre you are railroading the party by removing player choice and agency. Even if the players have no information to make an informed decision, getting lucky is supposed to be possible and they made that choice with that luck factor in mind. The quantum ogre takes that from them.

But choice implies informed decision. Flipping a coin is not an informed decision. Not exactly the same, I just don't think flipping a coin is any better.

 

[Composer99]

I'd say as a rule of thumb that if your players feel like they were at a stage magic show - so, they know it's an act even if they don't necessarily know how it works, but bought into the premise and came away with their gameplay preferences satisfied, then you have done your job. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what techniques you used.

If your players feel like they have been conned, something has gone wrong. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what techniques you used. (Note that this can happen even if you are working from the best of intentions.)

If you as GM set out to deceive your players, then you are the problem. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what techniques you used.

 

[Lyxen]

I'd say as a rule of thumb that if your players feel like they were at a stage magic show - so, they know it's an act even if they don't necessarily know how it works, but bought into the premise and came away with their gameplay preferences satisfied, then you have done your job. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what techniques you used.

If your players feel like they have been conned, something has gone wrong. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what techniques you used. (Note that this can happen even if you are working from the best of intentions.)

If you as GM set out to deceive your players, then you are the problem. And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what techniques you used.

I agreed up to the last sentence. There can be very good reasons to deceive the players, in particular if it provides for a better game and experience for them. When you go to a magician's show, you know that he will deceive you (you know that you very probably won't know how), but it does not prevent you from enjoying the show.

As (almost) everything in this thread, it depends on the players' expectations. If they want to play CaS and test themselves, deception is probably not something that they want. But once more, it's not an obligation to write everything in advance and to respect that to the letter, it's only one way to play the game. In the end, it's a game of make believe anyway...

 

[Composer99]

I agreed up to the last sentence. There can be very good reasons to deceive the players, in particular if it provides for a better game and experience for them. When you go to a magician's show, you know that he will deceive you (you know that you very probably won't know how), but it does not prevent you from enjoying the show.

As (almost) everything in this thread, it depends on the players' expectations. If they want to play CaS and test themselves, deception is probably not something that they want. But once more, it's not an obligation to write everything in advance and to respect that to the letter, it's only one way to play the game. In the end, it's a game of make believe anyway...

The point of my comparison to stage magic is that even though the stage magician is pretending that something that is not true, is true (which is normally an ingredient of deceit), the magician is not setting out to deceive the audience - in fact, the audience knows they're being fooled, but they are willing to play along.

So IMO you never need to deceive your players. Like the stage magician and the audience, they can know they're being fooled and be willing to play along all the same. (And just like with a stage magician, it's not strictly necessary for the players to know how your tricks work.)

So what matters isn't whether you fudge or don't fudge dice, whether the ogre is "quantum" or not, and so on, but your intentions and the players' intentions going into gameplay, your gameplay preferences and the players' gameplay preferences, player buy-in, and how it all fits together.

---

Edit to add: I should like to add that while you as GM never need to deceive your players outside the fiction, it doesn't follow that creatures within the fiction of the game won't try to deceive the player characters. But that's part of player buy-in: they ought to know going in that, in principle, NPCs will lie to their faces, hide stuff, use illusions, that there will be things going on in the background of the fiction that they're not aware of, and so on.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm not even old and it just makes me kind of befuddled. If they're gonna arbitrarily end combat when you like, why make players roll all those dice in the first place? Just... narrate the battle being won?

You absolutely can. It's called improvisation. None of us NEED to roll dice at all. All of us at the game table could, if we all wanted to, just completely improvise the story we were telling-- including what happens in combat. That is all doable. It is possible to completely remove the "board game" out of D&D and produce the same stories just by everyone making stuff up. Heck... that's exactly what RPGs like Fiasco do-- they remove the dice rolling almost entirely and just let people improvise. They make up when their character does something well, they make up when their character completely fails. They decide when something happens in the story, they decide when their character completely misses noticing when said thing happened. The players improvise the entirety of the story-- the highs and the lows, the successes and the fails, when they do right and what they do wrong. And most importantly... they make up when they win... and they make up when they lose.

And they are completely okay when they lose.

But THAT is something that I don't think most people who play RPGs are really trained to do or have the mindset to do. Voluntarily losing in a scene-- mainly for the drama that comes with it and the story progression of building to a winning scene later on-- is not in most gamers DNA. It's not something gamers in general do, or like to do, or are willing to do, or even think it is something they should do.

For a lot of people... I think gaming in general and in RPGs specifically... the point is to win. The game (because it IS a game) is meant to be won. That's what makes a game a game. And if you can't actually win, then you aren't playing a game. And a fight in D&D when the success and failure and drama and experience all comes out of the four to eight players around the table just arbitrarily deciding as a group... when they hit and when they miss... and when they climb on the monster and when they fall down and stepped upon BY the monster... and when the monster gets hurt and when it shrugs off an attack... and when one party member shoots the perfect arrow through everyone else and hits the monster square in the eye and when that party member shoots an arrow aiming at the monster and hits their fellow party member instead...

...basically all the kinds of thing that can happen in a D&D combat... ...it's not a game.

Instead, it's a group-written story. And most people don't want to play that. At least not when they are playing D&D.

But that DM who just decides when the monster falls down when it seems dramatically important? He's just improvising and trying to make compelling drama. And if that's also what the other players at the table care about, RATHER than "winning" the game... then there is absolutely no issues whatsoever.

But for the player who cares about winning... the player who constantly complains that the Monk and Ranger are underpowered classes (because their characters in those classes are not in the best position to help the party win)... the player who wants every hit point tallied, every damage roll applied, every rule in the game followed... the player whose only concern about "drama" is the results of how the dice game is played... the player who needs every single encounter placed in time and space and only comes up when the "playing pieces" of their characters move over the space on the "game board" where those encounters are found...

...the improvisor and "story-first" DM is an anathema to everything they play the game for. Because improv is not a game.

Needless to say... in my case, as someone who is and has been a professional theatrical improvisor for more than 25 years... I can tell you that improv is just as much a game as Monopoly is. It might not be random... but randomness is in no way a requirement for a game to be a game. So I can be both an improvisor and a gamer at the same exact time in the exact same game, and thus that DM who makes arbitrary decisions when a monster falls down is playing the game just as much as the other DMs who won't fudge anything.

 

[Oofta]

You absolutely can. It's called improvisation. None of us NEED to roll dice at all. All of us at the game table could, if we all wanted to, just completely improvise the story we were telling-- including what happens in combat. That is all doable. It is possible to completely remove the "board game" out of D&D and produce the same stories just by everyone making stuff up. Heck... that's exactly what RPGs like Fiasco do-- they remove the dice rolling almost entirely and just let people improvise. They make up when their character does something well, they make up when their character completely fails. They decide when something happens in the story, they decide when their character completely misses noticing when said thing happened. The players improvise the entirely of the story-- the highs and the lows, the successes and the fails, when they do right and what they do wrong. And most importantly... they make up when they win... and they make up when they lose.

And they are completely okay when they lose.

But THAT is something that I don't think most people who play RPGs are really trained to do or have the mindset to do. Voluntarily losing in a scene-- mainly for the drama that comes with it and the story progression of building to a winning scene later on-- is not in most gamers DNA. It's not something gamers in general do, or like to do, or are willing to do, or even think it is something they should do.

For a lot of people... I think gaming in general and in RPGs specifically... the point is to win. The game (because it IS a game) is meant to be won. And if you can't actually win, then your aren't playing a game. And a fight in D&D when the success and failure and drama and experience all comes out of the four to eight players around the table just arbitrarily deciding as a group... when they hit and when they miss... and when they climb on the monster and when they fall down and stepped upon BY the monster... and when the monster gets hurt and when it shrugs off an attack... and when one party member shoots the perfect arrow through everyone else and hits the monster square in the eye and when that party member shoots an arrow aiming at the monster and hits their fellow party member instead...

...basically all the kinds of thing that can happen in a D&D combat

...it's not a game, it's a group-written story. And most people don't want to play that.

But that DM who just decides when the monster falls down when it seems dramatically important? He's just improvising and trying to make compelling drama. And if that's also what the other players at the table care about, RATHER than "winning" the game... then there is absolutely no issues whatsoever.

But for the player who cares about winning... the player who constantly complains that the Monk and Ranger are underpowered classes (because their characters in those classes are not in the best position to help the party win)... the player who wants every hit point tallied, every damage roll applied, every rule in the game followed... the player whose only concern about "drama" is the results of how the dice game is played... the player who needs every single encounter placed in time and space and only comes up when the "playing pieces" of their characters move over the space on the "game board" where those encounters are found...

...the improvisor and "story-first" DM is an anathema to everything they play the game for. Because improv is not a game.

Needless to say... in my case, as someone who is and has been a professional theatrical improvisor for more than 25 years... I can tell you that improv is just as much a game as Monopoly is. It might not be random... but randomness is in no way a requirement for a game to be a game. So I can be both an improvisor and a gamer at the same exact time in the exact same game.

The problem with "the monster dies when I decide they do" is that it means that everyone is aware that their actions in combat don't really matter. The DM has already determined the outcome of the combat - the monster will either survive whatever the PCs throw at it or it will die at a climactic moment.

It's the ultimate (combat) railroad.