D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[TheSword]

You can't have one without the other unless there's only one way in or out...and then once outside...you can go any direction you want, provided the terrain isn't impassible.

Yes. Exactly that. Because I want the world to feel like it's a real place where the choice the players make matter. If they go north that's a completely different choice than going south...because different things exist to the north than to the south.

Absolutely. If there's a village to the north and the farmers are coming to your town from there...they're going to be on the north road...not the south road. If the ogre is staking out the south road to waylay people...he's going to be on the south road...not the north road.

Not every choice made is informed.

Space-time. They're connected. You cannot have space without time, nor time without space. Disconnecting an encounter from one or the other give you a quantum ogre problem. If you as the DM decide that the players will encounter an ogre regardless of which door they open (space) or regardless of when they open the door (time)...you're still deciding to use illusionism. Their choice doesn't matter, this encounter is predetermined. Period. It's a bad tool to use.

So what? DMs do it all the time. Players do it all the time. Real people in real life do it all the time.

If you want your world to feel real, yes, they should. Sometimes the PCs will miss things. That's okay. The farmers had important info about some thing and the PCs will find out when they get back to town...if they get back to town.

Yes, they can. But that's still illusionism.

I’m not going to get into a point by point rebuttal with you. As i said a choice that isn’t meaningful isn’t invalidated by something unrelated to that choice. Your method: deciding a specific location for the ogre is impractical outside a bounded dungeon and the only way it works in the big wide world is by artificially restricting choices I.e north, south… which is itself railroading. By placing your ogre in the ‘North’ you’re invalidating the players choice of going NW, NNW, N, NNE and NE. How dare you!

The truth is, it is perfectly possible to have adventures that proceed from series of events branching following player decisions over time without having that based on location. I suspect as you use the method of writing your adventures as you go along you are freed from the expectations of having to plan ahead beyond a few steps. It’s an option many people don’t have… least of all someone writing a campaign for other people to run.

 

[overgeeked]

What can be done to enable DMs to be less railroady? Recommend good hex crawls? Suggust improv classes? Write a capter in the DMG? Have a ton of random tables?

What @jmartkdr2 said, plus pick up Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and read the Alexandrian blog.

Basically you want to get into the habit of prepping situations, not plots. Plots involve the assumed outcome of situations. First this event happens, the PCs will react this way, and so then go here, and do this. Don't do that. Don't assume what the PCs will do. Don't assume they will succeed or fail at any given task. Put actual, meaningful choices in front of them and roll with whatever they do. Like you create this whole elaborate adventure you want the PCs to go one and it all comes down to the PCs going to this one place, talking with this one NPC, and accepting the job. That's a whole lot of assumptions you shouldn't be making. Because if you do, you get set on the idea that this is the adventure tonight and if those pesky PCs get any choice in the matter they'll choose something else, and you don't want your prep to go to waste, so you nudge them...push them...railroad them into your adventure. That's basically the death of fun. Removing the players' choices.

There's a quest giver at this tavern. But be okay with the PCs never going there. Don't move the NPC so that no matter where they go, they will meet that NPC.

There's a quest giver at the tavern the PCs are in. But be okay with the PCs never talking to that NPC. Don't move the quest so that whoever the PCs talk to, they will get that quest.

But you can still create and use that same idea as a hook instead of a railroad plot.

You create dozens of hooks for the PCs to engage with and leave it up to them which they follow. Have the situation prepped in rough outlines, but don't pre-determine exactly what happens. That's for the PCs. The DM should set up hooks and interesting situations and obstacles for the PCs to overcome. It's entirely up to the PCs whether they engage or not and how they engage if they do.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I think there's a meaningful difference. Illusionism (the Quantum Ogre) means no matter where they go they're going to have to deal with it. No?

Overgeeked, are all encounters in the games you run the consequences of player choice? Or are some of them simply things happening in the world that they run into regardless, but then get to deal with or avoid as they choose?

Railroading, as I understand it, involves tracks leading from A to B to C, from which the PCs can't remove themselves. The train goes this route. It cannot jump the tracks between A and B to go visit Z instead.

Illusionism just hides the tracks from the players. They still can't remove themselves, because no matter what they choose, the ogre will be there waiting.

A = a fork in the road.
B= ogre encounter.
C = village with NPC.

No matter which fork they choose, A goes to B which then leads on to C.

 

[TheSword]

The problem with having to create dozens of hooks and quests as @overgeeked suggests is that it’s wasteful and labour intensive. If you then repurpose those hooks for other locations as a practical measure you’re then railroading again according to them, because you’re forcing encounters.

The reality is that most players don’t care how they find out about the hook, they want to get on with the adventure.

 

[overgeeked]

Your method: deciding a specific location for the ogre is impractical outside a bounded dungeon and the only way it works in the big wide world is by artificially restricting choices I.e north, south… which is itself railroading.

What are you talking about? In my games the players are free to pick a direction and go. Whatever they find, they find. Whatever they miss, they miss. It's literally the opposite of railroading.

By placing your ogre in the ‘North’ you’re invalidating the players choice of going NW, NNW, N, NNE and NE. How dare you!

No, by placing my ogre in the north I'm providing verisimilitude. And I'm letting the players make meaningful choices that have consequences. If I were to move what I've prepped in front of them no matter where they go, I'd be invalidating their choices. Because I'd be removing the consequence of their choices.

The truth is, it is perfectly possible to have adventures that proceed from series of events branching following player decisions over time without having that based on location. I suspect as you use the method of writing your adventures as you go along you are freed from the expectations of having to plan ahead beyond a few steps.

Yes, because I want my players to have meaningful choices. Not to only be able to pick which track they follow on occasion.

It’s an option many people don’t have… least of all someone writing a campaign for other people to run.

Good thing we're not talking about professional campaign writers then, only DMs with groups at their tables.

 

[TheSword]

Good thing we're not talking about professional campaign writers then, only DMs with groups at their tables.

Plenty of people don’t have schedules that allow writing a session at a time. That’s a luxury.

I’d love to be able to fit in six hours a week per group, regularly in order to write brand new content for three groups of players so instead I pinch, adapt, cut corners and write in such a way as to maximize my time to fun ratio.

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see where in this example GM fudges or changes anything.

I think it's more of an "implicit action declaration" than anyone usurping anyone's agency.

I learned decades ago not to do things like, "You enter..." Invariably the response from the players was something like, "Wait, no. I didn't say I go in." I think that maybe they were worried about encounters or traps and wanted to have the decision go in be theirs. I agree with that.

Telling them what their PCs do is taking away their agency to make that decision. Now when I narrate something like, "You arrive at the hermits hut. The door is shut.", and I pause afterward and they just stare, I stare back, perhaps with a gesture indicating that they should say something. Usually the pause is to see if I'm going to give more information.

 

[Gradine]

Wait there are different ways to do things that work for different people?

 

[RangerWickett]

Check out the Alexandrian blog. The Three Clue Rule and Node-Based Design have a lot of great advice. Try picking up an investigation specific game, like Call of Cthulhu (especially the most recent edition) as it has a lot of great advice.

I mean, I've published an entire investigation adventure path. I've got a good grip of how to seed clues. But also I don't see the purpose in wasting narrative time.

In a movie, if a character hears a noise and goes to investigate, that should end up being relevant somehow, either for what the character discovers or how the event affects their mood or sets the tone of the story. We don't put everything that happens onto the screen, because we don't want to bore people.

So if the GM has presented information in a way that the players think that action X will be relevant somehow, my stance is to make that action relevant.

To me, a 'railroad' is when I say, "I want the party to chase the villain, and the villain gets away, so if they try anything that I haven't prepared, I'll just thwart them and come up with a reason why it doesn't work." Railroading is when the GM thwarts player intention in order to preserve the story the GM wants.

What I'm advocating for is sort of a ludo-narrative flexibility, recognizing that we're playing out of the mutual goal of having fun, and thus to tweak things as needed to ensure player intention is validated.

 

[prabe]

Wait there are different ways to do things that work for different people?

I know, right!?