D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[FrogReaver]

For me, if the players are aware and choose to follow along, as they would in most published adventures - that's not railroading. The players simply recognize that their choices are constrained by the adventure and are cool with that.

For it to be railroading there had to be an element of deception, where the players think their actions have meaning when they really don't.

I think deception is the most common way to ‘force’ players along, but not the only?

 

[Mort]

Exactly, thus the principle of an independent world negating railroading.

I guess I'm confused by what you mean?

Are you saying a world completely independent of the PCs cannot have railroading in it?

I suppose that's true IF the players realize that no matter what they do their actions have no impact. But then, what exactly are they doing there?

 

[TwoSix]

As long as the players voluntarily stay on the tracks it’s not a railroad. The moment a dm intervenes to keep them on the tracks, that part is railroading.

I think it depends.

If the players accidently take some action that gets them off the path, and the GM steers them back onto the path through some kind of scene, then I don't view that as negative railroading behavior, although the overall game structure is still an accepted railroad.

If the players deliberately evade the storypath by ignoring the story hooks, then they're violating the social contract they took on by agreeing to play in a story path adventure. If the GM never offered them a choice and the players are rebelling by not following it, then we're just into wildly degenerate play.

The worst kind of railroading, the one we were warned about in the '80s and '90s, is the illusionary/deceptive railroad. The one where the setting presented is that of an open-ended sandbox, but the DM has actually embedded an entire story path in the game and expects the players to follow it. The classic "the mountains in the north are unclimbable, the desert to the south is uncrossable, and the ocean to the west is too stormy to sail, so I guess we'll go east."

That's the true pejorative of "railroading", the deception. Non-pejorative railroading is simply a game with an expected path and endpoint.

 

[TwoSix]

I guess I'm confused by what you mean?

Are you saying a world completely independent of the PCs cannot have railroading in it?

I suppose that's true IF the players realize that no matter what they do their actions have no impact. But then, what exactly are they doing there?

Yea, I think that's a tricky path to navigate.

I can see a DM trying to do heavy sim play, with most of the setting action (and thus what the PCs encounter) being driven by algorithm (encounter tables).

But eventually the actions of the PCs are going to need to be accounted for by simulated rational actor NPCs, and at that point how does the GM avoid some sort of fiat decision?

 

[CreamCloud0]

I think it depends.

If the players accidently take some action that gets them off the path, and the GM steers them back onto the path through some kind of scene, then I don't view that as negative railroading behavior, although the overall game structure is still an accepted railroad.

If the players deliberately evade the storypath by ignoring the story hooks, then they're violating the social contract they took on by agreeing to play in a story path adventure. If the GM never offered them a choice and the players are rebelling by not following it, then we're just into wildly degenerate play.

The worst kind of railroading, the one we were warned about in the '80s and '90s, is the illusionary/deceptive railroad. The one where the setting presented is that of an open-ended sandbox, but the DM has actually embedded an entire story path in the game and expects the players to follow it. The classic "the mountains in the north are unclimbable, the desert to the south is uncrossable, and the ocean to the west is too stormy to sail, so I guess we'll go east."

That's the true pejorative of "railroading", the deception. Non-pejorative railroading is simply a game with an expected path and endpoint.

see, i wouldn't call that deceptive railroading due to being so barefaced about it, deceptive railroading IMO would more be the 'quantum ogre' of plot progression, where whatever you do initially seems successful but ultimately only ends up leading you back into the planned plot without you realizing it, you head in any direction and you'd still always end up in the plot location, head north and bandits capture everyone while asleep and send you to plotsburgh, head south and desert mirages mean you end up wandering to plotsburgh, go west and a storm shipwrecks you, washing you up on the shores of...you guessed it! plotsburgh.

 

[TwoSix]

see, i wouldn't call that deceptive railroading due to being so barefaced about it, deceptive railroading IMO would more be the 'quantum ogre' of plot progression, where whatever you do initially seems successful but ultimately only ends up leading you back into the planned plot without you realizing it, you head in any direction and you'd still always end up in the plot location, head north and bandits capture everyone while asleep and send you to plotsburgh, head south and desert mirages mean you end up wandering to plotsburgh, go west and a storm shipwrecks you, washing you up on the shores of...you guessed it! plotsburgh.

I mean, if you're obvious in your deception, are you actually being deceptive?

But I think these 2 cases are pretty much the same thing.

1) We start at Place A, and we have paths 1, 2, 3, and 4 out of place A. 1, 2, and 3 turn out to be dead ends, and the PCs have to take path 4 to get to place B.

2) We start at place A, and we have paths 1, 2, 3, and 4 out of place A. All 4 paths take slightly different routes but all end up in place B.

If it wasn't clear to the players that the path they took was always going to lead to place B, that's deceptive railroading. The "illusion of meaningful choice" is always the root problem.

 

[AlViking]

There's always going to be a spectrum from sandiest of sandboxes to the extremist of railroads, let's say a scale of 1-10.

Most published mods seem to be in the 7-8 range because to me even a very linear game still is more of a highway with certain stops planned than a railroad. To qualify as a 10, no player decision ever matters, the outcome of every social or combat encounter is predetermined.

I even saw a story once where the DM turned it up to 11. The DM supposedly told the players what to say and complained when they didn't roll the correct number because he was trying to replicate a streamed game. Needless to say there was no session 2.

But it seems that to some people having a broad overall plot, anything not collaboratively improvised on the spot is a railroad.

But this is another one of those cases where the term used is wishy washy and it depends on whom you ask.

 

[Enrahim]

Replace "this" with "a bluff." The sentence is really, "Unless a bluff is totally foreign to the area." For instance, don't try to build one in a sand desert where a bluff is likely to be totally foreign to the area. Or on a flat island. And since they were hex maps, there might not be one on a plain, or in a hex area of forest.

Yes? This was what I assumed when I wrote my post?

 

[Mort]

There's always going to be a spectrum from sandiest of sandboxes to the extremist of railroads, let's say a scale of 1-10.

Most published mods seem to be in the 7-8 range because to me even a very linear game still is more of a highway with certain stops planned than a railroad. To qualify as a 10, no player decision ever matters, the outcome of every social or combat encounter is predetermined.

I even saw a story once where the DM turned it up to 11. The DM supposedly told the players what to say and complained when they didn't roll the correct number because he was trying to replicate a streamed game. Needless to say there was no session 2.

But it seems that to some people having a broad overall plot, anything not collaboratively improvised on the spot is a railroad.

But this is another one of those cases where the term used is wishy washy and it depends on whom you ask.

I tend to limit the term railroad to the derogatory usage, to avoid confusion.

Otherwise, I just prefer the term linear. If an adventure goes from A-B-C-Z, the players are aware of this and go along, that's just linear. Not only is there nothing wrong with this, in my experience, many players actually prefer this over a sandbox (especially a sandbox where the DM hasn't set enough hooks and the like).

If the adventure PRETENDS to be open world, endless choices with each choice leading to different opportunities consequences, but in fact the only meaningful choices are the ones that lead from A-B-C-Z, that's a railroad.

 

[TorgoTheWhite]

I tend to limit the term railroad to the derogatory usage, to avoid confusion.

Otherwise, I just prefer the term linear. If an adventure goes from A-B-C-Z, the players are aware of this and go along, that's just linear. Not only is there nothing wrong with this, in my experience, many players actually prefer this over a sandbox (especially a sandbox where the DM hasn't set enough hooks and the like).

If the adventure PRETENDS to be open world, endless choices with each choice leading to different opportunities consequences, but in fact the only meaningful choices are the ones that lead from A-B-C-Z, that's a railroad.