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

[TwoSix]

I guess my question there is why not keep the standard meaning of the 80’s and 90’s term when we have a different term to reference the exact thing you describe? (Also notable is that railroaded is not a term that originated in RPGs it’s much older than them).

Or maybe I should ask first, what’s the difference in your mind between a linear adventure using my definition and a railroad using yours?

Because the only difference between those two games in their overall game trajectory and narrative arc is "whether or not the players know it's happening."

Repurposing the term as a non-pejorative demonstrates our increased understanding that no playstyles are "bad" in and of themselves as long as everyone is clear on what the game is about.

 

[FrogReaver]

Forcing some specific things, as opposed to forcing everything.

That’s helpful. So I should have been more clear. I thought it was clear the context was in regards to forcing to stay on a particular path. Thus ‘forcing everything when it comes to not staying on the path’. Which to me reads identical to @Maxperson.

 

[FrogReaver]

Because the only difference between those two games in their overall game trajectory and narrative arc is "whether or not the players know it's happening."

That seems like a rather large detail? We even send people to jail or not based on that distinction.

Repurposing the term as a non-pejorative demonstrates our increased understanding that no playstyles are "bad" in and of themselves as long as everyone is clear on what the game is about.

Sorry, but the way you show a playstyle isn’t bad isn’t to repurpose a pejorative term to describe it, it’s to use the non-pejorative term to describe it. I’d have some sympathy if there wasn’t an alternate term. But there is here.

 

[Umbran]

If you voluntarily agreed to it then there’s no force involved. Don’t railroads involve forcing the players to stay in the path?

Players can accidentally wander off the path, even if they agreed that the path is fine, and "force" is then required to return them to it.

 

[Emerikol]

The assigned role of the player is to participate in a campaign fairly and to have fun. She has no "out of character" objectives. It is why she determines information about her character. The GM has everything else in the world and they have an agenda. Now, I fully expect them to be honest and fair bit they have temptations not to be. As a player, I've seen it happen.

Now, I've also seen bad players, and to be honest, Ice never felt they were containable by the GM threatening and browbeating them. Any player this would work on is likely a very poor player anyway. But sure, the GM can decide if they feel like the player is misbehaving, to eject them as a player in their group.

Funny how the exact same argument cuts both ways, eh?

It doesn't though. I reject both your point and your attempt at humor. We will just have to agree to disagree. Both statements cannot be true. And no, the player is free to play a character that could reasonable exist in the world the DM has designed. Not just anything.

Mine is not.

Further, you act like power inside the world is somehow some tiny minor thing of no real consequence, when it's anything but. It's literally the most important power one could have in the activity. Like saying that Congress "only" has the power of the purse, as if that weren't one of the most important things for making a government run!

I do think it is very important. DMs who abandon that authority are poor DMs that I avoid like the plague. It is though a game so in the greater grand scheme of things it is not massively significant. Children starving is significant. Switching DMs or changing games is not.

 

[TwoSix]

That seems like a rather large detail? We even send people to jail or not based on that distinction.

It's a large detail in making a normative declaration about whether that game is being conducted properly. It's not a major detail in trying to describe a game taxonomically.

Sorry, but the way you show a playstyle isn’t bad isn’t to repurpose a pejorative term to describe it, it’s to use the non-pejorative term to describe it. I’d have some sympathy if there wasn’t an alternate term. But there is here.

Sometimes friction in communication is a good thing. The provocation inherent in the repurposing is the point.

 

[FrogReaver]

Players can accidentally wander off the path, and "force" is then required to return them to it.

I wouldn’t call what the dm does force if they’ve agreed to have the dm place them back on the path in the event they wander off it.

There’s a difference in saying, hey wizard polymorph me into a frog and the wizard forcefully polymorphing me into a frog without my consent.

 

[FrogReaver]

It's a large detail in making a normative declaration about whether that game is being conducted properly. It's not a major detail in trying to describe a game taxonomically.

Unless the taxonomy has categories for whether the dm is behaving according to the players wishes or not. Then it’s still taxonomical.

Sometimes friction in communication is a good thing. The provocation inherent in the repurposing is the point.

And Sometimes you just did the hole deeper. You’ve now admitted It’s now purposefully using a pejorative term for provocation. No wonder so many push against your definition of railroad.

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t see the difference you envision here?

The difference is that with a railroad, I still get to play my character within the confines of the train. I can burn one train car down, repair the next, and so on. I may be stuck on the train, but the choices I make while on the train are mine. My agency is limited since some choices(those to exit or stop the train) are gone, but others are still mine to decide.

If the DM is controlling my character, all agency is gone. My PC isn't being forced down a rail. He's not even on a train at that point. All voluntary movement is gone. Even the forward along the rail.

And as both I and @Umbran mentioned, you can accidentally wander off of the rail and be forced back onto the track in a voluntary railroad.

 

[Maxperson]

I wouldn’t call what the dm does force if they’ve agreed to have the dm place them back on the path in the event they wander off it.

There’s a difference in saying, hey wizard polymorph me into a frog and the wizard forcefully polymorphing me into a frog without my consent.

That's not quite the equivalent of what we are saying.

If I don't know that I'm off the rail, the DM has to push me back onto it. A push is force.

With your frog example, that's just the player agreeing to the railroad(becoming a frog). It's when the frog jumps onto the wrong lily pad by mistake and has to be plucked up by a bird and "accidentally" dropped back onto the original lily pad that force comes into play.