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

[Enrahim]

I don't follow?

Here, the DM has presented a scene and is having it go a certain way (the track).

The player, not wanting things to go in that direction, says his character is explicitly picking his nose (trying to get off that track).

The DM, not wanting to derail his scene with the nose picking disallows the action and proceeds as if it never happened (continuing along the track).

Seems straightforward railroading?

That case might be railroading. But your question that I replied to was way more general than that

 

[hawkeyefan]

That's linear, but not a railroad. When I walk through a path in the woods, I usually opt to stay on it, even though I could step off any time I want.

The DM there has asked nicely for the players to stick to the adventure, but it is not required. If the players agree and stay on the path, that's their decision, not the DM's. They could leave the path if they wanted and the DM would have to improvise or call it a night.

I don't see as strong a distinction between linear and railroad. They're metaphors... descriptors. And to me, they describe very similar things.

Like... if I'm on an adventure path and I don't "get off the path" as you say, then my experience of play will basically be the same as a railroad.

Really? You think if you walk into a traditional game expecting to have a bunch of player facing ability to affect the fiction as a player you are being railroaded? You aren't. You have no right to agree to a traditional game and expect anything other than a traditional sort of game. Any feelings of being railroaded are on you. You aren't being railroaded, though.

No. When I agree to play a trad game, I know what limitations I should expect. I know that things will likely be on tracks of one form or another as far as what we experience, and there being some overarching story. Not always, but very often. When I agree to play, I accept that.

But I expect that my decisions and declarations will matter. Like in my example from Star Trek where I wasn't given the chance to point out I wanted to move quietly and stealthily, nor was I given the chance to notice oncoming NPCs who were not making any attempt to be stealthy.

No. You just shouldn't play in a game where you aren't happy. Agreeing to play in such a game, though, and then being unhappy with it being run as that sort of game, doesn't make you railroaded, no matter how unhappy you are with it.

Well, no. As you always point out, the rules grant absolute authority to the DM. So if I agree to play D&D, that's what I should expect? Your nose-picking blocking that will drive me from the game and then have you use my PC as an NPC?

If I should not expect that... then I don't see why it needs to be pointed out. And that bit of extremist rhetoric aside, there are still so many gray areas in question... there's no certain way for D&D 5e to be played. So what am I supposed to expect?

Why would you direct him to my posts? Nothing there indicates that I use absolute authority for that sort of thing. Sending him to my posts is going to be misleading.

What's more, I've never in my life demanded absolute authority when I DM D&D. You can't demand something that the game rules automatically give every DM who plays the game. When you DM D&D, you have absolute authority. When @EzekielRaiden DMs D&D, he has absolute authority.

I direct him to your quotes because you always feel the need to point out that the DM has absolute authority. You must be pointing that out for a reason. If not, then why point it out?

If it is never meant to be a case where you can deny a player declared action and then take that player's character and turn them into an NPC for seemingly no reason at all... if that's not meant to happen, then why do you insist that the game grants that level of authority? And if your interpretation is accepted as accurate, why does the game need to state this?

How are players supposed to base their expectations for what play will be like?

And as long as you feel the need to point it out, I'll use it as an example of a poster claiming absolute authority for the DM.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No, its a means of resolving the outcome of an uncertain action declared for the character. It's all done by the character as part of the ongoing fiction happening in that instant.

Which was also the case with the runes.

It can. If it does the DM likely won't have players for long.

Again, I'm not talking about someone who controls every decision. I don't care about the caricature GM who's railroading everything every moment of play.

I'm more concerned with instances of railroading during play. I'm more concerned with play that revolves around passively following the plot.

Games that are mostly fine, but could be improved if the GM just stuck to processes more or who was honest about what play would involve and so on. Otherwise perfectly competent and capable GMs.

Also, linear is not railroad.

Meh, they're close enough for me and the distinctions matter so little to me, that I consider them the same. If it helps, you can treat my use of either as interchangeable with the other.

Depends on the decision. I prefer as much of the fiction to be defined before actual play, at least for significant lore. We always need to fill in details and color along with deciding reactions to what the characters do. I'm not going to add a wandering ogre just because the characters avoided a combat. I'm not going to add a map because the characters are lost.

So you didn't answer. What are some examples of each? What DM decisions introducing a new element of play are changing game reality and which ones aren't? How do you make the distinction?

I see. So it seem to me like yor concern is more about procedural matters like pacing and rules application, than the created content itself?

In this example, yes. But that does not mean it is always so.

I find that what many trad GMs describe when they describe their play... the content of what their play includes... sounds very much like a path. References to things like "BBEG" and "hooks" and so on. These are elements of a story, and one that's been largely sketched, if not detailed exactly.

I find that the need for prep largely reinforces this. To maintain a brisk pace of play, the GM of a trad game needs to have material ready to go. To have material ready to go, he has to have done it before play. For that material to be relevant and useful, it has to come up in play.

I mean... this is pretty much self-evident.

Can things be done to mitigate this to some extent? Yes. Can procedural elements be implemented that help alleviate this kind of thing? Yes. Is every trad GM running a game doing all those things? No, of course not. Does that make them "bad" or their style "bad"? I don't think so... I don't think it's very enlightening to discuss an extreme example like a GM who gives their player no say whatsoever.

I think it's far more interesting and useful to discuss the practices that we're all likely doing or familiar with that maybe are contributing to play being less fun or effective than it is.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Of course, this is one of the most basic powers of the DM.

Well, if the GM alters reality, I may be annoyed by that. The setting and world should be reasonably consistent.

This is why I think it makes sense to make a distinction between altering something.... taking A and making it B.... and establishing something... taking a blank spot and saying this is A.

Treating these things as the same will only cause confusion.

I guess it is great for you to feel a set way, but why blame Railroading? To say "any time anything happens that I don't like is a Railroad", is just going to have nearly everything be a Railroad to you.

If a GM overrides or ignores my input as a player, then that's railroading to me.

If you don't have a Buddy Sharing DM that immediately tells you every game detail, you will see Railroads everywhere.

I don't know what a Buddy Sharing DM is, so I have no idea what you're saying here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

...yup. the player has full control of their character in play, and control of its creation subject to the limitations of the GMs setting, in the bulk of trad games (including my own). And many other non-trad games as well. I continue to see zero problem with that arrangement as a player or GM.

The point, that seems to be continually ignored, is that the player is repeatedly presented as having this enormous degree of freedom, but when we actually take the mask off, it's revealed that this freedom is almost totally illusory.

The customer can have it in any color they want, as long as it's black.

The player is free to choose anything...only so long as the things they want are on the pre-approved GM list.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I actually agree with @TwoSix here. You can agree to a railroad. It's very rare, but can be done. In all my time playing I've only agreed to it once. One of my players wanted to try DMing, but asked us to stay on the adventure he made and not try to deviate. His reason was that it was hard enough for him the first time out DMing without the group going every which way they want without warning like they do to me, and he didn't think he could handle it. So we agreed not to deviate and let him put us back on course somehow if we accidentally went off course.

Since we could not leave the path even if we wanted to later, having agreed in advance that he could put us back on, it was a voluntary railroad.

While I don't think it's rare... I mean, Paizo has built their entire business around it... there are plenty of times where it may make sense. You mention one... playing along so that a new GM can learn the ropes. Another could be to help new players learn the ropes. I've GMed for my kids a bit, and they benefit from some structure, so it makes sense to keep things on rails to some extent.

I also have friends who want the equivalent of a video game. They don't want to be thinking and making major decisions about where things go and all that. They want to decide if they should use Second Wind now or save it for later, and so on.

This is why I try not to cast railroading in a purely negative light. Some people enjoy it, for whatever reason.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, this has the ring of the old "player is trying to ruin the game for everyone".

The classic bad player that will just endlessly do stuff like "I walk up to the king and pick my nose". The player just wants a response that will ruin the game.

I don't think it is railroading at all to block such a hostile player with a "nope, your action does not happen" and keep the game rolling on.

And this ignores the possibility of the GM alleging without evidence or rationale that the player is doing this, and thus shutting down anything they desire to do that deviates from the GM's railroad.

Because, as always, it's the GM who decides what is "disruptive"/"hostile" and what isn't, and the GM who decides whether or not a player's appeal has any merit.

The party alleged to have done something wrong is also the party that decides whether something was done wrong. But there's nothing whatever wrong with that, no obviously not. The megacorp would never abuse their power to decide whether or not they deserve to face penalties for their behavior. Never ever ever!

 

[Lanefan]

The party alleged to have done something wrong is also the party that decides whether something was done wrong. But there's nothing whatever wrong with that, no obviously not. The megacorp would never abuse their power to decide whether or not they deserve to face penalties for their behavior. Never ever ever!

Seeing this I think the next halfway-important NPC my party meets has to be named Megacorp, just on principle.

 

[Faolyn]

I don't see as strong a distinction between linear and railroad. They're metaphors... descriptors. And to me, they describe very similar things.

Like... if I'm on an adventure path and I don't "get off the path" as you say, then my experience of play will basically be the same as a railroad.

Not really, because a railroad only happens if you try to step off the path and aren't allowed. If you can go and do something different, but choose not to, it's not a railroad. Your Star Trek example is probably an example of a railroad (at the least, it certainly sounds like the GM had a scene in mind they wanted to happen), but I have to ask if you said to the GM "no, I want to go in stealthily" and if so, what happened?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is IF the DM leads the players into believing that they are the ones establishing these details, when in fact they are not.

If/when the players think that certain details are established by their actions but, actually, they are determined by the DM regardless of what the players do - that's railroading.

If we're just talking about setting details the players have no part in? Setup, worldbuilding, things established before the players even get it it - stuff like that? No, that wouldn't have anything to do with railroading.




Yes, that's basically what I'm talking about. I don't think there is disagreement here.

I cannot find the original post that asserted the thing I wanted to respond to, so I am going to respond to this one. Might have been you, might have been another.

"Railroading" does not require deception, but it's rare to have railroading that doesn't include deception because players usually respond negatively to railroading that is 100% overt. But this brings up a very important point: there are several things that get called railroading, but aren't.

Linearity isn't railroading. A player-driven story can still be quite linear if the players, totally unprompted, believe there's only one reasonable course of action, or if they agree that a linear story makes sense. For example, they go to a cave. Caves generally are cul de sacs, they don't go anywhere, you have to exit from (more or less) the same point you entered, or at least near to it. If the party goes into a cave they want to investigate, they're probably going to expect to come back out from the original entrance after having defeated the bad things inside. That can still be 100% purely player-driven without any railroading.

Likewise, running a module isn't railroading, if the GM is clear about what they're doing. Can't run a module and pretend it's a homebrew campaign, sure, but folks kind of have to understand that a module is going to entail some restrictions of their choices in order to continue to make sense over time. Any player who doesn't accept this is either being foolish or disingenuous. Of course, any GM who acts like running a module gives them free rein to enforce one and only one action at every moment is also being either foolish or disingenuous, so it's not like the player is the only one who could go wrong here, but it's more likely to be a player error than a GM one of we are assuming at least a minimum effort at good faith.

More subtly, cause and effect/action and consequence aren't railroading, though a deceptive appeal to them can be. That is, actions have consequences. That's something everyone needs to accept in order for a game to function. Avoiding the usual cliche assassination example, consider something like "actively supporting a pretender to an empty throne". (Remember, in this context, "pretender" does not have a negative connotation; it's just the term for someone who lays claim to a title, without comment on the merits of their claim.) People will judge the party for supporting that candidate and not others. This will open some opportunities and close others. Now, a deceptive appeal to "consequences" or "cause and effect" is most certainly a common tactic for trying to deflect player concerns about real railroading, visible or not, but the fact that someone can assert it as a guise to deflect accusations of railroading does not mean that all cause and effect/action and consequence situations are railroading.

Ham-fisted railroading, what one might call "naive" railroading, is usually just beneath the skin. It's rare for it to be done so overtly that it can't be at least a little bit covered up (because such overt control is generally disliked)...but it's not impossible. Handing out pre-generared characters, for example, is often a prelude to railroading players, since the character, being GM-created, can be argued to never have motives the GM doesn't approve of. But because this is well-known as a preliminary to pretty open railroading, few players are particularly eager to do this.

Illusionism is the word for railroading that is actively concealed, where the GM relies on repeated or continuous deception in order to make players believe that they have freedom they don't and that the campaign is player-driven when it is not.