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

[Faolyn]

I suppose that’s what makes it linear? But again, a linear game that a player cooperates with and plays along will essentially have the same experience that the railroad would provide. This is why I don’t see that huge a distinction.

Imagine you're in an adventure and there's a monster between you and your goal. The GM expects you to kill the monster, but instead you decide to negotiate with it or even befriend it. In a linear adventure, the GM will be OK with that. In a railroad, the GM will do their darndest to make you kill it, or punish you for not killing it.

In a railroad, the GM will take over the character, at least a little, to ensure that the PCs do what the GM wants. In the game I was in (Changeling: the Dreaming), the book says that redcaps are always hungry and will eat anything and everything. The player tried to eat stuff. The GM didn't want it and so took over, telling the player that no, their character wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat, because their eating was getting in the way of the GM's story. In reality, it wasn't at all--the player wasn't eating anything (or anyone) that the plot required or that was anything more than mere scenery (seriously, it was a stream of magically-created pies). But the GM didn't want the player to do that and so intervened.

Also, in a linear adventure, the plot hooks are usually enough to make the players want to continue on the adventure's path.

In a railroad, the players aren't given a choice but to stick to the path. Think of video games where you literally can't continue until you perform whatever the next quest is. In a railroad, parts of the world simply aren't open to the players unless they're part of the story. A door won't open, no matter how well the player rolls, or the room beyond will have nothing in it, or a monster far too powerful for the PCs to hope to even dent, simply because that door isn't part of the GM's story.

Another reason is that I’ve experienced reasonable requests to “stick to the path” or to “engage with the material” that aren’t GMs being tyrannical, but rather them making a sincere request.

While that's pretty railroady, that's clearly because the GM doesn't have anything prepared and isn't used to improvising.

I’ve run some of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. They require significant investment by a GM. Player, too… but the GM typically spends the money and the time to read the books.

If that’s what the GM has done… they’ve made that investment and then said to their players “hey, I’m gonna run Kingmaker, what do you guys think?” and everyone seems on board… it really shouldn’t be that surprising that he’ll expect folks to stick to the material.

<shrug> That depends on the GM. Many GMs have scads of material they can run, or, again, are good at improvising, and can handle detours. Assuming they didn't rewrite parts of the adventure to begin with.

Well, I was going to say it, but before I could, another player said his character wanted to join mine, and then the GM said “okay you two go out into the hall and then a pair of people come around the bend and see you”. I said “I wanted to be sneaky about it” and he said “too late, they’ve seen you”.

So yeah… it was just a case of “okay, there’s gonna be a fight”.

Yeah, that's railroady. Or the GM being bored without combat. Either one.

 

[Lanefan]

I was wondering if these issues wouldn't be essentially gamist? That is, a worry that players might use authorship to the advantage of their character seems to be a worry about gaining unfair advantages.

Yes, that's a big concern.

If right, one could then wonder to what ends, in play without definite win conditions?

Except there are always ongoing win (or, more correctly, advantageous) conditions. Greater wealth, greater power, more knowledge, more abilities, greater survivability, etc. etc., in comparison with the other PCs.

Allowing players to author anything major without veto gives them free rein to, if they want, potentially throw things way out of balance; and IMO foolish would be the player who failed to take advantage of this opportunity.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, but, remember, most commonly, a campaign only has a half life of about 18-24 months, tops. After that campaign taps out, you simply pull out a new campaign and start again. The idea of "running out of ideas" gets a lot less of a problem when you constantly start new campaigns.

I mean, I've played or run over a dozen campaigns just in 5e. As in, we started at level 1, played through the campaign to its inevitable conclusion, then started again. Ravenloft, Dragonlance, Storm King's Thunder, Phandelver, 2 or 3 homebrew campaigns, Candlekeep Mysteries, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Decent Into Avernus, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple. It's not that hard to start racking up campaigns when they only last about 18 months at a time and you can play twice a week.

To me, a campaign (despite the way WotC wants us to see it) consists of more than one single closed-ended adventure path. For me, one of the very foundational things that defines "campaign" is that it's open-ended.

From what you've said here, you're playing 5e exactly the way WotC wants you to play it: buy lots of adventure-path books and play through them with a different party each time, and don't worry about worldbuilding beyond what the canned adventures require and-or provide.

Works for you. Doesn't work for me. Far too "pre-packaged".

 

[Lanefan]

Ok, I'll take a stab at this.
Railroad:

1. The DM has a pre-determined outcome
2. The DM will force this pre-determined outcome regardless of any action the players take.
3. The DM can force this pre-determined outcome in a number of ways, including straight up cheating/changing numbers/ignoring rules, massaging the situation in such an obvious way (for example, endlessly rolling checks until the party fails in order to trigger an event that the DM wants to have happen), among many other techniques.
4. The players at no point have any say in this outcome.

Linear:

1. The situation in the campaign is contextually linear. (sorry for repeating the word) For example, the party is traveling from A to B. That's going to be a linear scenario.
2. The over arching organization of the campaign might be set up in such a way that the story will progress in a specific order. For example, a Fetch Quest style campaign where you need to retrieve parts of a Macguffin, with each part of the Macguffin leading to the next part.
3. The players are not forced to proceed in this manner because the DM is pre-determining outcomes, but rather because of the contextual nature of the scenario.

A simple example of a linear scenario might be a dungeon where you have a series of caves A-B-C-D. There is only one passage between each cave. You are going to resolve this scenario in order. This isn't railroad because the ouline isn't being forced onto the players by the DM. I mean, there are a lot of perfectly plausible, logical, understandable scenarios that are linear. How you choose to resolve these four caverns is up to the players. And, if the players figure out a way to bypass one of the chambers somehow, that's also perfectly fine.

Does that make it clearer?

I think it comes down to linear = voluntary and railroad = involuntary.

I've both played and DMed some one-McGuffin-leads-to-the-next adventure series and they've worked out great: the players got engaged in the situation both in and out of character, after which the whole thing almost runs itself. But there's got to be off-ramps for if-when the engagement falters for whatever reason.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't disagree with you subjectively. But I think there are plenty of people who play this way. I would say that a significant amount of the hobby revolves around this kind of play.

Oh, it does now, for sure; largely because most of the community today (as in, most of those who came in during about the last 20 years) hasn't ever played in any other way. They started with PF adventure paths or 4e-5e hardcover adventure paths and simply assume that's how the game is played.

Oh, I don't expect there to be consensus about what would constitute improvements, except perhaps at the broadest level, or things like organization or presentation and the like.

Ayup.

 

[clearstream]

I do think a significant part of it is that a lot of people have dealt with either pretty extreme degrees of illusionism, or an extended shell game to avoid finally admitting that player choice doesn't really matter the way the players thought it did. That is, in my three-way taxonomy above, they've been stuck in lack-of-discussion land, or with true illusionism. If that's happened to someone a lot, I could see them taking a rather tough stand, where anything beyond the most basic limitations (like "actions have consequences") smells of pretense and BS, and is thus "railroading". Doubly so if they don't really have any personal desire to play in modules/APs, and thus the "explicit agreement" category doesn't really exist for them--so the only possible ways they could end up in a rigidly linear adventure are someone failing to say that that's what it is, or someone pretending it isn't that when it actually is.

If they think the label "railroading" applies, why should they not apply it?

Your explanation relies upon "railroading" having a different meaning from "linear". I'm saying that's right, so that -- as you explain -- someone may indeed try to disguise the one as the other. Disguising something as itself isn't deception.

 

[Lanefan]

I think we have very different social situations around our games.

All of my games already have players; we're just rotating DM duties so everyone has a turn DMing. When one game is wrapping up, the other people who have ideas for games present their ideas, and whichever concept has the most enthusiasm is the next game.

Here, we have a few DMs and a crew of forever or near-forever players. If someone wants to run a game that doesn't usually mean someone else has to stop; instead the new game just has to find a different night of the week to run if there's to be any overlap in personnel involved.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Ehh. That still puts the one person not up on the concept in a pretty weird position. I don’t love putting them in a “go along to get along” position.

Maybe it’s fine! It ultimately depends on the player. But it’s a red flag for me.

I mean… just let the player play a half-orc. It’s not like Krynn is really defined by the absence of orcs. They still had goblins and similar creatures. (And, some of the broader stories had orcs, too, and the setting didn’t fall apart).

If the players are voluntarily following a linear path (because that's all there is and they are aware of that, such as an adventure path) they are not being denied any meaningful choices

I don’t know about that. If I know I can’t make any meaningful choices, then I’m not going to try to do so. I mean, if I agree to play an adventure path, I’m not going to try to make choices that may deviate from the path.

My lack of attempt doesn’t mean that choice isn’t being denied to me. It just means I’m aware of it.

Even if those rails are never tested due to social norms or enforcement from the group rather than the GM?

Yup. Again, my experience during play isn't really changing. I know I’m supposed to stick to the path, so I do. It’s more like I’m proactively railroading myself so the GM doesn’t have to.

 

[hawkeyefan]

As for preferences, that would just be upresise language. I don't want a railroad either, but I have a lot of linear experiences I would love to try.

Trouble is that I think you also have characterised former experiences as feeling "railroady" rather than "linear", and pointed to certain features that is common in many games to try to explain that(?) This is when we start getting into problematic territory

Yes, I’ve described active force by the GM as feeling railroady. That’s more in line with the general usage, I believe. But again… any negative connotation I’ve presented in that way has been specific to me and my preferences.

You guys are all approaching this from an objective standpoint… and I don’t think that really helps.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't think it can be neutral at all. While I agree with you that there are some very specific and rare instances where a railroad isn't bad, I think that in something like 95%-99% of cases, it's bad. For that last little bit of the time, saying something like, "I think that in X specific case railroading isn't bad." is okay. However, if you are just saying X thing is railroading, it's going to be taken as a pejorative by the people who experience it as a bad thing 95%-99% of the time.

There's no way to use it as a blanket statement without it going badly. Take the "Traditional play is railroading" statement. That's insulting and derogatory, regardless of how the writer may have intended it. It doesn't become neutral because of intent. It's simply going to upset a whole lot of people.

Now if the odds are closer to 50/50, intent become a major factor. It can't be assumed to be bad because in a large percentage of instances it isn't negative or derogatory. You have to look at the context and/or stated intent of the author.

Well, no, I think intent always matters. And context matters, too.

Again… I’m not trying to change anyone else’s use of the word railroad. All I’ve done is explain my thoughts on it, and why I don’t see a meaningful difference between railroad and linear.

No one has to adopt my usage. But if I’ve explained myself, then we should all he able to understand what the other is saying based on our usage. Demanding that I conform to some general usage… one which I’ve explained I reject and why, and how casually dismissive it is of those 1%- 5% of games (I’ll just go with your totally fictional data here) where railroading is accepted and/or preferred… yeah, I’m not gonna give in to such demands. Nor would I expect others to do so.

Imagine you're in an adventure and there's a monster between you and your goal. The GM expects you to kill the monster, but instead you decide to negotiate with it or even befriend it. In a linear adventure, the GM will be OK with that. In a railroad, the GM will do their darndest to make you kill it, or punish you for not killing it.

In a railroad, the GM will take over the character, at least a little, to ensure that the PCs do what the GM wants. In the game I was in (Changeling: the Dreaming), the book says that redcaps are always hungry and will eat anything and everything. The player tried to eat stuff. The GM didn't want it and so took over, telling the player that no, their character wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat, because their eating was getting in the way of the GM's story. In reality, it wasn't at all--the player wasn't eating anything (or anyone) that the plot required or that was anything more than mere scenery (seriously, it was a stream of magically-created pies). But the GM didn't want the player to do that and so intervened.

Also, in a linear adventure, the plot hooks are usually enough to make the players want to continue on the adventure's path.

In a railroad, the players aren't given a choice but to stick to the path. Think of video games where you literally can't continue until you perform whatever the next quest is. In a railroad, parts of the world simply aren't open to the players unless they're part of the story. A door won't open, no matter how well the player rolls, or the room beyond will have nothing in it, or a monster far too powerful for the PCs to hope to even dent, simply because that door isn't part of the GM's story.


While that's pretty railroady, that's clearly because the GM doesn't have anything prepared and isn't used to improvising.


<shrug> That depends on the GM. Many GMs have scads of material they can run, or, again, are good at improvising, and can handle detours. Assuming they didn't rewrite parts of the adventure to begin with.


Yeah, that's railroady. Or the GM being bored without combat. Either one.

I suppose there are two levels we’re talking about. The campaign level, where the experience of play is largely sketched out as A-B-C-D like an adventure path. And then the play level where the GM overrides player declaration to preserve some predetermined idea or status quo or progression.

What I typically see as railroads at the campaign level are what others describe as linear games. Adventure Paths absolutely fall into this category. This is an adjective that describes a campaign.

At the play level, a single instance of a GM overriding or ignoring player input… like my example from Star Trek Adventures… is a GM railroading the players. This is a verb performed by the GM.

To me, this is where most of the actual confusion about the term comes from. I personally don’t think that for a campaign to fit the first definition it needs to be filled with nothing but the GM performing the second definition.

To me, a campaign (despite the way WotC wants us to see it) consists of more than one single closed-ended adventure path. For me, one of the very foundational things that defines "campaign" is that it's open-ended.

Sorry, @Lanefan… despite explaining your view, I’m afraid that’s no longer the commonly accepted definition… so despite my understanding of your preferences and why you have them, I’m going to ignore that and pretend that each time you use the word, you mean it how I expect it to be used!!

Then, I’ll blame any resultant breakdown in communication on you!

Makes sense, right?