Telling a story vs. railroading

[Raven Crowking]

There's a difference between obejective and arbitary. My definintion is objective. The definitions others are putting fourth are arbitary, not objective. They are indeed more subjective than mind, since they rely on the subjective assumptions people armaking about, for instance, what a legitimate form of control is.

Your definition is more objective in the sense that it rests upon a testable means for determining when railroading takes place: The player says so. The player saying so, however, is a subjective (and potentially arbitrary) factor.

This objective test, however, is only reliable when there is no other definition of the term "railroading". If there is another definition, then what the player says can be at odds with what is occurring, and the "player test" ceases to have any value.

As a direct result, the "player test" strips the term of any other meaning, so that the term itself loses any useful information that is not conveyed better by "I'm unhappy because of X." If you further define railroading as a bad thing, then whatever X is, regardless of how reasonable it would be in any other context, also becomes a bad thing.

Your test also relies upon subjective assumptions about legitimate forms of control. The only difference is that the player makes these assumptions, and they are automatically and arbitrarily assumed to be correct.

I have some serious problems with this.

If one were to say "A situation is not railroading if the DM says it is not railroading" the level of objectivity would be exactly the same. Presumably you can see the problem with relying on this as a test.

If one were to say, "If you think railroading is going on, roll 1d20. On a roll of 1-6, it is railroading. You are allowed one roll during each game session." it would be an equally objective test, but as a test it would be equally devoid of value.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Why, then, do you think that that statement is a straw man argument?

Because

an adventure path with a set order of adventures to be played one after the other that PCs cannot change no matter what they do or no matter what choices they make is not railroading in any way shape or form.​

is not my position, has never been my position, and in no way equates to my position. Obviously.

I do think that there is a great deal of difference between "Hey guys! Wanna try out this Age of Worms with me?" or "Hey guys, wanna playtest this adventure for me?" where the parameters of the game are known and accepted beforehand (we are playing AoW; we are playtesting this adventure) and a more generic "Hey, wanna play some D&D" wherein the players are effectively accepting one social contract only to discover that they are expected to follow another.

The first, in my mind, is not railroading simply because it is the result of informed player choice. The second is railroading because it circumvents the ability of the players to choose in a manner that I feel is illegitimate.

RC

 

[rounser]

The first, in my mind, is not railroading simply because it is the result of informed player choice. The second is railroading because it circumvents the ability of the players to choose in a manner that I feel is illegitimate.

Assume scenario one is true, then, because it's the one in conflict with my premise, and such scenarios are irrelevant to it. You think it's not railroading. You disagree with my premise under those terms, then, and agree with the above statement, because despite the player agreement not to stray off the tracks, it's still

an adventure path with a set order of adventures to be played one after the other that PCs cannot change no matter what they do or no matter what choices they make

so can I take it that you think it

is not railroading in any way shape or form.

Is this correct?

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

By the rules, you always know whether or not the target saves against your spell. It's in the PHB. There's a specific feat for dopplegangers/changelings that overrides this, I think.

Ken

Not just that, but it's rolling enough 20's that it might just win!

I repeat my earlier point that much of the problem comes down to trust. The doppelganger example is a good one here: when things start going sideways for the PC's (in this case, multiple charm attempts that should have worked but didn't...and by the way, how do you know if your charm worked or not unless you try to interact with the target afterwards?) there has to be trust that the DM has a valid reason for such. Here, it's a doppelganger. In another similar case it might be a device of charm resistance. In a third case it might be that having this particular person charmed to the party would destroy the whole plot...some might consider this last to be a railroad, but I'm cool with it as long as a) it's smoothly handled so as to look like an in-game issue, and b) it leads to a good adventure.

Thing is, if the DM has spent the time to design a worthwhile adventure, the players should in fairness at least try to play through it. If it proves hopeless, then have the party abandon it in character...but at least try it!

Lanefan

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

See, maybe it's just a philosophical difference, but in my game, the PCs have every right to use their abilities to 'destroy my plot'.

Ken

Not just that, but it's rolling enough 20's that it might just win!

I repeat my earlier point that much of the problem comes down to trust. The doppelganger example is a good one here: when things start going sideways for the PC's (in this case, multiple charm attempts that should have worked but didn't...and by the way, how do you know if your charm worked or not unless you try to interact with the target afterwards?) there has to be trust that the DM has a valid reason for such. Here, it's a doppelganger. In another similar case it might be a device of charm resistance. In a third case it might be that having this particular person charmed to the party would destroy the whole plot...some might consider this last to be a railroad, but I'm cool with it as long as a) it's smoothly handled so as to look like an in-game issue, and b) it leads to a good adventure.

Thing is, if the DM has spent the time to design a worthwhile adventure, the players should in fairness at least try to play through it. If it proves hopeless, then have the party abandon it in character...but at least try it!

Lanefan

 

[Raven Crowking]

Is this correct?

No. I am assuming that, as part of the aforementioned social contract, the players have the right to say "Sorry, but AoW/this adventure blows chunks. Let's do something else!"

That might require waiting because the DM has nothing else prepared, or it might require someone else DMing. However, the social contract is iteself negotiable, and if it is negotiable, then it is not a railroad. IMHO, of course. YMMV.

RC

 

[happyelf]

Hang on. Hold the phone. How does the above jive with:

I was being sarcastic.

That said . . .

If a player can complain about railroading but it "doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with it (the game)", then how can we use this definition of railroading to discuss anything?

You're still missing the point here. Just because one player isn't having fun with a game, doesn't mean the game is objectivly bad. This is the reality that you are willfully ignoring- fun is not objective.

There are any number of situations in wich a specific player might find a game utterly infuriating, boring, frustrating, even offensive, but other players, with different preferences and play style, might find the very same game to be inspiring, entertaining, and challening.

This is what you are failing to get through your skull- that reality isone of the key issues that any group must deal with, and any definintion with as common a usage as 'railroading' must be based on that reality.

I've said this, it must be a dozen times on this thread. When are you going to accept it? You completly ignore it again and again, but ultimatly it cannot be ignored. Ask 10 gamers what railroading is, and what railroading is not, ask them to be spcific, and you'll get 12 different answers. And they're all correct, for them.

 

[rounser]

No. I am assuming that, as part of the aforementioned social contract, the players have the right to say "Sorry, but AoW/this adventure blows chunks. Let's do something else!"

Sure. But my premise doesn't take hold until we're actually playing an adventure path (or the homebrew campaign equivalent of it). You could opt out of playing D&D entirely if you wanted; that still doesn't change the nature of an adventure path campaign in play.

That might require waiting because the DM has nothing else prepared, or it might require someone else DMing. However, the social contract is iteself negotiable, and if it is negotiable, then it is not a railroad. IMHO, of course. YMMV.

It does, because IMO, even if the players have agreed to ride the train, that doesn't mean the rails suddenly cease to exist. From what I gather, you view railroading as being based on DM coercion and player consent, whereas mine is based on design assumption that players will not have a choice in the matter in advance.

I think we're both right, from different points of view. Such an inflexible design is almost guaranteed to cause the kind of consent-seeking or coercion that your definition requires. Where we seem to disagree is whether or not the rails disappear when consent is granted, which is sort of a "when a tree falls in the forest when no-one is around, does it make a sound?" kind of issue (in scientific answer to which, of course it does).

 

[Abe.ebA]

I don't have a problem with it. I've said so multiple times. Would a campaign be better without it? Probably, but there's much more work involved. It'd be nice to have hologram miniatures too, but the game is still fun without them. Hey, deja vu, I said that before! Can you see the difference between "would be nice" and "is bad without"???

Sorry, Rounser. I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. I was trying to say that the thing you were talking about wasn't what I was talking about. I think I understand your position and agree with you, I just wanted to say up front that I wasn't talking about adventure paths and their use or non-use when I say 'railroading' later in the post.
In retrospect I should have said, "the campaign plotting style which Rounser was discussing" rather than "what Rounser had a problem with". In any event, I was just using your name as a reference point for the previous discussion, not as part of an attack on you or your feelings on the matter and so apologize for my misrepresentation.

In other news, and in an attempt to salvage something useful from this thread (well, something else useful... I did get a few ideas from the earlier discussion about limiting the campaign world's physical size)...

For anyone who can accept the definition posited by myself, RC, et al for a moment for purpose of discussion: when a situation arises where you, as a DM, feel it necessary to railroad, do you think it's preferable to do it in-game or to simply tell the players? I'll give an example:

The session is moving along with the PCs exploring the Crypt of Impending Doom when they come upon a chasm which a recent earthquake cut into the bedrock through which the crypt's network of passages winds. A couple of hundred feet below and a couple hundred feet away, on the far side of the chasm, they see a light flicker out as someone moves into a passageway on another level of the complex. Could it be Baddie McEvil, the necromancer they chased into the crypts in the first place? You, the DM, expect the sight to spur the PCs onward into finding a way down through the crypts to the lower levels and across the chasm to catch up with Baddie. Instead, one of them says, "I whip out that flying carpet we picked up from the evil djinn three months ago. Good thing I kept forgetting to sell it, huh?"
You don't have the lower level plotted out yet. You have a couple of badguys statted up for the end of the dungeon but they're way too tough for the PCs to handle right now and you haven't gotten around to statting out Baddie McEvil at all yet. You forgot that they still had that carpet; heck, you forgot you gave them a carpet. It was just part of a randomly rolled treasure horde.
This is obviously a contrived scenario. It's not likely to come up very often that the PCs can fly unexpectedly and that said flight ability will allow them to totally bypass your prepared dungeon and skip into unprepared area. But if it, or something similar in nature if not specifics, came up I suspect a lot of DMs would be tempted to railroad. So what's the best course?
a) "Right, when you land on the distant ledge, Baddie is no longer within sight." and continue the dungeon where they left it on the previous ledge while pretending it was meant to be the lower level.
b) "Uh... your carpet doesn't work. The earthquake was actually an anti-magic earthquake."
c) "Okay, off you go!" and ad-lib furiously.
d) "Look guys, I forgot about the carpet. You're two rogues, a barbarian, and a warlock and you haven't bought any potions of flight; I didn't figure you'd be able to fly and I haven't statted out the lower level at all."

Option b, I think, is clear railroading. Option a is a bit subtler railroading since the PCs may very well never know what happened with the maps but you're still forcing them along a route, especially if Baddie stays convinently 10 steps ahead for the rest of the dungeon. Option c is good in that there's no railroading going on whatsoever, but bad in that (at least for me) ad-hoc DMing rarely provides the same level of detail and challenge that having prepared encounters and challenges does. Option d avoids the problem, assuming the players agree, but is it a case of railroading just as bad as option b? Or is it preferable to some (or all) of the other options? Is there another way to handle it that would be better than any of these?

 

[happyelf]

Hang on. Hold the phone. How does the above jive with:

I was being sarcastic.

That said . . .

If a player can complain about railroading but it "doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with it (the game)", then how can we use this definition of railroading to discuss anything?

You're still missing the point here. Just because one player isn't having fun with a game, doesn't mean the game is objectivly bad. This is the reality that you are willfully ignoring- fun is not objective.

There are any number of situations in wich a specific player might find a game utterly infuriating, boring, frustrating, even offensive, but other players, with different preferences and play style, might find the very same game to be inspiring, entertaining, and challening.

This is what you are failing to get through your skull- that reality isone of the key issues that any group must deal with, and any definintion with as common a usage as 'railroading' must be based on that reality.

I've said this, it must be a dozen times on this thread. When are you going to accept it? You completly ignore it again and again, but ultimatly it cannot be ignored. Ask 10 gamers what railroading is, and what railroading is not, ask them to be spcific, and you'll get 12 different answers. And they're all correct, for them.

The problem that I have with your definition is that it removes any onus from the player requiring rationality or reasonable justification.

No, it doesn't. It jsut articulates the balance of power wich already exists. Furthemore, I repeat that your critiera for 'rationality' or 'reasonable justification' is extremly dubious. It's easy to use words liek that, but when you put it into action, all that results is the player complains to the GM, the GM claims their complaint is not 'rational' enough, and then, at best, they have an argument like the one we're having now. That is not constructive, nor is it rational.

If something is railroading (or anything else) just because I say it is, and I can say it is just because I don't like it, then what responsibility to be fair do I have within a given system?

Your'e acting like the definition of railroading is the be-all and end-all of the entire group process. That's absurd. It's a piece of terminology that can be used by a player to help them express a greviance or complaint. There is nothing thay follows from the definintion, that says the player then has the right to 'imbalabce the game', or set the table on fire, or any other apocalyptic outcome. Rather, the definintion simply recognised the reality that is in play- if the player is not having fun, that's a problem. It's an issue that needs to be resolved.

OTOH, if we agree that there is a baseline,

There isn't. Again, you're being arbitary, not objective.

and that things can be unpleasant but fair,

The idea is to amke things as un-unpleasant as possible, not make excuses and defend such a situation.

the onus is on all parties to accept some things because they are fair (be it that your pet NPC got killed, or you got charmed, or the game got called on account of work).

There is no valid criteri for fair, when we talk about issues at this point. You're just giving people another word to argue over. Far better that they have the real discussion, but they can't if you're obscuring the real issues by inserting a bunch of arbitary jugements that everyone in the entire hobby is supposed to agree on.

Any group can arrive at a resolution and a fair balance and compromise may be possible for whatever conflicts that arise- but that process isn't going to be served by stapling it into the definintion of railroading, and lumping on a pile of worthless and arbitary standards for what 'fair' is.

Again I repeat, I am a believer in some level of objective standards about gaming. There are universal norms across all groups within the hobby. I think there are quite a few universal 'rules' that can be applied to positive ends.

But there is also vast diversity of different styles and preferences and goals forplay, and rule #1 is to recognise that diversity, and deal with it apropriatly.

Especially when discussing prejorative terms, I strongly feel that it is necessary to use definitions that require a certain level of maturity (and responsibility) on both sides of the screen.

There is no maturity to be had by ignoring the reality that we are speaking about matter of preference. Nor is there any maturity in the aplication of arbitary terms of little worth.

Your definition is more objective in the sense that it rests upon a testable means for determining when railroading takes place: The player says so. The player saying so, however, is a subjective (and potentially arbitrary) factor.

This objective test, however, is only reliable when there is no other definition of the term "railroading". If there is another definition, then what the player says can be at odds with what is occurring, and the "player test" ceases to have any value.

No it does not. Simply because you present another definintion, does not make mine any less valid.

The 'player test' stands because it is relevant, while the other criteria presented are not.

As a direct result, the "player test" strips the term of any other meaning, so that the term itself loses any useful information that is not conveyed better by "I'm unhappy because of X."

Again, not true. It speciffies the nature of the complaint, and the type of problems that result, as wel as other information, such as a possible motive for the GM's actions, and a potential solution.

If you further define railroading as a bad thing, then whatever X is, regardless of how reasonable it would be in any other context, also becomes a bad thing.

This is also completly untrue. Just because one player does not like something, does not mean all players will dislike it. Again, if you ignore this, you ignore the basic reality of the games we play. Feel free, but you're only fooling yourself.

Your test also relies upon subjective assumptions about legitimate forms of control. The only difference is that the player makes these assumptions, and they are automatically and arbitrarily assumed to be correct.

They are correct isofar as they have a problem with the situation, and to the best of their ability they identify the problem as relating to control issues within the game. That is the best genuine information we can gain from such terminology.

I have some serious problems with this.

No, your problem is that my definintion is different from yours and you don't like that. You've been going on and on for pages and pages but all this is really pretty obvious if you just take the blinkers off.

If one were to say "A situation is not railroading if the DM says it is not railroading" the level of objectivity would be exactly the same.

But that's exactly what you are saying. All they have to do is use a code-word like 'logical' or whatever and they're off the hook.

The difference is that my definintion disguises nothing. We are talking about subjective preference, as defiend by a greviance made by players specific to the power dynamic in the game. This, it is for the player to define the problem.

Presumably you can see the problem with relying on this as a test.

Yes, the problem is that it's the correct definition and you can't accept that because you're unwilling to recognise the reality of the situation.

If one were to say, "If you think railroading is going on, roll 1d20. On a roll of 1-6, it is railroading. You are allowed one roll during each game session." it would be an equally objective test, but as a test it would be equally devoid of value.

No, that is far more like the kind of arbitary test you are proposing, where two situations, both of them potentially railroading, are defined as railroading or not based on whatever dodgy critera you set up for the term.

This is particularly true for the worst(IMO) railroading GMs- GMs who really want to control the plot, take it away from the players, are bound to find a device to do so wich you define as 'not railroading'. Go ahead, give me a list of things you would not consider railroading, and i'll show you how a GM can dictate the whole game using them. And if you can't see how that qualifies as railroading, then that only proves my point.