Telling a story vs. railroading

[Hussar]

I have a hard time imagining how a 'site-based' adventure could be a railroad.

Rather easily unfortunately. If the DM decides that the orcs in the cave ARE going to capture your characters, then it's a railroad. If the DM decides that you ARE going to free the prisoner and you ARE going to trust him, then its a railroad. If the DM decides that, no matter what you do, you MUST go to room X and no amount of lateral thinking will cause the baddies to leave their room then buckle up.

((Incidentally, ALL of the above happened to me in the Caves of Chaos.))

OTOH, sometimes the DM has the reins and it is perfectly realistic. Take my current campaign. The party has taken shelter in a Celestial garrison. The party, being good and being pretty tough, is offered membership in the garrison. Not forced, mind you, simply offered. The party accepts and is co-opted into the military forces of the garrison.

Now, as the DM, I control the leader of that garrison. If I hand orders to the party, is that railroading? If I tell the party to go out and scout yonder hill and report back what they find, am I railroading? The party has two choices, leave or accept. If they want help from the garrison, they have to be members of it. The garrison has long been under siege and doesn't have the resources to sell to random adventurers who are not going to help them. They don't need cash, they need warm bodies.

So? Am I guilty?

 

[Akrasia]

Rather easily unfortunately. If the DM decides that the orcs in the cave ARE going to capture your characters, then it's a railroad. If the DM decides that you ARE going to free the prisoner and you ARE going to trust him, then its a railroad. If the DM decides that, no matter what you do, you MUST go to room X and no amount of lateral thinking will cause the baddies to leave their room then buckle up.

((Incidentally, ALL of the above happened to me in the Caves of Chaos.))

That's the fault of the DM, not the module as written.

My point is that modules/adventures as written can be either plot-based or site-based, and generally the former are fare more vulnerable to the possibility of being 'railroads'.

So? Am I guilty?

Ummm ... I don't think so.

 

[satori01]

Giving Focus, and a narrow list of options is ok. I think the most egregious case of railroading comes when a DM has plans to capture a party that can not be thwarted. Without a lot of build up and work, most people will not let their parties be captured. Because of the nature of the game, many people would rather die than potentially lose their gear.

 

[Hussar]

That's the fault of the DM, not the module as written.

See, I think right there is the crux of the issue. To me, railroading is ALWAYS the fault of the DM. As was mentioned above, railroading is a metagame issue where the DM is changing the rules so that his pet idea cannot be avoided.

There are numerous realistic examples where the players will have little or no choice. Heck, if you want to talk about no choice, then any random encounter where the enemy is faster than the party is a railroad. They have to fight since they can't escape. However, I doubt that many would say that a pair of manticores appearing from the clouds is a railroad.

Granted, a tyranasaur popping up when the party tries to turn left is a railroad, but, somehow I think the DM might be more to blame in this case.

During one of the "Good Module" threads, I blasted the old Dragonlance modules for being a railroad. Thinking about it now, I don't think they were. Sure, they had a story and a focus. But, that doesn't make it a railroad. It doesn't negate player choices to have a story. Sure, if you have a plot arc, not all player choices will be ok. In a sense, they are being limited, but, again, not to the point where they have NO choice.

Less choice =/= railroad. Railroading, IMO, is a DM's fixation with a particular outcome.

 

[Akrasia]

... During one of the "Good Module" threads, I blasted the old Dragonlance modules for being a railroad. Thinking about it now, I don't think they were. Sure, they had a story and a focus. But, that doesn't make it a railroad. It doesn't negate player choices to have a story. Sure, if you have a plot arc, not all player choices will be ok. In a sense, they are being limited, but, again, not to the point where they have NO choice....

DL 1 as written was definitely a railroad. If you're going to deny that, I 'm don't think that a meaningful conversation on this topic can proceed any further.

 

[Hussar]

How is DL 1 any more of a railroad than say, A1? A1 STARTS when you arrive at the small castle. If you are going to play that module, you have to be at that point. There is no choice.

You have a tasking, complete it. The army is coming, you have to get to Xak Tsaroth to save your home. Which part is the railroad?

 

[Kormydigar]

The differences between story telling and railroading are simple. Its all about the timing. If a story is crafted BEFORE the PC's play the game then its a railroad. If the story is crafted AFTER the actions of the PC's then its a story. Simple

An amusing little story goes with this:

I was playing in a campaign a long time ago with a very controlling DM. Player options were very limited and all of the players felt very constrained. (We only put up with it because time to game was plentiful then) One day the DM left his campaign notebook behind and we were too weak to resist temptation. We read through the notes for sessions we had already played (thats all that was there) and nearly laughed ourselves to death. There, in the notebook was a printout of the "script" from our last session. Combats were detailed right down to predetermined hits and misses!! Quotes such as " In round 3 Orc #2 hits character # 4 for 6 points of damage". This was for real and he actually used the thing. Oh you bet we gave him a world of crap for that.

 

[Akrasia]

How is DL 1 any more of a railroad than say, A1? ...

A1's a railroad too. (The whole A series, as written, is pretty railroady -- which is understandable, since those modules were written for tournament play. DL1, in contrast, has no such excuse.)

 

[kigmatzomat]

DL was not a railroad, per se. It was, however, a story with few options before player choices make the plotline unrecoverable. Player choice could destroy any module. Take the generic "king requests the party go on a quest and he offers fabulous wealth in return" story. If the players attack the king it can all go sideways. The question is, how likely is it that completely rational gamers will derail the adventure?

In DL1, most of the time you have only one obvious rational choice (go from Point A to Point B ahead of the army). Fighting the army has a zero chance of success and fleeing does nothing to stop the evil army. So only unintuitive or irrational decisions will derail DL1.

Railroad adventures require the DM to force the players to do a particular thing at all costs or the adventure collapses while ignoring multiple, rational alternative actions. Bad railroads require the players do something stupid for the plot to work. One SR adventure I vaguely remembered expected the players to go and rough up a fixer for info, causing a cascade of revenge to dump on the PCs. We simply paid the fixer for the info. It destroyed about half the plotline b/c we didn't use a violent approach. It may have destroyed more of the plot but we had a decent GM who spent 15 minutes frantically rewriting the adventure so it made sense.

A good GM doesn't have to run a railroad adventure as a railroad but he probably won't get much value for his money.

 

[buzz]

See, I think right there is the crux of the issue. To me, railroading is ALWAYS the fault of the DM. As was mentioned above, railroading is a metagame issue where the DM is changing the rules so that his pet idea cannot be avoided.

Hussar, I'd be hesitant to say "always." DMs work with the tools they're given. If a given RPG product tells the DM to, say, fudge results in order to insure that a specific plot comes to fruition (all too common, unfortunately), is it the DM's fault for doing what he was told? It's the writer's pet idea that's being enforced, not the DM's.

To respond to the OP...

IMO, "railroading" depends on whether you're talking about the beginning or the ending.

Setting up a situation that begins an adventure is not railroading, even if the situation makes a lot of assumptions. E.g., (iirc), the classic Slavers series of modules for 1e started with the PCs stripped of gear and in a prison. This is an interesting and challenging "bang" that gets the adventure rolling. As long as the players are free to deal with the setup as they see fit, you're good.

Driving an adventure or encounter towards a pre-planned ending is railroading. E.g., the DM manipulates an adventure or encounter so that the PCs will inevitably be stripped of their gear and placed in prison. No choice they make will alter this outcome.

"Story" muddies the waters. Either option above results in a de facto "story," i.e., the in-game series of events that can be recounted after-the-fact. The point is that the former is fun and the latter is, well, pointless (IMO).

Granted, we could get into discussion about whether it's pointless if the players are unaware (or complicit) in the railroading, but that'd probably merit its own thread.