D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Crimson Longinus]

Though what also is not railroading: the campaign having a premise. If the GM says "I'd like to run the Tomb of Horrors, you guys wanna play?" and the players agree to that, I would expect the players to make characters who are actually willing to explore said tomb and it is not railroading for GM to decree that characters who refuse to do so are retired from play.

 

[kermit4karate]

Clear?

In no way, shape or form.

 

[Celebrim]

no, the players CAN just leave the tomb, there should be a world outside that singular dungeon, and at any point if that is what they should choose to do then they should be able to retrace their steps and go out, even if it causes hell for the GM and forces them say 'if you're really making this decision you're going to have to let me end the session here tonight so i can go plan things to be outside the dungeon',

So in other words you are going to "disagree" and then repeat back to me what I just said to you: "get off at any time" is functionally an agreement to stop playing. There isn't necessarily anything available for that session if you decide you don't want to do the tomb anymore"?

OK, nice.

the GM doesn't have the dungeon seal the entrance after they walk in and the only way out is forwards to complete the thing because that's what railroading would be in that situation.

I think there is a point in Tomb of Horrors where the doors do close behind you and you can't go backwards anymore and you can only go forward, and several published adventures do have features that trap you in. It's quite possible even in a very non-linear setting like a Gygaxian mega-dungeon to go through a one-way door or be dropped down a chute, or having a spinning room, or fall into a pit that goes three levels down, or have a sliding wall close off the passage and then find yourself in a position where going back the way you came isn't possible. I don't think that necessarily makes it a railroad.

But I am getting the feeling you aren't going to actually engage with anything I said.

the ability to leave a linear adventure is a significant part of what defines it as a different thing from a railroad.

Maybe. Certainly "leaving" is a sort of agency. I think that "you can't go back" could be part of making something into a railroad but wouldn't be I think the definitive thing that differentiates a linear dungeon from a railroad. Again, I think something more subtle is going on and that is, "Can you make meaningful choices?"

 

[bloodtide]

Regarding the never-ending railroad debate, I've said that I plan my adventures.

Me too.

I plan key areas and encounters.

I do this.

I've also said that I fudge select dice rolls.

I never do this. I'm very much Let the Dice Roll Where They May! I do set things up to make the 'fudging' not needed.

I've also said that I tweak some encounters to make them easier or more difficult, modify my dungeons on the fly to add/remove traps, secret areas, add/remove encounters, manifest helper NPCs when needed to keep the story moving -- full-on DM magic like that bald little DM gnome from the '80s cartoon.

I do this often.

Not only am I not ashamed about it; I am proud of how I run adventures because my players love our games. They trust and know that whatever adjustments I make are in service to the game.

I get trust from good players. Most of the rest have to be brought around the very hard way that my game is fun.

I don't solicit their approval before I fudge a roll, and I don't get their sign-off before I replace that spike trap at the bottom of the ravine with a cooling river because I want a player to survive the day. They trust my judgment because they love the experience.

To ask the players permission before I act is beyond silly and something I would never do. Though I would just about never change things to 'save' a PC.

The relationship between a DM and the players is a sacred bond. If they trust the DM's motives, they don't need or care about having a "right of refusal" over individual decisions.

I go as far as special bond.....

The reason I can get behind this definition of railroading by @EzekielRaiden is because it allows me to keep DM'ing the way I have for 40 years, while clearly describing a type of gameplay my players and I would not like.

"Railroading is the word for when a GM, through coercion or manipulation, enforces an inflexibly linear experience as part of GMing, that the players would not accept if they were aware of it, or do not accept if they are already aware of it."

I'm all for the "enforcing an inflexibly linear experience", as I would say that is a Story Plot Adventure. The "accept" part is just silly.

the difference being that railroading forces you to stick to the tracks the GM plans out, they WILL go from A to B to C, whether they want to or not, barring leaving the game entirely.

This is a Story Plot Adventure.

you might also go from A to B to C in a linear adventure but if the players so desires they can get off at any time and head for any other point they desire.

Of course going will disrupt the plot and story....and very often ruin it.

And to get off the Adventure is leaving the game.

That the characters end up where the GM "wanted" them is no indication that any railroading happened. A good GM playing with people they know, taking account the interests of the players and beliefs and goals of the characters can probably predict far better than mere random chance would suggest where the characters end up. This is not railroading, this is tailoring the content to the players and the characters in order to keep the narrative focused on the characters and content interesting to the players. Like if you have player that likes exploring mysteries and their character has goal to learn about arcane, it is not railroading to put an arcane mystery in the game even though the GM can with high certainty predict that the character will end up exploring that mystery.

This is my game too.

 

[kermit4karate]

Me too.

I do this.

I never do this. I'm very much Let the Dice Roll Where They May! I do set things up to make the 'fudging' not needed.

I do this often.

I get trust from good players. Most of the rest have to be brought around the very hard way that my game is fun.

To ask the players permission before I act is beyond silly and something I would never do. Though I would just about never change things to 'save' a PC.

I go as far as special bond.....

I'm all for the "enforcing an inflexibly linear experience", as I would say that is a Story Plot Adventure. The "accept" part is just silly.


This is a Story Plot Adventure.

Of course going will disrupt the plot and story....and very often ruin it.

And to get off the Adventure is leaving the game.


This is my game too.

Mostly same page except for the dice rolls. To that I would say that the entire process of coming up with CR numbers for things, estimating what the "odds" of a player pulling something off are, is already hand-wavy guesswork. It's so far from science it isn't funny.

It's not like fudging the numbers on something that was arbitrarily assigned a 33.33% chance of success is a crime against humanity.

 

[pemerton]

"If a key component of railroading is the lack of player acceptance, either explicitly given or convincingly assumed, then a DM unilaterally deciding on important aspects of gameplay, by itself, is insufficient to call something railroading."

I don't think railroading depends on a lack of player acceptance. A lot of RPGing that players accept involves railroading! I've played in railroad scenarios - mostly CoC ones, years ago now at conventions - that were well-done and enjoyable. And in more recent years I've run some railroad-y mystery scenarios (though more LARP-ish freeform than strictly TTRPG).

 

[bloodtide]

the ability to leave a linear adventure is a significant part of what defines it as a different thing from a railroad.

Sounds good enough.

I see this as simply the players wanting to play the game vs wanting to end the game.

And, as always, I would ask if the Reverse is Okay? Say the players buy and adventure module(don't read it) and ask the DM to run it for them. The players love it and are having fun. So....can the DM just say "Poof the adventure is gone, but hey you want to go over to that random forest and see what is there?" Every player would be happy as a clam with that, right?

 

[Maxperson]

Well, one of us doesn't.

So? Even if we accept your imperfect understanding,

Sorry dude. You don't get to appropriate a definition that is very different than the one you've been using and try to absorb it into your own.

if the players end up where I wanted them to be the fact that theoretically they had some other choice is irrelevant. I was still successful at forcing them to be where I wanted them to be and invalidating their agency. In fact, one of the most common railroading techniques is False Choice where in theory the players have multiple things they can choose to do, but by making all the choices but the one I want highly undesirable, I'm all but guaranteeing the players will do what I want them to do. As a crude example, I might have a powerful Monoarch or Archmage show up and tell the players, "You can either do what I tell you to do, or you can die. Your choice." The fact that in theory the players could choose death or to fight Eliminister or whatever doesn't mean I didn't railroad the players to get them where I wanted them to go.

So wait. If they choose to go where you wanted them to go, you forced them to be there even though you didn't do a darn thing to get them there?

The fact that they had several choices and chose the one you wanted doesn't make it a railroad just because you wanted them to be there. They picked one choice among many, which is all it takes for them to have complete agency.

The point is that one doesn't have to remove all agency from a player in order to force them to where you want them to be. In fact you can generously give them all the agency in the world so long as in the end you get what you want. Which is why that if you are good at this, you can run a game where it felt like to the player they had all the choices in the world and could do anything they wanted and still was totally in control of the GM the whole time. This is why @EzekielRaiden has to put his caveat about retroactively realizing that you were railroaded and withdrawing consent means you were railroaded.

Yes it does take the removal of all agency to force them to be where you wanted them to be against their wishes.

I don't have to use perfect and absolute force to steer the players where I want them to go.

If you don't, they have a good chance of not going there. Influence =/= making them go there against their wishes.

But then the obvious question should be, well, how much force can I use? Like if making an option require a natural 20 because I don't want it to happen is bad, would it be OK if I only required a natural 15 or higher?

They have to have no choice.

There have been instances where a PC has tried something so incredibly hard, that I said that it would only work on a 20. That wasn't a railroad. That was me generously letting it have a 5% chance to succeed.

Well, except they probably won't unless you've given them reason to suspect Schrodinger's Map or you used a particularly inelegant sort of chute to drop them where you wanted them. Because time skips are "normal" and "desirable" (and at a micro scale common), players aren't generally going to question them. But more to the point, with a time skip you are pretty much always trading agency for pacing. That might be the right choice for your game; I'm not judging how anyone plays, but a time skip does take away choices and information from the player. And it should always be in a GMs mind to consider just how much agency you are potentially taking away with a time skip.

Time skips don't take away any meaningful choices or information. The player doesn't need to know that there are 26435151 pebbles in sight, 167 trees, with 44 of them being pine, etc. every step of the journey in order to not be railroaded.

Why? Why even say it then?

Honestly, because I started off only asking it when it was a choice that would be a bad one the PC should be aware of. Then I realized the influence, so since they were used to me asking and it would be weird to just stop, I started asking in other situations. They quickly caught on and it no longer had any influence.

You influenced them by asking the question! It seems obvious to me. How can you know the question didn't change their proposition?

To do what? The question doesn't clue them in to whether or not it's good, bad or neutral, so they just discount it. It has no influence.

So does this force you to agree that if my influencing is effective it is also railroading? Think of it as like a craps game with loaded dice. The fact that any one throw could potentially be anything doesn't change the fact that in the long term I am very likely now to get what I want. I mean even if I'm the house and the game is craps with unrigged dice (and some modern RPGs feel like that to me) then even if occasionally the players can get what they want, in the long run I still get what I want. One doesn't have to leave zero wiggle room in order to railroad someone. All they need to do is ensure in the long run that the player ends up where they want.

No, because it wasn't guaranteed to work. Depending on how much you influence the group, you are probably reducing their agency, but since you aren't removing it, it's not a railroad. To be a railroad they can have no choice whatsoever to go in a different direction than you want.

One doesn't need to use total force to steer the players where you want them to be. You just have to put your thumb on the wheel.

You put a thumb on my steering wheel while I'm driving and you aren't going to influence me to do anything other than kick you out of the car. You certainly aren't moving the wheel. It takes far more than a thumb.

 

[Maxperson]

linear means A then B then C. Sounds a lot like the old railroad track.

As I explained upthread. In a linear game, when I get to B I can just walk west and go to Baldur's Gate, never reaching C. You can get off of the line. You cannot get off of a railroad. In a railroad game, you are going to end up at C no matter what you may want.

 

[kermit4karate]

I don't think railroading depends on a lack of player acceptance. A lot of RPGing that players accept involves railroading! I've played in railroad scenarios - mostly CoC ones, years ago now at conventions - that were well-done and enjoyable. And in more recent years I've run some railroad-y mystery scenarios (though more LARP-ish freeform than strictly TTRPG).

Fundamentally, I agree because I couldn't care less about the word -- railroading. I don't need it to know how I DM or to figure out how others do it.

But dang if that one word hasn't given people conniptions. It has been used to describe literally tens of thousands of words of context -- an entire novel's worth -- DIFFERENTLY. Some think it means completely different things than others. Like, what does it really matter??

If that word vanished from the lexicon tomorrow, it would have absolutely zero effect on D&D, TTRPGs or GM'ing.