D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[kermit4karate]

Talk me through this please. You've been a player in a game run by someone else. The GM has described an encounter, a boss, an area, or a treasure and you've said 'no, I think it should be [different thing] instead'? You've overridden what the GM said? Can you give me a specific example?

Is it really so hard to imagine? I'm not sure you want to see what I'm talking about.

Player (a rogue): "Instead of fighting the duke's guards, I'll try to impersonate his missing advisor. My disguise kit is ready. Can I bluff my way into the palace?"

DM: grins, flips through notes "Alright, I hadn't planned for that, but let's roll. Make a Charisma check against CR 12. If you succeed, the duke might reveal secrets you weren't supposed to hear until later." DM mentally gets ready to improvise.

 

[TwoSix]

The vast majority of players want a near 100% GM lead game. They don't want to play a RPG as a Co-GM, they want to play as a player.

To be fair, there's a spectrum between the two. A player can have a greater amount of backstory authority than normal, and more metagame control; but if they don't have authority to frame new scenes and challenges they can't really be a co-GM.

 

[kermit4karate]

A sizable percentage of players want the DM to tell the story and for their role to be sit back and occasionally participate.

The fact that people want that doesn’t change what the game is.

Wow, I guess I misread this earlier. I actually do agree with what you said here. I do believe that most players want the DM to tell the story and for their role to be to sit back and occasionally participate.

Not sure about your second sentence above...but I at least agree with the first one!

 

[Scott Christian]

I can also answer this!

Player: "I draw my sword, and sneak out the back door to escape the guards."

DM: "Nope, you can’t do that. The door is locked. The guards spot you, drag you back to the dining room, tie you to one of the chairs, and force you to listen to Enya until you die."

--THE END--

If you listen to some of the commenters here, that kind of thing happens daily at every D&D table.

Ha! Death by Enya sounds like a very slooooooooowwwwww way to go.

And I hear you. I am unsure who actually believes that happens all the time, but I guess someone will always play Devil's Advocate. That is one of the reasons why I think the entire debate is silly. You will always get someone who says railroading is everywhere, and that DMs do this all the time. Yet, we have a zillion YouTube D&D games that say differently. We have giant convention halls running D&D games that say differently. We have tables at gaming stores across the country that host D&D that say differently. We have tons of pay-to-play D&D sessions that say differently. And we have my experience of playing in many states with many groups dammit - that say differently.

Again, that is why the debate is so silly and disingenuous. The evidence is clear. But even if that evidence is accepted, the debate suddenly shifts to semantics, the old, "Railroading is defined as a lack of player agency," or "Railroading is linear." You know, basically definitions that have no real meaning. This way they can be morphed to fit whatever argument the person wants to make.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You're saying that you've changed encounters, bosses, areas, treasures as a player?

I mean, players "change" such things all the time by the actions of their characters. They decide where their characters go, who to befriend, who to attack, who to rob etc. Now there might be less of such happening in an AP with limited material, but I'd certainly expect some of it. And in a more homebrew game it is the norm.

 

[TwoSix]

Is it really so hard to imagine? I'm not sure you want to see what I'm talking about.

Player (a rogue): "Instead of fighting the duke's guards, I'll try to impersonate his missing advisor. My disguise kit is ready. Can I bluff my way into the palace?"

DM: grins, flips through notes "Alright, I hadn't planned for that, but let's roll. Make a Charisma check against CR 12. If you succeed, the duke might reveal secrets you weren't supposed to hear until later." DM mentally gets ready to improvise.

I mean, that's just bog-standard play to me. If you can't even flip a combat scenario to non-combat through use of the resolution system, then that game has serious agency problems above and beyond issues with pre-plotting.

 

[soviet]

Is it really so hard to imagine? I'm not sure you want to see what I'm talking about.

Player (a rogue): "Instead of fighting the duke's guards, I'll try to impersonate his missing advisor. My disguise kit is ready. Can I bluff my way into the palace?"

DM: grins, flips through notes "Alright, I hadn't planned for that, but let's roll. Make a Charisma check against CR 12. If you succeed, the duke might reveal secrets you weren't supposed to hear until later." DM mentally gets ready to improvise.

That isn't 'changing an encounter'! That's responding to an encounter in an unexpected way.

 

[bloodtide]

What is this? Can you please give an example? Thanks.

In general, this is what the average RPG gamer thinks of when they hear "Railroading", the worst of the worst. Like where the players say "we head south" and the DM says "Nope, you head north, because I say so".

No, not impossible evidence. It would be easily provable. I just think people would rather argue their biases without going through the trouble to objectively prove their theories. They're trusting their gut and the "eye test" (what they say they've seen in real life) versus trusting actual evidence, which is fine, but that puts us squarely in the realm of opinion.

So what will you accept as proof? If you are given just one bit of evidence, will you change your mind completely?

To be fair, there's a spectrum between the two. A player can have a greater amount of backstory authority than normal, and more metagame control; but if they don't have authority to frame new scenes and challenges they can't really be a co-GM.

It is not pure binary, but to be a player you really have to stay on the player side. Doing even a little "gming" changes the game and you can't play in a game your a co-gm of at all.

 

[kermit4karate]

That isn't 'changing an encounter'! That's responding to an encounter in an unexpected way.

Come on. Extrapolate that out to changing a preplanned encounter.

Player (the same rogue): "Instead of fighting through the dukes guards, I'm sneaking into the palace kitchen, bribing a servant and planting forged papers to frame the duke's advisor. I want to trigger a power struggle and get the guards called away."

DM: grins, flips through notes. "Alright, bit complicated, and I had a big battle prepped...but it looks like we're going full intrigue so we'll pivot. Roll Stealth and Persuasion against CR 12. If you succeed on both, the guards disperse." DM makes political fallout the new focus.

 

[bloodtide]

That isn't 'changing an encounter'! That's responding to an encounter in an unexpected way.

It is not even an unexpected way.....

My Example:
A Co-GM with a Player GM in an all Player Agency Sandbox game style: "The guard gets tired and takes a nap. While the guard is asleep my character sneaks by with no roll need. This! I! Command!" And the Player GM bows and says "yes player", and that is what happens in the game.