D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[RealAlHazred]

A lot of modules, I suspect, are failed novels. The author had a specific scene in mind, with the PCs here, the villain there, this monologue and that monologue going on, and then the dramatic reversal that was telegraphed in scene 2. Like I said, I can't define a Railroad module to anyone's satisfaction, but the urge to constrain available actions and decisions to force a specific "scene" is at the heart of scenarios that I think of as "Railroads." The Dragonlance module authors had the management directive to ensure the dramatic conclusion scenes played out as in the novels. Ed Greenwood in his modules is wont to use Elminster in a similar way. This is railroading, IMO. Because you shouldn't be telling the players how their PCs act or react; that is up to them. Maybe the group decides to throw in with the villain. Maybe the group is unwilling to compromise, even if they did in the novel. Maybe, maybe, maybe... There are as many possibilities as there are players. Good module authors will allow for many possible options, but it's impossible for an author to think of everything -- that's why you need a DM.

 

[DragonLancer]

I don't quite understand what the definition of "a linear game" is. Because if it is literally linear, from A to B to C etc, no room for deviation or change of the player actions to affect the outcome, I really do not see how it is not a railroad, albeit possibly one the players willingly follow. Or is that the difference? Railroading is defined as the GM using force to prevent the players from deviating from the path, but if on the linear adventure the players never try to deviate from the path then technically such force is not needed?

Let's say we have a scenario where the characters are approached/hired by the watch to help investigate a series of disappearances in a local district. Rumours point to some sort of people smuggling (or whatever) that may be operating out of a warehouse down by the docks but the watch haven't the time or resources to chase that lead up yet. It's obvious that that is the push and in a railroaded adventure, that is the only option. No talking to anyone else or going anywhere but the warehouse.

In a linear adventure, that is still the pointed lead but the players might decide to do some investigation first. Ask around the family, friends and neighbors of the missing. Canvas the streets of taverns. Set watches on the docks or the warehouse/s. Maybe doing some research in the local library or hall of records. Use their spells and abilities. The story still goes forward as before, but in a linear game, the players can get their in their own way, They can do whatever investigation or other actions before hand. That is what makes it linear over railroaded.

I prefer the Adventure Path approach to campaigns. Levels 1 to 20 with a start and an end. It works as long as the campaign doesn't become a railroad, and the characters to follow the campaign with their own methods, and that the players agree to the unwritten rule of the table that we are here to play said campaign, it works. Linear is the way to play, in my opinion.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Stop objecting. You're not the correctness police. That's why discussions fail to get off the ground. What do you want to accomplish here? Bully everyone into writing at a technical manual level, or actually have discussions about the content? The first is what you're kind of inadvertently doing, and it's never going to work because most definitions have secondary elements and nuance to them that you're ignoring anyway (and because people don't care and will ignore your attempts here), and the second isn't enabled by focusing on semantics.

I can accept what you mean by imprecise words once I understand it. It is just that with such word choices it is not surprising if misunderstandings happen, and people talk past each other. Also, at this point I still do not know whether other who used the term "linear adventure" understand it same way than you do.

But yes, if "linear adventure" just means "a non-sandbox adventure where player nevertheless can and will make decisions that affect the course of the events in meaningful way" then that obviously is not railroading.

 

[FrogReaver]

@Crimson Longinus

I can accept what you mean by imprecise words once I understand it. It is just that with such word choices it is not surprising if misunderstandings happen, and people talk past each other. Also, at this point I still do not know whether other who used the term "linear adventure" understand it same way than you do.

But yes, if "linear adventure" just means "a non-sandbox adventure where player nevertheless can and will make decisions that affect the course of the events in meaningful way" then that obviously is not railroading.

One can go from A to B to C provided one doesn’t too specifically define A, B or C. Or maybe better to say, where A, B and C aren’t events but fields of events that occur where the distance of events a1 and a2 is relatively small.

What’s happening is your grouping alot of non identical events together based on many similarities without those events being completely identical.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Good module authors will allow for many possible options, but it's impossible for an author to think of everything -- that's why you need a DM.

And great module authors have set scenes up in a certain way that results in players who do what they think is the smartest response to a scene... and that just happens to be the one the author has prepped for the DM ahead of time.

One of the issues it seems to me is that many folks here seem to just assume that their players aren't playing to the best of their ability. That their players aren't going to play smart. Which of course is always possible... but in my experience I think players like feeling they are making the smart decision. The right decision for the scene at hand. They put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4... and they choose 4 as their next decision direction. And DMs and module can predict that pretty well. And thus the next scenes written and prepped are the ones that come out logically from the previous scene. If a location ends with the party finding a treasure map to a location 2 hexes away... it doesn't take a genius to guess the players are going to make a beeline to that location. A location the DM and module writer have graciously already prepared.

Now sure... there are some DMs who run the most open of sandbox games where every single adventure location is its own singular thing and players just wander across the open map in a random direction, find that location, finish that location, and nothing in that location prompts the players to go any further. And thus once the players finish it they just start wandering randomly across the map again until they find another singular location and do that thing (so on and so forth). So of course there's no logical progression to be had or to be made or to figure out, because every location is just a random event. With that kind of module, indeed there is no planning that can be made because the throughway is completely random.

(Of course, that being said... the fact that every location is a singular thing and there are no indicators in any of these locations to push or prompt the players to a specific next direction means that indeed the DM can still create a linear path out of it by just not putting these locations on the map beforehand. Instead they just drop the next location they have material on into the map in whatever random direction the players wandered. If there's no story progression between locations, then there's nothing to determine what the next location is supposed to be. Which gives lie to the idea that sandboxes are inherently better than linear paths.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One of the issues here it seems to me is that many folks just assume that their players aren't playing to the best of their ability. That their players aren't going to play smart. Which of course is always possible... but in my experience I think players like feeling they are making the smart decision. The right decision for the scene at hand. They put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4... and they choose 4 as their next decision direction. And DMs and module can predict that pretty well. And thus the next scenes written and prepped are the ones that come out logically from the previous scene.

Some situations are like that, but I think it is poor adventure building if every situation has one correct and obvious answer, and yeah, to me that is rather railroady.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Some situations are like that, but I think it is poor adventure building if every situation has one correct and obvious answer, and yeah, to me that is rather railroady.

So you want your players to not play smart? To make bad decisions based on the information they have in hand? Or is it you just don't want there to be a throughline to your adventures and you want your players to just move randomly around (because to do otherwise is 'railroady')?

If that's how you prefer to play and your players prefer to play, that's cool. But hopefully that's just because you like that style and not because you have a need to 'not be railroady' first and foremost.

 

[Desdichado]

So you want your players to not play smart? To make bad decisions based on the information they have in hand? Or is it you just don't want there to be a throughline to your adventures and you want your players to just move randomly around (because to do otherwise is 'railroady')?

If that's how you prefer to play and your players prefer to play, that's cool. But hopefully that's just because you like that style and not because you have a need to 'not be railroady' first and foremost.

Insisting that 2 + 2 = 4 is taking away my mathematical agency and is a railroad.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Oh, well of course yeah! I'd never deny that!

Roleplaying games are absolutely 100% meant to be a story-creation medium, not a board game. Which is why I couldn't care less about anyone's efforts to make sure the "board game" of D&D is balanced and works correctly. If I wanted that, I'd just play actual board games.

Conversely:

TTRPGs are the only place where we can have the two parts of that actually, truly, interact dynamically. Video games cannot be flexible enough to adapt like that. And pure freeform roleplay is all about not having rules.

It's only in the TTRPG space that you can get things where you play the game by roleplaying, and you roleplay by playing the game. Where the two are in sync with each other and actually reinforcing one another, rather than one being a vestigial organ barely clinging to existence next to the full and complete development of the other one.

That's why I want both things. I want good story development AND good gameplay development. Because this is the one and only place I can actually find that.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Insisting that 2 + 2 = 4 is taking away my mathematical agency and is a railroad.

Hey now... if it wasn't for math Richard Trevithick wouldn't have been able to invent the railroad in the first place!