D&D General The Great Railroad Thread
- Thread starter bloodtide
- Start date
The fundamental element of a railroad is GM control of player character goals. Player character goals are the driving force of all play - if the GM controls them, they are deciding everything that matters about play (even if you can make micro-decisions about which square to stand in or which enemy to target, or which quip to say to the barman).
Whether this is fun or not largely depends on whether the goals are interesting and whether the obstacles to achieving them are worth anyone's time.
Sandboxes seem very poorly defined. But generally still seem to involve the characters 'discovering' (a euphamism for being told by the GM) what there is to do and then deciding whether to do it. In other words, they offer a menu of GM-generated goals and GM-generated outcomes. It can't be otherwise, since such games allocate all the authority for creating and changing the sandbox to the GM.
Non-railroad play has the players author their character's goals. Author, not pick from the GMs list or cues. Author themselves, absent the GM. The GMs role is to provide adversity in achieving them, with the help of a game system designed to create that adversity. Systems designed for such play need mechanics which allow players to achieve non-negatable success for goals other than killing stuff.
Such play rarely assumes 'a party' so it's often the case that player characters have conflicting goals and the game is also about the compromises each character makes, the changes they experience and price they pay to do so.
Whether this is fun or not largely depends on whether the players create goals which genuinely interest them and whether the obstacles which arise as a result create moral and ethical dilemmas which are worth anyone's time.
Whether this is fun or not largely depends on whether the goals are interesting and whether the obstacles to achieving them are worth anyone's time.
Sandboxes seem very poorly defined. But generally still seem to involve the characters 'discovering' (a euphamism for being told by the GM) what there is to do and then deciding whether to do it. In other words, they offer a menu of GM-generated goals and GM-generated outcomes. It can't be otherwise, since such games allocate all the authority for creating and changing the sandbox to the GM.
Non-railroad play has the players author their character's goals. Author, not pick from the GMs list or cues. Author themselves, absent the GM. The GMs role is to provide adversity in achieving them, with the help of a game system designed to create that adversity. Systems designed for such play need mechanics which allow players to achieve non-negatable success for goals other than killing stuff.
Such play rarely assumes 'a party' so it's often the case that player characters have conflicting goals and the game is also about the compromises each character makes, the changes they experience and price they pay to do so.
Whether this is fun or not largely depends on whether the players create goals which genuinely interest them and whether the obstacles which arise as a result create moral and ethical dilemmas which are worth anyone's time.
Last edited:
Here's my report of setting up and running a LotR/MERP game: Middle Earth/LotR RPGing using Cortex+ Heroic. One result of doing it as a RPG was that Gandalf was not as resistant to temptation/corruption as in JRRT's version.
Like I said above... I'm fine with changing 'obvious and correct' to 'most likely'. And there HAS to be one 'most likely' path because once you count up every table's decision on where to go, there will be one path that is more likely to get chosen than any other (unless one wants to get pedantic and say that there's a chance that out of thousands of runs that two just happen to tie for first. But that's beside the point.)
Crimson has been claiming that any author or DM who preps for that eventuality and has a next scene set up to use is making things 'railroady'. Which is fine... they can claim whatever they want. If they want to think an author or DM being proactive and guesstimating what the players are likely to do next after finishing a scene and having that next scene prepped is "railroading" those players... they can think what they want. But most other people do not think in that way. Because that means even something like Lost Mines is supposedly a "railroady" adventure and not a "sandbox" adventure that many people say it is.
But whatever. Crimson can interpret things as they want.
Last edited:
I would too... but Crimson has been saying that any adventure where a breadcrumb is left to potentially lead a party somewhere next is "railroady". They are not going as far to say that the players are actually being railroaded to go from the road to the goblin caves to Phandalin to the Redbrand Hideout to the various locations in the valley to eventually Wave Echo Cave... but because there is that path laid out per the author's design that it is like a railroad. It's railroad-y. And I guess they think that a completely non-breadcrumbed "open sandbox" is somehow a better option for players.
I, of course, disagree.
I've found a combination like Phandelver works well.
Found that most players despise the "no bread crumbs" approach and most DMs don't run that style well regardless.
Not @UngainlyTitan but, in answer, see where that leads.
The players are often surprising, they're on the ropes but pull out the clutch win.
Or, if possible, they flee and regroup, with the consequences of that hopefully being interesting.
Or there's a TPK/near TPK; the players bring in new characters and forge new paths.
Not really understanding how a linear adventure can't present a "real" challenge.
Unless you're talking about an adventure that has an express fail forward mechanic (Light of Xaryxsis, the Spelljammer adventure for example) which would be frustrating to some groups because failure and success DO have the same end results.
