D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[EzekielRaiden]

That's only true if you can't lose. Far as I know, nothing about a linear campaign mandates that.

I do think there is a slightly greater temptation to prevent any loss that actually stings in a linear campaign. When there is no endpoint except what the players are interested in doing, a TPK is just a consequence of biting off more than they could chew. When you're Saving The World, a TPK is a major downer. Obviously, not all linear games will be like this, but there's an element of greater loss with a linear game, when the point, to some extent, is to see the whole thing.

Looping back (heh) to the "rollercoaster" idea from earlier--linear in its best form--it would be like if you got onto a coaster, and got halfway through it, only for the ride to shut down safely. You have to get off the ride, and you never get to see the end. It didn't hurt you, you didn't suffer (other than maybe some dread stuck in the car for half an hour or whatever), but you clearly missed out on a lot of the experience you were there to get.

And I think that segues nicely into the inverse pitfall for the open game, for which sandbox is the best form and wasteland the worst. The temptation with the open game is to avoid making anything that might ever appear even slightly like it pressures the party to do something--but that leads directly into the "empty" feeling, where it's just a whole mess of completely disconnected points-of-interest, but a lot of the interest gets sapped away by needing to ensure they're just one-off oddities. Where the linear game tempts the GM to take away undesired consequences, the open game tempts the GM to take away structure and interconnection, leaving only novelty and curiosity as motives.

 

[soviet]

I do think there is a slightly greater temptation to prevent any loss that actually stings in a linear campaign. When there is no endpoint except what the players are interested in doing, a TPK is just a consequence of biting off more than they could chew. When you're Saving The World, a TPK is a major downer. Obviously, not all linear games will be like this, but there's an element of greater loss with a linear game, when the point, to some extent, is to see the whole thing.

Looping back (heh) to the "rollercoaster" idea from earlier--linear in its best form--it would be like if you got onto a coaster, and got halfway through it, only for the ride to shut down safely. You have to get off the ride, and you never get to see the end. It didn't hurt you, you didn't suffer (other than maybe some dread stuck in the car for half an hour or whatever), but you clearly missed out on a lot of the experience you were there to get.

And I think that segues nicely into the inverse pitfall for the open game, for which sandbox is the best form and wasteland the worst. The temptation with the open game is to avoid making anything that might ever appear even slightly like it pressures the party to do something--but that leads directly into the "empty" feeling, where it's just a whole mess of completely disconnected points-of-interest, but a lot of the interest gets sapped away by needing to ensure they're just one-off oddities. Where the linear game tempts the GM to take away undesired consequences, the open game tempts the GM to take away structure and interconnection, leaving only novelty and curiosity as motives.

Good post. 'Aragorn can't die yet, he hasn't even got to Minas Tirith!'. I guess the other possible fail state for linear play is where characters do die and get replaced to such an extent that you have a Ship of Theseus situation (or Trigger's Broom for those of us in the UK), where by the time the campaign gets to the end point none of the characters in the group-as-is really have any investment in the situation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I do think there is a slightly greater temptation to prevent any loss that actually stings in a linear campaign. When there is no endpoint except what the players are interested in doing, a TPK is just a consequence of biting off more than they could chew. When you're Saving The World, a TPK is a major downer. Obviously, not all linear games will be like this, but there's an element of greater loss with a linear game, when the point, to some extent, is to see the whole thing.

Looping back (heh) to the "rollercoaster" idea from earlier--linear in its best form--it would be like if you got onto a coaster, and got halfway through it, only for the ride to shut down safely. You have to get off the ride, and you never get to see the end. It didn't hurt you, you didn't suffer (other than maybe some dread stuck in the car for half an hour or whatever), but you clearly missed out on a lot of the experience you were there to get.

Then again, I think that in campaign with clear overarching plot, it is in certain sense easier to continue after a TPK with different characters and still have it be the same campaign, as the plot acts as the connecting tissue. Like if Frodo gets killed, someone still has to take the ring to Mount Doom. The knowledge that the previous fellowship failed might even make the stakes seem higher. On the other hand in sandbox the only thing that really ties things together is the characters. If in my game there was a TPK, we certainly could continue playing with new characters, but it would not really be "the same" campaign, rather than a new campaign that is merely set in the same world.

And I think that segues nicely into the inverse pitfall for the open game, for which sandbox is the best form and wasteland the worst. The temptation with the open game is to avoid making anything that might ever appear even slightly like it pressures the party to do something--but that leads directly into the "empty" feeling, where it's just a whole mess of completely disconnected points-of-interest, but a lot of the interest gets sapped away by needing to ensure they're just one-off oddities. Where the linear game tempts the GM to take away undesired consequences, the open game tempts the GM to take away structure and interconnection, leaving only novelty and curiosity as motives.

Perhaps in sense that there shouldn't be one pressuring massive plot "do this or the world ends" that forces the game to be about that. But there can be more local significant situations and things can be interconnected, and have consequences that are felt beyond that one situation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Good post. 'Aragorn can't die yet, he hasn't even got to Minas Tirith!'. I guess the other possible fail state for linear play is where characters do die and get replaced to such an extent that you have a Ship of Theseus situation (or Trigger's Broom for those of us in the UK), where by the time the campaign gets to the end point none of the characters in the group-as-is really have any investment in the situation.

But if Aragorn dies, the War of the Ring still goes on, and someone will try to defend Minas Tirith. It is still the same story. But if Conan dies at the Tower of the Elephant, and then it is Valeria who becomes the lover and companion of Bêlit, the Queen of the Black Coast, then there is nothing to connect these stories together.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Then again, I think that in campaign with clear overarching plot, it is in certain sense easier to continue after a TPK with different characters and still have it be the same campaign, as the plot acts as the connecting tissue. Like if Frodo gets killed, someone still has to take the ring to Mount Doom. The knowledge that the previous fellowship failed might even make the stakes seem higher. On the other hand in sandbox the only thing that really ties things together is the characters. If in my game there was a TPK, we certainly could continue playing with new characters, but it would not really be "the same" campaign, rather than a new campaign that is merely set in the same world.

I find it's a hard sell to come up with a completely different group that somehow manages to be all the things needed, without any of the connections the previous group had. If Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship die trying to take the Ring to Mount Doom...it almost certainly gets acquired by someone who can use it, either Saruman or Sauron. You can finagle it, but the finagling itself is an undesirable complication. If the TPK happens very early, maybe it can be worked around without too much effort, but like, if the Fellowship had stuck together through the start of Return of the King and then ended up dying in the Paths of the Dead rather than recruiting them. Suddenly, you've lost your Ring-Bearer, your True King, your nearly-unique Wizard, and almost all connection to that plot. Yes, it still exists, but so much has been built up, I find a lot of people would disengage rather than accepting a kludge to replace with the B Team that never existed until the TPK made them necessary.

But I would also argue that the idea that separating one campaign from another in the open format is a lot harder to do. That is, I would personally argue that that isn't a new campaign, so long as it's starting at more or less the same time that the previous group died, and getting to see the ripple-out consequences (as you reference below) that the other party had. Now, if there's a timeskip, so that the previous party's actions have mostly rippled out already and the group is having to rediscover the world again, then I would definitely call that a brand-new campaign.

I guess what I'm saying is, the linear campaign "stays the same" by retaining narrative proximity: new characters who can step into, or at least patch over, the roles that the original characters filled. Conversely, the open campaign "stays the same" by retaining setting proximity: new characters existing near the same time and location, rather than the same purpose and goal.

Perhaps in sense that there shouldn't be one pressuring massive plot "do this or the world ends" that forces the game to be about that. But there can be more local significant situations and things can be interconnected, and have consequences that are felt beyond that one situation.

Well that was my point: when things go wrong, just as a railroad is a linear thing going wrong in some way, the GM feels they cannot do even that local interconnected stuff with ripple-out consequences, because that might be seen as "forcing" people to do things. Hence, when that temptation actually manifests, it contributes to the "wasteland" experience, just as the GM shielding players from any real consequences contributes to the "railroad" experience.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But if Aragorn dies, the War of the Ring still goes on, and someone will try to defend Minas Tirith. It is still the same story. But if Conan dies at the Tower of the Elephant, and then it is Valeria who becomes the lover and companion of Bêlit, the Queen of the Black Coast, then there is nothing to connect these stories together.

See above, but my response is essentially, "Will they?" With Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, etc. all dead, it seems that the War of the Ring becomes a conclusive victory for either Sauron or Saruman, if the latter is in fact capable of wielding the Ring properly. (I'm personally skeptical of this and think the Ring would use him to get back to Sauron. Gandalf, on the other hand, I think really could wield the Ring better than Sauron himself.) Aragorn, especially by the start of the third book, is simply too important to be lost. The narrative has built him up to the point where losing him genuinely trashes the whole thing, and we get a downer ending where evil wins--or we get a fourth book showing a complacent Dark Lord taken down by a different group, at which point it's now a different campaign, one set in Fantasy Dystopia rather than Fantasy Post-Post Apocalypse.

 

[soviet]

But if Aragorn dies, the War of the Ring still goes on, and someone will try to defend Minas Tirith. It is still the same story. But if Conan dies at the Tower of the Elephant, and then it is Valeria who becomes the lover and companion of Bêlit, the Queen of the Black Coast, then there is nothing to connect these stories together.

Aragorn being the rightful king and all the resulting tensions with the steward and Sauron's fears of Isildur's heir is a big part of the reason why the climactic battles are scheduled for Minas Tirith. In some campaign prep methods, Minas Tirith would have been created as a response to Aragorn's background, to pay off the various plot threads the character embodies.

If Aragorn gets eaten by a grue and the second half of the saga is lead by Hibulbus the wood elf bard, a lot of the thematic resonance of using Minas Tirith gets lost. You might as well have the big battle somewhere else.

 

[Mort]

Well, I'm no sandbox purist, and I like I said previously whilst my D&D game has some sandboxy elements it probably does not qualify as a pure one.

But I think that in any good sandbox game the players can influence the content of the game massively. They might not influence content of the world, but like a real world a proper sandbox has massive amount of stuff in it, the PCs can choose to engage with any of it. If they want to be champion of light that defeats undead, then certainly any sandbox D&D world will have a lot of undead and forces that wish to create more of them in it, so this is easily done. Want to become a pirate? Go for it! Want to do heists to rob stuff from reach people? Plenty of rich people around, so not a problem at all. Etc, etc.

And in practice, I think the player choices and interests influence what gets put into the world. Most GMs do not actually write a full super exhaustive description of the world that covers everything (though such might be generated as a result of long campaigns.) Often there are a lot of things that are just barely defined sketches, and once the players take interest in them will they quantum collapse to something more concrete. My setting definitely has a lot of this. Like I said before, whilst I had defined that giants had a long lost ancient civilisation, it only got more properly defined once one character became obsessed with the giants and wished to research them. And there has now been many giant themed adventures as a result of that, and the history of the giants has been detailed.

100% agree that's the way it SHOULD be.

 

[Mort]

See above, but my response is essentially, "Will they?" With Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, etc. all dead, it seems that the War of the Ring becomes a conclusive victory for either Sauron or Saruman, if the latter is in fact capable of wielding the Ring properly. (I'm personally skeptical of this and think the Ring would use him to get back to Sauron. Gandalf, on the other hand, I think really could wield the Ring better than Sauron himself.) Aragorn, especially by the start of the third book, is simply too important to be lost. The narrative has built him up to the point where losing him genuinely trashes the whole thing, and we get a downer ending where evil wins--or we get a fourth book showing a complacent Dark Lord taken down by a different group, at which point it's now a different campaign, one set in Fantasy Dystopia rather than Fantasy Post-Post Apocalypse.

But gaming isn't or shouldn't be like that. If the party suffers a TPK/near TPK most groups just have everyone make new characters and continue. Sandbox, linear, the game goes on. Often the demise/defeat of the prior group can be incorporated into the fiction (the extent depending on what the prior group has actually done) and the new group goes forward.

I've certainly never been in a group (player or DM) where it was "well you guys royally messed that up, Greyhawk's done for. Guess we're moving on to an Eberron campaign now!" Though, thinking about it, that might actually be a fun rug to pull with the right group (mine might fit).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But gaming isn't or shouldn't be like that. If the party suffers a TPK/near TPK most groups just have everyone make new characters and continue. Sandbox, linear, the game goes on. Often the demise/defeat of the prior group can be incorporated into the fiction (the extent depending on what the prior group has actually done) and the new group goes forward.

I've certainly never been in a group (player or DM) where it was "well you guys royally messed that up, Greyhawk's done for. Guess we're moving on to an Eberron campaign now!" Though, thinking about it, that might actually be a fun rug to pull with the right group (mine might fit).

One of my ancient Exalted campaigns ended with the world being destroyed. And that was due one PC actually deciding to join the big bad at a crucial moment after the big bad's "join me" villain speech. I really didn't see that coming! We played Exalted after that though, albeit come think of it, I believe the next campaign was set in the past so the events of the first campaign could still have happened in the same continuum... Though I didn't think it that way, they were separate versions of the same setting, like Burton's and Nolan's Batman movies.