D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Maybe? But honestly, you can have ongoing events in a non-linear campaign where the consequences are a little grim beyond the TPK itself too, and linear games where the stakes aren't world-ending. I'm not saying linear games don't lean into the high-stakes more, but the divisor isn't clear-cut.

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.

Well, I do have to point out people can feel that in a sandbox if they're cut off so early they only see the lower character levels. It might be less of an issue given sandboxes are more common at the OSR end of things, which sometimes also run to capping or pushing levelling down, but if you're doing one with a game that avowedly is 1-20, losing everyone at 5th is a disappointment unless it was understood it'd end early anyway.

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.

Though I suspect in most case once people are nibbling on an event in a sandbox, people running them are not particularly hesitant to develop things from that which some people might think of as at least linear-ish. The "no nudges at all" group does not seem particularly common to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

The problem usually is, if there's a party capable of picking up the baton at midpoint, the question of what they were doing when all the other stuff was going on? Once you get into major world/nation threatening situations, its easier to just assume there wasn't much of anyone else for the job.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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).

I haven't seen a whole lot of TPKs, but with the groups I played with, I doubt most people would be interested in picking up the same campaign; the TPK would leave a bad taste in their mouth.

 

[Hriston]

FWIW, "The Provisional Glossary" over at The Forge has this definition:

Railroading​

Control of a player-character's decisions, or opportunities for decisions, by another person (not the player of the character) in any way which breaks the Social Contract for that group, in the eyes of the character's player. The term describes an interpretation of a social and creative outcome rather than any specific Technique.​

 

[pemerton]

No, a classic sandbox is having all of the areas, NPCs etc. already set. The PCs then can wander freely and encounter them, but they are constrained by what the DM has placed.

Now, done well/properly the PCs will act as dominoes/ripples and much of what they do will change how the surroundings respond so it will be a very different experience depending on who the PCs are and what they do.

Because you asked me upthread about my understanding of railroading, I just wanted to make an observation about this.

The difference of experience you describe is the GM deciding things in response to the players' action declarations. But it doesn't preclude the GM doing that more-or-less unilaterally.

 

[pemerton]

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.

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.

I think this shows the force of @chaochou's post upthread: if the "plot" is maintained, and new PCs are brought in to try and carry it forward, who is setting those PCs' goals? It doesn't look like it's their players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this shows the force of @chaochou's post upthread: if the "plot" is maintained, and new PCs are brought in to try and carry it forward, who is setting those PCs' goals? It doesn't look like it's their players.

Well, in a campaign with a save-the-world premise, that's pretty much the campaign premise out the gate; its an initial-state situation and part of the premise. That's true in any campaign in the world that isn't a sandbox.

 

[Maxperson]

I would generalize further and say that any campaign that starts with the GM having an endpoint in mind (barring a TPK) is a railroad. Lots of games are railroads. Pretty much every adventure path you purchase is a railroad.

Baldur's Gate 3, for all of its rightfully vaunted freedom (within a CRPG space), is both the platonic ideal of what an adventure path wants to be AND a railroad.

Adventure paths cannot inherently be railroads, because they do not inherently restrain player action and force them down a very specific path that the DM wants them on.

The adventure path might show us that the Duke is behind the current plot and he has the item we are looking for, but we don't have to go there and get it. Not then, or perhaps not ever.

Rather than risking the Duke's wrath and guards, we could decide to divert to a city a few weeks away and get an item that isn't quite as good, but should be enough of an aid in our estimation. Then we bypass the duke and continue on. Or maybe halfway through the adventure path it gets old and boring, so we decide to go investigate somewhere else and leave the adventure path up to NPCs to figure out.

A DM can on his own force us down rails in an adventure path, but there's no inherent railroad in a linear module, because without the additional DM force, you can hope off the path and go somewhere else.

 

[Maxperson]

If this is true, I have no idea what not a railroad even means.

It's not true.

 

[Maxperson]

I understand this thinking (and @pemerton made this point in one of the other threads and I do not feel he was wrong given his playstyle) but if we use the label in this way for all these games/adventures do we require further terminology, do you think, for more restrictive railroads either by design or by the GM?

What is or is not a railroad doesn't change with preferred playstyle. @pemerton may feel more constrained by a traditional playstyle than with his preferred style, but more constrained =/= forced down a single path that the DM wants you on with no way to change anything or get off the rail.

We don't need more terms for railroad, or the idea that there are more and less restrictive railroads. We just need folks to understand what a railroad is and not try to change the definition to suit their desires.

A railroad has one path that the party cannot deviate from. This rail over here is no more or less restrictive than that one rail over there. Both have one path that you cannot deviate from and completely invalidate a player agency.