D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[loverdrive]

That's an utterly terrible idea. It totally destroys any tension caused by dangerous situations.

People tend to avoid having to lose progress, so they tend to not want to die.

What's even the alternative, really, presuming have a problem with TPKs? Stopping play altogether? Restarting from the beginning, undoing even more progress?

 

[Thomas Shey]

People tend to avoid having to lose progress, so they tend to not want to die.

What's even the alternative, really, presuming have a problem with TPKs? Stopping play altogether? Restarting from the beginning, undoing even more progress?

I suspect for some people, its start a new group and/or game. It might be anticlimactic, but you don't have to continue on with the same situation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

People tend to avoid having to lose progress, so they tend to not want to die.

What's even the alternative, really, presuming have a problem with TPKs? Stopping play altogether? Restarting from the beginning, undoing even more progress?

I really don't think issue with TPKs is mainly about "losing progress." It is about disconnect in the narrative. So what you do if you want to continue, is to find a narrative threat that connects the new characters to what the old ones were doing.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think my words may have made it unclear.

Nearly all 5e games I've played have started at level 1. With the exception of Hussar's group, literally 100% of those games have failed to reach level 4.

I have never seen a 5e game that (a) started out at level 1 and (b) actually reached level 4.

I have seen 5e games that did reach level 4--they just didn't start at level 1. Specifically, I've had one that started at level 5 and another that started at 6, I think? Can't remember, that was a PbP game.

Out of curiosity what was the party size? I am not going to deny your experience and the only TPKs I have had was with low level parties right at the beginning of my experience of 5e but I think you have been very unfortunate.
Particularly with TPK's at fifth level. At that level 5e parties are really getting into their stride and should be difficult to TPK.

 

[loverdrive]

I suspect for some people, its start a new group and/or game. It might be anticlimactic, but you don't have to continue on with the same situation.

Sure. I'm operating under the presumption that the group actively likes their current situation and would rather continue playing, and thus "just start a new game" is a bummer outcome even outside the game.

Does such immortality "devalue" death and reduces tension? Yes. There are no win-win deals, something must be sacrificed.
Is it worth continuing the game and having more room for learning more about it and developing better strategies? Depends on how much you value this sense of finality of consequences.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes, but given that you probably do not run the same scenario for thousand tables, thus we do not have this information, it is moot.



No I didn't.



So it is true that sometimes the situation the GM present is such, that the GM can with high accuracy predict what the players will do. And some of this is both inevitable and perfectly fine. But if your game is wholly or even mostly composed of such scenes, then we are getting into railroady territory. Because if situations are constantly presented in such way that there is only one course of action that can reasonably be taken, what agency the players have?

And you must ask yourself, why it is that I can see and predict for most situations the course the players take? It is because you, as the GM, built the situations so that there is little real choice! But do not worry, as the solution is near! As you can see these likely choices, and you built the reasons that make the choices obvious, you can also easily alter the situation so that there is no obvious "correct" choice. Increase the tactical complexity and/or moral ambiguity, add nuance until you are no longer sure what the players would do. Then you have constructed an interesting situation that gives them real agency!

And I believe this is more fun for players, but at least to me, it is more fun for the GM too. I've been doing this for a long time, and I usually play with people I know well. So if I wanted the game to take a form of specific story I have predetermined, I could present things such a way, manipulate and illusionise, that it will with high degree of certainty come to pass. But what's fun in that? The point of RPGs is that the players get to make choices that impact the story, it is not just the GM telling a story to the players! And as GM I want to be surprised too! I don't want to know how the story will go before the play has even begun.

IMO. Sometimes the players have tons of choices and you just know them and which they are going to make. Or at least have a good idea of which, not due to railroadiness but due to understanding what drives them as players.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

There can be 12 smart solutions to something, only 8 of which are thought of by the module writer, and 1 of which is chosen as the next step in the linear process.

I agree with you that linear isn't a railroad, but I balk at the idea that the module writer is writing THE smart way to proceed.

Let's take the map scenario you mentioned earlier that leads to a place two hexes away. Maybe they proceed there immediately. Maybe they start asking the locals what they've heard about that area. Maybe they seek a guide who has been there. Maybe... There are lots of "smart" ways to proceed, not just the one the module writer decided on.

 

[Maxperson]

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

Right! What if I want to go with 1+3 or 0+4? Why force me down 2+2?!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think my words may have made it unclear.

Nearly all 5e games I've played have started at level 1. With the exception of Hussar's group, literally 100% of those games have failed to reach level 4.

That is strange. All my groups actually reached that level.

I have never seen a 5e game that (a) started out at level 1 and (b) actually reached level 4.

Maybe show us your characters sheets. Someone here could probably help you building them in a way that makes them able to survive a few encounters.

I have seen 5e games that did reach level 4--they just didn't start at level 1. Specifically, I've had one that started at level 5 and another that started at 6, I think? Can't remember, that was a PbP game.

How can you see characters reach 4th level if they started at level 5 or 6...

Do you use level drain abilities in 5e?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure but this can verge on the GM saying, "Your character wouldn't do that." Indeed, having a game system that encourages the players to take beliefs, bonds, goals ect. and then encourages the GM to invent scenarios specifically to "challenge" those beliefs, bonds, or goals is a pretty hard core form of railroading. This just opens up the game to a lot of False Choice techniques where your character is presented with a choice like, "Do this or die" that isn't really a choice at all.

No it isn't. If you come to that conclusion, then your definition of railroad is unprintable. Think harder.

Every game presents situations to the PCs. If 'presenting a situation' IN AND OF ITSELF is 'railroading', then the term is worthless.

If you think that presenting a situation 'because it was written down' or 'because I (the GM) imagined it being likely' is somehow 'less railroading' than 'because that situation puts you on the horns of a dilemma' or somesuch, you just have a very weird idea of what actual play is like.

But this thread has gone to some hilariously weird and ridiculous places, so...