D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Maxperson]

So the necromancer doesn't have one obvious answer, it has two. Give the artifact or don't give the artifact. Two completely logical answers to this problem, both of which are valid and obvious and the players just have to choose one of them. And I am willing to bet that whoever the DM was (you or whomever) knew what the necromancer would do with the artifact if it was given, or do to the party if they did not. So your scenario is railroading the party just as much as any other scenario.

Answer 3: Don't trust the necromancer and use other means to verify if he has the information or not.

Answer 4: Gather allies to capture the necromancer and force him to talk.

Answer 5: Give a fake artifact and and try to get the info out of the necromancer before he discovers that he was duped.

Answers: 6+ other ideas.

This idea you have that there is an obvious correct answer or two is flawed. There are many "smart"/"good play" answers to virtually all dilemmas.

And the prison? Getting out and escaping WAS the obvious solution to the problem was it not? So you've railroaded the players there too, by putting them in a situation where there's only one logical result-- escaping the prison. Sure the methodology for how to accomplish it could have various answers, but the solution to their problem was railroaded by you from the get-go.

You don't have nearly enough information to say this with any sort of confidence. We don't know why they are there or what else they could have tried other than escape. Depending on the specific circumstances, though, there are many possibilities.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, but it's not only about story.

Trying a difficult combat encounter several times until you win by the skin of your teeth is fun. If PCs just respawn as if nothing happened, it enables the GM to punch harder and challenge them more, and enables players to experiment with new strategies and approaches.

At the end of the day, there are reasons most videogames tend to not delete your save on game over, and those reasons are very much applicable to tabletop games, especially if we consider the whole "fight things and talk in silly voices" strata of campaigns.

Oh, sure, if you want to play a TT tactical wargame, that's great! I was one of the playtesters for TFT Melee back in the day. It has all the basic elements of D&D characters, ability scores, equipment, and some skills (just related to weapons). You just go into the scenario, kill the other guy, and that's it. You can play over as much as you like. The GM could even invent different scenarios, etc. That was, 1978 IIRC. I'm sure better ones have been invented since. And while TFT was elaborated in an RPG (and was sort of a prototype of GURPS) Melee (and Wizard) were not really RPGs in any meaningful way. You'd have to brew yourself a more complete structure for that, or just wait a couple years until TFT itself came out.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

"What is and isn't Real Role-playing" sounds like an argument about semantics to me, and those tend to go nowhere.

I don't find a single unbroken continuity to be a defining factor of roleplaying games.

Yeah, I agree with you on continuity. It COULD serve a useful purpose in some play, perhaps. But NOBODY actually exercises complete unbroken continuity anyway, so it becomes one of those things where we need to ask more specific questions anyhow.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I'm pretty sure all of them were 5, any that weren't would have been 4. I've never had a 5e group with 6 or more PCs.

Particularly with TPK's at fifth level. At that level 5e parties are really getting into their stride and should be difficult to TPK.

In my experience, the encounter-building rules for 5e are...well. I could voice my full opinion, but it wouldn't be nice. At all. So I'll just say that my experience thereof has been "GMs frequently don't know the difference between encounters that are near-guaranteed TPKs and those that are cakewalks", because every time, the resultant TPK has been followed with (brief) profound confusion about how that ever could have happened.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Not for my games. This happens quite often in my games.

Say it ain't so.

The average gamer that joins my game is totally unprepared for thing in my game like: Unfairness, Unbalanced, Harsh, Cruel, Old School, Let the Dice Roll where they May, Combat is War, Life is War, The Hardknock Life, and Death and Doom. No matter what is said to them before the game. So, this makes character death quite common for them. An example is they don't take cover when under a ranged attack, or worse when a PC leaves cover for some dumb reason to make themselves a target.

Yes, I'm well aware you pride yourself on being a "Killer GM" who actively tries to crush the spirits of your players, being actively and openly cruel to them. I have little interest in discussing that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

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.

All of these campaigns are from multiple years ago. I no longer have any of the materials for them. Sorry.

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

Really? Are you really going to stickle over this? I had hoped the meaning would be obvious, but...okay. Fine.

We did not reach level 4. We were already level 4 and more, but gained no further levels. There, are you happy now?

I'm sorry, I just find this insultingly pedantic.

Do you use level drain abilities in 5e?

I've never seen them used, no. I was under the impression they didn't exist.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Well, I could say that Luke Crane already did that . . .

Yeah, I guess. In my embarrassment I decided to take a break from the thread as punishment. The break got me thinking though, about MouseGuard, also by Luke Crane.

So, in Burning Wheel, as you pointed out, the GMs entire purpose is to foster narrative that engages the players interests by focusing on the PC's Beliefs. With the PC's Beliefs being an expression of the themes and ideas the player is interested in experiencing via the game's fiction. MouseGuard offers an alternative to BW's singular focus by splitting the narrative focus, specifically, by splitting the game sessions between a so called "GM Turn" and "Player Turn" respectively. During the "Player Turn" the GM is supposed to foster narrative in a fashion similar to BW in that the narrative is focused on what the player wants to do, giving the player meaningful influence over scenes and how they play out. However, during the "GM Turn" the GM is given free reign to fame scenes, and the stakes therein, independent of player influence, in order to present impersonal challenges the PC's must overcome. So, if I do, in fact, understand MouseGuard's play loop correctly, I have the following questions.

1) Would you still consider the "GM Turn" to be a railroad as the GM is the one who is supposed to set stakes and frame scenes independent of player influence?
2) Does the railroad-y-ness of a game's play loop depend on an expressed (or implied) agreement via "social contract" that the GM and players are supposedly following?
3) Is it possible that scenes and so called "world events" created by the GM independent of player influence, not be suppressing player agency, if and only if, the players do not feel as their choices are being invalidated?
4) Have I completely lost it by pursuing this line of thinking, and am in fact, completely talking out of my butt?!?

Cheers!

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Saruman is also Maia and the ring would be the same for him as it would for Gandalf and Sauron. If the Fellowship died, you still have Elrond, Galadriel, Gildor Inglorion, Glorfindel and others to fight. The elves wouldn't just sit there and die.

 

[Maxperson]

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).

Speaking for myself, the reason I've only put the world on the line a couple of times in 4 decades of DMing is because I'm not going to cheapen failure by bringing in NPCs or even other PCs to save the day. If the group fails a campaign like that, I would find a new world to DM in.

 

[Mort]

Speaking for myself, the reason I've only put the world on the line a couple of times in 4 decades of DMing is because I'm not going to cheapen failure by bringing in NPCs or even other PCs to save the day. If the group fails a campaign like that, I would find a new world to DM in.

I've only done a true world in actual danger of not existing plot once or twice but when I've done it there were other realities and even time travel shenanigans in play, so failure was an interesting complication not necessarily a full finality.