D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[FrogReaver]

The definition that I'm using was adopted precisely because I got tired of the "I know it when I see it" definitions that rely on subjective statements.



Agreed. Railroading to some extent is a part of all games. It's not possible to railroad 0% of the time. This is something I discuss, and is an important part of the discussion. Fundamentally it comes down to that no RPG runs without some GM fiat.



That's not obvious at all, and in fact that's obviously wrong in the general case. I discuss this as well. Your argument here would be correct if and only if the players had full knowledge of everything that might happen during the time they agree to skip. And this is obviously not the case. You can and I have on occasion use a time skip to jump the players into a trap that they agreed to jump into, but where they didn't fully understand the consequences of their action and where they would not have jumped if they had known what they were jumping into. This is the question, "Is there anything anyone wants to do before the morning?" or "Is there anything anyone wants to do before nightfall?" type question, where I know as a GM that there might be all sorts of things that they might want to do but because I can see they are running out of ideas or because I think the play will be dull if we don't time skip or for whatever reason, I'm luring the players into consenting to loss of agency so that I can get what I want to happen (something I think will be more fun than just having the players sit around and argue or speculate without taking meaningful action).

IMO some concepts are just difficult to place all the nuances into words.

I think using a definition that underfits the concept so as to make everything definable as that concept is infinitely worse.

 

[bloodtide]

I don't. That's the point. If my PC is immortal, why bother wasting the time playing out a combat encounter. Just tell me about how my immortal PC once again laid waste to my mortal foes and get on with the game. The whole point of a combat encounter is to feel tension, brought on by the fear that my PC might not survive. If I know my PC is going to survive, no matter what the rules or dice dictate, all the tension is gone. The combat encounter then becomes utterly pointless and downright boring. I have no interest in spending an appreciable amount of time in a session playing out a combat encounter that has the foregone conclusion; I win, because I am immortal and my opponent is not. I could instead spend that time engaging in different tension building encounters where failure might actually be an option.

I agree. This is one of the Big Things that makes RPGs Unique.

This most certainly requires investment on the players' part and effort on the GM's part to produce meaningful, worthwhile consequences. But I think it is an effort well worth pursuing--and I believe that, in most cases, it produces a game that encourages players to truly care about what happens, rather than what I have seen too many times in games that focus too much on death as the only important consequence.

I find character death makes players care more about everything game related. Not just their character, but their characters story arc and the game arcs.

Too many players get comfortable in the no-character death game and check out, goof off, or worse. They know their character will never die, so nothing really matters.

And all the other things don't even come close to character death.