D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[zarionofarabel]

Understood. Likewise I don't think we'd have a good time together. I try to always use this same kermit avatar wherever I go, so you should be able to recognize me and can nope away.

Or I could just post in this here public forum however I see fit as long as I am complying with the forums guidelines.

 

[kermit4karate]

Or I could just post in this here public forum however I see fit as long as I am complying with the forums guidelines.

OK...I did not suggest you couldn't? I think you took offense where none was intended.

 

[Maxperson]

Hmm... Bit on the nose there with the knife-twisting, but I agree that most DMs with more than a few years under their belt probably have more in common stylistically than they don't.

Also, I think we may agree that humans in general, even when they're able to improvise better than most, still benefit from planning and taking an organized approach. That applies to most things.

Bottom line, this is another of those discussions where there isn't a right or wrong answer for everyone. I'm gonna start calling these "Pedant's Delight" because they end up becoming fierce debates over the one true meaning of individual words! (cough like railroading)

Yeah. I prep stuff, but minimally. Like @EzekielRaiden, it's more ideas, situations, encounters, etc., rather than super detailed prep like you'd get from a module or AP. If I know they are headed for a fey forest, those ideas, situations, etc. will be fey/forest themed. Then the players go where they go and do what they do, and those prepped things either enter play or don't, depending on what happens. And I improvise the places in the middle.

Going back to the fey forest trip, if on the way they look for an inn on the road, there might be one. I don't know. I'd give them a roll or roll behind the screen and if the DC I assign is exceeded, they find one. That inn will be improvised, but I've done soooooooo many inns in my DMing life, and been in soooooooo many inns as a player, it's not hard to come up with a good inn on the fly.

The reason for my light prep and improv mix is that I just don't have the same amount of time to put into prep that I did before I married and had kids.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't owe anything to gaming or Gary Gygax or the game designers, literature or the "larger RPG community." I don't owe poo niblets to anyone other than the people who play with me, so if they're happy, I'm happy with myself.

And that's really what it boils down to. If you and the players are all happy, you're doing it right. Whatever the hell you are doing. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work for me or my group, we aren't your group.

 

[kermit4karate]

Yeah. I prep stuff, but minimally. Like @EzekielRaiden, it's more ideas, situations, encounters, etc., rather than super detailed prep like you'd get from a module or AP. If I know they are headed for a fey forest, those ideas, situations, etc. will be fey/forest themed. Then the players go where they go and do what they do, and those prepped things either enter play or don't, depending on what happens. And I improvise the places in the middle.

Going back to the fey forest trip, if on the way they look for an inn on the road, there might be one. I don't know. I'd give them a roll or roll behind the screen and if the DC I assign is exceeded, they find one. That inn will be improvised, but I've done soooooooo many inns in my DMing life, and been in soooooooo many inns as a player, it's not hard to come up with a good inn on the fly.

The reason for my light prep and improv mix is that I just don't have the same amount of time to put into prep that I did before I married and had kids.

Whenever anyone here tries to find consensus on something they might have disagreed on, it usually ends badly, but I'm hoping it's safe to say that...I think we mostly look at it the same way.

I do improvise when I DM with things like inns, encounters, side quests and sub-plot points, but the main plot, important encounters and the overall story arc are usually (hopefully in my case) planned out ahead of time.

 

[pemerton]

Not speaking for anyone else, but I don't reveal all my cards (dice) at the table either. I do literally pretend sometimes if I feel it's for the greater good.

If we only have 30 minutes left to play before the Cleric has to go home, I might use a little DM magic to disable that last trap in the final antechamber and turn the last secret door into an open archway, etc.

Play it straight, that's the point of having rules. If it was any other game, not following rules is considered cheating. Why is it that it's okay to cheat when playing a TTRPG? Also, how come it's okay for the GM to cheat but not the players?

This raises the question, do the rules of play include the GM draws and keys a map, and then sticks to that as part of the core of scene-framing and action resolution?

In some RPGing, the answer is yes. In some, it is no. I think it causes confusion to discuss and analyse all RPG play as if the answer is yes.

 

[kermit4karate]

This raises the question, do the rules of play include the GM draws and keys a map, and then sticks to that as part of the core of scene-framing and action resolution?

In some RPGing, the answer is yes. In some, it is no. I think it causes confusion to discuss and analyse all RPG play as if the answer is yes.

Absolutely. IMO, RPGs are not now, nor have they ever been, Monopoly or poker. Vastly more complex and multifaceted than that. They're also cooperative and lack a clear "winner." Winning happens when the entire group has a good time, and it's the DM's actual job to facilitate that, concealed behind an opaque DM screen.

Some may disagree, and that's great. No problem. I'm not looking for everyone's approval, especially on this surprisingly controversial subject.

 

[pemerton]

Absolutely. IMO, RPGs are not now, nor have they ever been, Monopoly or poker. Vastly more complex and multifaceted than that. They're also cooperative and lack a clear "winner." Winning happens when the entire group has a good time, and it's the DM's actual job to facilitate that, concealed behind an opaque DM screen.

Some may disagree

Yeah, I'm one of those who disagree! I think in a lot of RPGing there is winning, similarly to how in a lot of other cooperative games (eg Forbidden Island) there is winning.

Winning requires a degree of structure/constraint around how the play of the game unfolds. But, as per my post just upthread, that structure needn't take the form of a binding map and key.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Only because you are still seeing railroading as a qualitative term rather than a quantitative thing. The question isn't "Are we railroading or not?" but "How much are we railroading?" Railroading is like temperature. It has a nice zone you want to be in for comfort.

I think you'll find most people DON'T think of it as a quantitative term. It's intrinsic in the metaphor -- a railroad has a direction that you CANNOT avoid going. There is no qualitative aspect to a real-world railroad: Tracks do not "mostly" go in a direction or "suggest you head to New York". They either go there or they do not.

Every GM has intrinsic biases, stuff they think is cool, areas they have a. vision for, NPCs they would like to meet. Every GM will either consciously or unconsciously make it easier for the players to move in those directions than in others.

Railroading, for most people, is a qualitative statement. It's a statement that the players have lost some aspect of freedom of action. We can argue about whether they have to perceive it, or what sorts of losses count as railroading (and we will, until the end of recorded time ...) but it's not a question of having "less" freedom -- it's about no freedom.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

@Celebrim

Is railroading always coercive?

No, but it typically has the potential to be.

If I have a simple adventure that requires the players to choose to bargain with A, fight B and marry C, then that is a railroad as I am requiring the players to do certain things -- they have lost freedom to act and must follow my plot.

If they do actually do these things of their own accord, it is still a railroad -- they have still lost their freedom of action; they simply are unaware of it.

A trickier situation is if the GM entices them to stay on the rails -- say the GM offers a player a Fate points to start a fight with B. It makes reasonable sense so the player takes it and they go on. They haven't been coerced, but it's still a railroad and if they had refused the Fate point, the GM would be forced to coerce the action to keep the railroad going.

Coercion though is tricky to define. It's tricky in law and tricky in gaming. If the GM says "if you go that way, I have nothing prepped and we'll have to end now and play next week" -- is that coercive? Sort of feels like it to me, but it's not forcing the action, just making it tricky, so I'd probably say not coercive. But I wouldn't argue if you thought otherwise.