D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[FrogReaver]

And if the players do something that plausibly allows them to bypass those swamp encounters but the DM forces them through them anyway, that seems a good definition of railroading to me.

IMO. A lot hinges there on player expectations of plausible vs dm ones.

 

[FrogReaver]

Can a player railroad the other players? What about can the players railroad the DM?

 

[NN]

Like most Forge nonsense, it’s based on a half-baked faulty premise. The referee does not have complete control over the story. The story, such as it is, emerges from the interplay between the referee’s prep, the roll of the dice, and the players’ choices. There’s no Gordian Knot to cut. It’s an illusion.

“The Forge is wrong .

Heres why …”

[proceeds to actually agree with The Forge]

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I would just add to this Metagaming , as I think it's important that a player should not be able to ruin a game for everyone just as they are a jerk.

I don't see how that applies. If the action is reasonable, warranted, and within the scope of the rules, how could it "ruin a game for everyone"? I genuinely don't understand how this could apply.

Wait, you lost me. It's Railroading if a player is clueless? This is sort of saying like 95% of all players are railroading themselves?

No. You are inserting something I never said. I did not say "clueless". I said information hidden from the players.

Consider, for example, the possibility that the King is a doppelganger, and the true King is imprisoned elsewhere. One of the players decides to use a divination spell which would let them spy on the King because he's in a meeting and they want to hear what he says behind closed doors--not knowing that this spell would actually fail, because the true king is outside its range.

The GM knows that the action isn't something the players can do, but the players don't. They literally can't. So the GM has to fix this. The clumsy GM just heavy-handedly says "no". The less-clumsy but still not great GM invents, on the spot, an explanation that the royal chambers are warded against divination magic, even though that wasn't true yesterday when the party was sneaking around inside the castle. Naturally, the "good" GM would have had to think about this well in advance and specifically make sure players knew this plan would never work from the beginning--but I find that there are far more GMs who railroad than there are GMs who have that much foresight.

True.

I agree. I put this as one of the Top DM problems: not knowing how to write. And it is not just "writing a novel", it is "writing an RPG scene, encounter, plot or story.

Right. "Writing" is a bit of a catch-all as I used it there. Writing for a GMing context is going to be different from novel-writing.

This again falls under bad writing, or even bad game craft.

Doesn't mean it isn't railroading.

Agreed. Most clumsy DMs are just inexperienced or have never really been taught how to DM. Though I do count Casual DMs as bad because of their "whatever" attitude.

I don't. If a "Casual" GM makes it clear that that is their stance, then the players know this and can make their own decisions about it. It's only bad GMing if a "casual" GM makes it seem like they aren't being that casual about it.

Unless "casual" here means something more specific? I'm not always able to follow your meanings when you use capitalized words like this.

Metagame fits though, right? It is what you call something done Within the game for Real Life reasons.

No. Because, again, troll weakness to fire. Where is that in real life? It isn't. It's exclusively within the game. It isn't within this specific campaign yet, but it is within the game. Yet "knowing trolls are weak to fire even though your character couldn't" is pretty much THE go-to example of metagame knowledge. Or, consider, a player who knows that a cheese.

For example, no matter what each PC is as their personality and backstory they Must be a group of adventures together, because it would be wrong to tell a player "all the other PCs hate your character so you can't play that character".

This is not true for all playstyles. For myself, as a general rule, I do ask that the players choose to play characters that are going to get along with the rest of the team 90%+ of the time.

Same way it is metagaming when a player has their PC like an other PC that is a hag or harpy just because they find the player of that PC attractive and want to flirt.

That is a form of metagaming. It is not the only form of metagaming. Again, I point out

When a DM make a clue easy to find it is metagaming.

Is it? Sometimes some clues just should be easy to find. For example, if it's a murder mystery...clues that are on the body of the victim shouldn't be that hard to spot. Some might require careful thought (e.g., I once had a body allegedly found just after being stabbed, but the wound only oozed blood, not gushing it, indicating the body had been dead for hours--but only to people who know what the various stages of death are like. Two of my players at the time did know this, so that wasn't an issue.)

Plot Step? Event Point?

Again, this goes back to good writing......and more to the point good RPG design.

Events/situations, not "plots", is more or less my argument here. Calling them "plots" usually makes GMs think they need a rigidly-defined beginning, middle, and end, which is extremely likely to lead to problems.

More importantly, I cannot accept that good writing is enough to turn 100% of railroading from bad to good. That's simply not true. You can write supremely well, and still be ramming your players through stuff. Likewise, just because there's some weak writing doesn't mean it's automatically railroading.

I don't see how this has any intersection whatsoever with game design. There are no rules being invoked here. It's purely in the art of description and development, which are not game design.

I do second having such conversations.

Agreed. Though I would add on the even more "don't do it even with an agreed by-in". A lot of players don't like the buy-in concept. They will do it, but endlessly complain "guess we agreed to do it so we must whatever" and then sort of half-play as they are unhappy.

A player who does this is being a jerk. They're straight-up lying when they say they're okay with something, because they aren't actually okay with it. I have no tolerance for such behavior. It's okay to complain--once, so long as it then becomes a conversation for how we can fix the issue. After that (since everyone should be allowed to voice complaints!), the first unjustified complaint, it's a warning: "If you aren't actually okay with this, you need to tell me so we can try to work it out." Second time, I'm going to tell them directly, "You need to improve your behavior, now, or I'm going to ask you to leave the table."

Third strike, the player clearly doesn't care to actually fix the problem, and simply wants to complain so they can complain. They will be politely but firmly told they are no longer welcome in this campaign. If their behavior changes later, and they apologize and actually show how their behavior will improve going forward, I would genuinely consider inviting them back in. But without an apology and corrected behavior, they simply won't be welcome at any table I run in the future.

I hold GMs to a high standard of conduct. I hold players to a lower, but still meaningful, standard of conduct. It's hard for players to get on my bad side, but I won't tolerate it if they genuinely do cross a line. I'll give them chances to change--everyone deserves that--but they have to actually change.

It is best to have Inciting Incidents that really hook the players....hook, line and sinker. Make a good one, and the players will jump on it very willingly.

That's more or less what I was trying to say, yes. Either offer things you know will get them excited right off the bat, or

This is one of the reasons why it's useful to ask your players what kinds of stuff they like. Because, as long as they answer honestly, it gives you useful information. It will be a lot easier to make good inciting incidents when you have a good idea what kinds of things get these players to jump on it willingly.

At Least Three Things comes into play here too. It is often best to have three or more reasons for the PCs to do any task, adventure, plot or story. The easy way is to have all the PC be Lawmen, then it is simple enough for them to go after criminal. More complex is to give each PC a unique reason. One of the nice things about 5E is the bit of the focus on affiliations and factions. This gives PCs built in reasons to do things....assuming the players role play deeply.

Yes, this is generally a good rule of thumb. It's not always enough (no plan survives contact with the enemy), but if something is really really important to be seen/learned/done, giving multiple chances is a very good idea. I'd say three is the minimum if it's important. More if you want to be very, very sure it doesn't somehow slip through the cracks.

 

[NN]

The way to stop players disintegrating the expositing dying villian is to tell them “exposition incoming, do not interrupt”.
You can use words or wear a special hat.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The way to stop players disintegrating the expositing dying villian is to tell them “exposition incoming, do not interrupt”.
You can use words or wear a special hat.

Because everyone knows that 100% of players would both (a) obey this instruction without question, and (b) be happy that they received such a non-diegetic instruction on what to do.

Unfortunately, the preceding sentence is false, and pretty much everyone knows so.

 

[NN]

Because everyone knows that 100% of players would both (a) obey this instruction without question, and (b) be happy that they received such a non-diegetic instruction on what to do.

Unfortunately, the preceding sentence is false, and pretty much everyone knows so.

You cant jerk proof a game.

The nonjerky reason for cutting the bad guy’s speech short is that sometimes these speeches come with a ****-you last curse or spell Etc

So its better to say “challenge mode on/off” than expect the players to guess.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You cant jerk proof a game.

I never said you could.

The nonjerky reason for cutting the bad guy’s speech short is that sometimes these speeches come with a ****-you last curse or spell Etc

So its better to say “challenge mode on/off” than expect the players to guess.

Alternatively, it's better to actually talk to your players and make sure the group is all on the same page, rather than barking orders.

 

[Charlaquin]

Like most Forge nonsense, it’s based on a half-baked faulty premise. The referee does not have complete control over the story. The story, such as it is, emerges from the interplay between the referee’s prep, the roll of the dice, and the players’ choices. There’s no Gordian Knot to cut. It’s an illusion.

I think the ideas developed on the Forge were a mixed bag. Taking this notion of the impossible thing before breakfast for example, I think you’re correct that, for many modes of play, the very premise that the GM is in complete control of the story is erroneous. However, there are other modes of play in which the GM is expected to be in control of the story, while the players are still expected to be in control of their characters. For those modes of play, a lot of the discussion of this idea was very illuminating and valuable. As with pretty much RPG models, the creator had his own biases, which affected his analysis. Doesn’t mean his analysis isn’t useful, particularly for people with similar biases.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the ideas developed on the Forge were a mixed bag. Taking this notion of the impossible thing before breakfast for example, I think you’re correct that, for many modes of play, the very premise that the GM is in complete control of the story is erroneous. However, there are other modes of play in which the GM is expected to be in control of the story, while the players are still expected to be in control of their characters. For those modes of play, a lot of the discussion of this idea was very illuminating and valuable. As with pretty much RPG models, the creator had his own biases, which affected his analysis. Doesn’t mean his analysis isn’t useful, particularly for people with similar biases.

I find so often in this sort of thing, a controversial but earnest body of theory has something like a 60/40 or 70/30 ratio of wheat to chaff, but the folks who already had an entrenched view see it as 1/99 when they're feeling generous and thus pick the worst bits of the 30-40 chaff to write off every part of the 60-70 wheat.

Simply: it was worthwhile, if sometimes overly-enamored with bespoke jargon. Folks who hated the jargon, or who caught hard on the weaker parts of it, are some of the most ardent haters around, and that makes it real hard to use the parts that really are useful.