D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Celebrim]

But of course if everything is railroading there is nothing to manage, as you literally cannot avoid it!

Once again, stuck on the qualitative fallacy.

This is not what agency in a game means. I want to win in chess. But because I'm bad at it, I lose. But I did have agency. Now if I would just declare that I win in chess, I really would have no agency to play it.

And that's another fallacy. You've here substituted "getting what they want" (what I said) for "winning" which is a hugely fallacious substitution especially when going from a cooperative game with a fiction to a competitive game that just have moves and no meaningful fiction. And once again, you are attempting to avoid addressing what I actually said by substituting your own argument by analogy. And calling that an argument and declaring victory.

I have demonstrated that your definition basically equates GMing with railroading, which self evidently is absurd.

You have not.

Agree to disagree then?

I thought we had.

 

[kermit4karate]

Once again, stuck on the qualitative fallacy.



And that's another fallacy. You've here substituted "getting what they want" (what I said) for "winning" which is a hugely fallacious substitution especially when going from a cooperative game with a fiction to a competitive game that just have moves and no meaningful fiction. And once again, you are attempting to avoid addressing what I actually said by substituting your own argument by analogy. And calling that an argument and declaring victory.



You have not.



I thought we had.

Can I chime in here and have the last word??

See if everyone would allow me to have the last word on this, then everyone else can feel like they aren't letting their ideological adversary have it.

Yes, I'm brilliant, right? I know. You're welcome.

 

[Deset Gled]

Can I chime in here and have the last word??

No.

 

[zarionofarabel]

If nothing else some of the discussion in this thread has at least given me some idea as to why certain systems include meta currency for the GM. I know Modiphius 2d20 systems do. I mean, if the GM has their own meta currency they can use to force the narrative down a certain path, even if it's against player wishes, it shouldn't really be railroading, right?!? I mean, isn't that the whole reason why a GM would need meta currency, to give them the ability to railroad, as long as they have the currency to pay. Or am I totally off on that idea?

 

[kermit4karate]

If nothing else some of the discussion in this thread has at least given me some idea as to why certain systems include meta currency for the GM. I know Modiphius 2d20 systems do. I mean, if the GM has their own meta currency they can use to force the narrative down a certain path, even if it's against player wishes, it shouldn't really be railroading, right?!? I mean, isn't that the whole reason why a GM would need meta currency, to give them the ability to railroad, as long as they have the currency to pay. Or am I totally off on that idea?

I completely disagree with this. The DM's ultimate authority in the context of D&D is a nonnegotiable for me. There is already a built-in mechanism for players who disagree with a DM -- walk away from the game.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I completely disagree with this. The DM's ultimate authority in the context of D&D is a nonnegotiable for me. There is already a built-in mechanism for players who disagree with a DM -- walk away from the game.

I didn't mean it should be something added to D&D. I just recently encountered the 2d20 systems, and was flabbergasted as to why the GM would have their own meta currency. However, some of the recent discussions on here about GM manipulation of the narrative and whether or not it qualifies as railroading, makes me think that's the reason for having GM meta currency.

 

[kermit4karate]

I didn't mean it should be something added to D&D. I just recently encountered the 2d20 systems, and was flabbergasted as to why the GM would have their own meta currency. However, some of the recent discussions on here about GM manipulation of the narrative and whether or not it qualifies as railroading, makes me think that's the reason for having GM meta currency.

Seems like a reasonable compromise. If I believed we could reach consensus on a reasonable amount of a metacurrency to both satisfy my concerns as the DM and satisfy the people advocating for more constraints on the DM, I could agree with it...but I doubt we could. I bet that's where negotiations would break down.

 

[pemerton]

If nothing else some of the discussion in this thread has at least given me some idea as to why certain systems include meta currency for the GM. I know Modiphius 2d20 systems do. I mean, if the GM has their own meta currency they can use to force the narrative down a certain path, even if it's against player wishes, it shouldn't really be railroading, right?!? I mean, isn't that the whole reason why a GM would need meta currency, to give them the ability to railroad, as long as they have the currency to pay. Or am I totally off on that idea?

I don't know the details of the Modiphius systems.

But I am pretty familiar with the Doom Pool in Marvel Heroic RP. One thing it does is to serve the same function as player-side plot points: to manipulate resolution dice pools. But it can also be used to affect various aspects of a scene - both framing, and to close a scene even if the players haven't finished in it.

In D&D, the rules allow a GM to close a scene whenever and however they wish, and provide relatively little guidance on how to this. In comparison, the MHRP rules are more limiting of the GM's authority.

 

[pemerton]

Magic the Gathering is a total railroad. Strict rules the players must follow. Every board game? Strict railroad.

I'm not sure "railroading" applies outside of the context of a game where one participant - the GM - plays an important role in choosing what happens next. But anyway, I don't see how M:tG is a "total railroad". Each player gets to make their choices within the rules, and the state of the game emerges entirely from that.

Solitaire might be closer, in that the way the game plays out is dictated primarily by the initial state of the deck, and that many of the limited choices that the player gets to make are blind ones.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

"Railroad" is a metaphor. In a game, the tracks never go everywhere, and the tracks can very much mostly go somewhere. Truly facilitating the tracks going everywhere may not be possible.

I really am unsure what you mean here. In a game that is a railroad, the tracks very much do go somewhere. If they only mostly go somewhere, that's exactly what every single game in the world does and so cannot be railroading unless everything does.

I thought you were disagreeing with me. Those two statements are a big part of the basis of my argument. If you recognize the truth of them, then you are mostly in agreement with me.

I absolutely believe that people ere always biased and I do agree with you that their biases come out. I am nearly completely in agreement with you. Our only disagreement (I believe) is that you think that you should call a game where the GM makes several efforts to suggest that a town might be a good place to go a game "with some degree of railroading" and I would just call it a "game where the GM really wants something, but isn't going to force it on you"

So your hyperbole about how it's not a railroad until you have "no freedom" is just not useful for accurate.

I think I see where you have misunderstood me -- you took my statement it's not a question of having "less" freedom -- it's about no freedom to apply to the whole game. We are in agreement that that is an extreme position, and I do not take it. My statement applies to the individual cases of player agency. So if a player wants to go to sea, and the GM makes it impossible, then that is railroading regardless of how much other freedoms are allowed.

My argument is that railroading is the complete absence of ability for a player to choose a certain action. It is a qualitative thing, but, like all qualitative things you could turn it into a quantitive scale by counting the number of qualitative incidents. For example, you duo exactly that!

You still can do things and creative things within the framework of the story, it's just the major plot points will be hit and there isn't really anything you can do about it beyond perhaps commit suicide or otherwise quit the game

Excellent reference, yes. This helps explain my position well. The major plot points are railroading (you have "no freedom"), but other things are not.Your statement is exactly my argument -- you have split things into two categories when you describe this adventure, and each of them is either railroading or not -- either free action or no action. So ...

.. if your quantitative measure "railroading" is defined as a count / ratio / weighted whatever of the number of times that a railroading situation occurs, I think we are in agreement. If you assert that putting pressure on a player, either consciously or unconsciously to bias them to a certain decision is railroading to any degree at all, I'm not with you. As soon as a GM allows the players to take reasonable courses of action, even with possibly unfair costs, it's not railroading.