D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Maxperson]

Well, it has become apparent to me over the past few comments by @pemerton, @EzekielRaiden and @Celebrim that each is saying, perhaps even thinking, very different things when it comes to railroading, so until the definition part of 'railroading' gets worked out, this discussion will continue to go nowhere.

That's not surprising. @EzekielRaiden is using the railroading as it is commonly used in RPGs, and @pemerton and @Celebrim have invented personal definitions, which is why they get so much pushback when the claim certain things are railroads.

This, I agree with (thank you @EzekielRaiden):

"Railroading is the word for when a GM, through coercion or manipulation, enforces an inflexibly linear experience as part of GMing, that the players would not accept if they were aware of it, or do not accept if they are already aware of it."

Yes. Railroading is when the DM uses force overtly or covertly to make the players go where he wants them to be, invalidating their choices on where they decided to go. It removes agency.

It also really only applies to RPGs. MtG being a card game is not a railroad.

 

[Maxperson]

Once again, stuck on the qualitative fallacy.

Disagreement with you isn't a 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.

He substituted "I want" for "I want." It wasn't about winning.

 

[Maxperson]

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

On an internet forum?

 

[Celebrim]

Because you said that a GM having things they like and thus think would be cool to have in their game is railroading.

Even if that was what I had said, you can't now complain about it because your own definition means that unless the players consent to your myth it is railroading. And we can in fact find examples of players who don't consent to myth and suggest that unless a game is "no myth" then it is railroading. Now, I'm not inclined to agree with that but by your own definition you can't object to the idea that myth creation is railroading.

Especially after you have (repeatedly) said that all games feature tons of railroading...what am I supposed to think?

I'm not even sure what you are saying here because this doesn't seem to be a response to the section of text you quoted. What I will say is I never said everything a GM does is railroading. I have described things that aren't railroading, such as arbitration of an action according to the rules and established fiction. But of course, by your own definition, even that can be railroading if for some reason the player decides that your arbitration is wrong and doesn't consent to it.

I strongly suspect that your definition is going to end up needing a caveat of "reasonable consent" where a player in your opinion should be expected to consent.

If you knowingly consent to something, you're not being coerced or manipulated.

I don't think we agreed to that the last time we discussed coercion. You can be coerced or manipulated into consent.

But no, there are absolutely some things which cannot be done openly. Fudging dice, for example, specifically requires that it be done secretly. If you do it openly, you aren't fudging, you're just choosing to ignore the dice.

If you do it secretly, you are still just choosing to ignore the dice, the difference is how you are getting consent for it. You totally could roll in the open and the manipulate people into giving you consent to ignore the rolls.

As for your analogy to crime, I'm just not going to go there. We've got enough of comparing the hobby to intrinsically dangerous behaviors without going there.

 

[Maxperson]

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 think so.

My admittedly limited understanding of metacurrencies in RPGs is that they are primary acquired by the players using their agency to do or push certain things. The DM gets them to do stuff with, because the players in effect chose for them to be able to do so.

Also, you seem to be equating the DM placing challenges in front of the PCs through the use of metacurrencies with the DM doing things the players don't want. Simply by choosing to play a game where those metacurrencies are used, the players are engaging their agency to approve those uses.

 

[Celebrim]

@Celebrim have invented personal definitions...Railroading is when the DM uses force overtly or covertly to make the players go where he wants them to be, invalidating their choices on where they decided to go. It removes agency.

Funny how my personal definition is the same as the one you offered.

 

[Maxperson]

Funny how my personal definition is the same as the one you offered.

It can't be. Many, MANY of your examples of railroading, aren't railroading and don't meet my definition. Hell, you've stated that the DM asking, "Are you sure you want to do that?" is railroading, despite the players being able to say yes they do OR no they don't. The DM is failing there to force the players down path of his choosing.

For it to be railroading, the DM needs to refuse what they players have chosen to do, and force them down a different path of his choosing to get them to where he wants them to be. The players can have no option to do anything else.

 

[kermit4karate]

Funny how my personal definition is the same as the one you offered.

IMO, in this thread there is an inverse correlation between the length of a comment and the level of understanding people have after reading it.

 

[Celebrim]

It can't be. Many, MANY of your examples of railroading, aren't railroading and don't meet my definition.

They in fact do. If they don't then your definition actually has some extra personal caveats that you are hiding, which is probable, which means you are the one with a private and personal definition. But feel free to explain why my examples don't meet the stated definition.

Hell, you've stated that the DM asking, "Are you sure you want to do that?" is railroading, despite the players being able to say yes they do OR no they don't. The DM is failing there to force the players down path of his choosing.

LOL. Seriously, metagame direction like that were you influence the players choice is a really powerful railroading technique. You are manipulating the player's decision making process. I can't understand why you don't see asking that question is anything but a GM attempt to control the player's action because he doesn't want the player to do that. And sure, the player can say "Yes, I do.", but like the second or third time a player says, "Yes, I do." and terrible horrible things happen to the player character, they are going to take the hint.

For it to be railroading, the DM needs to refuse what they players have chosen to do, and force them down a different path of his choosing to get them to where he wants them to be.

The thing is your definition of railroading is just confined to DMs doing it crudely and ineffectively. You only understand it as railroading if it's just some crude "No, you don't; you do this instead." contest of wills or something. But the crudeness and bluntness of the application of force isn't part of your definition. The difference between what I'm seeing and saying and what you are seeing and saying is I recognize that artful, clever, subtle and economical applications of force to make the players go where he wants them to be, and invalidating their choices on where they decided to go, are just as much agency removing as direct confrontations and in fact are much more likely to be successful in manipulating the game and the players in the long run.

UPDATE: And additionally, to just show how ridiculous the definition offered by @EzekielRaiden is in this example, by his definition when I train my players to say "No" by asking them "Are you sure you want to do that?" and do something else I prefer, by his definition they aren't being railroaded because they have fully informed consent. "Thank you for taking my agency away, Mr. GM."

 

[Umbran]

I don't think anyone is arguing that a railroad is inefficient at forcing the PCs to where the DM wants them to be. You can't get off of a railroad in-between stops, and the stops are where the DM is forcing the players to go.

When I got on the T to go to work this morning, that was a choice on my part. I could have driven into the city instead. I could even have gotten my employer to pay for my parking, no questions asked. Or, I could have ridden my bicycle, or walked. I chose the train.

The main skew to the depiction of railroading as a technique comes from the implicit assumptions that the player will always want to choose absolute personal freedom, and cannot possibly also want to go where the train goes.