D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Thomas Shey]

Im not sure the best formula though i think its less levels, to the chagrin of folks who want 30 level D&D, I just dont ever see that in the cards anymore in face of the amount of folks that barely get past 10.

A lot of that turns on two things:

1. How long do people play?
2. How fast are they willing to let levelling go?

As an example, in theory 13th Age characters level every four sessions (in practice its slower than that in most cases after the first tier of play (L1-3) though they only go to level 10 (but 10 is also probably equivalent to 20 in most D20 games). Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard goes even faster, levelling after each adventure (and adventures are sort-of assumed to be one session operations, though that's probably assuming a longer gaming day than those folks who play for 2-3 hours do).

So a 30 level D&D version where people levelled every session wouldn't necessarily be beyond the reach of everyone. It might feel too fast for various reasons, but that's a different issue and is partly based on other design elements.

 

[payn]

A lot of that turns on two things:

1. How long do people play?
2. How fast are they willing to let levelling go?

As an example, in theory 13th Age characters level every four sessions (in practice its slower than that in most cases after the first tier of play (L1-3) though they only go to level 10 (but 10 is also probably equivalent to 20 in most D20 games). Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard goes even faster, levelling after each adventure (and adventures are sort-of assumed to be one session operations, though that's probably assuming a longer gaming day than those folks who play for 2-3 hours do).

So a 30 level D&D version where people levelled every session wouldn't necessarily be beyond the reach of everyone. It might feel too fast for various reasons, but that's a different issue and is partly based on other design elements.

I know some folks can do 30 levels, but even with 20 in 5E (which people think levels too fast) they dont much get beyond 10th. Im just not convinced "leveling speed" has much to do with the desire to actually achieve it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I know some folks can do 30 levels, but even with 20 in 5E (which people think levels too fast) they dont much get beyond 10th. Im just not convinced "leveling speed" has much to do with the desire to actually achieve it.

A separate question of course. Part of it is what "level" means various not only from game to game but from class to class within a game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yeah, but there's nothing about a level based game that mandates that 1 is the default starting point. Its just such a tradition people have trouble getting past it both in the design, and in application in the field. In other sorts of approaches it doesn't have the baked-in history that every game out there carries from D&D.

I mean there is literally a poll running on about starting levels on this forum and it seems a lot of people have no issues with starting at a higher level.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean there is literally a poll running on about starting levels on this forum and it seems a lot of people have no issues with starting at a higher level.

Two things:

1. As always noted, people on fora are not the populace as a whole. That doesn't mean that a poll here is automatically invalid, but it can at least bring them into question.

2. "A lot of people" /= "a majority". The latter is by its nature more relevant for people trying to find a D&D or adjacent game starting at higher levels than the former by its nature.

 

[bloodtide]

7. The PCs arrive in a room with 4 doors (A, B, C and D). In one of them, there is the villain. In the other three, there are some treasures. But no matter which door the players choose, the villain will always be behind the first door they open (to ensure that players do not run away with the treasure without facing the main villain).

Well, this is not a pure Railroad, this is much more Quantum Ogre .

A big part of the fix here is: why are there four doors in the first place? The best way for a DM to get players to go on a single path, is to have just a single path.

Really, the Villain or Treasure or the Villain or Escape makes no sense. The idea that the PCs will encounter the Villain behind some random door they open is just silly.In most cases, you simply want the PCs to go encounter the villain willingly. And slightly less often you will want to have the villain show up and attack the PCs. And, more or less, the villain will be guarding the treasure.

For most games, like most fiction, as the PCs get closer to the villain all other doors or paths or options should fade away. You don’t really want to get the PCs nearly right to the villain and then just send them away as they made a “choice B”.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Zero to hero is the point of having a level based game.

It is? When was that established? I never got that understanding from it, and it was never communicated in any of the level-based games I've played.

A level-based game is there to have understandable steps of progression. That has nothing to do with where one starts that progression. The alternatives are either a lack of progression at all (your character does not "grow" in any way; while rare in TTRPGs, it does occasionally show up), or pure "point buy" which produces pseudo-continuous changes. I say "pseudo-"continuous because the changes are still discrete, but they are very small and occur in a much more sporadic way, thus approximating the feeling of continuous growth (much as pseudorandom number generators approximate true randomness).

I certainly don't always want that, but there are games other than D&D. Now you of course can start at a higher level in D&D too, but the basic idea that the levels mean significant increase of power is a fundamental building block of the game and it would be a mistake to get rid of that.

That they represent a significant increase in power does not mean that the progression must start with none. All "significant" means is that it isn't--as noted above--small and sporadic. One can imagine any number of functionally level-based systems outside of gaming that do not have this "you must start at the absolute theoretical minimum of power" requirement.

 

[MrBeens304]

A thing that has come up a lot in this thread but hasn't really been discussed holistically is that context has a significant impact on "railroad vs player choice". 2 extremes below:
One shot convention game with randoms (3 hour session, pre gen characters) - as a player I don't expect much freedom, I'm happy to get on the train, a good convention DM keeps things flowing, I want to have a good conclusion at the end of the session and not just end at some arbitary point because Bobby spent 30 mins messing about talking to a random barman.
Ongoing game with your group of 20 year IRL friends (4 hour sessions twice per month) - we know each other, we know the DM style (or styles if we are playing different systems). We have an established social contract and can talk through any conflicts that arise.

 

[bloodtide]

A thing that has come up a lot in this thread but hasn't really been discussed holistically is that context has a significant impact on "railroad vs player choice". 2 extremes below:
One shot convention game with randoms (3 hour session, pre gen characters) - as a player I don't expect much freedom, I'm happy to get on the train, a good convention DM keeps things flowing, I want to have a good conclusion at the end of the session and not just end at some arbitary point because Bobby spent 30 mins messing about talking to a random barman.

I'm not sure I agree here. A one shot game is not really a Railroad. It is a linear game, yes. And as it is a one shot it is very simple and very direct.

It is Event building, not World building. The players in general just have random PCs, the setting is generic and the adventure is very random and generic. The adventure is just a simple straightforward "Do this".

And for a one shot, players just play whatever is in front of them....no "railroad" is needed.

Ongoing game with your group of 20 year IRL friends (4 hour sessions twice per month) - we know each other, we know the DM style (or styles if we are playing different systems). We have an established social contract and can talk through any conflicts that arise.

As this is a normal game, Railroading is appropriate.

 

[loverdrive]

Tangential to the railroading, but
RE: zero to hero

Yes, it's not exactly common to see such power progression (or, frankly, much power progression at all) outside of RPGs. Is that a bad thing? Raising a character from nothing to your desired build is, like, fun.

I'd say an interesting area of design is introducing some sort of randomization to progression, sort of like "get three options, pick one" so common in modern roguelikes (I'm not going to delve into an asinine argument about -like and -lite distinction) to make players think of their feet rather than planning every detail of their build in advance.