Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9732320" data-attributes="member: 6790260">It's one part. Another is that, even when two people completely agree about what "railroading" means, one will say it is a completely good and wonderful thing, and the other will say it is a horrible awful thing. I tend toward the latter camp myself.It's colloquial, but as a starting point, not bad.I mean, it's only generic because you spoke casually. Had you spoken less casually, it would have been fine. E.g.:"Railroading occurs when the GM (or author) forbids a player's character to take an action that is reasonable, warranted, and within the system's scope, simply because the GM (or author) does not wish the character to take that action." This, of course, depends on "reasonable" and "warranted" (I should hope that "within the system's scope" is reasonably clear on its own?), but I think we can appeal to a common-sense use of these terms. A reasonable action is one that, if you suggested it to some random bystander, said bystander would agree that it has a sensible, well-founded reason for being done, even if that bystander wouldn't do it themselves. A warranted action is one that follows from the situation at hand and the information available--so a character defending herself against what looks like a threatening monster is warranted, but a character brazenly and unexpectedly attacking a king who is surrounded by his retinue, in his throne room, is probably not warranted.Now, it's possible that the GM might know things the player doesn't that make an action unreasonable. (I don't think that's possible for being unwarranted--knowledge the player doesn't, or shouldn't, have is specifically what makes many actions unwarranted, e.g. "metagame" actions like knowing that trolls are weak to fire.) If so, the onus is on the GM to explain why the player is mistaken. If they cannot do so in a satisfactory way, that's still railroading, even if there "really is" an explanation. It is quite possible to railroad while trying not to!Telling a story is not a situation where players make choices.Au contraire, it absolutely can be. I've had a GM who had pretty significant issues with how a particular adventure was, in fact, extremely railroady because it slams the players into action immediately and then basically at every turn your only "choice" is "fail, or immediately go do the thing so you don't".Only in principle. In practice, the GM is the origin of all consequences, and thus it is quite possible for "having consequences" to be VERY VERY much railroading, if the GM is adjudicating in a biased or deceptive manner.They can be, if: (1) the players have been deceived into thinking a linear adventure isn't; (2) the linear adventure has a significant hole or holes, where reasonable, warranted actions are forbidden without due consideration; or (3) the GM has been arbitrary and/or heavy-handed in "keeping" the players rigidly attached to the line, rather than allowing at least a little bit of wiggle-room.Not in my experience. Rather, I find that many players have seen too many GMs who are not very good writers, and thus said GMs have to resort to a lot of force, arbitrary/capricious/deceptive GMing tactics, because the GM forgot to close several major loopholes.Plot hooks may or may not be railroading. That's all in the execution. But if the GM is "resist"ing, solely because of the effort she invested, that tells me she's getting a little too precious about her time investment and maybe needs to reevaluate some things. Especially "why are you doing so much prep work for things that have a high chance of failure/breakdown and then blaming your players for not reading your mind?""Clumsy Dming" as you call it, is the cause of a great deal of railroading, yes. A lot of GMs are clumsy. That's part of what makes them mediocre, rather than good or bad. (Few outright bad GMs are clumsy; bad GMing generally requires more skill than that. The irony, that to do the greatest bad, you must have some virtue!)I would not use such a limited definition of "metagame". As noted, a player knowing that trolls are weak to fire would be metagame knowledge, but it has nothing to do with things in real life affecting the game. Likewise, the "character creation metagame" is entirely within the game, it just isn't within this specific world until the character actually progresses.This I can agree with 95%--it just needs two little caveats to be perfect.First: Use something like "progress step" or "event" rather than "plot point". "Plots" almost always get GMs thinking too hard in railroad-y directions. Creating steps or events, on the other hand, helps to keep GMs focused on what matters: there is a situation in the world, which invites the players to respond. A good GM prepares situations--"frames scenes"--that are inviting in ways that the players will innately, spontaneously want to respond. They don't have to be led by the nose, they do it because it excites them, or intrigues them, or challenges them, or whatever.Second: Remember the important exception: "...unless you have the players' buy-in out of character." This is most obvious with a campaign pitch. In most cases, the very very very start of a campaign kind of needs something to just be declared to be true, or needs to just spontaneously happen around the PCs in a way that gets things rolling. Out of the Abyss, for example, needs characters born or sold into slavery under the Drow. Can't really do the campaign if that doesn't happen. Similarly, if a homebrew game ends one adventure and the GM says, "Hey, how do you guys feel about doing a swashbuckling pirate adventure? I just got a cool module we could run", that's not railroading if the players explicitly buy into it. It would be railroading to force the players to get on a ship and thus have a pirate adventure--but it isn't railraoding to have an adult conversation with your players and ask if they think a pirate adventure would be interesting to play. In other words, don't do things that rely on the PCs' unprompted participation--either make something that they'll innately just WANT to do, or tell them what you're aiming for, so they're going in eyes-open, understanding your goals.So, amended, I would say this pro tip reads...Pro Tip: Never make an inciting incident, or really any major progress step, dependent on the PCs' actions, unless you have their buy-in out of character. In this example, don't have a riot that depends on the PCs' unprompted participation to develop into an actual adventure.</blockquote>

Verification