Thought Experiment - "Is your game a railroad" test

[nedjer]

Some of us back in the '70s did not especially like borrowing the term "role-playing" either, but so it goes. The real "hokey-cokey, post-modern RPG revisionism" I see is coming from your quarter.

I will say this yet again: PLEASE make up your freaking minds already, you whatever-bashers! What the hell are we allowed to call the game we play without y'all -- who not only do not but will not play it -- insisting that we are using the term wrong?

Where you get off dictating from the outside like that in the first place is beyond me, but the practical problem remains.

Unless, that is, you really have no intent of allowing us to talk about our game in any terms. In that case, your endless objections are made in bad faith and deserve to be nugatory.

You can take a chocolate cake, paint it yellow, then sit it on top of a washing machine - and it still ain't going to be a blancmange

 

[Argyle King]

With the recent threads on Sandboxing/Railroading, I was thinking about making up a "test" - like the ones "what kind of player are you", but instead designed to evaluate what "percentage" of a Sandboxer vs. Railroader you are.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm best qualified to come up with say, about 20-25 questions to get a mix, so I'm turning to the community here for some help with questions and answers. I'd prefer questions that have three main options. The question itself and answers should NOT be loaded towards making one "correct" - Instead, one answer strongly leans towards Sandbox style, one answer about 50%/50% and one answer that strongly leans towards a Railroad style. Like the question, the answers should not, of themselves, be derogatory of one style over the other, but simply present options that a DM (or Player) might actually take.

Example:

In the current game, the DM has placed hints with certain NPCs of a powerful evil in a nearby mountain dungeon that threatens the local populace. However, after discussion, the players decide to undertake a different mission in the local woods. As DM, your response would be:

A) Require the players to undertake the mountain dungeon mission by manipulating events until they concede to go to the mountain. (Railroad)

B) Switch the dungeon to exist in the forest and make it part of the forest mission or have the forest mission relate/lead to the planned dungeon (50%)

C) Make preparations for/wing the menace in the forest and leave the mountain dungeon for another time, if the players come back to it (Sandbox)

hmm...

I think I'd be in the sandbox camp because I'd choose C. However, the players may or may not be able to come back to it at a later time. If Mr. Evil is planning to demolish the local village, eventually he will in my games. The PCs may come back from the forest to find Genericville has been reduced to rubble.

What would that mean in terms of the test?

 

[Nagol]

Still a sandbox -- nothing in a sandbox precludes a world that evolves, particularly evolution caused by player choice.

 

[Jhaelen]

Unless, that is, you really have no intent of allowing us to talk about our game in any terms. In that case, your endless objections are made in bad faith and deserve to be nugatory.

Couldn't you (& nedjer, et al.) please take this discussion elsewhere? It's derailing this thread which started quite interesting.

Maybe you missed the OP's second post:

Well, my intention still remains the same - a series of questions designed to help determine playstyle - whether its someone who prefers to be "in control" of a storyline or placing limits on player choice or someone who is more open to the idea of players who want to run off and go somewhere/do something unexpected.

Creating such a test sounds like fun to me even (or especially) if it's not entirely serious and/or doesn't actually tell you anything particularly useful about your playstyle.

So, please, everyone post more sample questions

 

[Piratecat]

Agreed. Please work to keep the conversation on topic, as per the OP. More questions!

 

[Janx]

Still a sandbox -- nothing in a sandbox precludes a world that evolves, particularly evolution caused by player choice.

Hopefully if a GM runs a published adventure or self-written one, the world also evolves and adjusts as players make unexpected choices.


You're starting to run the adventure to save PC#1's grandma. The PCs have opted however to stay home and go take out the mob boss who's been bothering their favorite innkeeper. You only made up the mob boss as some flavor last week.

what do you do:

a) force them to rescue grandma by guilt, by "your not in character, by force or override)

b) make up some stuff so the mob boss is behind the grandma problem so you can re-use the material

c) make up a whole crime syndicate and run that. Meanwhile, Grandma dies

d) Make up some material for the mob boss and his goons for the PCs to hunt down, meanwhile word of Grandma's escalating problem arrives

Choice A is always bad.

Choice B is still the grandma adventure, but you trying to bring it in on the angle the players want to pursue. Depending on how this is done, its OK, but it might also be done badly.

Choice C is the DM being flexible and punishing at the same time. Sure, you just finished doing this cool thing, by the way you chose wrong.

Choice D is similar to C, except that the GM softens the outcome of the choice, thereby letting the players take another stab at the decision. In theory, the grandma adventure should have gotten harder (which is OK, because the party just leveled up).


I'm not a big fan of choosing the most extreme outcome for a player choice. The DM can stagger the ramp-up of consequences, giving the player a chance to reconsider and re-evaluate. I'm also not a big fan of letting an ignored problem remain as it was while the party does something else.

So I don't give them too many simultaneous problems. And I consider what's a middle ground consequence that I can reveal while the party goes and does something else. To me its more natural in that if you don't pay your rent, you don't get evicted the next day, you get notices and warnings.

 

[Ariosto]

An "orchestrated" published scenario has "the adventure" proper starting with the player-characters as captives. However, the scenario does not start there. Instead, it presumes getting the players to "take the bait". Upon reflection, that seems extremely implausible.

Unfortunately, that doesn't strike you until in the event it fails.

Do you:
(A) keep turning every "scene" into another attempt to get the players to get on board "the adventure"
(B) forget about suspension of disbelief, maybe even talk with the players about the situation, and just "hand wave" the setup to get on with the game scenario ("The next thing you know, you wake up in a strange room...")
(C) figure on taking another session or several to maneuver the players into position, during which time you can contrive a more plausible connection; meanwhile, either try a more promising plot line or...
(D) just pay attention to the players' goals, and run with those, improvising as needed; figure you can use the published scenario as a "parts donor" of nifty bits for your game (rather than as a plotted sequence of events)

 

[Ariosto]

I recently tried (A), and it was a royal pain and a half that basically turned into (B). The "railroad" business is too much work for Yours Truly! I'm used to (D), which I find a whole lot easier because it simply doesn't involve creating such stumbling blocks in the first place.

(B) is the "cut to the chase" technique of classic AD&D tournament modules Ghost Tower of Inverness and In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords.

Under tournament or similar conditions,
1) the characters are of a package with the scenario, and so can be as perfectly fitted to it as one desires, and
2) there is no confusion or misleading as to what the scenario is, nor pretense that the players are "choosing" it.

One can certainly get closer to such smoothness by custom tailoring a scenario for players' characters, rather than trying to fit them into something off the rack.

(C) is basically how the designer of this particular scenario said one ideally ought to treat it -- a whole series of unrelated episodes over multiple sessions prior to "the adventure" proper.

 

[Ariosto]

Actually, it turns out "the adventure" proper doesn't really get under way until the players "find" and investigate Mystery X. The investigation is another obvious assumption of their "making the right choice" or "taking the bait".

As written, though, Mystery X is not really for them to find by taking causal action. There is no game to it. It is simply for the GM to reveal after eliciting a particular emotional reaction (frustration) to the prior situation.

Do you:
(A) do just that
(B) throw in some semblance of a game, which you will "fix" if they take too long (or too short?) a time to find Mystery X
(C) make it a game, and then just let the players play (bound to find Mystery X eventually)
(D) allow the possibility that they'll never find Mystery X (which is necessary for the plot line to continue)

In the event, (D) was unattractive in part because the other options in the situation -- besides Mystery X -- were extremely likely to be either dead boring or disastrous (see 'frustration' above).

There's a "railroad"... and then there's an "oubliette"!

 

[rogueattorney]

The culminating scene of the campaign will be, what?

A. I have no idea. There probably won't even be a "culminating scene." <Not a railroad.>

B. It could be a number of different options, some of which I'm sure I haven't thought of yet. <Probably not a railroad.>

C. The heroes will defeat the dark lord, save the princess, and set the universe aright. <Probably a railroad.>