What do you consider a "railroading" module?

[Mark Hope]

Seriously? We had a blast with it and I never noticed any railroading qualities at all with it. Granted, I haven't read it just played through it.

Well, it's also a good illustration of the point that you made about the influence of the DM over whether a game is railroaded or not. Our DM at the time stuck very closely to the plot as written and smacked us about the place something rotten when we tried to forge our own path through the story.

To start with we didn't really trust the NPC patron (Elladrin d'Cannith or something), but when we tried to question her further, she ran away and nothing we could do allowed us to catch up with her - because the adventure says that she leaves, there was no way we could alter that. So, without really having any real in-character reasons to embark on the adventure, we did so anyway because, well, the DM was taking the effort to run it and it's the decent thing to do.

We came up with what we thought was a really cool way to deal with the Rose Quarry segment. We planned to negotiate a settlement with the Karnathi dudes there and do a mutually beneficial deal. Apparently not catered for in the adventure, so the DM had the NPCs attack us relentlessly without provocation until we were one hit point away from a TPK and either down or captured. Apparently we were "supposed" to immediately figure out where the mucguffin was and sneak about until we found it. Failure to do so resulted in punishment. Bad PCs! Bad!!

We also came up with an alternate approach to the ending (you know - the bit where you are "supposed" to hand over loot to the bad guys - the same bad guys who had beaten and tortured us the session before, I might add). We rested, spelled up, set up a very cool fortified position in the Whitehearth entrance cave and prepared to lay the smack down. Again, apparently not catered for in the adventure. So the DM had some glass zombies suddenly rise out of the cave floor, shatter our ranks and then TPKed us to a man. Campaign over.

It's clearly primarily an issue of the DM not being willing to budge when we tried to actually play our characters and influence the world around us. However, having since read the adventure, it is also clear that Keith Baker's design makes no allowance (or even any real mention) of alternate paths through these bottlenecks. The PCs are simply assumed to do things the way he writes them, and hard luck if they want to take an alternate approach.

I fully agree that the DM makes or breaks the game (and any associated railroads) and, at the end of the day, I come down firmly in the "It's The DM's Responsibility" camp. But the adventure design plays a part as well, and a larger part if the DM (for whatever reason) can't recognise problems of this kind...

(crazy_cat, if you are reading this, you may mock my continued obsession with our DM's approach to the adventure - I am clearly in need of remedial free-form gaming, preferrably involving pirates, exploding monkeys and Neal Schlessinger... )

 

[ssampier]

A plot or story in module is not a railroad. The plot or story in a module that has only one conclusion, otherwise the PCs are captured or die, is a railroad.

As many great DMs have said, the adventure is just the skeleton of a story, the players fill in the details.

I tend to agree with this but I remember DM'ing the Avatar triogy of moduals and all three were a super railroad.

Railroad hall of fame right there.

 

[WayneLigon]

[Shadowdale modeule] Railroad hall of fame right there.

It really is. It includes what I consider the most classic and definative bit of railroading I've ever seen.

Railroading, to me, is when the players cannot change the scripted outcome no matter how hard they try. No matter how lucky, clever, stupid, brave, foolish or ignorant they are, the plot will go a certain way.

There's a point where this mage shows up to teleport Randall Morn away. Apparently, the characters are suppossed to simply stare stunned as this guy teleports in, gives a monolog, and takes away this very important guy they've worked to save. Nothing you do can prevent this, no matter what.

That's railroading.

 

[Tinner]

A plot or story in module is not a railroad. The plot or story in a module that has only one conclusion, otherwise the PCs are captured or die, is a railroad.

As many great DMs have said, the adventure is just the skeleton of a story, the players fill in the details.



Railroad hall of fame right there.

I'll see your Avatar Trilogy, and raise you one Hour of the Knife!

 

[BlackMoria]

The Shadowdale / Tantras / Waterdeep modules are the epidomy of railroading.

The main reason was the story line / plot line stood at the core of official FR canon and therefore, had to play out a certain way, regardless of player intervention. Unless the DM was prepared to depart from established FR canon for all time, certain events simply had to happen and happen in a predetermined fashion. Just plain wrong.

Cyric had to become the new god of evil. When our group did the module, my paladin character offed Cyric at some point due to his evil actions. Only for him to reappear for scene X. And get killed by me again. Only to reappear for scene Y. And get killed, yet again, the body totally burned. Then Cyric appeared for scene Z. By that time, I was set to throttle the DM.

 

[megamania]

Modules cannot railroad only DMs.

Without major rewriting I believe Eberron's Whispers of the Vampire Blade may be proof otherwise.


To avoid railroading, I would have to completely rewrite it unto the point where it would not be the same adventure.

 

[megamania]

To give a recent example, Shadows of the Last War for Eberron is a hideous piece of railroaded design which, even though I played it over a year ago, I am still ranting about. Issues? Me?

I ran that adventure and there was no railroading. The group did create challenges for themselves and me.

The book said go from point A to B to C.

The group went from A to B to something nearer to Z then back. When the adventure was "near complete" they really altered things and this lead to many new adventures as they now were on the run from House Cannith.


I did not run Vampire Blade because I saw no way to avoid the PCs having to follow a specicific path, at a specific time only to always just miss confronting Lucus. Eventually I borrow elements from the adventure and rewrite it but that will take time that I currently don't have.

 

[Celebrim]

The Shadowdale / Tantras / Waterdeep modules are the epidomy of railroading.

The main reason was the story line / plot line stood at the core of official FR canon and therefore, had to play out a certain way, regardless of player intervention. Unless the DM was prepared to depart from established FR canon for all time, certain events simply had to happen and happen in a predetermined fashion. Just plain wrong.

Cyric had to become the new god of evil. When our group did the module, my paladin character offed Cyric at some point due to his evil actions. Only for him to reappear for scene X. And get killed by me again. Only to reappear for scene Y. And get killed, yet again, the body totally burned. Then Cyric appeared for scene Z. By that time, I was set to throttle the DM.

Fortunately, I never had the displeasure of ever having anything to do with 2nd edition so I missed all this. But yes, that's bad.

It seems to me that if you are going to give the players a chance to muck in the big world changing events, you ought to allow them to do so and make that the selling point.

Normally, you get around this by having a somewhat binary outcome to the adventures. Either the heroes succeed (by whatever method) or else the heroes die and Bad Things Happen (tm). Trying to shape what the world will look like (who will live, who will die, what will be left standing) upon thier success goes too far. Finding out things like that is part of the fun of DMing. If you knew the end of the story (beyond, 'The Heroes Saved the Day') it would hardly be worth DMing.

 

[RainOfSteel]

I have always considered GDQ1-7 to be one long massive set of tracks.

Without major work from the GM, there is but one path to trod down.

Of course, they're very nice tracks, with adamantine spikes and all.

-----------------------

Oh, I'll say railroading is having no choices. There is but one script, and it's going to happen, and nothing I do will affect it no matter how hard I try.

I should also add that railroading comes in varying qualities. Some more forceful, restrictive, and unpleasant than others.

 

[Crothian]

Without major rewriting I believe Eberron's Whispers of the Vampire Blade may be proof otherwise.

We went through that one too and didn't have any problems. I might have to borrow and read through these mdoules to see what they are really like