What do you consider a "railroading" module?

[tx7321]

As long as the DM is able to figure out what happens if PCs go off course, railroading modules aren't so bad. What happens alot is the DM doesn't read the entire module first (or perhaps skims it) and gets flustered when the PCs become unpredictable. A flustered DM can be a nightmare.

 

[helium3]

* There's one major road that leads from where the adventure starts to where they need to get. There are enemies on that road, since enemies know that road is the best way to go. If the party doesn't go that way, they can avoid those enemies, but they might die in the wilderness, since it's winter in the mountains.

* There's an NPC that can help the party out of the city, since the gates are barred to travel. This NPC wants the party to do something for him first. The party can find other ways to get out, and if they do, they miss out on some of the plot points of the adventure, but they have the option of doing their own thing.

* To get the MacGuffin, the party needs to meet a contact who is a particular place. An encounter occurs there. If the party doesn't show, they will have to get the MacGuffin from the bad guys, who would have succeeded in stealing it since the party wasn't present to stop them.

I suppose the players could refuse to even take the mission, but when the GM gets an adventure for his group, I assume there's an implicit acceptance that the group isn't going to go out of its way to avoid the adventure.

None of these things are necessarily railroading, as long as the module provides for the possibility of the party choosing different routes to get from point A to point B.

So, some space should be given in the module for describing the alternate "winter in the mountains" route. This doesn't have to be anything more comprehensive than a random encounter table, list of settlements along the way and a description of how long it will take.

It might make the first encounter with the McGuffin less rail-roady if the party is given an opportunity to negotiate where the meeting place is. Maybe they don't want to meet the NPC in his favorite brother/tavern/temple. Even if the bad guys still attack while the meeting is taking place, it gives the party a greater sense of ownership over their destiny.

Rail-roading is what happens when the module is designed with the assumption that only the path described in the module is the one that can be followed. A good GM can fix a module that railroads, but why bother paying for it when you have to fix it?

Does the Campaign Saga fall apart if the PC's refuse to take this first mission?

 

[Celebrim]

There have been several of these threads in the past week or two, in which the general gist of a good portion of the posters has been how bad the DM's are for 'railroading', 'cheating', or whatever.

But no one has really come up with a satisfactory definition of what railroading is. I'm completely convinced it certainly isn't a puzzle with only one solution. The reason for that is that if you read one of the several threads lately about what is someone's favorite module the most popular choices are often those very modules filled with sentences like, "Once the door has closed it cannot be reopened with the ward stone in area 35" or "Teleport spells going into or out of the pyramid will not work unless the characters that are teleporting have the Star Gem" and so on and so forth. A good portion of the famous and well loved modules railroad the characters to one extent or another.

It's hard to tell what is meant by 'railroading' because players use it to mean so many different things.

The first thing to recognize is that there is no perfect way to play because there is no one way of playing that will satisfy everyone. People are different. This is easily seen because the sort of adventures which one person enjoys and admires, are quite often the ones that bore other players to tears - and vica versa. Because people are so different it may not be possible to define a definition of 'railroading' because I see so many players who use the term simply to mean 'something the DM does that I don't like'. But, this covers anything from a PC suffering the consequences of the players bad decision and the player simply being a bad sport, to megalomaniac DM's that insist on playing the character of every person at the table like some sort of deranged puppeteer. And, since everyone's particular set of experiences are different and they naturally pass judgement based on thier own experiences, their first thought - absent any details about the situation - is to judge what railroading is based on thier own prevalent experience.

All of this is fine and well and good, and people are entitled to thier opinion as to what constitutes a good game. But what I cannot except is that it is factual that creating problems for which there is only one solution - classically the indestructible door which can only be opened by the magical mcguffin - represents lazy, poor, and unimaginative design and DMing. I don't say that because I've occassionally created indestructible doors that can only be opened by the magical mcguffin, but because any reasonable list of the best and most important and influential designers in the game will produce a list of people who created adventures that not only railroaded the players at some point but which relied on the railroading in order to work and wouldn't have been as enjoyable otherwise. And, any poll of the best and most enjoyable and most memorable adventures of all time would be chocked full of such things. It is the height of hubris to assert that all of those adventures are poorly designed by slothful, unimaginative, and incompotent designers.

If they really think that they can do better, I want to see the product. Seriously. I think we all would.

As I said, I can't define a definition of railroading that will make everyone happy if we are defining such diverse things as railroading. But, I've been giving it some thought and I'd like to throw my definition into the fire.

Railroading is when a DM breaks character. For a DM breaking character is revealing that he is not neutral, that he has a stake in the outcome, and that he's manipulating events. The character of the DM is of the impartial but all knowing judge. The character of the DM is of the deist clockwork god of of his universe, and if rightly or wrongly he seems anything else then the players get uncomfortable (for reasons either reasonable or ridiculous as the case may be).

When a DM breaks character, the party is forced to look at the failing old man behind the curtain and it is revealed to them that all the magic is nothing more than trickery, smoke, mirrors, and melodrama. When the DM is forced to admit that he is not in fact all knowing, that he is contriving circumstances to make the PC's rich, famous, and powerful, that just beyond the hill there is nothing but blank space, that he makes mistakes, that the story is being created largely through artistic device and not because the players themselves are just so cool, and when the DM is forced to admit that ultimately the players don't have real freedom and that he's in one fashion or another imposing his will on them, then you have railroading. Railroading is when the illusion goes away, which explains in large part why we have such diverse ideas about what railroading is. Some DM's can be pushed further before the secret that they are mere mortals is revealed. Some DM's can recover more gracefully from thier on stage stumble. But the fact of the matter is, that we all railroad - usually, with the players implicit adventure. After all, there is no particular reason why interesting things should ever happen to anyone, even in a fantasy world. If we didn't railroad, the players would most likely either stay on the farm, wander aimlessly and never find anything, or some to quick and nasty ends.

Heck, simply ensuring that the first few encounters that the PC's come across are within a point or two of their ECL and that there is all this treasure lying around is railroading. There is no reason why the NPC red shirts die and the PC's save the day except that the PC's have been ordained to do so (barring thier own irredeemably bad decisions). The trick is to hide all these ugly truths as best as you are able.

And the ugly truth is this. As often as PC's die at my table (I'm infamous as a RBDM), I'm often struggling behind the screen to keep them alive and rooting for their dice to fall pips up. I love it when my players come up with a great plan, but if they don't I'm almost always fudging it a little to let them win. I'm quite positive that they don't want to know that except that most of them that would read something like this have been DM's themselves and do know that. After all, players - especially players that don't DM - tend to be highly competive individuals, and like any highly competitive individuals they don't want thier opponent to 'let' them win. They want to win 'fair and square'. But they don't really. Because they also want the impartial universe to be subtly balanced in thier favor, presenting them with only fair and appropriate challenges, with the lead role in every drama, and ancient unplundered tombs rather than the more likely a few broken caskets and thier very upset former occupant (or nothing at all). They want it both ways. They want the illusion of total freedom and yet interesting and profitable things to do no matter which direction they turn. And if thier aren't interesting and profitable things no matter which way they turn, whether what they find is challenges too strong ('impassable mountains') or challenges too weak ('nothing'), they will accuse you of railroading.

The irony of course is that when interesting and profitable things aren't found no matter which way the PC's jump, its the only time you aren't railroading.

 

[Ranger REG]

"Meh" or not, it is still a railroad as written.

The already overworked DM has yet another issue to deal with, thank to an unhelpful - and poor - published adventure (that cost him/her money).

Why? There should ALWAYS be more than one solutions to everything?

Either you succeed and be rewarded, or...

You fail, learn from it, and move to the next adventure (unless DM gives you a second chance to redeem that mistake).

 

[Hussar]

Sorry. I assumed usurptation would be a common enough word to use.

Just not spell. (J/K)

Why? There should ALWAYS be more than one solutions to everything?

Either you succeed and be rewarded, or...

You fail, learn from it, and move to the next adventure (unless DM gives you a second chance to redeem that mistake).

In a game featuring magic, there are extremely few situations which will only have one possible solution.

If, for example, the module as written prevents the party from, say, cutting down the trees lining the paths of the module and no amount of magic can affect those trees, then that is railroading. If the module then stipulates limitations on flight and teleportation, then it is locking the rails even tighter.

Granted, a single situation might have only a very small number of solutions, but, an entire adventure is a whole 'nother beast.

 

[howandwhy99]

But no one has really come up with a satisfactory definition of what railroading is. I'm completely convinced it certainly isn't a puzzle with only one solution. The reason for that is that if you read one of the several threads lately about what is someone's favorite module the most popular choices are often those very modules filled with sentences like, "Once the door has closed it cannot be reopened with the ward stone in area 35" or "Teleport spells going into or out of the pyramid will not work unless the characters that are teleporting have the Star Gem" and so on and so forth. A good portion of the famous and well loved modules railroad the characters to one extent or another.

There was a long thread a few months back about defining railroading. Definining a DMing technique isn't exactly easy and I don't think it was resolved in the end. I called it "force", for lack of a better word, for when a DM manipulates events to an outcome they desire rather than one of consequence.

The first thing to recognize is that there is no perfect way to play because there is no one way of playing that will satisfy everyone. People are different. This is easily seen because the sort of adventures which one person enjoys and admires, are quite often the ones that bore other players to tears - and vica versa. Because people are so different it may not be possible to define a definition of 'railroading' because I see so many players who use the term simply to mean 'something the DM does that I don't like'. But, this covers anything from a PC suffering the consequences of the players bad decision and the player simply being a bad sport, to megalomaniac DM's that insist on playing the character of every person at the table like some sort of deranged puppeteer. And, since everyone's particular set of experiences are different and they naturally pass judgement based on thier own experiences, their first thought - absent any details about the situation - is to judge what railroading is based on thier own prevalent experience.

I wouldn't be too hasty of calling railroading an indefinable term. The concept came about for a reason.

And there is a perfect way to roleplay, it's called "let's pretend" and everyone can join in with their own ideas in the way they want.

All of this is fine and well and good, and people are entitled to thier opinion as to what constitutes a good game. But what I cannot except is that it is factual that creating problems for which there is only one solution - classically the indestructible door which can only be opened by the magical mcguffin - represents lazy, poor, and unimaginative design and DMing. I don't say that because I've occassionally created indestructible doors that can only be opened by the magical mcguffin, but because any reasonable list of the best and most important and influential designers in the game will produce a list of people who created adventures that not only railroaded the players at some point but which relied on the railroading in order to work and wouldn't have been as enjoyable otherwise. And, any poll of the best and most enjoyable and most memorable adventures of all time would be chocked full of such things. It is the height of hubris to assert that all of those adventures are poorly designed by slothful, unimaginative, and incompotent designers.

Hey! You are absolutely right here. The fact that only one key can open my front door doesn't make my house a railroading adventure. Designing a game where the players must go through the front door and only with the key that opens it or you quit playing is railroading for me.

I ran into a similar problem a few months back when 2 PCs became trapped in a crypt. The ways out were just too obsure and difficult to determine. If other PCs were not coming, the session could have become like any too-hard riddle or puzzle. Not that other options for play in the crypt weren't available, but escaping assuring survival was the main priority.

Railroading is when a DM breaks character. For a DM breaking character is revealing that he is not neutral, that he has a stake in the outcome, and that he's manipulating events. The character of the DM is of the impartial but all knowing judge. The character of the DM is of the deist clockwork god of of his universe, and if rightly or wrongly he seems anything else then the players get uncomfortable (for reasons either reasonable or ridiculous as the case may be).

This is the traditional Referee stance. I have found it is better to alter NPC decisions than dice rolls when bending the world towards players' ideas. It's a form of "force" like I said above, but I prefer my players' plans have a good chance of succeeding.

When a DM breaks character, the party is forced to look at the failing old man behind the curtain and it is revealed to them that all the magic is nothing more than trickery, smoke, mirrors, and melodrama. When the DM is forced to admit that he is not in fact all knowing, that he is contriving circumstances to make the PC's rich, famous, and powerful, that just beyond the hill there is nothing but blank space, that he makes mistakes, that the story is being created largely through artistic device and not because the players themselves are just so cool, and when the DM is forced to admit that ultimately the players don't have real freedom and that he's in one fashion or another imposing his will on them, then you have railroading. Railroading is when the illusion goes away, which explains in large part why we have such diverse ideas about what railroading is. Some DM's can be pushed further before the secret that they are mere mortals is revealed. Some DM's can recover more gracefully from thier on stage stumble. But the fact of the matter is, that we all railroad - usually, with the players implicit adventure. After all, there is no particular reason why interesting things should ever happen to anyone, even in a fantasy world. If we didn't railroad, the players would most likely either stay on the farm, wander aimlessly and never find anything, or some to quick and nasty ends.

The fact of the matter is, we don't all railroad. It sucks if all the DMs a person has met do railroad, but that still does not make it true. Interesting things have no reason to happen to the PCs, so don't design events to do so. Living in a dangerous, fantastic, adventure-filled world means the PCs are going to bring events upon themselves. If they choose to become farmers, that is their choice. Who am I to say farming isn't fun for these players? Let the players choose their fun (that has to be the antithesis of railroading right there). On the other hand, wandering endlessly and finding nothing or randomly finding Dragons in foxholes is a world design issue, not something that requires railroading to deal with.

Heck, simply ensuring that the first few encounters that the PC's come across are within a point or two of their ECL and that there is all this treasure lying around is railroading. There is no reason why the NPC red shirts die and the PC's save the day except that the PC's have been ordained to do so (barring thier own irredeemably bad decisions). The trick is to hide all these ugly truths as best as you are able.

These aren't truths for those who choose not to railroad. Stop designing adventures according to "planned" encounters. Stop ensuring your PCs can never run into inappropriate ELs or CRs. Stop having your NPC monsters kill red shirts first. And stop allowing the PCs to succeed or save the day when they haven't.

And the ugly truth is this. As often as PC's die at my table (I'm infamous as a RBDM), I'm often struggling behind the screen to keep them alive and rooting for their dice to fall pips up. I love it when my players come up with a great plan, but if they don't I'm almost always fudging it a little to let them win. I'm quite positive that they don't want to know that except that most of them that would read something like this have been DM's themselves and do know that. After all, players - especially players that don't DM - tend to be highly competive individuals, and like any highly competitive individuals they don't want thier opponent to 'let' them win. They want to win 'fair and square'. But they don't really. Because they also want the impartial universe to be subtly balanced in thier favor, presenting them with only fair and appropriate challenges, with the lead role in every drama, and ancient unplundered tombs rather than the more likely a few broken caskets and thier very upset former occupant (or nothing at all). They want it both ways. They want the illusion of total freedom and yet interesting and profitable things to do no matter which direction they turn. And if thier aren't interesting and profitable things no matter which way they turn, whether what they find is challenges too strong ('impassable mountains') or challenges too weak ('nothing'), they will accuse you of railroading.

The irony of course is that when interesting and profitable things aren't found no matter which way the PC's jump, its the only time you aren't railroading.

I admit above that I like to change the world's consequences to give the players' plans a good chance of succeeding. This was a hard lesson to learn as I just don't want to fudge. I think the high power disparity between levels in 3E has made it too difficult for me to do otherwise. So stop fudging the dice and keep giving world-sensible consequences to your players. Fudging is your call, but I wouldn't call it railroading necessarily by the way the term was used when I learned the game in the 80's.

The "illusion" of freedom is the thing you can give up quite easily. That's a gaming style sometimes called "Illusionism" and tends toward railroading, while keeping the players under the illusion they can do anything. In truth, I've found almost all players in such games know they can't do anything they want. They follow were they are led because they know that is where the DM has designed the game, the potential enjoyment. It's a different style of play and sounds like the one you are lamenting above.

Interesing and profitable things can lie in any direction in a freeform game. It isn't impossible. Even in a world where absolutely nothing is interesting or profiitable, playing in it is not railroading - just dull. Give 'em a world of adventure and don't fudge the dice. Let 'em learn when to run, when to fight, and even how to overcome even seemingly impossible odds. It's more of a wargame style of play, but it does not require predetermination other than world creation. And if having a specific world to play in is railroading, I have no idea how to get out of that. (possible some narrative games, I suppose)

 

[Waldorf]

Which is to say, all modules railroad.

 

[Celebrim]

There was a long thread a few months back about defining railroading. Definining a DMing technique isn't exactly easy and I don't think it was resolved in the end. I called it "force", for lack of a better word, for when a DM manipulates events to an outcome they desire rather than one of consequence.[/quote]

That seems to be a good definition. We will come back to it in a bit.

I wouldn't be too hasty of calling railroading an indefinable term. The concept came about for a reason.

Yes, and yes. But I didn't say that it was an indefinable term. I could pick a definition and be happy with it. I said that its probably impossible to have a concensus definition that everyone would be happy with because people have come to use the term to mean so many different things.

And there is a perfect way to roleplay, it's called "let's prietend" and everyone can join in with their own ideas in the way they want.

HA! No. Good try, but no. The reason that RPGs exist is that 'let's pretend' proves in the general case to be unsatisfying. There are several basic problems, but the most obvious is one familiar to every kid. You start playing 'let's pretend we are cops & robbers/cowboys & indians/specops and terrorists/aliens and space marines and someone says, "I shot you." and the other one says, "No you didn't, you missed. I shot you." To resolve that you agree to take turns or play rock, paper, scissors, or roll a dice and suddenly 'let's pretend' has become a system in which people can't join in with thier own ideas in the way they want because the system constrains them. They may want to always hit and they may want their opponents to never miss, but so long as more than one person is playing the game they have to sacrifice thier full freedom for the sake of getting along.

Hey! You are absolutely right here. The fact that only one key can open my front door doesn't make my house a railroading adventure. Designing a game where the players must go through the front door and only with the key that opens it or you quit playing is railroading for me.

I love it when people state thier full agreement with me and then go on to disagree completely in practically the very next sentence. What you said is completely contridictory. Either you can't believe that I'm absolutely right, or you can't believe that 'one door with just one key and no other way in' is bad. But you can't believe both.

This is the traditional Referee stance. I have found it is better to alter NPC decisions than dice rolls when bending the world towards players' ideas. It's a form of "force" like I said above, but I prefer my players' plans have a good chance of succeeding.

I didn't say anything about how I was fudging, just that I was sometimes fudging.

The fact of the matter is, we don't all railroad. It sucks if all the DMs a person has met do railroad, but that still does not make it true.

Wait a minute, didn't you just say that you used 'force' too? Surely you don't think you are excluding yourself from those that railroad if you also admit that you are using 'force' to obtain the outcome you desire (namely that the PC's have a good chance of succeeding, that the story keeps moving despite the players getting 'stuck' etc.)?

Interesting things have no reason to happen to the PCs, so don't design events to do so. Living in a dangerous, fantastic, adventure-filled world means the PCs are going to bring events upon themselves.

Not it doesn't. You can have a dangerous, fantastic, adventure-filled world and the majority of people in it never find the adventure and never have the adventure come to them. Our own world is dangerous and fantastic, but if you gained super-strength and super-speed and instinctive martial arts prowess today, you couldn't go out tommorrow night and stop a mugging, prevent a burglery, and bring a murderer to justice because you'd find it a very hard thing to be in the right place at the right time. Dangerous and fantastic or not, oppurtunities to be heroic aren't happening on every corner like this was 'City of Heroes' or something. And the problem with conventions like 'City of Heroes' is that they don't stand up to scrutiny. As someone else said, they are like the plots of professional wrestling. They fall apart if you look too close, and that's means that you the world designer are STILL designing events to happen to the PCs. If you want to have a heroic game, its pretty much inescapable that you do so.

These aren't truths for those who choose not to railroad. Stop designing adventures according to "planned" encounters.

Show me a campaign setting without designed encounters and I'll show you the worlds largest wandering monster table. I had one that was 50 pages once. Believe me, I know about freeform.

Stop ensuring your PCs can never run into inappropriate ELs or CRs.

I didn't say that I did. I said that I ensured that there was something 'next door' that was appropriate. I didn't say that there wasn't also something next door that was above thier heads. But if they did run into the CR 15 creature at level 1, you can be fairly sure I'd design that encounter to be survivable in some fashion. Like it just so happens, the big bad evil monster isn't hungry just now and just wants to talk. Or whatever.

Stop having your NPC monsters kill red shirts first.

Who said that I did? What I said is that I made the decision that the PC's were not red shirts. I do things like have the evil overlord send his weaker minions to deal with the PC's when they first gain noterity for spoiling his plans, rather than coming himself and dealing with them right away before they become too dangerous to thwart so easily. That is railroading. It's a story convention that the evil overlord is always incompotant in this way, allowing things to get out of control before he actually takes the situation seriously despite his 23 INT.

And stop allowing the PCs to succeed or save the day when they haven't.

Who said that I did? What I said is that I always have a way for the PC's to succeed or save the day. The real world is under no such obligation to provide you with a way out.

Fudging is your call, but I wouldn't call it railroading necessarily by the way the term was used when I learned the game in the 80's.

Let us return to the definition you provided: "I called it "force", for lack of a better word, for when a DM manipulates events to an outcome they desire rather than one of consequence."

You claim that fudging isn't railroading, and I agree that it isn't generally recognized as railroading but I think that you'll find that any good definition of railroading encompasses fudging. Take your definition just provided. Wouldn't you agree that when you fudge the results, or the NPC's actions, or anything else, you are manipulating events to an outcome you desire rather than strictly one of consequence? You want to argue I think that this is different than having the NPC (whether a villain or not) critical to a latter point in the plot be effectively unkillable, but I don't think it is. They both can be achieved by fudging and they both are the DM manipulating events to some end other than one of consequence.

So you railroad too. We all do. Some of us just do it more gracefully than others.

Interesing and profitable things can lie in any direction in a freeform game. It isn't impossible.

Absolutely. I didn't say that it wasn't. What I said is that if interesting and profitable things are in every direction, then the world wasn't strictly one of consequence.

Give 'em a world of adventure and don't fudge the dice. Let 'em learn when to run, when to fight, and even how to overcome even seemingly impossible odds.

You know, I've been doing this for about 26 years now. I'm not a kid. I might not be God's gift to players, but I don't think I need basic lessons in DMing. And back when I was a player, the play group that I was in was among the better tactical groups in the nation with the tournament records to prove it. I don't think I need lessons on how to dungeoneer either. You want to disagree with me fine, there's probably good reasons for doing so although I get the impression that alot of your disagreement was based on a misreading of what I wrote (which is as much my fault for not being clear as anything), but if you start with the premise that I'm stupid then either I'm just going to start ignoring you or very quickly pirate cat is going to be asking me to leave another thread.

 

[Treebore]

All I know is I won't RR anymore than I have to.

Take the adventure paths in Dungeon. If you sit your group down at a table with the intention to play the whole AP you are railroading. Which, even though I like them, I will never sit down intending to run the whole thing.

I take it as a given that the players can go off on a tangent at any time. SO I do not obligate myself to stick to a strict path. I go where my players want to go. If I can add things to entice them back to the direction I would like to go, great. If not, great. As long as we are having fun we are attaining my most important goal and I'll save whatever we didn't do for another time. Even though I have yet to return to anything I didn't use, because something better always seems to come along.

This means I have left many a module only partially run. But I am OK with that. The module still led us to having a great time, which is all that ultimately matters.

I enjoy the challenges of trying not to railroad, but I will do it when I believe it will result in a great experience. That is a rare occurance, though. So most of the time we meander through the campaign world, paying attention to whatever catches my players attention.

The only time I really do any railroading is when I start a campaign. This is because it is usually new players who need to learn how to play together. So until they get to that point they follow my plot. After that, we go where the wind blows us.

 

[Lanefan]

I take it as a given that the players can go off on a tangent at any time. SO I do not obligate myself to stick to a strict path. I go where my players want to go. If I can add things to entice them back to the direction I would like to go, great. If not, great. As long as we are having fun we are attaining my most important goal and I'll save whatever we didn't do for another time. Even though I have yet to return to anything I didn't use, because something better always seems to come along.

This means I have left many a module only partially run. But I am OK with that. The module still led us to having a great time, which is all that ultimately matters.

All true. And if your party is typical of many, once it has got nicely started on an adventure it'll railroad itself all the way through, for one of three main reasons: Greed, Honour, or Stubbornness.

The only times I've had major parts of an adventure left untouched are when the party achieved its main goal early (trick bad guy into coming outside, get mcguffin off him, ignore rest of adventure) or when it gets its butt kicked and has to abandon.

Lanefan