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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3276139" data-attributes="member: 4937">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.</blockquote>

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