D&D 5E What does "Railroading" actually mean!? Discount Code on Page 8

[Ruin Explorer]

That would depend on whether it needs to feel like a railroad in order to be a railroad.

Thought experiment: months after a game has concluded, the players and DM are talking about a great session they had. The DM reveals that what the players thought was the result of their decisions was actually the DM making stuff up on the fly to keep the plot on the path he had planned out.

Was it a railroad?

(I don't necessarily have an answer; just throwing this out there.)

It kind of depends on what you mean by making stuff up. I would say that "railroad" is pretty subjective, certainly when it comes to DMing - with it adventures it can be a little more objective and factual. If the DM was making up stuff to suggest they go a certain path, but they were willingly going with that, and he wasn't having to hard-block them, that sounds more like illusionism rather than true railroading to me. Illusionism of course makes some people even angrier than railroading, but a lot of people just don't care.

If he was hard-blocking them, and they still had an amazing time, and didn't feel railroaded, well, okay first off do you have his email address? Because I need to get some tips from this guy. The level of skill and subtlety it would take to do that as a DM, against intelligent players is very significant. So I guess even if he was, I kinda wanna know how he did it. It's hard for me to get past that.

My real problem with your definition is that it requires DM fiat specifically though so excludes pre-determined railroads of all kinds which are, in my experience, both the worst kind and most common kind of railroad. I.e. as discussed, where an adventure just requires the PCs to make a choice that they are very far from certain (or in some cases even likely) to make. Whether that's because the DM wrote a problematic adventure, or because he bought an adventure which just has a railroad element in it (which was not all uncommon in 1980s and 1990s adventures and still regularly appears).

Some people may argue that this is a railroad with multiple paths, but I think this muddles what we mean when we talk about actual railroading. Railroading the players, means negating their choices or ability to choose entirely.

I don't think what you're describing is really a railroad at all, but it is worth noting you can have a railroad with multiple paths. It usually only becomes noticeable if the paths just don't make sense to the players (and sometimes even the DM) though. I know there was a Shadowrun adventure I played long ago where this happened - it went smoothly and then there's this point where you're expected to pick a side and go with them for the rest of the adventure, except why in god's name would you? One side have said they won't pay you, the other side literally just ripped you off, they're both creeps, and you're going to help one of them? The adventure was absolutely certain you would. It made no provision for doing otherwise whatsoever, or considered that as a possibility. Obviously we did the Shadowrun classic and just left them to kill each other and stole their cars whilst they were about it, but the DM was pretty flummoxed (he was somewhat newer) and that was the end of that.

 

[Umbran]

But "the person I need to talk to is the hooded figure sitting in the shadowy corner" is.

As I already noted, it is a level up from that. It is a genre trope (shared by a couple of genres - it's been in fantasy since Tolkien, and in noir since the beginning of noir, a common point in spy fiction as well...) It isn't about the fact that you're playing a game, it is about who in the place is apt to have useful information they'd be willing to let the character access. Barmaids will know the locals, people sitting mostly out of the action will have information about shady stuff, etc.

Remember that the character lives in the world 24/7, the player does not. Genre tropes are a way to deal with that gap. In this example, the characters who live in this world really should be able to suss out what kind of person is apt to be useful to talk to. They should not have to take a stab in the dark as a player. The genre trope gives them a starting point when the player doesn't really have other information.

 

[Umbran]

I'd have said that was an example of the game designer rather than the DM tbh.

Given that, in the very beginning, the people who established the standard of needing skilled play and having wandering monsters were both the initial GM and the game designers, we are both right

Except that "Every way has its own challenges and there is no One True Way - but boring ways will have additional 'impartial' challenges" is a very different statement to "You are always going to lose this scenario. The PCs are expected to win most adventures.

With respect, this actively contradicts the whole "skilled play" idea. There should be a way that's easier, and a skilled player should be able to find it. If there is no way that's actually easier... then what you choose to do doesn't really matter? Is that how we want to set that up?

Alternatively, we can accept that that we don't intend one road to be particularly easier than another, but then we should just lay that out as a personal choice, and not a failing on the player's part.

 

[prabe]

With respect, this actively contradicts the whole "skilled play" idea. There should be a way that's easier, and a skilled player should be able to find it. If there is no way that's actually easier... then what you choose to do doesn't really matter? Is that how we want to set that up?

I think this is about how you're (the general "you" not you specifically) looking at the adventure and how you're looking at difficulty.

So, caveats: First, this isn't how I personally prep or plan adventures; second, I'll be talking in D&D 5E terms, because that's the game in my brain at the moment.

It seems possible that one could design an adventure where there were multiple paths, each of which had the same number of checks of the same DCs in the same order, but checking different skills (or other proficiencies). From the writer's (or designer's) viewpoint, those paths could be said to be equally difficult. From the viewpoint of the players, one path is likely better-suited to the party's strengths (either character proficiencies or play style) than the others, and the skilled players could probably find it.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

I think that the DM needs to present choices and let the players make decisions. In the above example the players could have chosen to go back to the main dungeon and not bother with the giants, but the town they come back to would be destroyed and hostile to them, or maybe another group of adventures saved the town and are now the new favorites. This last part may feel like punishing the PCs for not doing the 'right' or 'good' thing according to the DM though.

A whole new discussion could be had on how the DM influences the world and players through his tastes and ideas of how the game should be played and how to act.

I think that's a really good idea for new or young players - but I know my main group wouldn't have it. They're goal seems to be to cause as much chaos as possible just to see how I will respond to their antics.

 

[Helldritch]

Again, railroad isn't a bad thing if done correctly. Yhe most important thing is to listen to the players' feedback. Once in an old campaign, players were paid to find a magic sword in a tomb and they had to be quick about it as their patron knew that someone was on his way there to get it too.

The players attained their goal and got out a wee bit before the mysterious nemesis appeared. One player stayed hidden to see who it was and he saw the following:" A man in his sixties surrounded by 20 orcs, 4 skeletons bearing jeweled silver crowns, red glowing eyes and ornate staves. 4 ogres and 2 skeletons wearing charred full plate weilding big two handed sword, thei eyes gleaming red under ornated helmet.".

The players assumed a high level necro with 4 lich servants and two death knights. I laughed, said sure, and continued on with the game. The guy was barely level 6, and the skeletons were just wearing props. I congratulated myself for conning the players and forgot about the poor necro. But not the players. At every opportunity they would pay to get info about the necro controloing four liches and two death knights as THEY KNEW I would pit them against him someday. When their contact failed to provide information ( that guy did not exist, he was a product of their imagination), they went further by paying for divinations, contact other planes and many other ways. They were spending money on someone that did not exist. And guess what? They assumed that the guy was protected somehow from divinations. They were so convinced that he was the main villain that I obliged them and made him the main vilain of the campaign. Escobar the Necrolord birthed out of the imagination of the players. After 20 years, my old timers still talk about their archnemesis. A nemesis they created.

Bear in mind that Escobar was a railroad to push my players to the next zone. He was never meant to be what the players turned him into; a nemesis. So railroad can be good, but catching and playing on players expectation can also be good. It required me to rewrite 12 adventures to suit the players' expectations, but it was well worth it.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Railroading is:

....invisible, if your DM is clever.

Should "clever" DMing really be based on lies?

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

BTW, I think railroading and choose your path is a perfectly fine style of play - so long as the players know about it and are informed before hand that they are living on rails.

 

[NotAYakk]

Should "clever" DMing really be based on lies?

You can use illusions without lieing. I mean, you don't tell the players, nor do you answer every question.

As the DM you are responsible to create a believable world that is fun to play in.

The downside of the illusion style is that making a perfect illusion of a sandbox is ridiculously difficult. The kind of stories you tell with an illusionary railroad is going to be different than the kind of stories you tell with a sandbox.

With a railroad, you never need to answer the question "what if the players don't interfere" -- you are picking what the players do. Even if your illusion is so good that the players don't know they are being forced down a particular path, the fact that you know you can force them means the "alternative story" doesn't have to be fleshed out.

And as you are a mere mortal, that means you'll get lazy, and you won't flesh out those "dead paths". Those "dead paths" -- what would happen if the BBEG won? What would happen if the Giants destroyed the town? -- even if they aren't taken, change the bones of the world. Like a creature that stops walking, the bones needed to support the unused paths atrophy and disappear.

By sandboxing, you force yourself to answer the question of the "untaken paths", which means your world needs bones to support it, and a world with bones on those untaken paths is going to have a different shape along the taken paths.

It is theoretically possible to have the taken path shape be identical with or without a railroad, except DMs are mortal, and mortals are lazy, and form follows function.

---

There is the classic "clue" bit. Your players are searching a building for a clue. In a classic illusionary railroad, the Nth place the players search (maybe 1st, maybe 5th) will have the clue. The clue will be a specific thing, say a certain thing, and lead to a certain next stop on the train.

In a sandbox, the DM can no longer rely on a player finding that clue. So they have to "plan for failure". Any link between two areas that is a single hidden fact is not a link.

So either the game has to be playable without finding that clue, or you have to follow the rule of 3 -- there are always 3 links. So the building has 3 distinct clues. Those 3 clues say different things about the connection. That connection gets "thicker" because there are more details in the DM's notes. Players who find one of the clues, and find a 2nd, may have different information than if they found other ones. Different approaches to the "next" location may now exist, based on which clues are found.

The railroad game is structured like a thread -- a leads to b leads to c -- the sandbox game that tells "the same story" is structured like a web.

Players doing the sandbox can never even see the rest of the web, but odds are they will catch glimpses of it.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

You can use illusions without lying. I mean, you don't tell the players, nor do you answer every question.

* * *

Players doing the sandbox can never even see the rest of the web, but odds are they will catch glimpses of it.

How is that not a lie of omission?