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

[Ruin Explorer]

Seems like a lot of work for zero benefit, but even so, there are lots of paths you could take through a forest, and still get the same random encounter, there are lots streets you could walk down in a town and still have the same encounter...

Unless you actually map out the exact position of everying in the world you are still engaging in this narrative slight of hand.

I have to agree, Paul, I am super-skeptical that there's much benefit in this, or that it's even plausible as a thing people do. I feel like people are talking about something they'd like to do, as an ideal, rather than that they actually do.

Most DMs who use random encounter tables (like myself) try to take player choices into account here - a longer but safer route might mean more rolls on a table with less dangerous encounters, while the shorter, riskier route might mean fewer rolls get made, but the encounters are more deadly if they do get rolled. Just as an example.

Can you give me a real example from an actual game you ran with the actual specific numbers, tables, and so on?

I ask because whilst I agree with you on a lot of things, I am highly skeptical about the practicality of this. Do people who aren't me just have thousands of pages of highly customized random-encounter tables?

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Seems like a lot of work for zero benefit, but even so, there are lots of paths you could take through a forest, and still get the same random encounter, there are lots streets you could walk down in a town and still have the same encounter...

Unless you actually map out the exact position of everying in the world you are still engaging in this narrative slight of hand.

I'm not sure about that. If you ask the players which road to take, but all the streets are the same. I agree with you. But if the choice is between two villages to spend a week of downtime in, one fulled with bootlegger dwarves, the other filled with barbarians, each with its own encounter table- that's a real choice.

I see it as a matter of scale rather than railroading. My world doesn't zoom in infinitely small - but I don't see that as an issue of railroading.

 

[Charlaquin]

In this essay M. Joseph Young points out a contradiction in mainstream roleplaying game design - the idea that the GM controls the story, but players control the protagonists.

I don’t know that I agree with Mr. Young’s foundational assertion that the GM has complete control over the story. Nor even much control over the story at all. In my assessment, the players have control over their characters, the GM has control of the world and all of the other characters in it, and the story is an emergent phenomenon that arises from the actions and reactions between the characters and the rest of the world.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have to agree, Paul, I am super-skeptical that there's much benefit in this, or that it's even plausible as a thing people do. I feel like people are talking about something they'd like to do, as an ideal, rather than that they actually do.

It's also something players are aware of and accept as part of "suspension of disbelief".

Really, it's the same as encountering six different paths through the forest. Without any clues to indicate what route to take (and realistically there seldom are) it's no different to rolling a d6 to see what you encounter.

And in real life we never get to see if our choices might have led to a different outcome, or if we would have ended up in the same place no matter what.

The player choice comes in when the decide how to deal with the encounter. If the DM only lets the encounter play out exactly as they have written down (and I have come across things like this in published adventures) then there might be a railroad problem.

 

[prabe]

The tavern situation is an actual railroad, on the other hand.

The "Y'all meet a stranger in a tavern and he gives you a mission" thing? Definitely on the road to a railroad. "Y'all are in the same place at the same time and something hits the fan" seems less railroady to me as a way to start a campaign; the GM probably has to instigate something, after all.

 

[Helldritch]

Because, really, railroading is done by DMs who feel threatened or overwhelmed...

What you say has some truth. But it is not the whole picture. A DM puts a lot of work in prep. Sometimes, that DM does not want that prep to go down the drain. A campaign is a story told by both players and DM. Not only by one or the other but by both sides. What a DM should never ignore is the preferences of his players. What players should not forget is that the DM worked a lot to give them a story to build. If, for some reasons, the players reject the story to do something else, it is unrespectful of the DM's work. Sometimes the benefits of a story isn't obvious from the start and the players should give the benefits of the doubt and play along.

Now, if the players found an unexpected way to solve a problem or an encounter, it would be unrespectful for the DM to force the players to solve the problem the way that the DM wanted it to be solved.

There is a big difference in not wanting your work going down the drain and punishing creative thinking.

 

[jayoungr]

Part of the problem is that people use "railroad" to mean two different things.

A railroad (noun) is what I would call a linear plot. The story moves from point A to B to C, without a lot of branching. I don't consider this to be an inherently bad thing, though it's not to everyone's taste.

Railroading (verb) is when the DM artificially blocks off options that don't fit the predetermined story. This is usually a bad thing, although it MAY be beneficial when used judiciously to make sure players get the plot hook or to keep a story from going disastrously off track. Even then, though, it should be a last resort and should be used as little as possible.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The "Y'all meet a stranger in a tavern and he gives you a mission" thing? Definitely on the road to a railroad. "Y'all are in the same place at the same time and something hits the fan" seems less railroady to me as a way to start a campaign; the GM probably has to instigate something, after all.

All campaigns have to begin at a fixed point. It's where things go from there that matters. And often, players are complicit. Show them a mysterious stranger in a tavern and many players will pull of a chair next to them and strike up a conversation...

 

[prabe]

What you say has some truth. But it is not the whole picture. A DM puts a lot of work in prep. Sometimes, that DM does not want that prep to go down the drain. A campaign is a story told by both players and DM. Not only by one or the other but by both sides. What a DM should never ignore is the preferences of his players. What players should not forget is that the DM worked a lot to give them a story to build. If, for some reasons, the players reject the story to do something else, it is unrespectful of the DM's work. Sometimes the benefits of a story isn't obvious from the start and the players should give the benefits of the doubt and play along.

This is why I try to give the players multiple goals to pursue, so they can choose. I'm not averse to having them choose something I haven't thought of, and I've ended at least one session early because I didn't want to ad-lib more than I had (out of fear I wouldn't remember it). It's the PCs' story, after all.

 

[Charlaquin]

I have to agree, Paul, I am super-skeptical that there's much benefit in this, or that it's even plausible as a thing people do. I feel like people are talking about something they'd like to do, as an ideal, rather than that they actually do.



Can you give me a real example from an actual game you ran with the actual specific numbers, tables, and so on?

I ask because whilst I agree with you on a lot of things, I am highly skeptical about the practicality of this. Do people who aren't me just have thousands of pages of highly customized random-encounter tables?

In my actual games it’s less granular than that - every possible route doesn’t have its own encounter table, obviously, since there are effectively infinite ways players might travel from point A to point B. What I do though is break the map into broad regions, each with its own random encounter table, generally keyed for different level ranges. Then when players want to get somewhere, they choose a route, and I’ll call for a Wisdom check to see if they successfully follow their intended route or get lost somewhere along the way (assuming there is a reasonable chance of getting lost, of course. Following a trail or a river or similar landmark removes the possibility of failure of course). Then I roll for random encounters, at a minimum of once per day, with possible additional rolls based on the players’ choices. Traveling at night, traveling through dangerous territory, etc. will trigger additional rolls. So, the difficulty of the encounter generally won’t be affected by the chosen route (unless the players happen to pass through a higher-level region on their route I guess, but I don’t specifically recall that ever happening), but the number of rolls can be.

I do think you’re right that DMs have a tendency to talk online more about how they intend to run things than about how they actually run them. I’m guilty of this more often than I would like to admit.