What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

[SkidAce]

If the puzzle is necessary to proceed, then its railroading yes.

Even puzzles and ridles can have several solutions.

Putting mandatory "puzzles" on players, like having to guess how they can get out of the current situation, definitly is railroading.

As long as players can just skip puzzles its fine. Especially since its gard to make good puzzles, and they are rarely as clever as the people who create them think.


In some sense riddles and puzzles make not much sense in D&D, since you are roleplaying characters, so they would need to solve the puzzles, so it should be just a skill check / skill challenge.


In a way they are also just a relic of the past coming from a time where people did read the hobbit and thought these riddles there where clever, and when it was in generally rare to find (good) puzzles/riddles, so seing a homemade riddle was a fun change.


Today, however, where its so easy to find good versions of any kind of puzzle it makes not much sense if a hobby designer tries to create a puzzle and add it in an RPG. If people want puzzles they can buy exit games or other professional puzzles with good ratings.

So a puzzle door, where only the bad guy and his minions know the solution, which is a common obstacle, is considered railroading?

 

[SkidAce]

This is why I think it's important to have a definition of railroading that isn't needlessly broad. When "bad thing happens to my character" or "obstacle placed in my way that I have to overcome" are considered railroading the term loses any meaning. I am a living human being with real human agency; that hasn't stopped me from having things stolen from me. A massive accident that blocks the main road between my work and my home doesn't take away my agency, it's just a thing that happens that's unfortunate and requires me to problem solve to get around.

A character is going to get robbed. They're going to get trapped with no obvious means of egress. That's not taking away their choices. It's presenting them with interesting circumstances normally outside of their control and asking them to find a solution.

Quoted for cosmic truth and justice!

 

[SkidAce]

That is a fair criticism. I am not really thinking of it so negatively. I am thinking of it in terms of the DM reading the room and then deciding. As I said earlier, we make decisions based on emotions, experience, and a little bit of brains. So I look at whims as, "My itch as a DM is satisfied and they seem happy." So, it's a good exception. I will try to find the right word.

As for your second paragraph, the DM is still deciding their chances, and in effect, he is railroading to some. And per OP: "There is no predetermined path home. They can try anything they want..." The DM had no idea how they could get out. So the first four things they tried might have failed because he determined they wouldn't work. Heck, the first thing they tried he said no to. Which leads us to the word "reasoned out." I take exception to that. It is more like "emotionally reasoned."

All those ideas you mentioned. What are the "chances" of each one working?

What are the chances they find one? What are the chances their negotiations succeed/fail? Suppose they come in all aggressive. What DC are you setting the intimidate skill check at? Suppose they bring a basket of oranges and promise to spread fairy love. What are you setting the DC at?

Same questions.

Same question: What are the chances of them finding one? What investigation DC are you setting? What nature DC? What arcana DC?

Same questions.

Setting those DCs based on PC actions is organic. All DMs will have to do that if the characters go in a unexpected direction.

Thats not railroading* or whims, in my opinion. It the DM doing they best they can to continue play.


* unless of course it is railroading! Here's the thing, you could have very similar scenarios and one be railroading and the other not, because of INTENT**.

- DM sets scenario, preps their best, determines DCs based on players and scenario, and judgement (not railroad)

- DM sets scenario, preps their best, determines DCs based on what they want to happen (railroad)

**Intent is critical when judging actions and crimes, I always try to take it into account.....I have a criminal justic degree, but IANAL.

 

[djotaku]

Doesn't sound like RR to me. I view it as a spectrum and, of course, as a table agreement. If we sit down and agree to play D&D or Paizo or Cosmere adventure, then it's rude if they nope out of the main task. However, within that main task it would be RR if they can only solve things the way I want them to. Eg: they have to stop the princess' wedding. That's part of the adventure so if they decide to just go fishing that's rude. But if I' not RR them they can stop it by objecting or infiltrating the wedding or kidnapping the officiant or killing the bride or killing the groom or blowing up the venue, and so on.

Other end of spectrum - sandbox/do w/e campaign. Then as the GM I need to be ready for whatever happens. But I still see LOTS of advice (including from luminaries in the field) that are on the RR spectrum. Eg: You had city X to the east (the party doesn't know it exists yet) and the party leaves to the west. Advice is that the city is now on the west. (Since it's what you prepped, etc)

 

[Thomas Shey]

To think of another example, say I pitch a one-shot heist adventure. If a player brings in a character that refuses to break the law and tries to turn the rest of the party into the authorities, am I railroading to tell them to knock it off? Or am I merely enforcing the buy-in we've all agreed to on the basis of the conceit of the adventure in the first place? Or is me even suggesting that the adventure is going to be a heist in first place railroading, because it's requiring the players to play a group of thieves, thus restricting their choices?

To call setting such expectations railroading is to insist that any TTRPG that isn't a sandbox is a railroad. Which I think renders the entire point of the term patently useless for any kind of serious discussion.

Just a note: I've seen people in apparently all seriousness suggest that not only is such a thing a railroad, but that it isn't even really an RPG. As I've noted, this not only excludes some set-ups, it excludes whole classes of RPGs and genres.

 

[Celebrim]

You had city X to the east (the party doesn't know it exists yet) and the party leaves to the west. Advice is that the city is now on the west. (Since it's what you prepped, etc)

Yeah, that's the Schrodinger's Map technique, and it's occasionally useful. A good example of where I would use it is the crossroads in I3 Pyramid, the first road the PC's take should always lead to the cave of the Efreeti, because the story just makes more sense if the PCs have a chance to be the one that released the BBEG.

However, in general there are a ton of very vocal luminaries in the hobby and especially online whose solution to all problems is rampant illusionism and railroading the heck out of their players. This doesn't bother me that much if you would be honest about your approach, but so many of these same influencers aren't remotely honest about their own methods even with themselves, I have several times listened to prominent influencers discuss their prep and how they are sandbox and non-linear and validate player agency and leave it up to players to decide how to solve problems, only for them when discussing how they ran to session to reveal that they used a whole bunch of illusionism and railroading techniques to ensure that no matter how the players approached the scenario the exact same thing would have happened. All choices get functionally invalidated in order to ensure the big climax goes off as desired and the big climatic set piece always goes off in the same way. And I can see the value in having your plans as a GM come to fruition, but please don't pretend to others or yourself that you're doing anything but running a railroad if the important thing is to get your plans as a GM to succeed.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, that's the Schrodinger's Map technique, and it's occasionally useful. A good example of where I would use it is the crossroads in I3 Pyramid, the first road the PC's take should always lead to the cave of the Efreeti, because the story just makes more sense if the PCs have a chance to be the one that released the BBEG.

However, in general there are a ton of very vocal luminaries in the hobby and especially online whose solution to all problems is rampant illusionism and railroading the heck out of their players. This doesn't bother me that much if you would be honest about your approach, but so many of these same influencers aren't remotely honest about their own methods even with themselves, I have several times listened to prominent influencers discuss their prep and how they are sandbox and non-linear and validate player agency and leave it up to players to decide how to solve problems, only for them when discussing how they ran to session to reveal that they used a whole bunch of illusionism and railroading techniques to ensure that no matter how the players approached the scenario the exact same thing would have happened. All choices get functionally invalidated in order to ensure the big climax goes off as desired and the big climatic set piece always goes off in the same way. And I can see the value in having your plans as a GM come to fruition, but please don't pretend to others or yourself that you're doing anything but running a railroad if the important thing is to get your plans as a GM to succeed.

Right, but they used their power to make the players feel cool, so it's okay.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Bad GMing solves itself.

Experience suggests to me that under some circumstances it can take a very long time to do so.

 

[Gradine]

Just a note: I've seen people in apparently all seriousness suggest that not only is such a thing a railroad, but that it isn't even really an RPG. As I've noted, this not only excludes some set-ups, it excludes whole classes of RPGs and genres.

You could always tell them that D&D contains it's own massive host of expectations based on the setting that restrict their choices. They can't play a hacker. Or a truck driver. Or a Klingon. Railroad

 

[Fenris-77]

We're getting to the point here where if a door only swings one way it's going to be called railroading. IDK. Puzzles have solutions, sometimes only one solution. If one wants to call that railroading then the term has lost any and all meaning.