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

[pemerton]

I don't think that's actually true; its entirely possible for the GM to give hints to a player playing a particularly smart character to represent things they've noticed or might have thought about that the player may not have.

I'm not a very big fan of this. It's like the GM playing the game with themself.

 

[Fenris-77]

I'm not a very big fan of this. It's like the GM playing the game with themself.

We all know that leads to blindess.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Some clarifications:

I did force them into the faewild as a side trek, but as with most "adventuyres" I write, it is a situation and the players are free to deal with it as they may.

The player who is unhappy (it is only one person, not the whole group) did NOT expend the spell slot. I told them their tuning fork was gone as they were preparing to cast.

Right before this all happened, the players drew from the Deck of Many Things and one PC got voided. They used some magic to discover that the PCs soul was not in the faewild, and have a good idea of where it is in the prime, and what is guarding it. This matters in context because now they know that the object of that self imposed quest is not in the faewild. But the doors are still locked, as such.

Your clarification here sort of takes me to where I personally would feel railroaded or not.

If the spell casters tuning fork ended up missing was because of GM fiat off screen I would feel like I was on the Adventure Express direct to Missiontown.

If the tuning fork was stolen during play, with the players having agency over it potentially NOT having been stolen by their actions and choices and die rolls then it's fair game.

Essentially....if the players had a way of preventing the loss of Plane Shift it's kosher...but if you just forced that little extra bit in to make your adventure work then it's not.

 

[pemerton]

I do expect the player to play that themselves. That doesn't mean in all cases they do, and some cases can be pretty egregious, and in those cases I think some method of addressing it is legitimate, even if I prefer some over others.

What do you do when someone cheats at cards?

When people break the rules of the game, it's time to step outside of the game and fix things up. I think the idea that seems to come up in relation to RPGs, that the GM can fix rules breaking by making moves within the game is a pernicious one.

 

[FrogReaver]

Your clarification here sort of takes me to where I personally would feel railroaded or not.

If the spell casters tuning fork ended up missing was because of GM fiat off screen I would feel like I was on the Adventure Express direct to Missiontown.

If the tuning fork was stolen during play, with the players having agency over it potentially NOT having been stolen by their actions and choices and die rolls then it's fair game.

Essentially....if the players had a way of preventing the loss of Plane Shift it's kosher...but if you just forced that little extra bit in to make your adventure work then it's not.

How exactly does having something stolen look to a character when the thief rolls high?

 

[Hriston]

Okay, so let’s take an example. It’s silly, but I hope it’ll be something that everyone gets.

Rodney Dangerfield’s character in Caddyshack… is he a low Charisma character who somehow makes all his checks? Or is he a high Charisma character whose player has decided to play him as crude and obnoxious but somehow everyone likes him?

Is there only one answer? And if either is possible, then the question is “what do the stats really say about the character?”

I love this example! Al Czervik (played by Rodney Dangerfield) is extremely effective socially. It's clear the background characters find him funny and entertaining, even lovable. He's a natural leader and life of the party. The main impact on the plot of his nouveau riche boorishness is to infuriate Judge Elihu Smails (Ted Knight), making him lose control on several occasions and eventually accept his challenge to play a golf match for a sizable wager. When Smails refuses to pay up, Czervik sends some thugs after him, telling them to "help the judge find his wallet."

So, in D&D terms, he's making several checks related to Performance (one-liners) and Intimidation (interpreted broadly as manipulation; seeing his uncouth behavior as abusive, this is basically how he operates). He also makes at least one attempt at Deception, when he pretends to be injured during the match because his team is behind, which fails to achieve his desired result of having it declared a draw. He then succeeds on a Persuasion check when he gets the main character, Danny Noonan, to agree to be his his substitute in the match, promising to "make it worth your while."

And yet, if you watch Dangerfield's performance, there seems to be little in the way of guile behind most of these actions. It may be a limitation of the performer; for all his truly enormous talent, Rodney Dangerfield wasn't what I would consider a great actor, but it's as if he just stumbles into most of these situations like a force of nature, prevailing through dumb luck. So it's difficult to say if it's natural Charisma that gets him through, or skill, or some kind of "lucky guy" class feature, or a combination of things.

If I was to try to play this or a similar character in D&D, I think he would be a Warlock, Pact of the Gopher, (warlock because nouveau riche, i.e. his money/power was come by through "unscrupulous" means, in the eyes of old money) with some Bard thrown in for one-liners.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

How exactly does having something stolen look to a character when the thief rolls high?

It isn't about what the characters see, it's about how the GM goes about setting up their walled garden adventure.

If one wants to use the railroad it's a tool in the box, but at minimum they should get the player buy-in that occasionally the Adventure Express will show up and deliver them to Missiontown.

I recently converted a sandbox campaign to instead a 5e conversion of Age of Worms. Part of this process was having a conversation with the players and making sure they knew that the walls and keep off the grass signs were going up in the playground.

I can steal the PCs items by GM fiat, and have doors literally impossible to bypass without fulfilling Quest 27 without guilt because all the players signed up for that experience. I would never use those tools when I was running the sandbox game.

I don't know how the NPCs in OPs game stole the tuning forks....but in a sandbox game I believe it's important to work within the rules of the universe as expected by the players. As far as I know any sort of "Every person ever teleporting to this plan has their items stolen and delivered to me" isnt a magical effect in the power level of a mortal, fey, or even most gods.

Were I running it I'd have spiked that fey-cabin Deck of Many Things draw with the classic devils bargain and have the dealer demand payment in the form of the tuning fork before they went through the portal. The obviously fey connected entity is working for the Winter Court and helping them achieve their goal of collecting wayward travellers in a way that the players can react to and respond with agency.

 

[TwoSix]

How exactly does having something stolen look to a character when the thief rolls high?

It looks like GM fiat, which is why I don’t do it.