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

[Reynard]

In the context of this thread, @Reynard simply decided that the tuning forks would be stolen and as a reason for it, the fey courts were having some sort of crisis(I forget exactly what).

I wanted to run a side quest in the faewild with the plot of said side quest being that the Winter Court had staged a coup. So I decided that the Winter Court would be locking down the plane so no one can leave (aimed mainly at fae, but applicable to "visitors" as well). Because Plane SHift is a thing in the fiction, and uses tuning forks as a matter of fact, one of the things the Winter Court did was use their mastery over the plane to steal any tuning forks that appear in the faewild.

AFTER that one player got irritated with the railroading of stealing the tuning fork, I decided the place the tuning forks were going was into the gullets of the two white dragons the Winter Court were using the guard the frozen Summer Court -- which the PCs killed.

 

[Celebrim]

To me DM force is when the DM makes something happen. For example, if the group were going through a mountain pass and I thought that an avalanche would be cool and just caused it to happen, that would be me using DM force to start that ball rolling. If it were instead just the result of a random encounter/event roll and then I rolled avalanche on the table, that would not be DM force.

So, a couple of questions:

a) Suppose I prep ahead of time a Stone Giant who lives in the mountain pass as a fixed encounter. Is that GM force?
b) Suppose I prep ahead of time that as the party travels through the mountain pass they come across a besieged caravan fending off an attack by stone giants? GM Force?
c) Suppose I prep ahead of time that as the party travels through the mountain pass a thunderstorm occurs, and if they press on instead of seeking shelter, that they will be caught in an avalanche triggered by the violence of the storm? GM Force?
d) What if in every case I instead dice for what happens and use a random encounter or weather table, even though I have in fact created the table.
e) Does it matter for 'd' how many entries are on the table?

 

[SkidAce]

So is an ambush a railroad?

 

[Fenris-77]

Because force is where this best practices conversation stemmed from.

@Umbran said, "Are you going to claim "zero/minimal GM force" is a "best practice"?" and "Folks ought to show work that minimizing GM force is really an overall best practice, rather than just assert it." which of course was a part of the DM force conversation.

And then you went on about how much ink was spilled and how it was so obvious it didn't need to be proven. I think the mistake that was made is that you seem to have switched the conversation on us and didn't say anything.

Well that's an interesting but flawed reading. What is trivially obvious is that reams of advice exists, with opinions on both sides of the argument. If people wanted to know more or understand the issue better they have the opportunity to do so.

 

[Celebrim]

So is an ambush a railroad?

That is what I'm getting at. Because this "GM force" concept seems to me to put under its tent some highly varied things, from overt railroading techniques to basic improvisation from established facts of setting, to potentially ordinary prep to establish setting.

 

[Reynard]

"GM force" just sounds like "GMing" to me.

 

[Celebrim]

"GM force" just sounds like "GMing" to me.

I can imagine some narrow definitions of it that wouldn't be just GMing, but I am struggling to find a middle ground for the term that doesn't mean either "fiat" or "railroading". I'm not convinced at this moment the term means anything, or that the people who are using it are using it to mean the same thing.

UPDATE: If I had to guess, it's a term that means "Railroading but in a good and justified way that I approve of."

 

[Maxperson]

So, a couple of questions:

a) Suppose I prep ahead of time a Stone Giant who lives in the mountain pass as a fixed encounter. Is that GM force?
b) Suppose I prep ahead of time that as the party travels through the mountain pass they come across a besieged caravan fending off an attack by stone giants? GM Force?
c) Suppose I prep ahead of time that as the party travels through the mountain pass a thunderstorm occurs, and if they press on instead of seeking shelter, that they will be caught in an avalanche triggered by the violence of the storm? GM Force?
d) What if in every case I instead dice for what happens and use a random encounter or weather table, even though I have in fact created the table.
e) Does it matter for 'd' how many entries are on the table?

Force forces it on the players. A party who is careful can spot and avoid A and B, so those are not force.

C forces the storm(not railroading), but does not force the avalanche as the party has a choice that affects whether or not that happens.

For D it doesn't matter who created the table or the odds of random encounters events. Once you are using random chance to determine what happens, it's not you choosing what is happening and forcing it on the players.

For E I don't think it does matter. Even if the table has one entry, if random chance is determining if it happens or not, you are not forcing it on the PCs. One entry would be a bit boring, though!

DM Force and DM Fiat are closely related, but not exactly the same.

 

[FrogReaver]

This would make every puzzle ever a "railroad" which does not sound right.

What would?

 

[Reynard]

What would?

The idea that anything with a single solution is a railroad.