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

[aramis erak]

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

if said puzzle is the only way to progress the plot, yup. If it gates a side quest or a reward, not really.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

It's really hard to make a nifty but solvable logic puzzle for players not used to logic puzzles.

I really annoyed my sunday group a few years back with a hard logic puzzle involving an alien computer... they had to figure out the bitwise commands. None of them are programmers. Not even casual-type... not even batch scripting nor shell scripting types...
Just young enough to have grown up on GUI only computing.

 

[AnotherGuy]

if said puzzle is the only way to progress the plot, yup. If it gates a side quest or a reward, not really.

If the only way to proceed is to

Solve the puzzle
Travel to the Well of Dragons
Defeat Tiamat (or her Summoners)

What to you is the effective difference between all of these? (if any)

 

[AnotherGuy]

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.

Realistically it is always up to the DM to decide when to use encounter tables and when not to...
But yes there is a distinct difference between making something happen and leaving it to chance.

 

[Retros_x]

As a player: When I feel that my decisions doesn't matter. Compare with videogames:

Linear game where you are NOT railroaded: Mass Effect
Linear game where you are railroaded: Last of Us

 

[aramis erak]

If the only way to proceed is to

Solve the puzzle
Travel to the Well of Dragons
Defeat Tiamat (or her Summoners)

What to you is the effective difference between all of these? (if any)

Solve the puzzle is entirely on player ability, not character ability, in typical Old School cases, such as White Plume Mountain...
And "Tiamat or her summoners" is two potential routes, not one.
Having no clue what the Well of Dragons is, but assuming it a location, walk, fly, teleport, plane shift to the Ether and plane shift back after a very rapid trek... multiple ways to get there.
The typical puzzle has one correct solution. Most riddles one, or sometimes two, solutions.

 

[GrimCo]

In the end of the day, everything is player ability. My character might be brilliant tactician and expert in small unit tactics, but if we, as a players, go every encounter guns blazing Leroy Jenkins, sooner or later we'll hit encounter that can't be brute forced. On the other hand, skilled players can use their character abilities in such a ways that they can punch way above their pay grade.

 

[FrogReaver]

As a player: When I feel that my decisions doesn't matter. Compare with videogames:

Linear game where you are NOT railroaded: Mass Effect
Linear game where you are railroaded: Last of Us

George Lucas wrote Star Wars. The characters have no choice but to go along the rails he already laid. Is Star Wars a railroad? I don’t think so. I don’t think many do. Star Wars is a story and stories are not railroads. Most games try to tell stories about specific characters, places and events. They typically give players some limited choices and have them play through the story to progress. In that sense I don’t think you can view games trying to tell stories as railroads.

The key differentiator seems to be whether the game is supposed to tell such a predefined story or not. If not then It’s probably railroading if such a story is forced. But just like with Star Wars or God of War, if a story is expected it’s not a railroad to tell it.