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

[RenleyRenfield]

If it is a railroad and they enjoy it, it is a rollercoaster.

Hey hey now, some of us like trains!

#horrorontheorientexpress

 

[zakael19]

Mass effect is kind of railroad. Once you start mission, you must finish it, no leaving and coming back. Translated into ttrpg, once you enter dungeon, you can't exit. You either finish it or die trying. It gives you choices about which order or if you wanna do any side missions, but main story mission, that's pretty straight forward, you have some choices about what to do which will make final part harder/easier, some companions will die or survive, but final stretch is ultimately the same.

Mass Effect is very much like a pre written TTRPG adventure path. The main plot and major story beats are fixed, and once you start a mission it plays out in a directed, set piece way. You have meaningful control over your character, relationships, and some outcomes (like who lives or dies), but you can’t radically change or derail the core narrative. It’s strong on character agency, limited on plot agency. In TTRPG space, that's where player buy in comes. Players agree to engage with a pre written story, accepting the world, premise, and main objectives. They willingly limit their choices, knowing the campaign has a defined narrative, key events and a final goal set by the DM or module. Within that framework, players exercise agency: deciding how to approach challenges, interact with NPCs, and develop their characters but they don't derail the main plot. The restrictions aren’t adversarial. They create a shared structure that allows for meaningful decision-making, suspense, and dramatic payoff, while keeping the story coherent and satisfying. In essence, it's self accepting railroad. The railroad exists, but it’s voluntary: the structure enables meaningful character decisions and dramatic moments within a story everyone has agreed to tell.

The BioWare “rivers and lakes” or “linear mandatory transit between chapters” along with “semi-open multiple (many optional) quests” is a pretty well known design technique that is absolutely how quite a few pre-written paths go to some degree.

Parts are pure railroad as far as direction, you may have an A or B choice in there but that’s it. And then you have areas with lots of choice among places and quests.

To use the structure of BG2 as an example:

Game starts, you’re captured! The goal is to escape the clutches. This is pretty linear with optional side content.

You’re in a city, your new goal is pursue the guy who captured and tortured you but he’s escaped with your sister! How do you get there?

Now we’re wide open for a while. Lots of potential quests, and a nice goal of “make coin” along with quite a bit of “personal” connections.

Then back on the linear river once you actually pay that, through encounters and a big mandatory dungeon.

Then back in a “lake” in the Underdark. &etc

 

[Maxperson]

I don't quite understand what people see as the difference between a linear adventure and a railroad. It is just linear if the players follow the tracks willingly, but if the GM has to force them to stay on them it is a railroad?

You get get off of a linear adventure. If in the middle of a linear adventure the party decides to teleport to Baldur's Gate for 3 days of R&R during a festival, they can do that. Hell, they can decide not to even go back.

You can't get off of a railroad. You are forced down the line.

 

[Maxperson]

If it is a railroad and they enjoy it, it is a rollercoaster.

And over in 30 seconds. I'd hate to be on a roller coaster for as many hours as I play D&D.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You get get off of a linear adventure. If in the middle of a linear adventure the party decides to teleport to Baldur's Gate for 3 days of R&R during a festival, they can do that. Hell, they can decide not to even go back.

But once you do that, hasn’t the adventure stopped being linear?

 

[Maxperson]

But once you do that, hasn’t the adventure stopped being linear?

Yes. Most folks, though, don't opt to stop. They have buy-in to the linear adventure. The key is that you CAN get off, not that you will. You cannot get off of a railroad and by definition have no buy-in for it since it requires the DM to force players down the line against their wishes.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I don't quite understand what people see as the difference between a linear adventure and a railroad. It is just linear if the players follow the tracks willingly, but if the GM has to force them to stay on them it is a railroad?

That's the way I see it, as functionally there is no difference between a "linear" game and a railroad; in that the GM decides what all the plot points, story beats, major scenes, and main encounters are going to be ahead of time. The only real difference is whether or not the players are okay with the GM deciding all that stuff without their input. I do think that a "linear" playstyle does absolutely fail to embrace the one and only thing that makes TTRPG play unique, which is the ability to have the entire experience customized for the particular people playing the game. You can get a "linear" experience out of many other types of games, like your typical computer RPG/MMO, same as socializing and cooperative play. The customized experience on the other hand, is unique to TTRPGs.

 

[Reynard]

I do think that a "linear" playstyle does absolutely fail to embrace the one and only thing that makes TTRPG play unique, which is the ability to have the entire experience customized for the particular people playing the game.

I don't understand how these things are at odds. You can absolutely craft a linear adventure specifically for the players at the table.

 

[Celebrim]

Should the players decide to come up with an alternate path, and the DM uses their power to keep them on the "main/desired" path, railroad.

Easy yes?

Yes.

But, also fully applies to a sandbox or an improvisational game as well.

The key point is the GM using some technique to steer the game how they want it to go usually with some form of illusionism - fudging, Schrodinger's map, false choice, obdurium walls, invincible/irresistible NPCs, small world, etc. to either directly put the story back on the rails or steer it so that the players get back on the rails without realizing it or thinking they were using their own agency.

Or to put it another way, the GM is not using techniques to limit their own power like dicing for the result, adhering to previously constructed fiction (even if and especially if unknown to the players), adhering to the previously agreed upon rules (even if and especially if the players don't realize you broke them), or granting players explicit narrative authority.

From a player perspective a skilled GM can railroad you while looking like he isn't. For example, you can dice for the result by the difficulty is always just out of reach, or else I use the broad latitude of "partial success" or "partial failure" or "success with complications" to introduce something that will steer the game where I want it to go. This later technique is particularly empowered in systems where those fiat empowering results are the most common sort of results. You can give the players a choice, where either both choices eventually lead to the same thing or where one choice is just worse than the other so the players will always take the pill you want them to. "Take the red pill and your story continues. Take the blue pill and the story is over."

The skilled railroader never shows that he's bothered by the game getting off the rails. That's the secret to making it work. Herding players is like herding cats. If you make it obvious to the cat what you are doing, they'll hiss and resist. If you make the cat think they are making their own choices when you put out the food bowl, you'll probably get away with it. I mention this only because some people seem to think that it's easy to tell when you are on a railroad, or because they seem to think if you are allowed to jump off the train that you can't possibly be on a railroad.

 

[Gradine]

I don't understand how these things are at odds. You can absolutely craft a linear adventure specifically for the players at the table.

It's not only this; you can design a linear adventure, but still run it as wide open and reacting to the full range of player expression and agency. The players can absolutely hop off the tracks. You can put signposts to help the players get back on the tracks, but if you're not telling the players "no, you can't actually do that" when they try to leave the beaten path, you aren't really railroading.