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

[Committed Hero]

But when we instead consider railroading as an action by the GM… that is the use of force to reach some predetermined state… then we at least begin to address those questions. The idea of “being forced” that railroading implies seems far less neutral. It hints at overriding choice, at subverting freedom… of removing decision making from the players.

Oddly, this sort of GM antagonism to the players' plans is often improvised, because the GM is taken by surprise and doesn't want to admit they're at a loss to proceed.

 

[AnotherGuy]

While i get that some people don't like railroading as DM method, i would like to hear opinions on following scenario.

You have open world, game starts, you throw in some potential quest hooks and you ask players: "Ok, what do you do?" And for the next 30-40 minutes, they spend trying to figure it out what do they wanna do, do they take quest hook, do they do something else. In essence, you give them complete control over what to do and they do - nothing.

So, in case of group's analysis paralysis, is it ok to use railroading methods to get game going and not waste precious session time?

This post reminds me of one of our recent sessions.

So I've been running a high level campaign for a while, the world is open, we are literally near the end of a multi-AP mashup.
I summarised various options for them pre-the session in our Telegram channel.

When session day came (in person), that is when they seriously discussed

• Looking at the map, assessing and calculating distances for travel (flight with various beasts or cloud giant castles, sailing vessels, riding whales, utilising known teleportation circles...etc);
• Asking about various lore and recalling campaign information;
• Assessing stakes and time management;
• Listing benefits for each option and which option was deemed to yield greater reward for the finale. I provided some mechanical benefits that would make sense for them to know, specifically with the Clocks;
• A lot of the stuff I had to look up or make-up because there was so much available.

I prepared our food while they deliberated. I offered input where I felt it was necessary. It was one of the shorter in-person sessions we had (between 3-4 hours), but I needed to know where the storyline would be heading because at that level (and at that specific point in the storyline), it helped to have a heads up. I do not want to rush things as we get to the end and sit with regrets to such a long RL campaign.

My experience online is that things tend to move faster, but in person games are much more relaxed (at least with us).

 

[Committed Hero]

You have open world, game starts, you throw in some potential quest hooks and you ask players: "Ok, what do you do?" And for the next 30-40 minutes, they spend trying to figure it out what do they wanna do, do they take quest hook, do they do something else. In essence, you give them complete control over what to do and they do - nothing.

If the group is having fun, it's not a problem. If the GM is not having fun, they are within their rights as a player to express this. Obviously, there are ways to do so that are less confrontational than others, but no reasonable player having spent that long already should balk at "decide your course of action in the next X minutes and let's play."

 

[Committed Hero]

I think it is okay to "break the 4th wall" at some point and pull everyone out of character in order to talk about things above board.

"Hey guys, are you having analysis paralysis? Is there something i can do to help you make a decision?" That sort of thing.

They may say, "Just tell us which one we should do first." Or, they may say, "We can't figure out why our characters would want to do any of these things." In either case, you have information with which to hopefully move forward.

Many of the problems and frustrations brought up in this thread can be solved with 30 seconds of out-of-character talk. Even other players in the game I'm in are fond of saying "did you hear that? Was that ... the call to adventure?"

 

[Bill Zebub]

and people are quite accepting of mechanically imposed limitations on physical attributes for a low score or failed check, but the moment you try implement anything of the sort on mental scores or 'what they have to do' it's 'Oh my agency is being destroyed! I can't RP my character exactly how i imagine them! Cruel tyrant GM!' You kick miette like the football!

Can you give me an example of what sorts of action declarations should be disallowed for low mental scores, and what score (assume D&D) counts as "low"?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Can you give me an example of what sorts of action declarations should be disallowed for low mental scores, and what score (assume D&D) counts as "low"?

Well, having a penalty is by definition a low score. And so far as where the line is, it's IMO a conversation, not an ironclad rule. The idea, "don't be a jerk" applies to both sides of the screen, and to me ignoring your stat's influence on how you play your PC because it's more advantageous to do so is IMO a problem.

 

[FrogReaver]

In another thread, I identified something I would consider railroading if it happened in any game in which I agreed to play. I.e. if I declared an action for my character, and the GM said my character wouldn't have thought to attempt such an action because my character's Intelligence score is too low.

How is that a railroad?

I think this is a prime example of confusing things one doesn’t like for railroading.

 

[Maxperson]

Not necessarily. While it is true that one of the more common railroading techniques is "Small World", where the only thing interesting to do is the thing that you have prepared the players to do, it's not necessarily a failure of simulation or world building that there isn't a really interesting thing to do on every block. The most unrealistic thing about Batman is he can hangout on a rooftop and be there to stop a mugging. In reality, the "interesting" parts of life are widely scattered in time and place. The stories that make for good adventure stories aren't just everywhere, or else the 0th level commoners and 2nd level farmers just wouldn't survive it. Most of the time any realistically informed world is pretty stable and boring. If you don't want to be recruited into an adventure by the infamous wizard that shows up once a generation and sends young hobbit lads off on foolish adventures, and you miss that chance there isn't necessarily anything but tatter farming and the occasional chicken that got lose from its coup for the next twenty years - and that wouldn't be a failure of worldbuilding.

In fact, if anything, it's a pretty dramatic and unrealistic application of GM force that interesting things are happening at all, much less that those interesting things are scaled so that the PCs can engage with them at some level. If the PC's turn down one hook and then around the next corner or in the next village there is something equally interesting going and another baited narrative hook, that's railroading too - just one we tend to not question because we recognize it's done to empower the players not disempower them.

There are two assumptions you are making in your response that get things wrong.

First, the failure in world building wasn't that the DM isn't making everything interesting everywhere all at once. It was that outside of his line he is making NOTHING interesting, which is far more unrealistic than your Batman example.

Second, your Batman example gets Batman wrong. It's not that crimes unrealistically just happen every time Batman is on a roof. It's that 1) it would be very boring reading to show the other nights of the week where Batman is sitting there twiddling his thumbs, and 2) Gotham is so crime riddled that Batman does run into a lot of crime while he is out. Were he in a safer city, there would be even more nights we don't see where he is twiddling his thumbs on a rooftop.

 

[Hriston]

How is that a railroad?

I think this is a prime example of confusing things one doesn’t like for railroading.

It's railroading because somebody not playing my character (the GM in this case) is controlling my character's choices in a way that violates expectations that have been set at the table. If the expectation was the GM could control my character like this, I wouldn't have joined.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Can you give me an example of what sorts of action declarations should be disallowed for low mental scores, and what score (assume D&D) counts as "low"?

it's not that i think actions should be outright banned but the main issue i think happens with mental scores is bleedover from player observations and thoughts, if they figure something out it tends to get beamed directly into their character's head, you get statements like 'of course my character would know XYZ information' because they've read the lorebook/monster manual/ect, 'i'm suspicious of this guy' 'but you rolled a 4 on insight' 'my character's still suspicious of them though, because reasons' and the player speaking 'for' their character in conversations without rolling CHA.

i think more 'mental actions' just ought to need to be backed up by a dice roll. edit: and if they fail the check for something the GM ought to not be seen as in the wrong for enforcing the player to adhere to the consequences of that roll's results.