D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Thomas Shey]

I think there's a lot of ideological elements in discussions of sandboxes that obscure what's actually going on.

In your traditional Hex Crawl you will often have safer areas and more dangerous areas with different types of encounter tables and different elements of risk. And the dangerous areas are clearly signalled. eg "The haunted Forest". This is a kind of balance, just as making dungeon levels more dangerous is a kind of balance.

To a point. But as I commented, in the old days this was a pretty big blunt object; a few terrains tended to have better or worse encounters, but even the best of them (barring tables for "settled" tended to be quite capable of killing a low level party outright.

It's just that sandboxes (and old school dungeons) tend to balanced at the level of risk rather than individual encounters.

In this regard CR is actually useful in design environments, it's just that people before CR tended to just go by Hit Dice (and general knowledge). If there's an unavoidable beholder on the first level of a dungeon then something has clearly gone wrong.

Sure. But it seems, as you say, that a lot of sandbox fans are also proponents of certain schools of OSR and seem to consider the very concept of "balance" abhorrent. Its usually the same people who start ranting about "combat as sport".

 

[Bedrockgames]

As so often in these discussions it feels like you are assuming certain things to be the case here which haven't been explicitly stated.

But they said in their post X is going to happen regardless. I can only go by the example and text they offered. If I am misreading it fair enough, but the words that poster typed to me conveyed the meaning I interpreted it to have

 

[Bedrockgames]

But that is only a choice which you can make if you know about the haunted house in the first place. I.e. an informed choice. In your scenario where there actually are different things in different directions but PCs still don't know about them, they cannot choose to avoid anything, the result is purely random.

like I said whether it is informed or not, is not something I can tell without more information. If the players were aware of the lay of the land and heard rumors of a haunted house to the north, but went south to avoid it, then I think it is a railroad if the haunted house is in whatever direction they go. Even if it isn’t. Even if the choice isn’t informed they know there isn’t a haunted house in every single direction. At the very least they would expect that house to bond up only one fourth of the time if they are blindly choosing from one of four directions. And you are making it happen regardless of the direction they choose, I just don’t see how that isn’t railroady

 

[Charlaquin]

I'd care to suggest that the vast majority of people I've seen talk about sandboxing are, at best, going by eyeballing.

Successfully eyeballing that requires a strong intuitive understanding of the game’s balance. It’s also an understandable preference when the tools available to you for measuring are unreliable.

Certainly you're the first person I've seen who seems to be pro-sandbox who had anything good to say about balance evaluation tools.

Well I’m definitely not the only one.

 

[Don Durito]

like I said whether it is informed or not, is not something I can tell without more information. If the players were aware of the lay of the land and heard rumors of a haunted house to the north, but went south to avoid it, then I think it is a railroad if the haunted house is in whatever direction they go. Even if it isn’t. Even if the choice isn’t informed they know there isn’t a haunted house in every single direction. At the very least they would expect that house to bond up only one fourth of the time if they are blindly choosing from one of four directions. And you are making it happen regardless of the direction they choose, I just don’t see how that isn’t railroady

So they don't know there isn't a haunted house, and the haunted house doesn't replace another encounter they might have been expecting to have?

If the GM rolled on an encounter table and it came up "Haunted House" would it still be railroading?

What about if the GM rolls the encounter before the session for some reason, and notes down a 4. And then when the players make a journey he looks it up and sees "haunted house"?

 

[robus]

You know, it just occurred to me that the “quantum ogre” is poorly named. Quantum mechanics operate based on probability. A truly quantum ogre would be one that’s on a random encounter table. The ogre in the thought experiment isn’t in quantum superposition, it’s placed in one of two positions by a rational entity based on concrete criteria. It’s God’s Ogre, not Shrodinger’s.

Ogre Ex Machina you might say.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So they don't know there isn't a haunted house, and the haunted house doesn't replace another encounter they might have been expecting to have?

If the GM rolled on an encounter table and it came up "Haunted House" would it still be railroading?

What about if the GM rolls the encounter before the session for some reason, and notes down a 4. And then when the players make a journey he looks it up and sees "haunted house"?

Because it is a location. And by making it come up no matter what direction they decide to go, even if their decision is effectively randomly choosing, it means it doesn't matter which direction they go: they will always encounter the haunted house. Also by letting the players pick a direction but then secretly deciding that direction always leads to X, you are creating the impression that the players have a choice, while they in fact do not. If I am in a game like that, and the GM isn't being transparent about this, and it becomes clear to me that my decisions about which direction we go never mattered, it is going to be bother me because I am going to feel like I am being railroaded.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

like I said whether it is informed or not, is not something I can tell without more information. If the players were aware of the lay of the land and heard rumors of a haunted house to the north, but went south to avoid it, then I think it is a railroad if the haunted house is in whatever direction they go.

Yes, but that wasn't the example. The example is that they have no knowledge of the haunted house.

Even if it isn’t. Even if the choice isn’t informed they know there isn’t a haunted house in every single direction.

And there isn't. Only in one. The one they choose.

At the very least they would expect that house to bond up only one fourth of the time if they are blindly choosing from one of four directions.

And it does. Because there is only one haunted house, so next three (and more) times they randomly choose direction whey will get something else.

And you are making it happen regardless of the direction they choose, I just don’t see how that isn’t railroady

Because no player agency is being thwarted. Players didn't make informed choice about haunted house in the first place, so their choice is not being overruled.

 

[Bedrockgames]

What about if the GM rolls the encounter before the session for some reason, and notes down a 4. And then when the players make a journey he looks it up and sees "haunted house"?

If the players have no choice but to have the encounter, then I think you are moving in a railroady direction for sure. There is a track and you are leading them on it, and they can't get off. If they can get off that track, then you are not railroading.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And there isn't. Only in one. The one they choose.

Which means they aren't really choosing. You are choosing what happens and making it happen no matter which direction they go in. When you give them four directions to choose from, that creates the sense they have a choice. And if you are pretending that they do, but deciding this happens whatever direction they go, I just have trouble not seeing that as a form of railroading.