D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Bedrockgames]

I think it is an excessively expansive view of railroading, makes low prep and improv play indefensible and shuts a lot of discussion because someone will always cycle the conversation back to railroading.
I also feel there is little point in engaging with you further on the topic.

Improv isn’t railroading if you try to take choice seriously. You can still put forks in the road that very moment.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So the location of house is irrelevant it has no place it needs to be to suit the game world so it can be wherever it needs to be to suit the adventure. The house is not foreshadowed it is just an interesting scenario the PCs can engage with. You say this is railroading?

So at what point can a scenario be added to the course of events? Does it have to be directly caused a conscious decision made by the party? That would rule out 80% of the plot hooks in published adventures.

Let’s be honest we put things in front of players all the time because they sound interesting and could make for a good session. Ogres, haunted houses, plot hooks etc etc

Putting interesting things in front of players is fine. But presenting a choice and not honoring the choice, moving stuff around in the background so it happens even if the choice didn’t warrant it, that is getting you into railroad territory IMO

 

[Bedrockgames]

So at what point can a scenario be added to the course of events? Does it have to be directly caused a conscious decision made by the party? That would rule out 80% of the plot hooks in published adventures.

Let’s be honest we put things in front of players all the time because they sound interesting and could make for a good session. Ogres, haunted houses, plot hooks etc etc

Most published adventures have to engage in some amount of railroading by their nature (at least most mainstream adventures). That is a tricky topic on its own. I think with published material because they are basically making it for every table, they have to give it that kind of structure. Some though. At the same time, even if it is a linear adventure, I don't think it is a railroad if the players can make meaningful choices and they can choose to disengage. With a published module, whether it is railroad will often come down to how the GM implements it.

I think there is a big difference between dropping a scenario on a party that naturally makes sense for what is going on and what choices they have made, even if it is say a canned scenario, and dropping a scenario on a party despite it being clearly not in line with the choices and decisions they have made. A canned and improvised scenario can still both be railroads, and they can both be non-railroads. A lot of it is about execution. Generally I do think sessions that are structured around events, or structured around encounters will face more potential railroad pitfalls (this is one reason I stopped enjoying and stopped running adventure path type adventures) but I don't think they have to be. You can still have meaningful choice within that, and you can honor choices the party makes (for example if they go off the path, allowing them to miss one of those encounters because of that decision, and maybe coming up with a new on suited to the choice on the fly). I think fundamentally railroading is about how married the GM is to the material the GM has prepared for the session. Most GMs prepare. I prepare. Having prepared material isn't the problem. The problem is forcing the prepared material when clearly that isn't the direction the players are going anymore (figuratively or literally).

The issue here is presenting the players with a choice and moving the house or the door encounter so it happens no matter which choice they make. There is a lot of gray obviously. If the players are effectively going off map, to venturing into an area the GM has no prep for, and the GM decides to put a haunted house down. After that point, if the decide not to go in, and the GM keeps putting pressure on them to return to the house, definitely it has become a railroad at that point. I think that is totally fair though to decide to put down a haunted house on the fly. That is different to me, than having the house on the map and then moving it in front of the path for the players so they encounter it. As a player I understand the GM has to invent things sometimes, and has to throw interesting situations at me sometimes. But I also expect if I am given a choice between two doors, or four cardinal directions, they don't all lead to the same thing the GM has planned.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this is the first time I think I've read that quickly thrown together and vague location descriptions and encounters are better than having things well thought out and detailed. (Or maybe just really well ad-libbed. I'm not sure I can always tell for some DMs).

"Better" is not stated, nor implied in my post; that's a question of where you put your priorities. But a giveaway over time that its very unlikely that they're not placing-after-the-fact at least? Absolutely so.

Honestly, a vague parallel would be lipsyncing to your own music on a live show; while some people are really good singers, and may well bring something to a live performance that isn't there in a studio recording, you're also going to have little slips and problems that are going to almost always be paved over in post-production in the studio. For someone familiar with the musician, this tends to be a dead giveaway when they've decided to lipsync to a pre-recorded song rather than sing it live.

But the truth is, by doing that, they may well have avoided a worse performance. But some people just like their music live, even if its, in some senses, less perfect. That doesn't mean studio work is intrinsically worse (though some people act like it is) but it does mean trying to fake one as the others isn't going to be received well by some.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is nothing wrong with the temporary suspension of disbelief.

Which is why my last line in the post you quoted is as it is.

If you took your approach to most adventures Bilbo would never have found the ring. Captain Zodge would never have coopted the PCs at the Griffon Gate. They never would have come upon the town as it was attacked by the Blue dragon. The PCs wouldn’t be in town for the Swallowtail Festival. They wouldn’t be the group attacked by bandits on the road to Millmaster… they would be in the group after that gets there without problem.

Unfortunately… that just isn’t very interesting.

Some people will trade at least some of the more interesting elements for more naturalistic ones. What people want varies, news at 11. And if you get people like that, attempting to fool them you're doing something other than you are is, at least fraught. That's true even of some who would be more willing to allow you more linear feed if you were upfront about what you're doing.

To be really clear, this is more a note about the risks of illusionism with people who haven't signed off on it than any judgement call on the value of more linear versus more open approaches.

 

[Umbran]

Improv isn’t railroading if you try to take choice seriously. You can still put forks in the road that very moment.

Agreed. It is important to remember that good improv has "Yes, and.." as part of the basis of its operation, and that outright negation of propositions is frowned upon.

 

[Lanefan]

And if the PCs came across the haunted house by heading north rather than south, them maybe that will matter too.

All you're arguing is that whether or not the choice ends up affecting something else can't be known until the end of the campaign.

Pretty much, yes, in many cases. And sometimes it can't be known even then, in cases where the campaign ends before getting to the point where the significance of said choice would appear.

Taken literally, that means we can never judge any railroading until that point.

Not quite never. Sometimes it's obvious even in the moment; and can be judged then and there. Sometimes it doesn't become apparent until later, if ever.

What's more important, perhaps, is DM intent in the moment: does the DM know it's an intentional railroad even if the players don't; and is the DM doing so in good faith intending to provide a better game or in bad faith intending to screw over the players. The former is excusable, the latter is not.

This comes back to @Hussar's very neat summary from way upthread, that railroading in the perjorative sense goes hand in hand with bad-faith DMing.

 

[Cadence]

What's more important, perhaps, is DM intent in the moment: does the DM know it's an intentional railroad even if the players don't; and is the DM doing so in good faith intending to provide a better game or in bad faith intending to screw over the players. The former is excusable, the latter is not.

I'm hoping no one in this thread was defending "screwing the players over" and was instead trying to "provide a better game".

 

[Lanefan]

Let me restate my question - why would I assume that your preferences are the measure of adequacy for my RPGing.

Simply counterbalancing you assuming your preferences are the measure of adequacy for whoever it was you were replying to, when you said words to the effect of "location doesn't matter".

Or if I'm posting on a public board, why would I make assumptions that your preferences are the governing ones? Wouldn't it make more sense to note - as I have done - that there are different sorts of preferences. In The Dying Earth RPG, sartorial details are much more important than geographic ones.

That's fine for the Dying Earth game, but this thread ain't in General and thus what that game does is of little relevance here.

 

[Lanefan]

Which sort of invites a question:

"Shall we go to the beach today, or will we go to see Shakespeare in the park?"
...time passes...
"Oh, well, it rained. It turns out neither was a real choice for today."

It isn't like every choice we make in the real world turns out to have been real, in the sense used above. Our own ignorance, or unforseen changes in the situation, put the kibosh on what we want all the time. Heck, few who have lived through the past year f pandemic can cogently argue otherwise. So, does EVERY choice the PCs make have to be "real"?

What about when they misconstrue information, and make choices that have nothing to do with anything? Do we have to quickly make up material so that, in some way, we make those choices into real ones? Like, say there never was an ogre, but they got an idea there was one, and go on an ogre hunt. Is putting a ogre wherever they happen to be going, to satisfy their desire for ogre-hunting, railroading them into their own misconceptions?

If not every choice has to be real, why do we have such a long argument about it?

I get this, but let's turn your example into something closer to what's being posited in the thread:

"Shall we go to the beach today, or will we go see Shakespeare in the park?"
"Let's hit the beach, I'm not really in a Shakespearian mood."
"Yeah, me too - beach it is!"
...time passes until arrival at beach...
"Hey, whaddya mean they moved the Shakespeare performance to the beach today?! Bloody hell, we can't get away from it!"

This is the same as the DM moving an encounter into the PCs' path after the PCs had actively taken steps to avoid it.