D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Lanefan]

Because it is one thing for circumstances to accidentally result in choices that don't matter, and quite another for the DM to intentionally cause choices to not matter.

This. Well put.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Because it is one thing for circumstances to accidentally result in choices that don't matter, and quite another for the DM to intentionally cause choices to not matter.

Plus? The point isn't making EVERY choice matter. The point is making choices that seem to matter actually matter. Sometimes, the player knows they're making choices that don't matter.

Agree with the other poster on your comment but the bolded also stuck out at me as important.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

No, that's not the example. Because here the people are actively deciding to go on beach instead going to watch Shakespeare. Which, whilst obviously terrible and wrong decision, is something the GM should respect. Comparable thing to quantum ogre would be if they happened to run into their friend Jake regardless of which of the two places they decide to go. These people never made any decision about intending to meet Jake nor to avoid him. Jake being there is completely independent of their decision. And because they're only going to one place, this doesn't seem weird at all. Jake just happened to make equally poor decision about his leisure activities than them, and thus went to the beach as well.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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

I didn't get the impression anyone was advocating screwing over the players. My sense was the intention was to provide a good session and the belief was that by moving the encounter behind the door, by moving the ogre on the path into the path of the players, by having the haunted house appear no matter what direction the players go, the GM is improving the session. The intentions here are not bad (I think the number of bad intentioned GMs is pretty small). But you don't need intention to screw the players to railroad, nor do you need to intend to screw the players, to screw the players. I think part of the issue here, at least in the scenario that was presented (I am not commenting on anyone's gaming style or approach in play just the examples we've been dealing with), it comes across as the GM thinking he or she knows what the players want and need even if they don't, and not trusting them to make a choice, and be okay with the outcome of that choice. If the issue is, the party needs something exciting, fair enough, but in that case just put something interesting behind both doors, or put something on the other path from the ogre so that the choice really does matter.

 

[Lanefan]

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

Few if any will defend "screwing the players over" but there's sure been enough examples posted where DMs have done it.

 

[Lanefan]

No, that's not the example. Because here the people are actively deciding to go on beach instead going to watch Shakespeare. Which, whilst obviously terrible and wrong decision, is something the GM should respect. Comparable thing to quantum ogre would be if they happened to run into their friend Jake regardless of which of the two places they decide to go. These people never made any decision about intending to meet Jake nor to avoid him. Jake being there is completely independent of their decision. And because they're only going to one place, this doesn't seem weird at all. Jake just happened to make equally poor decision about his leisure activities than them, and thus went to the beach as well.

Clearly you're a Shakespeare fan, so I'll say no more on that topic...

But yes, this is the example: the decision was made to do x simply due to the expected absence of element y; yet the behavior of element y didn't match with previously-known info and thus they had to face it.

Jake is irrelevant here as there's (I assume) no previously-known info as to where Jake will be today. He's a random interrupt - he could be on the beach, in the park, down at the pub having a beer, or wherever.

The type of bad-faith railroading I'm talking about is the type where the proactive decision is not respected by the DM and element y will be awaiting the PCs no matter where they go.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No, that's not the example. Because here the people are actively deciding to go on beach instead going to watch Shakespeare. Which, whilst obviously terrible and wrong decision, is something the GM should respect. Comparable thing to quantum ogre would be if they happened to run into their friend Jake regardless of which of the two places they decide to go. These people never made any decision about intending to meet Jake nor to avoid him. Jake being there is completely independent of their decision. And because they're only going to one place, this doesn't seem weird at all. Jake just happened to make equally poor decision about his leisure activities than them, and thus went to the beach as well.

We have three working examples so I think it depends on the one (I am actually a little unclear what the destination is in the case of the ogre). But let's say there are two paths and one goes to the beech, one goes to Shakespeare. And instead of an ogre let's say Biff Tannen is blocking one of the destinations. This would be equivalent to having Biff be there to stop them whether they picked the beech or Shakespeare. As a player, if I knew the GM was doing that, I would feel like it was a railroad, and I would prefer that, even if I don' know Biff is in play, that the GM doesn't move Biff from one location to the other just to make sure we encounter him. You can have a planned encounter with Biff, but at least make our choices matter. A less railroady way would be for Biff to go to one location, if we don't show up, he eventually checks out the other one (and perhaps that gives us an advantage or at least makes the encounter different in some way: maybe we even have a chance to hear about his approach and escape before he gets there). If the GM is making decisions about where Biff is, and sticking to them, then our choices about where we are going will matter even if we aren't immediately aware of it (our choice of direction is producing different situations).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Jake is irrelevant here as there's (I assume) no previously-known info as to where Jake will be today. He's a random interrupt - he could be on the beach, in the park, down at the pub having a beer, or wherever.

And that's the quantum ogre, Schrödinger's haunted House (filled with undead cats), it's a thing that could have been at any location, it just happens to be where the players are because that's more interesting. Players never made any decision about it.

The type of bad-faith railroading I'm talking about is the type where the proactive decision is not respected by the DM and element y will be awaiting the PCs no matter where they go.

But no one has been advocating overruling the informed choices of the players. And moving the Shakespeare festival that the people intentionally decided to avoid would definitely be that.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

"Railroading" is fine if everyone at the table agrees to it. In other words, the DM says "Hey, lets run this adventure. It's a story about [insert storyline without details...like a movie trailer]. Sound fun?"...and the Players all respond "Sure...tell us a story and we'll come along for the ride".

Then it's fine. I told my players this when we started to play the Paizo adventure path "Second Darkness". I think we managed to get to the third book when one player kinda poo-poo'ed playing for some reason. So we all agreed to ditch it and do something else. Still, they knew what they were getting in on...it was a STORY that was going to get told, and their PC's where there to facilitate THE STORY...and not 'what would they do'.

It was a lot of fun at any rate!

But 'railroading for the stories benefit at the cost of player knowledge/involvement/agreement'...nah, bro. Not cool.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We have three working examples so I think it depends on the one (I am actually a little unclear what the destination is in the case of the ogre). But let's say there are two paths and one goes to the beech, one goes to Shakespeare. And instead of an ogre let's say Biff Tannen is blocking one of the destinations. This would be equivalent to having Biff be there to stop them whether they picked the beech or Shakespeare. As a player, if I knew the GM was doing that, I would feel like it was a railroad, and I would prefer that, even if I don' know Biff is in play, that the GM doesn't move Biff from one location to the other just to make sure we encounter him. You can have a planned encounter with Biff, but at least make our choices matter. A less railroady way would be for Biff to go to one location, if we don't show up, he eventually checks out the other one (and perhaps that gives us an advantage or at least makes the encounter different in some way: maybe we even have a chance to hear about his approach and escape before he gets there). If the GM is making decisions about where Biff is, and sticking to them, then our choices about where we are going will matter even if we aren't immediately aware of it (our choice of direction is producing different situations).

No, your choice doesn't really matter here. What matters is that in this scenario there is only 50% chance to meet Bill in given location, but this would be exact same situation if there was Quantum Bill with 50% probability and the GM would just flip the coin once the PCs arrive in one location to see whether Bill is there.