D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Cadence]

Oh, this thread again. It took surprisingly many pages until we got to the terrible thought crime of illusionism. Seriously, whether the ogres were always meant to be on one path, were moved, made up on the spot or were in some vague state between these is information that only exists in the GM's noggin and will not affect the experience of the players one bit.

Hey now, I actually thought for a while on my ogre set up. (And am disappointed it wasn't quantum, because now I want the stats for the Quantum Ogre that is simultaneously maybe on two paths until observed, in which case it's in the observed one).

 

[Demetrios1453]

Because they don't know any better.

Scipted adventures have been the unquestioned standard for over 35 years, and most people don't know there's anything else.

I've been playing for over 30 years, and scripted is how I like it. Give me too many choices, and I brain lock over what to do.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeeeeeah... see... that kind of statement which presumes that there are no bad actors among the playerbase of D&D. And it's -hilarious-. I've had at least a dozen players, that I can -remember-, who decided to throw hissy fits or play counter to the story and situations they were in just to be contrarian. Most of them with CN or CG on their character sheets.

But that presumes there’s no bad actors among the DMs. There are bad players and there are bad DMs. But there I go again. Badwrongfun and onetruewayism.

 

[overgeeked]

We don't actually need to do that.

We need to remind folks that OneTrueWayism is not a good thing, and that arguments against railroading are OneTrueWayisms. We need to remind people to allow folks to like what they like, to try various ways of doing things, and not try to tell others they are having BadWrongFun.

How can we ever discuss better or worse practices if any and all conversation is always shouted down with these BS claims?

 

[Steampunkette]

But that presumes there’s no bad actors among the DMs. There are bad players and there are bad DMs. But there I go again. Badwrongfun and onetruewayism.

My two examples were one bad DM and one bad Player and you're trying to "Gotchya" me on a strawman that I'm suggesting there's no bad DMs?

What even the heck, Overgeeked. It's not even -hinted- in anything I've written that there's no bad actors among DMs. And it's a whole one page back to get the entire Quote.

The first is when the DM is actively playing against the characters. When regardless of what you choose the story progresses on a specific line. I'm not talking about a quantum ogre, here, I'm talking about a game where regardless of what you do the evil king always kills the princess because the DM decided that the princess had to die. If you save the princess she has a heart attack and dies.

The other time that railroading becomes a problem is when the player is going against the DM. When the player decides that no matter what plot hook is waved in front of them or what the agreed upon story was to begin with they are going to go off and do their own BS. When railroading happens in those situations The problem is that the DM is trying to keep a problem player in the game instead of inviting them to leave.

Bad faith fallacious arguments? Eugh.

 

[Demetrios1453]

That's not me complaining about "badwrongfun" (what an absurdly stupid conversation stopping nonsense phrase that is), it's me wondering why DMs would intentionally remove the one vector of input that players have in a supposedly cooperative role-playing game and why players would accept that. Railroading is literally removing the cooperative element of play. The player has control over exactly one thing, their character. Yet an apparently common and beloved mode of "play" is for the DM to wrest control of the PC from the player and simply dictate a story to the player. Without control over that character, that role, it ceases to be a role-playing game and becomes storytime with dice. That's certainly a valid pastime, but we shouldn't pretend it's role-playing.

According to your definition of role-playing.

By the way, you're railroading them by removing players' agency to agree to be railroaded.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

How can we ever discuss better or worse practices if any and all conversation is always shouted down with these BS claims?

Better or Worse Practices for WHOM? Despite what you may posit here you don't get to standardize how people choose to run their games. You don't get to declare that someone is a bad or poor GM because they don't run their games the way you do.

And you really, REALLY don't get be defensive by claiming to be shouted down. No one is stopping you from discussing it. Umbran is literally just saying allow people to like what they like and not tell people that they're doing it wrong. THAT'S IT.

 

[Cadence]

How can we ever discuss better or worse practices if any and all conversation is always shouted down with these BS claims?

Making it about things you prefer or don't prefer, or things you've found annoy some people and ways you've found to avoid them... Instead of making it an objective judgement on individual styles.

(Recognizing when the person saying something is a mod is sometimes helpful too . ).

 

[ReshiIRE]

Why would they be much different? Don't most DMs have the choices and rolls of the characters in combat matter?



Does it matter if the DM only phrased it that way because (1) they wanted to avoid charges of railroading and (2) they knew the players were almost surely going to pick a road and wanted to be sure they had to fight one to continue... but didn't want them to run into a second one because that seems like a lot of Ogres in the area?

I think my opinions are changing because of this thread but I do think that it matters for trying to handle different player choices in a more organic way and one that doesn't rely more-so on... just having specific things prepped that must be encountered?

I guess it all depends on how much things make sense within the world and what the reasons behind certain things are. I think it's important to have reasons for most things, and it feels that potentially having the same encounter be possible in two routes could end up feeling wrong.

It's a complicated thing, I think. I lack experience in this area so I'm going more so off what I've read versus what I've experienced playing versus the (really incomplete) homebrew prep I've done versus playing different computer RPGs.

Perhaps I guess my ideal is mimicking something like Divinity Original Sin 2's second chapters, where there are a lot of paths and choice and very rarely enforced fights or encounters. I find that's kind of what I want to emulate, and I think perhaps that I am trying to prepare a lot of stuff not just for a session, but for any time.

I'm not sure if I'm providing value to the conversation at this stage, I feel things are getting a bit frayed.

 

[overgeeked]

According to your definition of role-playing.

Well, what’s yours?