D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Morrus]

By these definitions every published adventure is a railroad, because it includes a plot.

 

[iserith]

By these definitions every published adventure is a railroad, because it includes a plot.

Not my definition. It's only railroading if the DM forces the players to be on the plot despite their belief they can make choices otherwise. The module, however linear, cannot in and of itself railroad the players. It takes a DM to do that. So, if a DM wants to run a module, all the DM need do is say, "Hey guys, I'm running Sunless Citadel, so the adventure is only that dungeon plus the town and maybe the wilderness in between. Do you agree to stick to those areas?" If they agree, then there is no railroading going on.

 

[DemoMonkey]

Because it works.

 

[Charlaquin]

Railroading is a very nebulous term. It would be more helpful to directly talk about the specific behaviors you’re using the term to describe. Is railrodIng running an adventure with a linear structure? Is it dictating that the PCs must do certain things in a certain order? Something else? It’s hard to criticize or defend something that isn’t clearly defined.

 

[overgeeked]

Wanting to hit a finite list of train stations to complete most of the scavenger hunt... but the players pick the order... doesn't entirely feel like there are no tracks.

I disagree. By definition there are no tracks. There's no linear progression you must follow, i.e. tracks. With node-based design there's bumpers at the edges and you're free to roam within the predefined area. You still have choices and those choices matter. I could see a similar negative argument being made that unless the PCs can leave the predefined area it's still removing some choice, but the easy rebuttal is that it's not removing all choice. Strictly enforced linear adventures remove all choice.

Near as I can tell there's maybe four options for published adventures. Linear, node-based, sandbox, and a mix of the previous three. To me, linear is duller than dirt. Node-based is better because at least there's some choice. Sandbox is the best, but it's also the hardest to do and requires a lot of space (page count and head space). And you could publish a single adventure that has elements of each.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not my definition. It's only railroading if the DM forces the players to be on the plot despite their belief they can make choices otherwise. The module, however linear, cannot in and of itself railroad the players. It takes a DM to do that. So, if a DM wants to run a module, all the DM need do is say, "Hey guys, I'm running Sunless Citadel, so the adventure is only that dungeon plus the town and maybe the wilderness in between. Do you agree to stick to those areas?" If they agree, then there is no railroading going on.

Just because something is on rails, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a railroad. It could be a roller coaster!

 

[Morrus]

In my experience an adventure with no guidelines is a bumbling, boring mess of people saying "ummmm......."

 

[iserith]

Just because something is on rails, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a railroad. It could be a roller coaster!

And if I agreed to go on the roller coaster, I can't complain about being railroaded!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As opposed to B2 where the party has bought in to going to the caves, but they can do whatever once they get there (assuming all of the monsters don't have their alignment that firmly engraved on their souls that they have to all be killed).

There's actually quite a bit they can do if they don't go to the Caves of Chaos. I've been running B2 during the pandemic, using the OAR version, and was surprised at how much else there is to do. So you don't even need that level of buy-in. I just started my players' characters at the western end of the map, on the road, and let them go from there. They had a number of misadventures before getting to the keep or finding the caves themselves.

 

[overgeeked]

Just because something is on rails, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a railroad. It could be a roller coaster!

Do the riders get any meaningful input on the direction the roller coaster goes? If not, then it's a railroad.