D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Greg Benage]

For the sake of the exercise, the players don't know, and cannot know, and will never know, what those reasons are until the DM reveals them. For all intent and purpose, it's just as likely that the treasure map was 100% authentic and someone beat them to the treasure, as it is to have been an elaborate forgery or the work of a trickster god.

It's not railroading as long as my character can ignore the map. The DM needs to understand that the campaign may now be about figuring out what's up with the map to nowhere.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You can't track everything like a universal watcher, but you can predict what happens next with a fully fleshed out world. All characters, even extras, should have personal goals. Even if its an extra that only wants to keep farming and living a simple life, that's a goal that will allow you, as a DM, to predict where he'd go on-the-fly. This is an easy case: stay at his farm or return to it if he's not already there.

All characters, even extras in the entire world in the areas the players have not visited yet? Yeah, I call BS on that, no one does that, no one can do that. No, when the characters enter a new area, there will be some starting point, and that starting point has not been tracked from previous positions of countless NPCs over several months or years when the characters were adventuring elsewhere, completely unaware that farmer Bob and his now missing goat Gertrude even existed. Gertrude is missing now, and not two months ago, because now is when the players arrive to the village and finding the goat is the plot hook which will reveal to the players the existence of goat-eating were-chupacabra cult, who also have not yet completed their greater deamon summoning ritual and taken over the world before the PCs even knew they existed and had a chance to stop them.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'd say if the DM actually has information about why the map was made the way it was yet they refuse to ever give the players a chance to obtain that information no matter what choices the players made, I'd say that's railroading because their agency was, or was planned to be, removed.

If the Wizard living in the Tower wrote that map and the players decided to check out the tower yet the DM suddenly locks all the doors with impenetrable, unknockable locks or throws it into a demiplane at the last minute, the players had their agency in that situation removed.

This would imply that only the DM knows for sure that the players are "being railroaded," or that the players' agency is being removed. (Since there is no way for the players to know whether or not the DM has withheld information, or whether or not the doors were supposed to be locked, etc.) It would only be apparent to the players if the DM revealed that information, right?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Nope. It is an imaginary thing and the players didn't know of it. To them it didn't exist.

Yes, it did. That's the whole thing I've been trying to communicate to you. To me--and people like me, which includes my players--IT DOES EXIST. It really, REALLY does have some kind of existence. Sure, it's not the same as the existence of the keyboard on my lap. But, for us, it's honestly a hell of a lot MORE existent than, say, some dude named Σωκράτης who said some stuff, like, a lot of years ago.

You keep insisting that these things are literally completely totally 100% non-existent in absolutely any sense of the word. I'm telling you, here and now, that for me and people like, me, they DO exist, in some limited, contingent sense. Maybe, instead of just flatly denying this, instead of just saying "nope, your feelings are simply wrong," you could try to understand why I might speak of them in this way?

Yes, me too. And they can still be found in many different places. Like Bilbo found the mightiest Ring of Power completely randomly in some goblin cave. And yes, there was a narrative for how that ring had ended up there, but Tolkien invented details of that after writing the Hobbit.

And novels are not the same as RPGs. You know this.

But you invented that narrative in the first place. You didn't need to invent narrative that ties them to a specific place.

You don't need to do anything categorically, no. We're not talking deontology here. But I wasn't arguing a categorical imperative here. I was arguing a conditional imperative. Because, as I've said repeatedly, you can never maintain the illusion forever. Eventually one of your players WILL see through it. And that's gonna be a real sad day for them. Why put so much effort into keeping up this front, when you could put that same effort into...having it be, in some limited and contingent sense, "real"? Why not avoid deceiving your players, and instead focus on deceiving the characters?

Sorry, but this sounds rather awkward and railroady to me. Oi player, you missed my clue so I decided that your character suddenly develops a magical spider sense to detect this one specific item! Yeah, I'll stick to my method, thanks.

I mean, magical senses are a well-established part of my world. That's the reason I used it. Indeed, that's one (among many, many) reasons why these senses exist in-universe: to clue the players in on stuff they shouldn't be able to observe with ordinary senses, but which they could observe with other senses. (In this case, it was preservative magic on the contents of the chest, because those contents were living things--seeds and silkworms, to be specific).

Of course sometimes things progress on their own, usually when the starting point has already been already observed by the players. But you literally cannot track goings and comings of every person in the setting. Sometimes things must just start when the PCs happen to be there.

You're conflating things. I don't have to track every single living being. Just things that are potentially relevant. That's, maybe, a couple dozen individual people (most of whom do generally lead pretty boring lives, that's how life usually works) and half a dozen important factions. The only things that start "when the PCs happen to be there" are those triggered by the PCs' arrival. Sometimes, an unexpected but expectable event will happen, usually as the result of rolled dice--again, not "the action happens because the PCs showed up," but rather, the world proceeding as it reasonably should, with various events (fortuitous and fearsome alike) happening to and around the characters.

There's still absolutely no NEED to have the world spontaneously START being dramatic, just because the PCs showed up.

Why this thing is not another thing? Because that wasn't its purpose.

You know what I meant; please don't play coy. Why shouldn't this be "that sort of thing"? Why should the hooks for situations or quests or whatever be anti-naturalistic, something inserted purely by authorial fiat rather than naturally built into the fiction? I absolutely introduce things the players have to learn about (this happened even in the very first dungeon!), but I always build SOME reason, SOME justification for why they'll be there, and not anywhere else. And if the players miss them...well, that's unfortunate, but missing things happens. Maybe an NPC might find it later (it's not like the locations they visit spontaneously evaporate while the PCs aren't there!), leading to a whole different adventure to take away the dangerous artifact some dangerous madman now has.

So: have the players been "railroaded"?

I would say no, but only by the absolute barest, slimmest, tiniest of margins, a hair's breadth from going too far. The players operated on what information was available to them, and took appropriate measures, those measures just weren't adequate to determine that treasure WOULD be there. You provided a perfectly valid example of why the map might fail to produce treasure even with them taking reasonable precautions (someone else got there first), which would be hard though not totally impossible for the players to learn if they tried to find out.

I would, however, be EXTREMELY careful doing this as DM. This is so perilously close to being a jerk DM (and to railroading) that, if the idea had occurred to me, I would probably have dropped it for fear that I would do it wrong, or that my players would feel cheated. In practice, they probably trust me enough to accept that this would kick off some kind of fun adventure, but this IMO should strain that trust.

For the sake of the exercise, the players don't know, and cannot know, and will never know, what those reasons are until the DM reveals them. For all intent and purpose, it's just as likely that the treasure map was 100% authentic and someone beat them to the treasure, as it is to have been an elaborate forgery or the work of a trickster god.

The exercise is asking: does "railroading" depend on what the players discover and when they discover it? Is "railroading" only observable in hindsight?

If it is genuinely IMPOSSIBLE for the players to find out that the map won't lead to treasure--as in, the DM will actively negate any attempt to do so, and literally no effort could succeed even at discovering that their efforts are being negated--then I would say it has crossed the line into railroading. Even recognizing Greg Benage's point below (which is quite fair), if the DM is preventing any possibility of discovery until the players are actually on the island and actually see the absence of treasure, that would cross the line. As I said above (which I wrote before seeing this post), it was already a sneeze away from being a problem, enough that I would doubt my ability to do it; adding this in makes it actually a problem.

It's not railroading as long as my character can ignore the map. The DM needs to understand that the campaign may now be about figuring out what's up with the map to nowhere.

For me, it's a bit more complicated than that. I recognize some amount of (for example) eliding out all the islands you might pass along the way that aren't the island the players set out for, and do not consider such elision "railroading." But if the players choose to engage with the map, and then the DM actively prevents any effort to learn the truth until it's staring them right in the face....I just can't call that not railroading. To reject that as a form of railroading effectively means that, so long as the DM does just the bare minimum effort to earn player interest in the story, nothing they EVER do is railroading, which runs counter to both my understanding of the term and how it's used in practice.

 

[Maxperson]

While we're discussing theory and DM motives, how about this one:

The DM places a treasure map somewhere in the world, and it falls into the players' hands. It's a map of a mysterious tropical island with a bright red X on it, and the notes on the back describes an amazing treasure hoard waiting to be claimed.

The party has the map examined by a historian, and it checks out as authentic. They have it checked by a professional cartographer, who confirms the coordinates and confirms that such a place exists. They research the name of the map's author, and it checks out as well. So the party hires a boat and travels to the island...but they don't find any treasure at the bright red X. Despite their best efforts and careful planning, the party is empty-handed.

For all the players know, the treasure map could have been a fake, or it might have been tampered with. Any one of the experts they consulted might have been wrong, or paid off by an unknown competitor. The treasure might have already been looted decades ago, there are countless things that could have gone wrong. Now the party has wasted months of time and thousands of goldpieces on a fruitless expedition.

Of course, the DM knew all along that the party was never going to find any treasure. She has very good reasons for putting the party on that ship and bringing them to this island, but those reasons haven't yet revealed themselves.

So: have the players been "railroaded"?

No. The party could have ignored the map, sold the map, or abandoned the quest at any time. The DM placed a plot hook and the players opted in.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

All characters, even extras in the entire world in the areas the players have not visited yet? Yeah, I call BS on that, no one does that, no one can do that.

Every character that gets a name has this happen. Every single one. Yes, I absolutely actually do this. I'm a bit baffled that you think this is impossible, to be honest. At this point, I couldn't possibly have created more than, say, 200 characters over three years of play, and most of those were one-off characters that don't show up again because the party doesn't repeatedly visit the same instrument shop or continually drop by a far-off city's main magic library.

No, when the characters enter a new area, there will be some starting point, and that starting point has not been tracked from previous positions of countless NPCs over several months or years when the characters were adventuring elsewhere, completely unaware that farmer Bob and his now missing goat Gertrude even existed. Gertrude is missing now, and not two months ago,

Before the players ever arrive in a new location, I build such things. It's not that hard. Occasionally, yes, I do need to improvise stuff, but I do so only and specifically when the players throw a curveball....and only and specifically within the bounds of what is reasonable for the worldbuilding I've already done, unless I specifically either inform them directly that something has changed (exceedingly rare, but I've had to do it once or twice), or furnish them with an opportunity (usually several) to learn what has changed and how.

because now is when the players arrive to the village and finding the goat is the plot hook which will reveal to the players the existence of goat-eating were-chupacabra cult, who also have not yet completed their greater deamon summoning ritual and taken over the world before the PCs even knew they existed and had a chance to stop them.

I honestly have no idea what this part is trying to say. Could you clarify? I feel like you're making a very important point here and I'm just flat not seeing it.

 

[CleverNickName]

If it is genuinely IMPOSSIBLE for the players to find out that the map won't lead to treasure--as in, the DM will actively negate any attempt to do so, and literally no effort could succeed even at discovering that their efforts are being negated--then I would say it has crossed the line into railroading. Even recognizing Greg Benage's point below (which is quite fair), if the DM is preventing any possibility of discovery until the players are actually on the island and actually see the absence of treasure, that would cross the line. As I said above (which I wrote before seeing this post), it was already a sneeze away from being a problem, enough that I would doubt my ability to do it; adding this in makes it actually a problem.

I feel the same way...no matter what the party chooses to do, they really have no choice in the matter because the DM has rigged the consequences of every action to always point to the island. That's generally the accepted definition of a railroad, I think. Any choices the players felt they had were just illusions.

But the interesting part of all of this to me: unless the DM reveals that plan...whether through accident or on purpose...the players will never know. They might grow suspicious, but a sufficiently clever DM can evade suspicion. They might push the boundaries, but a sufficiently flexible DM will know when to push back and when to stay flexible.

I really think that this "railroading" thing is only observable in hindsight. And the whole idea is fascinating to me. When I was a TA in college, I read several essays on the psychology of baseball. I think that it would be interesting to read one on the psychology involved in tabletop RPGs.

...but only by the absolute barest, slimmest, tiniest of margins, a hair's breadth from going too far.

Hooray! My model is functioning as intended!

 

[Maxperson]

I'd say if the DM actually has information about why the map was made the way it was yet they refuse to ever give the players a chance to obtain that information no matter what choices the players made, I'd say that's railroading because their agency was, or was planned to be, removed.

I disagree. Information can be secret until discovered. The map was the hook to get them to the island where something else interesting was going to happen. The players had full agency to bite at the hook or not. I've planted authentic maps where they would have found the treasure, but the players didn't want to go on a long voyage and just sold the map. That portion of what I prepared went into the ether and the game moved on. Plus, there are divinations and such that could give them clues about how it will turn out. The players have choices.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes, it did. That's the whole thing I've been trying to communicate to you. To me--and people like me, which includes my players--IT DOES EXIST. It really, REALLY does have some kind of existence. Sure, it's not the same as the existence of the keyboard on my lap. But, for us, it's honestly a hell of a lot MORE existent than, say, some dude named Σωκράτης who said some stuff, like, a lot of years ago.

You keep insisting that these things are literally completely totally 100% non-existent in absolutely any sense of the word. I'm telling you, here and now, that for me and people like, me, they DO exist, in some limited, contingent sense. Maybe, instead of just flatly denying this, instead of just saying "nope, your feelings are simply wrong," you could try to understand why I might speak of them in this way?

This is your personal hang up. And I get it, I have such too. And yeah, as a GM many things I have not told to the players 'really exist' for me. But that's just because I decided so, and just as easily I could undecide (I just might not want to.) But these things do not exit to the players; things that I have not told about to them cannot exist to them.

And novels are not the same as RPGs. You know this.

But doesn't matter for this example.

You don't need to do anything categorically, no. We're not talking deontology here. But I wasn't arguing a categorical imperative here. I was arguing a conditional imperative. Because, as I've said repeatedly, you can never maintain the illusion forever. Eventually one of your players WILL see through it. And that's gonna be a real sad day for them. Why put so much effort into keeping up this front, when you could put that same effort into...having it be, in some limited and contingent sense, "real"? Why not avoid deceiving your players, and instead focus on deceiving the characters?

Again, the players know that I am actually making stuff up. That's literally how this game works. No one is being deceived.

And yeah, I preplan a lot of stuff and a lot of things are 'real' in the sense that you mean (probably more than necessary for the player's enjoyment.) I just understand the limits of it. You always end up making stuff up on the fly anyway. There is no point in getting fixated on some preliminary musings when the living situation at the table might benefit from something else.

I mean, magical senses are a well-established part of my world. That's the reason I used it. Indeed, that's one (among many, many) reasons why these senses exist in-universe: to clue the players in on stuff they shouldn't be able to observe with ordinary senses, but which they could observe with other senses. (In this case, it was preservative magic on the contents of the chest, because those contents were living things--seeds and silkworms, to be specific).

To me it still sounds like in-setting justification for a railroading or at least the GM very aggressively pointing the players to the right direction. I would find this jarring.

You're conflating things. I don't have to track every single living being. Just things that are potentially relevant. That's, maybe, a couple dozen individual people (most of whom do generally lead pretty boring lives, that's how life usually works) and half a dozen important factions. The only things that start "when the PCs happen to be there" are those triggered by the PCs' arrival. Sometimes, an unexpected but expectable event will happen, usually as the result of rolled dice--again, not "the action happens because the PCs showed up," but rather, the world proceeding as it reasonably should, with various events (fortuitous and fearsome alike) happening to and around the characters.

There's still absolutely no NEED to have the world spontaneously START being dramatic, just because the PCs showed up.

So in the entire world there are just two dozen people who do anything without the PC prompting them into action? Nothing significant ever happens if not initiated by one of these two dozen people with functioning minds or the PCs? Wow! Again, I'll stick to my method.

You know what I meant; please don't play coy. Why shouldn't this be "that sort of thing"? Why should the hooks for situations or quests or whatever be anti-naturalistic, something inserted purely by authorial fiat rather than naturally built into the fiction? I absolutely introduce things the players have to learn about (this happened even in the very first dungeon!), but I always build SOME reason, SOME justification for why they'll be there, and not anywhere else.

They will have a reason to be there! And were they somewhere else, they would have a reason to be there then!

 

[Asisreo]

All characters, even extras in the entire world in the areas the players have not visited yet? Yeah, I call BS on that, no one does that, no one can do that.

Things prewritten:

The folk of Rivernile are a simple people that don't have many worries outside of the harvest season of their crops and tax season when the reeve goes door-to-door and takes a certain poundage of rice from the citizens to be shipped to the capital Lorthal. The citizens are enjoying a prosperous harvest.

When players approach: "You see a few farmers working the rice fields through sweat and hard-work."

Player: "I walk up to them and say 'Good evening, my name is Tressa, I was wondering if there was anything of note in this village."

DM: "A man looks up at you and stands proper. He's still covered in the mud and grain. He says 'Mornin' Tressa, you must be new 'round here. Name's Linel. Nothing much going on in this farm 'cept for the fact the crops 'ave gotten more flourished. If you wanna know more, might wanna talk to the reeve."

P: "I'm going to cast Dominate Person on Linel and have him ask questions for the reeve and report back to us while we avoid the reeve knowing we've arrived."

DM: "He's charmed and follows your command, he relays that the reeve wouldn't tell him much but he is worried about the strange men stationed a bit north of here.

P: "Okay, well, we wanna keep Linel with us until the spell is up."

DM: sigh "Alright"

players finish the quest

P: "'Hey Linel, sorry we casted a spell on you, but you were awesome when you stealthily unlocked us from those cages. Wanna come with us? we can pay you well.'"

DM: "Linel says 'Nah, deary. I'm not one for the city. Thanks for the offer though. Oh, and maybe just ask before you do your witchy mumbo-jumbo, 'right?'"

players leave, DM writes note about Linel next to the town key. Players return 2 years later

DM: "As you return, you notice that the village has remained how it normally had despite the War of the Ironkons throughout the nation. You notice a familiar face picking the rice in the fields, its Linel! He notices you all and waves, seems he recognizes you too! A difference is that it seems like he's missing an arm. He says 'Ey, friends. Rough year, huh? Oh this? Yeah, one of the blighters came to our village. Tried fending it off by using some moves I saw you all do. Wasn't nearly as good as yall apparently, but I held them off enough for the guards to arrive.'"

The End. Its not that complex but it greatly increases immersion. The only improv I did was Linel's name and what happened to him after the war. Everything else was using the prompt or worldbuilding I would have written down before the adventure began.