D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Don Durito]

Rape is forcing people to do things without their consent. Railroading is just a DM giving players less freedom than they want.

The way some people talk about railroading, you'd think the DM had shackled them to a gaming table in the basement.

It's the internet. Where would we be without hyperbole?

 

[iserith]

Rape is forcing people to do things without their consent. Railroading is just a DM giving players less freedom than they want.

The way some people talk about railroading, you'd think the DM had shackled them to a gaming table in the basement.

"Some people" think that consent can apply to all kinds of situations, not just the hyperbole you just engaged in.

 

[Malmuria]

Is "railroading" always bad?

Is "the absence of meaningful choice on how the events in the game unfold" always bad?

Yes, it is. Because the whole point of role-playing games is to have meaningful choices that effect how the events of the game unfolds. If you have no meaningful choices to make, you're not playing a role-playing game. The DM is reading you a story and you occasionally rolls some dice between their talky bits.

Well there is a bit of a difference between that story being linear or being a choose-your-own-adventure (which is maybe more common?). What I can't get my head around is when the dm presents options A, B, or C, but secretly wants you to select B, and guides you into selecting B, and if you choose A then a bunch of guards show up and try to arrest you or something.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This.

I would define railroading as the DM forcing specific outcomes because the DM has decided that that specific outcome will happen regardless of any action within the game and that no action taken in the game can change that outcome.

So, a linear adventure isn't a railroad since the DM is not forcing specific outcomes. A dungeon where you have three rooms connected by a single tunnel is not a railroad. No choices are being forced on the players.

@iserith has a really good definition here.

How is a linear adventure not forcing an outcome, though? If you have to go through the wickets, then... well, the game is forced to go through the wickets. You can dress this up, and even hide it (Illusionism is a good term, here), but you're still doing this.

Railroading is the term for the degenerate form of play that "linear adventure" manages to do without the degeneracy. You can structure a linear adventure such that it progresses smoothly -- ie, the players are incentivized and want to go through the next wicket. This becomes a "railroad" when the GM has to force it noticeably. Pretty much any of the WotC adventures is linear in this regard -- you have to go through the wickets. Some, like CoS, hide this well by letting you go through the middle wickets in any order. IE, wickets B, C, and D, are really just Bi, Bii, and Biii. At least one B is required for C. And, this is great! It's actually pretty well done, because it does a good job of incentivizing players to jump through these wickets. It goes sour, though, if the players decide to do something off-script, and the GM forces a wicket on them. That's when "railroading" gets deployed.

"Railroading" is not especially different from quite a lot of fun, entertaining, and frankly common play approaches. It's just the degenerate form of it, where something has gone wrong and the response by the GM is to step on the game to force it. It's not actually a different thing, just a bad version of a quite common approach to play. Now, that said, some people have a strong aversion to that approach to play, and characterize any form of it as the degenerate version. And, the degenerate version can be quite unenjoyable -- badly so -- and so there's a lot of stigma built up about it, so anything close enough for someone to get a whiff gets pounded -- but that's really silly. It's been a predominant approach to D&D and D&D-alikes (most games with high GM prep and the GM centered at the source of most of the fiction) that it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's not the only way to approach these games, not at all, but it's a very common one.

 

[Charlaquin]

Is "railroading" always bad?

Is "the absence of meaningful choice on how the events in the game unfold" always bad?

Yes, it is. Because the whole point of role-playing games is to have meaningful choices that effect how the events of the game unfolds. If you have no meaningful choices to make, you're not playing a role-playing game. The DM is reading you a story and you occasionally rolls some dice between their talky bits.

I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want to play in a game where I had no meaningful choice. But, some players might, and I’m not going to say they’re wrong to want that.

 

[overgeeked]

I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want to play in a game where I had no meaningful choice. But, some players might, and I’m not going to say they’re wrong to want that.

If they have no meaningful choices to make they’re not players, they’re audience members.

 

[Charlaquin]

If they have no meaningful choices to make they’re not players, they’re audience members.

Whatever you want to call it, there are folks who voluntarily sign up for that, and I’m not going to judge them for it.

 

[Cadence]

If they have no meaningful choices to make they’re not players, they’re audience members.

Are there tables where the choices in combat and resource management can't lead to eventual failure?

 

[Don Durito]

Meaningful choices are basically the currency of role-playing games run on. If you don't have meaningful choices, you don't just have an issue with railroading you have weird pacing issues.

This is why so many DMs struggle with journeys.

DM: So you start out on the journey to Fallcrest. After three hours you come to a fork in the road. The sign says Fallcrest to the left and Starmount to the right. What do you do?
Players: We go left.
DM: Ok you travel for another hour. You come to a rickety old bridge. What do you do?
Players: We cross the bridge and keep going.

 

[Mallus]

If they have no meaningful choices to make they’re not players, they’re audience members.

Isn’t characterization a set of meaningful choices?

Aren’t tactical choices in combat meaningful?

I mean, aren‘t there many of kinds of choices individual players find meaningful?