D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Stalker0]

My take is that the DM should always be a neutral arbiter.

I feel like we are replacing railroading players with railroading DMs.

Dming is work, and that work needs to be respected. Some DMs are fine with a “anything goes” approach, but some DMs want to run a certain style of campaign, and as long as that is set at session 0…I think the players have an obligation to respect that.

aka if in a heroic themed game the players decided to become murderous thieves…that’s not ok. Even if the DM can handle that, doesn’t mean they want to, and doesn’t mean they should have to throw away their desired style.

 

[MaskedGuy]

I'm probably trying to stop continuing to watch this, but I'm amazed how in span of five pages the definition of railroad has evolved again ._.; And I'm once again confused about what is everyone's stance

I will also note that "end of the world" plot isn't usually literally "world blows up", its usually "status quo of world changes drastically". Aka lich undead kingdom IS "end of the world" plot

 

[Maxperson]

A lot of thise divination spells are only available at fairly high level, and even at fairly high level, many parties never use them.

Does this change anything in the analysis? (that the DM is virtually certain that the party in question will not use high level divinations on the map)

One complaint in this edition is that you get lots of money and nothing to do with it. I was assuming that they probably pay someone to find out, not necessarily cast them directly.

 

[Maxperson]

Players seem to be quite easily influenced by leading questions. Like "Do you want to check out that side room btw before you leave?" or "Do you want to ask more about that thing you heard about before?" Its not straight up railroading unless you ignore what they answer (which you shouldn't If players so no, then you ignore whatever cool you put into that side room you wanted to use), but its surprisingly easy way to get players do something they might have ignored or forgotten about.

That's not my experience. Every time they ask a question like, "Is the lava real or illusion?" and "Is there really a demon behind that seal?" and I respond with, "Do you want to jump in?" and "Do you want to deface the seal?", they say no. Alas, I've never been able to influence them with leading questions.

 

[Maxperson]

Given the world shortage of DMs, you are in a minority.

Certainly, I would love to be a player, but since no one else will do it, my only choices are to be the DM or not play at all.

Interesting. Of the 5 of us in my group, 3 of us DM. I'm the primary, but every so often one of the other two will take over for a while and let me play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This sentence is quite difficult for me to parse, it’s got like four negatives in it. What way are people going to see what?

People are going to see things as Major and Minor encounters whether you think of them that way when placing them or not.

 

[Maxperson]

Which in turn penalizes the players.

Whereas if there is a general understanding that players don’t rob the merchants put there to enable them, everything works smoothly.

A lot of this depends on whether you think PCs are special in your world or not. If PCs are special (as I think they are) then it explains why PCs can easily rob a local shop but the local thieves guild can’t (because they are all NPCs with NPC level stats). There’s no break in world immersion.

There's no penalty to the players if a small town doesn't have a scroll shop. In 5e the default assumption is that there aren't any magic shops at all. If the DM is adding them in to some or all major cities, that's a bonus for the players, not a penalty.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah. Far, far too many refuse to speak about things that should be spoken of, and devolve into deeply dysfunctional behavior as a result. I still genuinely do not understand why people do this. It's not even that hard. But fear of rocking the boat or being a party pooper silences a great many vitally-needed things...far beyond mere gaming.

Communication is hard. Many, many people are confrontation averse, afraid of coming across differently than they mean to, and concerned about unintended consequences.

It screws up more games one way or another than probably any other thing.

 

[Maxperson]

If you lie to someone, you change their perspective on that situation purposefully to get them to do or think what you want them to without their informed consent.

There's no obligation to avoid placing a trap in the hallway just because it would look like and be described as an empty hallway. I mean, do you place big neon arrow signs flashing TRAP! TRAP! TRAP! whenever you use a trap or are they hidden like traps are supposed to be?

Players in this game should know that things are not always as they seem in the fiction. Having misleading fiction is not the same as the DM deceiving the players by hiding the railroad and forcing quantum ogres on them no matter which way they go or what they do.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My take is that it was unreasonable, but from the opposite direction. In my view - and, sadly, I think this view was more common in days of old than it is now - it's not the DM's place to shut the players down like you're describing above. Instead, I see it as the DM's job to roll with whatever the players try to have their PCs do, and have the setting and-or NPCs react accordingly.

They decide to try and rob the scroll shop? Fine. Play it out. Figure out what (if any) theft defenses the shop has, make them tell you their plan, then neutrally and fairly give it whatever chance of success it deserves and let the dice fall where they may.

And even more importantly, let the consequences fall where they may. Maybe the party gets clean away with it - unless they're dumb enough to try selling those scrolls in the same town - and if so, good for them. Maybe they bungle the job, or get caught, in which case they're arrested or run out of town or subjected to whatever punishment thieves receive in that setting/locale. It's a simple risk-reward proposition, and the fact that it's not the risk-reward proposition put forward by the adventure is irrelevant.

Telling the players how to play (as per your above "I want you guys to do (semi-)heroic things" example) is in my view just as bad as the other forms of railroading we've seen posited here.

TL-DR - it's a fact of life that DMs build settings so players can break them.

I don't think GMs ever felt a need to run a campaign shaped around absolutely anything the players decided to do. The only difference is that in the old days if they didn't want to they'd cook the books to stop it in game (by making it impractical and/or have such severe and unavoidable consequences it was unattractive) or just stop running. Hard to see just saying it up front as worse.