D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Hussar]

Most players should have picked up on that. But then, we do have a thread on here about making sure clues aren’t subtle…

Heh, just leaving this here:

 

[Charlaquin]

Most players should have picked up on that. But then, we do have a thread on here about making sure clues aren’t subtle…

There are also players who want to test boundaries. Some players see an obvious “the adventure starts here” signpost and immediately want to see what happens if they go in exactly the opposite direction. I don’t know if that’s what was happening here, but I’ve seen it often enough.

 

[MGibster]

There are also players who want to test boundaries. Some players see an obvious “the adventure starts here” signpost and immediately want to see what happens if they go in exactly the opposite direction. I don’t know if that’s what was happening here, but I’ve seen it often enough.

I don't know either. While that's not an example of railroading, I think the GM was hesitant to just have the player start in the inn with the rest of us because he didn't want to take away player agency. I.e. He didn't want to railroad him. And, honestly, I can recount many occasions where players had their characters perform actions that were detrimental to the campaign (meaning the enjoyment of other players and me) where I should have spoken up. But I didn't because I didn't want to railroad the player. At the very least I should have paused and asked them if they considered what such actions would have on the campaign as a whole. I know I don't like it as a player when I feel railroaded so I try to avoid it when I DM.

 

[Malmuria]

Railroading is the term for the degenerate form of play that "linear adventure" manages to do without the degeneracy.

"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.

That's why I keep trying to keep the terms separate. Railroading is a degenerate DM behavior where player options are being constrained in order to arrive at a result 100% determined by the DM.

What do people mean by this? "Degenerate" is an odd descriptor for a particular playstyle, and one to my ear sounds extremely harsh. Is there some technical meaning that I'm not picking up on?

 

[Lanefan]

There are also players who want to test boundaries. Some players see an obvious “the adventure starts here” signpost and immediately want to see what happens if they go in exactly the opposite direction. I don’t know if that’s what was happening here, but I’ve seen it often enough.

Yep.

I can be that player sometimes, if a) the signpost is pointing to an adventure that holds no interest and-or b) the signpost is just a bit too blatant and I smell a trap.

 

[overgeeked]

I think it's important to point out when presented with adventure hooks the players should bite. I.e. Players need to make characters who are interested in engaging with what the DM is offering. If we're playing a Call of Cthulhu campaign, don't make a character who has no interested in being an Investigator.

A few years back I participated as a player in a one-shot GURPS Fantasy game at my local game store. The game started off with us arriving at an inn after traveling a great distance and getting some sack time. It was pretty obvious to me that this was where the adventure was supposed to start, but one of the players, who had a ranger type character, was insistent that his character would sleep in the wilderness outside the city. I wish the GM had just said, "Hey, it's easier if you start at the inn with everyone else because that's where the adventure is going to start" instead of trying to coax the player into having his character just start out at the inn. Having to work around this player's decision just ate into the limited amount of time we had to finish the scenario without adding anything of interest or amusement. But I guess the DM didn't want to railroad the player. But that game was stupid for so many other reasons....

Or just narratively delay the start of the adventure until everyone arrives at the inn for breakfast or drinks or to meet each other or any of another dozen reason to meet there.

 

[el-remmen]

Someone once suggested in a thread on this topic not that long ago that the very existence of boxed text(!) was railroading and that was when I knew there was no reasonable discussion possible about this topic with some folks - though some of you in this thread are doing a very good job of it.

Personally, I think railroading is only definable against the (hopefully explicit) understanding of the table of how much player agency is to be expected in the campaign.

 

[MGibster]

Or just narratively delay the start of the adventure until everyone arrives at the inn for breakfast or drinks or to meet each other or any of another dozen reason to meet there.

And risk having the player come up with some other naughty word (I didn't know we had a language filter here!) contrivance for his character to avoid the city? "My character wouldn't go to the inn for breakfast or a drink. He'd forage for berries and through the power of nature and fermentation turn it into wine!" No, the GM just let us go get Mr. Wilderness once we became aware of the danger but before we acted on it. It didn't make any narrative sense but why waste more time? Man, I'm still bitter about it. It set a bad tone that just didn't improve as the night wore on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A lot of it depends on how broadly you paint "railroading". There are campaign types that absolutely demand some degree of what some people would consider "railroading"--if you have to have complete freedom of choice what you do, then any campaign where you're playing, say, soldiers or other officials are going to be railroaded to one extent or another (and I've seen people who outright not only called those railroads but "not really an RPG").

In addition, to be really blunt, there are players who don't want too much choice. I've hit a number over the years who, as I put it, want to know where their tape marks are. Give them a bunch of choice and they'll just wait around for other players to make the decisions; if you've got a whole group like that, or where the ones who aren't are feeling off that day, the whole thing can stall out.

 

[Asisreo]

I feel a huge reason why railroading has become such a common occurence is because new DM's don't know how to write adventures.

The DMG has decent advice and guidelines but it never really teaches you what you're supposed to squiggle on a paper, if you even need to write down your adventure at all. If a player wants to homebrew an adventure, they must either turn to the formats of official adventures or just make a guess.

A natural consequence is that DM's will have a cause-and-effect approach to adventure design similar to writing novels, which have far more guidance even online. This approach, however, needs to be done tediously or else it falls apart and most newer DM's don't want to put in that effort.

If the DMG taught players less about the content of their adventure and more about the structure and presented this information in a digestible manner, I'm confident most DMs won't feel the urge to create a game where players must follow their set guides to properly keep their games afloat.