D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Bedrockgames]

Well, suppose that in scene A the PCs befriend NPC X (resolved via application of the social resolution mechanics) so as to achieve goal P, while killing NPC Y (resolved via application of the rules for resolution of violence) so as to achieve goal Q.

And now suppose in scene B the GM has X turn on the PCs and thwart their aspiration for P; and has NPC Z, a newly-authored NPC, turn up to try and stop the PCs achieving Q by fighting them about it.

That looks to me like it could be railroading - the GM is not respecting the outcomes of resolution, and is manipulating the fiction so as to continue to press his/her conception of what it is going to look like regardless of what the players have their PCs do and regardless of success in action resolution.

I don't think the pattern of play I've described above is merely hypothetical, either. I've seen modules that encourage the GM to do both: modules that tell the GM to have a particular NPC betray the PCs without any regard to outcomes of social resolution processes; and modules that tell the GM to introduce a new oppositional NPC if the PCs kill the original one (Bastion of Broken Souls is an example of the second pattern that I remember especially well).


In my mind, this depends on details that are missing.

Is the choice to open the left rather than the right door supposed to matter? In that case, it seems railroad-y to me that the same thing happens whichever door is opened.

But if the choice is merely colour - like a player choosing the shape of a PC's belt-buckle - then it doesn't seem railroad-y.

A complicating consideration is that, for purely historical reasons, D&D play obsesses over architecture and geography whereas it largely neglects belt-buckles (contrast, here, The Dying Earth RPG), and so there is a weight of convention to at least pretend that choosing the door matters in a way that choosing one's clothing doesn't. Breaking free of that convention can take a bit of an effort of will!


You are assuming here that the choice of door should matter. But maybe it's just flavour! In which case there's no railroad.

When my group plays Prince Valiant I'll often pull out the map of Britain in the front of my Pendragon hardback and we'll work out together where they're going on the map. But those decisions have ZERO implications for what encounters I frame. It's just to help me narrate "woods" or "swamp" in a consistent way, and to help maintain at least a rough consistency of which town or castle is near to or far from which other town or castle. This isn't railroading; it's just a different focus to play from a Cook/Marsh expert hexcrawl: the action of play isn't about which hex the PCs are in, but rather what happens when they meet the Huns? (As it turns out, they beat the Huns with their warband and then converted the bulk of them (who had survived the skirmish) to Christianity and added them to their warband as light skirmishers.)

Going through the left vs the right door may be significant in a map-and-key exploration game (eg Keep on the Borderlands/Caves of Chaos as presented by its author). But in a different sort of game it may just be colour. Hence why - as @iserith has said - there can be no de-contextualised answer to @Urriak Uruk's question.


Treated as rhetorical, I feel the force of your question. Treated as literal, see my remarks about the inheritance of convention earlier in this post.

I was just going by what he said, which was one door had an encounter and one door didn't, but the encounter would shift if the players picked the door with no encounter behind it. It is just color, I suppose it doesn't matter. I would need to see what he meant. But since he described it as an encounter, I think it is a safe bet this is a meaningful thing he is thrusting on the players. Certainly there could be types of games where that isn't the case. But assuming it is an encounter as the term generally means in these games (and I had no reason to think he was using it in some out of the box way), then I don't see how it isn't railroading to force the encounter even when the players choose the right path to avoid the encounter but the GM insists the encounter still takes place. That is like an adventure where whether you go north or south, east or west you will still encounter the same adventure hook for the haunted house. Railroading is the X that the GM has in mind is going to happen regardless of what choices the players make.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I recently started to teach my 10 year old daughter to play D&D.

She needs railroading for the game to function well. At this stage, giving her too many open ended choices doesn't work well. She needs a more limited set of choices to enjoy the game.

As she gets older and figures out how things work with the game and her character better, I am sure we will be able to open up the game to a more sandbox level of play. But right now? She needs to be on that railroad.

Again though linear isn't a railroad. And railroad isn't I have an adventure for the night, which I've planned, and everyone has all bought into the idea of that being the thing the party will do (and the GM helps by making sure the leads to the adventure are obvious or something). Railroading is the GM has an adventure planned, and no matter what the players do, it will happen, and even, it will happen in exactly the way and order the GM intended. Now, if everyone is content with that set up, its fine. If you are transparently railroading and your players are fully on board, then there is no problem. The issue is some posters seem to be suggesting it is okay to trick players into participating in their railroad (shifting encounters without their knowledge, etc). I think that is a problem because it is a very dishonest way to GM, but also eventually the players do pick up on it. I've seen this again and again when its happened. And if they do pick up on it, and they express resentment and call it a railroad, don't be surprised.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That is like an adventure where whether you go north or south, east or west you will still encounter the same adventure hook for the haunted house. R

And that's not railroading unless the players actually took some actions to intentionally avoid the haunted house. If they just blindly chose a direction and had no any idea of any haunted houses then their agency was not affected as it was not a meaningful choice to begin with.

This sort of thing is usually just used to add verisimilitude and make the world seem bigger than it actually is. As I said like thirty pages ago or something, the world may be limitless, the GM's prep time isn't. And I definitely prefer this over the characters wasting time aimlessly wandering around until they finally happen to choose the place for which GM actually has interesting stuff planned for.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And that's not railroading unless the players actually took some actions to intentionally avoid the haunted house. If they just blindly chose a direction and had no any idea of any haunted houses then their agency was not affected as it was not a meaningful choice to begin with.

This sort of thing is usually just used to add verisimilitude and make the world seem bigger than it actually is. As I said like thirty pages ago or something, the world may be limitless, the GM's prep time isn't. And I definitely prefer this over the characters wasting time aimlessly wandering around until they finally happen to choose the place for which GM actually has interesting stuff planned for.

I don't find this persuasive. If you don't want a sandbox, that is totally fine. Sandbox isn't the only non-railroad. But the point is if I am presented with four cardinal directions to choose from, and no matter which direction I choose, the adventure the GM has planned is going to happen, that is absolutely a railroad. The choice of direction is meaningless in this case. Whereas if the GM has a haunted house in the north, a kobold tribe attacking villagers in the south, a town to rest in in the east, and a princes kidnapped by pixies in the west, at least my choices matter. Not every adventure needs to be this kind of exploration of the map. But if I am making that sort of choice and the Gm just moves things to undermine that choice, I don't see how that isn't railroading. Now there is a deeper layer here. Agency isn't just about making blind choices about cardinal directions. Once the players get to these places, you can still have railroading if the players choices aren't being respected, and if they are being forced along. The standard definition of a railroad is being forced to go on the adventure. So if you are moving things around so the adventure happens no matter where the players go, that is a railroady GMing decision. And again, if everyone has bought into this idea that the GM has a single adventure planned for the night, this is the adventure and we are all going to go on it, that is different. The players are agreeing to buy into the scenario, and they aren't interested in exploring a range of adventuring choices. But if you are tricking the party so they think their decision to go west was the thing that led them to the haunted house (even though all directions led to it) absolutely, it is a railroad.

 

[Don Durito]

I don't know. I think meaningless choices should be avoided, but choices can have meaning regardless of a specific encounter.

If you decide to travel north there will be some fixed things that can only be north (eg cities, climate etc). But there might be a good bandit encounter (And I don't mean a "bandit's attack" but a good well designed encounter) that will work in any direction. Or I might just have an interlude with a old vagabond who can give the party some key setting hooks that is not location dependent.

Basically, if an encounter could just as easily come up anywhere on a random encounter table then it's hard to see how it could be seen as a railroad.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't find this persuasive. If you don't want a sandbox, that is totally fine. Sandbox isn't the only non-railroad. But the point is if I am presented with four cardinal directions to choose from, and no matter which direction I choose, the adventure the GM has planned is going to happen, that is absolutely a railroad. The choice of direction is meaningless in this case.

Yes, it is meaningless. But not because of guaranteed thing happening but because it is not an informed choice.

Whereas if the GM has a haunted house in the north, a kobold tribe attacking villagers in the south, a town to rest in in the east, and a princes kidnapped by pixies in the west, at least my choices matter.

It's just lottery. The choice really doesn't matter. The choice could be replaced by the GM randomising one of these scenarios regardless of the direction the PCs go and nothing would change. Furthermore, if the PCs have time to go to only one direction, it doesn't matter whether there were three other potential adventures; they're still going to experience only one.

Not every adventure needs to be this kind of exploration of the map. But if I am making that sort of choice and the Gm just moves things to undermine that choice, I don't see how that isn't railroading.

Because players were not making informed choices to begin with.

Now there is a deeper layer here. Agency isn't just about making blind choices about cardinal directions.

Yes. Agency is not about such choices at all.

Once the players get to these places, you can still have railroading if the players choices aren't being respected, and if they are being forced along. The standard definition of a railroad is being forced to go on the adventure.

No. That's just playing D&D. If you don't want to go to adventure, why are you playing D&D?

So if you are moving things around so the adventure happens no matter where the players go, that is a railroady GMing decision. And again, if everyone has bought into this idea that the GM has a single adventure planned for the night, this is the adventure and we are all going to go on it, that is different. The players are agreeing to buy into the scenario, and they aren't interested in exploring a range of adventuring choices. But if you are tricking the party so they think their decision to go west was the thing that led them to the haunted house (even though all directions led to it) absolutely, it is a railroad.

No, it's just adding a bit of flavour, verisimilitude and creating an illusion of larger world. And doing that is GMs job.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No. That's just playing D&D. If you don't want to go to adventure, why are you playing D&D?

You might want to adventure but maybe you don't want to explore the haunted house that is to the north, and instead want to look for other things to do

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's just lottery. The choice really doesn't matter. The choice could be replaced by the GM randomising one of these scenarios regardless of the direction the PCs go and nothing would change. Furthermore, if the PCs have time to go to only one direction, it doesn't matter whether there were three other potential adventures; they're still going to experience only one.

It isn't even a lottery. That would at least give me a chance of not doing what the GM has planned. Instead this is "this is going to happen, no matter which direction the players go". Now that might be an informed choice or a shot in the dark (it depends on how the players are approaching making their decision about which direction to go). But I can say for sure, if my choices don't have any impact on whether the thing the GM has prepped happens or not, if I can't resist and go another direction, then I am in a railroad. Now you can argue that is still okay. But to say it isn't a railroad seems like a distortion of the term to me

 

[Mistwell]

Again though linear isn't a railroad. And railroad isn't I have an adventure for the night, which I've planned, and everyone has all bought into the idea of that being the thing the party will do (and the GM helps by making sure the leads to the adventure are obvious or something). Railroading is the GM has an adventure planned, and no matter what the players do, it will happen, and even, it will happen in exactly the way and order the GM intended.

You really don't need to mansplain to me what railroading is. I am and old timer like you and fully know what it means and I used it correctly in this context and it's precisely what I meant.

Now, if everyone is content with that set up, its fine. If you are transparently railroading and your players are fully on board, then there is no problem.

Gee thank you for the permission to run a railroading game for my 10 year old daughter playing her first game. I don't know what we would have done without your judgement deeming it acceptable.

The issue is some posters seem to be suggesting it is okay to trick players into participating in their railroad (shifting encounters without their knowledge, etc). I think that is a problem because it is a very dishonest way to GM, but also eventually the players do pick up on it. I've seen this again and again when its happened. And if they do pick up on it, and they express resentment and call it a railroad, don't be surprised.

This has nothing to do with the context I presented. I am sure you can reply to those posters just fine without the need to repeat your objection to their contexts to me for...reasons?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You might want to adventure but maybe you don't want to explore the haunted house that is to the north, and instead want to look for other things to do

But that is only a choice which you can make if you know about the haunted house in the first place. I.e. an informed choice. In your scenario where there actually are different things in different directions but PCs still don't know about them, they cannot choose to avoid anything, the result is purely random.