D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Cadence]

That was entertaining, but not written by someone who understands what the railroading argument is about.

What did the author miss about it? If I understand correctly, the players choice should meaningfully affect the outcome. And so, this DM apparently had a series of relatively quick encounters down one path (the quicker looking one) and very well had a few more.expansive encounters down the other path (the longer looking one) and a bunch of terrain issues and hazards and some populated hexes if they went off road. The players chose direct, so the DM starts giving them the few pretty quick encounters for flavor and likely some information that will be helpful if they communicate instead of fight. The player thinks they have telepathy and accuse the DM of railroading. No?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

"If I can come up with something interesting" requires that it be grounded in the fiction. If I can't ground something in the fiction, I won't do it, flat.

Of course. But given that the GM is the one responsible of inventing said fiction, that's not exactly a high bar.

I have explicitly established that the desert, for example, is stalked by dangerous monsters. There's a tradition (it's too loose to call it an "order") of monster-hunters who stalk the wastes, generally filled with adrenaline junkies (Grim World playbook, called "Slayer") and those who are in tune with the land without revering it per se (Rangers, rather than Druids). This foundation, established literally from before session 0 (due to arising in the previous group's session 0), gives me reasonable latitude for encounters in the desert, even without any other considerations. Any time you wander off the beaten path, you're taking a risk of running into Something Nasty; it's part of why trade routes are well-established and have regular caravanserai locations along them (along with both mercenary and city-state soldiers patrolling them for protection).

But the reason why that danger materialises exactly then is because the PCs went there and you decided that an encounter would be fun.

Those other considerations include the fact that the party is hunted by no less than three distinct factions who are heavily active in the desert: the Zil al-Ghurab/"Raven-Shadows," a mystery-cult of assassins whom the party crossed on their second adventure; the Shadow Druids, a hive-mind faction of druids who revere death and decay and seek to transcend that cycle, whom the party repeatedly interfered with during their second and third adventures; and the Cult of the Burning Eye, a group that apparently worships a Lovecraftian horror imprisoned on the PCs' world and which uses blood magic rituals to drive themselves to frenzy, whom they have foiled two or three times now on different adventures. (There's also a black dragon gang, but that's almost exclusively operating within the main city, and thus largely irrelevant for wilderness encounters--but quite relevant for in-city encounters!)

This is what I mean by saying it isn't hard to make the justifications for this stuff. It really isn't. Just do a little bit of early work, and inform the players about these things, as stuff their characters should just know about the setting. Boom, instant explanations for a variety of expected encounters. I mean, I already said I was okay with random encounter tables, and that's by definition "placing something" in the party's way--but in an ecologically- and narratively-consistent way, assuming your random encounter tables are actually good and not crappy.

I honestly do not see why this is such a "gotcha," though I would be lying if I said I didn't expect you to come along at some point with a message pretty much exactly like this one. I'd hoped not, but...well. Here we are.

You literally said that you will have an interesting event happen because PC's go to certain place and the players seem bored. This is not something directly flowing from the setting independently of the player decisions and meta considerations of the player mood. Sure, the setting fluff can be used to justify the thing happening, (and any good GM does this) but that's not the actual reason for the thing happening.

The issue is that you are doing the same things you claim are dishonest when others do it. I only assume this is because you either lack awareness of what you're doing, or imagine some ridiculous strawman versions of what others are doing.

 

[pemerton]

A beggar can, logically, be anywhere--because he or she is a creature, and thus not bound to a singular location. There may be places where they are more or less likely to be, but there's nothing in principle wrong with a beggar showing up at any point along a journey, even in the absolute thick of the woods hundreds of miles from even the closest road.

You can't say that about a house, unless you do the work to justify why it's there. Houses don't just spontaneously appear. They are, as I said, built. That makes a difference--they're rooted much more strongly in the world.

This is no more persuasive an attack upon this particular GM-side approach to scene-framing, then it is as an attack I've encountered many times upon the use of Wises check in Burning Wheel.

In the BW game where I'm a player, my character Thurgon has a sorcerer sidekick Aramina, who is skilled in Great Masters-wise. At one point I, playing Aramina, declared as an action Don't I recall that the wizard Evard's tower is around here? The GM set a difficulty for the ensuing Great Masters-wise check; I made the roll, and succeeded; hence, in the fiction, it was true that Evard's tower was around there. We travelled to it, and in fact it was haunted (by a demon).

It really is no different, as an act of authorship, to say You come to a clearing in the woods - there's a tower! or to say You come to a clearing in the woods - there's a small fire where a vagabond is cooking the rabbit she's caught.

We could also point to Dungeon World (which I believe you have played?), thinking about Spout Lore or Discern Realities. The Lore spouted might be You've heard of a tower in the middle of the forest. Something may not be what it appears to be, because there is a ship-burial beneath the slight mound at the centre of the clearing. I'd expect that sort of thing to be pretty typical in DW. The haunted house encounter is being created via a different (more GM fiat-ish) method; but its basic character as an act of authorship is no different.

I don't know how to express to you that "moderately involved, complex side-adventures consistently plonked right where the PCs happen to be" is a significantly different thing from "a single individual who/simple location which may or may not have anything to offer the PCs plonked right where the PCs happen to be." The former is "do this (sub)plot, I don't care where you decided to be, it's happening." The latter is "here's a hook, take it or leave it."

You are making very strong normative assumptions here about how RPGing works.

I started my 4e campaign using the module Night's Dark Terror. As per the module, when the PCs arrived at the homestead it was under attack from goblins. On the way to the homestead, the PCs had been assaulted by The Iron Ring slavers while boating down the river. I didn't roll for either of these encounters - they were fun, in my view worked much better in 4e than they would have in B/X.

In my Prince Valiant campaign, when I used a ghost episode, I began it by narrating the (travelling) PCs' encounter with another traveller. That other traveller turned out to be a ghost. But I didn't make any random checks here - I just framed the PCs into a situation that I thought would be interesting. Which it was.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You are the one introducing the notion that it is secret. Why assume that?

As far as it being a location - yes, it doesn't matter which direction the PCs go. Why should it? Why is location a more important element of the fiction than the colour of a PC's cloak?

If the GM is telling them what he is doing, like I said, I don't have a problem with it. It is still railroading, but at least people have bought into the idea. But there isn't any reason for me to assume this isn't secret. Otherwise the example doesn't make tremendous sense. But yes, if he isn't being secretive, then it is not as much of an issue

Because the direction the players went was a choice they made. And by having it always go to the outcome the GM had planned, you are stripping that choice of any value. You are railroading them, pretty much by definition. Now you can argue, that isn't as big a problem as people say, that there is gray in these kinds of decisions (which I think most of us have acknowledged) or that a little railroading is necessary if you want, but it is definitely railroading. In both examples there is a choice presented: do the players go through door A or door B; do the players go north, south, east, west, etc. And the poster has said, even though they are making a choice here, it is going to result int he thing the GM has in mind (that he will even move things from where they originally were placed, in order to make sure the players encounter them). And again, perhaps there is a type of session where this isn't railroading for a particular set of reasons. But that is an edge case. In most situations, this sort of action by the GM will be regarded as railroading. If there is some mitigating reason why it isn't the poster can include that detail in the example. Otherwise I just have to go with some baseline assumptions.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The first thing needn't be a trick, though.

In many FRPGs players are able to choose what colour their cloaks are. This almost never matters to what happens next. But is it a trick? Or a railroad? - whatever colour of cloak I chose for my PC, the game plays out the same! I don't think so - everyone knows that choosing your PC's cloak colour is just for fun.

In a game where choosing whether to go East or West or whatever is just for fun - eg like @Crimson Longinus, it's just a way of making the world feel big - then there's no railroad.

And there can be intermediate cases too. In my Prince Valiant game, the PCs chose to cross the upper part of the Balkan Peninsula, from the Dalmatian coast to the Black Sea. The landing of the vessels the PCs and warband were traveling on the Dalmation coast was sheer GM stipulation: I told them that storms made their ship captains seek port. This was because I had an "episode" (the Prince Valiant terminology for scenes and short scenarios) that I wanted to run, and that would make sense in Dacia/Transylvania. I think it was the players that chose to proceed to the Black Sea and from there to Constantinople, rather than heading overland directly. After resolving interactions with soldiers in a border town, I used an encounter with a "dragon" (a giant crocodile) because that worked for a boat trip. If they'd not gone on boats at that point, I might have used it later instead, when they sailed from Anatolia to Cyprus.

Railroading in Prince Valiant would mean (as examples only, not necessarily exhaustive) deciding how NPCs - even the Emperor in Constantinople - act, regardless of player action declarations to influence them or change their minds; or arbitrarily taking away a PC's horse or armour or special item. But details of geography just aren't very important: the whole point of the game is for the GM to serve up episodes that will allow the players to exemplify their conceptions of their character's errantry (if a knight) or connection to the Arthurian world more generally. Whether the episode occurs in Scotland or Dacia is just not that significant.

I addressed this above. Choosing to go in a given direction, especially in this example where the poster said originally there are two doors and behind one is an encounter, and if the players pick the other door, he will move the encounter so they still have it. In most campaigns choosing which direction to go is not the same kind of thing as choosing which color cloak to have (especially if that decision is what is supposed to determine what you encounter or where you end up: and you reach those things regardless of the direction you choose). Again, in certain games maybe that is just flavor but those are definitely edge cases and nothing like that was brought up in the example. I am not making an argument that there is only one type of adventure here or that exploration is always the way things are done (but the example is clearly giving an indication that this is the expectation). The first xample is giving every indication this is some type of dungeon situation where players expect choices like that to matter, to be objective and keyed to things the GM has planned on the map. Now if this were a wandering encounter, or a monster with will that is trying to follow and attack the party, or something that is different, but the poster specifically says something is behind the door, but gets moved to make sure the players encounter it. The second example is giving every indication that the players would expect their choice to matter and be important for determining where they end up. If they end up at the haunted house every time not matter what, and they are informed about this, without any other context to go on, I think it is fair to label this railroading and I think most players in that situation, once informed of what is going on, would see it as railroading (I know I would).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not saying that the encounter is colour. I'm saying that where it happens is just colour. That going left or right is no different from walking through the woods with hats on or off.

Again maybe in campaigns you run this is the case. I would be annoyed if I thought I had a choice between two doors, or I thought I had a choice between four directions and the GM made sure the haunted house happened either way or made sure the wolf encounter happened either way. Granted there are different types of encounters there are different styles of play and campaigns, but with no other context given to indicate those things are the case here, I am assuming this is a situation where the players believe their choice is driving where they end up.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And this is a base assumption that I don't think everyone agrees upon. We do not all agree on whether "meaning" and "following event" are the same thing. And, if we don't all agree upon that, this discussion cannot resolve.

Agency is shown when you take an action intended to produce some effect or result. If you are not intending anything, you are not exercising your agency.

If you randomly generate a series of syllables and intone them, you have sounds, but those sounds have no meaning. They are just random sounds (one literal definition of "noise"), gibberish containing no semantic content. Even if a few syllables in a row sound like a word in some language, it isn't like you meant to intone that word. You did not have information in mind and attempt to communicate it.

We all live in a world in which things happen that have nothing to do with our own actions or intentions - events unrelated to us sometimes impinge upon our lives. It is not, so to speak, all about what we want. Does this count as a removal of your agency - are you railroaded into dealing with the thing?

If you don't feel those restrict your agency, then the quantum ogre - the monster who appears separate from your choices - does not either.

If you do feel those things restrict your real-world agency, well, then such removal of agency is part of life, and that means it should have some place in our games from time to time.

I think we can definitely talk about meaningful choices as well and what makes a choice more meaningful. But I would also say sometimes the players think they are picking between two concealed things in a situation they believe to be objective. They don't expect to be making an informed choice in all these cases, sometimes the fun is just hoping to pick the right one in a tense situation or something. But if it turns out its just a fixed shell game, I think most players would feel like they didn't really have a choice (even if it wasn't as significant or informed a choice as something less like pick A or B with no other information to go on). It is the fact that the GM is presenting a situation that feels like choosing between different options will have a real impact on what happens (even if you are choosing blind) when in reality its an illusion and the impact has already been decided.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You literally said that you will have an interesting event happen because PC's go to certain place and the players seem bored. This is not something directly flowing from the setting independently of the player decisions and meta considerations of the player mood. Sure, the setting fluff can be used to justify the thing happening, (and any good GM does this) but that's not the actual reason for the thing happening.

The setting fluff is both (a) absolutely essential, as in without it I would NEVER do this no matter how bored the players might seem, and (b) not something I can just change on a dime whenever I want to whatever degree I want. I have actual constraints on what I'm allowed to do. Yes, I can invent new things and proceed to demonstrate them in the fiction. But that's not the same as "the haunted house is EXACTLY wherever the players go, because I've decided that's where the players are going." It takes effort on my part, sometimes a lot of effort, to make these additions (or changes) happen--even in a world following the Dungeon World DM principle, "Draw Maps, Leave Blanks."

Asking for a random encounter roll when the party is choosing to sojourn through non-patrolled land, or saying "you got jumped by nasty monsters" when it is a well-established possibility that nasty monsters are A Thing that really does just randomly attack.

As an example: if the party is looking bored while, say, on a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean? Nope, not gonna spring a random encounter on them, no matter how convenient that would be for me as DM, because there's literally nothing I've done that would establish that as a possibility. I would have to do real, serious work to establish it, and leave some breadcrumbs for the PCs to learn about it, and very specifically give them time to choose to follow up on that if it isn't just stated out in the open. E.g., openly stating it could be the captain of the ship they're on inviting them to a private dinner, regaling the party with tall tales...and then getting more serious and explaining how there are Things that come from the deep, such that the best sailors always carry a cutlass even on routine voyages...and a holy symbol just in case. Leaving breadcrumbs could be mentioning that there's been a sharp increase in demand for mercenaries on trading vessels, or that Waziri mages (who normally avoid the docks) have been spotted dockside, collecting reports from sailors about unusual phenomena. Stuff that's noticeable, and that the party could spend a little time investigating as long as they aren't on a super-tight time budget. That would give me a foundation to build on.

I absolutely still think it is deceptive to use illusionism--which is not the same as "dishonest." "To deceive" is "to mislead by a false appearance or statement," which is exactly what happens when you present a choice as mattering, giving it the false appearance of impact, when it actually has no impact. "Dishonesty" is about lying, cheating, or theft, which doesn't apply to this situation (or at least I can't see how it would). I mean, the top three definitions of "illusion" literally all reference deception or false appearances in some way. I don't see how it's possible to argue that illusionism is not built on giving choices a false appearance of significance where there is none.

We could also point to Dungeon World (which I believe you have played?), thinking about Spout Lore or Discern Realities. The Lore spouted might be You've heard of a tower in the middle of the forest. Something may not be what it appears to be, because there is a ship-burial beneath the slight mound at the centre of the clearing. I'd expect that sort of thing to be pretty typical in DW. The haunted house encounter is being created via a different (more GM fiat-ish) method; but its basic character as an act of authorship is no different.

It is precisely the "GM-fiat-ish" that is the problem.

And yes, I run DW, I don't just play it. (Well, I don't play it at all right now, I just run it. But I did play it for several years before, and have played some Masks and IIRC one other PbtA game, though I can't remember what it's called.)

 

[Umbran]

But if the same thing (a haunted house, in the ongoing example) is going to appear no matter which way they choose to go then yes, that choice was never real.

Which sort of invites a question:

"Shall we go to the beach today, or will we go to see Shakespeare in the park?"
...time passes...
"Oh, well, it rained. It turns out neither was a real choice for today."

It isn't like every choice we make in the real world turns out to have been real, in the sense used above. Our own ignorance, or unforseen changes in the situation, put the kibosh on what we want all the time. Heck, few who have lived through the past year f pandemic can cogently argue otherwise. So, does EVERY choice the PCs make have to be "real"?

What about when they misconstrue information, and make choices that have nothing to do with anything? Do we have to quickly make up material so that, in some way, we make those choices into real ones? Like, say there never was an ogre, but they got an idea there was one, and go on an ogre hunt. Is putting a ogre wherever they happen to be going, to satisfy their desire for ogre-hunting, railroading them into their own misconceptions?

If not every choice has to be real, why do we have such a long argument about it?

 

[Umbran]

an example only the worst kind of DMs would even consider.

Mod note:
There are more things in the Seven Heaven and in Oerth, Fenris-77, than is dreamt of in your gaming philosophy.

Try to avoid labeling things that you don't like or don't work for you as "bad GMing", as if you are the arbiter of all that is right and good with GMs. As a practical matter, you are statistically assured that some things you do are not everyone's cup of tea, and you wouldn't want to be called a crappy GM for those, right? Golden Rule applies, then. Leave room for folks who aren't carbon copies of you.