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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Composer99" data-source="post: 8336621" data-attributes="member: 7030042">By my reckoning, railroading in any gameplay layer requires that:(1) The players have not chosen to forfeit making choices within that gameplay layer. (Players can legitimately want not to have to make meaningful decisions within any given gameplay layer. On this point, overgeeked is clearly mistaken in asserting the existence of railroading.)(2) The players are presented with the illusion of meaningful choice within that gameplay layer when no such meaningfulness exists in actuality.That is to say, a definition of railroading cannot consist solely of a lack of meaningful or consequential choices within any gameplay layer or at any possible decision point. It must account for both the players' knowledge and consent with respect to same.Since the term railroading is inherently metaphorical, let's extend/abuse the metaphor some:If the players willingly buy tickets and get on the train, they are making the meaningful choice within any given gameplay layer, to be freed of the obligation to make further such decisions, as is their right. At the gameplay layer of "what kind of game do we want to play?", they are choosing to play a game where the plot-path, as it were, is a more-or-less invariant line from plot-point A to B to C (and so on as required), with few, if any, meaningful decisions required on their part about which plot-path to take. Because players can legitimately want to not have to make those kinds of choices, it is not railroading to play a game where they aren't expected to make them, provided they agree to play that sort of game, which is itself a meaningful and consequential decision.Railroading happens when the players think they have the option of choosing between walking, taking the bus, bicycling, or carpooling, only to find that they are stuck on the train no matter what their choice. At the gameplay layer of "what kind of game do we want to play", they are led to believe they have multiple decision points about which plot-paths to take and which plot-points to travel to (and in what order), only to find that no such option set exists.Just like in real life, some of these choices might have pertinent constraints. Boating down a river requires possessing a boat, for instance, whether the PCs purchase or fabricate it. Just like in real life, some of these choices might be contextually better than others. If the PCs are following a river, boating down it is often going to be the optimal travel path - walking might be fine in most respects, but slower, and swimming for hours on end might be folly (whether due to the risk of exhaustion, having to leave equipment behind, or what-have-you). Accounting for such considerations is not railroading - quite the opposite, in fact: they're usually what give gameplay decisions meaningfulness and consequentiality in the first place.Tying back to my remarks in the thread about best practices, it strikes me that the problem with railroading is the DM being misleading, intentionally or unintentionally, about the kind of game being played. It is a fault in communication - a social fault.[HR][/HR]In case I need to clarify a bit about what I mean by "gameplay layer", suffice it to say that in many TTRPGs, gameplay happens at several different layers, some of which happen within the diegetic frame (so to speak), and some of which do not. For instance, in D&D 5e, character-building is a distinct layer from, say, making round-by-round decisions during combat, which in turn is a distinct layer from "what spells should I, a wizard/cleric/druid, prepare today?", which in turn is a distinct layer from "do we want to play a published module or a homebrew game?" Important to note here is that within any given layer, players can legitimately choose not to make "meaningful and consequential" decisions and leave them up to other players and/or the DM.[HR][/HR]Apropos of Schrödinger's Ogre, personally, I wouldn't care to run a Schrödinger's Ogre encounter as a DM, but having a Schrödinger's Ogre does not imply railroading is happening of necessity.If we use overgeeked's own proposed definition of railroading, Schrödinger's Ogre as used in several examples posted on this thread does not, in fact, "remove meaningful and consequential choices from the player". It exists independently of those choices. The meaningfulness and consequentiality of each choice follows from the path chosen and/or the destination, and is unaffected by the presence of absence of the Schrödinger's Ogre.This is not to say this game structure can't be used as part of railroading. But clearly not every instance of it constitutes same.</blockquote>

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