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Why I Dislike the term Railroading

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The term "railroading" is trouble because, I suspect, it's used mostly as a term to deride a style of game play that is actually really pretty popular.
I personally think it's trouble because it often gets used in absolute terms, along with its "rival", the sandbox.

to a certain extent, ALL published adventures could be called railroads.
Indeed.

A truly sandbox style "adventure," in my mind, isn't an adventure at all. It's a campaign setting.
Again, yes. Where "sandbox" is some conceptual absolute, that is. Which is probably what you meant by "truly", so. . . :)

It's just the same old, really. For discussion purposes, and quite possibly just for the sake of remaining reasonably sane, spectrum > binary.
 

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I dislike both the term "railroad" and "Sandbox" as there are no real definitions of those words nad too many people use them to beat each other over the head with them.

In a lot of ways, however, I prefer to follow along iwththe DM's story and see what is going to happen. Exploration and stuff are fun, and it is a vital necessity to alter the DM's plot at certain junctures, but I'm not gonna wate the DM's work and expertise by throwing his plans to the wolves every session.


But that takes a bit of negotiation before the game starts, which is what I find critical. If you(players and DM) cannot agree on what will happen, then things will go south quickly.

It is like playing an AP, you buy the thing to move through the story, trusting the designers to some extent, but alway having the option of quitting after na adventure and doing something different. Taht is how a game should be.
 

A truly sandbox style "adventure," in my mind, isn't an adventure at all. It's a campaign setting.

This is an attitude that I see as an issue in modern module writing. A campaign setting need not have have any adventures connected to it and an adventure does not require a defined sequence of action leading to a specified end to be an adventure.

To me, an AP is an already written story with fill in the blank slots for the protagonist's names. If the basic progression of the storyline is already known what's the purpose of playing it all out?

I remember when adventure writers wrote scenarios. A setting of limited scope filled with stuff. This stuff could include monsters, treasures, NPC's and their plans, etc. The situation was presented and the players determined the flow of the story based on their actual activities.

I greatly prefer scenarios to adventures that are already written.
 

I remember when adventure writers wrote scenarios. A setting of limited scope filled with stuff. This stuff could include monsters, treasures, NPC's and their plans, etc. The situation was presented and the players determined the flow of the story based on their actual activities.

I don't.

Well, I do, but it's never been the majority of what's been published.

Most of the old TSR stuff was either straight-up dungeons (the order in which you killed the things in the hole in the ground or fortress or whatever was up to you, but there wasn't any real interaction) or tournament modules which were as linear as anything anyone's come up with since (the slavers series was particularly notable in this regard).

I won't argue that setting up a scenario with lots of independent actors is much more to my tastes, but the idea that this was ever the norm is a myth.
 

I won't argue that setting up a scenario with lots of independent actors is much more to my tastes, but the idea that this was ever the norm is a myth.

A myth?

B2 Keep on the Borderlands- the relationship and pecking order between the various tribes provides opportunity for all kinds of intrigue not to mention the activities of the evil temple.

You could play this as simply a "stocked dungeon" if you wanted but there was so much more that could be done.

L2 The Assassins Knot- a full on investigtion/ murder mystery featuring a timeline of events and pressure to solve the case quickly. All this was accomplished without having to tell the PC's where to go when or what to do.

I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City- another environment with multiple factions at work against one another. Captured treasure to recover, and a tribal chief's son to rescue provided solid hooks to get adventurers into this cool environment.

U1-3 The Saltmarsh series- Yet another investigation based scenario featuring villains, their plans, and modes of operation while allowing the players to handle the action as they saw fit.

There are others but I think the point is made. The whole point of the scenario concept is to set the stage for an adventure that the playing group can create together that will be a unique experience for them. The fact that the DM has to fill in some details is a feature not a bug. Scenarios are written to spark the imagination and the game was originally marketed as being a vehicle for creative expression.
 

A myth?

B2 Keep on the Borderlands- the relationship and pecking order between the various tribes provides opportunity for all kinds of intrigue not to mention the activities of the evil temple.

You could play this as simply a "stocked dungeon" if you wanted but there was so much more that could be done.

L2 The Assassins Knot- a full on investigtion/ murder mystery featuring a timeline of events and pressure to solve the case quickly. All this was accomplished without having to tell the PC's where to go when or what to do.

I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City- another environment with multiple factions at work against one another. Captured treasure to recover, and a tribal chief's son to rescue provided solid hooks to get adventurers into this cool environment.

U1-3 The Saltmarsh series- Yet another investigation based scenario featuring villains, their plans, and modes of operation while allowing the players to handle the action as they saw fit.

There are others but I think the point is made. The whole point of the scenario concept is to set the stage for an adventure that the playing group can create together that will be a unique experience for them. The fact that the DM has to fill in some details is a feature not a bug. Scenarios are written to spark the imagination and the game was originally marketed as being a vehicle for creative expression.

I never said there weren't any. I said they were not the majority, and that this hasn't changed. These were always few and far between.

I'll admit, I don't know what's out there today, but with the props people give to the Paizo modules, I suspect there's a lot more than canned adventures.

Personally, I've got no use for either type, except as idea mines. I'm much more comfortable running my own creations.
 

To me, an AP is an already written story with fill in the blank slots for the protagonist's names. If the basic progression of the storyline is already known what's the purpose of playing it all out?
Well, hopefully the players won't read the adventure beforehand, so it'll all be new to them. The purpose of playing out a premade adventure is the same as the purpose of playing out a story-based video game: to find out what the story is and how you can change the story depending on how you do x or y.

Personally, I'm OK with railroading so long as it's not blatant -- that is, so long as I at least have the "illusion of choice" (eg. the GM has only prepared one encounter even though he's given us two paths from which too choose ... and he'll end up running that one encounter, with some adjustments, regardless of which path we take ... and we'll most likely be known the wiser).

The kind of railroading I don't like isn't so much related to any conceits of the overall metaplot of an adventure but more when the GM dictates what happens in a situation where my character ought to be able to have a say in the matter or even goes so far as to tell me what my character does (although even this can be acceptable in certain situations, such as cut scenes or intros, so long as it's just done to advance the plot in a positive way). An example: the guy GMing SWSE before me hit our brand-new ship with a meteor that just so happened to destroy not just the main hyperdrive but also the backup hyperdrive and conveniently shook the ship up enough to break the spare hyperdrive in the cargo bay ... all so that we would get stranded on a particular planet so we could find something we were supposed to find there.


The thing is: even in an open-ended sandbox game, you can still end up with a bit of railroading. For one thing, you can only ever choose to go down one path at a time. If the GM presents you with Path A and Path B and you choose Path A, you won't know whether Path B was really any better/different unless you play the same adventure/scenario/whatever again and choose B the second time around.



To use the Neverwinter Nights series of CRPGs as examples, I would say that NWN1 demonstrates the "good" kind of railroading, while NWN2 demonstrates the "bad" kind.

NWN1 has a set story, yes, but it gives you many options. In each act, you are given a "home base" and multiple adventure paths leading out of the base. You are completely free to choose what order in which to follow those paths. Each path also includes several little sidequests that you can either follow or ignore. The game assumes that you will arrive at a particular destination, but it gives you some leeway as to how you get there.

NWN2, on the other hand, leads you by the nose from one place to the next with no say in the matter whatsoever really. If you want to progress the plot/gain levels/etc, then you'd bloody well be prepared to go where the game tells you when it tells you to go there. And in the few instances where it gives you the illusion of choice it smacks you in the face with its blatant "It doesn't actually matter which choice you make here, you're going to end up with the same result" railroading (eg. the sham trial where winning or losing doesn't matter because you end up having to fight the frenzied berserker dude in a "trial by combat" no matter what; and the cut scenes that assume you're playing along with the romantic subplots whether or not you actually bothered to pursue those lines of dialogue in-game).


As a player in NWN1, you know that the game is leading you in a particular direction. You also know that you can't really affect the overall outcome of the metaplot. But you can still make some choices, as minor as they might be (eg. Doing the quests in the order of 1-3-2-4 or 4-2-1-3 instead of 1-2-3-4 order).

As a player in NWN2, you're more of a spectator than a participant. You're just along for the ride to see where the game takes you. Once you play it once, there's really almost no reason to play it ever again.
 
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Not really true.

Check out The Masks of Nyarlathotep or The Caverns of Thracia for example.

You can do non-linear adventures without having a full-blown sandbox.

Masks of Nyarlathotep frequently gets cited as the "Best Adventrue Ever for Any Game System." It's non-linear linearity (tackle the adventures in any order you want, but once you start, you're kinda in for the whole thing) is really cool, and one of the reasons it is rightfully called the best.

ANYway... I'd have to agree about the terms anyway; railroad and sandbox both annoy me, since they seem to most often be used as terms to be negative about a product. :P
 

ANYway... I'd have to agree about the terms anyway; railroad and sandbox both annoy me, since they seem to most often be used as terms to be negative about a product. :P

This is the internet. I challenge you to find a term that isn't used to be negative about something.
 

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