Why I Dislike the term Railroading

[Scribble]

Just how have I "not accepted" that???

By over and over again claiming that people have "changed the meaning" of railroading.

What next? Are you "just going to ask" me whether I've stopped beating my wife?

Well have you?

 

[Obryn]

Perhaps we can define linear adventure on it's own terms since they seem to be considered separate from railroads. Can we get an example of a linear, non-railroad adventure? If we can see one then maybe we can pinpoint that quality which excludes it from being a railroad.

Sure. An example I've pointed to before is P3 - which is intensely linear, but largely site-based. That is...

(spoilered for players playing it.)

Spoiler

You go to the Gloomdeeps, you go to the Tomb, you arrive outside the Fortress, you must visit everywhere in that Fortress to get access to four macguffins, you get access to the tower, you face the Dragon.

And that's it.

This is a very linear module, in that you could basically set every single encounter down a single tunnel, separated by a few feet of corridor, without a single fork in the road. The only thing approaching a "branch" is if the PCs decide to go to the top of the fortress and work their way down, but even that's a false one.

What distinguishes it from a railroad are a few major things, in my mind...
(1) The solutions to each encounter aren't set in stone. Players can find innovative ways to get around them, through them, or bypass them entirely.
(2) Success and failure are both actual options, depending on the players and not on the DM's fiat.
(3) The players' actions are neither assumed nor pre-scripted
(4) Minimally, the players could say, "To heck with this" and go do something else - which they could not do, in a railroad.

The linearity is a result of the (depressing) way the maps are designed, not because of requirements in how the plot must progress.

Now, if a poor DM runs it and doesn't allow for novel solutions, doesn't allow creative problem solving, and doesn't allow them to abandon the whole darn mission, it could easily be a railroad. Heck; there's a scene where the PCs might interact with and possibly fight the "BBEG" - but only if they've tarried too long and have been discovered. If the PCs manage to kill him off early, but the DM fudges the result, that's pretty railroady right there. For another example, the PCs need to get to the Shadowfell pretty early on, and a method of doing so is presented. If they have a way of doing it that isn't the one set forward in the adventure, and the DM vetoes it, that'd be railroady as well.

As it stands, though, it's just a bad adventure.

-O

 

[ExploderWizard]

Evil cultists are using the power of Orcus to blot out the sun. You have 24 hours to save the world.

You have a deadline, and if you fail to accept the hook, bad things will happen to you. HOWEVER, you have full freedom to figure out a way to do it; find a powerful spell, discover an ancient relic, make a deal with a powerful entity, or just kick cultist ass until there isn't enough of them left to cast the ritual. (In theory, you could join them as well, but that's pretty much a game over scenario too).

This is a cool, very open scenario with loads of options. I would say that this scenario is a railroad (the world ends unless you move your arse) but in no way linear. There is start (you have info)..................stuff...................(save the world).

I am looking for an example of the opposite. An actual adventure following a linear progression that is somehow not a railroad.

 

[Ariosto]

Linear, not necessarily a railroad: The dungeon known as the Hellstair is a winding but branchless series of passages descending into the earth, and at the bottom there is a mystical Watzit. Said Watzit has magic powers and is probably worth a lot of gold.

And who the hell is calling that a 'railroad' in the first place? It's a 'shaft', no more nor less literally than the Skunk Train is a railroad.

So long as the structure remains in the field of architecture, it is uncontroversially not what 'railroading' is about.

If the players have arbitrarily (or "unreasonably", or "willfully" on the DM's part, or whatever) no choice except to move down on that line, then it becomes an actual, confining line of events. Then it becomes a "railroad".

Even a literal railroad is not inherently a 'railroad' in the relevant sense.

It's this routine of going right past the point, down a secret elevator, and then changing cars three times that leads pretty quickly to confusion!

 

[Doug McCrae]

I've run an adventure that one of the players described as 'linear', he intended it as a criticism, and it was no railroad. It had a narrow-wide-narrow structure, a superhero scenario, a oneoff for a convention, called the Doomsday Device of Doctor Demoniak.

The PCs are a superhero team minding their own business when Dr Demoniak comes on TV, shows film of a mountain in S America exploding and says unless he's made world ruler within 48 hours he will blow up one city every 12 hours. Next thing that happens is the PC's base is attacked by a bunch of slightly lame supervillains who came out of the mirrors and started trashing their vehicles and computer.

After that the game was wide open. Demoniak's secret base was in Tibet. I had a bunch of clues and red herrings laid on, and an ambush by some less lame supervillains that could happen anywhere, at any time, after the TV broadcast but before the PCs get to Tibet.

The player said it was linear because they interrogated one of Demoniak's junior minions and he put the PCs on to a higher up minion and then that higher up told them about a base, a mobile communications centre. That section of the scenario was linear in the sense that from those two particular minions, there was only one interesting branch point. But at any time the players could've got off that 'line' and followed up any other number of clues if they had wanted to.

So the scenario as a whole was not linear. I can see how a part of it was, but that's the nature of things. Sometimes a minion only knows one interesting titbit. I don't see how that could be avoided.

 

[Obryn]

This is a cool, very open scenario with loads of options. I would say that this scenario is a railroad (the world ends unless you move your arse) but in no way linear. There is start (you have info)..................stuff...................(save the world).

Whereas I don't see how it's a railroad at all. It's a setup (or a plotline, if you will) - that is, a game-world element presented by the DM which is outside of the players' control. This is part of what I've been talking about with the expansion of the term - I don't know why it's helpful to include this generalized setup under the umbrella term "railroading."

-O

 

[Obryn]

And who the hell is calling that a 'railroad' in the first place? It's a 'shaft', no more nor less literally than the Skunk Train is a railroad.

We're not. We're calling it a linear adventure. And you're calling linear adventures "railroads."

-O

 

[Doug McCrae]

Tomb of Horrors is almost completely linear. Not totally, iirc.

 

[Beginning of the End]

"railroad" and "sandbox" came to be the antonyms for each other

Which is problematic because treating those terms as polar opposites tends to distort their historic and useful meaning.

Let me see if I can unpack that statement a bit:

Railroading, in the purest sense of the term, is something that happens at the gaming table: The GM negates the choice made by a player in order to enforce a pre-conceived path through the adventure.

In practice, of course, the term has bled over into scenario prep. We talk about "railroaded adventures" all the time, by which we generally mean linear scenarios which are designed around the assumption that the PCs will make specific choices at specific points in order to reach the next part of the adventure. If the PCs don't make those choices, then the GM has to railroad them in order to continue using the scenario as it was designed.

By contrast, non-linear scenarios don't assume that the PCs will make specific choices.

So if you're looking for antonyms, those are the useful opposites:

(1) GMs negating player choices vs. players being free to make any choice.
(2) Scenarios assuming specific PC choices/actions vs. scenarios that don't.

(These are both scales with wide areas of gray between the extremes.)

IME, this is what most people mean by railroad/linear vs. non-linear play/design.

Meanwhile, off to one side, we have the term "sandbox". The most useful definition for sandbox I've heard is something along the lines of, "Allowing players to choose the scenario." IOW, you get sandbox when the entire world is designed as a situation, allowing the players to decide what their next adventure will be.

And here's where we run into the problem with treating "sandbox" as the opposite of "railroad". Because the opposite of a "sandbox" is a campaign in which the players don't have control over scenario selection: The opposite of sandbox is the prototypical campaign in which the GM comes prepared with a specific scenario for the game session and the players are expected to play through that scenario.

That catch is that I think most people would consider "the GM has a scenario and the players are expected to play it" to be extremely light railroading (if they considered it railroading at all). IOW, I think the severity of railroading is perceived to increase from the outside in: Predetermining that a particular scenario is going to be played is very light railroading. Predetermining the sequence of encounters is heavier railroading, but not as severe as predetermining the exact outcomes of those encounters ahead of time.

So when we cast "sandbox" and "railroad" as antonyms, we actually end up treating the lightest form of railroading as if it were the extreme form of railroading. And, in response, the meaning of "sandbox" gets warped towards meaning "any sort of non-linear design". Neither distortion is useful.

My final two-bits:

Railroading: Railroading happens when the GM negates the choice made by a player in order to enforce a pre-conceived path through the adventure.

Linear Design: Designing a scenario around a predetermined sequence of events and/or outcomes.

Non-Linear Design: Designing a scenario in which specific outcomes or events are not predetermined, allowing freedom of player choice.

Sandbox Campaigns: Campaigns in which the freedom of player choice is extended to include the choice of scenario. (And, specifically, it is the PCs choosing the scenario within the context of the game world.)

 

[Dungeoneer]

I oppose the use of the term 'plotted adventure' in opposition to sandbox unless we're going to start calling sandbox games 'plotless adventures'.