I was reading up on the 'That DM' thread that's up now, and an Anon mentioned how that a bit of railroading to describe the setting is cool, so long as the players can do whatever afterwards.
What does /tg/ think? Is Railroading all that bad? Is it the ebola of the gaming community? Is a little bit justified?
Railroading is one of those terms that have extremely nebulous definitions.
>>43640764
Depends on how you define railroading, though I'd say almost all compaigns have some reailroading at the start. You're not going to just say "You're in a tavern, where do you go?", you have to present some hooks or something. Usually a strong hook related to a planned BBEG that will get them started, not just killing some rats etc.
Why is /tg/ so fucking hung up on this term "railroading"?
Look, I know 99% of you are players who have no concept of what goes on in a game besides "LOL I CAN DO ANYTHINg!" and you've never actually stopped to consider that not all, not even fucking most games are "open sandboxes" for you to shit in.
You guys spend so much time harping on the concept of "railroading" that you make people who eventually go on to become DMs terrified of the notion of accidentally committing that one cardinal sin of giving their players an actual narrative rather than letting them fuck around and punch peasants in the face for 4 hours a week.
Look, you are not "railroading" because you give your players a narrative to follow. You are not "railroading" by having details of the setting push them back on track of the narrative if they stray too far or lose the plot. You are not "railroading" if you punch your players in the face for deciding that the campaign they sat down to play doesn't involve enough wacky shenanigans so they want to wander off and go somewhere else. What you're doing is called being a fucking DM.
And fuck every single player who has ever insisted "My DM runs a sandbox game with no plot and we do whatever we want and it's super fun!"
Railroading is fine if you're a great liar and do it invisibly.
>>43641160
Railroad had become a meme/buzzword, but the meaning behind it is still very destructive. When you stay from a GM's plot and are smote (rocks fall, guards kill, giant monster appears, etc.) For not going to what the GM clearly has planned, THAT'S railroading.
Of course, a GM should always have some central hook. To start all of Mt games j give my players a central plot hook to build a character behind, so they can think, "ok, who would respond to a job ad like that?"
Keeping the game open ended so the players may fuck about as they please should be easy enough though. If the players murderhobo,people start trying to stop them. If the players have people after them until they completes a mission, those people ATTEMPT to bring them back into the conflict, and might succeed or fail.
You want you're players to constantly suspend their disbelief and at no point should they think that the GM is tailoring an encounter for a specific outcome. It's at that point, railroading or no, that I think a GM had failed.
>>43641322
I don't agree that a game should always be open-ended. In fact, I think that's hugely to every campaign's detriment.
You people have this weird notion that "player agency" has to be preserved above all else, and that's something I don't agree with at all. The only thing that needs to be preserved is the players THINKING they have agency within the plot.
They have choices of how to attack each problem, sure. They can choose to storm the front gate, sneak in the back door, drop in from above, or tunnel in from below, but their objective should never be their own choice.
Don't be afraid to have a plot, and don't be afraid to wall it off so the players have no reason to leave to go do other things instead. This is how I've always DMed, and the feedback I consistently hear is that players always feel like they're making decisions that derail or subvert the entire campaign, because they're choosing options they think are insane or too dangerous to make sense, when in fact all they've ever done is make exactly the moves I planned for and hoped they would make, because it's all been set up that way.
When a player makes a choice he thinks is his own, he will feel good when that choice succeeds and advances the plot. The fact that you were subtly guiding him to that choice and he never realized it doesn't really matter to him, because all he gets is the final experience.
But to throw all of that away because you're scared of "railroading"? Fuck that.
>>43641322
>at no point should they think that the GM is tailoring an encounter for a specific outcome. It's at that point, railroading or no, that I think a GM had failed.
This is iffy.
I mean, we're usually talking about a game where the original point was, "You're all adventurers who met in a tavern, now you're off to a dungeon to loot treasure and slay monsters."
There's a clear goal in mind, and the GM didn't draw up this elaborate labyrinth on graph paper just so the group would ignore it and battle the city guards instead.
A lot of these problems can be solved by discussing before the campaign begins that this is a game, the player characters should be adventurers with a common goal, and that you will and won't do certain things. This way you don't get That Guy playing an evil rogue who antagonizes the rest of the party and stabs a guard for no reason. You've all agreed, as players playing a game, that you're going to work together, and to work with the GM whose job it is to make these adventures fun and exciting.
>>43641012
This. Railroading is a non-term at this point, like autism or edgy.
>>43641558
That's what I've been trying to explain, basically.
The game is a collective story. The players are the participants, and the GM is the primary architect of the plot. If the players do not want to work with the GM to construct a compelling narrative, they should not be playing.
>>43641571
Yep. It's alot like porn. You can identify it when you see it. But you can't always describe it.
Experienced GM and Players know it when they see it.
>>43641905
>Yep. It's alot like porn. You can identify it when you see it. But you can't always describe it.
Maybe if you're an idiot.
>>43642005
Describe it, then.
>>43642116
When it's on rails. I.E can't go wherever you like, only in a direction dictated to you by someone else.
>>43642155
Fair enough, can you give a descriptive example?
Maybe an example of railroading versus not-railroading? Ideally as close together as you can get them, I'd be interested to know where you think the cut-off point is.
>>43642155
>using part of the word in the definition
>>43642116
Railroading: Your actions do not influence the narrative or alter events, with all aspects predetermined by the DM.
Porn: Material which features explicit elements designed to stimulate sexual desire.
>>43642240
>Railroading: Your actions do not influence the narrative or alter events, with all aspects predetermined by the DM.
What does that mean? What counts as the narrative or the events? What if these things are external to the player characters?
It would be pretty bullshit if the group said, "We take the east tunnel," and the DM said, "No, your characters wouldn't do that. You have to take the west tunnel."
But what if there's some real, logical situation where the player characters are forced in-universe to do a certain thing, as happens in real life and in plenty of stories? Maybe the tyrannical king demands they recover his daughter from the clutches of the evil wizard, or he will execute them. Is that railroading?
>>43642446
>What counts as the narrative or the events?
>narrative: a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
>events: a thing that happens, especially one of importance.
>>43642446
Are you literally retarded? Read it slowly, gump:
>Railroading: Your actions do not influence the narrative or alter events
>Maybe the tyrannical king demands they recover his daughter from the clutches of the evil wizard, or he will execute them. Is that railroading?
That has nothing to do with the character's actions. Not railroading. Now when the characters attempt to break down the door, but they can't because the door is invincible due to DM shenanigans, then it's railroading.
>>43642515
What makes it railroading?
I might create a dungeon and decide that the door that requires a puzzle or a sacrifice or a key to open is made of very strong iron and has an Antimagic Field so it can't be opened with Knock or a similar spell. This room is obviously important, perhaps it's the treasure room, so whoever built the dungeon decided to take extra precautions.
Is it then railroading? What if I decide this on the fly? Does that make it railroading?
>>43642619
Are you acting dumb on purpose? What you explained is a scenario where a door is near impregnable in a way that is consistent with the story and most, importantly, is a pre-planned element. Having a random door that the PCs can't forcefully enter because you decided it would break your story is different.
And hastily put together example aside, you're still ignoring the objective definition that has been put forward. tl;dr fuck you dumbass
>>43642692
What if, because it would break your story, you decided the door was impregnable in a way that is consistent with the story? What if the players never knew the difference? Is it railroading?
>>43642734
>Railroading: Your actions do not influence the narrative or alter events
There you go, dumbshit. You can stop posting.
>>43642785
So is it railroading or not?
The narrative and events are that one character tried to force open the door. He gave it his best, but he couldn't manage, the door was simply too tough to even budge.
Railroading is excessive limiting of the PCs' options. Some limiting of options is not necessarily bad and can actually make the game more fun. Railroading occurs when the options become so limited that the game becomes less fun. Exactly where the limit is depends on the group.
>>43642956
now you're being deliberately obtuse.
read >>43642785 again and go read about the terms "player agency", and "perceived agency vs. actual agency", those are ones that hasn't been muddled yet.
>>43642956
IMO, the poblem is that people characterise railroading as a bad thing when it absolutely is not.
The world is the GM's and the players have the right to expect free agency within its boundaries. The trouble starts when bad players - yeah, I went there - come to believe that anything that throttles-back unrealistic ambition - things like those aforementioned boundaries - constitutes a personal attack by a vindictive GM.
Any campaign with the acts written in advance (i.e. all of mine) has the beginning and end LOCATIONS pre-determined, but the PCs are the ones laying the track. They determine how and when they get to the stops along the way.
Unless you're explicitly in a freeform sandbox adventure, you're on RR tracks by definition - and that's as it should be.
>>43643576
How is that being deliberately obtuse? I'm giving a very concrete example here.
>>43643841
for one, you defended yourself instead of trying to progress the topic and address my second point or taking a guess at what you THINK the other person is saying in order to convey what you do not understand.
Look, do you understand the difference between players, characters, GMs, and the setting/plot/campaign at hand? Do you know what the term agency means? How do you define and differentiate each of those?
For another,
>>43642619
You're not paying attention.
>Your actions do not influence the narrative or alter events
>Your actions do not influence the narrative or alter events
>Your actions do not influence the narrative or alter events
Games can differ in how "planned" they are, and players can differ in their preferences about that, but whether it's a sandbox hexcrawl or a tightly contained mystery, the players need to be able to decide the course of events by their actions.
If a wizard shows up and blasts the enemies so that the players don't lose the battle so that they can defeat the big bad in time is railroading.
If a mysterious stranger rolls past and tosses the missing clue into their laps because they couldn't figure it out, that's railroading.
Boundaries (like a dragon the party can't possibly defeat in straight combat) is not railroading in itself--but it could be used to railroad if it is used as a stick to keep the players on track.
A GM can define a situation or circumstances, but he shouldn't be "planning the plot" or "giving the narrative" to the players, because that implies he is driving them towards a specific outcome.
>>43644152
Well I can see we're getting nowhere closer to defining what definitely is or isn't railroading since it seems very subjective, so I'd like to ask a different question:
>A GM can define a situation or circumstances, but he shouldn't be "planning the plot" or "giving the narrative" to the players, because that implies he is driving them towards a specific outcome.
Why is that a bad thing? Or rather, is it always a bad thing?
People play video games that are very linear. A lot of people (myself included) prefer linear games. I generally like linear RPGs which have a planned, A to B to C story structure. That doesn't mean the party has to take only the left corridor or talk only to the innkeeper, but they are going to go from the village of Hommlet to the Temple of Elemental Evil, or from the Keep on the Borderlands to the Caves of Chaos.
Is this inherently bad? I think it's a great thing. It's not for everyone and it's not the only way to run role-playing games, but a fixed sequence of story events where you can control what your character does within each setting? I think that's the best of both worlds. And if it's a good story or each setting makes for an exciting game, I would much prefer that to a completely open sandbox campaign.
>>43644359
No, it's not INHERENTLY a bad thing. Key word there, inherently. There's a lot of caveats to that.
Again, I ask you: "Do you know what the term agency is?"
Here's another question: "Do you know what your players came for?"
Here's a third question: "When there is a possibility of a better story being told than you had pre-planned, what is your reaction?"
None of these questions are rhetoric, although I will admit that a few of them serve purposes beyond you answering them. Still, how you answer them helps determine what purposes, in this scenario, railroading can and should serve, and what it shouldn't.
>>43644359
Jesus, you're an idiot. Nothing you have said is even remotely intelligent because it just shows your severe inability to read. Like this statement:
>That doesn't mean the party has to take only the left corridor or talk only to the innkeeper, but they are going to go from the village of Hommlet to the Temple of Elemental Evil, or from the Keep on the Borderlands to the Caves of Chaos.
No one has called the railroading. That's called a plot. As you have been told time and time again in various posts, railroading is
>Your actions do not influence the narrative or alter events
That means when a player does something, it will be denied arbitrarily (not by virtue of failing, but by way of the DM denying player to take said action even though it is possible in the context of the story).
So you can stop now. Don't bother posting anything. If you don't get it, then sleep on it and keep trying. No one wants another nonsensical and nonintelligent post by you bumping this dead thread.
>>43644359
>they are going to go from the village of Hommlet to the Temple of Elemental Evil, or from the Keep on the Borderlands to the Caves of Chaos.
Again, of itself, this is not railroading, but chains of modules can get very railroady indeed. What happens if your players decide to head straight for the Caves of Chaos? Or what if they get in deep with the thieves guild and decide to plan a caper instead of following your plot? What if they get some lucky rolls and kill your big bad, and no longer have to chase his ass across a series of adventures?
Neither of those actions are disruptive or out of line with the sort of pulp adventure you all sat down to play, but there are plenty of GMs who will get assblasted because their precious plans are being ruined.
>People play video games that are very linear.
One of the strengths of PnP RPGs is that they don't have to be linear. You could certainly play it like a tightly scripted computer game, but... why?
>>43644470
>Again, I ask you: "Do you know what the term agency is?"
Yes, but is it removing player agency if both the jungle path and the mountain path lead to the same dungeon (perhaps slightly retooled to suit the environment)? Is that railroading?
>Here's another question: "Do you know what your players came for?"
If they want to play a fun game and you steer them towards that fun, is that railroading? I'd even say this one is good GMing.
>Here's a third question: "When there is a possibility of a better story being told than you had pre-planned, what is your reaction?"
That's great, and plenty of good stories come of it. But remember that the main thrust of these games is that the players describe their character's actions, and the GM responds with what happens in the game world. So the players generally don't have the omnipresent narrator power like the author of a novel does. They control characters.
They might individually stop the evil cult's plans early using clever tactics, they might burrow into the treasure room of the dungeon using a map and some shovels, they might have some funny side romp with a character in town. But ultimately the plot is going to happen independent of them. The evil cult will summon their god in ten days regardless of what the players or player characters want.
>>43644676
slow down there. We're still building up to the point where we actually touch on railroading.
>Yes
Then do you understand that the difference between PLAYER agency and CHARACTER agency? Even when the character has lost freedom or power, it is easily possible for the player's choices to matter, whether by the emotional responses and development of the character, or what they manage to accomplish with that reduced set of abilities.
But when you take away player agency, it doesn't matter how strong the character is. Flat out disregarding what they can do and skipping to the conclusion that you want is bad practice. There are cases where forces CAN be in play to prevent the characters from impacting important events, but to create impenetrable walls necessitates that said forces are deliberately acting against the characters, devoting time and resources that sometimes would be better used elsewhere.
>lead to same dungeon
mechanically? No, people recycle that kind of stuff because numbers are just numbers. What's important is the experience, both thematic and how it can affect the rest of the story. It doesn't make sense to have jungle themed puzzles and loot in a mountain dungeon, and vice-versa. Were you able to provide a jungle or mountain experience? What was even the purpose of making a choice there? If, say, another team takes the other path and clears the other supposedly different dungeon, should they have had a 100% success rate with no losses? should it matter how quickly the players cleared this one?
This is why I asked you what your definitions were, so I knew where to start from. I'm already getting sick of typing this out.
>>43644676
>If they want to play a fun game and you steer them towards that fun
but this is definitely something I have to touch on. Some people have fun when they watch other people tell a story. Some people went out of their way to go to someone else's house because they wanted to participate in JOINT storytelling. And neither are wrong. It's just that one can be done in video games, and the other has a bit of trouble and thus more commonly favors trpgs. Which one did your players come for?
If you are defining fun FOR them and forcing it on them, well, I don't see that going over too well for your "friends".
>>43644676
>But remember that the main thrust of these games is that the players describe their character's actions, and the GM responds with what happens in the game world. So the players generally don't have the omnipresent narrator power like the author of a novel does. They control characters.
the GM controls characters too. It's up to the style whether they stick to pre-established setting and knowledge.
Here's another keyword: meta-knowledge. While players certainly have this problem, an everpresent spectre for GMs is knowing when and where omniscient narrator knowledge applies to NPCs, and whether it is in their power, motive, and theme to act upon it.
Nobody is perfect, and NPCs can't plan for everything. It is explicitly when the GM reacts or retroactively reacts to player input without NPC knowledge that it starts to become clear that the characters are interacting with the GM, NOT the NPCs. And THAT is bad storytelling.
>>43641045
Which is exactly why it's pointless to refer to this as "railroading."
Likewise, to OP, if it's setting description at the start, it isn't railroading, even if the players don't make any choices (unless it goes for a really long time.)
>>43641571
>like autism or edgy.
or hipster
or cancer
[....]
man people should stop to abuse language.
now if you use the word literal in the real way or asume people did it you are called autist
>>43642446
>or he will execute them. Is that railroading?
if the dm angry if they say no to the king, absolutely
>>43640764
As a new GM I've been concerned with railroading and being That GM and all these other things I'm told to be afraid of on /tg/.
What I've found is that if you do minimal planning and aren't a prick, the players will eat right out of your hand. And if they want to do something else? My players haven't yet, but that would be fine. The game isn't as fun if everyone isn't having fun.
Honestly, if I ever have to throw my notes out, that just means I overplanned. That's my fault.
>>43640764
What's more fun? Sitting in a wagon listening to someone monologue about how cool this world is, or going out and getting to explore it for yourself?
>>43649854
Listening to someone monologue.
>>43649854
Why the fuck don't you do both? Wait for him to explain how cool the world is, where the cool bits are and what's the greatest part ofi t and then go there, because it sounds cool.
>>43641012
The definition of railroading should be easy: It's when the player's illusion of agency breaks down.
Obviously that's a cop-out subjective definition, but it's to emphasis the important bit: player agency is mostly an illusion in the first place. It's the GM's job to make everyone believe in that illusion. Whether that means throwing out all your notes, or desperately trying to stop your players from breaking everything, you gotta do what you gotta do.
>>43640764
As a long time DM here is my 2 cents. When starting the campaign it is good to railroad for bit. The players are still getting a feel for their PCs then. After they get a past that they still need some time to work out the give and taking element inside the party. Even with veteran players who know each other those things are still at issue.
Based on how that table is doing give them a short ride of 2 to 5 secession's, then let them get off the train if they feel like it. Early character deaths would be a common reason keep the ride going at this stage, and so is party leadership issues.
The ultimate "railroad" is a movie. The closer your session feels to a movie instead of a game (specifically regarding your ability to make decisions) the more it's a railroad.
Also, don't many DMs make generic dungeons that can be applied to several situations? Like if the players have place A, place B, and place C that they will go to for the next part of their journey, the DM will just have one dungeon ready to mockup with slightly different elements depending on which location? I was always under the impression most DMs did this to cut way down on prep time.
>>43650475
>The closer your session feels to a movie instead of a game (specifically regarding your ability to make decisions) the more it's a railroad.
That's dumb. So if you happen to have story structure it's a railroad?
DMs can and do recycle unused assets. But in reality, that probably contributes more to the "railroad" than it facilitates sandbox play by cutting down preptime. Ex: There was always going to be an elderly man that wants you to avenge his son. It didn't matter what town you traveled to, he would show up in the first tavern. Even if you ignore the man, the unrevealed villain is just given a new crime, and is transplanted to the next town over.
>>43650706
Giving your players zero input into how the game progresses isn't a good thing
>>43650758
They'd be upset if they saw plot lines being obviously being recycled. The key is to keep that sort of thing under the hood, which is what I tried to make clear in the example. Whether the story is branches into a million paths, or it loops in on itself like a Telltale game, the players won't necessarily know. And if the players believe they have true freedom in both cases, was it really the freedom itself that they desired, or just the appearance of it?
>>43640764
Everyone gets railroaded. Sometimes it's necessary. Other times, following the players and just giving them consequences for their own misadventures (including having the BBEG succeed because they were too busy trying to navigate the legal system to adopt an orphan because they thought she deserved a better life) is story enough. It's up to you.
>>43650837
You still want flexibility though unless your players are really creatively bankrupt. A proper railroad falls apart really quickly
We wouldn't be having this conversation if you all played the only legitimate form of RPG: hexcrawls.
I always think GMs shouldn't railroad because planning everything else is way less fun than playing to see what happens.
But it really does come down to what people want to play.
I also consider having your endgame plot in mind as immutable to be very railroady. You should incorporate the PCs' goals into the endgame so they can have a satisfying character arc.
Also plays agency isn't an illusion, but it is more-or-less entirely determined by the GM and to a lesser extent the system used. Give players what they want, which is what you should be doing anyway.
>>43650856
It can, and improvisation and contingencies may be a necessary, but rarely is a DM forced to discard much, if any content. They may choose to discard something, but most of the time if the DM knows what they're doing, they could put it back in later down the road if they wanted. A common tactic is to have many parts planned out, but leave the connective tissue between planned points vague enough as to account for unforeseen events (such as being able to ditch the old man hook, but keep the villain around for whatever hook takes).
Granted, there's some ways you get yourself into a bind. If you plan the final encounter in detail before the first session, it'll probably have to be re-edited significantly. If you reveal everything the players can expect in a given quest early on, then you can't reuse it later if the PC's abandon the quest. It's easy to avoid doing that as a DM, but for various reasons you maybe compelled to do it. If that happens it's simply a risk, but a risk the DM can chose deliberately.
None of this is to say that a secretly rail-roady campaign is the one true way to play. And it's always possible to strike a balance between sandbox and linear or even straight up improve.
>>43650844
> Other times, following the players and just giving them consequences for their own misadventures is story enough.
I agree with this.
As I GM I have two distinct styles of running a game. The first is "plot-comes first" style where I keep players close to the red string of the campaign and while I allow players to stray a bit off the path, I always try to return them to the plot in hand during the same session or the beginning of the next. This is the way I lead campaigns when we agreed in advance that we want to experience a compelling story and have limited number of sessions with clear beginning, middle and end.
The second style I use is "harsh world" (the way my new players usually describe it before they understand what I am doing) where there are handful of plot hooks available, which may or may not tie to each other at some point, and players are free to do what they wish. The only constant is that the world will keep on running even if they didn't choose to have an effect on it. With multiple plot hooks available and each of those running its own "timer" players may not even have a chance to affect every plot hook. I also keep book on most actions they do, small or big, and try to bring the consequences of those actions back in to the game at some point. The plot hooks in this kind of game are more mundane, like: "rich aristocrat acting as Jack the Ripper", "a band monsters appears next to a peaceful farming village", "a group of rebels attack a festival and kill dozens of people
" and so on.
The point is, I agree with you how the consequences of the players action are usually interesting enough to make a whole story out of. And more importantly, since the consequences are directly resulted by the players actions, the players seem to care much about those stories.
