# DM Issues: Railroading



## Isiolith (Jun 6, 2011)

I wanted to bring this up here before we brought it up with our DM so that we weren't just flying off the handle at him.

As a DM, ours is usually just fine. However, as of late (and especially in the session we played last night, which is why this is still fresh in my mind), it feels like, as a group, we're being heavily railroaded from point A to point B within the overarching plot without being given opportunities, in character, to agree with the decisions essentially being made for us; rather, we're just told (by Elminster at this point or whomever is "in charge" in whatever town we're in) to go find (insert antagonist-of-the-week) and kill him/her/it. As the group is a mercenary company currently finding itself in the middle of an all-out war between an evil mercenary company/the Zhentarim and an evil lich and his undead army, this is understandable plot development (that we'd be used to pick off minor antagonists one-by-one) but it doesn't feel like we're actually choosing to _accept_ the contract--and mercs, if I understand correctly, don't have to accept every contract that is presented to them.

Short version: the plot is already written and we're being dragged along its path rather than letting our actions help write, drive, and direct the plot. Is there a polite way to bring this up with a DM without coming across as ungrateful and selfish? There _are_ other things our characters would like to do (such as spend downtime to go over treasure acquired and create magic items that would be beneficial to our merc company and in the course of the overall war or retake one character's hometown) but the DM responds with lines like "well, you're in the middle of a war, so I don't know about spending downtime..." (even when real wars have campaign seasons so that groups can do things like this).

Any and all help/criticism is welcome. Thanks in advance for your time and responses.


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## CharlesRyan (Jun 6, 2011)

I don't think there's anything impolite about what you've said here. The term "railroading" can be a bit inflammatory, but if you skip it I think your points are all reasonable. Just tell the GM that, as mercenaries, you feel like your characters should have the right to choose whether to take assignments. Maybe there's a war on, but if the characters are really mercenaries your participation in the war is voluntary.

Within the game, what would happen if you simply said "no"? Elminster says "go get this guy," and you say "find someone else; we've got something else we need to do right now."


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## billd91 (Jun 6, 2011)

I would expect mercenary groups to be able to approve their current patrons, but not necessarily their current assignment, if under long term contract. Refusing to do what the hand that pays the bills wants may get you unemployed.

Which would get you the downtime you want. AND it could set the campaign into a mode in which you are shopping around for short-term patronage which could bring in interesting role playing possibilities.


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## Janx (Jun 6, 2011)

Ryan's points and tests are valid.

Other things to consider:
how much time is passing between sessions?  You mention war taking place in seasons, that's Spring until Fall.  Has this war even lasted a year?

are your PCs cold-blooded contract killers, or s?  There's a war going on, and the good guys need your help.  You're seriously going to go polish your money and dungeon delve when they're asking for your help to kill some people?

 At the end of each session, has the GM asked you what you plan to do next?
If not, he's writing himself into a boxcar.

the problem being, if you go try to explore some random dungeon, he's not going be prepared, and you're risk of railroady behavior will increase. He'll thwart your attempts to alter course and worse, force you to go on his mission that he wrote material for.

Additionally, in-game, whenever there's big problems afoot, you have to consider that you really don't have a choice.  People of action are where the action is.  While the nerds may still stay in their labs researching new things, men of action go where the action is.  Plus. it's a freaking war.  What person goes spelunking when there's a tsunami headed their way.


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## Ravilah (Jun 6, 2011)

I agree with Janx, and would suggest that at the end of next session tell your DM, "Hey, next session we all intend to [insert plans]." No need to make it a request, really. Then the DM has time to plan for it, and you are in control of the next direction.


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## Jimlock (Jun 6, 2011)

Avoiding the railroad is the most difficult part of being a DM...BY FAR.

It requires that:

1-The DM is creative and that he has a talent in improvisation.

2-The DM has enough time to prepare (a multitude of choices the character's MIGHT choose).

3-The DM is a good storyteller/liar in order to make it less evident when he does it. (No matter how good he actually is, he WILL do it, every once in a while).

Expecting to play in a campaign that is not railroady AT ALL is like asking for god as a DM.

...That is not to say that it's impossible...just that it's very difficult.



.......My point is: Tell him. Outright. Doesn't really matter if you employ the word "railroady" in your argument. He's a DM, he knows exactly what you are talking about.

Just tell him that he needs to improve in that sector. No harm done.

As I said above: He's a DM. He knows exactly what your objection is about no matter how smoothly you bring it to him. If he's a good DM he'll try to improve. If he's a jerk... then he's a jerk.

Let's not forget that a DM is no god and that players can be just as judgmental on the DM's style of play, just as the DM has the right to be judgmental about his players' play.

Let's also not forget that the DM spends more time on his own reading/preparing, than all his players do so combined together. This fact alone should earn him your respect.

Be respectful, but also ask your DM to overcome his own self and create a story worth remembering.


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## Isiolith (Jun 6, 2011)

[MENTION=5265]CharlesRyan[/MENTION]: I suppose the question to be answered then is whether we took a contract that is binding us to the participation in the war (thus voluntarily participating) or were just swept up into it by the Great Whirlwind of Plot Development (and are, as you say, involuntarily participating)? Being straightforward (“no, we’ve just exhausted all our resources and need time to recoup”) as you say could also work…

*****

[MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION]: As I said in the above response, I suppose we need to take a look at whatever contract is binding us to this war and see if it is long-term or not; if we’ve been swept up and are doing something we’re not under contract for (and, consequently, aren’t getting paid for), then we might just need to bite the hand that feeds. The DM is always asking for more involved roleplaying (before myself and my significant other joined, the group was largely…not anti-roleplaying but far from being good at it, we’ll just say, so the DM’s not used to having people who actually like roleplaying), so perhaps getting ourselves into these short-term bursts you speak of would help?

*****

[MENTION=8835]Janx[/MENTION]: Real-world time? One week (we play every Sunday). In-game time? We usually pick up right where the previous session left off, so minutes at the least, hours at the most. The most significant jump was when we switched DM’s for a while that trapped us in an alternate world for twenty years (though for the PC’s it was only a couple weeks), during which the war really erupted; we’ve only been involved for a few months at this point, though, if that (save for one PC).

I don’t know if you’d classify us as assassins as that’s not all we do (although a fair majority of our contracts given that it’s wartime have been to take out particular marks in the enemy ranks). And no, we definitely don’t want to dungeon-delve, but being able to obtain items that will enable us to better perform our contractual duties would be worth the time invested, no? Besides, there are other knights in Myth Drannor (where we’re currently based) that could go on missions; we just happen to be the most powerful (17-19, level-wise).

No, at the end of each session, the DM does not ask us what we want to do, which is where the group’s perception of railroading is coming in. It’s usually that we’re told what we’re going to do, because Elminster (acting as the voice of the DM) tells us where to go. Though I don’t DM, I completely understand your point about having to follow the basic arc that he’s set out and for which he’s planned material—but he’s not giving us any flexibility when we do follow the course he’s laid out; part of DMing, at least as I see it (and correct me if I’m wrong) is structuring a basic plot arc and planning material but also being able to think on the fly and be flexible if your players don’t follow exactly what you’ve planned.

*****

[MENTION=19383]Ravil[/MENTION]iah: Being straightforward. Got it. J

*****

[MENTION=6674931]Jimlock[/MENTION]: Like in my original post, I guess I (though certainly not some of our other members) am afraid of being critical of him for fear of him thinking it’s a slight on him as a person, much less a DM—everyone screws up once in a while. I certainly don’t expect him to be a god of any sort and most definitely have the utmost respect for him both as a person and as a DM. As I write this, I’m finding myself thinking about why my character is even still traveling with this group of people—which has nothing to do with the DM and everything to do with me needing to reevaluate my character’s priorities and get together with the DM to throw some of those in there so I feel more invested as a player.


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## pawsplay (Jun 6, 2011)

Isiolith said:


> As a DM, ours is usually just fine. However, as of late (and especially in the session we played last night, which is why this is still fresh in my mind), it feels like, as a group, we're being heavily railroaded from point A to point B within the overarching plot without being given opportunities, in character, to agree with the decisions essentially being made for us; rather, we're just told (by Elminster at this point or whomever is "in charge" in whatever town we're in) to go find (insert antagonist-of-the-week) and kill him/her/it.




So look for another angle. In some cases, people hop onto a self-fulfilling railroad. I've had players make quips before about "following the plot point" or "clicking the glowie" when I honestly had no idea how to anticipate what they would do next and I was prepared to improvise.


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## Tamlyn (Jun 6, 2011)

As everyone else has said, you need to sit down and have a non-confrontational conversation. You need to talk about your perceptions. You perceive that the DM has you on rails. It sounds like the DM perceives that you're not really immersed in what's going on in the game-world. 

Like [MENTION=15538]pawsplay[/MENTION] mentioned above, sometimes the DM tries to give the players something, anything, to do if they don'y have a good feeling for where the PCs want to go. 

Open, honest, respectful communication cures all ills.


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## Stoat (Jun 6, 2011)

Several years ago, one of my buddies came up to me between sessions and said, "Hey, the guys asked me to tell you that they've been feeling a little railroaded lately.  They want to do more of their own thing."  He was right.  I had been railroading the party, pretty egregiously actually.  I tried to fix the situation after we talked.

So my suggestion is do that.  Bring it up with the DM outside of gametime.  Be cool about it.  Have some idea what else you want to do.


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## Herschel (Jun 6, 2011)

Railroading is an interesting concept. DMs need creativity, but the players also have to be cognicent of not derailing the story/campaign. If it makes sense to do what's presented, then do it. It's a war and teh region's resources will be geared twoards that regardless of where you are at. 

In other words, if the trip is fun and makes sense, buy a ticket and enjoy the ride. You're not the conductor. Let him drive you where you need to go.


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## AeroDm (Jun 6, 2011)

I imagine your DM puts a lot of effort into writing engaging adventures because he believes that is what you guys enjoy. Evidently, he is at least partially wrong; this is usually a communication (not an ability or willingness) issue. I would phrase it positively--"Hey, we've really enjoyed the last few adventures but don't feel like we are in as much control of our characters as we'd like. Is there any way we can broaden the scope of the adventures to pursue various character interests?"


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## Tamlyn (Jun 6, 2011)

As a DM, I try and manage player choices differently depending on which phase of the campaign we're in. 

Picture a garden rake. The early part of the campaign is like the handle. It goes in a straight line with no branches. This introduces the PCs to the game world and whatever conflict(s) are in existence. As they progress in level and understanding, I start throwing in the "tines". Based on their earlier experiences, they now get to choose which options to pursue.

The funny thing is, I was feeling like I wasn't giving my players enough options at the current point in the campaign, so I asked them what they thought. The response was, essentially, "Too many options!" But now I get to make the game more fun for them because we talked about it.


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## Herremann the Wise (Jun 6, 2011)

If I was you I would very quietly talk to the DM in between sessions about the issues you are having (and by this I mean personally yourself; not you representing the entirety of the group). If you are concerned he will take it personally, please highlight all of the things you are enjoying about the game and discuss with him the personal input you would like our particular character to have. Keep it one-on-one rather than DM versus player-representing the group. It might feel like you're dancing around the issue but you need to put the railroading-seed in your DM's head first. Also, don't use the term railroading - use the term "directed-storyline" or something euphemistic.

At the root of all these sorts of issues I think is that you have a DM who is trying to tell a cool story rather than presenting a cool scenario and trusting the players to give him a cool story in return.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## Morrus (Jun 6, 2011)

Railroading has become an emotive term.

There is a balance - if your DM has written an adventure, you should play that adventure. You don't have the right to demand the DM create any adventure you wish to play at a moment's whim. The balance of that is that the DM should be able to accomodate _reasonable_ deviations.

One extreme is "I don't want to explore the evil dungeon, I want to explore the obsidian glacier - write an new adventure for me _now_, bitch!" The skill of the DM lies in accomodating player freedom to choose with what is, essentially, a workload. And the job of a player is to accept certain restrictions out of respect for his friend who's trying to write an adventure for you and who isn't your slave. In the long run, even when the_ player_ has no real freedom to choose the adventure, though, it should feel like his _character _had.

It's a tricky balance to take, but "railroading" isn't, by definition, a bad thing unless done to extremes; it's merely a play-style. A fully sandbox world? That's a LOT of work. It's possible, but it's not something I'm ever prepared to run, because I simply don't have 26 hours a day to design it. So my players accept that there's a plot, and they go along with it in the interests of everyone having fun.


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## chaochou (Jun 7, 2011)

Isiolith said:


> There _are_ other things our characters would like to do (such as spend downtime to go over treasure acquired and create magic items that would be beneficial to our merc company and in the course of the overall war or retake one character's hometown) but the DM responds with lines like "well, you're in the middle of a war, so I don't know about spending downtime..."




I'd like to sidestep the railroading thing entirely and instead highlight how much of a an opportunity situations like this might offer.

If I read it right, as a group you seem to want some almost 'free' or 'no strings' downtime, and the GM is resisting that because there's a war on.

So maybe you need to talk to the GM about the consequences of not aiding the war effort. Will your characters be seen as cowards for not being there when Town X got over-run? Does one guy hiring you lose faith in your loyalty or motivation? Does morale in the allied army drop, or supplies run short as the enemy cut lines of communication?

My view is there's room for negotiation here without 'railroading' entering the frame. If there's a war on, and you are the heavy hitters in the war, I think you should be ready to agree - maybe more than agree, to enjoy - new hardships and problems as a result of your actions.

But to go that route I think it has to be open - the options should be there, discussed up front, so you can make an informed decision, rather than feeling persecuted or 'gotcha'd'. If your GM can balance the offer of a deteriorating war situation against the freedom and benefits of your downtime you might find yourself with significant, and possibly memorable, decisions to make.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 7, 2011)

Morrus said:


> Railroading has become an emotive term.
> 
> There is a balance - if your DM has written an adventure, you should play that adventure. You don't have the right to demand the DM create any adventure you wish to play at a moment's whim. The balance of that is that the DM should be able to accomodate _reasonable_ deviations.
> 
> ...




As a GM who runs a sandbox game, I disagree that it takes 26 hours a day to run. In fact, this is by far the game I do the least amount of prep work for. For example, I might put in about 10 minutes of "work" each week, and that's mainly just jotting down a few names and who they are, or reviewing some thing five minutes before sessions.

What it really takes to run well is good improvisational skills, and a good memory for consistency's sake. But, I'd say that's necessary to run a pretty great anyways, so it's not a big stretch.

Since everything I do is basically purely reactive, I don't have to worry about writing up anything. I just wing it, and maybe make notes along the way for NPC names and who they are. The rest is run off of my memory (or occasionally the group, if I miss something).

But, with the system I use (a point buy system), winging NPCs is especially easy. I don't have to worry about class features or anything. I just say "they have ability X, get +X to attacks, and have X hit points" and I know the system will accommodate me if I really feel like justifying it later on. I can even throw in special abilities or traits and know it's fine.

Still, even if I went back to a D&D system, all I'd have to do is complete the initial time consumption of, say, mapmaking, and then I'd be good to go. Once that is done, all I have to do is completely wing everything else, while keeping in mind the barest concepts of political machinations. I basically only move the magnifying glass somewhere if the players have a reason to know about it (they're currently at a location, Knowledge check, etc.).

Just my two cents. But, honestly, it's the least work I've put in to GMing by far. As always, play what you like


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## Morrus (Jun 7, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> As a GM who runs a sandbox game, I disagree that it takes 26 hours a day to run.




I was exaggerating!  Obvioisly 26 hours a day doesn't exist.  If I was serious, I'd have picked an existent number. 



> In fact, this is by far the game I do the least amount of prep work for. For example, I might put in about 10 minutes of "work" each week, and that's mainly just jotting down a few names and who they are, or reviewing some thing five minutes before sessions.
> 
> What it really takes to run well is good improvisational skills, and a good memory for consistency's sake. But, I'd say that's necessary to run a pretty great anyways, so it's not a big stretch.




Maybe you have those skills.  I have them, to an extent.  But I'm not good enough to do that perpertually.  I need a good plot in front of me to make it good.

Perhaps that does work for the top echelon of elite DMs, but it's too hard for me.   And while I don't for a second think I'm a _great_ DM, I don't think I'm a terrible one, either.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 7, 2011)

Morrus said:


> I was exaggerating!  Obvioisly 26 hours a day doesn't exist.  If I was serious, I'd have picked an existent number.




Ha, no worries, I knew it was hyperbole. Though, it got the point you meant across clearly to me.



> Maybe you have those skills.  I have them, to an extent.  But I'm not good enough to do that perpertually.  I need a good plot in front of me to make it good.
> 
> Perhaps that does work for the top echelon of elite DMs, but it's too hard for me.   And while I don't for a second think I'm a _great_ DM, I don't think I'm a terrible one, either.




I'm sure you're a good GM. Since I'm still rather new to the site, I've only really seen your input in other threads, but I found it interesting.

At any rate, maybe it's just my players, but they tend to latch onto things for me to build on easily. They will pursue one thing at a time, and I only have to worry about the ripple effect their actions take with this one pursuit. Sometimes, it's fighting for the government mercenary style, sometimes it's fighting the demons on the realm, sometimes it's looking for gold wherever they can get it, sometimes it's just being on the run while town guard hunt you down.

Honestly, it ends up pretty similar to my previous style of play, except that I'm much less hands-on with plot. However, if the players are pursuing one course of actions (we'll say fighting demons), then it only makes sense to change the setting as necessary when taking their actions into account. Yeah, they might kill a dozen infantry demons and it makes no difference on the setting, but if they kill enough elite commanders, then they'll start to get noticed on both sides of the conflict (mortals will like them, demons will dislike them).

Theoretically, the players could just up and drop this pursuit to pursue something else, but I've found that it's rare. It does happen, and it takes good improv skills, but I think most GMs are used to it as players tend to do it occasionally anyways.

Anyways, thanks for the quick reply! As always, play what you like


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## Morrus (Jun 7, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> Ha, no worries, I knew it was hyperbole. Though, it got the point you meant across clearly to me.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I ran a fantastic sandbox city a long time ago. But I was younger; I had more time on my hands.  These days, in my mid-30s, married, and continually trying to not make my friends feel like I'm neglecting them (and I fail at that, too), I find that sort of campaign much harder to run.  It's not just prep-time, but the time you have available to idly think about it - and I just don't have that any more.

I'd hate to think of what it'd be like if I had kids.  I imagine that I'd be running WotC adventures only, exactly as-written.


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## Aberzanzorax (Jun 7, 2011)

My sole piece of advice for players who have a problem with their DM:

If you're going to say "we don't like x" that's absolutely fine (and helpful)...but it's not particularly helpful unless you can also follow it with "we'd like to see more of y".

annnnndd....that just became my sig.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 7, 2011)

Morrus said:


> I ran a fantastic sandbox city a long time ago. But I was younger; I had more time on my hands.  These days, in my mid-30s, married, and continually trying to not make my friends feel like I'm neglecting them (and I fail at that, too), I find that sort of campaign much harder to run.  It's not just prep-time, but the time you have available to idly think about it - and I just don't have that any more.
> 
> I'd hate to think of what it'd be like if I had kids.  I imagine that I'd be running WotC adventures only, exactly as-written.




Hmm, well that is a pretty stark contrast to my lifestyle. 25, "self employed", and single. That does give me a lot of time to just mull over ideas if I feel I want to.

Interesting perspective.


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## Aberzanzorax (Jun 7, 2011)

I'll echo Morrus there...but only to a point.


Our group played 1/month, all employed 30+ year olds with careers, some with children...

I made a good effort and turned it into a bad mistake...

Rather than set tone and develop story, I vaulted the story into overdrive/boxed text and skipped past the "paltry" encounters to go straight to boss encounters.


It was a mess.



My personal experience has taught me that with my group it's best to just play the game as is, and even to enjoy the "dull" parts that have meaning. Other groups might vary of course, but I think there's definitely a line between "ok, let's get the heck out of this bar...Joe's been chatting up the waitress for an hour now" and "boss fight!" good job! "boss fight2!" good job!.

I've been guilty of both.


In the end...railroading is not "structure"...it's "too much structure"...and THAT, my friends varies from group to group....


....as does "too much freedom."


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## Mark CMG (Jun 7, 2011)

Add me to those who agree with most of the above advice but also believe that bringing it up privately, one-on-one, with the DM can help keep things less confrontational.  If he doesn't adjust to a friendly chat, then bringing it up as a group can always be done later.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 7, 2011)

Herschel said:


> Railroading is an interesting concept. DMs need creativity, but the players also have to be cognicent of not derailing the story/campaign. If it makes sense to do what's presented, then do it. It's a war and teh region's resources will be geared twoards that regardless of where you are at.
> 
> In other words, if the trip is fun and makes sense, buy a ticket and enjoy the ride. You're not the conductor. Let him drive you where you need to go.



The thing to bear in mind is that if someone feels annoyed enough to complain then _it is no longer fun !_

This is a game, if the DM is not fun to play with then telling him so is a good thing, hopefully he will listen, and throw the damned conductor under the drivers, tear up the tracks, and actually allow the players some freedom of choice.

I _hate_ railroads - the game stops being fun as soon as the DM decides that options aren't necessary. And it is the number one reason that I have seen for games ending - the players just go and find something more fun to do, like being eaten alive by fire ants.... [Possible Hyperbole.]

The Auld Grump


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## the Jester (Jun 7, 2011)

TheAuldGrump said:


> I _hate_ railroads - the game stops being fun as soon as the DM decides that options aren't necessary.




While this is true for me too, I have discovered that some people actually prefer a game with clear direction and a strong plot, even if it does cut your options down to "stay on the train". And that's okay- it's all about preference of playstyle.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 7, 2011)

the Jester said:


> While this is true for me too, I have discovered that some people actually prefer a game with clear direction and a strong plot, even if it does cut your options down to "stay on the train". And that's okay- it's all about preference of playstyle.



You know, in all my years of running games, I have _never_ heard anyone complain that I gave them too many choices. 

Part of it may just be the way I structure games - as an example taking Keep on the Borderlands and adding a timeline for a plot going on in town and out in the woods.

The PCs can ignore that plot, or not even notice it for a while. If the characters don't act then Something Bad Happens but I don't force them to ignore the Caves of Chaos to find out what the Mad Hermit is doing. If the Something Bad Happens then it happens.

I guess I just prefer a sandbox with timelines more than a railroad. I like giving the freedom of choice, even if the choice is to fail.

The Auld Grump, it was especially fun for the guy who thought that he _knew_ The Keep on the Borderlands....


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## Hussar (Jun 7, 2011)

See, this is where definitions start getting tricky.  If you have a timeline for Keep on the Borderlands, and the players not engaging in that timeline results in strong, negative consequences for the characters, there's not so much difference with an outright railroad.

Do X or get beaten with the punishment stick, or Just Do X amounts to largely the same thing.

Granted it's all about scale.  If ignoring the Mad Hermit means that some NPC's die and this makes for some difficulty for the PC's, then fine and dandy.  OTOH, if ignoring the Mad Hermit means he completes his ritual and Cthulu shows up, well, that's a lot closer to a railroad.

And the line between those two points is very blurry.

I'm really coming to the opinion that what people call story or plot based games and what people call sandboxes are nowhere near as far apart as they might appear at first blush.

Anyway, sorry for the digression.

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To the OP.  There isn't a whole lot to add here.  Talk to the DM in an open and honest manner.   Tell him that you're feeling hemmed in by the campaign and there are some other elements you'd like to have to oportunity to pursue.  And, actually HAVE other elements to pursue.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 7, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Do X or get beaten with the punishment stick, or Just Do X amounts to largely the same thing.




Déjà vu.



> I'm really coming to the opinion that what people call story or plot based games and what people call sandboxes are nowhere near as far apart as they might appear at first blush.




As someone on the other side of things, tell me about it.



> To the OP.  There isn't a whole lot to add here.  Talk to the DM in an open and honest manner.   Tell him that you're feeling hemmed in by the campaign and there are some other elements you'd like to have to oportunity to pursue.  And, actually HAVE other elements to pursue.




Good advice.

As always, play what you like


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## pawsplay (Jun 7, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, this is where definitions start getting tricky.  If you have a timeline for Keep on the Borderlands, and the players not engaging in that timeline results in strong, negative consequences for the characters, there's not so much difference with an outright railroad.




The difference can be night-and-day. In one scenario, the players identify strongly with the situation faced by their PCs. In the other, they recognize they are being asked to accept the DM's power play. Now, there are situations where the two are indistinguishable (convenient ruby-eating titan blocks the way), but only at first glance. Upon inspection, there is a huge difference between a situation which is merely limiting (and limitations add interest) versus one which is oppressive (boring, except insofar as it provokes frustration). It is a curious paradox that a GM creates adventures by subtracting, and can suck the life out of them by adding, but I believe it. The GM is not the author of the story. Period.


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## S'mon (Jun 7, 2011)

Morrus said:


> One extreme is "I don't want to explore the evil dungeon, I want to explore the obsidian glacier - write an new adventure for me _now_, bitch!" The skill of the DM lies in accomodating player freedom to choose with what is, essentially, a workload.




If the DM wants the PCs to explore the evil dungeon, he should make it attractive to the PCs - eg rumours of treasure!  It's a good idea IMO *not* to drop the same amount of treasure on the PCs wherever they go; traditional D&D depends on motivated PCs seeking out the loot-rich environment.  Or maybe there are prisoners who urgently need rescuing.

If my players decide the evil dungeon is unattractive - eg they think it's too tough for them, or too loot-poor, or they hate the quest-giver NPC - and they are being at all reasonable, then well fair enough, ideally give me some notice & I'll happily prep the obsidian glacier for them.  No notice and in extremis they'll be fighting no-loot random glacier encounters for the rest of the session!  

Edit: And IMO there are BIG advantages to the Evil Dungeon being left unexplored & uncleared.  The players have just given you a long-term plot hook and potential source of woe.  The bad guys in the Evil Dungeon get to work their plans undisturbed; monsters ravage the countryside, evil rituals are completed, maidens sacrificed, et al.  Or maybe some NPCs clear the dungeon and become The Great Heroes of the Realm...


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## S'mon (Jun 7, 2011)

Morrus said:


> Perhaps that does work for the top echelon of elite DMs, but it's too hard for me.   And while I don't for a second think I'm a _great_ DM, I don't think I'm a terrible one, either.




I think it's more about DMing style than how good we are in an absolute sense - you may do best with a more linear story approach, I like a fair amount of improvisation and winging it, so I like a sandboxy environment.  I also get a thrill out of not knowing which way the PCs will go, so I'll often give 2 valid options and let them choose - which some players, again, don't like.

You don't have to be a Piratecat-level DM to run a good sandbox, indeed AFAIK Piratecat is more of a 'story' DM.  It just has to be a style you like.


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## S'mon (Jun 7, 2011)

Morrus said:


> I ran a fantastic sandbox city a long time ago. But I was younger; I had more time on my hands.  These days, in my mid-30s, married, and continually trying to not make my friends feel like I'm neglecting them (and I fail at that, too), I find that sort of campaign much harder to run.  It's not just prep-time, but the time you have available to idly think about it - and I just don't have that any more.
> 
> I'd hate to think of what it'd be like if I had kids.  I imagine that I'd be running WotC adventures only, exactly as-written.




I find that trying to grok some huge WotC adventure takes me far more time than a short-term sandboxy thing.


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## S'mon (Jun 7, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, this is where definitions start getting tricky.  If you have a timeline for Keep on the Borderlands, and the players not engaging in that timeline results in strong, negative consequences for the characters, there's not so much difference with an outright railroad.
> 
> Do X or get beaten with the punishment stick, or Just Do X amounts to largely the same thing.




I disagree very strongly, but then you knew that already.

You can run a sandbox in an setting where the bad guy armies are conquering the world.  If the PCs don't stop them, the world gets conquered.  As long as the DM is ready to have the PCs do whatever they want, it's a sandbox.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 7, 2011)

Getting the players to do exactly what you want, without them feeling they've been railroaded, is good GMing.


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## pemerton (Jun 7, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> Getting the players to do exactly what you want, without them feeling they've been railroaded, is good GMing.



I don't think I agree with this - but I guess it depends on how abstract the description is of "exactly what I want".

I definitely want my players to engage the gameworld, and they do that. I don't think this is railroading, either overt or covert - it's playing the game.

I populate the gameworld with elements that I've got reason to think will grab them. But what their PCs do when they are grabbed by those elements, and engage the gameworld is, up to them.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 7, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I don't think I agree with this - but I guess it depends on how abstract the description is of "exactly what I want".



I'm thinking of 'low level' player decision making, like Bite on plot hook A, Distrust NPC B, Keep sinister-seeming item C, rather than broader player behaviour. Though really I should have said that it's one kind of good GMing. It's the skill of manipulation, just as improvisation, writing a compelling plot, or creating a rich sandbox are all skills too, and useful ones.

As a GM, I'm no good at that kind of manipulation. I'm very uncomfortable with it, and I don't do it. I couldn't even if I wanted to. As a player, I'm not sure if I like it or not. I have experienced railroading, in the sense of an encounter being pushed very strongly towards a particular outcome by the GM, that worked and I've experienced railroading that, for me, didn't work (though the other players didn't seem to mind).

In fact, as a player, I've experienced a very wide range of GMing styles that all worked - improvised sandbox; stupidly detailed sandbox with some plotted story elements and PC death avoided; this is tonight's adventure and I don't have anything else prepped; prepped adventure becoming improvised sandbox in the latter half of the evening when the GM runs out of material; minimally prepped adventure with railroading to follow a planned campaign arc; somewhat pre-plotted adventures and campaigns with strong storytelling elements that managed to incorporate big changes as a result of unexpected player decisions.


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## Jhaelen (Jun 7, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> Getting the players to do exactly what you want, without them feeling they've been railroaded, is good GMing.



I'm not sure it's good DMing, but it sure leads to getting good results with little preparation.

Basically, if you know your players and their characters well (and they behave somewhat consistently), you can present choices in a way that the outcome is almost guaranteed. Still, from time to time they will surprise you!

For me the key to good DMing is to know _what_ to prepare: Early in my 'career' I used to over-prepare. These days I prepare less, but more effectively. I prepare things that I can use in different ways and situations, altering them with a minimum of effort.

I still end up preparing a lot of stuff that doesn't see play, but if it's based on a cool idea, I'll pick it up at some later point, modifying it slightly to fit the changed circumstances.


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## Herschel (Jun 7, 2011)

the Jester said:


> While this is true for me too, I have discovered that some people actually prefer a game with clear direction and a strong plot, even if it does cut your options down to "stay on the train". And that's okay- it's all about preference of playstyle.




Yep. Most of my groups are in this mode too. 

I also find some players enjoy trying to take control of a game and "de-rail" it just because they can, decreasing teh fun for others. There really are a huge number of players, styles and motivations.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 7, 2011)

This is a difficult issue to address because some GMs can take offense, and there may be a misunderstanding about expectations. 

A certain amount of railroading isn't a problem in my view. Sometimes it helps get things started. Most adventures are a pretty good mix of linear and non linear. Personally I run a lot of investigation-like campaigns, so often times the hook is a little railroady, but the remainder of the adventure is pretty open (within the scope the hook has established). 

However, I also run a lot of open-style mafia campaigns, with pretty much no railroading. These are much harder to prepare for, because it all boils down to the individual characters and their motivations. So I don't even really prepare events, I prepare NPCs and power groups, then let them react with what the PCs are doing. 

In the later case, player initiative is very important. If my players didn't set goals for their characters and pursue them, I'd probably have to resort to some railroading. This may be helpful in your case. I don't know the specifics, but consider things from your GM's point of view: have you indicated an interested in or out of game of persuing your own goals and taking initiative? Sometimes when the players start doing interesting things, it makes ad-libbing easier for the GM and it lightens his load a little.

It sounds like things have changed somehow in your game. Like the GM used to have a more open style but has shifted to a more linear one. This could be because he has more personal responsibilities, or it could even be because he was following a thread like this and was persuaded to change his approach (I've definitely seen this happen). 

It definitely doesn't hurt to ask him. You could be diplomatic by asking him general questions about how he prepares for adventures (just as an exchange of ideas), and work it in. Or you could be more direct and politely explain you think his adventures are great but you want to have more choices. 

It would probably be helpful if you explain the kinds of choices you would like to see in game.  As a GM I love it when players give me feedback, but general feedback that isn't specific can be counter productive. If someone says "Less railroading", that gives me an idea, but that could mean anything from "I want 10 adventures to choose from at the beginning of each session" to "I want more interesting pathways to choose from during the adventure." If you are going to give him feedback, the more detailed you are about your own expectations the better.


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## Janx (Jun 7, 2011)

S'mon said:


> I disagree very strongly, but then you knew that already.
> 
> You can run a sandbox in an setting where the bad guy armies are conquering the world.  If the PCs don't stop them, the world gets conquered.  As long as the DM is ready to have the PCs do whatever they want, it's a sandbox.




From the other side of the GM screen, that sounds like a punishment-stick.

Players goals tend to align with keeping the status quo or improving it.  So if the village was nice and peaceful, they will tend to fight the disruptions to that, and repair it if they can.

If they see an opportunity to improve it (builder mentality), they'll do that.  all of this is usually as a course of improving their own situation.  By helping the village fend off orcs, they get respect and perks.  They may even get power and command over the region.

Psychologically then, when a big war erupts, you are disrupting the status quo and threatening what they are building.  The probability that they will keep walking back and forth to the dungeon to the village to sell their loot is low.  Because if they ignore the war, the village will be destroyed.

Now this assessment can't apply to all players.  But to some, such as myself, this is what we'll see, despite the GM thinking he has a sandbox.

When you have a significant Consequence about to happen, while the GM may think the players have a choice, the players have no Choice but to take action towards that problem, rather than some other goal they wanted to pursue.

Disagree?  At 5PM today, a gang of hoodlums is going to go to your house and rape, rob, and kill your family.  You are free to stay late at the office, or go solve the problem.

You have some choices on how to solve the problem (call the cops, get your family out by 4PM, be there with a gun, etc.)  But no man is going to rationally ignore the Threat and work late.  That is a non-Choice.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 7, 2011)

S'mon said:


> I disagree very strongly, but then you knew that already.
> 
> You can run a sandbox in an setting where the bad guy armies are conquering the world.  If the PCs don't stop them, the world gets conquered.  As long as the DM is ready to have the PCs do whatever they want, it's a sandbox.




They could also join the badguys, or try to profit from the ensuing conflict. I think it depends on the players and the party. My most memorable campaigns have been of the pirate crew variety, where the party isn't necessarily out to save the world or always help those in need.


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## chaochou (Jun 7, 2011)

chaochou said:


> If your GM can balance the offer of a deteriorating war situation against the freedom and benefits of your downtime you might find yourself with significant, and possibly memorable, decisions to make.






Janx said:


> Disagree?  At 5PM today, a gang of hoodlums is going to go to your house and rape, rob, and kill your family.  You are free to stay late at the office, or go solve the problem.




What you've done, imo, is deliberately unbalance the choices for the sake of argument.

At 5pm your boss comes in saying the sales figures look great and he needs a report for the board by 8am tomorrow. It could be the key to that promotion you've been angling for. But tonight is your son's big football game. Do you write the report or go to the game?

The commander comes to see you. A town on the edge of the kingdom is under threat from the enemy. It's your wife's home town. Do you ride out to save it or let it fall and build your magic weapon? Do you fight for your wife or power up for later?

I'd say both of those offer significant choices which say valuable and interesting things about the character. And ask the player to accept the consequences of their actions.

It's not a playstyle for everyone - but it can work far more effectively than your 'no choice' example gives it credit for.


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## the Jester (Jun 7, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, this is where definitions start getting tricky.  If you have a timeline for Keep on the Borderlands, and the players not engaging in that timeline results in strong, negative consequences for the characters, there's not so much difference with an outright railroad.




I disagree and kind of think you're mis-characterizing this (unintentionally). 

A sandbox is not consequence-free; but there is typically a wider range of possible consequences than in a railroad. A railroad's consequences are usually written or planned out in advance; a sandbox' vary depending on the nature of the pcs' engagement with the adventure.

Railroads often boil down to "you stop the bad guys". That's not just the basic plot, _that is the consequence of the adventure._ It's often a foregone conclusion that the pcs _will_ oppose the villains, even that they _will_ be victorious.

A sandbox approach instead acknowledges that "there are bad guys". That's the basic situation; but there is no foregone conclusion. Maybe the pcs oppose the bad guys; maybe they ally with them or go to work for them; maybe they ignore them. Maybe the pcs slay the bad guys; maybe the bad guys slay the pcs; maybe the pcs leave the territory that the bad guys have sway over; maybe the pcs never get involved with the bad guys at all. 

Railroad gms run "save the world" scenarios where it is a foregone conclusion that the world will be saved. Sandbox gms, in my experience, run fewer "save the world" scenarios _because it's quite possible that the world will not be saved._

A sandbox often has a stronger devotion to following the repercussions of pcs' actions than a railroad. The key is choice of engagement. In a railroad 'save the world' campaign, _the pcs are out to save the world_. In a sandbox 'the world is threatened' campaign, it is up to the pcs to decide what they are doing. 

There is no punishment for joining the bad guys, other than the consequences of having done so. There is no punishment for ignoring the 'plot' other than the natural consequences of it. There are never arbitrary armies of draconians pushing you to the dm's chosen path.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 7, 2011)

I'll strongly disagree with that, Janx. That's a big choice. And, it'll be obvious for most people, but not all people in a D&D-like game.

If I don't go to my house, and my family dies, and we continue to play, then it's not railroading. It's still a sandbox. Just because it's a sandbox, it does not mean the world does not spin, the setting does not evolve, and consequences are not applied to actions.

I can "deal" with the threat, if I feel I must, by not going. I can move my family, or have them move. I can go myself, or hire others to protect them. I can ignore them completely. I can join in. If the action is going to take place, and I am not purposefully being herded toward a decision, it's not railroading, in my opinion. It's still a sandbox.

However, when running a sandbox game, there's one simple thing to keep in mind: everyone has motivations for everything they do. Period. Even crazy hermits have motivations, even if they aren't not logical. So, if you did something that caused this attack, then it's just the consequences of actions you performed in a sandbox world. If it's someone doing this to get you out of the way while the BBEG does his evil plan (ie, Superman has to stop a missile or save Lois Lane), then it's just another action taking place in the sandbox world.

But I've discussed this at length already in another thread. As always, play what you like


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## Nagol (Jun 7, 2011)

the Jester said:


> I disagree and kind of think you're mis-characterizing this (unintentionally).
> 
> A sandbox is not consequence-free; but there is typically a wider range of possible consequences than in a railroad. A railroad's consequences are usually written or planned out in advance; a sandbox' vary depending on the nature of the pcs' engagement with the adventure.
> 
> ...




I'm in the middle of running a save-the-world scenario right now.  The PCs discovered it with about 2 years time remaining and no idea how to stymie it.  They worked on personal goals for the first year or so.  They're down to 7 months, recognise they're at 7 months with limited understanding of how to proceed and are debating taking a month to deal with some secondary issues (there is a time and material cost to leveling in the campaign).  I hope they succeed, but I'm beginning to think they won't.


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## S'mon (Jun 7, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> I'll strongly disagree with that, Janx. That's a big choice. And, it'll be obvious for most people, but not all people in a D&D-like game.
> 
> If I don't go to my house, and my family dies, and we continue to play, then it's not railroading. It's still a sandbox. Just because it's a sandbox, it does not mean the world does not spin, the setting does not evolve, and consequences are not applied to actions.
> 
> ...




Well said, I got the must spread XP notice.  

A player or PC may feel they have no real choice in a matter because of their commitments.  They may feel it's a 'punishment stick' if they feel they have to take time to defend what they built up.  It is not a Railroad though.  A Railroad is where *the DM *is not prepared to let the PCs make another choice.

Eg you could run a Dragonlance sandbox where the PCs were free to help the Dragonarmies conquer Krynn, or become scavangers, or just try to survive.  LG PCs might feel forced to oppose the Dragonarmies, but if *the DM *is ok either way it's not a Railroad.

Railroading is a DM-side concept, not a player-side concept, IMO.  Because it is a DMing technique, not a feeling that players or PCs have.  IRL I felt I had to go to work today and mark these damn Contract Law papers on my desk.  Nasty things will happen if I don't.  But I am not being 'railroaded' into marking them!


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## pawsplay (Jun 7, 2011)

Janx said:


> Disagree?  At 5PM today, a gang of hoodlums is going to go to your house and rape, rob, and kill your family.  You are free to stay late at the office, or go solve the problem.




How do I know this? Do I have precognition? If so, that could be a very interesting scenario.


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## Hussar (Jun 7, 2011)

pawsplay said:


> The difference can be night-and-day. In one scenario, the players identify strongly with the situation faced by their PCs. In the other, they recognize they are being asked to accept the DM's power play. Now, there are situations where the two are indistinguishable (convenient ruby-eating titan blocks the way), but only at first glance. Upon inspection, there is a huge difference between a situation which is merely limiting (and limitations add interest) versus one which is oppressive (boring, except insofar as it provokes frustration). It is a curious paradox that a GM creates adventures by subtracting, and can suck the life out of them by adding, but I believe it. The GM is not the author of the story. Period.




The GM may not be the author of the end of the story, but, his fingerprints are certainly all over the manuscript.  

The GM sets up a scenerio on a certain time frame - a completely linear plot line unless the PC's can time travel - but that doesn't make it a railroad.

See, the problem I'm seeing here is people are contrasting the idea of sandbox with railroad.  That's a false comparison.  The opposite of sandbox is linear, not railroad.  You can railroad just as easily in a sandbox as in a linear campaign.  

Do X or bad things will happen to your character might not be forcing the players to act in a certain way, but, it's certainly pushing them in that direction.  To me, there's no difference between "You can choose not to do X, but if you do, this shopping list of bad things will happen" and "Just do it".  

Because, IMO, at the end of the day, the players will do it because it's pretty obvious that's what the GM wants you to do.

To me, saying, "Well, you don't HAVE to do X, but, if you don't, you get punished" is railroading.  Find the Disks of Mishakal or the invading dragon armies will simply come in larger and larger waves until you die may be totally justifiable from an in game perspective, but, it's totally a railroad.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 7, 2011)

When I think of sandbox, I think of something like the West Marches campaign or The Vault of Larin Karr. The bad guys are disunited, localised and largely static. The setting as a whole is also static. There are no impending plots to take over or destroy the world. There is no great pressure on the PCs to choose one adventure location over another. This lack of pressure increases player freedom.

The Dragonlance setting otoh, was intended for adventure path play. It has powerful, unified opposition, and impending threats to the safety of all the PCs hold dear. It's a high pressure setting and, as such, I find it difficult to think of a game with such a setting as a sandbox.


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## Nagol (Jun 7, 2011)

Hussar said:


> The GM may not be the author of the end of the story, but, his fingerprints are certainly all over the manuscript.
> 
> The GM sets up a scenerio on a certain time frame - a completely linear plot line unless the PC's can time travel - but that doesn't make it a railroad.
> 
> ...




My mileage varies.

I've had player groups decide to deal with the known threat head-on, finesse around it, flee, hunker down to survive then pick up the pieces and start putting them back together, help it Quisling style, and pretty much every combination of those tactics put together.

Additionally, who says the threat needs a linear solution?  There's often a wide range of ways for the PCs to approach the problem.

Invading orc army?  Defeat them in battle! or Kill the leader! or Poison the food supply! or Convince the Elvish King to help! or Flee to the next kingdom with a warning! or Stage a prophetic omen to convince them to retire! or Bulid up a rival in exchange for peace! or pretty much any other tactic the PCs want to try.


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## Janx (Jun 7, 2011)

JamesonCourage said:


> I'll strongly disagree with that, Janx. That's a big choice. And, it'll be obvious for most people, but not all people in a D&D-like game.
> 
> If I don't go to my house, and my family dies, and we continue to play, then it's not railroading. It's still a sandbox. Just because it's a sandbox, it does not mean the world does not spin, the setting does not evolve, and consequences are not applied to actions.




Let me disect this further.

I'm talking about the feeling of being railroaded, and not having any choice, rather than the actuality of not having any other choice.

A Threat is lopsided.  If you don't deal with it, YOUR interests will be hurt.  If a threat to the kingdom isn't a big deal to the PCs, it isn't a Threat to the PCs.

From a player's perspective, once a Threat is on the board, they have no other choice but to solve it.

This may actually be at the heart of the matter for the OP.  They want to go spelunking.  The DM brought out a Threat.  Now the players don't really feel like they have any choice but to deal with it.  In reality, sure, they could ignore Elminster.  Just like you could ignore the flat tire on your car and keep driving it.

I differentiate a Threat from an Opportunity.  Opportunities are the kind of things where a PC could pursue it, or another, and while there can be consequences, there's no extra pressure on a PC for one choice or another.  A Threat pretty much locks in a PC, failure means what the PC cares about is lost.

I see it as totally valid for a DM to use a Threat, hopefully sparingly.  But in no way should a DM delude himself into thinking that the PCs have a choice in tackling the Threat.  Because the players don't think they do.

the point with the extreme robbery example, is to illustrate that in real life and in game, a Threat can manifest that you MUST resolve or die.  And generally sitting there and dying is the only way you lose D&D.


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## billd91 (Jun 7, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> When I think of sandbox, I think of something like the West Marches campaign or The Vault of Larin Karr. The bad guys are disunited, localised and largely static. The setting as a whole is also static. There are no impending plots to take over or destroy the world. There is no great pressure on the PCs to choose one adventure location over another. This lack of pressure increases player freedom.
> 
> The Dragonlance setting otoh, was intended for adventure path play. It has powerful, unified opposition, and impending threats to the safety of all the PCs hold dear. It's a high pressure setting and, as such, I find it difficult to think of a game with such a setting as a sandbox.




Either of those could be sandboxes depending on how much freedom the PCs have to make their own choices in what they want to do with the situation at hand. In the case of the ones you see as sandboxes, the encounter areas are triggered by PC involvement and pretty much nothing else. Everything is dormant except when it's in the same scene as the PCs. 

But I think a setting with ongoing events can also be a sandbox, even if those events are widespread and potentially severe, as long as the PCs can decide how they interact with them and have the freedom to try to do so. Consequences may follow from their choices (including choices to not get involved) and some of them may be negative. Their plans may well fail. But that can still reflect sandbox style play.


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## billd91 (Jun 7, 2011)

Janx said:


> From a player's perspective, once a Threat is on the board, they have no other choice but to solve it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I differentiate a Threat from an Opportunity.  Opportunities are the kind of things where a PC could pursue it, or another, and while there can be consequences, there's no extra pressure on a PC for one choice or another.  A Threat pretty much locks in a PC, failure means what the PC cares about is lost.




The trouble with your differentiation is that one PC's threat may be another's opportunity. Whether something is a threat really depends on the particular PC's orientation toward it. It may be that there are some factors in a campaign that certain types of PCs (or players) utterly cannot pass up. But it's also entirely possible that another type of PC (or player) will see the factor in the opposite way.
You mention that, from the other side of the DM's screen, they don't feel they have a choice. But that may vary from player to player. They don't have to have a single viewpoint.


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## Aberzanzorax (Jun 7, 2011)

We've mentioned the punishment stick...how about the rewardstickcarrot?


In my campaign, my players know they are reincarnated heroes. They also know that there are some really valuable magic items tailored to their needs locked away in a bank with magical protections (sort of a dungeon crawl, but only in a loose sense).

They can attempt to get the items any way they like, or they can forget about them (forgetting about them would be a HUGE punishmentstick/lack of rewardstickcarrot...these are awesome items, and will level with them as they level).


So, what do I do as DM to "not railroad"? Do I allow them to try and break in, and if they get caught, get punished by the law? Do I prevent them from getting caught? Do I prevent them from being punished? What if they try to legally claim these items that were placed there long before they were born, and that they believe they own/deserve, claiming their reincarnation/heritage? 

All of those questions pale to: *Do I, as DM, figure out a way to get them the items eventually regardless of their actions?*

If so, is that railroading? If not, is that railroading? Is it railroading to even HAVE such items in the campaign? 

To be clear: I'm bringing this up as the flip side to "you do x (or don't do y) and you get bad consequences". What if you just fail to get good rewards?


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## nedjer (Jun 7, 2011)

Morrus said:


> I ran a fantastic sandbox city a long time ago. But I was younger; I had more time on my hands.  These days, in my mid-30s, married, and continually trying to not make my friends feel like I'm neglecting them (and I fail at that, too), I find that sort of campaign much harder to run.  It's not just prep-time, but the time you have available to idly think about it - and I just don't have that any more.
> 
> I'd hate to think of what it'd be like if I had kids.  I imagine that I'd be running WotC adventures only, exactly as-written.




No way; you'll be down on your hands and knees improvising like crazy with Playmobil cities, Lego starships and a bunch of Papo figures. Most of these objects will have patches of gooey, sticky, icky stuff on them, but you won't give a flying . . . 

. . . fig leaf is I believe Umbran's preferred translation


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## nedjer (Jun 7, 2011)

The axe is past grinding on this one for me. Needs to be a fast, easy way to put together coherent 'sandboxy' settings and scenarios. Came to the conclusion this might be done with psychological prompting and shared gameplay expectations.

Blog's been splattered with it for weeks and the theory is getting put to the test by posting a 'campaign-build' as it gets playtested over the summer and autumn. Going to use a forum within the site to try 'walls' as a medium and/ or method for campaign building.

Taking some 'mooring posts' from 14th century Scotland; not due to a sudden rush of nationalist fervour north of the border, but because the whole lot of them were 'Lords of Misrule'. Hopefully, we'll end up with a template for fast, open-ended play, and it won't matter whether it's Iceland and/ or Venice that's feeding into the design alongside a GM's imagination.

High hopes


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## pawsplay (Jun 7, 2011)

Janx said:


> the point with the extreme robbery example, is to illustrate that in real life and in game, a Threat can manifest that you MUST resolve or die.  And generally sitting there and dying is the only way you lose D&D.




Not everyone resolves situations in the same way. A robbery does not lock in or dictate PC behavior. The PCs don't even have to confront the robber.


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## Mort (Jun 7, 2011)

Hussar said:


> ...To me, saying, "Well, you don't HAVE to do X, but, if you don't, you get punished" is railroading.  Find the Disks of Mishakal or the invading dragon armies will simply come in larger and larger waves until you die may be totally justifiable from an in game perspective, but, it's totally a railroad.




If I substituted "consequences" for "punished" in the above paragraph it reads exactly the same with the exact same intent - yet are you actually saying there should be no consequences for making a decision? And further that consequences = railroading; because that seems the logical step - and yet I believe that is flat out wrong. The thing about the above paragraph is the choice is designed and presented poorly and in a very one sided way, but it's not railroading unless the PCs *actually* can't make it (that btw is why the Dragonlance adventures actually are railroads - if the PCs do not make the presented choice the adventure stops dead, there is literally nowhere else to go unless the DM completely adlibs).

Not all (or even many) decision points in an adventure (or even campaign) should be do x or face dire consequences - but they do and should come up. That's not railroading, it's making the players think about their actions and face consequences (good and bad) for the decisions they make. 

I think the term railroading is getting vastly overused these days - and too often being applied in a "I don't like x = railroading" manner. Railroading is the elimination of player choice. presenting bad choices, disproportionate choices/rewards for certain actions may be heavy handed and may be "bad DMing" but it's not railroading unless no choice exists.


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## Locutus Zero (Jun 7, 2011)

I tend to practice a hybrid version of railroading.  I try to place branch points at the end of sessions, and make sure I know what the party is planning to do next session.  Then I write a fairly railroady session.  At least, the encounters are all pre-determined.  Maybe a choice they make halfway through this session will matter next session, but it won't change things too much today.

Last session, we had about half an hour left, and I had a few plot hooks ready but didn't drop any of them.  They had spent two months of in-game time being led from emergency to emergency, and I just left them with nothing to do.  There was enough going on in the world that I thought they could come up with something.  Maybe go to the Feywild and try to get ahead of the over-arching storyline, maybe go back to Fallcrest and check out their new diggs, a few other things.  This gives them a sense that they live in this world and can make their own choices, but doesn't mean I have to design a sandbox.  It gives them a chance to be proactive.


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## the Jester (Jun 7, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, the problem I'm seeing here is people are contrasting the idea of sandbox with railroad.  That's a false comparison.  The opposite of sandbox is linear, not railroad.  You can railroad just as easily in a sandbox as in a linear campaign.




It seems like we have different ideas of a railroad. An adventure can be linear without being a railroad as long as the pcs are free to make choices- even if it is just "We choose to leave this place behind". 

That ability to make choices is the definition of a sandbox to me; a sandbox is a setting that the players adventure in without being forced into one path or another by the dm.

I'll agree that a dm can _turn a sandbox into a railroad_ quite easily, but I disagree that you railroad in a sandbox- it is no longer a sandbox at that point. 

I'll state further that I think sandbox --> railroad is a continuum, not an either-or. 



Hussar said:


> Do X or bad things will happen to your character might not be forcing the players to act in a certain way, but, it's certainly pushing them in that direction.  To me, there's no difference between "You can choose not to do X, but if you do, this shopping list of bad things will happen" and "Just do it".




To me, there is all the difference in the world.

A good sandbox relies on cascading consequences. The pcs' actions reverberate and make waves, and some of those may threaten the pcs or their interests. _That is a feature, not a bug, of a sandbox._ If the pcs feel trapped, forced to take a certain path or whatever, that's okay and it is still a sandbox. It's only when the dm actually forces them down a certain path, not when they feel like any other choice is a bad one, that the game goes from sandbox to railroad. 

A big part of sanbox dming is enforcing the consequences of pc actions. It sounds like you're suggesting that, if the party attacks the merchant in town and flees to the next town, the merchants there shouldn't care because that would be a negative consequence. Well, if you kill the merchants in town A in my campaign and word gets to town B, not only will the merchants not serve you, the town will outlaw you and possibly try to hunt you down. 



Hussar said:


> Because, IMO, at the end of the day, the players will do it because it's pretty obvious that's what the GM wants you to do.




Players who try to pander to the dm are poorly trained for sandbox style play. 

As a dm I might want the party to go to some place I've designed that's really cool- _but is out of their league._ If the players pick up on my eagerness, assume that it's a path to follow _right now_ instead of later, and don't flee after the first encounter six levels above them- TPK! And as a sandbox dm, I am okay with that. 

The pcs need to go where _they_ want in a sandbox. Maybe they develop obligations and ties that they feel a need to defend throughout the campaign. Awesome! But ultimately, the decision must be up to them.



Hussar said:


> To me, saying, "Well, you don't HAVE to do X, but, if you don't, you get punished" is railroading.  Find the Disks of Mishakal or the invading dragon armies will simply come in larger and larger waves until you die may be totally justifiable from an in game perspective, but, it's totally a railroad.




Again, I disagree strongly. Saying, "Oh, you go the other direction? There's this huge army of draconians in the way! Oh, you turn west instead? More draconians!" -- THAT is a railroad. Saying, "Okay, you leave the quest behind- let's see what messed up stuff happens" is a sandbox. 

And actually, "the only solution to your problem is the Disks of Mishakal" in the first place is a strong railroady element in itself. Why can't the pcs try to raise armies and take the field? Why can't they join the Dragonarmies? Why can't they infiltrate them and try to assassinate their leader? Why can't they seek out a bunch of dragon slaying weapons instead (I know, that comes later)? Why can't they try to appeal to the dragons' vanity and pride to get them to eat their riders?

None of those have to _work,_ but the fact is, in the old DL modules there is no point whatsoever to even trying any of them, or anything else outside of the pre-written story. _That's_ a railroad.


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## Jhaelen (Jun 7, 2011)

the Jester said:


> Railroad gms run "save the world" scenarios where it is a foregone conclusion that the world will be saved. Sandbox gms, in my experience, run fewer "save the world" scenarios _because it's quite possible that the world will not be saved._



That's an interesting point. Interesting to me, because it illustrates what I consider to be a weakness of sandbox games:

Sandboxes seem to work best if the heroes' actions are largely inconsequential on a world-wide scope. I think it's also best for a sandbox if the pcs are really not that special, i.e. low-powered rather than (super-)heroic. This allows for others to jump in and take over.

Heroic gameplay works best with a strong focus, like the 'save the world' scenario. If you want every action to revolve around the heroes, a sandbox doesn't work well.

What works best for myself is a middle-ground between railroading and sandboxing. In my 3e campaign the overarching scenario was "An evil, psionic race is trying to take over the world". I did not decide right away which race that was. This was decided by the players' choices in a pivotal adventure late into the campaign.

(Some additional details because I still enjoy talking about the campaign - ignore it if you like )
[sblock]
What I had decided right from the beginning was that the heroes would have to gain strong allies if they wanted to have a chance to stop the villainous race. The more allies they would manage to win, the easier it would be in the end.
After the pivotal adventure I started using a timeline with events that would happen if they didn't do something to foil the villains' plans.

Before that point adventures mostly revolved around traveling all over the place, and learning about the land and the people.

While I would have been prepared to continue playing if they didn't save the world (either for lack of trying, because they were too slow, or because their allied forces turned out to be too weak), I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't have been an appealing option for my players.
But who knows, considering we just started a Dark Sun campaign 

What happened was that they allied with Aboleth, Duergar, Githzerai and Orcs to defeat a combined force of mind flayers of Thoon and Ilsensine. (The orc allies were not something I ever had had in mind: It was an accidental side-effect of the druid player using reincarnate on a key npc, who was reborn as an orc!)

They failed to ally with celestials (because of questionable behaviour), a draconic cult, the drow (for lack of investigating/contacting them), githyanki, and an undead army led by a vampire lord (because they didn't want them as allies or didn't realize they might be won as allies, respectively).

In the end, they did defeat the threat (and several players actually felt the finale was too easy - but that was only a logical consequence of their effectiveness at utilizing their allies' resources and a bit of luck).[/sblock]

When I introduced my campaign idea to the players, they basically agreed they were interested in battling the psionic villains and accepted that they would have to play characters that were lawful members of a border patrol - at least initially.

So, they started on a railroad with a fixed destination, got to change a couple of switch points (and once replace a wagon), stop every once in a while at a tiny sandbox, and choose to skip a few stops.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 7, 2011)

the Jester said:


> And actually, "the only solution to your problem is the Disks of Mishakal" in the first place is a strong railroady element in itself.



Yeah. The term 'pixelbitching' has been put forward for that type of thing, from videogames where you have to click on one particular pixel or nothing will happen. Although the PCs are free to go anywhere, nothing very interesting will happen unless they pick the single correct solution.



> Why can't the pcs try to raise armies and take the field? Why can't they join the Dragonarmies? Why can't they infiltrate them and try to assassinate their leader? Why can't they seek out a bunch of dragon slaying weapons instead (I know, that comes later)? Why can't they try to appeal to the dragons' vanity and pride to get them to eat their riders?
> 
> None of those have to _work,_ but the fact is, in the old DL modules there is no point whatsoever to even trying any of them, or anything else outside of the pre-written story. _That's_ a railroad.



What if a GM allows the players to try any or all of these things but makes them extremely difficult and/or unrewarding for the PCs? So the GM's preferred path thru the campaign is easy street, the path of least resistance. Everything else is, not impossible, but much, much more difficult. For example if the PCs join the draconian army they get given all the terrible jobs, are constantly insulted and occasionally attacked by their own side (friendly fire!) and their new allies steal any nice treasure they acquire. Railroad? Heavy-handed? Passive-aggressive GMing? "You guys are free to go anywhere and try anything you want! (It's just that if you don't do what I want you'll always fail.)"


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 7, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> Sandboxes seem to work best if the heroes' actions are largely inconsequential on a world-wide scope. I think it's also best for a sandbox if the pcs are really not that special, i.e. low-powered rather than (super-)heroic.



Sandbox = low fantasy? Adventure path = high fantasy?


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## Nagol (Jun 7, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> Yeah. The term 'pixelbitching' has been put forward for that type of thing, from videogames where you have to click on one particular pixel or nothing will happen. Although the PCs are free to go anywhere, nothing very interesting will happen unless they pick the single correct solution.
> 
> What if a GM allows the players to try any or all of these things but makes them extremely difficult and/or unrewarding for the PCs? So the GM's preferred path thru the campaign is easy street, the path of least resistance. Everything else is, not impossible, but much, much more difficult. For example if the PCs join the draconian army they get given all the terrible jobs, are constantly insulted and occasionally attacked by their own side (friendly fire!) and their new allies steal any nice treasure they acquire. Railroad? Heavy-handed? Passive-aggressive GMing? "You guys are free to go anywhere and try anything you want! (It's just that if you don't do what I want you'll always fail.)"




Bad DMs exist across the spectrum of games.  The expression of bad DMing varies by the philosophy at the table.  Passive-aggressive "soft railroading" aka "Do what I want or expect to be miserable" is at least as possible in a linear campaign structure.


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## billd91 (Jun 7, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> What if a GM allows the players to try any or all of these things but makes them extremely difficult and/or unrewarding for the PCs? So the GM's preferred path thru the campaign is easy street, the path of least resistance. Everything else is, not impossible, but much, much more difficult. For example if the PCs join the draconian army they get given all the terrible jobs, are constantly insulted and occasionally attacked by their own side (friendly fire!) and their new allies steal any nice treasure they acquire. Railroad? Heavy-handed? Passive-aggressive GMing? "You guys are free to go anywhere and try anything you want! (It's just that if you don't do what I want you'll always fail.)"




How would you know if any particular course of action is harder than another or unrewarding without trying or without having already tried in the same campaign? How does a player know which path is the one of least resistance?

If you don't trust your GM to make the consequences of an action fair, why would it matter if it's a railroad or a sandbox you're playing with? As a player, you're screwed anyway.

As a player in a Dragonlance campaign, if my non-draconian PCs joined a draconian army as a mercenary or opportunist, I would expect some resistance for a while. Hazing, dominance games, and so on. These are the corrupted offspring of dragons we're talking about here. My PC would need to prove his chops before he could expect any respect, and even then it wouldn't be universal. I wouldn't necessarily call that out as a railroad or punishment.


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## the Jester (Jun 7, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> What if a GM allows the players to try any or all of these things but makes them extremely difficult and/or unrewarding for the PCs? So the GM's preferred path thru the campaign is easy street, the path of least resistance. Everything else is, not impossible, but much, much more difficult. For example if the PCs join the draconian army they get given all the terrible jobs, are constantly insulted and occasionally attacked by their own side (friendly fire!) and their new allies steal any nice treasure they acquire. Railroad? Heavy-handed? Passive-aggressive GMing?




Heavy-handed, yes, but as long as the option is there it's not a total railroad. (As I posted earlier, it's a spectrum.) I don't have a problem with this. As another example, in Temple of Elemental Evil, the easiest way to deal with 



Spoiler



Zuggtmoy


 is to 



Spoiler



not open those intriguing magic doors


- super easy, because you don't have to do anything at all! Other courses are somewhere in between extremely difficult and lethal. Yet there is no railroad there. 



Doug McCrae said:


> "You guys are free to go anywhere and try anything you want! (It's just that if you don't do what I want you'll always fail.)"




Well, that's a bit more extreme- but it's not the same as "this choice is the easy one and the others are harder".



Jhaelen said:


> That's an interesting point. Interesting to me, because it illustrates what I consider to be a weakness of sandbox games:
> 
> Sandboxes seem to work best if the heroes' actions are largely inconsequential on a world-wide scope. I think it's also best for a sandbox if the pcs are really not that special, i.e. low-powered rather than (super-)heroic. This allows for others to jump in and take over.




It's a weakness for certain styles of play, absolutely. For others, what you see as a weakness is a great strength. I like not having to preserve the pc the prophecy is about or whatever.


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## S'mon (Jun 7, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> When I think of sandbox, I think of something like the West Marches campaign or The Vault of Larin Karr. The bad guys are disunited, localised and largely static. The setting as a whole is also static. There are no impending plots to take over or destroy the world. There is no great pressure on the PCs to choose one adventure location over another. This lack of pressure increases player freedom.




(Spoilers for Vault of Larin Karr)

I'm running VoLK, and it's not written as static.  At the beginning, the Orcs are plotting with the Hobgoblins.  If the PCs wipe out the hobgoblins, the Orcs start trying to recruit the Gnolls instead.  This takes time, but if the PCs don't wipe out the Orcs quickly enough, eventually they attack and destroy the PC's home base.

BUT the PCs are probably unaware of all this!  They certainly were IMC.  IMC they were off on a side trek - they'd just cleared out the Forge of Fury - when they heard that Pembrose was destroyed, Chaos forces had overrun Quail Valley and had joined those from the Caves of Chaos to besiege the Keep on the Borderlands.

None of that would have happened if things had gone differently, but the players were not aware of the bad guys' plans.


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## S'mon (Jun 8, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> That's an interesting point. Interesting to me, because it illustrates what I consider to be a weakness of sandbox games:
> 
> Sandboxes seem to work best if the heroes' actions are largely inconsequential on a world-wide scope. I think it's also best for a sandbox if the pcs are really not that special, i.e. low-powered rather than (super-)heroic. This allows for others to jump in and take over.




Naw, I've run very high level sandbox games, where the PCs' decisions (and sometimes their errors) literally reshaped the political map of the world.  High-power sandbox works fine if you're prepared to let PCs change your world.  It's only a problem if you're afraid to let them 'mess up' your precious campaign setting.


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## S'mon (Jun 8, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> Yeah. The term 'pixelbitching' has been put forward for that type of thing, from videogames where you have to click on one particular pixel or nothing will happen. Although the PCs are free to go anywhere, nothing very interesting will happen unless they pick the single correct solution.
> 
> What if a GM allows the players to try any or all of these things but makes them extremely difficult and/or unrewarding for the PCs? So the GM's preferred path thru the campaign is easy street, the path of least resistance. Everything else is, not impossible, but much, much more difficult. For example if the PCs join the draconian army they get given all the terrible jobs, are constantly insulted and occasionally attacked by their own side (friendly fire!) and their new allies steal any nice treasure they acquire. Railroad? Heavy-handed? Passive-aggressive GMing? "You guys are free to go anywhere and try anything you want! (It's just that if you don't do what I want you'll always fail.)"




If the DM is making all other options implausibly horrible, then that would seem to be railroading.  Having the Draconian forces initially distrustful, but won over by the PCs destroying an elf city or somesuch, would be fine.  I'd let smart PCs potentially maneuver into becoming Dragon High Lords or whatever the BBEGs are called.  Or maybe they'd lose the intrigue game and get their throats slit.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> Let me disect this further.
> 
> I'm talking about the feeling of being railroaded, and not having any choice, rather than the actuality of not having any other choice.




Aberzanzorax made a great post that I can't XP right now. He brought up the reward-stick. I mean, if I have a duke announce that he is going to reward the players for defending the town from demons in two days during a festival in their honor, is that railroading? I mean, that choice is obviously better than their other choices. They have no pressing matters to attend to. They know the duke is wealthy and that they're in his favor.

The PCs won't feel railroaded. However, it seems like (and I say seems because I don't know what you think for sure, so I leave room to be corrected) to you that if it were a negative consequence, it'd be railroading. That's what I take issue with.

If the demons threaten the PCs family in retaliation for their defeat, it's a consequence, not a railroad (even if I don't use the "threaten family" thing often). If the duke rewards them for helping defeat the demons, it's a consequence, not a railroad.

How the players feel in terms of railroad is important, but as long as everything is on the up-and-up, and they aren't being herded by the GM, then it's not a railroad.



> A Threat is lopsided.  If you don't deal with it, YOUR interests will be hurt.  If a threat to the kingdom isn't a big deal to the PCs, it isn't a Threat to the PCs.
> 
> From a player's perspective, once a Threat is on the board, they have no other choice but to solve it.




Yep. And as long as it follows the same rough guidelines I posted, then it's not a railroad:



> However, when running a sandbox game, there's one simple thing to keep in mind: everyone has motivations for everything they do. Period. Even crazy hermits have motivations, even if they aren't logical. So, if you did something that caused this attack, then it's just the consequences of actions you performed in a sandbox world. If it's someone doing this to get you out of the way while the BBEG does his evil plan (ie, Superman has to stop a missile or save Lois Lane), then it's just another action taking place in the sandbox world.




If any threat is legitimately motivated, and not twisted motivation or prodding by the GM, then it's still in a sandbox setting. If you aren't actually on rails, then there's no railroad. 



> This may actually be at the heart of the matter for the OP.  They want to go spelunking.  The DM brought out a Threat.  Now the players don't really feel like they have any choice but to deal with it.  In reality, sure, they could ignore Elminster.  Just like you could ignore the flat tire on your car and keep driving it.
> 
> I differentiate a Threat from an Opportunity.  Opportunities are the kind of things where a PC could pursue it, or another, and while there can be consequences, there's no extra pressure on a PC for one choice or another.  A Threat pretty much locks in a PC, failure means what the PC cares about is lost.




There's definitely a difference between the two. Opportunities are often more common, but they're basically actions the party can take when no consequences from past actions are affecting them.



> I see it as totally valid for a DM to use a Threat, hopefully sparingly.  But in no way should a DM delude himself into thinking that the PCs have a choice in tackling the Threat.  Because the players don't think they do.
> 
> the point with the extreme robbery example, is to illustrate that in real life and in game, a Threat can manifest that you MUST resolve or die.  And generally sitting there and dying is the only way you lose D&D.




The players might feel railroaded in a scenario, but if they do have a choice, and a legitimate one at that, then it's not a railroad, especially in situations where past choices led to the current scenario. Sure, you can assassinate three or four kings in high level 3.X, but when you become a victim of a "scry and fry" while you're sleeping to the united forces of the remaining royalty for revenge (or to protect their own hide), don't complain about it.

If you stand up to the same demonic army for years on end, helping hand them defeat after defeat wherever you are, don't expect them to not retaliate eventually. If that means simply distracting you by threatening your family, then it's part of the consequences for your past actions.



Doug McCrae said:


> What if a GM allows the players to try any or all of these things but makes them extremely difficult and/or unrewarding for the PCs? So the GM's preferred path thru the campaign is easy street, the path of least resistance. Everything else is, not impossible, but much, much more difficult. For example if the PCs join the draconian army they get given all the terrible jobs, are constantly insulted and occasionally attacked by their own side (friendly fire!) and their new allies steal any nice treasure they acquire. Railroad? Heavy-handed? Passive-aggressive GMing? "You guys are free to go anywhere and try anything you want! (It's just that if you don't do what I want you'll always fail.)"




As long as everything is handled by the above guidelines (the appropriate motivations), then it's fine. I mean, players sometimes feel railroaded when the only way to deal with the shopkeep is by buying his stuff (working with the draconians). Maybe he won't barter or lower his price, even on a Diplomacy check (draconians won't let outsiders work for them). You might be able to steal from him, but as a high-end magic shop, he's very well prepared (draconian army and heroes prepared for assaults on their leaders). You can threaten his life, and he might be willing to negotiate now (if you can threaten the leaders of the draconian army, you might be willing to get a negotiation process moving forward). You can dominate the shopkeep magically (you can dominate the leaders of the draconian armies magically).

Some are easier than others. When it's the shopkeep, very rarely are there cries of railroading, unless it's very much like your scenario, where "only X works, you just have to figure it out." If the other options are legitimately easy, difficult, or non-existent do to appropriate motivations, then it's not a railroad.


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## Janx (Jun 8, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> Sandbox = low fantasy? Adventure path = high fantasy?




That would match my imaginary impression of a sandbox.  I don't know about the reality.

I've heard sandboxes called Status Quo campaigns.  That gives the impression that not much changes unless the PCs change it or instigate some consequence that changes things.

I certainly see that "the end is nigh, unless you stop it" kind of problems as being high fantasy, and likely to strongly encourage player participation unless they want to see the campaign end.

As to the OP's problem, here's some hopefully new thoughts.

the game's time table has you rushing.  With no game time passing (or able to be passed), there's really no room for side quests or "before we go help him, let's do X."

The PCs are nearly level 20.  Nobody should be telling 20th levels what to do.  20th levels should be telling others what to do and making strategy.  Elminster should be ASKING the party what their thoughts on the best strategy is and ASKING them to implement the solution the PARTY came up with.  In fact, it would be more in character for a wise, powerful NPC to let the party derive the solution that he has already thought of.

The GM, by way of the NPCs seems to be issuing "go here, do this" directives to the party.  Even in a "linear" adventure, he should be revealing information about the problem (troop forces, captured plans) that the party is deciding how to solve (let's go there, and do that).  I reckon there's a time and place for an NPC to issue an order to a PC, but that should be heavily based on context (a bossy king, whom you expect they'll disobey; a trusted mentor who seldom gives direct orders).

This doesn't change the fact that there's a war on, and the kinds of adventures you have will be about the war.  But the approach to how the PCs get the hooks and decide to follow the hooks probably needs to change.


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## Nagol (Jun 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> That would match my imaginary impression of a sandbox.  I don't know about the reality.
> 
> I've heard sandboxes called Status Quo campaigns.  That gives the impression that not much changes unless the PCs change it or instigate some consequence that changes things.
> 
> <snip>




Status Quo doesn't refer to how the setting evolves over time.

Status Quo refers to those campaigns where the inhabitants of an area have a (generally) stable CR/EL regardless of the level of the PCs when they travel through the area.  Areas are generally stable in terms of threat and likely encounters, but that can change over time as the character of the setting changes.


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## Aberzanzorax (Jun 8, 2011)

Well, thankya kindly Jamesoncourage! 


To somewhat summarize this longer post 







Aberzanzorax said:


> <snip>




If it's railroading to get hit with the punishmentstick if you don't do the things that the story or world dictates are "best"...
...is it also railroading to be rewarded if you do the the things that the story or world dictates are "best"?

What if we change "best" to "sensible"?



How are the *reward* versus punishment paradigms considered in this whole conversation?


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## Janx (Jun 8, 2011)

Nagol said:


> Status Quo doesn't refer to how the setting evolves over time.
> 
> Status Quo refers to those campaigns where the inhabitants of an area have a (generally) stable CR/EL regardless of the level of the PCs when they travel through the area.  Areas are generally stable in terms of threat and likely encounters, but that can change over time as the character of the setting changes.




I guess it puzzles me that there needs to be a term for that.

If every NPC/monster leveled when the PCs do, that would be stupid (Elder Scrolls IV, my favorite game does this).

I am disinclined to alter or level up the kobolds who live in the cave next to Newbieville.

I am inclined to make the next new Threat or Opportunity be level appropriate under the premise that the PCs have risen in rank socially and as such, the problems they encounter are of a larger nature.  1st level PCs don't get summoned by the 10th level Lord to ask for their help.  They are beneath his notice.  8th level PCs have traveled far and earned the animosity of higher level beings.  As such, that's the kind of trouble they find.

But if the PCs want to go slumming with the peons, they are probably still there.


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## Janx (Jun 8, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> Well, thankya kindly Jamesoncourage!
> 
> 
> To somewhat summarize this longer post (
> ...




I wouldn't fully call the punishment stick a railroad.  Sure, I argue that when you threaten the empire I founded, my business operations, my personal interests, I have little choice but to respond, that doesn't make it a railroad.  it just means that for a while, I have to solve this Threat, so I can get back to the Opportunities I really want to pursue.

If all the PCs get are Threats, than that can be the sign of a railroad.

But a full on railroad?  I'm reminded of an example I read here a few years back, where the GM insisted the party use this Tank to attack the enemy, and everytime they failed to do it JUST his way, they restarted back at the Tank.  That was a railroad.


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## Nagol (Jun 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> I guess it puzzles me that there needs to be a term for that.
> 
> If every NPC/monster leveled when the PCs do, that would be stupid (Elder Scrolls IV, my favorite game does this).
> 
> ...




The opposite philosophy is termed Tailored where the encounters are speecifically tailored to the PC group.  A lot of Bioware games (Mass Effect series, Dragon Age series, Bioshock IIRC) use this approach.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 8, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> Getting the players to do exactly what you want, without them feeling they've been railroaded, is good GMing.



Heh, what I want the players to do is _surprise me!_ 

Railroading would actually get in the way of that. 

The Auld Grump


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## Ariosto (Jun 8, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> Yeah. The term 'pixelbitching' has been put forward for that type of thing, from videogames where you have to click on one particular pixel or nothing will happen. Although the PCs are free to go anywhere, nothing very interesting will happen unless they pick the single correct solution.
> 
> What if a GM allows the players to try any or all of these things but makes them extremely difficult and/or unrewarding for the PCs?




That's not anything peculiar to RPGs.

It's old-fashioned game design. A trivially "solved" game is boring.

RPGs came from D&D, and D&D came from wargames. Old time wargamers should be well acquainted with the concept of a game situation with so many possible and strategically viable histories that it is indeed worth replaying several times. The greatest wargames get avidly replayed multiple times.

A D&D campaign should be much richer in possibilities than, say, _The Russian Campaign_.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 8, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, this is where definitions start getting tricky.  If you have a timeline for Keep on the Borderlands, and the players not engaging in that timeline results in strong, negative consequences for the characters, there's not so much difference with an outright railroad.
> 
> Do X or get beaten with the punishment stick, or Just Do X amounts to largely the same thing.
> 
> ...



Whether the line is blurry or not depends on the folks running and playing the game - the world doesn't end if the Keep on the Borderlands becomes a bastion of Chaos. The players can flee the area, or retreat, regroup, and return - failing now does not mean being unable to turn things back around later, so, yeah scale is important. Pretty safe to assume that failing to prevent a Chaos incursion in a CR 1-3 area won't end with the world ending, though.

How does Smoking Sulfurous Fumarole on the Borderlands sound?


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## pawsplay (Jun 8, 2011)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Originally Posted by Doug McCrae
> _Getting the players to do exactly what you want, without them feeling they've been railroaded, is good GMing. _
> 
> 
> ...




While I can see the entertainment value to be had by playing with yourself while others watch, most of the time, when I game, I want to get it on.


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## pawsplay (Jun 8, 2011)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Heh, what I want the players to do is _surprise me!_
> 
> Railroading would actually get in the way of that.
> 
> The Auld Grump






TheAuldGrump said:


> Whether the line is blurry or not depends on the folks running and playing the game - the world doesn't end if the Keep on the Borderlands becomes a bastion of Chaos. The players can flee the area, or retreat, regroup, and return - failing now does not mean being unable to turn things back around later, so, yeah scale is important. Pretty safe to assume that failing to prevent a Chaos incursion in a CR 1-3 area won't end with the world ending, though.
> 
> How does Smoking Sulfurous Fumarole on the Borderlands sound?




Considering how many situations begin with something already having gone bad, I've never really seen the problem with "the world ending," unless the entire usable world literally ends. At the beginning of Star Wars, the Empire has already "won;" we now know that it was because a previous group of PCs pretty much mucked the whole thing up.


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## Jhaelen (Jun 8, 2011)

S'mon said:


> High-power sandbox works fine if you're prepared to let PCs change your world.  It's only a problem if you're afraid to let them 'mess up' your precious campaign setting.



In my experience it's not me, the DM, who has the problem of being afraid to 'mess up' _our_ (it certainly isn't just mine!) 'precious' campaign. It's the players who are afraid, or rather, who aren't interested in continuing to play if the campaign becomes too different from the initial setup that was agreed upon.

In the particular case of my campaign I would have been fine with continuing play in a world overrun and ruled by mind flayers, it's my players who (probably) wouldn't have enjoyed it.
I was wrecking the setting pretty thoroughly, as it was.

Actually, I think, I'm going to ask my players to see if they would have been interested in such a scenario. Maybe I'll be surprised


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## S'mon (Jun 8, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> In my experience it's not me, the DM, who has the problem of being afraid to 'mess up' _our_ (it certainly isn't just mine!) 'precious' campaign. It's the players who are afraid, or rather, who aren't interested in continuing to play if the campaign becomes too different from the initial setup that was agreed upon.
> 
> In the particular case of my campaign I would have been fine with continuing play in a world overrun and ruled by mind flayers, it's my players who (probably) wouldn't have enjoyed it.
> I was wrecking the setting pretty thoroughly, as it was.
> ...




In my main campaign world kingdoms expand, contract, merge, are destroyed and so on, frequently as a result of player action.  A major empire was recently conquered/destroyed by extradimensional invaders.  PC 'starting areas' tend to be more stable initially while the PCs are low level, by the time major threats/events arrive they may be high enough level to influence them.
I tend not to do a lot of "You must do X or the world ends" plots; though a few of these have occurred over many years of play, Buffy-style "weekly end of the world" approach strains my credulity and interest.

Edit: I tend to use human & near-human threats, rather than alien aberrations like mindflayers - I think it's a lot easier to keep playing in Nazi-occupied France than in Cthulutown.


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## Starfox (Jun 8, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> In my experience it's not me, the DM, who has the problem of being afraid to 'mess up' _our_ (it certainly isn't just mine!) 'precious' campaign. It's the players who are afraid, or rather, who aren't interested in continuing to play if the campaign becomes too different from the initial setup that was agreed upon.
> [...]
> Actually, I think, I'm going to ask my players to see if they would have been interested in such a scenario. Maybe I'll be surprised




At the end of my Greyhawk-based Savage Tide game, I was seriously considering a points-of-light post-savage-tide Greyhawk. Might have been fun. "Unfortunately" the PCs succeeded in saving the world.


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## Starfox (Jun 8, 2011)

There is another thing to be considered here, and that is campaign premise. When recruiting players to a game, whether to give them directions on what characters to play and what kind of gameplay to expect is important. 

Suppose the GM has a two-year plot to end the world in the works. But the introduction to the game doesn't mention this, it encourages the players to make characters deeply rooted in the detailed game world. Well, they do - making a gardener, a dancer, and a stargazer. These three become friends and seek out problems based around gardening, social dancing (and the intrigues thereof) and finding high mountains with clear views of the stars. The GM introduces hints about the end of the world, which the players decline to handle as being out-of-character to them. Instead they develop their interests, becoming deeply entangled in the world and involved in their characters. After two years, all hell breaks loose, and the players are justifiably angry at the DM for arbitarily destroying what they built. And they are right - the game did not live up to its premise.

What I am trying to say is that in a sandbox, the GM must be prepared to take on responsibility for his own plots. If the world destruction plot turns out not to engage the players, there should be some NPC to handle it while the players muck around in the sand. This NPC could be a character the PCs deal with to convey some of the drama of the story, and the players might be tangentially involved in the plot - the gardener might make a herbal remedy, the dancer may facilitate an alliance, and the stargazer might make a map or provide crucial navigation aid. But if the GM is not satisfied with the level of player involvement in the plot, it is his own fault for not setting the premise clearly enough from the beginning.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 8, 2011)

pawsplay said:


> Considering how many situations begin with something already having gone bad, I've never really seen the problem with "the world ending," unless the entire usable world literally ends. At the beginning of Star Wars, the Empire has already "won;" we now know that it was because a previous group of PCs pretty much mucked the whole thing up.




I always  like to leave the possibility of failure and consequences on the table. As a player, one of my pet peeves is when the GM fudges to save characters or preserve the plot/setting. But I feel these are missed opportunities for interesting play. That doesn't mean you should have world changing invasions or cataclysms on a regular basis, just that the GM should contemplate, what happens if the PCs don't succeed? What interesting events can follow failure?


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## Nagol (Jun 8, 2011)

Starfox said:


> There is another thing to be considered here, and that is campaign premise. When recruiting players to a game, whether to give them directions on what characters to play and what kind of gameplay to expect is important.
> 
> Suppose the GM has a two-year plot to end the world in the works. But the introduction to the game doesn't mention this, it encourages the players to make characters deeply rooted in the detailed game world. Well, they do - making a gardener, a dancer, and a stargazer. These three become friends and seek out problems based around gardening, social dancing (and the intrigues thereof) and finding high mountains with clear views of the stars. The GM introduces hints about the end of the world, which the players decline to handle as being out-of-character to them. Instead they develop their interests, becoming deeply entangled in the world and involved in their characters. After two years, all hell breaks loose, and the players are justifiably angry at the DM for arbitarily destroying what they built. And they are right - the game did not live up to its premise.
> 
> What I am trying to say is that in a sandbox, the GM must be prepared to take on responsibility for his own plots. If the world destruction plot turns out not to engage the players, there should be some NPC to handle it while the players muck around in the sand. This NPC could be a character the PCs deal with to convey some of the drama of the story, and the players might be tangentially involved in the plot - the gardener might make a herbal remedy, the dancer may facilitate an alliance, and the stargazer might make a map or provide crucial navigation aid. But if the GM is not satisfied with the level of player involvement in the plot, it is his own fault for not setting the premise clearly enough from the beginning.




I disagree.  The players now get to play how their deeply rooted characters deal with hell breaking loose on the world thay care for.  If the DM sets up a situation (I hate to call it a plot since that suggests a defined set of actions and known end state which my sandbox does not have) and the PCs ignore or decline to engage then that situation evolves over time to its natural end.  That doesn't mean it'll always end horrifically; sometimes NPCs will turn it around (which can also happen if the PCs do get involved though it tends to be more rare since PCs tend to make quick work of things that raise their ire) or the master villain will make a fatal mistake.  After all, the game is about the PCs and how they act and react to changes.  This is just a larger change than is common.

Now, that doesn't mean properly advertising campaign structure and premise isn't important; I find it absolutely is.  I despise bait-and-switch character creation where the premise provided for constructing the characters is invalidated in the first adventure (e.g. "I have an idea for a light social intrigue; surprise! Zombies are rising!" or "Build some good adventurers for a vanilla D&D campaign -- surprise! The mists you just walked through led to the Demiplane of Dread").  But if the dire situation introduced is within scope of the premise, so be it.


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## S'mon (Jun 8, 2011)

I agree with Nagol.  I dislike bait & switch too; if the end of the world threat is going to be a major part of your campaign you need to tell the players that and get buy-in up front.  If they create gardeners, dancers & stargazers (and the threat isn't a Plant Demon Star Dancer) who refuse to engage, then well that's their choice.

In my sandboxy main campaign world I do quite often have NPC heroes deal with threats, often resulting in the demise of those heroes.  Most of those threats were not statted out as things I expected PCs to deal with though; just part of life's rich pageant.  If there was a PC-area threat they ignored I might well roll randomly to determine the resolution.


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## Vespucci (Jun 8, 2011)

By putting into the game world, from the outset, that a potentially world-destroying event is in the post, the ref is engaged in telling his story, not running the game.  I think what seems so wrong about the gardener, dancer, and stargazer case (GDS-case) is that the ref has determined their role behind the backs of the players.  The characters aren't just an trio of arty hippie types, they're also the heroes on whom the fate of the world depends _no matter what the players think_.

"Railroad" versus "sandbox" isn't a very good way of capturing the distinctions involved in this case.  On the other hand, if I had my way with the hobby's terminology we'd only use "Dungeon Master" to refer to guys like Gary Gygax...


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## Nagol (Jun 8, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> By putting into the game world, from the outset, that a potentially world-destroying event is in the post, the ref is engaged in telling his story, not running the game.  I think what seems so wrong about the gardener, dancer, and stargazer case (GDS-case) is that the ref has determined their role behind the backs of the players.  The characters aren't just an trio of arty hippie types, they're also the heroes on whom the fate of the world depends _no matter what the players think_.
> 
> "Railroad" versus "sandbox" isn't a very good way of capturing the distinctions involved in this case.  On the other hand, if I had my way with the hobby's terminology we'd only use "Dungeon Master" to refer to guys like Gary Gygax...




I'm unsure of that.  For example, if the premise of the game was a low-combat high-intrigue game set at the Royal Court and the world-shattering event was a set of tensions that could result in a great world-sprawling war that would overwhelm the nation quickly then the gardener, dancer, and astronomer would possibly be fitting characters and the potential devastation would be natural to the milieu.


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## Vespucci (Jun 8, 2011)

Nagol said:


> I'm unsure of that.  For example, if the premise of the game was a low-combat high-intrigue game set at the Royal Court and the world-shattering event was a set of tensions that could result in a great world-sprawling war that would overwhelm the nation quickly then the gardener, dancer, and astronomer would possibly be fitting characters and the potential devastation would be natural to the milieu.




Let's go back to what Starfox wrote:
Suppose the GM has a two-year plot to end the world in the works. But the introduction to the game doesn't mention this, it encourages the players to make characters deeply rooted in the detailed game world. Well, they do - making a gardener, a dancer, and a stargazer. These three become friends and seek out problems based around gardening, social dancing (and the intrigues thereof) and finding high mountains with clear views of the stars. The GM introduces hints about the end of the world, which the players decline to handle as being out-of-character to them.​ What you've described is _how to avoid the problem_.  I was trying to _describe the problem_.


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## Nagol (Jun 8, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> Let's go back to what Starfox wrote:
> Suppose the GM has a two-year plot to end the world in the works. But the introduction to the game doesn't mention this, it encourages the players to make characters deeply rooted in the detailed game world. Well, they do - making a gardener, a dancer, and a stargazer. These three become friends and seek out problems based around gardening, social dancing (and the intrigues thereof) and finding high mountains with clear views of the stars. The GM introduces hints about the end of the world, which the players decline to handle as being out-of-character to them.​ What you've described is _how to avoid the problem_.  I was trying to _describe the problem_.




Right, but if I were preparing to run a game as I described, I'd build a default timeline that runs out 2-3 years that I can map PC actions and the consequences thereof against.  It is entirely possible that in such a setting that sometime in year 2 the great war will break out _in the absence of PC action_.  Every action and every consequence will be judged as to its effect on the timeline.

The players have had advertised that this is a high-intrigue game and know the starting situation.  The changes over time are telegraphed in different ways and opportunities emerge for the PCs to get involved.  The PCs deliberately refuse to engage because it's out of character for them.



> The GM introduces hints about the end of the world, which the players decline to handle as being out-of-character to them.




It's perfectly their right to do so and everyone is having fun attending the equivalent of The Burning Man when news of the war strikes.

Now the PCs can react to their (in)actions and the consequences thereof.  The event is entirely within the original premise and is partially derived from the consequences of the PC choices over the preceding two years.


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## Vespucci (Jun 8, 2011)

Nagol said:


> Right, but if I were preparing to run a game as I described, I'd build a default timeline that runs out 2-3 years that I can map PC actions and the consequences thereof against....  The event is entirely within the original premise and is partially derived from the consequences of the PC choices over the preceding two years.




When you first put up "tensions" and "intrigue", I had it in mind that perhaps this was an idea for a game in which the characters muddling is integral to potential disaster.  But in a "default timeline that runs out 2-3 years", the players don't own the event.  You've scripted something (and put great effort into it), thrust a role in that story upon the characters, and - should the players dare to refuse that role - will resort to punishing their characters.


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## Nagol (Jun 8, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> When you first put up "tensions" and "intrigue", I had it in mind that perhaps this was an idea for a game in which the characters muddling is integral to potential disaster.  But in a "default timeline that runs out 2-3 years", the players don't own the event.  You've scripted something (and put great effort into it), thrust a role in that story upon the characters, and - should the players dare to refuse that role - will resort to punishing their characters.




I find in intrigue games that the relationships and attitudes of the players act as the 'landscape' of the game.  It allows me some foreknowledge of what might be if the PCs do not get involved in any form of consequential action that I can use and adjust to track relationships, knowledge and events.  The timeline is a framework to act as a control for the intrigue and the in-game relation of events -- it starts at a page or two and grows with player choices and consequences. 

The only 'script' is what would happen if the PCs weren't there or the PCs chose not to involve themselves.  The PCs are not thrust into a role.  They are thrust into a pivotal situation that they can affect as they wish.  They are masters of their fate within the context of the situation.

Why should the event be considered a punishment?  It is no more a punishment than hitting the ground is a punishment for falling off a stool used as a ladder.  Certainly, it is not a deisred result and the actors wish it hadn't happened, but it is not a punishment.


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## Vespucci (Jun 8, 2011)

Nagol said:


> I find in intrigue games that the relationships and attitudes of the players act as the 'landscape' of the game.




Are you kidding?  I was going to take you on for treating the players like the cast of your production, but now they're being demoted to scenery?!  I wrote the rest of the reply before seeing this on the proof-read.  Clearly we have _wildly different notions_ of how to run an RPG, and can probably talk past each other until the end of time.

[sblock=remainder of reply]







Nagol said:


> It allows me some foreknowledge of what might be if the PCs do not get involved in any form of consequential action that I can use and adjust to track relationships, knowledge and events.  The timeline is a framework to act as a control for the intrigue and the in-game relation of events -- it starts at a page or two and grows with player choices and consequences.
> 
> The only 'script' is what would happen if the PCs weren't there or the PCs chose not to involve themselves.  The PCs are not thrust into a role.  They are thrust into a pivotal situation that they can affect as they wish.  They are masters of their fate within the context of the situation.




You cannot have it both ways.  Either, the characters are thrust into a pivotal situation, _or_, they are not thrust into a role.  It's possible to pitch the pivotal role to the players - if they agree to play but then reject the role, it's probably best to just have a talk out-of-character, starting with, "Hey guys, would you rather be playing a different kind of game?"  (In fact, this is pretty much what happens in the default assumption.  The players are invited to make up adventurers, but sometimes they don't...)



Nagol said:


> Why should the event be considered a punishment?  It is no more a punishment than hitting the ground is a punishment for falling off a stool used as a ladder.  Certainly, it is not a deisred result and the actors wish it hadn't happened, but it is not a punishment.




The reason it's punishment in this case is that (sticking to the analogy) you're the one in control of physics.  Moreover, it's very clear from the language you used to describe the scenario: "opportunities emerge for the PCs to get involved.  The PCs deliberately refuse to engage because it's out of character for them".

Conflating player and character is unhelpful.  The characters do not engage because the activity is unnatural to them - it's not a deliberate activity on their part.  The players do not engage because they're not interested in your plot, or because your hooks fail to motivate them.  Or perhaps they're just contrary.  In any case, the players' deliberate refusal to engage with your story is the reason you've sent the characters tumbling to the ground and inflicted bruises upon them.[/sblock]


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## Nagol (Jun 8, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> Are you kidding?  I was going to take you on for treating the players like the cast of your production, but now they're being demoted to scenery?!  I wrote the rest of the reply before seeing this on the proof-read.  Clearly we have _wildly different notions_ of how to run an RPG, and can probably talk past each other until the end of time.




The PCs are not landscape; the relationships to others are the landscape.  Rather than traveling to the dungeon of Doom and releasing a demon, they accept the advances of a potential lover and trigger a new rivalry.  



> You cannot have it both ways.  Either, the characters are thrust into a pivotal situation, _or_, they are not thrust into a role.




I don't want it both ways.  I never claimed the PCs had a role.  They exist in a pivotal situation.  Their role, if any, is decided by the players.  The consequences of the world depend on the roles they choose and the actions they take within them.  The world continues to exist and evolve in their absence if they decide to not have a role.



> <snip>
> 
> 
> The reason it's punishment in this case is that (sticking to the analogy) you're the one in control of physics.  Moreover, it's very clear from the language you used to describe the scenario: "opportunities emerge for the PCs to get involved.  The PCs deliberately refuse to engage because it's out of character for them".
> ...




I am not conflating player and PC.  In the hypothetical example, the players were pitched a high-intrigue royal court campaign.  The PCs refused to engage the opportunities to affect the fate as per the OP.  As to why the players thought such engagement out-of-character, it is unstated.  I could build a deeper hyothetical set of examples as to opportunities and reasons for refusal, but frankly they're immaterial to the discussion.


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## the Jester (Jun 8, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> When you first put up "tensions" and "intrigue", I had it in mind that perhaps this was an idea for a game in which the characters muddling is integral to potential disaster.  But in a "default timeline that runs out 2-3 years", the players don't own the event.  You've scripted something (and put great effort into it), thrust a role in that story upon the characters, and - should the players dare to refuse that role - will resort to punishing their characters.




I keep seeing this notion that consequences are punishment, and I think that is a large part of the disconnect here. In fact, I think *consequences happen based on pc action or inaction* is a characteristic of old skool gaming (at least, the old skool I play by). 

The whole "don't kill pcs/destroy equipment/use their background against them/enforce social consequences when they attack people in town" approach is a very different approach. In my version of old skool gaming, the players know that they don't always win and may have seen tpks to prove the point. They certainly know better than to expect plot immunity.

One thing about 'world ending' menaces: most of them really don't, even if they win. What happens if the evil empire sweeps across civilization? Well, the world may turn ugly, but it doesn't end. What happens when the archdevil Belial is released on earth? Well, the world may turn ugly, but it doesn't end. What happens if the giant comet hits the world? Well, the world may turn ugly, but it doesn't end. Sure, any of these could result in the destruction of the pcs and everyone they know. _So what?_ The next party tries to beat the darkness back, Midnight style!

Here's another thing about these things: In a sandbox, the pcs may well not be the only people responding to the situation. Just because the pcs flee the evil empire's advance doesn't mean that the dwarf heroes of Grimhold do, too- and maybe they can hold the evil back.

The pcs _aren't the center of the world_ in a sandbox. They aren't assured of success. They may not even be the guys that handle the problem. 

This continuing assertion that "consequences" are "punishment" misses the point of consequences entirely. They aren't arbitrary, they are the logical result of what has gone before, possibly including the pcs' actions, possibly including their inaction. But I'll put this forward again- if the pcs insist on attacking and robbing store owners in town, is it "punishment" when the other store owners stop opening the doors for them? 

I mean, they can't sell loot, buy new weapons (with which to rob more stores!), cash in those gems- is this punishment, or a consequence? If you call it punishment, how do you handle the problem in game, without metagaming it, without saying "Hey, stop that, you guys" to the players? Or do you just blow it off and assume the merchants are too stupid to protect themselves? (After all, wouldn't hiring competent guards be "punishment" too?)


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## S'mon (Jun 8, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> When you first put up "tensions" and "intrigue", I had it in mind that perhaps this was an idea for a game in which the characters muddling is integral to potential disaster.  But in a "default timeline that runs out 2-3 years", the players don't own the event.  You've scripted something (and put great effort into it), thrust a role in that story upon the characters, and - should the players dare to refuse that role - will resort to punishing their characters.




I take it you wouldn't want to play in a game set in Belgium, July 1914 or Poland, August 1939, then?


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## Janx (Jun 8, 2011)

the Jester said:


> I keep seeing this notion that consequences are punishment, and I think that is a large part of the disconnect here. In fact, I think *consequences happen based on pc action or inaction* is a characteristic of old skool gaming (at least, the old skool I play by).





Sometimes Consequences are the Punishment.

Consequences can be used as the cattle prod for a rail road.


Let's say we have a game world where at the current moment, the PCs have a number of opportunities, and there's a variety of bad guys the PCs could try to stop.  Let's say that each of these bad guys is a nuisance in the game world, but none of them is a Threat.  They're not currently massing an army to wipe out all mankind, etc.

At that point, it's pretty much a static world, like an 80's TV show.

If the PCs go do heroic stuff, failure should mean Consequences.  if the PCs do bad stuff, there should be Consequences.  If both examples, the PCs are the Initiator.  They took an action to change the game world, and the Consequences are appropriate to that action.  The Consequences should probably have even been predictable.  But in no way, were the Consequences of such concern to be a Threat.  The PCs weren't reacting.

When the GM announces, "you hear rumors of a new force in the east, gather power, seeking to eliminate all mankind", the GM is the Initiator.  At that point, the Consequences will occur unless the PCs jump on the plot wagon.

Thats where Consequences runs the risk of railroading, being a prod to force player down a path.

So, is a GM allowed to Initiate trouble?  Much like the 80's TV shows. The A-Team drives along, until they hear about a problem (GM Initiated Threat).  If the party doesn't get involved, there will be Consequences.


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## Mort (Jun 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> When the GM announces, "you hear rumors of a new force in the east, gather power, seeking to eliminate all mankind", the GM is the Initiator.  At that point, the Consequences will occur unless the PCs jump on the plot wagon.
> 
> Thats where Consequences runs the risk of railroading, being a prod to force player down a path.




As long as the PC can ignore the threat and do something else (consequences or no) it's not railroading. As long as the players have a meaningful choice, again, it's not railroading. If, no matter what the players seemingly choose, they end up confronting the big bad threat (even if they deliberately go in the opposite direction for example) then it's quite likely railroading.

Let's say at 1st level the players hear whisperings of a mad hermit working on a world destroying device, they ignore it and end the city's goblin menace instead.

At 4th level, they hear stronger rumors of a mad hermit gathering items for a world destroying device. As they've also heard of at least 3 adventuring groups and a city militia seeking out the hermit, they ignore it figuring they have easier and better things to do.

At 10th level, it's more than a rumor - the mad hermit has established a trap infested cave where so far no one has returned from. Constructs, undead etc. are known to guard the place. The king has put out an open (pleading) call for adventurers to help (as well as devoting his own army and resources) and many have responded. The PCs, having other obligations, politely decline.

At 15th level, while the PCs are in the middle of their current adventure - the world blows up.

The above may be a bit heavy handed, but is not railroading (unless you expand the definition so broadly as to make it lose all meaning).


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## Janx (Jun 8, 2011)

Mort said:


> As long as the PC can ignore the threat and do something else (consequences or no) it's not railroading. As long as the players have a meaningful choice, again, it's not railroading. If, no matter what the players seemingly choose, they end up confronting the big bad threat (even if they deliberately go in the opposite direction for example) then it's quite likely railroading.




I think I see where my point is being missed.

Forget gaming for a minute.  Let's talk real life.  Because gaming is just attempting to model real life, minus the boring stuff.

My thesis is this, at any given moment in your life, while technically you have a multitude of actions you could take, many of those choices are self-negated and effectively non-choices.

You are going to go to work every day, because you have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay.  Just quitting for no reason is not something you would do, therefore it is not Choice.

You are not going to Eric's grandma's house to murder her and take her stuff, because you are not a murderer.  It is not a Choice.  Even though you technically could get her address and go pay her a visit.

When yet another pipe sprung a leak on Monday AND my AC went out, I had no choice not to fix it lest my water bill shoot through the roof, my house is destroyed by water damage and we die from the heat because I live in TX.

Therefore, when the GM raises the new Threat, if he has designed it with your PCs in mind, you do not really have a choice to not deal with it.

Any sane person who does not deal with their problems is a freaking idiot.  Seriously, that's what people with problems that they don't deal with are.  

Now I suppose there's a corner case for the pacifist who won't resist a robbery and gets killed for his beliefs, but even there, that wasn't exactly a genius move.

In my view, a PC who doesn't take a realistic response to a problem isn't engaging the game world realistically.

Whether I am right or wrong, somebody with this view set is going to feel compelled by the GM to go solve the problem.  Because the alternative choices are unappealing.  And this is how a GM manipulates players into going his way.

Because of that, I feel it is disingenuous to insist that "oh the PCs had a choice.  They could have let the evil empire rape their gramma."  Replace Gramma with something the player/PC cares about, and you have taken away their Choices.

When the GM starts some big new external problem (like the OP's war), the players ability to choose what kind of goals they want to pursue gets narrowed down.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> I think I see where my point is being missed.
> 
> Forget gaming for a minute.  Let's talk real life.  Because gaming is just attempting to model real life, minus the boring stuff.
> 
> ...




Are you saying that life is a railroad?


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 8, 2011)

I believe this is getting more into the topic of free will versus determinism, than GM aproaches.


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## sec_tcpaipm (Jun 8, 2011)

The choice may be how to deal with the evil empire. A railroad would be having no option but to attempt to sneak into the palace and assasinate the Imperatrix in her sleep.


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## Mort (Jun 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> I think I see where my point is being missed.




I don't believe I'm missing your point - I'm saying that your definition of railroading is too broad. Railroading is not "heavy-handedness" - it is the limited instance of not giving players any actual choices. In the example I posted meaningful choices existed - there just happened to be one that was more meaningful than others - this might (and likely is) bad DMing and way too heavy handed, and yes very manipulative - but if you label it as railroading - that's too broad a definition. 

I do believe the DM is entitled to make some problems bigger than others, saying all problems are equally important is less realistic and would completely destroy some people's sense of verisimilitude.

I also believe the DM is allowed to initiate conflict (something you listed as a possible negative) – The world having conflicts that appear, get resolved, don’t get resolved – with the PCs, without the PCs etc. is a living dynamic place. If the world just waits for the PCs to show up (or, more importantly, has the appearance of doing so) then the sense of a living, breathing world is lost and the player’s experience may well suffer for it.


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## Nagol (Jun 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> I think I see where my point is being missed.
> 
> Forget gaming for a minute.  Let's talk real life.  Because gaming is just attempting to model real life, minus the boring stuff.
> 
> ...




My spouse did.




> You are not going to Eric's grandma's house to murder her and take her stuff, because you are not a murderer.  It is not a Choice.  Even though you technically could get her address and go pay her a visit.




Yet people do every day.



> When yet another pipe sprung a leak on Monday AND my AC went out, I had no choice not to fix it lest my water bill shoot through the roof, my house is destroyed by water damage and we die from the heat because I live in TX.



 Yet people live in houston without A/C all year round.



> Therefore, when the GM raises the new Threat, if he has designed it with your PCs in mind, you do not really have a choice to not deal with it.
> 
> Any sane person who does not deal with their problems is a freaking idiot.  Seriously, that's what people with problems that they don't deal with are.






> And yet there are always people who make choices that seem rational to them in there situation that appear insane to outsiders -- not paying debt, going deep into debt, committing acts of violence, whetever.  Choice some wouldn't make make sense to others.
> 
> Now I suppose there's a corner case for the pacifist who won't resist a robbery and gets killed for his beliefs, but even there, that wasn't exactly a genius move.
> 
> In my view, a PC who doesn't take a realistic response to a problem isn't engaging the game world realistically.




Is someone staying behind to certain death  because a loved one can't leave acting realistically?  It's not rational from a survival standpoint, but it happens.  Is someone jumping into a river to try to rescue a small boy acting realistically?  Does your answer change when both are lost?  When both are saved?  The choices someone makes -- to deal with something or ignore it; to respond with violence or negotiation; to save or damn are the choices that define the character and the narrative.



> Whether I am right or wrong, somebody with this view set is going to feel compelled by the GM to go solve the problem.  Because the alternative choices are unappealing.  And this is how a GM manipulates players into going his way.
> 
> Because of that, I feel it is disingenuous to insist that "oh the PCs had a choice.  They could have let the evil empire rape their gramma."  Replace Gramma with something the player/PC cares about, and you have taken away their Choices.
> 
> When the GM starts some big new external problem (like the OP's war), the players ability to choose what kind of goals they want to pursue gets narrowed down.




Just like life, minus the boring bits.


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## Janx (Jun 8, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I believe this is getting more into the topic of free will versus determinism, than GM aproaches.




No.  I haven't gotten into Moist Robot theory and left brain/right brain decision making flow.

The OP said his GM has this big war going on and big NPCs telling the PCs what to do.

those GM-based initiators are influencing the player decision process, and can make the player feel like he has less valid choices.

Even if the PCs feel stuck in doing what Elminster says, it's not like he's giving them round by round direction for what spells to cast and weapons to use.  the party goes to where Elminster said and then does the unpredictable things players to solve the problem.  So at the micro level, still lots of choices going on.

At the macro level, which big goal to pursue, the players feel constrained to having to go pursue that big problem.

So, is it fair for a GM to spring up new DM invented problems on the players?  Is there a scope or frequency of these DM invented problems that should be taken into consideration?

Is it fair, and not Deus Ex Machina, for the GM to bring in NPC heroes to deal with DM invented problems the PCs ignore?

Is there an issue if there are too many DM invented problems going on at once AND he does not have NPC heroes cover the gap?

Note that I prefaced problem, with DM Invented.  Problems the players make are actual Consequences of their action.  That's kind of the point for those.  But when the GM invents new problems out of the blue (like an Adventure Path inherently does), are there some guidelines to be followed?

If I was running a sandbox, I think I would start the world where there's lots of opportunities, to entice the party into action.  very little direct Threats initially, unless the party needed stimulus into action (I don't want to play Beet Farmer the RPG).  After that, I would make anything that happens after that be a consequence or prior PC action.  Only rarely would I invent a new problem, namely when all the major problems/consequences have already been dealt with, so as to stimulate some change and action.

If I was running an adventure path, I think the main hook would be a DM Invented problem that involves and interests the players/PCs.  I would not have multiple of these things going on, as invariably, the PCs are the heroes, and too many problems, and they would not be able to win.  the point of winning being that clever play through solving the main hook's problem is victory, failure to solve it is failure.  

If I have 2 major problems, and only the PCs as heroes, they will fail one of those problems.  if I have an NPC party step up for the other problem, the the players learn that neither problem was special and about the PCs, and they can let the NPCs handle it all.


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## Janx (Jun 8, 2011)

Mort said:


> I don't believe I'm missing your point - I'm saying that your definition of railroading is too broad. Railroading is not "heavy-handedness" - it is the limited instance of not giving players any actual choices. In the example I posted meaningful choices existed - there just happened to be one that was more meaningful than others - this might (and likely is) bad DMing and way too heavy handed, and yes very manipulative - but if you label it as railroading - that's too broad a definition.




You're not obligated to go do the research, but I can be cited on this forum and in my blog here on a VERY concise definition of RailRoading.  The short of it is, when the DM actively thwarts player actions in order to constrain them to his own pre-chosen outcome.

If I declared DM Invented Problems or Consequences as Railroading, that was a misphrasing by myself.

What I am saying is DM Invented Problems can manipulate players and FEEL like a railroad to the players. 

Perception trumps reality, when it comes to humans.  So if the players feel railroaded, they'll be whining about it.


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## Mort (Jun 8, 2011)

Janx said:


> You're not obligated to go do the research, but I can be cited on this forum and in my blog here on a VERY concise definition of RailRoading.  The short of it is, when the DM actively thwarts player actions in order to constrain them to his own pre-chosen outcome.




Yes if all roads lead to the exact same place, regardless of player choice, that is railroading.




Janx said:


> What I am saying is DM Invented Problems can manipulate players and FEEL like a railroad to the players.
> 
> Perception trumps reality, when it comes to humans.  So if the players feel railroaded, they'll be whining about it.




Maybe I'm just lucky to have players who don't whine when thrown curveballs. 

A good DM has to balance things, and after some experience (and getting to know the players) should hopefully throw challenges the players enjoy without having them feel forced.


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## the Jester (Jun 8, 2011)

All of the following is IMHO: 



Janx said:


> Let's say we have a game world where at the current moment, the PCs have a number of opportunities, and there's a variety of bad guys the PCs could try to stop.  Let's say that each of these bad guys is a nuisance in the game world, but none of them is a Threat.  They're not currently massing an army to wipe out all mankind, etc.
> 
> At that point, it's pretty much a static world, like an 80's TV show.
> 
> ...




Nothing you said here is a railroad. 

"The world ends because you didn't act" is not a railroad.

"You guys have to go deal with the power in the east" is a railroad.



Janx said:


> I think I see where my point is being missed.




I don't think anyone is missing your point. We are disagreeing.



Janx said:


> Forget gaming for a minute.  Let's talk real life.  Because gaming is just attempting to model real life, minus the boring stuff.




No it isn't. I don't see any dragons overhead or a big fat pile of gold in my bedroom.



Janx said:


> My thesis is this, at any given moment in your life, while technically you have a multitude of actions you could take, many of those choices are self-negated and effectively non-choices.
> 
> You are going to go to work every day, because you have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay.  Just quitting for no reason is not something you would do, therefore it is not Choice.... >and a bunch more examples<




Again, you are factually incorrect. I quit a good job a couple of years ago. People commit murder, people let stuff go, people act irrationally or against their own interest all the time.

And what does life have to do with whether or not a game is a railroad? Life is a whole different story. Your proposition sounds like "Your character's background is a mason, so why would he risk his neck and give up a fine career to go fight monsters?"



Janx said:


> Therefore, when the GM raises the new Threat, if he has designed it with your PCs in mind, you do not really have a choice to not deal with it.
> 
> Any sane person who does not deal with their problems is a freaking idiot.  Seriously, that's what people with problems that they don't deal with are.




Hello entire modern world! 

And I have to call bullcrap. People ignore their best interests _every day._ Do you drink soda or smoke? Do you eat fatty foods? Do you exercise for hours every day? 

If there's a threat to your character's interests, you don't have to deal with it. You can walk away... unless you're in a railroad. In fact, that's a good test of whether you are in a railroad; not _are there consequences if I walk away?_, but _can I walk away?_



Janx said:


> Whether I am right or wrong, somebody with this view set is going to feel compelled by the GM to go solve the problem.  Because the alternative choices are unappealing.  And this is how a GM manipulates players into going his way.




"The alternatives are unappealing" is not a railroad. "There is no alternative" is a railroad.



Janx said:


> Because of that, I feel it is disingenuous to insist that "oh the PCs had a choice.  They could have let the evil empire rape their gramma."  Replace Gramma with something the player/PC cares about, and you have taken away their Choices.
> 
> When the GM starts some big new external problem (like the OP's war), the players ability to choose what kind of goals they want to pursue gets narrowed down.




No it doesn't. They simply see that they must deal with the consequences of their actions or inaction.



Janx said:


> You're not obligated to go do the research, but I can be cited on this forum and in my blog here on a VERY concise definition of RailRoading.  The short of it is, when the DM actively thwarts player actions in order to constrain them to his own pre-chosen outcome.




"Do the research" meaning "read your blog"?

No offense, but why on earth do you think the fact that you wrote a blog about it makes you the authority on what a railroad is? That said, you seem to be arguing for a substantially broader definition of railroading in this thread.



Janx said:


> What I am saying is DM Invented Problems can manipulate players and FEEL like a railroad to the players.




Oh, sure. 

But it doesn't matter how it feels. What matters is this: _Do I have a choice?_ Not _Do I have a choice with no bad repercussions?_ or _Do I have a decent choice?_ or even _Do I have a choice that doesn't totally screw me?_ The question is, _Do I have a choice?_



Janx said:


> Perception trumps reality, when it comes to humans.  So if the players feel railroaded, they'll be whining about it.




Fair enough. 

But irrelevant to what actually constitutes a railroad.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 9, 2011)

Janx said:


> You're not obligated to go do the research, but I can be cited on this forum and in my blog here on a VERY concise definition of RailRoading.  The short of it is, when the DM actively thwarts player actions in order to constrain them to his own pre-chosen outcome.
> 
> If I declared DM Invented Problems or Consequences as Railroading, that was a misphrasing by myself.
> 
> ...




I think if we're talking about the definition of a railroad, then it's best to stick to what the definition is, for clarity's sake, even if the perception is different.

Now, I understand what you mean, and it's valid. Your players probably shouldn't feel railroaded, even if you're not railroading them. It's usually a lot less fun for many players. It's how you get threads like this one.

However, I do believe it's best to make your point on the last paragraph, rather than on broadening the definition of railroading to include "it feels like a railroad." But, that's only because I see the extra precision as helpful, especially in a text-based medium.

At any rate, I do see your point. I think where we have different mileage has been demonstrated above a few times. You believe that nobody would quit a job if they have responsibilities. Well, I can tell you that I have quit every job I've worked at, and usually with no notice, and on the spur of the moment. Once, I quit a job at Gallo Wineries, visited my father in Los Angeles for a couple months while staying in a hotel, then came back and lived in my car, willingly, for three years.

I don't think it's going to be a common action, but I can understand you implying that things like this "just won't happen" unless you're stupid. But, I can assure you that I'm quite intelligent (and I also don't feel like you were trying to be insulting, so no worries ), and that I knew exactly what I was doing. I put a water bed in the back of my '95 Chevy Corsica, and I had a blast for 3 years.

I think what you have to do in a sandbox is approach every character, individually, and think, "what motivates this character specifically? Does he value his life as much as his family? Would he be willing to risk everything when he could probably easily spend his days at home, peacefully raising a dozen kids?" PCs in particular fit this above mold, most of the time. They are willing to risk it all for a life filled with risk (and often not motivated by any particularly good intentions).

Is this as logical as settling down and living the rich life with a beautiful wife and a dozen kids? Probably not to most people. Is it reasonable to this character? Yes, it is. 

And that's the way I think the NPCs in a sandbox must be approached. You must look at what is reasonable from their perspective, even if it isn't logical. Then, you must play out those characters, based on their reasoning. If that causes a war to happen that none of the PCs want to get involved in, than I see how that might cause some issues where players might feel railroaded, if they aren't used to this.

My players have been playing in a sandbox world for some time, and they have accepted a dynamic and changing world setting based on individual NPC motivations. When something happens that they don't feel interested in, they either deal with it, ask someone else to deal with it (usually an appeal to legal authority), or they flee from where it will affect them. I've had players talk of moving from one continent to another to get away from a particular problem on that continent. They have that choice. I won't stop them. Nor did I make that problem prominent to hurt the players. In fact, the players knew that this problem (a particular small private army) was well-intentioned, and had the approval of other governments on the continent.

Was it railroading when that private army acted against one of the PCs, even when he didn't want to deal with it? No more, to me, than getting hassled by guards because you're an orc in human lands. It's a setting issue.

If players don't want to deal with particular setting issues, I understand that, and I think they have the right to speak up. I think it's probably a good thing for people to be upfront about their expectations of play. I think players should speak up if they feel railroaded. I think compromise should be reached, where possible, while maintaining the internal logic of the setting.

But, these are all just my opinions. As always, play what you like


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

the Jester said:


> A sandbox is not consequence-free; but there is typically a wider range of possible consequences than in a railroad. A railroad's consequences are usually written or planned out in advance; a sandbox' vary depending on the nature of the pcs' engagement with the adventure.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> A sandbox approach instead acknowledges that "there are bad guys". That's the basic situation; but there is no foregone conclusion.



Leaving to one point that who the bad guys are may often be up to the players rather than the GM, I think what you describe here under the label "sandbox" sets out a clear contrast with railroading play.

But I don't think it gets to the essence of a sandbox, because what you offer is an _equally_ good description of thematically-driven play where the GM present the players with situations, the players engage those situations via their PCs, the consequences of that engagement are determined (keeping in mind the relevant thematic drivers) which produces new situations, etc, etc.



Doug McCrae said:


> When I think of sandbox, I think of something like the West Marches campaign or The Vault of Larin Karr. The bad guys are disunited, localised and largely static. The setting as a whole is also static. There are no impending plots to take over or destroy the world. There is no great pressure on the PCs to choose one adventure location over another. This lack of pressure increases player freedom.



I think this is right - provided we recognise that the player freedom here is _freedom to explore the gameworld_. And that, to me, is the essence of a sandbox - it is a player-driven though GM-mediated exploration game.

Whereas the sort of theme-driven game I mentioned above, while also about player freedom, is not about exploratory freedom - it's about players' freedom to express their thematic points by making choices for their PCs. But those choices won't generally be exploration-type choices - they'll be thematic-type choices.



Hussar said:


> Find the Disks of Mishakal or the invading dragon armies will simply come in larger and larger waves until you die may be totally justifiable from an in game perspective, but, it's totally a railroad.



I agree with this too. As a GM, you can't avoid railroading just by punting it all to the setting and saying "it's the setting's fault"! As Doug points out, different setting configuration support different sorts of player freedom  - or, perhaps none at all, which is my problem with Dragonlance - the players have neither exploratory freedom (Draconian armies will cut them off), nor thematic freedom (the answers to the thematic issues are already prepackaged into the scenario) nor even tactical freedom (because the adventure encourages fudging to produce predetermined outcomes to action resolution).

My own game doesn't support exploratory freedom, because I deliberately foist situations upon the players which they have (in the sense of "have" that Janx is talking about upthread) to engage with them - but how they engage, and therefore what consequences they push towards, is under the control of the players.

A story from somewhere (I think maybe the Burning Wheel rulebook?): a player created a PC who carried around the body of his dead wife, and whose goal in life was to have her restored to life. In the second (or thereabouts) session of the campaign the GM introduced a healer NPC, who duly proceeded to raise her from the dead. The GM thereby killed the game for that player, by removing the very point of play. Whether or not you want to describe that as a railroad, it certainly shows that setting elements are not neutral in their effects on the players' engagement with and participation in the game.



Aberzanzorax said:


> what do I do as DM to "not railroad"?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Do I, as DM, figure out a way to get them the items eventually regardless of their actions



The answer to this question depends, in my view, on what sort of freedom your players want to exercise in your game. If they want freedom to explore the gameworld, or to try and win treasures, then probably no. If they want freedom to pursue certain thematic concerns, and their PCs can't do that without the items, then probably yes - but the _way_ you get the items to them should set up the thematic material in a way appropriate to your players' own concerns.


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## Hussar (Jun 9, 2011)

Mort said:


> If I substituted "consequences" for "punished" in the above paragraph it reads exactly the same with the exact same intent - yet are you actually saying there should be no consequences for making a decision? And further that consequences = railroading; because that seems the logical step - and yet I believe that is flat out wrong. The thing about the above paragraph is the choice is designed and presented poorly and in a very one sided way, but it's not railroading unless the PCs *actually* can't make it (that btw is why the Dragonlance adventures actually are railroads - if the PCs do not make the presented choice the adventure stops dead, there is literally nowhere else to go unless the DM completely adlibs).
> 
> Not all (or even many) decision points in an adventure (or even campaign) should be do x or face dire consequences - but they do and should come up. That's not railroading, it's making the players think about their actions and face consequences (good and bad) for the decisions they make.
> 
> I think the term railroading is getting vastly overused these days - and too often being applied in a "I don't like x = railroading" manner. Railroading is the elimination of player choice. presenting bad choices, disproportionate choices/rewards for certain actions may be heavy handed and may be "bad DMing" but it's not railroading unless no choice exists.




Honestly, I just think your splitting hairs.  As Janx has pointed out, once the credible threat to the PC's is on the table, they are most likely going to deal with it.

Sure, there might be the outliers where they ignore it, but, the vast majority of the time, they're going to jump right on board.

Disproportionate choices will result in a single response far more often than not.  I'm not seeing a huge difference here.


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## Hussar (Jun 9, 2011)

Janx said:


> /snip
> 
> When the GM announces, "you hear rumors of a new force in the east, gather power, seeking to eliminate all mankind", the GM is the Initiator.  At that point, the Consequences will occur unless the PCs jump on the plot wagon.
> 
> ...




Honestly, I agree with Janx here.  Once the DM has initiated a threat, and that threat will negatively impact the PC's if they don't deal with it, I'm finding it pretty weak to say, "Well, it's not really railroading because you could just suck up the negative consequences".

Now, the point upthread that if the DM declares a threat must be dealt with in a specific way is a railroad - that I totally agree with.  That's most certainly a railroad.  I think everyone agrees there.

But, if the dragon armies are advancing, the players cannot ignore it.  They have no choice but to deal with it in some manner.  Sure, they could fight, join the army, try to sneak through, whatever, but, what they don't have is the option to not deal with it.

Isn't the negation of options railroading by definition?

If the players initiate something, that's not a railroad, by definition, but, if the DM initiates a threat that the PC's cannot avoid dealing with in some manner, isn't that a railroad?

Now, as far as the carrotstick approach goes, well, that's why it's not a railroad.  After all, the PC's can choose to ignore the offer.  Ignoring the offer carries no negative consequences, other than they don't get the reward.  OTOH, the PC's cannot ignore the DM generated threat because that will directly, negatively, impact the characters.


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## Mort (Jun 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Honestly, I just think your splitting hairs.  As Janx has pointed out, once the credible threat to the PC's is on the table, they are most likely going to deal with it.
> 
> Sure, there might be the outliers where they ignore it, but, the vast majority of the time, they're going to jump right on boar.




The fact that if they don't actually have to "deal with it" (there's a choice) then it's not railroading is not splitting hairs, it's an important distinction. Railroading is a narrow concept and artificially broadening the definition just leads to confusion and overuse.



Hussar said:


> Disproportionate choices will result in a single response far more often than not.  I'm not seeing a huge difference here.




The "huge difference" is that the ability to make a choice other than disproportionate/obvious one is important. Just because a choice seems obvious does not mean it is the correct/most fun one for the group - maybe they want a change of pace - say walking away from (or heck joining) the big bad consequences be damned. If they can make that choice it's not a railroad.


Going back the OP. If the characters can look at Elminster/their patron and say "we don't like this contract give us some more choices" and their patron does - it's not a railroad. If the characters can look at their patron and say that with the patron saying "OK then you're on your own, get your own contracts!" It's still not a railroad (assuming the PCs efforts don't all lead to the same contract). If the characters say "no thanks" and their patron acts as if they just said "sure" and/or the DM otherwise forces the issue - then it's a railroad. If that's the case the players need to decide how to approach the DM and explain that the current choiceless scenario is unsatisfying/not fun - and what can be done about it.


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## Mort (Jun 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Honestly, I agree with Janx here.  Once the DM has initiated a threat, and that threat will negatively impact the PC's if they don't deal with it, I'm finding it pretty weak to say, "Well, it's not really railroading because you could just suck up the negative consequences".




So anything the DM initiates that will negatively impact the PCs is a railroad? really? I'm not even sure what to say to that.

DM: the dragon is attacking the town your staying in! what do you do?

Player: Oh my god! A dragon? How can you do that, my character might die - I'm being railroaded into action - can't I just sit here and drink my ale?

Or let's pull that back.

DM: the dragon breathes on the wagon - you can save the gold (enough to set you up for life) or the peasant - which is it?

Doing either has negative consequences for the player (staying poor vs. passively letting someone die) it's mean but it's not railroading.



Hussar said:


> But, if the dragon armies are advancing, the players cannot ignore it.  They have no choice but to deal with it in some manner.  Sure, they could fight, join the army, try to sneak through, whatever, but, what they don't have is the option to not deal with it.
> 
> Isn't the negation of options railroading by definition?"




Can they joing the dragon armies? Can they move continents? Do they have multiple options ind dealing with the invading armies (rally the nobles, rally the peasants, confront the threat directly, sneak behind enemy lines etc.) If the players have choices and options, if the end result is not set - it's not railroading.



Hussar said:


> If the players initiate something, that's not a railroad, by definition, but, if the DM initiates a threat that the PC's cannot avoid dealing with in some manner, isn't that a railroad?




How they deal with the threat is a choice, or if the PCs have the option of ignoring the threat -that is a choice. If the PCs have meaningful options and meaningful choices - it's not a railroad. If the DM has set up a world shattering event, as long as the PCs have meaningful options it's not a railroad. If the players are just simply not enthused with the "world shattering event" and dislike the whole concept - well they need to talk to the DM.



Hussar said:


> Now, as far as the carrotstick approach goes, well, that's why it's not a railroad.  After all, the PC's can choose to ignore the offer.  Ignoring the offer carries no negative consequences, other than they don't get the reward.  OTOH, the PC's cannot ignore the DM generated threat because that will directly, negatively, impact the characters.




Are we back to negative impact/consequence = railroading? Sometimes the player making a choice that negatively impacts their character is the most fun/rewarding choice for the player! Not all choices should be reward or bigger reward, sometimes character growth is initiated by choices that the player knows are suboptimal but feels it's the choice the character would make.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> What works best for myself is a middle-ground between railroading and sandboxing.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I don't really see the railroad here. You were upfront with your players. You had their buy in. And the decisions that they made had a significant effect not just on the colour but the outcome of the resolution to the campaign.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

Janx said:


> Because gaming is just attempting to model real life, minus the boring stuff.



That's fairly controversial. It's not how I think of an RPG at all, for example, any more than I think of any other fictional work or authoring process as primarily an attempt to model real life.



Janx said:


> In my view, a PC who doesn't take a realistic response to a problem isn't engaging the game world realistically.



Again, it's a big assumption to think that realism is an important goal for players in playing their PCs. For some, perhaps. But certainly not for all.



Janx said:


> Whether I am right or wrong, somebody with this view set is going to feel compelled by the GM to go solve the problem.  Because the alternative choices are unappealing.  And this is how a GM manipulates players into going his way.
> 
> Because of that, I feel it is disingenuous to insist that "oh the PCs had a choice.  They could have let the evil empire rape their gramma."  Replace Gramma with something the player/PC cares about, and you have taken away their Choices.
> 
> When the GM starts some big new external problem (like the OP's war), the players ability to choose what kind of goals they want to pursue gets narrowed down.



Now this I agree with, because it is entirely independent of whether the aim of RPGing is to model reality in some fashion. If the players feel that the only meaningful option for them to have their PCs take is the one the GM is laying out for them, then the GM is constraining their choices - whatever the relevant dimensions of "meaningfulness" for those players. This way railroading lies.



Janx said:


> If I have 2 major problems, and only the PCs as heroes, they will fail one of those problems.  if I have an NPC party step up for the other problem, the the players learn that neither problem was special and about the PCs, and they can let the NPCs handle it all.



Another good post. For some players, a necessary condition for the "meaningfulness" of play is that their PCs are the heroes who make a difference in the world. For those sorts of players, the scenario you describe suddenly deflates the meaningfulness of the campaign, however much freedom they had to decide which of the two major problems they would confront.



Mort said:


> As long as the PC can ignore the threat and do something else (consequences or no) it's not railroading. As long as the players have a meaningful choice, again, it's not railroading.



OK, but what if they don't - because the threat forecloses any other option that might be meaningful for the player in question?

Which raises the question - who gets to decide what counts as meaningful? I assume that, given we're talking about "meaningful for the player", it is the _player's_ conception of meaningfulness that is paramount here.



the Jester said:


> But it doesn't matter how it feels. What matters is this: _Do I have a choice?_ Not _Do I have a choice with no bad repercussions?_ or _Do I have a decent choice?_ or even _Do I have a choice that doesn't totally screw me?_ The question is, _Do I have a choice?_



Given that player conceptions of meaningfulness are paramount here, I think it matters very much how it feels. You don't deliver a good play experience by assuring your players that they had choices that _you think they should have cared about_. The players actually have to care about them. The choices must be meaningful _for them_.

Because what is meaningful is different from player to player and group to group - some regard exploration as the GM's gameworld as the most important thing, for example, while others don't - there is no general answer to what is the best way to set up a gameworld, and to develop it in response to the players' choices about their PCs' actions.



Mort said:


> So anything the DM initiates that will negatively impact the PCs is a railroad? really? I'm not even sure what to say to that.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



But that's because, in the scenario you're presenting, the player has two meaningful options. It's not negative consequences in general that are under scrutiny here. It's a certain sort of negative consequence that forecloses other meaningful choices.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

Starfox said:


> There is another thing to be considered here, and that is campaign premise.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



This is a great post. And I fully agree. A GM has no basis for using "But the gameworld made me do it!" as an excuse for a bad play experience. That's not an excuse, it's a confession of bad GMing, because it is the GM who is authoring the gameworld.



Nagol said:


> I disagree.  The players now get to play how their deeply rooted characters deal with hell breaking loose on the world thay care for.  If the DM sets up a situation (I hate to call it a plot since that suggests a defined set of actions and known end state which my sandbox does not have) and the PCs ignore or decline to engage then that situation evolves over time to its natural end.





S'mon said:


> If they create gardeners, dancers & stargazers (and the threat isn't a Plant Demon Star Dancer) who refuse to engage, then well that's their choice.



The question is - did the players have a good play experience, or not? If they didn't, it's not to the point that they refused to have their PCs engage the GM's storyline. It's not as if they tricked the GM into giving them a bad time - from their point of view, they've been playing the game by playing their PCs, and now the GM ends the game on them.

I think this is Starfox's point: that this isn't an ingame issue, but a metagame issue. Vespucci makes the same point here:



Vespucci said:


> By putting into the game world, from the outset, that a potentially world-destroying event is in the post, the ref is engaged in telling his story, not running the game.



Implicit in this is that "running the game" means noticing what the players are interested in, and having their PCs do and not do, and shaping the gameworld and the ingame situations in response to that.

Now some players are happy to play their PCs in whatever gameworld and situations the GM serves up. Those players, even if playing the GDS trio, presumably wouldn't have a bad play experience in the situation that Starfox describes. But in my view, a GM who proceeds down a given path _without regard to what sort of play experience the players are looking for_ is a bad GM. As Vespucci says, s/he is no longer _running an RPG_.



the Jester said:


> I keep seeing this notion that consequences are punishment, and I think that is a large part of the disconnect here. In fact, I think *consequences happen based on pc action or inaction* is a characteristic of old skool gaming (at least, the old skool I play by).



But it's not very distinctive of old skool gaming.

Consequences happening based on PC action or inaction is central to the play of HeroQuest or Burning Wheel, for example - but they are hardly old skool games.

As I see it, the issue isn't whether or not the consequences are bad for the PCs. It's about the way the consequences are attuned to the interests and expectations of the _players_. Presumably Starfox's GDS trio are happy to have their PCs suffer the consequences of spending too much time dancing and therefore not noticing a crucial astronomical event. Or of being outdanced by the faeries they found at the bottom of the garden while harvesting mistletoe by moonlight. It's consequences that are sprung on them that arise not out of anything _they_ are interested in, or have engaged with via their PCs, but rather out of a plot that only the GM cares about, that Starfox and Vespucci are talking about.



Janx said:


> Consequences can be used as the cattle prod for a rail road.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



The answer to this question, for any typical RPG, has to be Yes. It's practically a job description for the GM. What's at stake in Starfox's example is that the GM has initiated trouble that the players _aren't interested in_, and haven't had their PCs engage with - and then, on the basis of that trouble _that was a dead letter as far as actual play is concerned_ is bringing the campaign that the players have been enjoying to an end. When the players complain about this, the GM is not going to get very far just by saying "Hey, it's my job as GM to initiate trouble - it's not my fault you guys ignored it!" This won't change the fact that the players ended up having a bad play experience and, presumably, will spread the word about their bad GM. I see this as the pointy end of Vespucci's distinction between the GM running a game, and the GM telling a story regardless of the players.



Nagol said:


> The PCs are not thrust into a role.  They are thrust into a pivotal situation that they can affect as they wish.  They are masters of their fate within the context of the situation.



This may be true as far as it goes, but doesn't really address Starfox's point. Because the question then becomes, How is that situation decided upon? If the GM decides on the situation regardless of the players deciding to play the GDS trio - and would have used exactly the same situation if the players had build a Sorcerer Supreme, a Goliath Brawler and a Valkyrie - then is the GM still running a game? Or just authoring his/her own story? The answer to this seems to me to depend crucially on the preferences and expectations _of the players_. But there is no default presumption that what this GM is doing is the proper way to run an RPG.



Vespucci said:


> Conflating player and character is unhelpful.  The characters do not engage because the activity is unnatural to them - it's not a deliberate activity on their part.  The players do not engage because they're not interested in your plot, or because your hooks fail to motivate them.  Or perhaps they're just contrary.  In any case, the players' deliberate refusal to engage with your story is the reason you've sent the characters tumbling to the ground and inflicted bruises upon them.



Another great post! Key to Starfox's hypothetical scenario is that the GM has persisted with his/her own conception of the gameworld _regardless of the fact_ that for whatever reason, the players are unmoved by the bits the GM is very excited by. If the players end up being upset by this, when the GM brings to an end the game that the players have been enjoying, the GM should hardly be surprised!



S'mon said:


> I take it you wouldn't want to play in a game set in Belgium, July 1914 or Poland, August 1939, then?



Well, if I get into such a game I know what I've got into, don't I? - even if my naive PC is surprised by the outbreak of war. The question is whether a player is obliged to enjoy the GM springing a war scenario - or whatever else - on the players _regardless of the players' preferences for play as revealed through the PCs they have built and been playing_. I think that the general answer to this question is No, and that a GM who proceeds in this way is therefore doing so at his/her own risk. S/he had better be pretty confident that exploration of the GM's world, which may proceed in a way completely orthogonal to how the players have been engaging it up to now, is the players' main interest in playing the game.



Nagol said:


> if I were preparing to run a game as I described, I'd build a default timeline that runs out 2-3 years that I can map PC actions and the consequences thereof against.  It is entirely possible that in such a setting that sometime in year 2 the great war will break out _in the absence of PC action_.  Every action and every consequence will be judged as to its effect on the timeline.



Whereas I would never run a game like that - I constantly rework the backstory to my campaign world in light of the unfolding interests of the players revealed in the course of play, in order to better support situations that build on those interests and allow the players to keep driving the game forward in the way they want to.

As Starfox says, a GM must be prepared to take responsibility for his/her own world design decisions. If you know that your players want to explore a world in which you already have a default timeline worked out, and in which your choices for what will be significant in the setting (like the end-of-the-world plot) are settled prior to play, then go for it - take responsibility! But a lot of players don't want to play that way, don't want to explore the GM's world but rather want to play their PCs in the setting as they conceive of it (and as their conception of it evolves over the course of play) - and there is nothing defective about their preferences in this respect.


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 9, 2011)

Mort said:


> So anything the DM initiates that will negatively impact the PCs is a railroad? really? I'm not even sure what to say to that.
> 
> DM: the dragon is attacking the town your staying in! what do you do?
> 
> ...




This is a great post. I'd XP you if I could. This is really what it's breaking down to. Again, I feel the term "railroading" is being grossly overused, here. Railroading, basically, means ending with the GMs desired outcome, no matter the actions that take place. That's being confused with being heavy-handed (which I'm also against).

You can be heavy-handed without railroading people (an army is sweeping across the land; you must fight, lead men, switch sides, sneak around, leave the continent, etc. This is heavy-handed, as you're forcing people to deal with a problem. Sometimes the setting evolves in such a way naturally that this can occur, even on a mini-scale: if you're being accosted by bandits, then you must deal with the problem, whether you fight, hand over your goods, or run.).

You can also railroad people (an army is sweeping across the land; no matter what the PCs do, they'll fall into service of the head general against this army, and they'll complete mission X, Y, and Z. Afterwards, they'll have an epic battle against the opposing general, where they'll break the enemy lines if they win).

Those are two very different and distinct things, and I think that it would be a lot clearer if they weren't used interchangeably.

Just my two cents. As always, play what you like


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## Nagol (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> This may be true as far as it goes, but doesn't really address Starfox's point. Because the question then becomes, How is that situation decided upon? If the GM decides on the situation regardless of the players deciding to play the GDS trio - and would have used exactly the same situation if the players had build a Sorcerer Supreme, a Goliath Brawler and a Valkyrie - then is the GM still running a game? Or just authoring his/her own story? The answer to this seems to me to depend crucially on the preferences and expectations of the players. But there is no default presumption that what this GM is doing is the proper way to run an RPG.




In my case the starting situation would remain exactly the same.  The unfolding narrative is likely to be highly different depending on the areas the PCs engage, their choices, and the relationships explored.  I do not author the game.  I present the starting context and let the players choices guide the narrative.  

I have experience that the player choices strongly affect the way the narrative and situation unfolds.  Several times, I've been asked to run a 2nd or 3rd simultaneous campaign with a different group.  In order to cut down on my workload, I start the new group in the original situation with the same starting parameters.  Typically, by the third session, the circumstances have changed enough that I no longer have a reduced workload.  The situations evolve away from each other quite quickly from the differences in PC choice and success.



> Another great post! Key to Starfox's hypothetical scenario is that the GM has persisted with his/her own conception of the gameworld regardless of the fact that for whatever reason, the players are unmoved by the bits the GM is very excited by. If the players end up being upset by this, when the GM brings to an end the game that the players have been enjoying, the GM should hardly be surprised!






> Whereas I would never run a game like that - I constantly rework the backstory to my campaign world in light of the unfolding interests of the players revealed in the course of play, in order to better support situations that build on those interests and allow the players to keep driving the game forward in the way they want to.




I constantly rework the forestory and the current situation by adding previously undefined elements.  Once an element is in play, its nature remains constant.  As an example, from a much earlier discussion; under my scheme if a PCs long-lost mother is known to be in an orcish camp for sacrifice and the PCs leave without interrupting the ritual then the mother is sacrificed.  The backstory is not modified because _I think_ the player may want to further engage the NPC in a thematic way. I let the players choose what interests them from the milieu.  Perhaps the players wants the angst of knowing he failed to save her?  Perhaps the player originally had her long-lost because he doesn't want to interact with the mother at all?  Allowing the players to author the story by respecting their choices -- both good and bad -- is a form of empowerment.

As a player my interests are ecletic and best known by me not the DM.  I'll engage those things that catch my fancy and drop them again just as quickly if they don't keep my interest.  Having someone rebuild to feed my apparent interest would be disconcerting and likely frustrating for the other person.



> As Starfox says, a GM must be prepared to take responsibility for his/her own world design decisions. If you know that your players want to explore a world in which you already have a default timeline worked out, and in which your choices for what will be significant in the setting (like the end-of-the-world plot) are settled prior to play, then go for it - take responsibility! But a lot of players don't want to play that way, don't want to explore the GM's world but rather want to play their PCs in the setting as they conceive of it (and as their conception of it evolves over the course of play) - and there is nothing defective about their preferences in this respect.




Of course, I take responsibility for my designs and game play.  I am upfront with the prospective players about my style, the starting situation, and base expectation for the game.  I despise bait-and-switch gaems where the character is designed under one premise and rapidly thrust into a different one without player choice because it is deceptive on the part of the DM regarding design and game play.

I insist the players take responsibility for their designs and game play too.  The unfolding narrative is constructed out their actions and consequences.  The PCs do not instigate all actions; they may not appreciate all developments; but the PCs can affect any outcome.  If a player doesn't want this form of play, as a DM I hope he takes the responsible route and finds a game more to his taste.


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## S'mon (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> L
> I agree with this too. As a GM, you can't avoid railroading just by punting it all to the setting and saying "it's the setting's fault"! As Doug points out, different setting configuration support different sorts of player freedom  - or, perhaps none at all, which is my problem with Dragonlance - the players have neither exploratory freedom (Draconian armies will cut them off), nor thematic freedom (the answers to the thematic issues are already prepackaged into the scenario) nor even tactical freedom (because the adventure encourages fudging to produce predetermined outcomes to action resolution).




This.  THIS IS RAILROAD!    Dragonlance is a Railroad because as you point out it does not support player freedom in _any_ significant dimension, the players are essentially just along for the ride.  Where there is significant player freedom in any of the dimensions you have identified, it is not a railroad.

Example:  I'm playing Great Britain in Axis & Allies.  I only have one kind of freedom - to direct my forces in the struggle with the Axis powers.  That's a very limited freedom, but enough that the game is not a railroad.  Snakes & Ladders or Ludo, by contrast...


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## S'mon (Jun 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Honestly, I just think your splitting hairs.




You're wrong, though.  

99 times in 100 the players will go do the obvious thing.  But as a player the feeling that we the PC group are free to go do something else if we really want to is vital to my enjoyment of the game.  Likewise as DM, it's important to me that if the PCs want to attack the quest-giver NPC and loot his house because they think he's not paying them enough, then fine, they can do that, and natural consequences follow.  Often the players will have more fun as wanted outlaws anyway.

Edit: Or the time the DM expected our 1st level 3e PCs to assault an Ogre castle.  We took one look at the ogres on the battlements, said "No way Jose!" and turned right round.  The DM was surprised, but didn't try to railroad us into attacking the castle anyway.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Honestly, I just think your splitting hairs.  As Janx has pointed out, once the credible threat to the PC's is on the table, they are most likely going to deal with it.
> 
> Sure, there might be the outliers where they ignore it, but, the vast majority of the time, they're going to jump right on board.
> 
> Disproportionate choices will result in a single response far more often than not.  I'm not seeing a huge difference here.




For me the difference is, the players don't have the option of ignoring the hook in a railroad. One way or another the GM is going to hook them. And as the game progresses, in a railroad it isn't just a matter of what threat they choose to engage, but how they engage it. If I complain about railroading as a player it means not only has the GM presented a scenario that we basically have to go for, but within that scenario we really don't have many choices beyond battlefield tactics (we will meet NPC so and so, who reveals the secret of such and such, only to betray us at the last minute, etc).

In the example given, the players can chose not to bite if the GM isn't railroading, and he will go with it. Just because the GM presents an option the PCs are likely to choose, I don't really see that as railroading. Especially if it is a set up where they could choose a number of different approaches (side with the invaders, attack the invaders, act as middle-men negotiators, profit from the ensuing war, etc). 

I also tend to think of railroading as a tool, more than anything else. I have no problem with the GM railroading the set-up a little bit. I understand the GM only has so much time to prepare. But when he railroads throughout the adventure, this bothers me a little more.


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## S'mon (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Well, if I get into such a game I know what I've got into, don't I? - even if my naive PC is surprised by the outbreak of war. The question is whether a player is obliged to enjoy the GM springing a war scenario - or whatever else - on the players _regardless of the players' preferences for play as revealed through the PCs they have built and been playing_.




I would just say that the GM should make sure the players know in advance the type of campaign he'll be running - *avoid bait & switch* is a very good general rule.  If the GM tells the players about the looming shadows of disaster, and that their PCs will have the opportunity to confront it, and the players create PCs who won't confront it, I don't see it as bad DMing if the disaster still occurs.  For one thing, the players may *want* to experience being swept up in disaster.  If the players actually wanted a no-disaster game, they should have told the GM that up front and he could run a different game or get different players.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 9, 2011)

The way I get around railroading as a GM, is to focus more on NPCs and powergroups than on scenarios and events. So as the campaign evolves it really becomes more about the PCs engaging different characters or organizations, and everyone reacting according to their interests and motives.


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## S'mon (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> As Starfox says, a GM must be prepared to take responsibility for his/her own world design decisions. If you know that your players want to explore a world in which you already have a default timeline worked out, and in which your choices for what will be significant in the setting (like the end-of-the-world plot) are settled prior to play, then go for it - take responsibility! But a lot of players don't want to play that way, don't want to explore the GM's world but rather want to play their PCs in the setting as they conceive of it (and as their conception of it evolves over the course of play) - and there is nothing defective about their preferences in this respect.




It's defective if they didn't tell the GM what they wanted, and let him run his timeline-to-disaster game for 3 months before telling him: "Uh, no Great War please, we much prefer the setting without it".


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## Aberzanzorax (Jun 9, 2011)

DM: "On your journey between towns, on a wilderness road, with no one around, you find a huge pile of gold."

Is this a railroad because 99 out of 100 times players will take it (after being suitably paranoid about it being trapped/cursed/bait/etc)?



As far as the whole negative versus positive argument, I strongly disagree that it matters if the consequences are good or bad. In the above example, the bad consequence is not taking it. The good consequence is taking it. Failing to reap rewards is a negative consequence, it is a matter of perception that tells us otherwise.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 9, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> DM: "On your journey between towns, on a wilderness road, with no one around, you find a huge pile of gold."
> 
> Is this a railroad because 99 out of 100 times players will take it (after being suitably paranoid about it being trapped/cursed/bait/etc)?
> 
> ...





I think placing something in a specific location isn't railroading. If the gold always appeared on the road no matter what direction the PCs went, that would be railroading. Also if the gold was on a specific road, but the players had no choice but to go there, that would be railroading. 

Also this isn't a typical scenario, and it is pretty simple and straight forward (there is a pile of gold on the road). The more complex the situation, the more choices the PCs have.  If there is a pile of gold on the road and there are two brothers fighting over ownership of the gold, now you have something the players can interact with in a number of ways. They can ignore the brothers, mediate the dispute or take sides. If they take sides, perhaps there are two very different outcomes (possibly good, possibly bad).


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## Vespucci (Jun 9, 2011)

We all owe Gary XP for this carry-on. 

I'm pretty sure this is a style debate, and the sides correspond roughly to New School and Old School.



S'mon said:


> This.  THIS IS RAILROAD!    Dragonlance is a Railroad because as you point out it does not support player freedom in _any_ significant dimension, the players are essentially just along for the ride.  Where there is significant player freedom in any of the dimensions you have identified, it is not a railroad.




So, if Hickman had just given the players cool powers and advised the ref with something like, "you should be guided by the dice, not mastered by them - if it comes down to throwing out a bizarre dice roll, or the same plot, the die has to go!", rather than Answers To Their Tactical Problems - Dragonlance wouldn't be a railroad?  What would you call it - a railshooter? 

This is something of a distraction, anyway.  The OP's question is about how to deal with a ref who's being a bit tight on downtime - I'm reluctant to call that railroading at all.  The debate that's since developed from Starfox's thought experiment is more about scripting than railroading.  I can railroad you into a non-scripted event.  For example:
It's 8pm, and we're on to day 3 of a wilderness expedition.  I roll on a weather table for the day, get a freak roll, it's a storm!  Glancing at the notes for the hex the party happens to be in, I see that a witch's cottage is there.  I figure that the storm can set in midday and the players can take shelter in the cottage.  But oh no, you miserable miscreants want to create a makeshift camp where you are, and build a fire!  Well, too bad!  The high winds prevent you from getting it started.  You can smell woodsmoke coming from upwind.  What's that?  You try to create a windbreak?  Uh... it catches fire, then the winds put out your campfire before it really gets started!  There's a smell of delicious food accompanying the woodsmoke!​*WARNING*: this is ham-fisted and not something I'd recommend.  If I'm really keen on the witch's cottage as a scene, I should have the party pass it by _before_ the rail really starts to come down, but accept their decision if they decide not to backtrack.  (They're not necessarily being silly: traveling during a storm can be very dangerous, and a makeshift shelter is better than none at all.)  When they're setting up the fire, all that needs to be said is, "Yeah, you get your fire started and huddle in.  It's a cold and uncomfortable way to spend the afternoon.  The weather still hasn't let up as dusk approaches - it's going to be an unpleasant night."  Short of any more player action, they'll just wear some minor penalty from fatigue the next day.

One point to note, however, is that when I hit the characters with penalties for not taking better shelter during the storm, I am merely interpreting the rules to them.  The weather wasn't my decision (it surprised me, too).  According to the setting notes I'd prepared independently of the weather, there was a possibility for shelter - it could just as easily have been a burned-out watchtower, a traveler's shrine, the base camp of a band of robbers, or nothing at all.

By scripting the exact same session, I own it.  If the characters take penalties for not doing what I expect them to do (go to the witch's cottage for the scene I wanted to run), I am punishing them for not following my script.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 9, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> We all owe Gary XP for this carry-on.
> 
> I'm pretty sure this is a style debate, and the sides correspond roughly to New School and Old School.
> 
> ...





I think there are all different kinds of ways to railroad. As a player, I consider it railroad when the GM clearly coerces us, or alters things so we get on track. I don't mind if the GM has anticipated a series of events, and if there are naturual consequences that flow from how we react to those events. It is when the GM deliberately imposes negative consequences on you for not going where he wants you to that it is a problem in my experience. 

And I agree, railroading can crop up in instances of an adventure that is otherwise pretty open (if that is what you are saying)----and I must admit I don't mind it in brief instances, so long as it isn't as heavy handed and imposing as your example above. I get that the GM only has so much time, a little nudge here and there is fine. But at the end of the day the PCs should be free not to bite. 

I haven't been following this thread too closely so forgive me if I misunderstand how this next point was dealt with, but consequences on their own aren't a bad thing. In my mafia campaigns, players have total liberty to pursue whatever rackets, alliances, personal goals, etc they want. And because I have a fully fleshed out set of characters in the underworld they inhabit, I can generally react with realistic consequences (good or bad) when the players do things---I also have a lot of NPCs in motion doing their own things. 

There is nothing wrong with presenting a meaningful situation to the players, as long as they can engage it how they wish or ignore it if they wish to do so. Things like this crop up in real life (you mother calls and says your sister is in the hospital, your friend offers a chance to join him on a business venture, etc). 

Example From my own campaign:
In my last campaign, the players set out to impress their capo, and succeeded by making money with some innovative rackets. The capo had been secretly plotting against the boss from the beginning. After they interacted with him a bit, I decided he would try to bring them into the conspiracy. He propositioned them, offering them good positions, and assuring them he had other capos lined up behind them. 

This scenario wasn't something I originally intended them to participate in. Originally the family war was going to be more of a backdrop, but because they impressed the capo and played it smooth, he brought them in. However, they chose to act like they were going along, and then immediately told the boss what was up. This moved them from the periphery of a mob war to the center.


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## Vespucci (Jun 9, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I haven't been following this thread too closely so forgive me if I misunderstand how this next point was dealt with, but consequences on their own aren't a bad thing. In my mafia campaigns, players have total liberty to pursue whatever rackets, alliances, personal goals, etc they want. And because I have a fully fleshed out set of characters in the underworld they inhabit, I can generally react with realistic consequences (good or bad) when the players do things---I also have a lot of NPCs in motion doing their own things.
> 
> There is nothing wrong with presenting a meaningful situation to the players, as long as they can engage it how they wish or ignore it if they wish to do so. Things like this crop up in real life (you mother calls and says your sister is in the hospital, your friend offers a chance to join him on a business venture, etc).
> 
> ...




As far as I can tell, we agree about "railroading".

For the rest: I'm not arguing against consequences.  My sensible version of the storm example has consequences for the players decision to stay in a makeshift shelter.  The debate is over scripting, with particularly emphasis on what that means about consequences for PC decisions.  There's clearly a scale.  Stormfox's example was one of scripting, from day 0 of the campaign, an end-of-the-world event to occur in two game years _and_ expecting the players to deal with it, on pain of - the end of the world!  

Interestingly, what looked to me like a bit of a straw man has actually attracted defenders.  Because their approach is so radically different to mine, I don't think an intelligible debate can take place - all I can really do is explain why I don't like playing in strongly scripted games.

For completeness: I probably wouldn't play in your current game because I don't find the mafia to be particularly compelling.   But a different genre under the same style would be interesting.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 9, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> As far as I can tell, we agree about "railroading".
> 
> For the rest: I'm not arguing against consequences.  My sensible version of the storm example has consequences for the players decision to stay in a makeshift shelter.  The debate is over scripting, with particularly emphasis on what that means about consequences for PC decisions.  There's clearly a scale.  Stormfox's example was one of scripting, from day 0 of the campaign, an end-of-the-world event to occur in two game years _and_ expecting the players to deal with it, on pain of - the end of the world!
> 
> Interestingly, what looked to me like a bit of a straw man has actually attracted defenders.  Because their approach is so radically different to mine, I don't think an intelligible debate can take place - all I can really do is explain why I don't like playing in strongly scripted games.




Scripted isn't a term (within the context of RPGs) I am terribly familiar with. It sounds like what I encountered a lot in the 90s (and correct me if I am wrong) where the GM sees the game as a movie or book. Kind of like railroading, but where he actually has a lot of dramatic beats planned out as well (The Ending of the Ravenloft Module, the created, felt like this for me). If I remember a lot of modules back then actually used the script format for organization (Scene I, etc). 

I am curious, if you consider a major world event scripting (correct me if I am wrong), how would you distinguish between scripting and world in motion (just curious, not criticizing). 



> For completeness: I probably wouldn't play in your current game because I don't find the mafia to be particularly compelling.   But a different genre under the same style would be interesting.




Yes mafia isn't popular as a gaming genre. I've loved mafia stuff since I saw goodfellas as a kid. Some players wouldn't mind this same scenario set in a fantasy campaign using guilds (my campaign is essentially a modern day city adventure). In my own group we tend to prefer modern campaigns, so mafia is a good fit.


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## Vespucci (Jun 9, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> Scripted isn't a term (within the context of RPGs) I am terribly familiar with. It sounds like what I encountered a lot in the 90s (and correct me if I am wrong) where the GM sees the game as a movie or book. Kind of like railroading, but where he actually has a lot of dramatic beats planned out as well (The Ending of the Ravenloft Module, the created, felt like this for me). If I remember a lot of modules back then actually used the script format for organization (Scene I, etc).




I'm trying to coin it as a term of art.   Glad to see that it's fairly easy to understand!



Bedrockgames said:


> I am curious, if you consider a major world event scripting (correct me if I am wrong), how would you distinguish between scripting and world in motion (just curious, not criticizing).




I don't think there's a blanket answer to that one.  In the heroic adventure genre that D&D dominates, you don't really need major world events (those that you do need, the players will create or provoke).  In published campaigns, such events really just exist to move new editions of the campaign.  It's not entirely clear to me why home-brewing refs see fit to add such events to their own campaigns.  Imitation surely comes into it, but can't be the whole answer.

In other genres, major world events may be part of the setting.  That question about games set in the first half of the 20th Century takes a couple of examples of such.  In the examples, deleting or altering the major events without any input from the players would be a bait-and-switch on the setting (whatever the characters might expect is going to happen, the players have definite conceptions about a game starting in Belgium 1914).

All the best with your game - I'm sure your players are having a blast.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

Nagol and S'mon, thanks for the replies - can't XP Nagol again yet, though.



Nagol said:


> In my case the starting situation would remain exactly the same.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I constantly rework the forestory and the current situation by adding previously undefined elements.  Once an element is in play, its nature remains constant.



We differ on the first of these - I fit the starting situation to the players and their PCs.

I'm not sure about the second - once an element is in play in my game, its _revealed_ nature remains constant, but stuff that has not yet been revealed about it (eg perhaps its origin, or where it was/what it was doing 5 years ago) is still up for grabs. Often I'll have a loose notion of what some of these things might be, but will often precisify or change them on the fly as seems best-suited to push the game forward.



Nagol said:


> if a PCs long-lost mother is known to be in an orcish camp for sacrifice and the PCs leave without interrupting the ritual then the mother is sacrificed.



Good example. I could imagine handling this in different ways. Thus, in my game the players had a chance to rescue the mother of one of the PCs from a goblin fortress, but left her in a room on her own while they searched for a way out. When they came back, I explained that they found her dead. (I'd already decided that this would be the outcome unless very affirmative steps were taken to prevent it - and they weren't.)

But in circumstnaces where the PCs failure to protect his mother had a different cause - for example, he was doing something equally heroic elsewhere - then how I resolved the matter might be different.



Nagol said:


> Perhaps the players wants the angst of knowing he failed to save her?  Perhaps the player originally had her long-lost because he doesn't want to interact with the mother at all?  Allowing the players to author the story by respecting their choices -- both good and bad -- is a form of empowerment.



I strongly agree with this. Relating it back to Starfox's scenario, the reason why the GDS trio ignored the world-ending issue is therefore crucial. If the players actively decided to continue planting, dancing and gazing in the knowledge that the world is soon doomed, then ending the world affirms those choices. But if - as Starfox seemed to have in mind - they are just not interested in the world-saving thing and treat it as an irrelevant distraction to the game they actually want to play, then I think that the GM insisting on his/her plot and ending the gameworld would tend to be the disempowering way of proceeding.



S'mon said:


> If the GM tells the players about the looming shadows of disaster, and that their PCs will have the opportunity to confront it, and the players create PCs who won't confront it, I don't see it as bad DMing if the disaster still occurs.  For one thing, the players may *want* to experience being swept up in disaster.  If the players actually wanted a no-disaster game, they should have told the GM that up front and he could run a different game or get different players.



This works for me - the stuff on the right-hand side of "for one thing" especially. As I read Starfox and Vespucci, what you say there accords with what they're saying, namely, that the setting/timeline etc have a metagame as well as ingame significance, which a GM can't repudiate just by saying "But that's what is happening in the gameworld!"

What the actual metagame significance is, for whom, and how the play group as a whole should best respond to it, is going to be a particular matter for each group. I don't think any general rules - such as "stick to your prepared timeline or you'll invalidate player choices" or "always apply natural consequences to PC actions" - can be given here, because of the range of variation in interests, dynamics etc across groups.



Nagol said:


> As a player my interests are ecletic and best known by me not the DM.  I'll engage those things that catch my fancy and drop them again just as quickly if they don't keep my interest.  Having someone rebuild to feed my apparent interest would be disconcerting



I'm not sure what you mean here by "rebuild", so I'm not sure what you're describing.

But my general experience as a GM has been that players don't object when the parts of the gameworld that reach out to grab them are mostly the sorts of things that they are interested in engaging with (so, to give a very simple example, when the party contains a lot of Raven Queen worshippers they encounter more than the population average of Orcus cultists).



Nagol said:


> The PCs do not instigate all actions; they may not appreciate all developments; but the PCs can affect any outcome.



In my game the PCs do not appreciate all developments, but I try hard to ensure that the players do.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Dragonlance is a Railroad because as you point out it does not support player freedom in _any_ significant dimension, the players are essentially just along for the ride.  Where there is significant player freedom in any of the dimensions you have identified, it is not a railroad.
> 
> Example:  I'm playing Great Britain in Axis & Allies.  I only have one kind of freedom - to direct my forces in the struggle with the Axis powers.  That's a very limited freedom, but enough that the game is not a railroad.  Snakes & Ladders or Ludo, by contrast...



I guess I don't think that board games provide an especially useful comparitor to RPGs in this respect. For example, it's not a failure of Snakes & Ladders that it is a railroad. I play Snakes & Ladders from time to time with my young daughter and it's kind of fun, in a "let's see who can roll highest the most" kind of way.

But I'm not sure what is gained by saying that an RPG scenario is a railroad only if _no_ player with any sort of interest in freedom could enjoy it, which is what I take you to be saying. Given that any given scenario is typically being experienced by some actual players who have actual preferences, I tend to think of it as a railroad if it denies those actual players freedom in the dimension(s) that matter(s) to them.

Which is to say that I think _being a railroad _is a relational property, relative to a given player's (or groups) interests and expectations - although in some cases (like Dragonlance) we can perhaps say that it is a property that will be instantiated in respect of nearly any conceivable play group.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> I'm pretty sure this is a style debate, and the sides correspond roughly to New School and Old School.



I'm not sure about this, because I'm not sure what counts as New School - it seems to include both (what I would consider) the worst of Dragonlance/2nd ed/White Wolf style metaplot and heavy-handed GMing, but also indie-ish style player-focused and thematically driven games of the Burning Wheel etc variety, where the GM is expected to follow the players' leads as much as, or even more than, vice versa. But these two versions of the New School are implacably opposed - the Forge is one of the strongest sources of hostility to Dragonlance/White Wolf/2nd ed-style play.



Vespucci said:


> if Hickman had just given the players cool powers and advised the ref with something like, "you should be guided by the dice, not mastered by them - if it comes down to throwing out a bizarre dice roll, or the same plot, the die has to go!"



I thought that this was roughly what Dragonlance did - maybe I've been misinformed?! Unless I've misread you, what you're stating here is the White Wolf Golden Rule - which is one of the starting points for the sort of GM-storyline-dominated play that the Forge (and I) are very hostile towards.



Vespucci said:


> If I'm really keen on the witch's cottage as a scene, I should have the party pass it by _before_ the rail really starts to come down, but accept their decision if they decide not to backtrack.



I'd make it even clearer than that! - have the rain start to pelt down as the cottage comes into view. This makes it unambiguous to the players that you are offering them something interesting.

If they decline it, well that's their lookout. (And if they do decline it, then whether having the witch come chasing them through the rain would be unreasonably railroady, or a reasonable complication, will depend on a lot of other details of the situation, the reasons the players have for ignoring the cottage, etc.)


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## JamesonCourage (Jun 9, 2011)

In my view, these discussions seem to gravitate towards what looks like the issue coming down to immersion versus meta.

Some players will not be happy at the "please the players in a meta sense" type game, as it draws the immersion out of the game. Such a take would be self-defeating.

Some players will not be happy at the opposite. As that's not my preferred play style, I'd feel bad phrasing it, especially by incorporating quotes.

At any rate, play what you like


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## Vespucci (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure about this, because I'm not sure what counts as New School - it seems to include both (what I would consider) the worst of Dragonlance/2nd ed/White Wolf style metaplot and heavy-handed GMing, but also indie-ish style player-focused and thematically driven games of the Burning Wheel etc variety, where the GM is expected to follow the players' leads as much as, or even more than, vice versa. But these two versions of the New School are implacably opposed - the Forge is one of the strongest sources of hostility to Dragonlance/White Wolf/2nd ed-style play.




I agree that there are more than two schools of roleplaying, just as there are more than two schools of music.  When I talk about the Old School and the New School in music, I mean styles in hip-hop.  When I talk about the Old School and the New School in roleplaying, I mean styles in D&D and clones.  (Carrying the analogy further: there could even be more than two schools in D&D and clones.)

To treat with the specific example: while White Wolf did make the ref into a storyteller, they were very slow to let the player be an optimizer (it's arguable that they still haven't done this).  The New School had a certain lag between storytelling and optimization, but both had been absorbed into its paradigm by the start of the 90s.

(You could express that in several different ways.  Some folks would say that the New School wasn't going until both trends had been brought through, some might quibble on the timing, etc.  But the distinction between New School D&D playstyle and Storyteller playstyle is a fairly clean one.)



pemerton said:


> I thought that this was roughly what Dragonlance did - maybe I've been misinformed?! Unless I've misread you, what you're stating here is the White Wolf Golden Rule - which is one of the starting points for the sort of GM-storyline-dominated play that the Forge (and I) are very hostile towards.




Dragonlance went further than that.  I'm assuming a softer version of the module, not a complete revamp.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 9, 2011)

I am curious, how many hear have been in railroad campaigns they enjoyed? Generally I prefer games where the PCs can set their own goals, or at least react with the greatest amount of freedom possible to events, but I've been in some great campaigns that were basically railroads. The last starwars campaign I was in, the GM pretty much railroaded us, but I enjoyed it because I wanted something that felt like the starwars movies.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

Vespucci, thanks for the clear reply.

But how does 4e - or even aspects of 3E - fit into your old/new distinction?

In 3E, for example, Expedition to the Demonweb Pits is a clear example of new school - player optimisation of PC builds plus GM as storyteller - and I would go further than you have done and say that all it leaves up to the players is a bit of colour and a bit of tactical decision-making (heavily informed, of course, by the prior optimisation).

But some of the Penumbra d20 modules - like In the Belly of the Beast (Mike Mearls) or the Ebon Mirror (Keith Baker) - don't seem to fit this mould. They seem closer to the indie mould, insofar as they contemplate the players making genuinely free choices, of some thematic significance, via their PCs, which will determine how the story resolves and what the thematic import of that resolution is.

4e offers similar variety. While it has some railroady stuff that fits your notion of new school (eg a lot of the modules) it has other stuff that seems different both from this _and_ from classic/old school D&D - for example, the guidelines on how to adjudicate skill challenges (both in the DMG and DMG2); or the discussion of journeying into deep myth in The Plane Above, which is basically HeroQuesting by another name. This clearly contemplates that the players will be genuinely free to make thematically signficant choices that determine the resolution of the scenario being played.

So even within the domain of D&D play, I find the old/new school distinction hard to apply.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I am curious, how many hear have been in railroad campaigns they enjoyed?



Sort of, but only despite the railroad.  I was in a 2nd ed game for about a year, which was a GM-storyline PCs-have-to-decipher-the-prophecy style game. But the group was quite large (7 players, I think) and the GM spent most of his time paying attention to the PC at the centre of the prophecy. So despite the railroad the rest of us were able to have quite a good time roleplaying among ourselves - building up relationships between our PCs, various loyalties and points of difference and the like, and also relating all of that to the various elements of the gameworld and of the prophecy.

Then the GM teleported us all 100 years into the future. This killed off all the intragroup stuff, which had depended upon us being comfortable with our PCs' relationships to one another within the context of the gameworld as we understood it. It put the focus firmly back on the GM's railroad. I don't know if the GM did it to deliberately have this effect, or because he'd become too confused by his own convoluted prophecy, or a bit of both, or for some other reason. In any event, I left the game a session or two after this, as it killed off everything that I enjoyed about the game.


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## Hussar (Jun 9, 2011)

Mort, JamesonCourage and various others.  

Yeah, I see where you're coming from now.  That makes sense to differentiate between "Heavy Handed DM Pushing" and outright railroading, because they do result in a somewhat different perspective from the players, even if the end result is frequently the same.

I guess, for me, I just have some difficulty with there really being a large difference between the DM stripping choices from the players or simply making one choice so blatantly obvious that no other choice makes logical sense.

But, yeah, I largely agree with you all.


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## the Jester (Jun 9, 2011)

Hussar said:


> But, if the dragon armies are advancing, the players cannot ignore it.  They have no choice but to deal with it in some manner.  Sure, they could fight, join the army, try to sneak through, whatever, but, what they don't have is the option to not deal with it.




Sure they do (as long as it isn't a railroad). They could go into a megadungeon for the duration of the war. They could just be civilians and hope the fighting misses them. They could treat the Dragonarmy troops pretty much like any other wandering monsters. They could go off to the unexplored wilderness. They could take ship in the direction opposite the encroaching Dragonarmies.

It is having the option to do these things removed that makes it a railroad. 

The same holds true in a setting where society is under the sway of a monotheistic and intolerant religion, where all other gods are forbidden. The pcs have no choice to deal with it in some manner, it will come up in play all the time. They will see statues of this god in all the taverns. Once a week people will expect to see them in the temple. If they don't tithe, people cluck and tsk. But is that a railroad? I don't think so. 

Is it a railroad if one of the pcs is a cleric of a different god and has to hide it? I don't think so.

What if not going to church means he draws significant suspicion from society at large? I don't think so.

What if it means there aren't npcs willing to heal him if he needs it? Still no.

What if they persecute his faith and if he's caught with his holy symbol they'll execute him? Still no.

A railroad happens when the players _cannot_ make a choice because the dm will not allow it. "No, you can't go east, there are Dragonarmies."

I will repeat the proposition that _just because your choices suck doesn't make it a railroad._



Hussar said:


> Isn't the negation of options railroading by definition?




Yes. I'll even agree that there is a point where the pcs really do lose their ability to make choices because of the strength of the threat. I guess where we differ is on where that line is. It seems as though my tolerance for Devil's choices is far higher than most. 

If you can get off the tracks, _even if it sucks,_ you aren't on a railroad.


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## the Jester (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Given that player conceptions of meaningfulness are paramount here, I think it matters very much how it feels. You don't deliver a good play experience by assuring your players that they had choices that _you think they should have cared about_. The players actually have to care about them. The choices must be meaningful _for them_.




We are not talking about delivering a good play experience. A good play experience can come via railroad; a poor play experience can come via sandbox. We are talking about the difference between the two.

Again, choices need _not be_ meaningful to make a sandbox a sandbox. How meaningful of a choice is "We are lost in the woods, which direction full of trees should we go in?" to the players?

And yet in a sandbox that is an entirely valid choice for the players to find themselves facing. 

In a railroad, you only get lost if the rails lead you there, and it doesn't matter which direction you choose- your next encounter is waiting at the next station along the tracks.


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## Tamlyn (Jun 9, 2011)

Isiolith said:


> I wanted to bring this up here before we brought it up with our DM so that we weren't just flying off the handle at him.
> 
> As a DM, ours is usually just fine. However, as of late (and especially in the session we played last night, which is why this is still fresh in my mind), it feels like, as a group, we're being heavily railroaded from point A to point B within the overarching plot without being given opportunities, in character, to agree with the decisions essentially being made for us; rather, we're just told (by Elminster at this point or whomever is "in charge" in whatever town we're in) to go find (insert antagonist-of-the-week) and kill him/her/it. As the group is a mercenary company currently finding itself in the middle of an all-out war between an evil mercenary company/the Zhentarim and an evil lich and his undead army, this is understandable plot development (that we'd be used to pick off minor antagonists one-by-one) but it doesn't feel like we're actually choosing to _accept_ the contract--and mercs, if I understand correctly, don't have to accept every contract that is presented to them.
> 
> ...




So Isiolith, what did you wind up doing/plan on doing? Let us know how it goes.


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## Starfox (Jun 9, 2011)

First, I think we are discussing different things. As someone said early on; Railroading <-> Sandbox is not an either or, it is a spectrum, a sliding scale. Things can be not railroady and still not be fully sandbox. In fact, I believe the best games avoid either extreme, but that is a personal opinion. 

IMO, an extreme sandbox is unengaging, a locomotive going on its own track regardless of whether the players want to go there or not. The players are simply not significant enough to impact the timeline. Basically as bad as railroading, exchange "timeline" for "story" and you instead have a railroad. To be interesting, a campaign has to place the players at the center of the action and plot.

About my solution to the GDS syndrome - a flexible sandbox. Assuming I had made a storyline about a 2-years-in-the-future disaster with foreshadowing but my players focused elsewhere, I would let the focus of my players determine the focus of the story. The disaster would still loom, but the player's role in resolving it would be different - they would assume the parts normally given to bit players and these parts would be made the main roles. There is an episode of Babylon 5 that does this, as well as a movie Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which I have not seen but ought to). Basically, what was intended as the main action becomes the backdrop while the main action now revolves around what would ordinarily be bit players. For example, a would-be hero might get his moment of crisis when he decides to preserve the perfect beauty the gardener created, the great magus gets a realization into a crucial astral problem watching the ethereal moves of the dancer and so on. These "great" characters appear in the story as bit players having problems that the GDS main/PC characters can help them out with. This demands that I make NPC heroes to take on the roles the players didn't, but I am in no way stealing the player's limelight, because they are not acting on the same stage as these NPC heroes.

This leads me to a more general solution to the problem of story vs. sandbox - focus where the character's focus. Say there are ten possible enemies the 1st level characters could focus on. They pick one, with 2-3 others as minor enemies and more or less ignoring the rest. Rather than making them feel inadequate because they ignored the one the GM decided to be the main villain, MAKE the one they focused on the main villain. Make whatever plot the players investigated the main plot. 

I realize this is not a "true" sandbox, in that reality changes in response to the PC's actions, but it is very far from a railroad. It does empower the PCs and makes the plot revolve around them.


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## the Jester (Jun 9, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> I am curious, how many hear have been in railroad campaigns they enjoyed?




I have run two games that were either railroads or close to them. 

The first was a disaster and the only time I've had my players lose interest in a game. This was in the late 80s/early 90s and I'd kind of written an Ultima IV style epic quest. Ugh. I learned a lot from that.

Then a couple of years ago I talked to my group about running a low magic setting with more plot than usual. A big feature of it was that the elves were gone- nobody knew what had happened to them- and "elfbloods" (mechanically half-elves) were anywhere from about 1/3 to 1/16 elf.  It ran in two arcs, the first of which was fairly sandboxy with a good amount of political intrigue and treachery and lots of hints about the overall plot line. The last session I set up so that it would be _just shy_ of a railroad- I needed to break one of the main rules of good dming to pull it off ("never count on capturing the party") and one of the pcs got away, but I managed to integrate in my planned "last minute npc arrives, reveals she is an elf and helps save the pcs from death while the bad guy gets away through the mysterious portal that his ritual has created" scene.

It went off GREAT. I think a lot of it was because, rather than forcing the pcs to jump on the rails, I had spent many games setting things up to encourage them to _want_ to get to that station. Instead of being prescriptive, I tried to be predictive, and because I know my players really well it went perfectly. Another big element that helped was the fact that only the very end was like this.

Then, when we came back to it for the second arc, the pcs were on a much stronger railroad. Ultimately, not following the bad guy would lead them into the middle of the apocalypse that made the setting low-magic. There was a living epic spell called the Elf-Slayer of Vardoth that was CR 157 and was committing genocide in one direction, a demonflame zone in another, etc. The pcs could have wandered off into these areas and likely died, but they might have found a way to stay alive. Who knows... but they all were hot to chase the bad guy anyway, even if the surrounding areas weren't lethal.  

The second arc of the campaign had an area detailed that covered the zone the enemy would travel to his destination. It was predetermined that the pcs wouldn't catch up to him until the end; there were several planned encounters along the way that would happen wherever they went. There were sandbox elements, though; some choices about the route they were taking could lead to their choice of messed up mid-apocalyptic zone. 

Though I'd predetermined where the pcs would catch up with their arch-nemesis, I had not decided what the outcome would be. That was for the dice. So the train took them to the station, but once there it was up to them what to do.

That campaign was very satisfying for all of us. Again, being predictive let me preserve the players' sense of autonomy while keeping them on the tracks. 

There are so many bits of that that are totally against my normal dming philosophy that it's ridiculous.  But like I said, it worked, everyone loved it and we had a blast.


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## Janx (Jun 9, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> DM: "On your journey between towns, on a wilderness road, with no one around, you find a huge pile of gold."
> 
> Is this a railroad because 99 out of 100 times players will take it (after being suitably paranoid about it being trapped/cursed/bait/etc)?
> 
> ...




with the money on the road, I am in no worse state regardless of what I do with the money (ignore it or take it).  I'm ignoring another choice of "add money to the pile" which would obviously hurt the PC, and could qualify as unexpected or unlikely.

With the big looming threat of dragon armies, some choices will leave you in a worse state than others.

And some of you point out, the PCs could join with the enemy.  It illustrates that the very nature of the PCs has relevance on what will be a threat to the PCs (as some children like spanking).  I have a house and a spouse. I am not going to quit my job and live in my car for 3 years.  Not without some seriously good reason.  A good aligned party will naturally be more inclined to help fight evil than a non-good party.

I use DM initiated events all the time.  Stuff that has nothing to do with what the PCs did, but happens to intersect the PCs path, so they have to take action.  

Emphasis on the have to take action.  We're playing D&D.  When the Tsunami comes, your chosen character class is one that will take action.  Because Ostrich Necked Beet Farmer is an NPC class.


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## steeldragons (Jun 9, 2011)

My dear gentlefolk and assembled sentients...

Let us set aside this senseless debate of subjective playstyle.

Instead, let us acknowledge our differences and enjoy our respective games. The Sandbox is no more rightgoodfun than the Railroad badwrong.

Are you and your players (if you're the GM) or your follows and GM (if you're a player) having a good time? The answer should always (or mostly) be a resounding "Yes!" Consequences, "good/perceived reward" or "bad/perceived punishment" are matters of subjective opinion and individual playsytle perference.

The game's the thing! This or that playstyle is neither "right" nor "better" than the other for anyone besides the particular group. The collective "Yes we're having fun" is all that matters.

If you prick the Sandboxer, do we not bleed? If you tickle the Railroader do we not laugh? If you poison either, do they not die?

I...have a dream.

A dream of a thread when the sandboxer and the railroader enjoy their game.

A dream of a thread when the 2e player and the 4e player join together with their respective groups and tell us about their good times. 

I dream of a thread when the "gamist" and the "simulationist" compare notes and laughs, not insults or snarkery.

I dream....a dream of a day when the Dragonborn shall lay with the Kender, the Gnome with the Tiefling...

A dream of a day when PCs across this great forum of ours, from post to post, shall ROLL THEIR DICE...withOUT prejudgement or accusation.

But instead, roll their dice for GLORY...for FUN...FOR NARNIA!...no, wait...

For KILLIN' THINGS n' TAKIN' THEIR STUFF or defeating the BBEG and saving the world...or whatever the players AND GM decide will be FUN without declaration of UNfun at other tables!

Yes, I have a dream.

--Steel Dragons
(Pay no attention to that Lead Drake behind the curtain!)


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

the Jester said:


> A railroad happens when the players _cannot_ make a choice because the dm will not allow it. "No, you can't go east, there are Dragonarmies."
> 
> I will repeat the proposition that _just because your choices suck doesn't make it a railroad._
> 
> ...



I notice that at the start of what I've quoted you refer to "the players", and by the end you are referring to "the PCs". I'm not sure how much of that is inadvertant slippage. I think it might be important, because something can suck for a PC but not suck for a player - and that is the spot I'm looking for in presenting hard choices to my players.

If you don't draw such a clear distinction between player and PC - eg because you're looking for a very first person, immersive play experience - then I can see that you wouldn't think about hard choices in the same way.

I think that this might be relevant to the different ways we are approcahing this issue, but I'm not sure.


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## pemerton (Jun 9, 2011)

Starfox said:


> As someone said early on; Railroading <-> Sandbox is not an either or, it is a spectrum, a sliding scale. Things can be not railroady and still not be fully sandbox. In fact, I believe the best games avoid either extreme, but that is a personal opinion.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



I agree with your concluding paragraph. Which also refutes your opening paragraph! Because it shows that there are approaches to play that lie off your suggested spectrum.

The sort of approach you describe - in which the GM follows the lead of the players in shaping and presenting a gameworld that engages their interests - is not widely discussed on ENworld, in my experience, but is discussed on other forums (eg the Forge). The key to making it work is for the GM to assert _situational authority_ - the GM sets the scenes for the players, in response to their expressed and revealed interests - but for the players to exercise _plot authority_ - ie the choices of the players determine how the situations actually resolve. The GM then takes those resolutions into account in setting up new situations (this is what you called a "flexible sandbox").

A game like this will flop if the GM can't set up situations that the players see as worthwhile to engage in. "Worthwhileness", here, may be influenced by any number of factors, but would normally include considerations like "fits sensibly - or at least plausibly - with what came before" and "doesn't make everything we've done up to now worthless or meaningless". The problem you identified in your initial GDS example, as I read it, is that the GM has failed on this second count.

And in case I've completely misunderstood you, I'll apologise in advance for projecting my own ideas and preferences onto your description of your preferred approach to play!


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## the Jester (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I notice that at the start of what I've quoted you refer to "the players", and by the end you are referring to "the PCs". I'm not sure how much of that is inadvertant slippage. I think it might be important, because something can suck for a PC but not suck for a player - and that is the spot I'm looking for in presenting hard choices to my players.
> 
> If you don't draw such a clear distinction between player and PC - eg because you're looking for a very first person, immersive play experience - then I can see that you wouldn't think about hard choices in the same way.
> 
> I think that this might be relevant to the different ways we are approcahing this issue, but I'm not sure.




It was a total slip, but I _do_ prefer a very immersive play experience. You might be on to something here.


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## Starfox (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> I agree with your concluding paragraph. Which also refutes your opening paragraph! Because it shows that there are approaches to play that lie off your suggested spectrum.




As the xp comment was cut short I have to make a post.

I think we are in agreement.

I don't see the two paragraphs as in conflict - they both point to the big grey are in between the two extremes - sandbox and railroad. (And I mean extreme sandbox here, as "sandbox" seems to have a much wider range of meaning that railroad).

As I read it, the rest of your post also talks about this grey area and subdivides it further, which is beside my original point but fully compatible with what I said.


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## Starfox (Jun 9, 2011)

steeldragons said:


> Let us set aside this senseless debate of subjective playstyle.




But debate is FUN! As long as it does not degenerate into flame wars, why not debate to our hearts content? It does not mean we are enemies, or even seriously disagreeing - railroad vs. sandbox is a pretty fine distinction that would be largely incomprehensible to someone outside the hobby.


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## Janx (Jun 9, 2011)

the Jester said:


> It was a total slip, but I _do_ prefer a very immersive play experience. You might be on to something here.




With the way pemerton worded it, is there a difference in opinion on what that means



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> If you don't draw such a clear distinction between player and PC - eg because you're looking for a very first person, immersive play experience - then I can see that you wouldn't think about hard choices in the same way.




When I play a character, I put myself in the head of that character.  I'm ruder, abrupt and quick to violence as Rau the half-orc barbarian.  As my high level elven f/t/m, I'm like freaking batman.

Where that matters, is drama and challenges for my character doesn't suck for me the player.  Yet I consider myself fully immersed in my character.


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## Janx (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> The sort of approach you describe - in which the GM follows the lead of the players in shaping and presenting a gameworld that engages their interests - is not widely discussed on ENworld, in my experience, but is discussed on other forums (eg the Forge). The key to making it work is for the GM to assert _situational authority_ - the GM sets the scenes for the players, in response to their expressed and revealed interests - but for the players to exercise _plot authority_ - ie the choices of the players determine how the situations actually resolve. The GM then takes those resolutions into account in setting up new situations (this is what you called a "flexible sandbox").




This is effectively what I try to do when I run a game.  I write about 4-6 hours of material, based on what the players have expressed their PCs are interested in as goals, and as outcomes of past PC activities.  If things are slow, I'll throw in a dinosaur attack against their interests to spur them into some new action.


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## Vespucci (Jun 9, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Vespucci, thanks for the clear reply.
> 
> But how does 4e - or even aspects of 3E - fit into your old/new distinction?
> 
> ...




I'm sticking to the art analogy.  The output of a studio famed for turning out gangster rap might contain works that stretch this definition, or outright defy it.  But we could still legitimately refer to the basic axis of the studio's work by reference to its most famous and prolific artists, etc.

With D&D, we actually have it much easier.  Because the industry leader produces not merely content (in the form of modules) but a guide on how to play in them (the PHB) and run them (the DMG), we can just turn to those texts when wondering "how does that play"?  This doesn't tell us how an individual module, player, or ref will play, but it is what people read when they learn how to play the game.

I'm taking as non-controversial that the 3e PHB invites scripted character development.  The 3e DMG, on the other hand, is explicitly ambivalent on scripting.  It describes two styles of adventure: the "site-based adventure" (typically dungeoneering) and the "event-based adventure" which,
_"is often described as more story-based, because it's more like a book or movie and less like exploration of a passive site.  Event-based adventures usually don't involve a room-by-room key but instead notes on what happens when."_​There's some good advice on managing event-based adventures and stern warnings about the need for choices, especially meaningful ones.  There's also advice to script in an exciting climax to the adventure!  And we get some useful content for non-scripted adventures (among other things, random tables for dungeon non-design)

It's hard to divine the writer's intent, but I suspect that they were trying for a "big tent" to welcome in those who thought Hickman is the messiah and seat them with those who felt Dragonlance ruined everything.  However, due to increasingly complex rules, scripting had a better hand - "winging it" had become a lot harder.

Short answer?  3e trends towards the scripted New School, though the writers are trying to accommodate the Old School.



pemerton said:


> 4e offers similar variety. While it has some railroady stuff that fits your notion of new school (eg a lot of the modules) it has other stuff that seems different both from this _and_ from classic/old school D&D - for example, the guidelines on how to adjudicate skill challenges (both in the DMG and DMG2); or the discussion of journeying into deep myth in The Plane Above, which is basically HeroQuesting by another name. This clearly contemplates that the players will be genuinely free to make thematically signficant choices that determine the resolution of the scenario being played.




Once again, I assume no controversy in claiming that the 4e PHB invites character development scripting.  Let's start with the 4e DMG on campaigns:_"When you start a campaign, you should have some idea of its end and how the characters will get there. Fundamentally, the story is what the characters do over the course of the campaign._
_ Keep that point in mind—the story is theirs, not yours... If the characters go in drastically unexpected directions, try to coax them back to *the story you want your game to tell *without railroading them."_​ This is somewhat contradictory, but I think it boils down to "script, but don't be heavy-handed while trying to get players back onto the script".  Or, to use the author's words again:
_"you’ll at least have an idea of the campaign’s climax and how the characters can get there. When they stray from your outline—and they will—you’ll have some sense of what adventures to create to get them back on course"_​I'm not quite sure what's drawn your eye in the Skill Challenges.  Some people do regard this sort of stuff as New School, pointing out that they substitute character skill for player skill, and would really beat up on the section about solving puzzles with dice rolls. 

So, another short answer: 4e is the continuation of the New School.  It's perhaps not the most finished expression of scripting to hand (IMO, that's Pathfinder), but it puts more weight on it than any prior D&D.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> Short answer?  3e trends towards the scripted New School, though the writers are trying to accommodate the Old School.



I really like the tone of the advice in the 3e DMG. It's not dogmatic. It holds that there are multiple, equally valid, ways to run a roleplaying game - static vs tailored encounters for example. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. 

_"If the characters go in drastically unexpected directions, try to coax them back to *the story you want your game to tell *without railroading them."_​To that should probably be added - "and be prepared to ditch your planned story if you think it will make for a better game."


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## Ariosto (Jun 10, 2011)

If you don't have the _motivation_ that leads to "railroading" players by the strictest definition, then you are less likely to do something that looks like "railroading" by any definition.

The motivation that leads to "railroading" is partiality. 

Note that the original term for the moderator in the D&D rules was referee. A dungeonmaster who is disinterested not only when one PC faction clashes with another but when PCs take on "the world" has no destination toward which to lay rails.

Why introduce a single overwhelmingly "no brainer" course of action in the first place, if the object is to provide _interesting_ options for players? That is of course a question the particular judge must answer from his or her own heart. 

I once thought up a scenario that was essentially really a story. Its dramatic effect depended, though, on the players' emotional and conceptual responses to events. Even if I could have forced them to go through certain outward motions, their inner movement -- the real key -- was something that I could only hope to _influence_. The climax involved revelation of how they had misunderstood things. My aim was to "push the buttons" of their (presumed) habits of thought so that their own choices, which they (theoretically) had opportunity to inform, would in retrospect clearly have led step by step to that point.

That in the event came off very well. It would not have been a total dud, I think, if the players had not responded as I hoped, but it would not have had the almost literary beauty.

Another time, I ran a thoroughly "on rails" gauntlet of puzzles -- but it was plainly advertised as just that. It got an enthusiastically positive response, partly because once again (and more certainly) I had built in dramatic foreshadowing and revelation with particular timing.

That kind of thing can be very tempting, and certainly there are groups of players who by far prefer to ride such a railroad as a regular thing rather than to have something less like a drama and more like a game.

People who don't like it as a steady diet may nonetheless enjoy such a production as a "one-shot" (for instance at a convention).

On balance, though, I have found the greatest rewards to come from dramatic situations that arise "organically" in play. When I not only don't but _can't_ know in advance what is going to happen, even narrow it down to a handful of options, I know I have an exciting game set up.

A mathematical exercise may suggest a difficulty with planning event-driven scenarios, one that can be part of the temptation to keep "getting players back on track":

- Suppose that at each step (decision point or event) one must move forward.
- Suppose there are only two options (outcomes) at each step.
- Suppose that no points (states of the scenario) overlap.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who count in binary and those who don't.

With 4 steps, there are 2^4 = 16 end points.
With 8 steps, there are 2^8 = 256 end points.
With 16 steps, there are 2^16 = 65,536 end points.

So, with 16 binary choices and no overlap/duplication, there are 65,535 _final_ states alone that are "wasted" if you wrote them up for a single run. The more you devote your effort to preparing very specific scenario-states in advance, the more temptation there is to trim the tree.

This is not such a problem when one sets up an _environment_ after the example of Dungeon and Wilderness maps and keys in old D&D. Provide the _materials_ for a vast number of possible states, introduce players, and away you go!



*"Players will not find a game enjoyable which confines them too much."*

The definition of "railroading" aside, that is the bottom line. "Too much" is however much the particular players in question find not enjoyable.


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## Janx (Jun 10, 2011)

Vespucci said:


> Once again, I assume no controversy in claiming that the 4e PHB invites character development scripting.  Let's start with the 4e DMG on campaigns:_"When you start a campaign, you should have some idea of its end and how the characters will get there. Fundamentally, the story is what the characters do over the course of the campaign._
> _ Keep that point in mind—the story is theirs, not yours... If the characters go in drastically unexpected directions, try to coax them back to *the story you want your game to tell *without railroading them."_​ This is somewhat contradictory, but I think it boils down to "script, but don't be heavy-handed while trying to get players back onto the script".  Or, to use the author's words again:
> _"you’ll at least have an idea of the campaign’s climax and how the characters can get there. When they stray from your outline—and they will—you’ll have some sense of what adventures to create to get them back on course"_​




I'm not sure I like their wording and strategy, and I'm a "my sessions should form a cool story about your PC" kind of guy.

Especially the concept of "where the campaign will end".  That seems presumptious.   If you're playing a heroic good guy, I'll give you a chance to kill the BBEG.  But I'm not going to fully assume he'll end up dead.  you might screw it up.  Or change your mind.  or capture him.

I'll probably re-arrange some things, if you bypass some content.  If it makes sense that something can't be re-used (we carefully take these precautions to avoid spiders, then no spiders should appear).  If I can re-use it, I will, because I'm cheap.

If you've done enough smart things in prior encounters, I'll make the next encounter the climactic battle with the bad guy, because that was the whole point of your pursuit of him.  He can be anywhere that isn't contradictory to commonsense, player choices, and verisimilitude.

But I sure as heck don't want to coax PCs back onto a path.  Ultimately, if the PCs really want to go south, find out why, and put some interesting stuff there.


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## steeldragons (Jun 10, 2011)

Ariosto said:


> There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who count in binary and those who don't.
> 
> -snip-
> 
> ...




Precisio. Well said.

Live the dream!
--SD


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## C_M2008 (Jun 10, 2011)

steeldragons said:


> I dream....a dream of a day when the Dragonborn shall lay with the Kender, the Gnome with the Tiefling...




You mean laying 6 feet under right?


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## Vespucci (Jun 10, 2011)

steeldragons said:


> I...have a dream.... A dream of a thread when the *2e player and the 4e player* join together with their respective groups and tell us about their good times.




We didn't land on Krynn - Krynn landed on us!


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## S'mon (Jun 10, 2011)

The 4e DMG2 has some good examples of what WoTC seem to think a long-term campaign should look like.  They seem fairly heavily scripted, building towards a predetermined climax and sometimes a campaign-ending revelation.  The model seems to be more like literary or cinematic trilogies, rather than the wargames which influenced Arneson and Gygax.


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## nedjer (Jun 10, 2011)

'Flexible sandbox' - couldn't even be bothered to go back for the quote. I thought even the Forge itself had accepted that it was one huge merry-go-round fueled by pseudo-science and too much bubblegum.

So did they mean a flexible flexible, or a sandbox sandbox when talking about a flexible sandbox? Pure mince


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## nedjer (Jun 10, 2011)

S'mon said:


> The 4e DMG2 has some good examples of what WoTC seem to think a long-term campaign should look like.  They seem fairly heavily scripted, building towards a predetermined climax and sometimes a campaign-ending revelation.  The model seems to be more like literary or cinematic trilogies, rather than the wargames which influenced Arneson and Gygax.




Which is plain baffling, as a long-term campaign might benefit ever so slightly from opportunities for a number of revelations and climaxes. Not sure I want to wait six months for my next . . . revelation


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## S'mon (Jun 10, 2011)

nedjer said:


> Which is plain baffling, as a long-term campaign might benefit ever so slightly from opportunities for a number of revelations and climaxes. Not sure I want to wait six months for my next . . . revelation




The models do include revelations and major events at the beginning or end of each Tier.  If you're playing for 5 hours every week you can level up about every 2.5 sessions, and cover a 10-level tier in 6 months, which as you say is still a long long time.  Anything less and it will stretch out interminably - eg 2.5 hours a fortnight, 5 session to level at standard XP, gives 2 years per tier, and 6 years for a 30-level campaign!

I think WoTC would do better to look at the design of fully satisfying campaigns focused on a single Tier, because I suspect that's a much more practical model for most people if you want a literary/cinematic approach. The big climaxes should be at most every 3 levels, not 10.  And a typical significant adventure should be 1 level, not 3-4.

Edit: Looking at the literary sources, I think the 1-Tier model fits them better too.  Eg the hobbits of LoTR have an Heroic Tier campaign, going from plucky novices to battle-hardened veterans.  Fafhrd & Mouser start at the beginning of Paragon when we meet them, and edge into Epic at the end of their 40-year careers.  Elric starts off at the beginning of Epic when he's the first guy for centuries to summon a Chaos Lord, and caps out at 30th at the time of his demise.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2011)

On static vs tailored encounters - I use tailored encounters in my 4e game. HeroQuest revised edition has an entire action resolution and pacing mechanic based on tailored encounters (where the tailoring is relative to prior successes or failures by the PCs), which has influenced my approach to GMing 4e (and some of this stuff is cribbed by Laws in his sections of the 4e DMG2).

Another published example of tailoring is The Dying Earth RPG, which describes monster stats expressly by reference to the average strength of the PCs in relevant abilities - this is building tailoring right into the NPC stat block!

But tailoring is orthogonal to railroading. Tailoring has no implications for the players making meaningful choices in dimensions other than "how hard will this be". And it even permits meaningful choices of that sort in at least some cases - a Dying Earth GM can easily create a situation, for example, where going to place A will result in meeting two hostile creatures whose statblock is appropriately tailored, while going to place B will result in meeting only one such creature.

What tailoring _does _presuppose is that the GM has a certain role in exercising situational authority - the framing of scenes.Tailoring vs static _is_ relevant, therefore I think, to classic D&D: the advice that Gygax gives at the end of the PHB, for example, would make no sense at all if the GM was adjusting the difficulty of encounters in response to pacing concerns, PC strengths etc, because that advice is all about how good players should take responsiblity for getting their PCs into and out of the situations that are there to be found in the dungeon.

Of course, in the DMG Gygax then goes on to instruct GMs on how _they_ should exercise situational authority - for example, in his well known discussion of how various dungeon occupants might respond to a raid by the PCs. Implicit in this advice, presumably, is that the GM won't have the occupants repsond in such a way as to be unfair to the players and to the capabilities of their PCs - this therefore suggests a degree of tailoring even in classic D&D, as well as a possibility of play breaking down as the players exercise situational authority via "skilled play", the GM exercises situational authority in response via "rat bastard-ism", and the whole thing escalates and degenerates in the way that is exemplified in some early Dragon and White Dwarf discussions of tricks and traps.

Again, though, this lurking incoherence in classic D&D strikes me as being orthogonal to railroading.


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## pemerton (Jun 10, 2011)

S'mon said:


> The 4e DMG2 has some good examples of what WoTC seem to think a long-term campaign should look like.  They seem fairly heavily scripted, building towards a predetermined climax and sometimes a campaign-ending revelation.  The model seems to be more like literary or cinematic trilogies, rather than the wargames which influenced Arneson and Gygax.



There are similar examples in Underdark and The Plane Above. But I read them differently from you (which is not to say that I'm right and you're wrong - I may have misread them!)

The way I read these is as examles of how the designers envisage a 4e game playing out. They're not scripts - neither actually suggested scripts (what could be worse than a script? a script your players have already read because they've looke at the book too!), nor hypothetical or exemplary scripts. They're hypothetical retellings of actual play.

And read in this way I've found them very helpful - they've drawn my attention to features of 4e as a game - its monsters, its mythology, etc - which I had forgotten about or not properly focused on, and helped me see how I can use those world elements to create (hopefully) compelling situations in my game.



Vespucci said:


> I'm not quite sure what's drawn your eye in the Skill Challenges.



The PHB says this (at page 259):

Your DM sets the stage for a skill challenge by describing the obstacle you face and giving you some idea of the options you have in the encounter. Then you describe your actions and make checks until you either successfully complete the challenge or fail.​
The DMG says this (at page 74):

Begin by describing the situation and defining the challenge. . . You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results.​
It also says (at page 75):

In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no. . . This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth…

However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, “Can I use Diplomacy?” you should ask what exactly the character might be doing … Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge.​
Given that the narration of results is intended to respond to the skill checks that the players make, which in turn are to be grounded in descriptions of what their PCs do in resopnse to the ingame situation; and given that the GM is told to allow the players actual freedom in this respect; it follows that the GM will not know what results to narrate until the players have actually done what the rules tell them to do.

Now there is more to be said than that, because the skill challenge system is meant to do a wide range of jobs. For example, it is the default overland travel resolution mechanic - and when used in this way, it is probably less likely to produce unexpected overall outcomes (mostly the PCs will make it from A to B) but rather is used to regulate the attrition of resources (the PCs lost X healing surges in transit, or did/didn't get to rest en route). In this sort of skill challenge, departure from anticipated outcomes is likely to be at the margins rather than in the centre - although in my own case, I've found that some of these marginal surprises are still interesting, and create consequences that come back into play sometime downstream.

Published skill challenges have a tendency to approach the skill challenge _only_ in this way, however - even social skill challenges, which turn into metaphorical "journeys" to certain information or assistance with attrition/penalties along the way. But the skill challenge mechanic can also be used not as a travel mechanic (either metaphorical or literal) but as something analogous to an extended contest in HQ or a Duel of Wits in BW. My experience from using the skill challenge guidelines in play, when the stakes are something other than "how do we get from A to B", is that unexpected stuff comes about.

And this is what I've seen in 4e's skill challenge rules that tells against scripting/railroading.


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## S'mon (Jun 10, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Of course, in the DMG Gygax then goes on to instruct GMs on how _they_ should exercise situational authority - for example, in his well known discussion of how various dungeon occupants might respond to a raid by the PCs. Implicit in this advice, presumably, is that the GM won't have the occupants repsond in such a way as to be unfair to the players and to the capabilities of their PCs - this therefore suggests a degree of tailoring even in classic D&D...




You're reading in something which I _really_ don't think is there.    Gygax, the "Never give a player an even break" guy, seems like the kind of DM who'd happily slaughter PCs who wander into a situation above their heads.  But he'd expect the players of low level PCs to understand that assaulting an active fortress was a dumb idea.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 10, 2011)

pemerton said:


> this therefore suggests a degree of tailoring even in classic D&D, as well as a possibility of play breaking down as the players exercise situational authority via "skilled play", the GM exercises situational authority in response via "rat bastard-ism", and the whole thing escalates and degenerates in the way that is exemplified in some early Dragon and White Dwarf discussions of tricks and traps.



Yeah, there was definitely tailoring in classic D&D. There's the party size and level indicators for all modules and scenarios, the "rooms full with silent monsters" (DMG pg97) to thwart players who bore the DM by being too cautious, Don Turnbull's monstermark system in White Dwarf (an incredibly detailed, mathematically precise version of CR) which "gives dungeonmasters better guidance than previously available on the thorny question of how many wandering monsters should appear against a party of a particular size and strength" and the traps arms race mentioned in several issues of Dragon.



> It was obvious that the time had come for a more elaborate form of the pit: the concealed hole with a trap door that opened suddenly, dropping the victims into it. The covered pit appeared on the second level, and this lead to the rise in popularity of the 10-foot pole.
> ...
> By the time the characters had progressed to 3rd level or beyond, the threat of taking 1d6 damage wasn't dismaying. Ah-hah! I came up with a solution for this. Put spikes in the bottom of the pit and the damage is increased by a considerable amount.
> ...
> As the pits were avoided by characters, what better place to locate secret doors leading to the places the party wanted to find? Thus, in addition to being a hazard, the pit then became a place to seek out. To that nuance, of course, was added another: the pit with a secret door leading to another trap.



 - Dragon #294, Ain't it the Pits? by Gary Gygax



> One of my favorite devices is the pit. However, my players, after having several promising players impaled at the bottom of one, got together and brainstormed on a solution to the problem. Their solution: tie everyone together in mountain climber fashion so that when a player fell into a pit he would be saved by a safety line. My countermove: I decided to have a weight (1 ton) drop from above the pit when it was sprung, which would carry the player and all his confederates into the pit, crushing or impaling (take your pick) them all.
> 
> But never underestimate the player! They again brainstormed on a solution and came up with another award winning idea: since my traps were sprung by weights they would take a small cart with them, loaded with lead, which they would push in front of them. They also would bring several pairs of wheels and a carpenter, so they could continually reuse the same cart. My countermove: I decided that when a player reached a trap it would not only activate but would also activate several other previously-unactivated traps that would lie along the player’s approach paths. Not only did this prevent the players from using their cart idea, it also deterred them from ever trying to weasel around my pits again!



 - Dragon #26, Notes from a Very Successful D&D Moderator by Michael Crane

The second quote is hilariously RBDM-y imo.


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## S'mon (Jun 10, 2011)

pemerton said:


> There are similar examples in Underdark and The Plane Above. But I read them differently from you (which is not to say that I'm right and you're wrong - I may have misread them!)
> 
> The way I read these is as examles of how the designers envisage a 4e game playing out. They're not scripts - neither actually suggested scripts (what could be worse than a script? a script your players have already read because they've looke at the book too!), nor hypothetical or exemplary scripts. They're hypothetical retellings of actual play.




Again, I very much did not get this impression.  They seem expressly to be sample frameworks upon which the DM pre-builds the outline of his campaign *before play begins*.  The idea seems to be that campaigns should always have a "point", and this point is determined by the DM in advance of play.  

I like your misinterpretation better though.


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## nedjer (Jun 10, 2011)

S'mon said:


> The models do include revelations and major events at the beginning or end of each Tier.  If you're playing for 5 hours every week you can level up about every 2.5 sessions, and cover a 10-level tier in 6 months, which as you say is still a long long time.  Anything less and it will stretch out interminably - eg 2.5 hours a fortnight, 5 session to level at standard XP, gives 2 years per tier, and 6 years for a 30-level campaign!
> 
> I think WoTC would do better to look at the design of fully satisfying campaigns focused on a single Tier, because I suspect that's a much more practical model for most people if you want a literary/cinematic approach. The big climaxes should be at most every 3 levels, not 10.  And a typical significant adventure should be 1 level, not 3-4.
> 
> Edit: Looking at the literary sources, I think the 1-Tier model fits them better too.  Eg the hobbits of LoTR have an Heroic Tier campaign, going from plucky novices to battle-hardened veterans.  Fafhrd & Mouser start at the beginning of Paragon when we meet them, and edge into Epic at the end of their 40-year careers.  Elric starts off at the beginning of Epic when he's the first guy for centuries to summon a Chaos Lord, and caps out at 30th at the time of his demise.




Most teen and adult media are fixed narrative, so it must be a pretty hard sell to walk into the hallowed Stables of the Lords of My Little Pony and say, 'we'd like to do something flexible, flexible.'

Probably not the way to collect on a set of those mystic Golden Pony Spurs.


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## Vespucci (Jun 10, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Given that the narration of results is intended to respond to the skill checks that the players make, which in turn are to be grounded in descriptions of what their PCs do in resopnse to the ingame situation; and given that the GM is told to allow the players actual freedom in this respect; it follows that the GM will not know what results to narrate until the players have actually done what the rules tell them to do.




Ugh.  If this is what it takes for a campaign to be "unscripted", then why bother pointing to the skill challenge system?  The obvious case of this sort of thing, long-standing in the game, is combat: ref describes scene, players describe actions, dice mediate success, ref describes outcome.  The storyteller generally doesn't fill in the whole of the work in an rpg: they'll generally have "the PCs fight this bad guy, it's a sweet fight, and the good guys win".  It's _very_ uncommon, even in the New School, to script _how_ the characters will overcome opposition - but just scripting that they do is bad enough.

In case that's obscure: no, I don't think that bringing the dice into it makes the story unscripted.  Even less so in a game which invites the ref to fudge the dice.

IMO, the related point about such skill systems sidelining player skill is a consequence of more scripted games.  In a scripted game, players who focus on problem-solving and getting around challenges (rather than going through them) are a kind of "problem player" - they'll take that mindset to the plot, too!  By the same token, the player who has specialized in going along with the story and adding dramatic color with their descriptions may not be very good at solving problems.  (I don't mean that there are no roleplaying polymaths.  But these are different skills.)  Taking player skill out of the game compensates for turnover in the hobby's player pool without needing to change the genre.



pemerton said:


> Published skill challenges have a tendency to approach the skill challenge _only_ in this way, however - even social skill challenges, which turn into metaphorical "journeys" to certain information or assistance with attrition/penalties along the way. But the skill challenge mechanic can also be used not as a travel mechanic (either metaphorical or literal) but as something analogous to an extended contest in HQ or a Duel of Wits in BW. My experience from using the skill challenge guidelines in play, when the stakes are something other than "how do we get from A to B", is that unexpected stuff comes about.
> 
> And this is what I've seen in 4e's skill challenge rules that tells against scripting/railroading.




Please note: scripting and railroading are not the same thing.  Scripted games have, perhaps, a greater chance of including railroading (for reasons excellently explained by Ariosto, upthread), but my storm/cottage example showed that railroading can be done in an unscripted game.

That out the way: I'm still a bit confused about your position.  It seems like you're saying that the paradigm in the published 4e material is for scripting, but you see a way to use the mechanics otherwise?  It's a matter of interpretation, but that doesn't encourage me to think of the game as leaning towards unscripted play.


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## S'mon (Jun 10, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> The second quote is hilariously RBDM-y imo.




Ridiculously rat-bastardy IMO, and entirely not a style I'd support.  I guess it could sorta work if you embrace the concept of the dungeon as a living hostile entity actively reacting to and trying to kill the PCs.  Sits very poorly with a naturalistic approach though.


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## Jhaelen (Jun 10, 2011)

Doug McCrae said:


> The second quote is hilariously RBDM-y imo.



You could say that!

An arms-race between the DM and the players - how great! The DM might as well just tell his players: "A giant fist strikes down on you from the heavens. You're all dead. I win!"

Pathetic!


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## the Jester (Jun 10, 2011)

pemerton said:


> Of course, in the DMG Gygax then goes on to instruct GMs on how _they_ should exercise situational authority - for example, in his well known discussion of how various dungeon occupants might respond to a raid by the PCs. Implicit in this advice, presumably, is that the GM won't have the occupants repsond in such a way as to be unfair to the players and to the capabilities of their PCs...




Not just no, but WHAAAAAT???

I am looking at those pages right now, searching for any sign of this "implicit" stuff you are making up, and here's what I'm finding:

(In discussing a second assault on a small town)



> The town will have sought whatever reinforcements they could by means of employments  of mercenaries, request to nearby fortresses and towns for men-at-arms, and *all* [italicized in the original] able-bodied persons will be formed into militia bodies. Any destruction wrought by the initial assault will have been repaired as time and ability allowed. Guards will be doubled or trebled, and local spell casters will have their most effective and powerful offensive and defensive magicks ready. Scouting parties will have been sent out and the approach of the attacking party will be likely to be known. Pursuit will be very likely if the second attack fails so as to allow it.




So: Massive increases in the number of enemies, all spellcasters prepped for battle, repairs made, merciless pursuit. I see no sign whatsoever of tailoring, nor do I see anything at all that "implies" it.

(In discussing a second assault on a fortress)



> The fortress will most likely have replaced all losses and have reinforcements in addition. An ambush might be laid for the attackers when they approach. A sally force will be ready to fall upon the attackers (preferably when engaged in front so as to strike the flank or rear). Siege machinery, oil, missiles, etc. will be ready and in good supply. Repairs to defenses will be made as thoroughly as time and materials permitted. Weak areas will have been blocked off, isolated, and trapped as well as possible under the circumstances. Leaders will be nearby to take immediate charge. Spell casters might be disguised as guards, or hidden near guard posts, in order to surprise attackers. Any retreat by the attackers will be followed up by a hot pursuit.




So: ambush, beef up defenses, use oil and siege weapons, use trickery and tactics, press when the advantage is secured, have spell casters ready to spring nasty surprises.

The only tailoring here is when the tailor needs to make the pcs' funeral shrouds!


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## Stoat (Jun 10, 2011)

On the other hand,  I've seen early modules that suggest modifying the opposition based on the number or level of the PC's. 

_Tomb of Horrors_ suggests modifying the PC's based on the number of players and their skills.


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 10, 2011)

Stoat said:


> On the other hand,  I've seen early modules that suggest modifying the opposition based on the number or level of the PC's.
> 
> _Tomb of Horrors_ suggests modifying the PC's based on the number of players and their skills.




That definitely exists. None of this stuff was ever monolithic. Especially back in the 70s and 80s before we really had forums like this. I think it is a matter of how prevalent it was. In 1E, my overall memory was tailoring things less to party power level. However I do remember a lot of the things we are discussing (tailoring encounters, lower lethality,etc) creep in more and more during 2E. The first time I remember seeing advice to fudge rolls to save PCs was 2E (I believe). I am sure it came up prior to that. But at the same time, Gary talked about fudging die roll results (usually for other reasons) in the 1E GM guide, if I recall.


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## S'mon (Jun 10, 2011)

Bedrockgames said:


> But at the same time, Gary talked about fudging die roll results (usually for other reasons) in the 1E GM guide, if I recall.




Gygax seems more likely to fudge _against_ the players than to fudge in their favour.

I know I often 'tailored' while running 1e.  The encounter was 30-300 orcs, but whether it was a sleepy orc village spotted from a mile off, or a ravine ambush by 30-300 orc archers, could depend on PC level...

I remember once a player (Upper_Krust) took a 26th level Wizard into a troublesome Orc lair to wipe them out.  30-300 1 hd Orcs, with a few guardian creatures, notably some winter wolves.  He just about survived, but I still remember the shell-shocked "WTF?!" look in Craig's eyes as Karzalin the Archmagus staggered back into the daylight...


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## Bedrockgames (Jun 10, 2011)

S'mon said:


> Gygax seems more likely to fudge _against_ the players than to fudge in their favour.
> .




I agree. Just re-read the 1E DMG and my impression is the same as yours on this. I guess I meant on the fudging aspect of things, Gary seemed on board in some cases, if for other reasons than saving the characters.


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## Vespucci (Jun 10, 2011)

I don't think that the tailoring discussion is particularly informative.  Seizing on this aspect of not that much difference to say, "Well, they're not really that different" is a poor response to the debate.  One can say, "Look, all the editions have fighters, it's the same game!" without less controversy over the premise.  That said, the case against difference here is not particularly strong:

Doug McCrae's quotes on the trap arms race indicate that tailoring did take place in the Old School.  But it's quite obvious that the tailoring is of a different kind.  Gygax discusses dealing with _better players_ by being sneakier.  The New School deals with _higher level characters_ by increasing the power of their opposition.



Stoat said:


> On the other hand,  I've seen early modules that suggest modifying the opposition based on the number or level of the PC's.
> 
> _Tomb of Horrors_ suggests modifying the PC's based on the number of players and their skills.




The advice in the _Tomb of Horrors_ doesn't include any suggestions for changing the module.  Gary's advice to the refs is that, if the group seems too weak (by comparison to the sample parties), use of the module should be delayed, or they should receive some assistance.  He also recommended the module for "thinking persons" and suggested that "hack and slay gatherings" should just skip it.  This, no doubt, has contributed to S1's reputation as a killer dungeon - most roleplayers would like to think of themselves as "thinking persons", no matter their actual style of play.

So, if you want to insist that both Schools have tailoring - no skin off my nose.  What's important here is that each School's tailoring aims at different purposes.


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## Heathen72 (Jun 15, 2011)

Morrus said:


> There is a balance - if your DM has written an adventure, you should play that adventure. You don't have the right to demand the DM create any adventure you wish to play at a moment's whim. The balance of that is that the DM should be able to accomodate _reasonable_ deviations.




This is the nub of it. If your GM isn't prepared, or able to come up with a totally new adventure on the fly, it doesn't mean he is railroading you. For me, railroading is when the GM _continually_ negates unexpected player actions to keep them "on the rails", i.e., bring them back to the game he has prepared. Some examples: 


The GM has created a pressure plate trap for the players. He expects them to fall into it and be captured by the Villain. Everyone falls down the trap, but the wizard casts levitate and avoids the trap. The GM suddenly decides the trap comes with an anti magic shell.
The GM creates a session where the players have to ride through the night on horseback to deliver a vital message to the King. The players, concerned the dangers in the forest (described by the GM to raise the stakes) present an unacceptable risk to the mission and decide instead to sell their horses to pay the 'witches' (who they know from a previous session) to send a telepathic message. The GM has the witches refuse, because he hadn't thought of that idea, despite how reasonable it is.
The players are in an area with a foot high stone perimeter. The map has only been drawn to include the area within the perimeter. A player decides to jump over the stone wall, but can't, no matter how high he jumps. When he asks the GM why not, the GM replies "Computer says no"
Okay, the third one was a joke, but the point is one of the defining pro's of gaming (as opposed to computer gaming) is that a GM can react to and accommodate unexpected player actions. It can be frustrating as a player when the GM blocks a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem he has presented, not because it's a bad idea, but because he just didn't think of it. It's like being asked a bad riddle and having your answer rejected because it, despite fitting the riddle, is not the answer the creator had in mind. 

Sure, railroading is an emotive term, because it is either used to describe things that aren't actually railroading ("What! But I don't want to do the  dungeon you spent ages on. I want to travel to arcadia to study at the feet of Flaubert the Master Chef This is a Railroad!!") whereupon the GM has to engage in a futile exercise of appeasing the player's sense of entitlement, or because it is an accurate call and the GM just has to admit the player outsmarted him. How hard that is to deal with depends on the GM. 

So, as GM, what are the solutions? What do you do if a player catches you out and you realize that their clever play has potentially rendered loads of prep work, (or worse, your 'story') useless? I, for one, would suggest going with it, seeing how your impro skills hold up, and holding onto your forest encounters for another time. But if you aren't confident with GMing on the fly, perhaps the best thing to do is just fess up. Tell the players you hadn't thought of that. Give them a load of XP, and then ask them if they are still interested in playing through what you had prepared. In the second example above, for instance, you might just say 

 "Ah, Of course. Damn. I hadn't thought of that. Good idea! Um.... look. This whole session was based on you going to the King. Do you mind if we assume that at the end of your telepathic discussion the King sends back the message that he needs you to come straight to his side? He says he wants to send you on a mission based on your intel. To help you he has arranged for a guide to help you through the woods, and will pay for new mounts for you to get to him as soon as possible. Is that cool with everyone?" 
Hopefully your honesty will keep everyone happy.

If don't want to 'fess up', fearing it might dispel your air of GM infallibility, or destroy the illusion of reality, it is still important that you still make sure that the players are acknowledged and rewarded for their smart play. Because if you end up ignoring the impact of their actions, and charge them for the horses, they are going to feel ripped off.


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## Starfox (Jun 15, 2011)

spunkrat said:


> But if you aren't confident with GMing on the fly, perhaps the best thing to do is just fess up. Tell the players you hadn't thought of that. Give them a load of XP, and then ask them if they are still interested in playing through what you had prepared.




Mutants and Masterminds has a rule about action points in cases of GM fiat.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 15, 2011)

Starfox said:


> Mutants and Masterminds has a rule about action points in cases of GM fiat.



Yeah, M&M explicitly permits railroading by the GM. He can say, "The villain activates his emergency escape teleport podule", (even if there was no such item listed in his stats) and compensate the players with a hero point.

Personally I would have preferred it if comic book tropes had been more strongly built into the rules rather than the rules being essentially a superhero-y version of 3e D&D with deviation from this structure being entirely in the hands of the GM.


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## CuRoi (Jun 15, 2011)

First - I'm replying directly to the OP without sifting through the entire thread. I'll get to it...I promise : )

Second - I think all of your points are vaild further I think the DM's points are valid : )

Railroading IMO can be just another tool in a DMs toolbox (the problem arises when its the ONLY tool). In some cases it can be used in a collaborative story to add dramatic tension and give players a sense they are involved in something "bigger than their characters". Something they feel compelled or coerced to go along with...for a time. 

However, the DM has to make sure the players are all buckled in and enjoying the ride. If some players are screaming for it to stop, the DM needs to a) hit the breaks and let the players make more decisions or b) let the players jump from the moving train and suffer the consequences.

Solution A is necessary if the DM has just taken over the story. He needs the players to just smack him in the face and bring him back to a reality where he realizes he's not the only one at the table invested in the story. This may be your case. I don't even recommend discussing this "OOC". Just be obstinate about doing exactly what the DM is trying to railroad you into and reclaim your part in the story. If Elminster or whoever shows up and says "I want you to toss this ring in a volcano" tell him you've got plans, tell him you're allergic to volcanos, tell him he's got Teleport and he should do it his damn self. 

Scenario B, jumping from the moving train may be necessary if the DM planned the railroading as part of the overall plot/story. The players are allowed to exit the moving vehicle whenvever they wish but dramatic tension, sacrifice and other great story advancing things will happen when they make that abrupt departure.

So, if your DM is serious about the "well there's a war going on" statement, he shouldn't be using it as an excuse to keep you guys on the tracks. He should let you bail. However, when you come back after several weeks of item making, vacationing, knitting, what have you, you may be dealing with a completely different threat. 

Perhaps the war is over, mercs are now having to answer for "War crimes". Perhaps your "side" is losing badly. Perhaps another merc company took up the slack and you are now competeing with them for jobs and for prestige. Who knows.

EDIT: Just skimmed the thread. Great discussion on the definition and positives / negatives of differing play styles. I'll agree with the many posts that essentially say "play what your group wants to play!" Some poeple love railroaded "plots" where they are spectators of sorts to an entertaining story. Some people want to be able to build the story as they go. Some peopel want a bit of both. I will add that IMO, in high level games it's nigh impossible to accomplish railroading unless there is an implicit understanding between the players and DM. Plane Shift, Teleportation, Divinations, etc. etc. all pretty much beg the question of "can I really force the players along a single track of my choosing?" So it's definitely a group choice on how to play as opposed to anything dictated solely by DM or rules. Debating the differences or the value is purely academic.


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