# Why I Dislike the term Railroading



## Zhaleskra (Jun 25, 2010)

This topic has nothing to do with whether "railroading" is good or bad. It is about what I dislike about the term itself.

Okay, so a train can only go where the tracks it is on go. This is where we get this term. But railroads also have switches, that allow/force one train to go somewhere else. I'm not going to get into why, because it's not important.

Hmm, as I write this I think my problem is not so much with the term "railroading" as it is with the concept of "jumping the tracks". Granted even going to separate, switched tracks, can still only get you to limited destinations.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 25, 2010)

The train driver, analogous to the players, doesn't control the switches, as I understand it.


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## Pbartender (Jun 25, 2010)

Zhaleskra said:


> Hmm, as I write this I think my problem is not so much with the term "railroading" as it is with the concept of "jumping the tracks". Granted even going to separate, switched tracks, can still only get you to limited destinations.




Note that "jumping the tracks" in railroad terms doesn't mean the train has switched to a new track.  It means the train has literally jumped off the tracks at a spot it shouldn't have, has derailed, and has possibly crashed and smashed into a great big mess.

Like so:







From the DM's point of view, it's what happens when the players purposefully and maliciously try to maneuver themselves independent of the plot...  The DM's plot gets derailed, jumps the tracks and crashes.


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## FireLance (Jun 25, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> The train driver, analogous to the players, doesn't control the switches, as I understand it.



Well, according to the movies I've seen, the people on the train _can_ control the switches, but it usually requires a great deal of effort and at least one of the following:

1. Highly accurate shooting or throwing.

2. Getting off the train and somehow moving faster than it in order to reach the switch before it does.


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## Nifft (Jun 25, 2010)

Pbartender said:


> From the DM's point of view, it's what happens when the players purposefully and maliciously try to maneuver themselves independent of the plot...  The DM's plot gets derailed, jumps the tracks and crashes.



 Yep yep.

When a campaign is too brittle to survive player input regarding changes in direction, the players only have two choices: stay on the tracks, or crash the whole game.

Cheers, -- N


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## Zhaleskra (Jun 25, 2010)

FireLance said:


> Well, according to the movies I've seen, the people on the train _can_ control the switches, but it usually requires a great deal of effort and at least one of the following:
> 
> 1. Highly accurate shooting or throwing.
> 
> 2. Getting off the train and somehow moving faster than it in order to reach the switch before it does.




I think there's a third: being aware of some reason they have to go to the other track and telling the people in the switch station to "throw the switch muhahahaha". Sorry, my B-Horror movie side came out. Though that's more of a cooperative switch throwing.


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## nedjer (Jun 25, 2010)

railroading only exists as a function of rules lawyering. If the game is genuinely open to discussion, the GM and players can negotiate how the switches operate.


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## hexgrid (Jun 25, 2010)

You can't control a train, but it's a moot point because you wouldn't get on the train if you didn't want to go where it was going. Maybe that's the problem with the analogy.


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## pawsplay (Jun 25, 2010)

hexgrid said:


> You can't control a train, but it's a moot point because you wouldn't get on the train if you didn't want to go where it was going. Maybe that's the problem with the analogy.




But riding the train requires you to get somewhere by a certain path. That's the point.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 25, 2010)

hexgrid said:


> You can't control a train, but it's a moot point because you wouldn't get on the train if you didn't want to go where it was going. Maybe that's the problem with the analogy.




Assuming you knew that you were boarding the train in the first place, sure.


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## Zhaleskra (Jun 25, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> But riding the train requires you to get somewhere by a certain path. That's the point.




Well, that and avoiding traffic considering that the only "traffic" trains generally have to deal with is other trains on the same track going the opposite direction. This being another purpose of the switches.


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## wayne62682 (Jun 25, 2010)

Isn't it referencing the fact that the passengers of the train (PCs) can't determine where to go next, but it's decided by the conductor (DM/GM) and they just have to sit and wait until the next destination?


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## pawsplay (Jun 25, 2010)

wayne62682 said:


> Isn't it referencing the fact that the passengers of the train (PCs) can't determine where to go next, but it's decided by the conductor (DM/GM) and they just have to sit and wait until the next destination?




Yes. That is what the term is all about. While trains are a great way to get from Berlin to Moscow, they are not a fully featured way to run an RPG and have a strong tendency to create dysfunctional play.


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## pawsplay (Jun 25, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Assuming you knew that you were boarding the train in the first place, sure.




A railroaded RPG is a lot like showing up for a three beach cruise, and then being told get on the train.


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## Zhaleskra (Jun 25, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Yes. That is what the term is all about. While trains are a great way to get from Berlin to Moscow, they are not a fully featured way to run an RPG and have a strong tendency to create dysfunctional play.




This is why I don't write "plots". I'll do an outline with hints, a defined starting point, and a possible end point. It might take me a bit to come up with something if the players do something I really don't expect.


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## pawsplay (Jun 25, 2010)

Zhaleskra said:


> This is why I don't write "plots". I'll do an outline with hints, a defined starting point, and a possible end point. It might take me a bit to come up with something if the players do something I really don't expect.




Another good reason not to write plots is that most poets and authors in the post-modern era have concluded that plots and themes are not really the central point of storytelling, and may not always be necessary. I think one thing that makes RPGs really great is that you can "explore text" in a post-modern sense in a way few other forms of entertainment permit.


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## francisca (Jun 25, 2010)

Zhaleskra said:


> This topic has nothing to do with whether "railroading" is good or bad. It is about what I dislike about the term itself.
> 
> Okay, so a train can only go where the tracks it is on go. This is where we get this term. But railroads also have switches, that allow/force one train to go somewhere else. I'm not going to get into why, because it's not important.
> 
> Hmm, as I write this I think my problem is not so much with the term "railroading" as it is with the concept of "jumping the tracks". Granted even going to separate, switched tracks, can still only get you to limited destinations.




Do you have a term you think would be a better fit?

How about "shafted"?

Like "I got shafted by DL1, and it hurt like futhermucker."


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## hexgrid (Jun 25, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Assuming you knew that you were boarding the train in the first place, sure.






pawsplay said:


> A railroaded RPG is a lot like showing up for a three beach cruise, and then being told get on the train.




Right, and because neither of these situations exist with real trains, the analogy to RPGs doesn't make much sense, because it's not really analogous.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 25, 2010)

hexgrid said:


> Right, and because neither of these situations exist with real trains, the analogy to RPGs doesn't make much sense, because it's not really analogous.



Well, y'know, it's hard to have a perfect analogy. Some munchkins aren't even small.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 25, 2010)

hexgrid said:


> Right, and because neither of these situations exist with real trains, the analogy to RPGs doesn't make much sense, because it's not really analogous.




You can apply the situation to any mode of transport that you desire. 

Take this fine example from Run DMC for instance:

" It's not funny when we got, on the wrong plane. We wanted to go to L.A. but we were headed for Spain."


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## Theo R Cwithin (Jun 25, 2010)

I agree that this... 







Pbartender said:


>



... is bad.  But at the same time, it's still vaguely interesting in that twisted rubber-necking way that all crashes interesting.  Because, hey, look! It's a trainwreck, cool!

For me a better analogy than "railroading" would be those little suck-em-up vacuum chute thingys at bank drive-thrus.  Put the players in the capsule, hit the button, and *whoosh* it ends up in front of the teller (and never the cute one you want to talk to, either).  If the system breaks down, the capsule simply never arrives.  No wrecks, no explosions, no warping of reality.  It just gets stuck, and you move on to a new campaign.

To my mind _those_ are the worst kinds of "railroads" because they're not interesting _at all_, even in their inevitable collapse.

Imho the best wrought railroads are there if the players really need the tracks to guide them, but they're not really necessary for the train to keep on going:


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## francisca (Jun 25, 2010)

the_orc_within said:


>




<Tatoo>

Boss!  Da TRAIN!  Da TRAIN!

</Tatoo>


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## Beginning of the End (Jun 25, 2010)

Zhaleskra said:


> Okay, so a train can only go where the tracks it is on go. This is where we get this term. But railroads also have switches, that allow/force one train to go somewhere else. I'm not going to get into why, because it's not important.




(1) Roleplaying games cannot be used to ship grain. Roleplaying games do not have large steam engines or locomotives. Roleplaying games are not national corporations. Roleplaying games do not offer commuter services.

I think you might be over-analyzing the correlative property of the metaphor.

(2) I'm still pretty comfortable applying the term railroad to a campaign that's been designed to the rigid specifications of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. That design is a little bit more permissive and responsive to player-input, but still has the fundamental structural flaws which lead to "jumping the tracks" and failed/frustrating sessions.



Pbartender said:


> From the DM's point of view, it's what happens  when the players purposefully and maliciously try to maneuver  themselves independent of the plot...  The DM's plot gets derailed,  jumps the tracks and crashes.




I'd argue that it doesn't need to be purposeful or malicious. IME, many railroaded scenarios feature invisible tracks. Even if players are _trying_ to "do what the GM wants us to do", it's still pretty easy for them to make a mistake and do something that screws up the GM's well-hidden and inflexible plans.



hexgrid said:


> You can't control a train, but it's a moot point  because you wouldn't get on the train if you didn't want to go where it  was going. Maybe that's the problem with the analogy.




Adventure hooks frequently don't tell you exactly where they're going. ("Something's mutilating cows. Figure out what.")

And even when the adventure hooks does tell you where you're going, it doesn't mean you're going to like all of the mandatory tourist stops the train is unexpectedly making along the way. (To stretch the analogy to its breaking point.)

And, of course, in a railroaded game you're often expected to take whatever plot hook the GM puts in front of you. So you don't even really have the choice of getting on the train. It's more like you've been drugged and then wake up to find yourself hurtling down the tracks.


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## Pbartender (Jun 25, 2010)

the_orc_within said:


> But at the same time, it's still vaguely interesting in that twisted rubber-necking way that all crashes interesting.  Because, hey, look! It's a trainwreck, cool!




...unless you happen to be the one riding the train.


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## Obryn (Jun 25, 2010)

I, personally, dislike the term because it's been abducted by sandbox purists as a general catch-all term for "not a sandbox."   It's at the point where it's getting expanded so much that actual distinctions between various types of non-sandbox games are simply being grouped under a derogative term for one particular kind of degenerate game.

-O


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## Pbartender (Jun 25, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I'd argue that it doesn't need to be purposeful or malicious.




It doesn't need to be, but from the DM's point of view it almost always looks that way.


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## unan oranis (Jun 25, 2010)

FireLance said:


> Well, according to the movies I've seen, the people on the train _can_ control the switches, but it usually requires a great deal of effort and at least one of the following:
> 
> 1. Highly accurate shooting or throwing.
> 
> 2. Getting off the train and somehow moving faster than it in order to reach the switch before it does.




DM:  uh-oh gang, someone or something has thrown the switch and your train is headed to craptown instead of awesomopolis!

Player:  I shoot the switch lever from the train, WOW natural 20!  I saved the day!

DM:  um, yeah actually the signs were just switched.  now your heading for craptown for real.


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## catsclaw227 (Jun 26, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Yes. That is what the term is all about. While trains are a great way to get from Berlin to Moscow, they are not a fully featured way to run an RPG and have a strong tendency to create dysfunctional play.



So, then explain the wild success of Adventure Paths, especially Paizo's which have a bit of a reputation for having some some pretty sturdy tracks.  (Kingmaker, notwithstanding).


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## Diamond Cross (Jun 26, 2010)

I've been working in the coal mine going down down...
Working in the coal mine woo! About to slip down...


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## Ariosto (Jun 26, 2010)

I am not familiar enough with Paizo's Adventure Paths to say how much 'railroad' they involve. However, I know that many products from the early 1980s and on have been very successful while demanding a lot of keeping on track.

The simple fact is that different people want different things from a fantasy game. Some people seem even to want things that I am hard pressed to categorize as games at all. I have enjoyed some of those myself, but they are not what I want from D&D -- different games are by design different experiences.


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## James Jacobs (Jun 26, 2010)

The term "railroading" is trouble because, I suspect, it's used mostly as a term to deride a style of game play that is actually really pretty popular. While our Adventure Paths DO try to account for a lot of player choice and, I think, are generally pretty good at providing the GM with enough options and information that, should his/her PCs go off those rails, there'll be enough info to keep the game going... to a certain extent, ALL published adventures could be called railroads.

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

In any event, if you're a GM who wants to run an Adventure Path or any other published adventure, you'll do yourself a huge favor by letting the players know before they make their characters what kind of campaign they're getting in to. A player who wants to see a story play out and started the campaign with a character concept that works well with that story will have a lot more fun than a player who doesn't know anything about the adventure before the character is created. For all our Adventure Paths, we release "Player's Guides" that do just this—provide advice on what kinds of characters are best suited for play and provide traits and other goodies that help to create characters that will be fun to play on that Adventure Path.

Kingmaker, the current Adventure Path, is our attempt to open up the rails quite a bit and provide something closer to what folks think of as a "sandbox" game... but even then it's a certain amount of railroad. We detail the HECK out of the region in which the campaign takes place, and although that region is about as big as the state of Maine, I can certainly see players wanting their characters to wander OUT of that area. In which case, they're heading "off the rails," even in a sandbox game.


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## Dungeoneer (Jun 26, 2010)

It's my experience that the degree to which the players feel "railroaded" is directly proportional to how boring the story is.

Fact is that if the DM has a good juicy hook and the players are on board with what he's trying to do they won't care that the adventure is pre-planned.  Within reason, of course.

I just don't think that people dislike having a plot and a specific framework for an adventure as much as they claim they do.  I think many complaints of 'railroading' are actually symptoms of a DM who is bad in other ways.  

A bored and unengaged player is also 10x more likely to want to make the train jump the tracks.


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## Nifft (Jun 26, 2010)

catsclaw227 said:


> So, then explain the wild success of Adventure Paths, especially Paizo's which have a bit of a reputation for having some some pretty sturdy tracks.  (Kingmaker, notwithstanding).



 Clearly, it's because people who like Paizo's products prefer dysfunctional play.

Cheers, -- N

[sblock=PS]More seriously, I think it's because there are people who want tracks, and they want sturdy ones.

Also, by playing an AP, you are announcing to your group in advance: "Hey look, you're on tracks!" -- they can object early if they want. Unlike the (deservedly maligned) railroad campaign, there's no nasty surprise waiting for the players. Furthermore, they know the tracks are laid down by a disinterested 3rd party (rather than there being some chance that the DM is personally screwing over their specific choices), and there is some social pressure to enjoy the rail-ride because many other people have played and are playing those specific APs.[/sblock]


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## Ariosto (Jun 26, 2010)

James Jacobs said:
			
		

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




I think that certain extent is precisely the extent to which you just arbitrarily decide to call anything that's not a railroad not an adventure.



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



So, it really ends up being a moot objection. Calling the thing an 'adventure' does not make its _nature_ any more palatable! What that does is insist on co-opting the word 'adventure' to exclude the meaning it originally had in the D&D context.

People either like adventures in the original sense or do not, and the same holds for 'adventures' in your sense. A lot of people who dislike the original sense rather reasonably also dislike pretty much everything else about the game. Hence, we get _different_ games.

In other words, the old term is getting used in a new and very different cultural context. Trouble arises because of a conceit that it is 'really' the same old context.

All by itself, the term is about as appropriately descriptive as one might expect of jargon. There is nothing inherently negative about railroads! The negative connotations have everything to do with the historical negative response to the denotations.

That was based on tastes that the prevailing demographic -- selected in synergy with the flavor of commercial offerings, as some people still persist in perversely not buying what they do not want -- apparently does not share.


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## Varianor Abroad (Jun 26, 2010)

Zhaleskra said:


> Hmm, as I write this I think my problem is not so much with the term "railroading" as it is with the concept of "jumping the tracks". Granted even going to separate, switched tracks, can still only get you to limited destinations.




See, I think your discussion begins with an assumption that "railroading" begins on the train, i.e. in the game. "Railroading" to my mind is when the DM plans a storyline from beginning to end with no possible deviation by the players pursuing a logical (albeit sometimes loose) end that the DM did not plan for. To put it differently, it's bad when you must meet the villain at X point in time with Y items to have Z combat, especially if the entire game is like that because it destroys even the illusion of choice.

To put it differently, it's like starting a journey and not being allowed to choose the means of travel or where you stop. You do not even buy a ticket. Someone buys it for you and wheels you onto the train.

Example: You're in New York. You want to get to the top of a mountain in Alabama. It's not easy to take the train, but you could with a lot of stope. You'll have to hire a car at the station and walk a long ways to the peak. A car is probably the most direct way to get there, although you'll still have to walk a long ways once you get to the base of the mountain. A plane is the fastest overall, but may be subject to certain weather delays, you'll still hire a car at the airport and walk a long ways at the end.

In all the examples, you're headed for the mountain peak (final conflict/mystery resolution/campaign ending). The means where you get there is different.

What's missing from the "railroad" scenario as originally described? Two things: the ability to choose the means whereby you seek the end and the perception (or the ability) to stop heading for that mountaintop to explore along the way. Or to decide to head to a beach in Florida in case everyone gets really crazy. Player railroading is when everyone agrees "Yeah we want to head for the mountain", the DM starts planning for interesting things on whatever route is chosen, and then PCs deliberately keep changing the destination en route.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 26, 2010)

James Jacobs said:


> We detail the HECK out of the region in which the campaign takes place, and although that region is about as big as the state of Maine, I can certainly see players wanting their characters to wander OUT of that area. In which case, they're heading "off the rails," even in a sandbox game.



I think that's true of all sandboxes, after all the GM can only prepare a finite amount of material.

In the West Marches sandbox, one of the most commonly referenced examples online, there is a gentleman's agreement that the players will stay in the West Marches, cause that's all the GM has.



> PCs get to explore anywhere they want, the only rule being that going back east is off-limits — there are no adventures in the civilized lands, just peaceful retirement.


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## Ariosto (Jun 27, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> the GM can only prepare a finite amount of material.




Along with that, the players can have only a finite rate of movement.

More to the point, they have only a finite rate of information processing, whether looking at the stars or at "the smalls". How long is a coastline? It depends on how much care you want to put into tracing its shape.



			
				James Jacobs said:
			
		

> In which case, they're heading "off the rails," even in a sandbox game.



Nope. You're claiming that what defines one from the other does not distinguish them, so they are just the same thing. When all you have is rails, everything looks like a railroad?

One can go out of one's way to make it harder to run an old-style campaign. There's nothing like an unwavering devotion to unpreparedness to make it so! Making sure to spend a lot of time on material that's useful _at most_ just once, and that only if the players jump through certain hoops, is a great way to avoid developing a case of flexibility.

One should be careful, then, not to avail oneself of tools that make campaigning easier.

There is a system for generating random wilderness terrain in the original _Dungeon Masters Guide_ Appendix B (page 173). (That's in between Appendix A for random dungeons and Appendix C for random monster encounters.) There are similar procedures to be found elsewhere.

I used to have a Games Workshop product -- "Mighty Empires", I think it was -- that had individual hexagons of countryside as geomorphic cardboard tiles. Something like that could be a more variable analog of the old "Outdoor Survival" board for impromptu wilderness expeditions.


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## Zhaleskra (Jun 27, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I think you might be over-analyzing the correlative property of the metaphor.




I think you're over analyzing my analysis.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 27, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Yep yep.
> 
> When a campaign is too brittle to survive player input regarding changes in direction, the players only have two choices: stay on the tracks, or crash the whole game.
> 
> Cheers, -- N



And if the game is that brittle, then let it crash. Let it burn.  (Some of my least favorite gaming experiences involve railroading - a big chunk of why I run more often than I play.)

To me the term railroading likens the party to passengers on the train - in control of nothing, watching the scenery outside the windows....

The Auld Grump


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 27, 2010)

James Jacobs said:


> The term "railroading" is trouble because, I suspect, it's used mostly as a term to deride a style of game play that is actually really pretty popular. While our Adventure Paths DO try to account for a lot of player choice and, I think, are generally pretty good at providing the GM with enough options and information that, should his/her PCs go off those rails, there'll be enough info to keep the game going... to a certain extent, ALL published adventures could be called railroads.
> 
> A truly sandbox style "adventure," in my mind, isn't an adventure at all. It's a campaign setting.
> 
> ...




Actually, your APs do a pretty decent job of allowing the PCs some free reign.  A really bad example of railroading was White Wolf's Time of Judgment - the PCs were not even allowed to get off of the stupid plotline because of mind control. 

I think that was the last thing I bought from White Wolf, aside from some D20 material. If I was a player in that scenario I would either quit the game or defenestrate the GM.

The Auld Grump


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## Aus_Snow (Jun 27, 2010)

James Jacobs said:


> The term "railroading" is trouble because, I suspect, it's used mostly as a term to deride a style of game play that is actually really pretty popular.



I personally think it's trouble because it often gets used in absolute terms, along with its "rival", the sandbox.



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



Indeed.



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



Again, yes. Where "sandbox" is some conceptual absolute, that is. Which is probably what you meant by "truly", so. . . 

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


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## Beginning of the End (Jun 28, 2010)

James Jacobs said:


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




Not really true.

Check out _The Masks of Nyarlathotep_ or _The Caverns of Thracia_ for example.

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


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## Dice4Hire (Jun 28, 2010)

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

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


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

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


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 28, 2010)

James Jacobs said:


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




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

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

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

I greatly prefer scenarios to adventures that are already written.


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## BenBrown (Jun 28, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


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




I don't.

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

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

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


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 28, 2010)

BenBrown said:


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




A myth?

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

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

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

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

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

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


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## BenBrown (Jun 28, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


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




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

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

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


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## pukunui (Jun 28, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


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



Well, hopefully the players won't read the adventure beforehand, so it'll all be new to them. The purpose of playing out a premade adventure is the same as the purpose of playing out a story-based video game: to find out what the story _is_ and how you can change the story depending on how you do x or y.

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

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


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



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

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

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


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

As a player in NWN2, you're more of a spectator than a participant. You're just along for the ride to see where the game takes you. Once you play it once, there's really almost no reason to play it ever again.


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## James Jacobs (Jun 28, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Not really true.
> 
> Check out _The Masks of Nyarlathotep_ or _The Caverns of Thracia_ for example.
> 
> You can do non-linear adventures without having a full-blown sandbox.




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

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


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## BenBrown (Jun 28, 2010)

James Jacobs said:


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




This is the internet.  I challenge you to find a term that _isn't_ used to be negative about something.


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## Nifft (Jun 28, 2010)

BenBrown said:


> This is the internet.  I challenge you to find a term that _isn't_ used to be negative about something.



 How about the term "positive"?


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## Dungeoneer (Jun 28, 2010)

Nifft said:


> How about the term "positive"?



What are you, some kind of positivist?


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## Dungeoneer (Jun 28, 2010)

pukunui said:


> Well, hopefully the players won't read the adventure beforehand, so it'll all be new to them. The purpose of playing out a premade adventure is the same as the purpose of playing out a story-based video game: to find out what the story _is_ and how you can change the story depending on how you do x or y.
> 
> Personally, I'm OK with railroading so long as it's not blatant -- that is, so long as I at least have the "illusion of choice" (eg. the GM has only prepared one encounter even though he's given us two paths from which too choose ... and he'll end up running that one encounter, with some adjustments, regardless of which path we take ... and we'll most likely be known the wiser).




I strongly agree with this.  The _illusion of choice_ is key, whether or not an actual meaningful choice has been made.

It's my experience that what goes on behind the DM screen is opaque even to players who have DM xp of their own.  So many times after a session I'll have a player ask me "So, we really caught you on the hop with X didn't we?" when I actually had X all planned out.  Other times they're complimenting me on Y which I made up entirely on the fly.  For the most part, the players' information on the game world is so limited that they can't distinguish between a genuine choice and a cleverly disguised railroad.

Of course you have to do more than simply pat the player patronizingly on the head and say "Sure, I'll be taking THAT into account..."  You have to be subtle, and willing to improvise little details here and there.  And sometimes you really do have to let them make a choice or go off track a bit before gently leading them back on.

The point is that you're responding to the player, which makes the world and story feel alive and dynamic to them, even if it is largely pre-scripted.  It's when you refuse to engage them and are simply ramming chunks of exposition down their throat that things go awry and players revolt.

The crime is not having a story in mind or failing to give your players complete and total freedom (paralyzing for most!); it's refusing to interact with them and failing to make them feel like they have a meaningful role in your world.  That is railroading, in my book.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 28, 2010)

I honestly don't care what you call it.  I just have zero interest in a game where it is going on.

YMMV.


RC


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## BenBrown (Jun 28, 2010)

Dungeoneer said:


> I strongly agree with this.  The _illusion of choice_ is key, whether or not an actual meaningful choice has been made.
> 
> It's my experience that what goes on behind the DM screen is opaque even to players who have DM xp of their own.  So many times after a session I'll have a player ask me "So, we really caught you on the hop with X didn't we?" when I actually had X all planned out.  Other times they're complimenting me on Y which I made up entirely on the fly.  For the most part, the players' information on the game world is so limited that they can't distinguish between a genuine choice and a cleverly disguised railroad.




Oh yes.  Now, perhaps my players aren't as wily as all of those who decry this as "illusionism!" or "railroading!"  Presumably they have some way of knowing, or failing that, GMs who are just really really bad at doing this.




Dungeoneer said:


> Of course you have to do more than simply pat the player patronizingly on the head and say "Sure, I'll be taking THAT into account..."  You have to be subtle, and willing to improvise little details here and there.  And sometimes you really do have to let them make a choice or go off track a bit before gently leading them back on.




I'm not even sure it's a question of "leading them back on," so much as them taking an alternate route.  The destination may well be the same, but the journey can be completely different.



Dungeoneer said:


> The point is that you're responding to the player, which makes the world and story feel alive and dynamic to them, even if it is largely pre-scripted.  It's when you refuse to engage them and are simply ramming chunks of exposition down their throat that things go awry and players revolt.
> 
> The crime is not having a story in mind or failing to give your players complete and total freedom (paralyzing for most!); it's refusing to interact with them and failing to make them feel like they have a meaningful role in your world.  That is railroading, in my book.




By any name, it's bad GMing.


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## Ariosto (Jun 29, 2010)

If one happens to like the phenomenon in question, then one might prefer to use a term other than "railroading".

Maybe "plotting" would be appropriate.

The 4e DMG, at page 98, has a section on "Fixing Problems" concerned with the fact that, "Occasionally, the characters decide to go exactly the wrong way, pursuing a path not covered in the adventure at all."

Headings include "Wandering Off Course" and "Skipping to the End". Not only is one fix "Introduce More Plot Twists", but there is throughout an affectation as if one were dealing not with refereeing a game but with writing a story.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 29, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> If one happens to like the phenomenon in question, then one might prefer to use a term other than "railroading".
> 
> Maybe "plotting" would be appropriate.
> 
> ...



The problem creeps in when there are folks who love plotting (hello!) and _hate_ railroading (me again!). Railroading is when the plot determines the entire direction of the game, rather than being the motive force behind the game. 
Good plotting - The bad guys have a plot, you know what they will do if they are not checked. They adapt their plans when necessary, but the actual direction of the game is determined by the players and their actions.

Bad plotting (i.e. railroading) the bad guys have a plan, and there is only one possible solution. The PCs must adhere to the plot, and Raistlin _must_ turn evil. (One of the above mentioned 'worst gaming experiences - the GM was running Dragonlance (first ed. AD&D), told us not to read the books, then got angry when we did not do what the characters in the book did. (As an example, my version of Raistlin was leaning towards Lawful Good, and told the 'voice in his head' to go pound sand.)

The Auld Grump, you want me to turn evil because a voice in my head tells me to? What am I, Son of Sam?


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## Obryn (Jun 29, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> If one happens to like the phenomenon in question, then one might prefer to use a term other than "railroading".
> 
> Maybe "plotting" would be appropriate.
> 
> ...



It's a section about published adventures.  A new DM who'd never played before would get some mileage out of it.  You overlooked the headings "Let it go and move on" and "move on and scavenge for future adventures," though - where it basically says, "Maybe your players hate this adventure.  Stop playing it." 

I mean, the entire section is there to help newbie DMs _avoid_ a railroad - "Your players were creative and figured out something unanticipated!  Good on them!  It's time to improvise!  If you still want to get some use out of the adventure you bought, try some of these ideas..."

-O


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 29, 2010)

Obryn said:


> It's a section about published adventures.  A new DM who'd never played before would get some mileage out of it.  You overlooked the headings "Let it go and move on" and "move on and scavenge for future adventures," though - where it basically says, "Maybe your players hate this adventure.  Stop playing it."
> 
> I mean, the entire section is there to help newbie DMs _avoid_ a railroad - "Your players were creative and figured out something unanticipated!  Good on them!  It's time to improvise!  If you still want to get some use out of the adventure you bought, try some of these ideas..."
> 
> -O



Actually, not bad advice, for any edition of the game. The moments when the PCs come up with something that I didn't plan for, that makes _sense!_ are my favorite moments in the game. Double that of the moments when I do that to someone who is running a game that I am playing in.

The thing to keep in mind is that players _really_ don't want to feel like they are not in control, that their characters are merely cogs in the great machinery of the campaign.

The Auld Grump, I give bonus XP when the players pull that off.


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## Ariosto (Jun 29, 2010)

Well, it's just a suggestion of a possibility.

If you have a better idea, then please share it.

If all you can do is complain that you don't like _anything_, then I don't see how that is any help.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 29, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Well, it's just a suggestion of a possibility.
> 
> If you have a better idea, then please share it.
> 
> If all you can do is complain that you don't like _anything_, then I don't see how that is any help.



Me? I like calling railroading railroading, and a spade a personnel powered entrenching device. 

The Auld Grump sometimes a term is fraught with negative emotional weight because it is meant to be fraught with negative emotional weight.


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## Obryn (Jun 29, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Well, it's just a suggestion of a possibility.
> 
> If you have a better idea, then please share it.
> 
> If all you can do is complain that you don't like _anything_, then I don't see how that is any help.



Actually, I think it's important to make a distinction between railroads, plotted adventures, adventure paths, story-based games, etc.  These are not all the same thing.

So it's not about liking "railroading" and therefore calling it something else.  That misses the point.  _Plotted adventures are different from railroads._  That's what I was saying about sandbox purists abducting the term "railroad" earlier in this very thread.

If you're respecting that difference, we have no disagreement here.

-O


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

'Linear adventure' = railroading without the negative connotations. Well, not as many, anyway.


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## pukunui (Jun 29, 2010)

How so? I would classify a linear adventure as a classic example of the "bad" kind of railroading.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Actually, I think it's important to make a distinction between railroads, plotted adventures, adventure paths, story-based games, etc.  These are not all the same thing.



You can definitely have story without railroading.

Dragon Age is a good example of this. Tons of story, but lots of player freedom also.

I think some people see the word 'story' and they think that has to mean a Dragonlance or Time of Troubles type of heavily linear adventure. That's not necessarily the case. The GM can have story elements prepared, such as a big reveal about a PC's origin, that could be presented in a variety of situations, or not at all.


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## Zhaleskra (Jun 29, 2010)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Good plotting - The bad guys have a plot, you know what they will do if they are not checked. They adapt their plans when necessary, but the actual direction of the game is determined by the players and their actions.
> 
> Bad plotting (i.e. railroading) the bad guys have a plan, and there is only one possible solution. The PCs must adhere to the plot, and Raistlin _must_ turn evil. (One of the above mentioned 'worst gaming experiences - the GM was running Dragonlance (first ed. AD&D), told us not to read the books, then got angry when we did not do what the characters in the book did. (As an example, my version of Raistlin was leaning towards Lawful Good, and told the 'voice in his head' to go pound sand.)




You've just raised an interesting point about something else I dislike in both book & dice RPGs and computer/console RPG simulations: The idea that the bad guys are just going to warm their chairs while they wait for their turns to be killed by the PCs or convinced by the PCs to change their ways. I do realize that in a video game it would take a lot of code to have an active, adaptable, main villain.


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## Ariosto (Jun 29, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> Plotted adventures are different from railroads.




I think that if you've got a real distinction, then it has probably not been lost on everyone else for the past quarter century. There are indeed a lot of things that are different from railroads.

What do you think is called 'railroading' that is not 'railroading'?


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## Obryn (Jun 29, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> I think that if you've got a real distinction, then it has probably not been lost on everyone else for the past quarter century. There are indeed a lot of things that are different from railroads.
> 
> What do you think is called 'railroading' that is not 'railroading'?



Adventure paths and plotted adventures have both been unjustifiably called "railroads" simply because they are not sandbox-style locations.

I think the distinction is fairly obvious.  As I've said, there are certain elements of the gaming community who have opined that any DM-directed plotline is a railroad.  Again, if you are comfortable with making a distinction between _railroads_ and _plotted adventures_, and agree that one is not necessarily the other, then we have no disagreement.

-O


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## Reynard (Jun 29, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Adventure paths and plotted adventures have both been unjustifiably called "railroads" simply because they are not sandbox-style locations.
> 
> I think the distinction is fairly obvious.  As I've said, there are certain elements of the gaming community who have opined that any DM-directed plotline is a railroad.  Again, if you are comfortable with making a distinction between _railroads_ and _plotted adventures_, and agree that one is not necessarily the other, then we have no disagreement.
> 
> -O




Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

I think it is time for the "sandboxers call everything that isn't a sandbox a railroad" people to show some evidence of this actually occurring, lest the discussion gets lost amongst the strawmen.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 29, 2010)

Obryn said:


> I think the distinction is fairly obvious. As I've said, there are certain elements of the gaming community who have opined that any *DM-directed plotline is a railroad*. Again, if you are comfortable with making a distinction between _railroads_ and _plotted adventures_, and agree that one is not necessarily the other, then we have no disagreement.
> 
> -O




I really want to believe this but the statement above (my emphasis) would suggest otherwise. 

I think before we toss around the R word any more we should attempt to define "plotted adventure" on it's own. 

I will agree that the mere existence of plots in an adventure does not automatically mean a railroad. Plots make the adventuring world go round. If villains didn't enact any of their fiendish plots then everything going on would be a spontaneous random course of events. Spoiling the bad guy's plans mean that there must actually _be _some plans to spoil. 

So does a plotted adventure mean that someone somewhere in the adventure has a plot/s or agenda/s they are trying to make happen? 

If this is a plotted adventure then I can agree that it does not have to be a railroad.


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## Obryn (Jun 29, 2010)

Reynard said:


> Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
> 
> I think it is time for the "sandboxers call everything that isn't a sandbox a railroad" people to show some evidence of this actually occurring, lest the discussion gets lost amongst the strawmen.



I'm saying sandbox _purists_, not sandboxers in general.  So that's one strawman right there!  I'm not making a claim that sandboxers and old-school gamers _in general_ regularly blur these particular lines.

-O


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## Ariosto (Jun 29, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:
			
		

> So does a plotted adventure mean that someone somewhere in the adventure has a plot/s or agenda/s they are trying to make happen?
> 
> If this is a plotted adventure then I can agree that it does not have to be a railroad.




Yes, some words simply raise more questions as to what they mean. That NPCs have agendas is not only not alien to an old-style FRP campaign but is a very powerful tool in moderating such a game! The employment of such material was one of the delights in, for instance, Chaosium's magnificent _Griffin Mountain_. (It was really a hallmark of Chaosium scenarios after the lackluster _Balastor's Barracks_.)

Paul Jaquays had previously made good use of the technique in _Dark Tower_ and _Caverns of Thracia_ for Judges Guild.


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## Scribble (Jun 29, 2010)

Since I've only ever seen "railroad" used in a negative way I've always found it to simply mean anytime the DM is willfully forcing a particular action upon unwilling players. (Which can even crop up in a sandbox game.)

If the players are not unwilling to go with the plot, they're not being railroaded.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 29, 2010)

So does my description of plotted adventure fully cover the meaning of that term or is there more to it?


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## Nifft (Jun 29, 2010)

Scribble said:


> Since I've only ever seen "railroad" used in a negative way I've always found it to simply mean anytime the DM is willfully forcing a particular action upon unwilling players. (Which can even crop up in a sandbox game.)
> 
> If the players are not unwilling to go with the plot, they're not being railroaded.



 I could buy that.

So if "the illusion of choice" is every DM's tool, then railroading is when all your players successfully disbelieve.

Cheers, -- N


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

If railroad means an exertion of GM power that is regarded by the players as intrusive (on player decision making), or implausible, and plot means a sequence of events which affect the players that the GM wishes to see occur then, yes, there can definitely be a plotted non-railroaded game.

The GM just has to be careful that his sequence of events doesn't go against what the players want or is jarringly unlikely.

It's really not that hard. About 95% of the time, imo, player action can be reasonably predicted.

For example the GM has a magic weapon with an interesting curse on it, say it slowly turns the bearer into a demon, but is otherwise beneficial, and his plot is that he wants the item to go to a particular player.

Simply make sure that the weapon is of a type that only that player can use, and that rumours about the weapon's location reach the PCs' ears. Presumably it's in a dungeon. The GM has a good grasp of the players' skill level so he sets the dungeon difficulty to be fairly easy but not so easy that it's suspicious. I mean what's difficult about that? It's D&D, snatching magic items is pretty much all the PCs do.

What's that you say? What if the players refuse the dungeon or fail to win the item? Well, that probably won't happen, so the non-railroaded plot will probably occur. And if it doesn't, well there's always the GM's next evil plot.


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## Obryn (Jun 29, 2010)

Reynard said:


> Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
> 
> I think it is time for the "sandboxers call everything that isn't a sandbox a railroad" people to show some evidence of this actually occurring, lest the discussion gets lost amongst the strawmen.



Alrighty.  Many of these are from a few years back, because that's when the terminology really started to get confused.

Linear adventure path= Railroad

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/196400-opposite-railroading-2.html#post3523980

Not-Sandbox = Railroad
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...o-you-play-more-story-combat.html#post4572980

Adventure Paths = Railroad
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...g-story-vs-railroading.html?pp=40#post2954697

Published Modules = Railroad
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...lling-story-vs-railroading-2.html#post2959668

-O


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> I will agree that the mere existence of plots in an adventure does not automatically mean a railroad. Plots make the adventuring world go round. If villains didn't enact any of their fiendish plots then everything going on would be a spontaneous random course of events. Spoiling the bad guy's plans mean that there must actually _be _some plans to spoil.



Useless, unhelpful definition.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 29, 2010)

Scribble said:


> Since I've only ever seen "railroad" used in a negative way I've always found it to simply mean anytime the DM is willfully forcing a particular action upon unwilling players. (Which can even crop up in a sandbox game.)
> 
> If the players are not unwilling to go with the plot, they're not being railroaded.






Nifft said:


> I could buy that.
> 
> So if "the illusion of choice" is every DM's tool, then railroading is when all your players successfully disbelieve.
> 
> Cheers, -- N




Ok. How did plotted adventure get from "plots existing within the adventure" to "illusion of choice." 

There seems to be some confusion still in the meaning of plotted adventure.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 29, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> What's that you say? What if the players refuse the dungeon or fail to win the item? Well, that probably won't happen, so the non-railroaded plot will probably occur. And if it doesn't, well there's always the GM's next evil plot.




Acid test:

Who's plot was the whole cursed sword business?

If we can't point the finger to any agency within the gameworld we have choo-choo ville.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

If by plotted adventure one means a linear adventure where scene A leads to scene B leads to scene C etc, again that can be achieved without railroading much of the time. Not all of the time, but most of the time, simply by ensuring that scene B is somewhere the players will most likely want to go.

After all the question is not, "Are plotted adventures never railroads?" Ofc not, they sometimes are. The question is, "Can you have a plotted adventure that isn't a railroad?" The answer to that is, definitely, yes.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 29, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> If by plotted adventure one means a linear adventure where scene A leads to scene B leads to scene C etc, again that can be achieved without railroading much of the time. Not all of the time, but most of the time, simply by ensuring that scene B is somewhere the players will most likely want to go.
> 
> After all the question is not, "Are plotted adventures never railroads?" Ofc not, they sometimes are. The question is, "Can you have a plotted adventure that isn't a railroad?" The answer to that is, definitely, yes.




Which takes us back to defining a plotted adventure. My definition was useless to you. Can you provide a working alternative?


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Acid test:
> 
> Who's plot was the whole cursed sword business?
> 
> If we can't point the finger to any agency within the gameworld we have choo-choo ville.



It's the GM's plan. But do you really think that if the GM has a plan, and it pans out as he wants, that that *must* be a railroad? What if the players were happy with events turning out that way?

Now, otoh, it might be a railroad. 

1) GM wants players to go from A to B. Players do everything in their power to avoid B. GM sends falling rocks and orc armies and flooded rivers and the like, so that the PCs can go nowhere but B. That's a railroad. And a plot.

2) GM wants players to go from A to B. Players  are happy to go to B. That's not a railroad. And a plot.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Which takes us back to defining a plotted adventure. My definition was useless to you. Can you provide a working alternative?



There are a variety of possible meanings but I'm pretty sure no one uses 'plotted adventure' to mean that there are NPCs in the adventure that have plots. That really is useless because a) it's not what anyone means imo, and b) it applies to pretty much every adventure ever published.

Other possibilities:
1) A linear adventure. Scene A leads to B leads to C.
2) A non-linear, but still strongly structured adventure. Scene A leads to B, can lead to C or D.
3) An adventure in which there is a sequence of events the GM wants to see occur.
4) An adventure in which there is a sequence of events which must occur.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> I could buy that.
> 
> So if "the illusion of choice" is every DM's tool, then railroading is when all your players successfully disbelieve.
> 
> Cheers, -- N



Or the DM has failed his spellcrafting roll. 

There may be a bit more to it than that - some DM's just don't have the ranks in Profession [Dungeon Master] to pull it off, and a lot of folks who might be able to pull it off try not to do it in the first place. 

The best way of giving the illusion of choice is by actually giving the players a choice, and being prepared to change your plans on the fly. Just be ready for the most likely paths the PCs might take, and sometimes, if you weren't ready... neither was the bad guy.  (Or the PCs have tried something truly boneheaded, like trying to swim the Rhine, in flood, without having any ranks in the skill*....)

The Auld Grump

* Almost a near TPK, and the only PC who didn't make the attempt was also the only one who had any ranks in Swim... he decided to look around to find a boat that he could steal. And found one. I was prepared for the PCs trying to cross the river, just not the PCs drowning themselves instead of looking for a boat.... He was able to rescue the others before they were _too_ drowned.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> GM sends falling rocks and orc armies and *flooded rivers*





TheAuldGrump said:


> the Rhine, in flood



Railroad!


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## Obryn (Jun 29, 2010)

A linear adventure is not the same thing as a railroad.  Linear just implies a sequence of events - not that the players have no choice or agency.

The outcome isn't pre-determined, either.

I think it would be more helpful to consider railroading as something a DM does - not a characteristic of a given adventure or module.  I think that's where everything goes awry.

-O


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## Ariosto (Jun 29, 2010)

Scribble said:
			
		

> If the players are not unwilling to go with the plot, they're not being railroaded.




Wrong. That is analogous to pretending that a regime would suddenly lose the character of 'dictatorship' were it successful in ending dissent.

I have never seen this 'out' proposed by opponents of 'railroading'. It is the ability to identify the behavior in its own right that makes the category useful. By avoiding the behavior in the first place, one obviates resentment of it.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 29, 2010)

Obryn said:


> I think it would be more helpful to consider railroading as something a DM does - not a characteristic of a given adventure or module.



Sometimes it's there in the text. For example in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade there is a scene near the start in which the PCs pursue the BBEG who is escaping by coach, but they *cannot* catch him because if they do the rest of the module doesn't work.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 29, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Railroad!



Not my fault man! It was springtime (without Hitler) in the Germanies. 

They could have found the boat (actually two boats - one in bad shape, one in decent condition, but hidden), walked upstream to the town (yes, they were swimming downstream from a town, in the river... into which the chamber pots were emptied on a regular basis...). They could have walked downstream to a ferry, or further down to a bridge. But _noooo_, they had to try swimming across, without the damned skill!

No, I am not still mystified by that, almost ten years later. Why do you ask? 

Ah well, not as bad as the wizard in OD&D who had himself launched over a castle wall via catapult. Well... more _into_ a castle wall, rather than _over_....


I suppose trying to suppress the Lemming reflex can count as railroading.... (No! You can't have your characters die _here!_ Go die over there like you're supposed to!)

The Auld Grump


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## pukunui (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


> A linear adventure is not the same thing as a railroad.  Linear just implies a sequence of events - not that the players have no choice or agency.



I dunno. I think it very much implies that. At the very least, I think linear adventures lend themselves to railroading much more than other kinds of adventures. If the players cannot affect the sequence of events in any way, then how is that not a railroad?

If the PCs start at A and have to get to C and their only option is to go via B, they don't exactly have much choice, do they? If, however, the PCs have the option to get from A to C via B1, B2 or even B3, then it's not entirely linear, nor is it a railroad. Now, of course, if B1, B2 and B3 all involve the same encounter (tweaked for each path's particular circumstances), then the GM is only giving his players the illusion of choice. But so long as the players still have the ability to affect the outcome, then that's not really a problem.

I've already spoken at length about NWN2, so let's go with a different example: the WotC D&D 3.5 module, _Barrow of the Forgotten King_.

The metaplot is that a bad guy has broken into an old king's tomb in search of his magic sword. The PCs are hired to chase down the bad guy and catch him before he gets to the king's coffin. The tomb turns out to be a winding, twisting series of tunnels, hallways, natural caverns, and manmade rooms. However, it is entirely linear, at no point giving the PCs any options on how to progress. It's entirely A -> B -> C -> D and so on. No B1, B2, or B3 here. Not only that, but many of the rooms are stocked with extremely perilous terrain and/or monsters. And because of the linear nature of the dungeon, this creates a series of chokepoints. If the PCs are unable to defeat the monster or get past the terrain (but do not suffer a TPK in the process), then they are simply _unable_ to continue with the adventure. And, of course, even if the PCs successfully overcome each encounter, they _cannot_ catch up to the bad guy until the very end, when he is already breaking into the king's coffin (and the module's authors tell the GM just to assume that, if the PCs get stuck or decide to spend 24 hours recuperating in a cleared-out room, the bad guy is doing the same thing).

As an aside, what really irked me about that module was that it pretty much took every bit of encounter design advice that WotC had put in the 3.5 DMG and threw it out the window. Now, I know that WotC is notorious for ignoring their own rules and advice, but still ... _Barrow_ really takes the cake in that respect.

I think I may just be rambling now, and I need to go pick up my daughter from kindy, so I'd better leave it there. I might be willing to accept that not all linear adventures are railroads, but I would also be willing to be that most of them are.



> I think it would be more helpful to consider railroading as something a DM does - not a characteristic of a given adventure or module.  I think that's where everything goes awry.



I think it's entirely possible for a module's author to build railroading right into it. Although, sure, an experienced, creative GM can compensate for it, so it would really only be an issue for an inexperienced and/or unimaginative GM. What I mean are things like the module giving certain NPCs plot immunity or simply not accounting for what might happen if things don't turn out as expected.



Doug McCrae said:


> Sometimes it's there in the text. For example in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade there is a scene near the start in which the PCs pursue the BBEG who is escaping by coach, but they *cannot* catch him because if they do the rest of the module doesn't work.



I was waiting for someone to bring up that module. Doesn't it literally involve a railroad?


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


> A linear adventure is not the same thing as a railroad.  Linear just implies a sequence of events - not that the players have no choice or agency.
> 
> The outcome isn't pre-determined, either.
> 
> ...




Linear implies a _particular_ sequence of events that the GM enacts, _no matter what_ we players do.

In that case, we who dislike getting 'railroaded' do not have the choice or agency that we want to have as players of a game.

Should one coincidentally desire to do what a gunman wants, then it is not necessary for the threat even to be made. That does not change the fact of the weapon's readiness should one turn out to be uncooperative.

It is the _intent_ to thwart the players, the _commitment_ to employ arbitrary and capricious means as necessary to force the sequence of events one wants, that is inherent.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


> A linear adventure is not the same thing as a railroad. Linear just implies a sequence of events - not that the players have no choice or agency.
> 
> The outcome isn't pre-determined, either.
> 
> ...




I can agree that only DM's allow railroads to actually happen even if all that means is failing to ignore 90% of published material.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

pukunui said:
			
		

> If, however, the PCs have the option to get from A to C via B1, B2 or even B3, then it's not entirely linear, nor is it a railroad.




Wrong. It is your determination that they _must_ arrive at C that makes it a railroad.

All the rest is just details of laying rails.

If you were running a game instead of a railroad, then you would not be concerned with choosing the players' moves for them. You would not be rigging the outcome.

You would let the players play the game, and so discover the outcome.


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## Nagol (Jun 30, 2010)

pukunui said:


> I dunno. I think it very much implies that. At the very least, I think linear adventures lend themselves to railroading much more than other kinds of adventures. If the players cannot affect the sequence of events in any way, then how is that not a railroad?
> 
> If the PCs start at A and have to get to C and their only option is to go via B, they don't exactly have much choice, do they? If, however, the PCs have the option to get from A to C via B1, B2 or even B3, then it's not entirely linear, nor is it a railroad. Now, of course, if B1, B2 and B3 all involve the same encounter (tweaked for each path's particular circumstances), then the GM is only giving his players the illusion of choice. But so long as the players still have the ability to affect the outcome, then that's not really a problem.




I can think of two ways where a linear adventure won't be a railroad.

If the consequences of the method the players use to overcome the adventure will affect their relationship with the game world then it's not a railroad.  The players may have little choice as to what obstacles to overcome in what order, but the decisions can be meaningful and show consequence.

If the players have the option to retire from the adventure then there is at least one other option or them to pursue.

It really only beomes a railroad when the player choice will be intentionally blocked in order to force an outcome.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Wrong. It is your determination that they _must_ arrive at C that makes it a railroad.
> 
> All the rest is just details of laying rails.
> 
> ...




I gotta spread some around.  Yeah. If a plot driven adventure can circumvent this problem then perhaps we can speak in terms of possibly not being a railroad.


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## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Linear implies a _particular_ sequence of events that the GM enacts, _no matter what_ we players do.
> 
> In that case, we who dislike getting 'railroaded' do not have the choice or agency that we want to have as players of a game.




An interesting example that tests the "linear=railroad" hypothesis is the "(Super)Natural Disaster" adventure. You know the kind: some wizard's experiment goes awry and for a night the town is plagued by zombies, frozen in ice, whathaveyou. there's no agency and no way to stop it, just a schedule of inevitable events (whether its x zombies per hour squared, or the ice zone doubling in diameter every hour), the Stuff (people, places and things around the PCs), and the PCs themselves.

It's certainly immutable and linear, which suggests its a railroad. But at the same time, there's no presupposed endpoint or requirement set upon the PCs, which suggests a freeform (or "sandbox") adventure. So which is it?


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Wrong. It is your determination that they _must_ arrive at C that makes it a railroad.
> 
> All the rest is just details of laying rails.
> 
> ...



That's just it, though - IMO it's still not a railroad even then.  If the DM actively shuts down alternative paths and alternative solutions, and only allows the adventure to move in the direction that he wants - _that's_ the railroad.

And, even within a linear adventure, the DM isn't controlling or necessarily restricting players' autonomy over their characters.  If there's a two-hour-long ritual, set back in a cave, there might be a straight line of A-B-C to get to them, but the players can get through A, B, and C however they see fit.  (Or fail to do so entirely!)

Linearity can be a function of the game world.



Doug McCrae said:


> Sometimes it's there in the text. For example in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade there is a scene near the start in which the PCs pursue the BBEG who is escaping by coach, but they *cannot* catch him because if they do the rest of the module doesn't work.



I can see your point, and concede that my distinction may not be helpful.   If the DM ensures that the BBEG cannot be caught no matter what, through fiat, it's a railroad.  If the PCs simply can't because they lack the resources, it's not.

-O


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn, might it help to differentiate between a scenario (location, NPCs, monsters) and an adventure (what actually happens) in this particular instance?

A scenario can be linear, but not a railroad, if the players choose whether or not to engage in it, or can engage in it in such a way as to attempt an escape from the linear model.  For example, in Reynard's post, if the PCs can attempt to affect, excape, or otherwise deal with the events that are occurring, it is not necessarily a railroad.  OTOH, if the means by which the events can be dealt with are proscripted to a predetermined sequence of events, IMHO it is.


RC


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> Obryn, might it help to differentiate between a scenario (location, NPCs, monsters) and an adventure (what actually happens) in this particular instance?
> 
> A scenario can be linear, but not a railroad, if the players choose whether or not to engage in it, or can engage in it in such a way as to attempt an escape from the linear model.  For example, in Reynard's post, if the PCs can attempt to affect, excape, or otherwise deal with the events that are occurring, it is not necessarily a railroad.  OTOH, if the means by which the events can be dealt with are proscripted to a predetermined sequence of events, IMHO it is.
> 
> RC



That's just it, though - when I see a "linear" adventure it's almost always the former.  (For example, the 4e adventure P3 is insanely linear in structure.)  I'm having a hard time thinking of pre-scripted and immutable adventures, though.

I have zero problem with calling an immutable series of events which the PCs can't affect in any meaningful way a "railroad" (if, that is, it's happening once the DM and players get their hands on it).  But if there's even a player-directed chance of success or failure that's more involved than the GM basically saying, "Guess what I'm thinking!", I'm reluctant to use the term.

-O


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## BenBrown (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


> That's just it, though - when I see a "linear" adventure it's almost always the former.  (For example, the 4e adventure P3 is insanely linear in structure.)  I'm having a hard time thinking of pre-scripted and immutable adventures, though.




The aforementioned _Barrow of the Forgotten King_ is pretty darned close.  Of course, it's just a big linear dungeon crawl, with a minimum of branches, all of which shortly dead-end.  There's no real plot to railroad, but it's pretty much linear.


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## pukunui (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Wrong. It is your determination that they _must_ arrive at C that makes it a railroad.
> 
> All the rest is just details of laying rails.
> 
> ...



You misunderstand me. I wasn't implying that the GM was forcing the players to go to C. I was assuming that the players _wanted_ to go there. That is, the GM has presented them with an adventure hook that requires their PCs to make their way to a particular destination (C) and the players have accepted the hook and their PCs have set off on the journey.

I can accept that if the GM only gives them a linear path with which to go from A to C, this does not automatically mean they're on a railroad. Even if the players aren't given the option to take multiple routes to their destination, as long as they can still affect the outcome (and not just of each individual encounter but also the overall plot), then there's no railroad. If the PCs' actions at B make the encounter at C easier or harder, then it's not a railroad. If the encounter at B makes it apparent to the players that it isn't worth their PCs' time to go to C and the GM is happy to let them go to D instead, then it isn't a railroad. But if the GM is determined that the PCs go to C no matter what, and even if he has given them several paths to get there, then it _is_ a railroad.


Going back to NWN2, I think perhaps my problem with that game is not that it's linear and therefore also a railroad. It's just that it happens to be both linear _and_ a railroad. On a small level, the game gives you choices and allows you to affect the outcome of particular encounters. For instance, depending on your Diplomacy skills and the dialogue choices you make, you might be able to circumvent a potential combat encounter. Or if you're very sneaky, you might be able to bypass it entirely. If you fail, you have to fight. But how you tackle each individual encounter has no bearing on the overall plot. Successfully talking your way out of encounter A has no effect on encounter B. Winning or losing the trial makes no difference because either way you're fighting the frenzied berserker, and if you fail _there_, it's game over (or reset to your last saved game, as the case may be, since this is a video game). Even if you beat the guy, winning or losing the trial has no real effect on the environment. Sure, you get either a good title or a bad one, but that title carries very little meaning within the game. You can also insult your companions all you want, and they won't leave you (except at prescripted moments). And even if you don't bother to follow the various romantic subplots, the cut scenes assume you do (playing a female, you can ignore the paladin all you want and choose never to engage him in the romantic dialogue, but his actions in the cut scenes are all scripted as though you have).

Anyway, I realize this is a CRPG and not a tabletop game, so a certain amount of scripting is necessary. But like I mentioned in my original post, NWN1 gave you a lot more freedom than NWN2 does. And I think NWN2 can still be used as a good example of what a real tabletop RPG railroad looks like.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:


> An interesting example that tests the "linear=railroad" hypothesis is the "(Super)Natural Disaster" adventure. You know the kind: some wizard's experiment goes awry and for a night the town is plagued by zombies, frozen in ice, whathaveyou. there's no agency and no way to stop it, just a schedule of inevitable events (whether its x zombies per hour squared, or the ice zone doubling in diameter every hour), the Stuff (people, places and things around the PCs), and the PCs themselves.
> 
> It's certainly immutable and linear, which suggests its a railroad. But at the same time, there's no presupposed endpoint or requirement set upon the PCs, which suggests a freeform (or "sandbox") adventure. So which is it?




Reynard, if I show up to be a 'player' in this affair, then what is my role?

If it is simply to go as scripted from scene to scene, having no decisive decisions to make, then I expect at least Guild rates.

That's what that kind of 'player' is for.

As a player of a game, I want an interesting game to play. That means my choices make a difference -- the difference between victory and defeat.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> If the DM actively shuts down alternative paths and alternative solutions, and only allows the adventure to move in the direction that he wants - _that's_ the railroad.




That is precisely what I see right there. You are allowed only to go from A to C. An attempt to head in any other direction is an attempt to "jump the rails". Whether with the subtlety of a shell game or with very blatant rigging, you will be forced back into line.


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## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Reynard, if I show up to be a 'player' in this affair, then what is my role?




I don't know. What was your role before this scenario started. I imagine whatever else it was, it was also probably protagonist -- and still is. Except now, you're not a protagonist in a hero-versus-villain story, you're a protagonist in a man-versus-(super)nature story -- a story you are writing by playing.

Here's the thing -- that story can be a paragraph long, ending with, "...and they got the hell outta Dodge." and that's okay.



> If it is simply to go as scripted from scene to scene, having no decisive decisions to make, then I expect at least Guild rates.




You're making lots of assumptions there, all of them wrong.



> As a player of a game, I want an interesting game to play. That means my choices make a difference -- the difference between victory and defeat.




Victory over what?

See, now we're talking about something else entirely, that's related to neither railroads nor sandboxes. You want to Kick Ass and Take Names, to be a Big Damn Hero. That's fine. Whatever you like. But, when I run games, the PCs are not the only characters in the world and things happen regardless of them or their actions. And sometimes, 'Stuff Happens' when they are around and they just have to deal (even if dealing means running away or otherwise ignoring the situation).

The PCs are present for situations all the time. Sometimes those situations are created by antagonists in the setting; sometimes those situations are caused by the setting itself. You can't have any type of game, railroad or sandbox, without those situations. Of course this doesn't prohibit players or their characters from creating their own situations, but IME most players don't want that responsibility and the game is more fun for everyone when (again, most) players are reactive.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:
			
		

> You're making lots of assumptions there, all of them wrong.



Dead false. In that statement, it is you making assumptions. Apply some common sense, please.

Why do you refuse to answer the question?

If you will answer it, then we shall have the answer to the question of whether your production is a 'railroad'.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:
			
		

> Victory over what?




That's up to me.

Unless it's a railroad.


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## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> That's up to me.
> 
> Unless it's a railroad.




If you read what I wrote you would know that the whole point of the argument is that in the situation I described you *do* have complete freedom. You can choose to deal with the situation at hand any way you desire, up to and including just bugging out.

But perhaps it isn't a lack of choices that you are concerned about, but rather a lack of control. Perhaps you classify the situation I described as a "railroad" because you use the term to mean any play situation where you are not in command of what is occurring at the table. If that is the case, you need to get yourself behind the screen, because presenting situations is exactly the GM's job in any rpg. It is the players' job to deal with said situations. It really can't be distilled much more than that.

But I'm likely wasting words. I believe we had this very same discussion a couple months ago and it turned out much the same as it is now.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:
			
		

> If you read what I wrote ...



I read it. It was unclear. I requested answers to questions. Your response was evasive and disagreeable.



> in the situation I described you *do* have complete freedom



Then just why do you imagine that it should be regarded as 'railroading'?

It is of no help at all for you to try to put words in my mouth, to make up insulting 'speculations' about my thoughts.

What would be helpful would be for you to turn that energy instead to coming up with other, potentially clearer, words in which to express your own thoughts.


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

BenBrown said:


> The aforementioned _Barrow of the Forgotten King_ is pretty darned close.  Of course, it's just a big linear dungeon crawl, with a minimum of branches, all of which shortly dead-end.  There's no real plot to railroad, but it's pretty much linear.



Right - but if it's set up as a bunch of rooms in a line, there's still quite a bit of potential for PC efficacy, depending on how the game is run.  I'm unfamiliar with the adventure, though, so I can't speak much more about it. 

I'm personally taking the adventure I mentioned - P3 - and rearranging the heck out of it.  While I don't think it's a big railroad, I also don't think there's enough emphasis on solving the scenario in ways other than hacking through it.  For example - there's a huge dungeon with a lot of empty space and four little fiefdoms, all managed by sub-bosses, all of whom are subservient to another sub-boss.  Sadly, none of these sub-bosses have personalities, and apart from some vague allusions, they are basically portrayed as static individuals who don't interact.  Simply put, this sucks, and I'm making the situation much more dynamic.

-O


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Then just why do you imagine that it should be regarded as 'railroading'?



Um.  I don't think he did.  I think he was asking you if _you_ thought it was railroading.



> What would be helpful would be for you to turn that energy instead to coming up with other, potentially clearer, words in which to express your own thoughts.



...

-O


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:
			
		

> It's certainly immutable and linear, which suggests its a railroad.




Yes, if it is in fact immutable and linear, then that is the very model of a railroad. It is also incompatible with my having complete freedom.

So, which in fact is it?

Or are you just playing Humpty Dumpty's game?


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:


> An interesting example that tests the "linear=railroad" hypothesis is the "(Super)Natural Disaster" adventure. You know the kind: some wizard's experiment goes awry and for a night the town is plagued by zombies, frozen in ice, whathaveyou. there's no agency and no way to stop it, just a schedule of inevitable events (whether its x zombies per hour squared, or the ice zone doubling in diameter every hour), the Stuff (people, places and things around the PCs), and the PCs themselves.
> 
> It's certainly immutable and linear, which suggests its a railroad. But at the same time, there's no presupposed endpoint or requirement set upon the PCs, which suggests a freeform (or "sandbox") adventure. So which is it?



Depends on the DM handling it in this instance - if the DM has fixed events that the players cannot change, _even if they are in a position to do so_, then yes, it is a railroad. So the PCs are dragged along by the Niktuku to witness the death of Baba Yaga, and can't prevent it happening, getting dragged from scene to scene.... (Yes, I really do hate Time of Judgment.)

On the flip side, if the DM has the situation, but allows the PCs free reign to handle the scenario, leave town, convince the townsfolk to leave town, hole up in the crypts, loot the shops while the shopkeepers hide in the crypts, lure the critters into the abandoned church, chain the doors shut, then set fire to it... then it is not a railroad, the players have the option of leaving the rails.

If the PCs are in San Fransisco after the great quake, the city _will_ catch fire, but what they do while the city is burning is up to them.

These are _events_, not scenarios per se.

The Auld Grump


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## Majoru Oakheart (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


> That's just it, though - when I see a "linear" adventure it's almost always the former.  (For example, the 4e adventure P3 is insanely linear in structure.)  I'm having a hard time thinking of pre-scripted and immutable adventures, though.
> 
> I have zero problem with calling an immutable series of events which the PCs can't affect in any meaningful way a "railroad" (if, that is, it's happening once the DM and players get their hands on it).  But if there's even a player-directed chance of success or failure that's more involved than the GM basically saying, "Guess what I'm thinking!", I'm reluctant to use the term.




Yeah, me too.  I find people are ready to use "railroad" for nearly any time they don't get absolute freedom.  I use it the other way around, if there is even a hint of freedom, it isn't a railroad.

I'll only use it for the worst cases where the DM literally says "No" when you ask to do something that seems like a good idea with no particular reason why it isn't allowed.

And I allow an exception for any time the DM says "No" because it would simply end the game.  I've used the example before, but I like to throw PCs into situations where they are the only one who can stop the world from ending.  If they choose not to help, the world ends and they all die.  It's that simple.  I don't consider that railroading.  The PCs can do whatever they want, including walk away.  They just have to deal with the consequences of walking away.  The biggest of which is that they don't get to play the game anymore.


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## Thunderfoot (Jun 30, 2010)

Frankly, I've never liked the term "sandbox", that's where my cat does her 'biological business'.

But I agree with AG in that an outline of events with mutating scenarios as altered by the players is the way to go.  But one part of the "sandbox" method as described by the latest edition of D&D that events don't happen until the players interact with them is just silly. 

For example, I as a DM have designed an adventure area, one scenario includes a BBEG that when faced is easier to defeat if a particular item is used (similar to The One Ring and Sauron but not required to defeat the BBEG).  According to the new suggested rules, that item always exists and is available for the PCs to snag and use.  However, it is more likely that the item will be tracked by the BBEG, so if the players don't go after it when they find out about it, there is a chance that the BBEG got there first.

I think a DM should be doing a lot of behind the scenes calculations to keep realism at a high point; the real world spins each day and events keep unfolding regardless of whether you get up off the couch or not.  So, why would your game world be any different, it doesn't force the players to follow a script, in fact, just the opposite, as their actions directly affect the outcome of what happens.  

It doesn't take victory out of their hands, it just alters the circumstances.  I have heard people say that any scripting/outlining/ideas not created by the players is wrong, frankly play something other than D&D, the DM has ALWAYS been the world designer, rules judge and arbiter (as well as a small supporting cast of of thousand of interactive characters, at least if the DM is doing their job correctly) yes an inexperienced DM can blow the balance  but with practice the feel of the world is awesome.  

Okay, I ready for the flames...


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## Hussar (Jun 30, 2010)

TheAuldGrump said:


> snip for good stuff
> 
> If the PCs are in San Fransisco after the great quake, the city _will_ catch fire, but what they do while the city is burning is up to them.
> 
> ...




That's an extremely fine line to make though.  What distinguishes an "event" from a "scenario"?  Aren't they pretty much synonymous?

The PC's are in a city.  There is a festival in the city.  People are partying in the street.  An enemy of the PC's uses the distraction of the festival to attack the PC's as they enjoy the festival.

Railroad or not?  Event or scenario?  Scenario or adventure?  

I mean, we're splitting some serious hairs here.  RC is trying to claim that adventure is what happens AFTER play, but scenario is what's created before play.  That's a new one to me.  I've seen both used pretty interchangeably in the past.  Module, scenario, adventure... do we really need to make distinctions here?

Personally, I take railroading to mean the DM has taken away player agency in such a way that the player objects.  I mean, if the DM says, "I'm going to let a month pass, any objections?" and no one objects, that's not railroading, despite the fact that he just took away player agency.  However, if the DM says, "One month passes" and ignores the players wishes entirely, that is railroading.

I'm a huge fan of aggressive scene framing.  Glossing over small details to get to the big stuff.  Not to everyone's taste, certainly, but, something I do appreciate in a game.  I don't enjoy the book keeping that goes along with highly detailed exploration style games.

Am I being railroaded?  I don't think so.  I've accepted that details will be glossed over and trust my GM will bring the fun to the table.  If you play with a GM you trust, you don't have to worry quite so much about losing a little player agency once in a while.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:
			
		

> What distinguishes an "event" from a "scenario"?  Aren't they pretty much synonymous? ...  Railroad or not?  Event or scenario?  Scenario or adventure?



[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
While                            you're wandering around, you may occasionally notice                            a dotted red line across the ground. There is also a                            series of accompanying notice boards explaining that                            this marks the edge of the adventure and that no objects                            may be taken beyond the line. Your character has a metal                            wristband which, apparently, cannot be removed. As it                            is an object, you are kept within the realms of Kerovnia.

[/FONT] That is from a review (in British magazine Zzap!64 #20, November 13, 1986) of the Magnetic Scrolls computer adventure _The Pawn_.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Personally, I take railroading to mean the DM has taken away player agency in such a way that the player objects.




Some of us simply prefer to make our objection clear in advance. It saves a lot of bother.


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## Krensky (Jun 30, 2010)

Obviously I've been running a railroad game for the past several years without realizing it because at the start of each adventure the PCs are given orders by an NPC and if they refuse the campaign will end because they'll be thrown in jail for 20 to life, at the least.

Whoa is me, I'm a filthy rotten control freak for not running a litterbox campaign the way the game is supposed to be played. 

Of course it's a military based campaign and they're soldiers and officers (with a handful of civilian specialists employed by the military, I suppose they might just get fired), so they really don't have a choice since I'm not going to run a game of the PCs going rogue and escaping from Levenworth.

If you like emergent plot and litterbox play, fine. Stop implying or outright stating that those of us who don't and prefer something more structured and plotted are playing the game wrong.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> That's an extremely fine line to make though.  What distinguishes an "event" from a "scenario"?  Aren't they pretty much synonymous?
> 
> The PC's are in a city.  There is a festival in the city.  People are partying in the street.  An enemy of the PC's uses the distraction of the festival to attack the PC's as they enjoy the festival.
> 
> Railroad or not?  Event or scenario?  Scenario or adventure?



 The PCs are free to do as they want? Then the festival is an event, the assassins are an encounter at the event. Both the event and the encounter are part of a scenario. 

Railroad version: GM: You are at the dunking booth, dunking witches when...
PC: Wait - why would I be at the dunking booth dunking witches? I _like_ witches!
GM: I _said_ 'You _ARE_ at the dunking booth, and you _ARE_ Dunking witches, when....'
PC: No, I am _NOT!_ You Silly GM person.
GM: The scenario says you are, so you are....
PC: I am going to go play with my Wii, you have fun running my character for me....
Other PCs: You have a Wii? Can we play? Gotta be more fun than dunking witches.... 



> I mean, we're splitting some serious hairs here.  RC is trying to claim that adventure is what happens AFTER play, but scenario is what's created before play.  That's a new one to me.  I've seen both used pretty interchangeably in the past.  Module, scenario, adventure... do we really need to make distinctions here?



For me it is a major difference in the use of terms -  It is a hair as big around as a sequoia, and if you can't make out the difference then I may need to hit you with a hammer. A Nerf hammer, but a hammer nonetheless.

An event is what is going on. The festival will be happening, whether the PCs are there or not.

A fire is an event. It is going on whether or not the PCs are there, unless of course they are the ones who set the fire, or the fire was set because the PCs are there. It will still be an event even if the PCs are the cause/reason for the fire. Things are going on.

San Fransisco _did_ have a great quake - it would still have the quake, even if the PCs are in Boston, listening to the church bells ring. It is an event - things are happening. Fires did level much of the city in the aftermath of the great quake. The fires will still happen, even if the PCs are in Boston, sitting in the church, sending alms to help the people displaced by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The fires are an event subsequent to the great quake. The gathering of alms is an event that is taking place con-temporally with the fire in San Fransisco, and would be taking place whether or not San Fransisco got flattened then burst into flames. 

At the festival the PCs are attacked by a bunch of goons, sent by the bad guy. The attack is an encounter at the event. The GM has both the festival and the attack in an adventure - adventure is, for this usage, synonymous with scenario.

At the church in Boston the PCs meet up with a kindly vicar who tells them that he feels that something terrible has just happened, but that he is not certain of what. Meeting the vicar is an encounter at that event. As it happens the volcano, the earthquake, and the fire have nothing to do with the scenario - the GM has just noticed the game date, and felt like adding some flavor. The important part is the meeting with the vicar, who will be important later in the scenario.



> Personally, I take railroading to mean the DM has taken away player agency in such a way that the player objects.  I mean, if the DM says, "I'm going to let a month pass, any objections?" and no one objects, that's not railroading, despite the fact that he just took away player agency.  However, if the DM says, "One month passes" and ignores the players wishes entirely, that is railroading.



 And no argument there. (What? You thought I was going to disagree with you?) It is close enough to my own definition of railroading that I can live with it - I might add that for me it would really become railroading only after the same thing happens repeatedly, but that is just an argument over how many, not kind.



> I'm a huge fan of aggressive scene framing.  Glossing over small details to get to the big stuff.  Not to everyone's taste, certainly, but, something I do appreciate in a game.  I don't enjoy the book keeping that goes along with highly detailed exploration style games.
> 
> Am I being railroaded?  I don't think so.  I've accepted that details will be glossed over and trust my GM will bring the fun to the table.  If you play with a GM you trust, you don't have to worry quite so much about losing a little player agency once in a while.



 It doesn't sound like railroading to me, either. Now if the GM was dragging your character from place to place, event after event, encounter after encounter, then I think both of us would agree that it is railroading.

Rather a long winded means of basically just saying 'I agree', wasn't it?  I mostly just wanted to clarify my terms, for my own usage. My only real disagreement was calling it splitting hairs, since to me the distinction seemed obvious.

The Auld Grump


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## pemerton (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Personally, I take railroading to mean the DM has taken away player agency in such a way that the player objects.



I agree. If the agency is taken away and the players know about it and consent, then we have some sort of scene-setting, more or less aggressive, by the GM. If the agency is taken away and the players don't know about it but (at least implicitly) consent, then we have illusionism.

I'm personally not a big fan of illusionist play, but there are features of D&D that push towards it. Because D&D has very open-ended action resolution rules - bascially, players are allowed just to identify a task that they might want their PC to perform in the current situation, and then have their PC attempt it - it is very hard for the GM to close a scene unless the players stop having their PCs attempt actions in that scene. One way to get the players to stop attempting actions is to go through the charade of dice rolls, but ignore the results. Hey presto! - illusionist GMing is born. Part of the attraction of confict resolution mechanics is that they allow the scene to come to an end without the GM needing to fudge/cheat in this way - if the PCs attempt to win the conflict, and lose, then that's the end - the players can't keep trying and trying to roll again. In D&D this only happens once the PCs are reduced to 0 hp - a very aggressive form of scene closing! (Less aggressive, but still annoying if used as a regular substitute for otherwise crappy scene-setting rules: subjecting a high-level D&D party to anti-magic.)



Doug McCrae said:


> in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade there is a scene near the start in which the PCs pursue the BBEG who is escaping by coach, but they *cannot* catch him because if they do the rest of the module doesn't work.



That's not necessarily a railroad.

If the GM lets the players roll dice to hit (for example) and declares misses regardless of the result, then instead of railroading we have illusionism, and pretty modest illusionism at that. (Provided the players don't suspect.)

If the GM just tells the players "the coach escapes - no dice rolls are needed here" then we don't have railroading or illusionism, just aggressive scene closure. Whether that is acceptable or not will depend upon the group's approach to play, and also how aspects of action resolution mechanics interact with scene-framing/closing - eg, in D&D a GM who doesn't let a wizard PC cast "rock to mud" to stop the coach is overriding the standard action resolution mechanics in order to frame the scene, which some players would reasonably regard as cheating ("railroading" would be the politer term). As noted above, other RPGs don't have such open-ended approaches to action resolution, however, and so can give the GM the power to close a scene like this without it being cheating.



pukunui said:


> If the players cannot affect the sequence of events in any way, then how is that not a railroad?



It depends a lot what the events are, and what the group in question cares about. For example, if you're playing a game set in Greyhawk then it's pretty much given that there are two moons shining down on you at nighttime. The players can't effect that, or the lunar sequence. If the GM (as I once did) introduces rules about lunar conjunctions affecting magical power, the players can't do anything about that either.

None of that is railroading, though. In a standard fantasy RPG it's the GM's job to do this sort of work specifying the background details. And the natural disaster or zombie swarm scenario is, in princple, just a more localised version of the same thing. Maybe it doesn't make for a fun game - I'd want to make sure my players were up for a bit of zombie madness - but I don't think it would count as railroading for the typical fantasy RPGer. (Maybe it would be if playing Primal Order, or Immortals level D&D, where the expectation is that these things _aren't_ background details but rather are the very subject matter of play.)

A completely linear dungeon is also unobjectionable per se. The players choose to go in, or not. If they do, they encounter a series of monsters in order. If not, they don't. The linear dungeon might be more boring than a branching one, but not necessarily if the encounters are interesting. It gets more tricky if the GM doesn't give the players the choice to take their PCs elsewhere - that looks more like a railroad, although it might scrape in as plaintive scene-framing ("Guys, I don't have anything else prepped for tonight!").

It also gets tricky if the players try to use Passwall or something similar to bypass the linearity. The more the GM piles on half-baked reasons why this doesn't work (see, eg, the D-series approach to teleport denial, which I think is on the verge of crossing the line) the more this starts once again to look like railroading by cheating - especially in a game that emphasises the importance of players using spells to achieve operational advantages, which D&D at least traditionally does.



Nagol said:


> If the consequences of the method the players use to overcome the adventure will affect their relationship with the game world then it's not a railroad.  The players may have little choice as to what obstacles to overcome in what order, but the decisions can be meaningful and show consequence.



This will be true in some games, but not all. In a very traditional D&D dungeon crawl, moral and social issues are not all that importance, so nerfing passwalls but letting the players choose whether they defeat the lizardmen by challenging them to a duel or by sneaking in under cover of darkness might still come across as railroady in play. On the other hand, if you nerf passwalls but set up a situation where there are many and varied operational choices to be made, the passwall nerf might be forgiveable (this is the argument in favour of the D-series teleport denial).

On the other hand, in a game where moral and social themes are important to the players, then I absolutely agree that linearity of situations need not be railroading at all, if each situation is one in which players get to make thematically meanginful choices, and if the presentation of each downstream situation reflects the conseof the players' prior choices. This is more-or-less the approach to adventure design promoted by games like HeroQuest and Burning Wheel. It's interesting to contrast it with a WotC module like The Bastion of Broken Souls, which attempts to be a thematically rich event-based adventure, but fails in that attempt because (i) a lot of the events don't allow for thematically meaningful choices, and (ii) no provision is made for earlier choices affecting later events. I think Speaker in Dreams is probably better in this respect, although still a bit underdeveloped.



Doug McCrae said:


> If railroad means an exertion of GM power that is regarded by the players as intrusive (on player decision making), or implausible, and plot means a sequence of events which affect the players that the GM wishes to see occur then, yes, there can definitely be a plotted non-railroaded game.



Fully agree. See above.


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## pemerton (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> So does a plotted adventure mean that someone somewhere in the adventure has a plot/s or agenda/s they are trying to make happen?



No. That would be a _plot-filled_ adventure.


ExploderWizard said:


> Who's plot was the whole cursed sword business?
> 
> If we can't point the finger to any agency within the gameworld we have choo-choo ville.



I can't agree with this at all.

The cursed sword scenario does involve GM metagaming. It does so whether the GM, having had the idea, decides which demon in the gameworld placed the cursed sword, or whether the GM leaves all these details to be made up later if necessary (ie pre-planning, or winging it, doesn't reduce the metagamie-ness). But this is not railroading, which has to do with action resolution and scene-setting (see my previous post). It is metagaming at the level of backstory/world design - which is the analogue, for the GM, of players metagaming at the character build stage (which they do in every mainstream RPG I'm familar with except Classic Runequest, Classic Traveller and 3d6-in-order D&D).

Some play groups may object to this sort of GM metagaming, just as some prefer non-metagamed character building, but my instinct is that they are probably a minority. Even Gygax metagamed in this way - he put features into Castle Greyhawk, like the Fraz-Urblu'u (sp?) face, because he knew they would be appealing encounters for particular players. I think it is a pretty typical conception of the GM's role that it involves preparing encounters that provide adversity to the PCs, based on the hooks the players have built into those PCs. In Doug's example, the hooks are (i) a willingness to risk curses delving into dungeons in search of treasure, which the player has signalled by agreeing to play a typical D&D game, and (ii) a desire to use a particular sort of weapon, which has been sginalled by choosing a weapon for his/her PC - weapon choice is a big deal in most versions of D&D, though not in all fantasy RPGs.

But no railroading. And if the player, having put those hooks into his/her PC, then refuses to engage the cursed sword challenge, I even think that many GMs and fellow players might reasonably regard the player as not fully co-operative. Of course, there are many ways to engage the challenge - in traditional D&D, one way would be to look for a sage or a Legend Lore spell to tell you whether or not the sword is cursed!


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## pukunui (Jun 30, 2010)

pemerton said:


> It depends a lot what the events are, and what the group in question cares about. For example, if you're playing a game set in Greyhawk then it's pretty much given that there are two moons shining down on you at nighttime. The players can't effect that, or the lunar sequence. If the GM (as I once did) introduces rules about lunar conjunctions affecting magical power, the players can't do anything about that either.



Of course. I'm not sure I'd classify those things as events, though. I'd say they're more "environmental effects" or something. Besides, I think you've taken my comments out of context. Obryn defined a linear adventure as a set sequence of events. I was saying that if the players cannot affect the outcome of that sequence of events (that is, if the PCs' actions during Event 2 has no bearing on the subsequent Event 3, which proceeds as scripted no matter what), then there must be some railroading going on. That's all. I never meant to imply that there shouldn't be _anything_ that the PCs cannot affect. I think that would make gaming next to impossible.

I think the most important thing is that the GM and the players communicate. As long as everyone is on the same page, it really shouldn't be an issue if the GM introduces some scripting or prods the players to move in a particular direction. If the players are happy to go along with it, what does it matter? It only becomes a problem when the GM is doing it against the wishes of his players. In more plot-based adventures, too, the GM needs to make sure the players are on board so that they do _not_ continually strive to sabotage or disrupt the adventure by being contrary and so on. It's all about communication. And there may be something about a "social contract" too, but I can't remember exactly what that's all about. I've just seen the term tossed out there on occasion.


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## FireLance (Jun 30, 2010)

You know what, I think I'm starting to dislike the term "railroading" because it seems that everyone has a different definition of it. Hence, whatever advantage of conciseness that is gained by using it in a conversation instead of a wordier but clearer phrase is offset by the confusion that it creates.

If you don't like linear scenarios, then say that you don't like linear scenarios. If you don't like it when the DM arbitrarily restricts the players' agency, or comes up with implausible scenarios to foil the PCs' plans, just then say _that_ instead. 

 And now I can't decide whether I was railroaded into typing that.


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## pemerton (Jun 30, 2010)

pukunui said:


> if the players cannot affect the outcome of that sequence of events (that is, if the PCs' actions during Event 2 has no bearing on the subsequent Event 3, which proceeds as scripted no matter what), then there must be some railroading going on. That's all.



That makes sense. I'd add - what counts as "no bearing" is game-relative and group-relative. In a game/group that focuses on tactical play, the players' tactical choices should make a difference. In a game/group that focuses on thematic play, the players' thematic choices should make a difference. What exactly the GM has to do to achieve this - in terms of altering the sequence of events, altering aspects of pre-planned encounters, giving the players bonuses or penalties in new encounters carrying over from earlier ones, etc - is highly dependent on the mechanics of the game in question, and the relevant dimension(s) of meaninfulness.

To give a simple but concrete example - suppose the GM has planned two encounters, first with a powerful demon and then with an aspect of Demogorgon. It is not per se railroading for the Demogorgon aspect to turn up regardless of the upshot of the demon encounter (even if the PCs die, presumably Demogorgon can conjure an aspect into the shadowfell to confront them). But one would expect the outcome of the demon encounter to make a difference to the framing of the Demogorgon encounter. At a minimum, the PCs may have more daily powers or action points left if they used tactical skill to fight the demon. Or if the PCs didn't fight the demon but accepted it's promise of future power in return for sparing its life, the Demogorgon encounter might play out as a non-combat encounter of some sort.



pukunui said:


> I think the most important thing is that the GM and the players communicate.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> And there may be something about a "social contract" too, but I can't remember exactly what that's all about. I've just seen the term tossed out there on occasion.



Fully agree. Communication and social contract (ie the upshot of the communication) are key. In many cases (eg with friends) implict understandings will do the job, but sometimes the communication has to be explicit.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

It's possible in a linear A-B-C scene progression scenario for the players to have a lot of freedom within each scene. I played in a game where this was extremely noticeable at a convention once, convention games tending to be more structured/linear/railroaded/whatever you want to call it. At the structural level, the players had no freedom at all. But within each scene, we seemed to have complete freedom of action.

One can see something similar in an adventure path such as G1-3. If a GM has planned to run the G modules in order, and that's non-negotiable, then the players have no freedom at the 'choosing the adventure' level, but within each adventure they have pretty much total freedom.

Actually I think this is extremely common in rpging. The GM typically prepares one adventure for the evening, so the players pretty much have to go on that adventure, otherwise there's no game. But what happens after that is up for grabs. That's mostly how I run my games, btw.

It's a compromise between player freedom and lack of freedom, but most players have really consented to go on whatever adventure the GM serves up, simply by turning up for the session.


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## pemerton (Jun 30, 2010)

FireLance said:


> You know what, I think I'm starting to dislike the term "railroading" because it seems that everyone has a different definition of it.



Well, this is a bit like the "grognard" thread. Because different play groups find different aspects of play and player choice important or unimportant, they're going to have different views of what counts as railroading. 



FireLance said:


> If you don't like linear scenarios, then say that you don't like linear scenarios. If you don't like it when the DM arbitrarily restricts the players' agency, or comes up with implausible scenarios to foil the PCs' plans, just then say that instead.



This strategy isn't guaranteed to work, though. Because what counts as linear, or as implausible, is probably also in the eye of the beholder to a significant extent.

There's no reason to think that discussion of RPGs, and the merits of various approaches to play, is going to be any less contested than criticism of other media.


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## pemerton (Jun 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Actually I think this is extremely common in rpging. The GM typically prepares one adventure for the evening, so the players pretty much have to go on that adventure, otherwise there's no game.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> most players have really consented to go on whatever adventure the GM serves up, simply by turning up for the session.



That's what I called "plaintive scene framing" a few posts upthread.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

I have seen railroaded used in a non-pejorative sense fairly often also, just to add to the confusion over the term. So railroaded doesn't necessarily mean bad, though it usually does.

I'm going to suggest an alternative definition:
The GM in an rpg has a lot of power. But the GM's presence is normally invisible. He acts thru NPCs, the environment, the world. The players can suspend their disbelief and believe that they are living in a secondary world. Railroading occurs when the GM's normally invisible hand becomes visible. It becomes apparent that the GM has wants other than those of the NPCs in his world. Things begin behaving in unlikely ways, the game rules are bent or broken, the world seems to be acting with one mind, as if there were some grand conspiracy of everything, to push the PCs in a particular direction.

This is where the issue of implausibility comes in, which we've not been talking about so much, focusing instead on player freedom.

By this definition, railroading is not necessarily a bad thing. Okay, it's bad that the players can no longer suspend disbelief, but that might be the lesser of two evils. It can be beneficial for the players to know where the plot is, to know where the GM's prepared material is, to be directed toward the adventure. This is where the visible hand, pushing, is a good thing, because it becomes perfectly clear what the PCs should do.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

pemerton said:


> That's what I called "plaintive scene framing" a few posts upthread.



Yeah, that describes my style pretty well. Plaintive GMing.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

pemerton said:


> It also gets tricky if the players try to use Passwall or something similar to bypass the linearity. The more the GM piles on half-baked reasons why this doesn't work (see, eg, the D-series approach to teleport denial, which I think is on the verge of crossing the line) the more this starts once again to look like railroading by cheating - especially in a game that emphasises the importance of players using spells to achieve operational advantages, which D&D at least traditionally does.



I didn't know that about the D-series. It's surprising the number of times Gary bans certain spells in his high level modules. EX1 Dungeonland, EX2 The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror (both for levels 9-12), and WG6 The Isle of the Ape (18+) all have long lists of 'Magic that will not work in this module', a lot of it movement and informational such as teleport, dimension door and commune with nature. Not the spells that win fights, but those that give the players control over the flow of an adventure, of the structure (is this what is meant by scene-setting?) or let them 'skip to the end'.

In Tomb of Horrors, if the PCs try to go astral or ethereal they are attacked by a demon, which isn't quite as bad, but indicates the problems with high level magic when trying to run a traditional dungeon.

Gary has really no one to blame but himself here!


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## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Gary has really no one to blame but himself here!




But he also came up with a perfectly viable solution...

EDIT: To expound a bit, what i mean is that the teleport nerfing and the like isn't inherently bad. it's "kryptonite" -- sometimes you need a plot device to promote a certain kind of play experience. But, like krytonite, it can get old fast. It's the over use of anti-magic fields and dimensional anchors that makes them unpalatable, not their mere existence. Plus, it ultimately goes back to the Player-DM sparring issue. Teleport was put in the game to allow PCs to fast travel, not bypass the adventure. When players started using it to bypass the adventure (probably the second time it was cast) the DM, having done all that prepatory work, said, "No way, Jose" or some Gygaxian equivalent.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I have seen railroaded used in a non-pejorative sense fairly often also, just to add to the confusion over the term. So railroaded doesn't necessarily mean bad, though it usually does.
> 
> I'm going to suggest an alternative definition:
> The GM in an rpg has a lot of power. But the GM's presence is normally invisible. He acts thru NPCs, the environment, the world. The players can suspend their disbelief and believe that they are living in a secondary world. Railroading occurs when the GM's normally invisible hand becomes visible. It becomes apparent that the GM has wants other than those of the NPCs in his world. Things begin behaving in unlikely ways, the game rules are bent or broken, the world seems to be acting with one mind, as if there were some grand conspiracy of everything, to push the PCs in a particular direction.
> ...




Yes, the heart of the problem with defining a railroad is the automatic assumption that railroad=badwrong fun. If the players are enjoying what is happening in the game then there is no badwrongfun happening although it might indeed be quite an obvious railroad.


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## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Yes, the heart of the problem with defining a railroad is the automatic assumption that railroad=badwrong fun. If the players are enjoying what is happening in the game then there is no badwrongfun happening although it might indeed be quite an obvious railroad.




25 years of DMing experienc ehas taught me this: always be willing to "sandbox" but be prepared to "railroad" and you'll do fine.

That is to say -- players (IME) like having direction and that sometimes includes being "rairoaded", but when they want to go off and do their own thing, they don't want to be told "No". So the best thing the DM can do is have an adventure ready but not be married to any of the details.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:


> 25 years of DMing experienc ehas taught me this: always be willing to "sandbox" but be prepared to "railroad" and you'll do fine.
> 
> That is to say -- players (IME) like having direction and that sometimes includes being "rairoaded", but when they want to go off and do their own thing, they don't want to be told "No". So the best thing the DM can do is have an adventure ready but not be married to any of the details.




This is the kind of flexibility that makes for happy players. Every once in a while, even proactive players might want an obvious trail to follow.


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## evileeyore (Jun 30, 2010)

It's happened, one of my pet peeve buttons has been pushed.  Repeatedly.




> It's not a railroad if the players like it!




Yes it is.  It's just a railroad the players happen to like.




A railroad is when control and choice over the characters actions are removed from the player.  Nothing more, nothing less.


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

evileeyore said:


> It's happened, one of my pet peeve buttons has been pushed.  Repeatedly.Yes it is.  It's just a railroad the players happen to like. A railroad is when control and choice over the characters actions are removed from the player.  Nothing more, nothing less.





Since it's not really a definition that you'll find in a dictionary, I think the meaning is kind of open for debate...


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

evileeyore said:


> Yes it is.  It's just a railroad the players happen to like.
> 
> A railroad is when control and choice over the characters actions are removed from the player.  Nothing more, nothing less.



Are you saying a railroad is not necessarily a bad thing then?

As Scribble says though, there's no authoritative definition for this, or many other rpging terms. From the evidence of this thread, there are clearly multiple definitions of railroad in common use.

Same with sandbox, grognard, campaign, powergamer, magic Walmart, videogame-y and anime. Even the terms roleplaying, roleplaying game and D&D are hotly disputed. Some say that d20 D&D isn't really D&D, for example.


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## Hussar (Jun 30, 2010)

TheAuldGrump said:


> /snippage
> 
> An event is what is going on. The festival will be happening, whether the PCs are there or not.
> 
> ...




Heh, I should probably not disagree with your eloquent agreement.  

I guess the issue I have is that, unless you happen to be playing in a "Real World" rpg, very, very few "events" occur in a game that aren't at least tangentially related to the PC's.  Sure, you could mention that some city far away just had an earthquake, but, really, do people actually do this?

IME, events are almost always tied to the PC's.  Anything else rarely comes up in game.



Doug McCrae said:


> /snip
> 
> Actually I think this is extremely common in rpging. The GM typically prepares one adventure for the evening, so the players pretty much have to go on that adventure, otherwise there's no game. But what happens after that is up for grabs. That's mostly how I run my games, btw.
> 
> It's a compromise between player freedom and lack of freedom, but most players have really consented to go on whatever adventure the GM serves up, simply by turning up for the session.




I believe the term for this is narrow-wide-narrow or something to that effect.  And, honestly, I think this is probably the most common style of play out there.  Pc's get a job (quest, hook, what have you), PC's undertake to resolve the job in a number of ways that they come up with on their own, job gets resolved, and it narrows back down to the next job.

Yeah, there might be three or four jobs lined up (again, replace "job" with hook or whatever term floats your boat) but, essentially, you have another choke point so the DM can prep the next session at the very least.


----------



## Raven Crowking (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Sure, you could mention that some city far away just had an earthquake, but, really, do people actually do this?





Yes.


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## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> And, honestly, I think this is probably the most common style of play out there.  Pc's get a job (quest, hook, what have you), PC's undertake to resolve the job in a number of ways that they come up with on their own, job gets resolved, and it narrows back down to the next job.
> 
> Yeah, there might be three or four jobs lined up (again, replace "job" with hook or whatever term floats your boat) but, essentially, you have another choke point so the DM can prep the next session at the very least.




As the difficulty of "winging it" and the length of prep time increase for a given system, so does the tendency for the GM to push the players onto the prescribed adventure. Frankly, it's just more fun that way. Therefore, player character freedom can often be at least partially attributed to the system itself, insofar as it supports or restricts the GM's ability to provide multiple avenues of entertainment for the players. BD&D is emminently wingable -- it's just *that* easy to run and come up with stuff for. As you move along the AD&D->3E->Pathfinder track, it becomes less easy. I combat this (running PF now) by having a few different adventures in my game bag with some party/campaign specific notes. And if I throw out a random hook (as I am wont to do0 and the PCs bite hard (and I am totally unprepared) I have a few special encounters/mini-adventures ready to go. Since we only play for 3 or so hours at a clip, that'll cover me til next week and they're none the wiser (okay, they probably know, but they seem to enjoy it anyway).


----------



## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

I think if you're asking the question "is there anyone out there who actually does X..." the answer will be yes... (even if it's only one dude.)


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> I believe the term for this is narrow-wide-narrow or something to that effect.



Yeah, I believe it was Piratecat who coined that phrase to describe how he designed his convention scenarios.

The start is fixed. For example: PCs are asked to acquire the Eye of Argon.
The middle is open. PCs could go about finding it in many ways - ask around, cast a spell, go to the library.
The ending is fixed. The Eye of Argon is in a particular place so the PCs will have to go there to get it.

What I'm describing might be a bit closer to narrow-wide-wide, where the start of an adventure is fixed but both the methods and conclusion are more open. That said though, endings usually depend on beginnings. The resolution of a task usually depends heavily on what the task is, so maybe narrow-wide-narrow is more appropriate. Most freedom is usually in the middle.


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## Nagol (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Heh, I should probably not disagree with your eloquent agreement.
> 
> I guess the issue I have is that, unless you happen to be playing in a "Real World" rpg, very, very few "events" occur in a game that aren't at least tangentially related to the PC's.  Sure, you could mention that some city far away just had an earthquake, but, really, do people actually do this?
> 
> IME, events are almost always tied to the PC's.  Anything else rarely comes up in game.




I can't speak for others, but I do this.

For the past four game years, the PCs have heard about the problems plaguing a shipping coast (piracy, privateering, the withdrawl of naval forces, drop in trade, etc.), the downfall of a free city, the kidnapping of a new princess-consort on her wedding day in a nearby nation, 2 border skirmishes between major powers, a resumption of a civil war and a continuation of that war into a war of conquest, a newly inheriting noble son turning to evil methods, the rapid expansion of a city due to shifting trade patterns from all of the above.

Were these events tied to the PCs?  No.  Could the PCs decide to react to these events?  Yes.  Have the PCs reacted?  To some.


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Sure, you could mention that some city far away just had an earthquake, but, really, do people actually do this?



I tried that a bit in my most recent campaign, a superhero game, with little snippets of info about what other superheroes around the world were up to, but it wasn't very successful. The players didn't really give a toss.

Players are practical, they only care about what directly affects them.


----------



## Nagol (Jun 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I tried that a bit in my most recent campaign, a superhero game, with little snippets of info about what other superheroes around the world were up to, but it wasn't very successful. The players didn't really give a toss.
> 
> Players are practical, they only care about what directly affects them.




The trick is to present information that they may consider an opportunity.  The players have to understand that the DM does not expect but is prepared for a player to follow up on the information.

Games where the players are highly reactive (like superheroes), I tend to present less news.  The news I do present usually offers a different perspective onto the situations the group is facing/will face/just faced.

Games where the players can be more proactive (like a sanbox D&D game), I present more opportunities as snippets of news.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:


> As the difficulty of "winging it" and the length of prep time increase for a given system, so does the tendency for the GM to push the players onto the prescribed adventure. Frankly, it's just more fun that way. Therefore, player character freedom can often be at least partially attributed to the system itself, insofar as it supports or restricts the GM's ability to provide multiple avenues of entertainment for the players. BD&D is emminently wingable -- it's just *that* easy to run and come up with stuff for. As you move along the AD&D->3E->Pathfinder track, it becomes less easy. I combat this (running PF now) by having a few different adventures in my game bag with some party/campaign specific notes. And if I throw out a random hook (as I am wont to do0 and the PCs bite hard (and I am totally unprepared) I have a few special encounters/mini-adventures ready to go. Since we only play for 3 or so hours at a clip, that'll cover me til next week and they're none the wiser (okay, they probably know, but they seem to enjoy it anyway).




While I agree with this on general principle, in practice it can be just as easy to run on the fly with heavier rulesets as long you prep efficiently. 

I run an open/exploration focused 4E campaign in the same style that I ran BD&D. Monster builder software turns mountains of prep into an easy task. I have more customized NPC/ monster stats at hand than I could ever run out of in 5 sessions ready at every game. The players may wander wherever they wish and find something to do. There will be several hooks to explore sometimes being connected so that investigating one will indirectly connect to the others. 

This is why it seems so out of whack to me that published adventures for this system are among the most railroady ever when the tools for the system make overprepping a piece of cake, and easier to do than anything in the 3E spectrum. 

I guess it doesn't help that the rulebooks themselves go on and on about the importance of prepping combats as these elaborate pre-constructed scenes on carefully crafted soundstage terrain in order for them to be interesting/dynamic. This is directly at odds with the "violence happens where/when it happens " style that I am used to.  I suppose if one were to believe the philosophy given in the rulebooks then non-linear adventures might seem overwhelming for new DMs.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 30, 2010)

Nagol said:


> The trick is to present information that they may consider an opportunity.  The players have to understand that the DM does not expect but is prepared for a player to follow up on the information.





This.

Also, consider how important news can be when it demonstrates how an area has changed since the PCs saw it last.  Without the Innkeeper's daughter getting married, the Mayor of the Free City dying, and the village by the woods recovering from a harsh winter, it becomes very obvious why the players think the world only exists to react to them, or to cause them to react.

Better, IMHO, to cultivate a setting where everything _*may be*_ important, but not everything _*is*_.

This goes back to the Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing in _Expedition to the Barrier Peaks_.  If the DM never mentions animals unless they are important, no one is going to be surprised by this encounter.  A lot of the flavour, IMHO, is lost.  Like cooking without salt.  The better DM (again, IMHO) sprinkles the world with descriptions that include normal animals, so that it isn't always obvious that a cat, or a crow, or a toad, must be a wizard's familiar.

The same with events happening across the world.  PCs hearing news of distant events, some of which may affect them some day in one way or another, is a good thing.  PCs discovering that places change while they are away is a good thing.  

Either the world breathes, or it does not.


RC


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Krensky said:
			
		

> Obviously I've been running a railroad game for the past several years without realizing it because at the start of each adventure the PCs are given orders by an NPC and if they refuse the campaign will end because they'll be thrown in jail for 20 to life, at the least.




Yeah. So what?

If it's a military game, then maybe you're using _Phoenix Command_ or _Merc_. News flash: Not everybody likes those game systems. In fact, not everybody likes military games.

A whole lot of "dungeon modules" and the like start with an "express line" to the start of "the adventure".

The root of it all, of course, is the prior determination for (not by) the players as to what constitutes "the adventure". This can lead to further 'railroad' behavior down the line, if the players threaten to exit the adventure.

Anyhow, the "commuter express" is something most people expect to happen on occasion, and take in stride to that extent. It's par for the course in a tournament scenario, for instance. Taking up direction of a character's career for the first time is usually a similar process, and not a cause for dismay.

How do you figure the frequency of your use is at all to the point of the name? The phenomenon is what it is regardless.



> If you like emergent plot and litterbox play, fine. Stop implying or outright stating that those of us who don't and prefer something more structured and plotted are playing the game wrong.



Maybe it's suddenly appeared in the past couple of pages (I'm not caught up), but I have not seen any suggestion of an absolute right and wrong. I have seen people expressing their preferences -- _just as you have done right here_.

Sauce for the railroader is sauce for the off-roader, pal!



			
				evileeyore said:
			
		

> It's just a railroad the players happen to like.




Yes.

Tapioca pudding or licorice is what it is even though Alice likes it and Bob does not.

Ditto 'punk' rock and 'flea' markets and "agony aunt" columns and "soap opera" shows.

When someone who doesn't like railroad games sees a railroad game in action or in the offing, he or she is likely to call it 'railroading' because _that's what it's called_.

For the same reason, someone who likes the phenomenon is likely to use the same term. You are free to come up with a substitute -- but insisting that everyone else must use it would be a stretch!


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> When someone who doesn't like railroad games sees a railroad game in action or in the offing, he or she is likely to call it 'railroading' because _that's what it's called_.
> 
> For the same reason, someone who likes the phenomenon is likely to use the same term. You are free to come up with a substitute -- but insisting that everyone else must use it would be a stretch!




But I've seen it called railroading and I've seen it called not railroading.

I've seen it used a bunch of different ways, so to me you insisting one definition is the correct one, simply because you feel it is, as you say- is a stretch.

In fact, when I was more actively going to conventions and gaming at hobby stores (and therefore interacting with a wide variety of gamers) I more commonly saw it being used in the method I mentioned earlier.

***

I wonder if part of the "problem" is that it seems to be one of those somewhat subjective terms-  Like saying it's "Cold out."

When I lived in SF, people commonly said it was "cold out" to describe 60 degree weather... Here in Jersey 60 degrees isn't usually referred to as "cold out."


Some stuff that is railroady to one person might not even feel that way to another. Neither is "more correct." It is what it is to the specific player.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

pemerton said:
			
		

> If the GM lets the players roll dice to hit (for example) and declares misses regardless of the result, then instead of railroading we have illusionism, and pretty modest illusionism at that. (Provided the players don't suspect.)



That's railroading.

It might also be 'illusionism'  or 'absurdism' or something.

But it's definitely railroading.



> If the GM just tells the players "the coach escapes - no dice rolls are needed here" then we don't have railroading or illusionism, just aggressive scene closure.




That's total baloney.


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Scribble said:


> But I've seen it called railroading and I've seen it called not railroading.
> 
> I've seen it used a bunch of different ways, so to me you insisting one definition is the correct one, simply because you feel it is, as you say- is a stretch.
> 
> In fact, when I was more actively going to conventions and gaming at hobby stores (and therefore interacting with a wide variety of gamers) I more commonly saw it being used in the method I mentioned earlier.



Here's the transformation I've, personally, seen over the past 5-6 years.  It's grown, I think, because of the re-emergence of Sandbox play and a very active OSR movement - but this is not to say that everyone who sandboxes, and everyone who's into the OSR is responsible.  I think it's just an unfortunate example of definition drift.

*Before:* Railroading is bad gaming.  It's a degenerate state of affairs where a DM basically plans both the adventure and the PCs' reactions to it ahead of time.  Most problems only have one solution, and there's only one right path - and deviation from that path is severely punished.  Stuff like mandatory capture scenes, unavoidable ambushes, NPCs you can't attack, and so on are hallmarks.  Railroads are best defined by their inflexibility during play, the lack of player agency over their characters' actions, and the arbitrariness of the DM's decisions.  It's to be dreaded as a player, and avoided as a DM.

*After:* "Railroading" can include anything from linear adventure structures (where the PCs actions still aren't constrained by fiat), to branching flowchart adventures, to even presenting an adventure plot to your group up-front rather than having them pick one from a list of rumors.  Opinions vary; it depends who you talk to.  "Railroading" gets conflated with other gaming styles, and it's no longer limited to the earlier definitions.  However, there's often a caveat - some railroading is _good!_  Really!  It's not all bad, it's just a different way of gaming, so it's okay if you like to be railroaded in your "story-games"!

Personally, I find the latter definition (or lack of definition, frankly) rather useless because nobody can quite agree on it anymore - and the former, negative definition no longer has a name of its own.  I also think "It's okay if you like to be railroaded" is more than a bit condescending; the term has historical negative connotations, and pretending they don't exist anymore is a dodge, at best.  I think it's more often used in a "my-sandbox-gaming-is-better-than-your-story-gaming" manner.  And, frankly, I dislike that this redefinition has been allowed to happen without a fight.

-O


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

FireLance said:
			
		

> You know what, I think I'm starting to dislike the term "railroading" because it seems that everyone has a different definition of it.




Different people have different tolerances for it.

Different people who change it to mean "only railroading I don't like" change it to mean different things.

Some people who really like it a lot do all sorts of things with the language that leaves it pretty useless for communication except with fellows fluent in their cant.

Confusion is a weapon in the cause of attacking critics of railroading.



> If you don't like linear scenarios, then say that you don't like linear scenarios.




That does not look like an improvement. It's just a wordier way to say 'railroads', subject to all the same trickery in rhetoric.


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Confusion is a weapon in the cause of attacking critics of railroading.



We could just go by the majority interpretation, which is that if a player doesn't feel railroaded then they aren't. This has, I believe, been demonstrated by past polls on ENWorld.

But I appreciate that a significant minority, including yourself, believes it to depend on actual, not apparent, freedom.

It's not an attack. If anything, it's showing respect, maybe too much, for a minority. Maybe we need the tyranny of the majority to sweep away minority definitions in the aid of clarity of language.


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## Mallus (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Some people who really like it a lot do all sorts of things with the language that leaves it pretty useless for communication except with fellows fluent in their cant.



Is now a bad time to mention your own posts can get a bit... err... cant-y on occasion? This is the pot calling the kettle esoteric... or something... 



> Confusion is a weapon in the cause of attacking critics of railroading.



I think we all can agree that railroading is the removal of player choice. But it's best seen as a spectrum, which neatly accounts for the number of differing definitions of it. 

A certain amount of railroading --limiting player choice-- is an unavoidable. A DM/GM can only prepare so much. Past that, they improvise... up until the point they can't. Eventually, the players and DM/GM need reach a mutual agreement as to where the action goes.


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Confusion is a weapon in the cause of attacking critics of railroading.



I don't think the confusion is coming from the direction you think it is.  As I said above, I think you're using a novel and idiosyncratic definition of "railroading" and are therefore creating this confusion, yourself.



> That does not look like an improvement. It's just a wordier way to say 'railroads', subject to all the same trickery in rhetoric.



Well, for starters, "linear adventure" doesn't carry the same negative connotation that "railroad" does.  That's a point in its favor, right there.  For another, the players' agency over their characters isn't denied in a linear adventure - their reactions to it aren't scripted ahead of time, and they aren't necessarily restricted from finding inventive ways to solve the linear adventure's problems.

-O


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Scribble said:
			
		

> Some stuff that is railroady to one person might not even feel that way to another. Neither is "more correct." It is what it is to the specific player.




And yet, here we have people insisting that it's just _wrong_ to use the term, because Joe S. happens to adore this or that thing and consider 'railroading' proper only when applied to things he personally dislikes.

Why can't Joe get over the fact that not everyone shares his taste?

The fact is, most of us who actually have use for the term get use out of it.

That is not changed by intentional and obstinate insistence on absurdities on the part of people bent on employing the "argument from weariness of argument" to run down everyone whose views do not toe their "players _ought to be_ passengers" line.


----------



## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> That does not look like an improvement. It's just a wordier way to say 'railroads', subject to all the same trickery in rhetoric.




Problem is, we're back to saying "linear scenario" and "railroading" are exactly the same thing. Which they are not.

I think that the resurgence in interest in "sandboxing" is primarily a response to the popularity of "adventure paths", and that "railroad" and "sandbox" came to be the antonyms for each other, which in and of themselves are actually rather broad playstyles. Roughly, "railroading" is a playstyle in which players give up some real or perceived freedom of action in return for a more focused play experience, and "sandboxing" is where the players give up directed focus on the part of the DM in exchange for freedom. there's a lot of room in each of those defintions to cover a lot of the particulars.

Now, prior to the new sandbox movement -- if we can call it that -- railroading had a singular definition, based purely on the metaphor itself: get on the train and end up at the destination, no matter what. or, more concisely, Dragonlance.

I think of it this way: sandboxing in Fallout 3 or WoW, while railroading is God of War or Arkham Asylum. Using that context, railroading isn't necessarily a bad thing if that's what you're after.

Plus, although I consider myself philosophically a Sandbox GM, practicality means I must occassionally engage in a little railroading just to keep the game moving.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> *Before:* Railroading is bad gaming.



Right. Now it's _not_ bad gaming to a lot of folks.

What has changed, though, is not the nature of the phenomenon.

What has changed is the fashion in "good gaming".


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Personally, I find the latter definition (or lack of definition, frankly) rather useless because nobody can quite agree on it anymore - and the former, negative definition no longer has a name of its own.  I also think "It's okay if you like to be railroaded" is more than a bit condescending; the term has historical negative connotations, and pretending they don't exist anymore is a dodge, at best.  I think it's more often used in a "my-sandbox-gaming-is-better-than-your-story-gaming" manner.  And, frankly, I dislike that this redefinition has been allowed to happen without a fight.



Yeah, railroading always meant bad at first, and then the term was reclaimed, a bit. People started to say stuff like:

"There's nothing wrong with a railroad if the train's headed to Awesome Town."

I think it still has mostly negative connotations. Though I'm wondering if those are on the part of the players experiencing the railroading or of a third party talking about the game on teh interweb. Is it still railroading if the players are okay with it, but the third party wishes to use the term and keep the negative connotations? Is he implying by his use of the term that the players didn't enjoy the game? Or just that he wouldn't enjoy it if he was a player? Or is he one of these "Nothing wrong with a railroad types"?

I believe I may now have identified *three* meanings of the term. This can only help discussion. I r awesome!


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> That is not changed by intentional and obstinate insistence on absurdities on the part of people bent on employing the "argument from weariness of argument" to run down everyone whose views do not toe their "players _ought to be_ passengers" line.



Calm down. No one's trying to steal your sandbox.


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> And yet, here we have people insisting that it's just _wrong_ to use the term, because Joe S. happens to adore this or that thing and consider 'railroading' proper only when applied to things he personally dislikes.
> 
> Why can't Joe get over the fact that not everyone shares his taste?




Who's Joe?  (And I think you might want to point that question inward? To some, it feels like you're stretching the term "Railroad" to constitute anything you dislike...)



> The fact is, most of us who actually have use for the term get use out of it.




Sure- I'll agree with that.  I don't think I said the term wasn't useful?

Just like saying "It's cold out" doesn't suddenly become no longer useful because I don't agree with the average SF inhabitants spectrum of coldness...

I think railroady might be just like that though- you have to have an idea of what the person feels constitutes "railroady" before you can decide if you agree or not.




> That is not changed by intentional and obstinate insistence on absurdities on the part of people bent on employing the "argument from weariness of argument" to run down everyone whose views do not toe their "players _ought to be_ passengers" line.




I think you're inventing an argument (or motivation at the very least) in this thread that's not actually there?

It's a descriptive term. Descriptive terms I think have a way of being kind of subjective?

You disagree?


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Right. Now it's _not_ bad gaming to a lot of folks.
> 
> What has changed, though, is not the nature of the phenomenon.
> 
> What has changed is the fashion in "good gaming".



No.  Railroading under the original definition is still bad gaming.  Railroading under your expansion of the term encompasses both good and bad gaming.

-O


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

> We could just go by the majority interpretation, which is that if a player doesn't feel railroaded then they aren't. This has, I believe, been demonstrated by past polls on ENWorld.



Sure, that's fine -- if y'all will just publish an ENWorldese lexicon.

It's a bit of a drag having to learn that an 'adventure' is now basically opposed to what an adventure used to be in D&D, and the myriad other conventions. It's a really big drag that 'sandbox', contrived as a politically correct way to refer to what 'campaign' formerly meant, has been lynched and strangled into uselessness.

Come on, guys. Either give a term you will accept, or let it be. Trying to silence discourse you don't like by stealing the language is dirty pool.

The really fraught disagreement is from and among people whose interest clearly is in keeping up the arguments over words. They can be disagreeable from here to eternity with scarcely any effort.

Meanwhile, those of us trying to accommodate them just get *railroaded* into weariness and disgust.


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Well, for starters, "linear adventure" doesn't carry the same negative connotation that "railroad" does. -O




This is what we call "spin" round these parts.

Your funds were not stolen sir, they we re-appropriated.


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Sure, that's fine -- if y'all will just publish an ENWorldese lexicon.




I think if somehow the game world would publish some type of dictionary that everyone accepted was the source of game related definitions it would be great. Doubt that would ever happen though.



> It's a bit of a drag having to learn that an 'adventure' is now basically opposed to what an adventure used to be in D&D, and the myriad other conventions. It's a really big drag that 'sandbox', contrived as a politically correct way to refer to what 'campaign' formerly meant, has been lynched and strangled into uselessness.




What if what you thought of as "not an adventure" was simply what someone else thought of as an adventure back then too? 

Where are YOU getting this official definition from that gives you the right to claim others are subverting the true meaning?



> Come on, guys. Either give a term you will accept, or let it be. Trying to silence discourse you don't like by stealing the language is dirty pool.




Others I think can claim this of you?



> The really fraught disagreement is from and among people whose interest clearly is in keeping up the arguments over words. They can be disagreeable from here to eternity with scarcely any effort.
> 
> Meanwhile, those of us trying to accommodate them just get *railroaded* into weariness and disgust.




Where is this happening?

I see people disagreeing with your definition, and then you claiming they are somehow trying to diminish games you enjoy...  I am confused.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> I think you're using a novel and idiosyncratic definition of "railroading" and are therefore creating this confusion, yourself.




The GM makes sure that the players arbitrarily are deprived of a freedom to depart from a set sequence of moves/events/encounters/scenes/whatever.

You think that's "novel and idiosyncratic".

Maybe it is in the special context of ENWorld today.


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## evileeyore (Jun 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Are you saying a railroad is not necessarily a bad thing then?




Correct.  Railroading is a tool.




> From the evidence of this thread, there are clearly multiple definitions of railroad in common use.





And all of them (except the ones that agree with me) are wrong.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> For another, the players' agency over their characters isn't denied in a linear adventure - their reactions to it aren't scripted ahead of time, and they aren't necessarily restricted from finding inventive ways to solve the linear adventure's problems.



Then it is ... get ready ... _not a railroad_.

It's a bit obscure just how it's 'linear', for that matter.

Anyway, "just say 'carob' when you mean 'cocoa' " misses the point by a mile.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:
			
		

> Problem is, we're back to saying "linear scenario" and "railroading" are exactly the same thing. Which they are not.




If they are not the same thing, then substitution of terms is to say what one does not mean. Someone who dislikes 'railroads' must instead profess a distaste for things that are not 'railroads' at all after all.

I do not see how this is an improvement, except in the eyes of those who delight in discord.

Just get someone once to fall for that, and Bingo! -- You can use it again and again to 'prove' that he believes something he has in fact never knowingly professed.

Please, though, explain what a "linear scenario" is. How is it different from a 'railroad'?


----------



## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Please, though, explain what a "linear scenario" is. How is it different from a 'railroad'?




Let's put it this way: in a linear scenario, the PCs move under their own power, while in a railroad, the trains keeps going forward no matter what. Does that illustrate the difference?


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:


> Let's put it this way: in a linear scenario, the PCs move under their own power, while in a railroad, the trains keeps going forward no matter what. Does that illustrate the difference?




Examples?  Relate "moving under their own power" to linear for us if you wouldn't mind.


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## evileeyore (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Please, though, explain what a "linear scenario" is. How is it different from a 'railroad'?





Railroad:  Players have little to no control over the character's destiny, little to no affect over the outcome of the pace of events.


Linear Plotline:  Event will occur regardless of character's action or inaction, however the Player's still control the characters actions and behavoir.  Events may be altered by the character's actions, or not, depending on the competence and resources of the characters.


Simple enough?


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Scribble said:
			
		

> To some, it feels like you're stretching the term "Railroad" to constitute anything you dislike...)




Some is welcome to point out just where I do so, rather than being so vague. If the feeling has any relevance to what I have actually written, then we have something to discuss.

Pure nothing, though, needs no more than nothing to discount it.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> No. Railroading under the original definition is still bad gaming. Railroading under your expansion of the term encompasses both good and bad gaming.




Really?

What "expansion" would that be?

I am afraid I can take credit only for _my own_ words.


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Really?
> 
> What "expansion" would that be?
> 
> I am afraid I can take credit only for _my own_ words.



We're going in circles, here, and I'm not even sure that we're speaking the same language at this point.  I've explained exactly what I was saying in earlier posts, but I don't know that we can have a productive or even entertaining conversation with each other on this topic.

-O


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> We could just go by the majority interpretation, which is that if a player doesn't feel railroaded then they aren't. This has, I believe, been demonstrated by past polls on ENWorld.





Actually, AFAICT, past polls have defined railroading effectively as:  "Railroading means whatever the players say it means."  This allows for no even-sort-of objective definition, and therefore no fruitful discussion.  It also means that if the players call it a railroad, no matter how open the scenario, no matter how accommodating the GM, a railroad it is.

Personally, I consider the term to mean something at least kinda-sorta objective, where people's ability to perceive what is occuring in the game, willingness to apply specific terminology to what is perceived, and/or emotional reaction to said railroading where it exists, all combine to make the issue seem far cloudier (to some) than it is.

IMHO, railroading is "the usurpation of player agency by the GM".  The term "usurpation" does mean that the GM is making decisions which are legitimately the players', in terms of the ruleset used and the social contract at the table.  So long as the players and the GM are in accord, there is no railroading (although the potential might exist); it is when the players expect -- _*and should reasonably expect*_ -- agency that the GM denies them that railroading occurs.

Whenever the players expect that the dice determine the outcome, and the GM fudges, the players expect -- _*and should reasonably expect*_ -- agency that the GM denies them.  That they do not know about it (i.e., so-called "illusionism") is no help here.  The denial of knowledge that the ruleset is not being adhered to is a method of stealthy usurpation.  The goal is that the scenario or encounter plays out within parameters chosen by the GM.  Indeed, systems that allow the player to know about it, and make decisions when to apply it (frex, Action Points) are not railroading, simply because they do not usurp player agency in this way.  

There are times when a situation occurs where agency should not be reasonably expected -- it is possible to paint yourself into a corner.  Nor is it railroading because the GM denies a player wish to suddenly turn his character into a minotaur, fly to the moon, or bring a warforged ninja character into a _Pirates of the Carribean_ setting.

Railroading is not railroading simply because the players say it is.  Nor is everything that some players may wish to claim as railroading actually the genuine article.

Railroading also is not somehow "not railroading" simply because the GM says it is not.

However, because of the "usurpation" requirement, nothing is railroading if both the GM and players say it is not, if both the GM and the players *actually understand the situation* (i.e., they are not being lied to by the GM ala the standard fudging scenario).  The players absolutely have the authority to grant the GM any agency they wish.  That is not usurpation, and it is not railroading.



IMHO, anyway.  YMMV.


RC



-


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> We're going in circles, here, and I'm not even sure that we're speaking the same language at this point.



Well, in common English it is pretty plain that when you tell someone that "your expansion of the term" is thus and so, then you are claiming that there is in the first place something that person has in fact offered as "his expansion".

That is a claim for which you can give evidence, if it is not false. At the very least, you can be specific in your accusation! To expect someone to plead guilty to a list of charges to which he is not privy is unreasonable.

Here, again, is the definition I have in fact offered:



> The GM makes sure that the players arbitrarily are deprived of a freedom to depart from a set sequence of moves/events/encounters/scenes/whatever.



Please, with what part of that do you disagree?

If you have in mind some other statement of mine that you think is at odds, then please bring it forward.


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Some is welcome to point out just where I do so, rather than being so vague. If the feeling has any relevance to what I have actually written, then we have something to discuss.
> 
> Pure nothing, though, needs no more than nothing to discount it.




What I'm saying is if you live in a glass house, don't throw stones.  (Or is it get dressed in the basement?)

You obviously have a strong feeling of what constitutes a railroad. That's fine- I don't think I've ever indicated your feelings aren't valid?

I'm only asking hat you accept that others have a less stringent view of what 
= a railroad.

You don't get to decide their subjective opinion any more then they get to decide yours, and they're not out to trick you into anything...  They just disagree with your opinion.



Ariosto said:


> Right. Now it's _not_ bad gaming to a lot of folks.
> 
> What has changed, though, is not the nature of the phenomenon.
> 
> What has changed is the fashion in "good gaming".






Ariosto said:


> Different people have different tolerances for it.
> 
> Different people who change it to mean "only railroading I don't like" change it to mean different things.
> 
> ...


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> The GM makes sure that the players arbitrarily are deprived of a freedom to depart from a set sequence of moves/events/encounters/scenes/whatever.
> 
> If you have in mind some other statement of mine that you think is at odds, then please bring it forward.




I pretty much agree with that statement although I would remove arbitrarily... it's not really arbitrary. It's willful in my opinion.

What I think seems to be the REAL disagreement though is when this definition applies.


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Jun 30, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> Personally, I consider the term [railroading] to mean something at least kinda-sorta objective




RC, you've argued with me previously that "chair" has no objective meaning. How can you possibly have one for "railroading," even kinda-sorta?


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


> We're going in circles, here, and I'm not even sure that we're speaking the same language at this point. I've explained exactly what I was saying in earlier posts, but I don't know that we can have a productive or even entertaining conversation with each other on this topic.
> 
> -O




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

Players not minding it isn't really any sort of distinction within the adventure itself. I could announce to my players that next session, they WILL be heading to the plaza of naughty delights wherein they will gamble away a third of their gold. Free booze and strippers will be present at the session to add to the atmosphere.

I doubt that I would have any complaints but that that wouldn't make it any less of a railroad.


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## Beginning of the End (Jun 30, 2010)

evileeyore said:


> Railroad:  Players have little to no control over the character's destiny, little to no affect over the outcome of the pace of events.
> 
> Linear Plotline:  Event will occur regardless of character's action or inaction, however the Player's still control the characters actions and behavoir.  Events may be altered by the character's actions, or not, depending on the competence and resources of the characters.
> 
> Simple enough?




I'm still struggling with the distinction you're trying to draw. Lemme take a stab at it and you can tell me if I'm right:

In a *linear design*, the sequence of events is pre-determined: The PCs need to face the evil vizier, then they need to travel to Sunburst Vale, and then they need to deal with the Aithar Ghosts.

A *railroad* is a linear design in which the outcome of each event is also pre-determined: The PCs will face the evil vizier _and the evil vizier will escape no matter what_; then they will travel to Sunburst Vale _and the bad guys will always get there just before they do_; and then they will need to deal with the Aithar Ghosts _by saving the Aithar's spirit totem and forming an alliance with the chieftain's daughter_.

Is that the distinction you're trying to draw?

If so, I can see the utility of drawing that distinction. But, at the same time, I see it as merely being a different of degree, not of kind.

Allow me to quote myself from another thread:



Beginning of the End said:


> Railroading happens when the GM  negates the choice made by a player in order to enforce a pre-conceived  path through the adventure.
> 
> There are two main methods of achieving railroading:
> 
> ...


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## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


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




I'll give it a go.

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

Linear, and also a railroad: When the GM starts the session, he says the PCs have been infected with a virulent disease that only the mystical Watzit can heal, but only within the space of 3 days, or else the PCs all die horrible, painful deaths and can never be raised.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 30, 2010)

Vyvyan Basterd said:


> RC, you've argued with me previously that "chair" has no objective meaning. How can you possibly have one for "railroading," even kinda-sorta?




Terms are always nebulous.  That this is so limits their value, but doesn't make them valueless.

If the term "chair" has no objective meaning, neither is its meaning entirely subjective.  

When one argues that a term is useless unless it can be pinned down, one is going to discover that no term can, in fact, be pinned down.  The usefulness of terms is not, when all is said and done, based upon our ability to agree concretely upon their meaning.  Or, if it is, then all terms are useless.

Hence the "kinda-sorta".

Tell me that a term is too vague to be of use, when I and many others obviously find it to be useful, and I am going to point out that vagueness is endemic in language.

Tell me that a term has no meaning whatsoever, and I am going to point out that terminology has meaning beyond that which is merely subjective.

Philosophies that claim that everything is subjective, or that things can be objectively known, miss the mark, IMHO.  The limits to objective knowledge do not require everything to be therefore completely subjective.  Nor does our subjective impression somehow destroy objective reality.

There is a median ground between "objective" and "subjective".  That median ground where we all live.  IMHO, it is about time that we get used to living there, because it isn't going to change.  

Again, IMHO.  YMMV.



RC


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Scribble said:
			
		

> I'm only asking hat you accept that others have a less stringent view of what
> = a railroad.




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

I've got no trouble at all with _less_ stringent views! If someone wants to call something 'railroading' that I don't, then that's his beeswax.

I've got a little irritation from the loonies going out of their way to tell me I'm _not allowed_ to call something 'railroading' because they happen to like it. 

Let them like it, it's no nevermind to me. I'm not doing a darned thing to interfere with them, and they can call it whatever they want even if it just sounds like phony baloney gibberish to me.

But it's still 'railroading' to me, and to anyone with whom there's likely to be any really practical necessity for knowing what that means.

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


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:


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




So what is linear here apart from a physical channel? By common definition this isn't even an adventure it is merely a treasure stocked single room.



Reynard said:


> Linear, and also a railroad: When the GM starts the session, he says the PCs have been infected with a virulent disease that only the mystical Watzit can heal, but only within the space of 3 days, or else the PCs all die horrible, painful deaths and can never be raised.




Finallly we have a scenario. If the mystical disease were inserted without context or explanation into an ongoing game it would be quite rude as well as being a railroad. 

Any linear non-railroad actual _adventures _out there?


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## Remathilis (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


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




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

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

Addendum: The relic  is always found in the Labyrinth of Ut-At-Ra, the spell is always lost in the vault of Prazzam, the Red Dragon, and the cult's ritual is always being held at the Free City and happens at Midnight.


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## Raven Crowking (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> I could announce to my players that next session, they WILL be heading to the plaza of naughty delights wherein they will gamble away a third of their gold. Free booze and strippers will be present at the session to add to the atmosphere.
> 
> I doubt that I would have any complaints but that that wouldn't make it any less of a railroad.




I agree.

I would say, however, that if you said you would like the players to do so, and they agreed, it would not be a railroad, even if they agreed to allow you to start the next session already at the gates of the plaza.


RC


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> A *railroad* is a linear design in which the outcome of each event is also pre-determined: The PCs will face the evil vizier _and the evil vizier will escape no matter what_; then they will travel to Sunburst Vale _and the bad guys will always get there just before they do_; and then they will need to deal with the Aithar Ghosts _by saving the Aithar's spirit totem and forming an alliance with the chieftain's daughter_.




I think for the most part I would call this a railroad yes.

Which is why I say it's really only a railroad when the DM is willfully removing the ability of the player to change a situation they should be able to, and are actively trying to, change.

In the case of the enemy getting there first:

If the PCs have done nothing to try to prevent them from getting there first, then simply writing "the enemy gets there first" in the adventure wouldn't be a railroad.

It would BECOME a railroad though if the players actively try to prevent that scenario, but the DM simply decides none of what they do has any effect purely to force the enemy getting there first.


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


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




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



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




Well have you?


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


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



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

(spoilered for players playing it.)


Spoiler



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


  And that's it.

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

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

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

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

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

-O


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Remathilis said:


> Evil cultists are using the power of Orcus to blot out the sun. You have 24 hours to save the world.
> 
> You have a deadline, and if you fail to accept the hook, bad things will happen to you. HOWEVER, you have full freedom to figure out a way to do it; find a powerful spell, discover an ancient relic, make a deal with a powerful entity, or just kick cultist ass until there isn't enough of them left to cast the ritual. (In theory, you could join them as well, but that's pretty much a game over scenario too).




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

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


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:
			
		

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




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

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

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

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

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


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

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

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

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

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

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


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


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



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

-O


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


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



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

-O


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

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


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## Beginning of the End (Jun 30, 2010)

Reynard said:


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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here's where we run into the problem with treating "sandbox" as the opposite of "railroad". Because the opposite of a "sandbox" is a campaign in which the players _don't_ have control over scenario selection: The opposite of sandbox is the prototypical campaign in which the GM comes prepared with a specific scenario for the game session and the players are expected to play through that scenario.

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

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

My final two-bits:

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

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

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

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


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## Dungeoneer (Jun 30, 2010)

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


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## ExploderWizard (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:


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




Any adventure that destroys the campaign world if the Pc's don't snap to is a railroad.

When I do run save the world scenarios it is at the end of a campaign and I make no effort to provide the illusion of free will.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Remathilis said:


> Evil cultists are using the power of Orcus to blot out the sun. You have 24 hours to save the world.
> 
> You have a deadline, and if you fail to accept the hook, bad things will happen to you. HOWEVER, you have full freedom to figure out a way to do it; find a powerful spell, discover an ancient relic, make a deal with a powerful entity, or just kick cultist ass until there isn't enough of them left to cast the ritual. (In theory, you could join them as well, but that's pretty much a game over scenario too).
> 
> Addendum: The relic  is always found in the Labyrinth of Ut-At-Ra, the spell is always lost in the vault of Prazzam, the Red Dragon, and the cult's ritual is always being held at the Free City and happens at Midnight.




That's not what I would call a linear scenario. It's a situation.

A linear scenario, to my mind, is something like the 4e "Living Forgotten Realms" scenarios I have seen. "The players _shall_ go through Combat Encounter A and Skill Challenge B to reach either Combat Encounter C1 or Combat Encounter C2 (followed by the other, because the DM will spring it thus or so) ...".


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

Here's a couple of examples of railroading, one good, one bad, that I experienced as a player.

Good:
Penultimate session of a fixed length campaign. My PC is trying to stop the BBEG escaping. He is an evil eunuch wizard riding an amorphous shapeshifting dragon. I think I suspected that he'd have to get away because it was a strongly anime/action movie/genre fiction influenced game so he had to be the opponent in the final encounter. I really gave it everything I had to stop him, I made a lot of hard rolls, as the GM described the monster's crazy tentacles grasping my catgirl PC.

Told you it was anime! Anyway I loved it. My character was amazingly physically capable and I felt she had finally been properly tested by a physical challenge and got to show what she could do. I never felt that I must be able to succeed for the encounter to be fun. I was fine with following the rules of 'story'. I mean, what's one more tier of rules in an rpg? There are already so many.


Bad:
The PCs were defending an underwater city from attack by raiders. Atlantis or Lemuria or something. There was a brief combat. The raiders (who have been raiding this place on and off for a long time prior to this) shot the force field of this hundreds (maybe thousands) of years old city once and their guns went through it like a light sabre thru butter. Boom! No more city. Thousands dead. All our fault. One of the PCs had even been in charge of the force field, not sure what he could've done.

It was a setup, there was no way we could have successfully defended the city. In fact I learned afterward that the GM had been talking about the adventure beforehand to someone else and described it as "The Fall of Atlantis" or somesuch.


Why is the second one bad and the first one good? In the former we still got to be big damn heroes, it was only delayed by one session. We didn't majorly fail. In the latter we had a huge appalling, terrible failure that had all been planned by the GM, for no particularly good reason imo, and, maybe worse, it was completely implausible. How could the city have lasted for so long if its force field went down to one blast from raiders they've been contending with for years?

There was a sense, with the first GM, of essential benevolence, of using the railroading for the purpose of telling an entertaining story. Whereas with the second GM I get the sense he was saying, "Hah! Gotcha! You thought you were heroes? Well you just lost a city, not so heroic now, eh?" Can't be good, that.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Scribble said:
			
		

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




Take your "over and over" and go pester Obryn with it.


----------



## Beginning of the End (Jun 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


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




This is a common failing in these types of discussions: You can't diagnose linear vs. non-linear design by looking at the sequence of events as they played out at the table. Events at the table will always fall into a linear sequence. It's the _potential_ for other outcomes that determines linearity in design.

We're also very bad at thinking about the potential outcomes of choices we didn't make. Check out _How We Know What Isn't So_ by Thomas Gilovich.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

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




Please stop that. What I actually wrote is plain for everyone to see.

I called it NOT a railroad, and explained why.

You are trying my patience with this behavior, Obryn. Once more, and I shall report it to the moderators.

Relax, guys. We'd rather have people report problems (or not), but threatening to do so is definitely not the best tactic. Thanks. ~ PCat


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto- If I've misunderstood what you've been saying then I apologize. 

I don't think you've been quite as clear as you think you've been though.

You might notice when you actively defined what you considered a railroad, I agreed (mostly) with what you said... It's only the part where you indicate others are changing the definition, that I disagreed with.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Of course railroading is not a grammatical antonym of sandbox. Neither do a lot of things bear such relationships to "democracy", or "free enterprise", or "marital fidelity" or what have you, that are nonetheless opposed in pretty basic ways to the ethos of the undertaking.


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## the Jester (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Any adventure that destroys the campaign world if the Pc's don't snap to is a railroad.




Not if you're okay with the world being destroyed.


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Scribble said:
			
		

> It's only the part where you indicate others are changing the definition, that I disagreed with.




I wonder which part that might be -- but not as much as I wonder why you are not haranguing Obryn instead (or, at the very least, as well).


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## Reynard (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> By common definition this isn't even an adventure it is merely a treasure stocked single room.




I take issue with your "common definition" of an adventure. And adventure is a confluence of PCs and some stuff in the setting. A dungeon, even if linear, counts as "Stuff" and there's PCs there, so it's an adventure.


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Please stop that. What I actually wrote is plain for everyone to see.
> 
> I called it NOT a railroad, and explained why.
> 
> You are trying my patience with this behavior, Obryn. Once more, and I shall report it to the moderators.



I am not willfully misinterpreting you.  As I've said, I'm not really sure we're speaking the same language.



ExploderWizard said:


> Any adventure that destroys the campaign world if the Pc's don't snap to is a railroad.
> 
> When I do run save the world scenarios it is at the end of a campaign and I make no effort to provide the illusion of free will.



Well, if you assume that nobody else could do it, instead... 

But let's make it smaller scale - it's a village the PCs started in, but have moved on from.  It will be destroyed if the PCs do nothing.  Railroad?

-O


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## Doug McCrae (Jun 30, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Any adventure that destroys the campaign world if the Pc's don't snap to is a railroad.



I can see where you're coming from there. It's very heavy-handed. The PCs, assuming they are at least halfway sane, have very little freedom in this situation.

I think something can be heavy-handed without necessarily going so far as to be a railroad, but that's splitting hairs. It's the same ballpark.

However I would also have to say that this kind of thing, if it is a railroad, is not necessarily bad railroading. It happens all the time in superhero and superhero-like genres. Genres where the PCs are the good guys, big damn heroes. That's a lot of rpgs.


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> I can see where you're coming from there. It's very heavy-handed. The PCs, assuming they are at least halfway sane, have very little freedom in this situation.
> 
> I think something can be heavy-handed without necessarily going so far as to be a railroad, but that's splitting hairs. It's the same ballpark.



It also brings up an interesting point that I don't specifically remember seeing before.  Usually I've seen "railroading" include a break with versimilitude.  That is, there's something happening that's arbitrary and inconsistent with the game-world.  Such as, for example, preventing characters from capturing or killing a villain when it's realistically within their power.

I don't think cultists bent on world destruction are necessarily out of character for a game world; it's something that could happen if you assume that there are both crazy cultists and magic capable of destroying a world  So yeah, interesting point for discussion.

-O


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## Ariosto (Jun 30, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> I am not willfully misinterpreting you.




Here's a tip: Instead of telling me that I said this or that, _quote it_. Start with some basis in clearly established facts, however accurate your interpretation may turn out to be.

Better yet, stick with telling me what _you_ have to say.

When it comes to what I _think_, I am most assuredly in no need of being informed by you!



			
				Obryn said:
			
		

> As I've said, I'm not really sure we're speaking the same language.



And yet you have confidence enough in the meaning to make such accusations? One can only wonder what the word 'reckless' means to you.


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## Scribble (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> I wonder which part that might be -




Here is one example:



Ariosto said:


> Different people have different tolerances for it.
> 
> Different people who change it to mean "only railroading I don't like" change it to mean different things.
> 
> ...







> - but not as much as I wonder why you are not haranguing Obryn instead (or, at the very least, as well).





I'm not haranguing anyone.

It seemed to me that you felt there was an accepted definition of railroad that people were trying to subvert for some reason.

I dissagree. 

I just feel there are people with a different definition of what railroading is.

They're not trying to subvert anything or confuse anyone. They simply dissagree with you.

That's all.

Did I misunderstand your meaning? If so, as I stated it was not intentional, I just missed your meaning.


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## Obryn (Jun 30, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Here's a tip: Instead of telling me that I said this or that, _quote it_. Start with some basis in clearly established facts, however accurate your interpretation may turn out to be.
> 
> And yet you have confidence enough in the meaning to make such accusations? One can only wonder what the word 'reckless' means to you.



Ariosto, I'm not discussing this any more with you in this thread.  You're interpreting my behavior as malicious, and I don't think further discussion will be either entertaining or productive.

-O


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## TheAuldGrump (Jul 1, 2010)

Hussar said:


> I guess the issue I have is that, unless you happen to be playing in a "Real World" rpg, very, very few "events" occur in a game that aren't at least tangentially related to the PC's.  Sure, you could mention that some city far away just had an earthquake, but, really, do people actually do this?



 Constantly.  Nothing adds more verisimilitude than feeling like the world is going on around you.

And sometimes the PCs decide to find out if the story about the tattered angel blowing a rusting iron trumpet above the gates of Schweren were true or not. (They were, and the city had plague by the time the PCs got there.) The plague would have happened anyway, as had its portent, the harbinger of plague. Just a reminder that things are not all right in the world. (Plague, religious schism and war, witch trials, a huge fire destroying most of a major city, things like that....)

Also, I have run multiple games in the same setting - and once or twice the handouts have included newspapers relating stories of previous adventures of previous groups. (The cry of 'Holy crap! That was _us!_' makes the effort worthwhile.  )

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* 


Doug McCrae said:


> I tried that a bit in my most recent campaign, a superhero game, with little snippets of info about what other superheroes around the world were up to, but it wasn't very successful. The players didn't really give a toss.
> 
> Players are practical, they only care about what directly affects them.




I, on the other hand, have had a great deal of success with it, both with younger players and older ones.



Scribble said:


> I think if you're asking the question "is there anyone out there who actually does X..." the answer will be yes... (even if it's only one dude.)



[Irish Accent]I'm not just a man, I'm an _army!_[/Irish Accent]


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 1, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Of course railroading is not a grammatical antonym of sandbox. Neither do a lot of things bear such relationships to "democracy", or "free enterprise", or "marital fidelity" or what have you, that are nonetheless opposed in pretty basic ways to the ethos of the undertaking.




Well, this raises an interesting point I decided to gloss over in my original message for fear it would interfere with clarity.

Could you have a sandbox campaign (in which players are completely free to choose whatever scenario they want) in which the actual scenarios are heavily railroaded?

I think that's an unlikely possibility. Since, as you note, non-linear scenario design and sandbox campaigns share the commonality of enabling/promoting player choice. And if that's what you like, you're unlikely to promote it in scenario selection and then work against it in scenario design. And, as I noted in my original message, I think we tend to see railroading "creep in" from scenario design down to individual decision points rather than vice versa. It's easy to imagine someone controlling macro-level events while leaving micro-level events undetermined; but it's more difficult to imagine a scneario in which micro-level events are being railroaded while macro-level events aren't.

OTOH, it seems at least plausible that such a campaign _could_ exist. And I would actually go so far as to say that if you translated most video game sandboxes directly into tabletop games, the result would be very light sandboxes with incredibly railroaded scenarios.



Obryn said:


> It also brings up an interesting point that I don't  specifically remember seeing before.  Usually I've seen "railroading"  include a break with versimilitude.




I'm going to dispute the premise. For example, one of the most-cited examples of a railroaded adventure is the "PCs must be captured" sequence form the A series of modules. There's nothing inherently unbelievable about the PCs failing to detect a _wall of force_ trap and then failing their saving throws against the subsequent poison gas attack. It doesn't violate versimilitude, but it doesn't change the railroad-y nature of the encounter.

Similarly illusionism, the practice of "invisible" railroading, would seem to depend on verisimilitude to remain undetected.

Re: The general form of "you must do X or your character will be automatically killed". It's a false choice. We could probably come up with some oddball corner-cases where it's a meaningful choice for a character who has some motivation for seeing the world end, but in practical term it's no different than "you must do X or we'll stop playing the game". It's an in-world version of "this is the scenario I prepped, so we either play this or we play nothing".

Which is fine. Lots of people play the game that way. Heck, I ran a "this is what we're playing" session just last night.

But it's still railroading.


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## evileeyore (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Is that the distinction you're trying to draw?




No.


I'll borrow your plotline:


Linear:  Day 1 the Evil Vizier has his minions kidnap some innocents, Day 2 the minions will transport the victims to the Sunburst Vale, Day 4 the victims will be sacrificed to bring forth and controll the Aithar Ghosts.

What the characterss do after getting a few clues/hooks is totally up to the Players.


Railroad:  "The PCs need to face the evil vizier, then they need to travel to Sunburst Vale, and then they need to deal with the Aithar Ghosts."

The Players do not have the choice to avoid facing the Evil Vizier, they have to go to Sunburst Vale, and must deal with the Aithar Ghosts.  Choice and controll have been removed from the Players, no matter how much they love going to Awesometown, it was still a railroad.



The simplest way to identify a railroad:  Can I go to Craptown?  Or Pissville?  Maybe I want to go to Vomitaria or Goodyburg.  But if my only choices are only Craptown and Awesomevania then it's a railroad.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 1, 2010)

evileeyore said:


> But if my only choices are only Craptown and Awesomevania then it's a railroad.



Cake or death.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNjcuZ-LiSY]YouTube - Eddie izzard-cake or death[/ame]


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

Obryn said:
			
		

> Ariosto, I'm not discussing this any more with you in this thread.




Good. I did not ask you to discuss it with me.

I asked you _to stop doing it_.

*Enough. Stop bickering, both of you. I'll also add that telling other people what to do is a guaranteed way to get both frustrated and moderated. there are better ways to have a discussion here. ~ PCat*


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

eevileeyore said:
			
		

> Linear:  Day 1 the Evil Vizier has his minions kidnap some innocents ...




None of that is inherently here or there in the context where 'linearity' counts. There are eight million stories in the naked city, each one in the event 'linear', and that is _one of_ them.

When the DM decides that this is "the" NPC business to which the players "must" pay attention, then that's a pretty significant step. It establishes the _motive_ for getting pushy. The DM now has a way to get, and so faces the possibility of not getting his way if he just stands back and lets the players play.


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## jdrakeh (Jul 1, 2010)

Obryn said:


> You're interpreting my behavior as malicious, and I don't think further discussion will be either entertaining or productive.




Oh, no, I _assure_ you that it's entertaining!


----------



## ExploderWizard (Jul 1, 2010)

Obryn said:


> I
> Well, if you assume that nobody else could do it, instead...
> 
> But let's make it smaller scale - it's a village the PCs started in, but have moved on from. It will be destroyed if the PCs do nothing. Railroad?
> ...




Nope. If the Pc's fail to act or fail in their attempt there are negative consequences for that but the world keeps turning. Serious consequences for failure are part of losing sometimes. 

Constantly saving the world gets tiresome. In these situations either the fix is in and failure is not possible OR the DM is tired of the campaign and hopes it blows up.


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## ExploderWizard (Jul 1, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> I agree.
> 
> I would say, however, that if you said you would like the players to do so, and they agreed, it would not be a railroad, even if they agreed to allow you to start the next session already at the gates of the plaza.
> 
> ...




This may be true but the agreement and social contract of a particular group cannot be said to apply universally. In other words, if the scenario I described was written into a product ( say, a sequel to Forest Oracle ) then we would need to judge the railroad factor of the product on it's own. I mean, not every DM would provide booze and strippers so not every group would agree to the scenario. 



Obryn said:


> Sure. An example I've pointed to before is P3 - which is intensely linear, but largely site-based. That is...
> 
> (spoilered for players playing it.)
> 
> ...




From what you have described it sounds like a similar setup to _The Ghost Tower of Inverness. _In Ghost Tower the PC's need to aquire 4 parts of a key which are found in small dungeons beneath each corner of the keep. Once they have the key assembled they can open the central chamber and enter the tower, to retrieve the soul gem. 

Replace keys with macguffins and the soul gem with a dragon and there you go. 

You can tackle the first parts in any way you wish, walk away, or whatever. I don't see this as very linear either.


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

The tournament background  for _The Ghost Tower of Inverness_ had the PCs as convicted criminals sent to the tower at the command of the Duke of Urnst.

If that were a sudden imposition in the course of a campaign, it might not be acceptable. Such 'railroading' is not terribly unusual for tournaments, though.

In a tournament, there is no previously ongoing game to be "taken offline", interrupted by putting the players on rails.

A series of discrete episodes makes it very clear. In our last meeting, we played a particular scenario. This time, we play another essentially as a separate game. We are using some of the same characters. However, what happens to them between scenarios is not a matter of play-moves. It is not inside the game. Whatever is necessary to the initial conditions of the new game is simply assumed.


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## Remathilis (Jul 1, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> You can tackle the first parts in any way you wish, walk away, or whatever. I don't see this as very linear either.




Lets say you have a room with 5 exits. Four exits lead to rooms with an encounter and a key. The fifth cannot be opened until all four keys are in place.

You can encounter the rooms 1, 2, 3, 4, or 2, 3, 1, 4, or 4, 3, 2, 1, or 1, 4, 3, 2, or any combination of the four. You cannot encounter 5 until the first four are done, and you can always leave. (Hidden option 6). 

That is not linear, right? 

I'm going to argue it is. Here's why. Lets assume you cannot (via any mundane or magical means) enter room 5 without exploring 1-4. IMHO the order of 1-4 doesn't matter, you have established an linearity to the adventure (first X, then Y, where X is get 4 key, and Y is open 5th door). There is no other recourse except abandoning the mission. That is linear (though not strictly so, since 1-4 can be done in any order). 

It it was a railroad, 1 MUST be done before 2, and the PCs have no choice but to do that. You cannot pick the order of the rooms, nor could you leave if you so chose. 

If it was a sandbox, 1-5 would all be viable choices, but 1-4 would allow the PCs significant advantage in room 5 (such as keys that opened windows that allowed sunlight to flood a vampire's domain). The PCs could enter some, all, or none of the rooms; skip ahead to room 5, or leave and go fight swamp orcs. 

I'm sure no one's game confirms EXACTLY to any of those, but they may serve as a decent example of the different playstyles.


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 1, 2010)

evileeyore said:


> Linear:  Day 1 the Evil Vizier has his minions kidnap some innocents, Day 2 the minions will transport the victims to the Sunburst Vale, Day 4 the victims will be sacrificed to bring forth and controll the Aithar Ghosts.
> 
> What the characterss do after getting a few clues/hooks is totally up to the Players.




Wait... So the PCs would be fully capable of hypothetically freeing the prisoners on Day 1 and stop the Evil Vizier from transporting them to Sunburst Vale? (Perhaps forcing him to kidnap more victims on Day 3, and similarly postponing the rest of his plans unless they catch him first.)

I'm confused. Where, exactly, is the linearity in that design? To my eyes you appear to be describing a non-linear scenario. That's not a plot, it's a situation.

I guess we need to come at this from the opposite angle. What would a non-linear version of this scenario look like for you?


----------



## Obryn (Jul 1, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Nope. If the Pc's fail to act or fail in their attempt there are negative consequences for that but the world keeps turning. Serious consequences for failure are part of losing sometimes.
> 
> Constantly saving the world gets tiresome. In these situations either the fix is in and failure is not possible OR the DM is tired of the campaign and hopes it blows up.



So, essentially, you're okay with railroading the cultists who both possess the power to blow up the world, and the desire for it? 

-O


----------



## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> the flow of an adventure, of the structure (is this what is meant by scene-setting?) or let them 'skip to the end'.



By "scene-setting" I've been meaning the opening and closing of "episodes" or "encounters" in the game - scene-framing and scene-closure.

This is separate from structure, I think, although related to it.

When you talk about "flow" or "structure" I think of A > B > C vs A > C > B (or maybe B is now redundant, if the players have "skipped to the end"). Ron Edwards describes the control of this as "plot authority". If it's all under the GM's control - if nothing the players do can influence the sequence in which these events happen - then I think we have a railroad by most people's understanding.

Of course, what _counts_ as an event, in the relevant sense, is game and group relative - eg for some D&D players shopping at the fair is an event, and for many D&D players overland travel is an event, whereas for most superhero players shopping is not an event, and for many travel may not be either. In my view some of the disagreement in this thread is a result of people not recognising that what counts as an event in the unfolding story of the PCs is not independent of game systems and group preferences.

Scene framing is different - it's getting to specify the starting parameters of the events as they occur (eg is it night or day, is the Duke in a good or bad mood, does he have 5 lvl 2 bodyguards or 10 lvl 8 ones, etc).

In typical D&D play plot authority and scene-setting authority blend together, however, because the action-resolution mechanics are so open-ended - the mechanics are mostly task-resolution, and the players are always allowed to have their PCs attempt a task. And conversely, the official rules have very little to say about how we might move from one episode to another _other than_ by the players describing the tasks that their PCs undertake.

If you want to play a game in which the players have a lot of plot authority but the GM has a lot of scene-framing authority, then you may need to constrain the action-resolution mechanics in some way, either by convention at the table, or by building it into the rules themselves (perhaps by switching to conflict-resolution mechanics). Skill challenges in 4e are the first example I can think of in D&D that create the possibility, at the purely mechanical level, for a separation of plot authority from scene framing - players can, in principle, choose whether to attempt to resolve situation X or Y or Z (and thus exercise plot authority) but the GM gets to establish the initial parameters for each skill challenge, and the skill challenge mechanics themselves tell us when the scene is resolved (see below for more on this).



Doug McCrae said:


> What I'm describing might be a bit closer to narrow-wide-wide, where the start of an adventure is fixed but both the methods and conclusion are more open.



This is a pretty typical way to play D&D - the GM describes the opening situation in the first session of the campaign, and then it expands from there. Is that railroading? I don't think so - it's just "playing D&D".

On the other hand, in Sorcerer it would be outrageous railroading, even cheating, by the GM, because in Sorcerer the _players_ specify the starting situation, by building a so-called "kicker" into their PC description.



Doug McCrae said:


> I have seen railroaded used in a non-pejorative sense fairly often also, just to add to the confusion over the term. So railroaded doesn't necessarily mean bad, though it usually does.
> 
> I'm going to suggest an alternative definition:
> The GM in an rpg has a lot of power. But the GM's presence is normally invisible. He acts thru NPCs, the environment, the world. The players can suspend their disbelief and believe that they are living in a secondary world. Railroading occurs when the GM's normally invisible hand becomes visible.
> ...



Interesting.

I tend to follow the Forge in my terminology, and so prefer to use "railroading" only for the GM using force to deprotagonise the players. But as I've already said, what counts as deprotagonising is game and group relative.

As to the GM's visible hand - after reading Edwards' discussion of ouija board roleplaying, and noticing that that is applicable to some of the sessions I've GMed, I've become a bit more ready for the GM to use force, rather than faff around hoping the action resolution mechanics will get the game to an interesting place. But I don't like to deprotagonise my players. I've therefore become more attracted to games that impose a clearer limit on action resolution mechanics (see 4e's encounter powers, milestones etc), to give the GM a bit more freedom in scene framing, and that at the same time give the players more authority over the plot, by enabling the players to force encounters to a conclusion - most fantasy RPG rules have this feature when it comes to combat (conclusion = foes at 0 hp) but 4e also has this feature in noncombat situations, via skill challenges - after at most 14 primary skill checks we'll all know the outcome one way or another! The GM can't just keep stringing the players along.



Doug McCrae said:


> Here's a couple of examples of railroading, one good, one bad, that I experienced as a player.
> 
> Good:
> Penultimate session of a fixed length campaign.
> ...



I don't want to be too forward in analysing sessions of play that you participated in and I didn't - but in the first, it seems to me that what was at stake was not only beating the bad guy, but succeeding in expressing your PC in a way that made her look heroic rather than useless. (Edwards has interesting things to say about the importance of this - ie of the mechanics allowing for PCs to fail at their overall goal without the player having to envisage his/her PC as a failure.) This latter was achieved. And then you got to beat the bad guy pretty soon after. Overall, very little or no deprotagonisation.

Whereas in the second scenario, you are forced to play out your PCs failures in a way that doesn't at all express your conception of your PC.

I can think of at least two ways to handle the "fall of Atlantis" which are in principle viable, although both will misfire if the players aren't interested in playing a game that deals with the consequences of the fall of Atlantis. One is to simply skip over the battle - the GM explains to the players that the forces are overwheliming in number and firepower, and despite the PCs best efforts as defenders the city falls. The question for the game now becomes - What do you do, having lost the battle? Approached this way the fall of Atlantis is not an encounter at all, it's just a prelude to actual play - so protagonism and deprotagonism are not even on the table.

The second is to play out the battle, but have the interesting aspects of play not being the military stuff - which the PCs can't win - but the social and emotional aspects of the downfall - who do the PCs choose to take with them in the escape pod, for example, and who do they leave to die or be taken prisoner? This would help set up some further context for playing out the consequences of the downfall, and would allow the players to express their PCs in ways that aren't predetermined by the GM.

But obviously neither of these approaches would work for a typical fantasy or science-fantasy game where the whole point of the game, from the players' point of view, is to be heroic defenders of Atlantis. In _that_ sort of game it is obvious railroading for the GM to build in a defeat from the get-go.

This also confirms that railroading is not just about action resolution mechanics but also about scene-setting. In the fall of Atlantis, as you described it, the GM didn't fudge any die rolls in the action resolution - it's just that he framed the scene in such a way that victory for the PCs was impossible (a bit like the notorious 1st level PCs vs Ancient Red Dragon). Another reason I like 4e D&D is that has robust encounter-building guidelines that give me, as GM, a much better handle on how to frame scenes that will preserve player agency during combat rather than steamroll over it with game-mechanically-unbeatable monsters.


----------



## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Here's the transformation I've, personally, seen over the past 5-6 years.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



Your diagnosis seems plausible.

I think part of what has allowed the "redefinition" to take place may be that many players who emphasise sandboxing are mostly familiar with games like D&D, Runequest and Traveller, or at least look to those games as paradigms of RPGing. In most versions of D&D PCs begin play as blank slates, and become defined as characters through the course of play. In this sort of game, too much GM constraint _will_ be experienced as railroading, because the players won't get the opportunities, ingame, to define their characters. (Of course, for those players who don't particularly care for a character focused game, but rather are happy to try and win at the encounters the GM provides while enjoying the story along the way, there won't be a problem - I assume quite a bit of adventure path play is like this.)

In Traveller or RQ, PCs start with randomly determined characteristics that reflect the gameworld rather than player metagaming. Not blank slates, but nevertheless it is only in the course of play that a player gets to put his/her mark on the PC. Again, for players who care about this, they will need to be provided with some choices by the GM. Otherwise it is the GM who is making those marks - again, classic deprotagonising railroading.

But in a game in which the _players_ get to metagame their PC creation and make their mark on their PCs from the start - a lot of indie games like HeroWars or The Burning Wheel, but also traditional games with open-ended point buy like Rolemaster and Hero (assuming the GM doesn't impose "realism" or "gameworld reality" constraints on character building), fit this description - then the player, in building his/her PC, is more-or-less telling the GM what sorts of situations s/he wants to play out. A GM who doesn't provide, and instead just plops the PCs down in the sandbox, is making those character creation choices meaningless - which may be just as deprotagonising as a railroad can be.

One of the weirdest thing to me, then, about the "redefinition" of railroading, is that these sorts of character-driven games- in which it is the GM's job not to build a sandbox in which the PCs wander around, but to cut straight to the chase by introducing situations into the game that speak to the attributes and relationships the player has built into his/her PC - get redescribed as railroads. Whether or not this is condescending, it's just radical misdescription.


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

"Railroading' is a phenomenon, a behavior. To apply it at every single decision point would an extreme. To apply it less often is not the same as not applying it at all.

All I know of Paizo's Adventure Paths is what I read of them at second hand. I'm looking at Wikipedia entries.

Statements that the PCs "do" this, or "must do" that I will take with a grain of salt. A certain amount of presumption is in the nature of the beast, at least as presented to the prospective DM. There tends to be a bit more in event based scenarios, regardless of how much railroading they may entail. The impossibility of covering all possibilities is part of what often allows the site based approach to get more mileage out of so many words.

It's up to the DM to infer, extrapolate, elaborate, modify, and otherwise adapt the material to the course of actual play -- however it is presented.

When I see it related that, "In this chapter, the heroes must find a missing paladin," and that in the next the players are "following their warning from a dying paladin", then I suspect an extra helping of assuming going on.

"The heroes must march on the Cagewrights' headquarters, in the heart of a volcano, before their ritual is complete and a permanent gate to Carceri is opened above Cauldron." If they don't then I'm guessing that the next/final two installments of "Shackled City" would require revision.

However, for the most part, that "path" does not appear (from my limited information) to have chapters dependent on certain outcomes in previous chapters. There might be possible situations, especially in a more wide-open campaign, that would make some chapters extremely implausible. (There is often a big practical difference between _requiring_ a very particular condition and requiring _anything but_ such a peculiarity.)

That's pretty typical of published event-driven scenarios, though, and one reason I don't find them much worth my while as a DM. Something like that could introduce the _temptation_ to 'railroad' events, even though the scenario in itself does not suggest any such thing.

As to the structures of individual chapters, I really have no clue. They could require as careful rigging as an M. Night Shyamalan movie, or be as wide open as a basketball match.


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## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Scribble said:


> it's really only a railroad when the DM is willfully removing the ability of the player to change a situation they should be able to, and are actively trying to, change.



And the "should" and the "trying" here are both game and group relative.



Scribble said:


> In the case of the enemy getting there first:
> 
> If the PCs have done nothing to try to prevent them from getting there first, then simply writing "the enemy gets there first" in the adventure wouldn't be a railroad.
> 
> It would BECOME a railroad though if the players actively try to prevent that scenario, but the DM simply decides none of what they do has any effect purely to force the enemy getting there first.



It's interesting that, in this paragraph, you move from PCs to players. From the mere fact that the PCs are trying to stop the enemy getting there first, we can't tell much about the play epxerience if the GM determines that they will automatically fail.

Suppose the players say "We try to stop the enemy getting there first - we mount our horses, load our biggest wands and crossbow, and head off". If the GM simply says "Despite your best efforts, you fail - the enemy is there first - but make skill checks to see how exhausted you become in the chase" then we have pretty aggressive scene-framing - maybe too agressive for many players! - but the GM hasn't wasted the players time and hasn't strung them along.

Has the GM cheated? This depends on what the rules of the game say about action declaration and action resolution. In most versions of D&D this would be at least a mild cheat, because the action resolution mechanics are all about miles per hour of speed, chances to hit with crossbows and wands, etc, and none of that has been brought into play in resolving the situation. In games which give the GM more liberty in setting DCs, based on considerations not of ingame causation but narrative flow, and which also give the GM more express scene-framing power, this may not be cheating at all. (Robin Laws, in chapter 1 of DMG2, tries to introduce some of these techniques into 4e. I personally don't think he succeeds very well, precisely because he fails to reconcile them with other, inconsistent, aspects of D&D's action resolution mechanics.)

Suppose, however, that instead of doing what I've described above the GM lets the scenario play out, speeds are calculated, maps looked up, dice rolls made to hit, damage rolls made, and so on - but the GM just stipulates (without actually applying the rules) "You don't do enough hits/damage to stop your enemy, and at the last minute he outflies you to arrive their first" then you have something that looks to me much closer to Doug's story of the Fall of Atlantis - the GM is wasting the players time, letting them go through the motions of playing the game when in fact s/he has no intention of actually treating it as part of the gameplay at all. This is illusionism at best (if the players don't know because they choose to be deceived) and railroading - or, if you prefer, cheating - at worst.


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## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Any adventure that destroys the campaign world if the Pc's don't snap to is a railroad.



Why? The players, after all, can choose to have their PCs (i) join with the cultists, or (ii) teleport to another plane that won't be destroyed, or (iii) try to stop the destruction, or (iv) recongise the inevitability of the end of all things and spend the final days trying to comfort their loved ones/resolve any remaining grudges/die with dignity rather than in terror/etc.

If the players have signed on for an open-ended D&D campaign where the basic premise of play is that their PCs will keep getting stronger and stronger until everyone gets sick of it and decides to try something else, _then_ maybe the end-of-the-world scenario is a railroad. But a lot of games aren't like that - including 4e, which has an endgame (lvl 30 and the Destiny Quest) built in.


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## TheAuldGrump (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Wait... So the PCs would be fully capable of hypothetically freeing the prisoners on Day 1 and stop the Evil Vizier from transporting them to Sunburst Vale? (Perhaps forcing him to kidnap more victims on Day 3, and similarly postponing the rest of his plans unless they catch him first.)
> 
> I'm confused. Where, exactly, is the linearity in that design? To my eyes you appear to be describing a non-linear scenario. That's not a plot, it's a situation.
> 
> I guess we need to come at this from the opposite angle. What would a non-linear version of this scenario look like for you?



*Shrug* I wrote a steampunk adventure that begins with a contact of the PCs getting murdered after sending them a message to meet him the next morning - but I also put in what would happen if they decided to keep a watch on his house immediately after getting his message. (Yes, they could, and did, save his life.) 

His death is scripted, but I allowed the option to change the script. Even if he gets saved he may, or may not, be too injured to give them the information that their organization has been infiltrated.

I prefer branching trees to linear stories, it gives both the players and myself more room for change. My starting point when writing an adventure varies - sometimes I do a few timelines for what the villains do if uninterrupted, sometimes I do a flowchart, sometimes both. Both leave the PCs (and villains) a lot of wiggle room. 

The flowchart acts as a decision tree, with a general guide of 'if the players do W then X happens, if the players do Y then Z happens. And of course the team sometimes to go with something off the charts, and these can be my favorite moments.

In the steampunk example the assassin tries to get away, whether he succeeded or failed. Sadly, when he breaks into a not yet finished station
of the Underground he encounters a large number of the goblins from London Below - the PCs _can_ intervene, but both times that I have run the scenario they have instead stopped, and watched as what look like street urchins with glowing eyes slaughtered the assassin, not wanting to risk what might happen when fighting the creatures. (Both times the party split up - so it would have been two or three heroes against a fairly serious number of goblins.) 

Again, while the assassin's death is scripted, it can be prevented - and chop a good length of the adventure off short, since he has much of the information that they would otherwise need to go hunting for.

Important clues can sometimes be gained in multiple ways, and other clues may or may not be needed.

In your example, perhaps the Vizier changes his hunting grounds, or, if he knows who thwarted his attempt, he may kidnap a contact/relative/friend/love interest of the PCs.

The Auld Grump, losing coherence, need sleeeeep!


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## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Reynard said:


> the teleport nerfing and the like isn't inherently bad. it's "kryptonite" -- sometimes you need a plot device to promote a certain kind of play experience.



But promoting play experience A when the players all signed up for play experience B _is_ railroading.



Reynard said:


> Plus, it ultimately goes back to the Player-DM sparring issue. Teleport was put in the game to allow PCs to fast travel, not bypass the adventure. When players started using it to bypass the adventure (probably the second time it was cast) the DM, having done all that prepatory work, said, "No way, Jose" or some Gygaxian equivalent.



The real issue here seems to be that D&D has traditionally included game elements which militate against the play experience that many who sign on to play the game actually want. It's not alone (Rolemaster has worse scry-buff-teleport issues than 3E D&D does, for example).

One way to resolve this problem is to introduce yet _more_ game elements - like kryptonite - that solve the problem. When you read the original AD&D rulebooks you see that this was one of Gygax's preferred techniques - listening at doors getting boring? ear seeker! or, cleric players getting to powerful with their spells? the GM, as god, refuses to grant them!, or, players acting like mass murderers and robbers because this is an easy source of XP? they're violating their alignment and lose levels!, etc etc.

My preference is actually to wind back the problematic game elements. Only put elements into the game that promote, rather than detract from, the desired play experience. Doing it this way also reduces the sense of player vs GM sparring which ingame nerfs tend to lead to.


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## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> IMHO, railroading is "the usurpation of player agency by the GM".  The term "usurpation" does mean that the GM is making decisions which are legitimately the players', in terms of the ruleset used and the social contract at the table.



Fully agreed. And for this reason, it's always a poor way of playing the game. But it's also highly table-relative as to whether or not any given episode of play is a railroad or not.

EDIT: For a certain type of D&D play, player agency is almost entirely focused on making tactical choices during combat. For these sorts of players, even the most linear adventure path would not be a railroad, provided that the GM actually lets the players play out the combats, and provided that, if the AP depends upon a certain NPC surviving, the GM simply makes it clear that there is no combat going on in relation to that NPC.


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:
			
		

> By "scene-setting" I've been meaning ...




If all that works for you, then that's groovy.

Me? I feel like Achilles with a tranquilizer dart in the keester just reading that. It's tortoises all the way down! 

I just play the game, following the instructions, and it works out.

Of course, the game doesn't mention any "scenes" to "frame", or "plot" over which to have "authority". There is space, and there is time, and events have pretty definite dimensions in the game's frame of reference. How much real time we're going to spend on this fight, or that negotiation, or the ride from A to B ... or Anne's half-orc jokes, or what happened to Carl in a game last week ... is something we settle as a group.

The big difference with something such as Rise and Decline of the Third Reich or Settlers of Catan is that there are relatively few options and the level of resolution is set. Everything is stereotyped.

That does not keep it from being possible to want to "hurry along" or "spend more time considering this move", or to spend more or less time looking up and debating rules.

Gaming is always a social engagement, to the extent that other people are involved!


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

> I think part of what has allowed the "redefinition" to take place ...



I'm not following your logic. We're in the context of D&D. There's a definition from players "mostly familiar with games like D&D, Runequest and Traveller". Those are all from the earliest years of FRP: 1974-78.

Then there's a definition from ... what? Sorcerer? Hero Wars? Burning Wheel? And that's supposedly the _older_ one?

Or are you seriously suggesting that if a situation in one of those games gets called 'railroading', then all of a sudden it doesn't mean what it meant for decades? That there's some kind of double standard in which the same behavior would be called 'railroading' by the AD&Der if it were somehow associated with Hero Wars, but not if it were labeled as AD&D?

_That_ I have not seen. People can judge whether they would consider something 'railroading' in their old-style games without needing to know the brand name of the rules set used in the case.


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

So, we're back to the claim that the only legitimate use is as a deprecation by a participant in a particular manifestation of a behavior -- and then, I guess, only with the approval of every other participant.

After all, if the standard is, "I like it, therefore it is not railroading", then where do we draw the line that permits someone to call something railroading?


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

Wouldn't it be simpler to take "YMMV" as read?

If you dig getting repeatedly captured and rescued by deus ex machina in the Dragonboil Chronicle, and consider it "act carpentry" or something, then that's fine.

When someone writes, "and there are another dozen modules with more such 'railroading'," then you know to expect so much more fun. Other people know to avoid the thing and spend their shekels on something "free of plot lines and all that baggage", such as Satanic Mills of the Hell Furnaces and Their Tea Rooms.


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## FireLance (Jul 1, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> After all, if the standard is, "I like it, therefore it is not railroading", then where do we draw the line that permits someone to call something railroading?



Immediately beyond the line where they are permitted to use the word "like", of course.


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## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Ariosto, I'm saying that GM metagaming is not per se railroading.

Games like HeroWars and Sorcerer and Burning Wheel mandate a _lot_ of GM metagaming, mostly in response to the players' character building - for example, if a player spends points to put a certain relationship into his/her PC, the GM is _obliged_ by the rules of the game to bring that relationship into play in some fashion.

Thus, these games are not about the PCs just being plonked down into a campaign world and looking for rumours. They're about the GM setting up situations that speak to the PCs the players have designed, and the players then resolving those situations - or at least attempting to - in ways that express the players' priorities.

It's clearly not sandboxing.

It's not early D&D either. Now not all early D&D was pure sandboxing. There was some metagaming by the GM - eg Gygax put particular rooms or encounters into Castle Greyhawk because he knew they would be appealing to particular players (eg the Fraz-Urb'luu room, and I think maybe also the trapped godlings). But the sort of play I'm talking about is all this all the time, and much more up front rather than with at best a nudge and wink of acknowledgement.

It's not all new, though. At least some Champions play was like this back in the 80s, according to what I've read (eg what does a player do by taking the Hunted property, other than signal to the GM that s/he wants to play a PC who confronts a particular enemy - query whether this should also be worth bonus points for upping your PC's power!). And I know from experience that Rolemaster - another pretty old game - can be played this way.

It's there to an extent at least in 4e as written - eg magic item wishlists - and 4e is easier to play in this fashion than early editions of D&D, in my opinion and experience.

All I'm saying is that _this is not railroading_, even though it is the GM using the GM's power over the game to set up situations within the game in a metagaming (and hence non-sandbox) fashion. It's not railroading because the GM's metagaming is _in response to_ the demands stated by the players at character creation. And it's a type of play that doesn't really make sense for games - like the ones I mentioned - that don't allow players to make such demands at character creation, because they do not allow for players to metagame at that stage.


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## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Wouldn't it be simpler to take "YMMV" as read?



Maybe. But there is a confusion that is common in discussions of railroading - and I'm not sure if you're making it or not - between games in which the GM metagames to override the players' choices, and games in which the GM metagames to give effect to the players' choices.

The first sort of game is (what I describe as) a railroad. In D&D play, I think AD&D 2nd ed is it's heyday, and perhaps Planescape is the heyday of the heyday. These game rules and modules give the GM the authority, more-or-less expressly, to (i) decide who the villain is, (ii) decide who the PCs will cooperate with, (iii) decide, without reference to action resolution mechancis that the players can meaningfully engage with, whether or not any action taken by a PC succeeds, (iv) to decide the consequences, both causally and thematically, of any decision that a PC makes. What do the players actually get to contribute in these adventures? As far as I can see, a bit of colour that is completely confined to the encounter at hand but has no implications for anything to come after. I'm personally puzzled by the apparent popularity of the modules from this era, but there you go. Not everyone is looking for the same thing as me in a roleplaying game  . . .

Adventure Paths seem to me to also have strong hints of railroading, but unlike 2nd ed modules they have plenty of opportunity for players to make meaningful choices in tactically rich combats. So they have features (i), (ii) and parts of (iv) from the previous paragraph, but at least as far as combat is concerned they do give the players action resolution mechanics to take advantage of. For those who like the tactics and don't care so much about overarching story or theme, adventure paths should therefore be pretty playable without complaint.

The second sort of game - in which the GM metagames in order to give effect to the players' choices - is the one in which, if a player specifies in her backstory that her wizard PC betrayed her mentor before setting out on the road to adventure, then the players can know with a pretty high degree of confidence that the cult leader, or the shadowy figure they saw ducking back inside the wizard's guild, is that mentor. Or in which, if a player's backstory is that his PC is a former slave who wants to free the other slaves in the society, then the players can be pretty confident that a major antagonist in the campaign will be a poweful figure who believes in the existence of natural slaves. Or in which, if a player pays build points for the carpentry skill, then adventures _will_ contain barns that need raising or boats that need repairing.

That sort of game is not a sandbox - the GM is choosing to put certain challenges in front of the players and not others - but it is not a railroad. The players' choices aren't being thwarted. Rather, the choices they made at the character build stage are being given effect to. And needless to say, in this sort of game none of the features (i) to (iv) above need be present.


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:


> As to the GM's visible hand - after reading Edwards' discussion of ouija board roleplaying, and noticing that that is applicable to some of the sessions I've GMed, I've become a bit more ready for the GM to use force, rather than faff around hoping the action resolution mechanics will get the game to an interesting place.




I think Edwards is excluding the middle here while playing a bit of a shell game.

(1) Let's postulate that the players are, in fact, capable of identifying what they would like to be doing.

(2) Ergo, when I ask them, "What are your characters doing?" They will respond with an action which they believe will let them do what they want to be doing.

(3) If I, as a GM, don't understand why they're doing action X, then we may fall into "faffing about". This is a dilemma. But it's a dilemma which is incredibly trivial to resolve when the GM says, "Why are you doing that? What are you trying to accomplish?"

Ta-da. Problem solved.

(4) The other potential source of "faffing about" would be insisting on minute simulation of intermediary steps. For example, the next point of interest in the campaign is attending a carnival in six weeks. But the GM insists on running the players through every intermediary day.

But that's just bad GMing. If you're interested in simulationism then the correct solution is zoom out to a more abstract resolution of those intermediary days. Nobody roleplays every single moment of every single day in the exact same amount of detail; so it's a bit of a strawman to suggest that the desire to do so is a problem that can only be resolved by abandoning simulationism.

Tangentially, Edwards had an incredibly poor understanding/appreciation of simulationism in the Threefold Model. In addition, when he formed the GDS he hyper-focused on the small slice of Threefold's dramatism that he personally liked, labeled that small slice Narrativism, and then shoved the rest of dramatism into simulationism. The result is, predictably, a complete mess.

This means that whenever Edwards starts talking about simulationism in one of his essays there's about a 90% chance that what he's saying is complete and utter bollocks. It will look just fine to most Edwardian Narrativists, but to anyone who actually finds Threefold simulationism appealing, it's almost certainly going to look like codswallop.



pemerton said:


> One of the weirdest thing to me, then, about the  "redefinition" of railroading, is that these sorts of character-driven  games- in which it is the GM's job not to build a sandbox in which the  PCs wander around, but to cut straight to the chase by introducing  situations into the game that speak to the attributes and relationships  the player has built into his/her PC - get redescribed as railroads.  Whether or not this is condescending, it's just radical  misdescription.




Providing an adventure hook isn't railroading by anyone's definition. It's the point where the GM insists that the PCs take the adventure hook that railroading occurs.

One of the skills that a sandbox GM needs to develop is the capability to predict what the PCs are likely to do. These predictions aren't made in order to pre-write the script, but they are useful in guiding the GM's prep time. (Since no mortal man can prep every single detail in the game world.)

And there's a pretty simple trick to mastering this skill: Ask the players what they're planning to do and what they're interested in.

In the case of the systems you describe, these questions are formalized into the game itself. And that's incredibly useful.

To sum up: Catering to the players' taste isn't a railroad.


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## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I think Edwards is excluding the middle here while playing a bit of a shell game.
> 
> (1) Let's postulate that the players are, in fact, capable of identifying what they would like to be doing.
> 
> ...



Often. But nevertheless I have had the problem in my own GMing. It comes about when the answer to "why are you doing that" is a bit more metagamey - more about the players' desires than their PCs' desires - and a bit more abstract. An approach to gameplay that is hostile to metagaming (which characterises a lot of RPG stuff from at least the mid-80s on, including D&D stuff both from TSR and in Dragon magzine), and that emphasises the purity of the ingame situation, can make posing this question, let alone answering it, hard - at least in my experience, this is sometimes the case.

In other words, I haven't been tricked by Edwards. At least for me, he's helped diagnose something that I've actually experienced. Would I have remedied it anyway without the diagnosis? - Maybe, but I think the diagnosis helped.



Beginning of the End said:


> The other potential source of "faffing about" would be insisting on minute simulation of intermediary steps. For example, the next point of interest in the campaign is attending a carnival in six weeks. But the GM insists on running the players through every intermediary day.
> 
> But that's just bad GMing. If you're interested in simulationism then the correct solution is zoom out to a more abstract resolution of those intermediary days. Nobody roleplays every single moment of every single day in the exact same amount of detail; so it's a bit of a strawman to suggest that the desire to do so is a problem that can only be resolved by abandoning simulationism.



In my experience this can depend a bit on the game in question. For example, if the game has an ongoing scenario in which time pressures (even mild ones) are in play and/or a detailed gameworld in which the players are highly invested, _and_ has detailed rules for action resolution based on daily resources (eg magical power points, non-instantaneous healing) together with an expectation that all parts of the gameworld, including NPCs, are acting under the constraints of these same action resolution mechanics, then despite all the goodwill in the world from players and GM pressures can arise to go more granular than anyone really wants. The pressures are the result of a shared view that anything less granular is in a certain sense "cheating", not allowing the action resolution mechanics to do there thing and _really_ tell us what is happening in the gameworld.

Rolemaster is a particularly egregious example here, but I think that D&D - especially 1st ed AD&D or 3E - can, at least at certain tables - namely, the purist-for-system ones - fall prey to the same problems.

One way to overcome the problem is obviously to suspend those purist-for-system inclinations and do some handwaving instead. This gives a fair bit of power to the GM, if we assume - as a general rule - that the GM has the ultimate say over whether or not the action resolution mechancis get temporarily suspended and hands get waved instead. Too much of this and railroading or adversarial GMing can threaten. But in a group with a robust shared understanding of the sort of game they want, it should be fine.

Another way to overcome the problem is to build various sorts of limits on the action resolution mechanics into the rules. I'm coming to favour this only because it makes my life as a GM easier - it's not that my group doesn't trust me (we've been playing together for a long time), but solid mechanics save me having to think about things!



Beginning of the End said:


> Providing an adventure hook isn't railroading by anyone's definition. It's the point where the GM insists that the PCs take the adventure hook that railroading occurs.
> 
> One of the skills that a sandbox GM needs to develop is the capability to predict what the PCs are likely to do. These predictions aren't made in order to pre-write the script, but they are useful in guiding the GM's prep time. (Since no mortal man can prep every single detail in the game world.)
> 
> ...



I think it's that formalisation into the game that some people seem to regard as suspect.


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## pemerton (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Tangentially, Edwards had an incredibly poor understanding/appreciation of simulationism in the Threefold Model. In addition, when he formed the GDS he hyper-focused on the small slice of Threefold's dramatism that he personally liked, labeled that small slice Narrativism, and then shoved the rest of dramatism into simulationism. The result is, predictably, a complete mess.
> 
> This means that whenever Edwards starts talking about simulationism in one of his essays there's about a 90% chance that what he's saying is complete and utter bollocks. It will look just fine to most Edwardian Narrativists, but to anyone who actually finds Threefold simulationism appealing, it's almost certainly going to look like codswallop.



What he says about simulationism made sense to me when I was a purist-for-system simulationist (Rolemaster, to be precise). And in my view the way that discussions go on the ICE boards is strongly confirmatory of Edwards' account of purist-for-system play and game design (eg the notion that one might pay build points to cement a piece of equipment, or a social status attained in game, is utterly anathema to the posters on those boards, just as it was to me when I was a hardcore purist-for-system player).

I've experienced what Edwards classifies as High Concept simulationism - enjoyably at convention one-shots (especially Chaosium based games), without much enjoyment at other convention one-shots and in longer-term play - but have never really set out to run a game that way myself, and have no desire to.

I don't think there's anything particularly compelling about running together purist-for-system and high-concept simulationism. At least for me, they're pretty different play experiences. Edwards takes them to be unified by having "exploration" as a priority, but what is being explored is pretty different in each case (system and its implementation of ingame causality in purist-for-system, a genre or thematic package in high concept). In my view this is an attempt to find theoretical unity where there is no pressing need to. I'm not sure that it therefore undermines particular comments about the experience of playing particular games. (My play preferences may be similar enough to Edwards' to mean that we are both victims of the same blindness, but I don't think so - I can't imagine him being interested in 4e, for instance, whereas at present it's my game of choice.)

But I do think there is something compelling about distinguishing high-concept play from Edwardian narrativism - and this is the real point of Edwards' classifactory scheme. Edwards wants to use this distinction to attack Vampire, Lo5R and similar games with which I've only got a pretty passing familiarity. But again, my agreement with Edwards on this point is based on my own play experience - it's all about where the thematic material comes from. If it's pre-packaged - high-concept. If it's injected by the players in the course of play - narrativism. I've played both sorts of games, can spot the difference pretty easily (alignment and personality mechanics can be one pretty clear indicator), and know which I prefer. And I like a classificatory scheme that can capture this contrast, as Edwards' does.

Of course, others who don't object so strongly to on-going high-concept play may not want to draw the line so sharply!


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:


> But I do think there is something compelling about distinguishing high-concept play from Edwardian narrativism - and this is the real point of Edwards' classifactory scheme. Edwards wants to use this distinction to attack Vampire, Lo5R and similar games with which I've only got a pretty passing familiarity.



I got the impression that Ron Edward's nar/sim distinction was informed by some very bad experiences with Vampire. One might almost say the whole reason for the Forge's existence is the belief that White Wolf's 'storytelling system' is very inappropriately named.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:


> In typical D&D play plot authority and scene-setting authority blend together, however, because the action-resolution mechanics are so open-ended - the mechanics are mostly task-resolution, and the players are always allowed to have their PCs attempt a task. And conversely, the official rules have very little to say about how we might move from one episode to another _other than_ by the players describing the tasks that their PCs undertake.



What's the difference between action-resolution and task-resolution?



> I don't want to be too forward in analysing sessions of play that you participated in and I didn't - but in the first, it seems to me that what was at stake was not only beating the bad guy, but succeeding in expressing your PC in a way that made her look heroic rather than useless.
> 
> Whereas in the second scenario, you are forced to play out your PCs failures in a way that doesn't at all express your conception of your PC.



In both scenes, the outcome was predetermined. Each GM used different tools to get to the ending he wanted, but I don't think that was important. What I saw as important in making one good and the other bad was the GM's reasons for doing so. The first GM wanted a satisfying story, the second (I think, I could be wrong, as I never asked him) wanted the PCs to experience failure.

Otoh one could see a major failure by the heroes as part of a satisfying story. The middle section where the protagonist experiences setback. A different player might have found the Fall of Atlantis to be good railroading, leading to some fun angst, soul-searching and the like. Some people love that stuff, and it's very much in the X-Men style (a big influence on the second GM).

In the actual game, I think all the players pretty much just ignored it, or came up with reasons why their PCs wouldn't care that much. Rather implausible, but I think it's pretty clear the players didn't want to deal with the realistic psychological consequences of something like that.

Mind you it's asking a lot for the players to have what I think were the desired responses, when the setup was so, in my view, contrived and unlikely. If anything it would be more reasonable to suspect that the whole thing was an illusion and that a Mysterio-type was behind it. Maybe that would've been passive-aggressive. Or really cool, if the GM had run with it.

Also, Golden Heroes, the system we were using, actually gives you combat penalties for being angst-ridden, and bennies for being really pleased with yourself. Now I come to think of it, that was probably not an insignificant factor.


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## evileeyore (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:


> And the "should" and the "trying" here are both game and group relative.




But railroading is not.  Liking and not liking and the degrees of investment in the rails is group relative



> Has the GM cheated?




Cheating is also a tool.  Neither good nor bad.



> This is illusionism at best (if the players don't know because they choose to be deceived) and railroading - or, if you prefer, cheating - at worst.




On no.  It was railroading the whole way.




Ariosto said:


> None of that is inherently here or there in the context where 'linearity' counts. There are eight million stories in the naked city, each one in the event 'linear', and that is _one of_ them.




So?  You have anything to add or subtract from what I said or are you just admiring your own voice?




> When the DM decides that this is "the" NPC business to which the players "must" pay attention, then that's a pretty significant step. It establishes the _motive_ for getting pushy. The DM now has a way to get, and so faces the possibility of not getting his way if he just stands back and lets the players play.




Correct.  If the DM forces the Players to take the hook that's dangled, it's a railroad.  If not, it isn't.

Simple.




Beginning of the End said:


> Wait... So the PCs would be fully capable of hypothetically freeing the prisoners on Day 1 and stop the Evil Vizier from transporting them to Sunburst Vale? (Perhaps forcing him to kidnap more victims on Day 3, and similarly postponing the rest of his plans unless they catch him first.)




Sure.  I'm all about that.

Indeed I might even have set it up so the characters have the resources to foil all the kidnappings and deal with the Vizier before he can bring forth the Aithar Ghosts.

Or not.  Depends on which genre I'm running, how much my players wanted to invest in the rails, etc.



> I'm confused. Where, exactly, is the linearity in that design? To my eyes you appear to be describing a non-linear scenario. That's not a plot, it's a situation.





You know what, I think your right.  I was tired and I'm probably arguing the Sandbox/Railroad styles and using Non-Linear plot pacing to describe the Sandbox style.

Eh.  It's what I prefer to run so I tend to use "linear" when events fall in a "should occur in this order" and "non-linear" to describe "can occur in whatever order".





Beginning of the End said:


> Providing an adventure hook isn't railroading by anyone's definition. It's the point where the GM insists that the PCs take the adventure hook that railroading occurs.




Yup.




> To sum up: Catering to the players' taste isn't a railroad.




Why not?  If the players prefer to ride the rails, why isn't that a railroad?

I know what your saying, I'm just pointing out, using the tool doesnot automatically make the game bad.  It's the how much the players like being railroaded and the skill to which the DM guides the game.  Too little of either (enjoyment and skill) lead to the term becoming a curse instead of a blessing.



Let's be clear:  I like having some rails.  Too much freedom to faff about has lead to every "sandbox" campaign I've been in falling apart.


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## Reynard (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:


> My preference is actually to wind back the problematic game elements. Only put elements into the game that promote, rather than detract from, the desired play experience. Doing it this way also reduces the sense of player vs GM sparring which ingame nerfs tend to lead to.




Ah, see, that player vs GM sparring is a feature from my perspective. having players think "outside the box" and surprise me is a great pleasure, and the occassional "Gotcha!" on my part can  be a lot of fun for everyone involved.

YMMV, of course.


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## ExploderWizard (Jul 1, 2010)

Obryn said:


> So, essentially, you're okay with railroading the cultists who both possess the power to blow up the world, and the desire for it?
> 
> -O




Who is playing the cultists and decides what their capabilities and desires are? 

The DM most likely. 

OMG! The DM is railroading himself. Yikes!


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## Zhaleskra (Jul 1, 2010)

I wrote an outline of an adventure once. Hell, it's not an adventure it's a situation. Rather than only one right answer, it only has one wrong answer. The PCs are free to do whatever they want, but the consequences for choosing the One Wrong Answer is a TPK.


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## Desdichado (Jul 1, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Sure, that's fine -- if y'all will just publish an ENWorldese lexicon.
> 
> It's a bit of a drag having to learn that an 'adventure' is now basically opposed to what an adventure used to be in D&D, and the myriad other conventions. It's a really big drag that 'sandbox', contrived as a politically correct way to refer to what 'campaign' formerly meant, has been lynched and strangled into uselessness.
> 
> ...



Surely you're posting this in an attempt to be ironic, right?


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## Piratecat (Jul 1, 2010)

*Enough bickering, folks. See my notes on the previous pages and PM me with any questions.*


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## Hussar (Jul 1, 2010)

Interesting stuff.

I'm not sure if the whole "Linear Adventure" without railroading was answered fully or not, so I'll chip in a bit.

Someone brought up Tomb of Horrors:







There's a perfect example. The encounters all pretty much follow one after the next.  Until you solve X encounter, you cannot move on to Y encounter.  Until you find the secret door in the pit in the first room, you don't get to move on, for example.  The few branches you get are almost all dead ends (in more ways than one.  )

Other examples:

The players decide to form a caravan to transport goods from City A to City B.  The route from A to B is pretty much pre-determined, after all, you can't take wagons cross country and there's a ford in the river to contend with as well.  Geography dictates a linear adventure.  A good example of this would be the Sea Wyvern's Wake from the Savage Tide adventure path where the PC's are hired to transport goods from Sasserine to Farshore by ship.  

Mystery style adventures are likely going to be fairly linear.  You need to find clue X that will lead you to Clue Y and so one and so forth.  While the clues might come in a fairly random order, you need to find enough clues to lead you to the next step and, unless you get very lucky, you cannot skip steps.

Note, they don't have to be this way, but, this is a fairly standard mystery form.


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Jul 1, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Free booze and strippers will be present at the session to add to the atmosphere. I doubt that I would have any complaints but that that wouldn't make it any less of a railroad.




Sadly, at least one of my players would complain. 



pemerton said:


> Adventure Paths seem to me to also have strong hints of railroading, but unlike 2nd ed modules they have plenty of opportunity for players to make meaningful choices in tactically rich combats. So they have features (i), (ii) and parts of (iv) from the previous paragraph, but at least as far as combat is concerned they do give the players action resolution mechanics to take advantage of. For those who like the tactics and don't care so much about overarching story or theme, adventure paths should therefore be pretty playable without complaint.




I must disagree here. Adventure Paths offer a framework that a good DM can use to allow the players freedom of choice. The Paths set out a series of events that happen within the game world. How the PCs react to the events is entirely up to them. Many of the good Paizo APs even give advice for players choosing courses of action that weren't anticipated.

[sblock=Example from Rise of the Runelords]We agreed upon the setting of Golarion as a group. We also agree as a group that we would like to play a heroic campign, so all characters are required to be non-evil. To give the players a starting focal point I asked them to explain why their character was attending the rededication festival for the newly completed Sandpoint Temple. Each player had varied reasons why their character was attending.

Goblins attack the festival. The party helps fight the goblins and saves the town from major death and structural damage. From this point the characters are not *required* to do anything. The Path assumes the characters will investigate why the goblins attacked and lays out what various townsfolk know, what was happening while the PCs were fighting, who is behind the attack, and what their motivations are. How the characters approach the events that are occuring is entirely in their hands.

The one option that isn't covered in the scope of the Path is the characters walking away. Maybe they decide they don't want to deal with murderous goblins and leave the next morning for the city of Magnimar. The adventure leaves me unprepared at this point, but by no means does the adventure even hint that in this instance I should railroad the party back on track with the goblin problem. I would just have to wing it at that point until I could better prepare for the PCs new direction and their inaction against the goblins may have reprecussions on the setting if I determine it's unlikely that local NPCs could not handle the problem - which is a likely decision since we agreed upon a heroic campaign, which to me carries more weight than just the choice of alignment.[/sblock]


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## ExploderWizard (Jul 1, 2010)

Hussar said:


> Interesting stuff.
> 
> I'm not sure if the whole "Linear Adventure" without railroading was answered fully or not, so I'll chip in a bit.
> 
> ...




While both are fairly linear, once again only due to geographic channeling. This is a feature of a limited setting rather than a linear scenario. 



Hussar said:


> Mystery style adventures are likely going to be fairly linear. You need to find clue X that will lead you to Clue Y and so one and so forth. While the clues might come in a fairly random order, you need to find enough clues to lead you to the next step and, unless you get very lucky, you cannot skip steps.
> 
> Note, they don't have to be this way, but, this is a fairly standard mystery form.




OK. Now we are talking scenarios. In a mystery situation the players begin with something to solve and some introductory information to start the investigation. This could be linear if the mystery has only a single way to solve it by following a prescribed trail of breadcrumbs-but that would also make it a railroad. If the mystery can be solved in a number of ways through a variety of approaches then it is neither linear nor a railroad. 

"Linear adventure" gets tossed around a lot for something that there are so few great examples of.


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:


> In other words, I haven't been tricked by Edwards. At least for me, he's helped diagnose something that I've actually experienced. Would I have remedied it anyway without the diagnosis? - Maybe, but I think the diagnosis helped.




Good point. I probably couldn't have articulated my own position if it wasn't for my exposure to Threefold theory, and without that self-awareness I might not be so cognizant of the problem myself. And awareness is the first step towards correcting problems.

My point is that, if this is a problem, abandoning simulationism isn't the only solution. There are solutions consistent with simulationism which will resolve the issue.

OTOH, I also want to clarify something: It's only bad GMing because the group doesn't like that sort of thing. If the group is specifically interested in dealing with the day-to-day grind of their characters (and enjoys doing that), then focusing on that day-to-day grind isn't problematic.



Doug McCrae said:


> I got the impression that Ron Edward's  nar/sim distinction was informed by some very bad experiences with  Vampire. One might almost say the whole reason for the Forge's existence  is the belief that White Wolf's 'storytelling system' is very  inappropriately named.




Which I think is a fair assessment. The original World of Darkness rulebooks all claimed a revolution without actually revolutionizing anything. (It's as if I vowed to overthrow the capitalist system by creating an economic system in which people could buy corporate stocks on an open market.) And it was even more problematic to preach storytelling as the One True Way of Gaming when the people preaching it didn't really have a clear understanding of how to achieve Story even in non-systemic ways.

The World of Darkness in the '90s created a generation of dysfunctional railroaders. And when the railroad methodologies of the gaming table got applied by to the ongoing design of the game world itself we ended up with even more dysfunction. I'm not sure the term "metaplot" is ever going to recover, which is unfortunate because properly executed metaplot can be pretty awesome.



Doug McCrae said:


> What's the difference between  action-resolution and task-resolution?




Say that the player wants to achieve goal X.

Task-resolution systems allow the player to propose various actions which they think will help them to achieve X. Each action is resolved independently and the system tells you whether or not each action is successful. What the mechanics don't tell you is whether or not the completion of the action has any impact on achieving goal X.

Conflict-resolution systems, OTOH, tell you whether or not the character succeeds at achieving goal X.

_Wushu_ is a pure conflict-resolution system: You resolve your success or failure in the scene at hand based on the amount of description you provide to the scene. That description may have absolutely nothing to do with the actions the character actually takes to achieve goal X.

4th Edition skill challenges attempt to wed a conflict-resolution system with a task-resolution system: It resolves individual actions and then tallies them up towards determining whether or not a particular task is successful.



evileeyore said:


> > To sum up: Catering to the players'  taste isn't a railroad.
> 
> 
> 
> Why not?  If the players prefer to ride the rails, why isn't that a  railroad?




Okay, first: The context of my original post makes it pretty damn clear that the taste I'm talking about isn't the taste for railroading.

Second, sure. If the PCs like railroads and you're railroading them, that's still railroading. But this isn't railroading:

Players: We'd like to fight some goblins.
GM: Cool. Some goblins show up.
Players: We fight them.
_And they do._

At no point in that sequence of events has the GM negated player choice in order to enforce a predetermined outcome.



> Let's be clear:  I like having some rails.  Too much freedom to faff  about has lead to every "sandbox" campaign I've been in falling apart.



I think that's a false dilemma. The definition of a sandbox isn't "don't provide anything interesting for the players to do". It's certainly possible to design a sandbox like that, but it's just as possible for you to railroad the players into cleaning their socks.


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 1, 2010)

Hussar said:


> There's a perfect example. The encounters all  pretty much follow one after the next.  Until you solve X encounter, you  cannot move on to Y encounter.  Until you find the secret door in the  pit in the first room, you don't get to move on, for example.  The few  branches you get are almost all dead ends (in more ways than one.  )




I was going to bring this up last night but I was pretty tired:

If you're modeling the geographic flow of the Tomb of Horrors, you  cannot ignore the teleport effects.

If you just look at the layout of corridors, the Tomb of Horrors is a  fairly simple branching dungeon. But with the teleport effects there's  actually quite a bit of sophisticated looping going on.

And this analysis assumes that other solutions aren't possible. For example, a couple of friends of mine successfully navigated the tomb by 



Spoiler



casting _locate object_ on their personal items after they were teleported to the demi-lich's tomb and then using _stone shape_ spells to tunnel directly there.



That being said, I agree with your general points.



ExploderWizard said:


> OK. Now we are talking scenarios. In a mystery situation the players begin with something to solve and some introductory information to start the investigation. This could be linear if the mystery has only a single way to solve it by following a prescribed trail of breadcrumbs-but that would also make it a railroad.




I would disagree. Let's assume a simple mystery structure of "solve for the location". In other words, the clues in Location X point to Location Y; the clues in Location Y point to Location Z; and so forth.

Even if we follow the Three Clue Rule and include multiple, diverse clues at Location X pointing to Location Y (allowing the PCs to approach Location X in a number of different ways), I still think it's fair to describe this X to Y to Z structure as being a linear one.


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## BenBrown (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> The World of Darkness in the '90s created a generation of dysfunctional railroaders. And when the railroad methodologies of the gaming table got applied by to the ongoing design of the game world itself we ended up with even more dysfunction. I'm not sure the term "metaplot" is ever going to recover, which is unfortunate because properly executed metaplot can be pretty awesome.




This is, to put it politely, a load of hooey.

The WoD games I played in were pretty much like any others.  In the hands of a GM with control-freak tendencies, they could become a railroad.  In the hands of a GM able to improvise, they were about as railroady as an ocean liner.

The GM advice in WoD books isn't great, but it's certainly no worse than run-of-the-mill.   But then, really great GM advice in game books is rare.

I'm not a real fan of the WoD (I own precisely one book, and it's for Changeling, which was something of a misfit), but claiming that it screwed up an entire generation of gamers is wrong and not conducive to a civil discussion.


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## ExploderWizard (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I would disagree. Let's assume a simple mystery structure of "solve for the location". In other words, the clues in Location X point to Location Y; the clues in Location Y point to Location Z; and so forth.
> 
> Even if we follow the Three Clue Rule and include multiple, diverse clues at Location X pointing to Location Y (allowing the PCs to approach Location X in a number of different ways), I still think it's fair to describe this X to Y to Z structure as being a linear one.




I was looking at the scenario as a whole as opposed to any structured pathway within it. It would appear to be linear (and a railroad) if there was no possible way to get to Y or Z without one (or 100) clues from X. 

If the PC's were really on the ball (or lucky) and were able to get to Y (or even Z) completely on their own then the adventure would not be linear.

If the adventure was structured so that a clue (any clue or multiple) was mandatory before Y was a possibility then it becomes linear (and a railroad).


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 1, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> I was looking at the scenario as a whole as opposed to any structured pathway within it. It would appear to be linear (and a railroad) if there was no possible way to get to Y or Z without one (or 100) clues from X.




What definition of "railroad" are you using here?

I also find it interesting that you can recognize constricted geographic pathways as a natural part of the campaign world and not representative of linear adventure design, but when pathways of constricted information naturally crop up in the campaign world you leap straight to "linear design" and equate that with "railroad".


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:
			
		

> I'm saying that GM metagaming is not per se railroading.




That's not all you appear to be saying. It's not what's at issue!

What does "GM metagaming is not per se railroading" have to do with calling railroading railroading?


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:
			
		

> The second sort of game - in which the GM metagames in order to give effect to the players' choices - is the one in which, if a player specifies in her backstory that her wizard PC betrayed her mentor before setting out on the road to adventure, then the players can know with a pretty high degree of confidence that the cult leader, or the shadowy figure they saw ducking back inside the wizard's guild, is that mentor.




Who is calling that 'railroading'?


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## ExploderWizard (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> What definition of "railroad" are you using here?"




An adventure in which real choices and the consequences resulting from them are not available to the players. 

In the mystery example above requiring the players to jump through the hoops of X and Y even if they want to go straight to Z qualifies.




Beginning of the End said:


> I also find it interesting that you can recognize constricted geographic pathways as a natural part of the campaign world and not representative of linear adventure design, but when pathways of constricted information naturally crop up in the campaign world you leap straight to "linear design" and equate that with "railroad".




Geography is simply the lay of the land. An adventure that takes place in a canyon does not need to be a linear scenario and an adventure set in a city with 1000 streets can easily be set up as one. 

What do you mean by constricted information?  Information is just that. The players may find all there is to find or might not. Either way life (and the adventure) moves on. If this information bottleneck brings the whole scenario to a screeching halt then there was obviously something that the players were _required _to do and thus (being denied a choice) a railroad.


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## BenBrown (Jul 1, 2010)

Here's a shot at a definition.

Railroading occurs when it appears that the characters have, or should have a choice of actions which lead to different results, but in fact have no choice.

This means that a dungeon crawl, no matter how linear, isn't really railroading, since there is no appearance of choice.  It's still usually bad design, but it's not railroading.

The one point of debate is the "magician's choice" issue, which in its most blatant form is railroading, but in others may not be.


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

Edwards said:
			
		

> Can you address Premise this way?




I don't care. Maybe the people playing Scrabble are interested.

Excuse me, but where is AD&D billed as a "Premise game"? I'm just not seeing it. I'm not seeing it in Squad Leader or Mille Bornes, either.

If someone's invited to play Poker, and gets all weird because he'd rather play My Little Pony, then it's not the game that's messed up. Dysfunctional attitude is dysfunctional.


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## rogueattorney (Jul 1, 2010)

I don't think linear dungeon design (as in a straight line of rooms instead of various branches) isn't railroading.  It might be bad or boring dungeon design, but it's not railroading.

Taking Tomb of Horrors as an example, as written, the players can at any time turn around and walk out.  The module actually encourages this at a number of points (the false tomb being the prime example).  Railroading would only come into it if the DM somehow contrived to make it so that the players had no choice but to continue on to the final confrontation with the demi-lich.


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## Umbran (Jul 1, 2010)

BenBrown said:


> Here's a shot at a definition.
> 
> Railroading occurs when it appears that the characters have, or should have a choice of actions which lead to different results, but in fact have no choice.




I don't mind that as the definition of something that many GMs and players might like to avoid.

I just note that it is not an intuitive definition to attach to "railroad".  Your definition specifies that the appearance and the actuality are different.  When was the last time you stepped on a train, and you had the perception that you could steer that turned out to be false?

I personally tend to think that "railroading" is forced linearity, in general.  Whether it matches perceptions, and whether it matches player desires or expectations, are separate questions.  This prevents "railroading" from always being problematic - if it meets player expectations, or does not conflict with their desires, the railroad may not be a bad thing.

The issue isn't whether you are on a railroad or not - the issue is whether you _wanted_ to be on a railroad or not.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 1, 2010)

BenBrown said:


> Railroading occurs when it appears that the characters have, or should have a choice of actions which lead to different results, but in fact have no choice.



That's a reasonable definition. It captures the highly subjective nature of rr with the 'appears', and the concept of the GM presenting a scene, such as a combat or other significant encounter, where it looks like player decisions matter, but they don't really.

Maybe it should say players instead of characters, as I think player freedom is the key issue. A character might have no real choice due to roleplaying considerations, for example a dogmatic paladin, and yet the player might be perfectly happy with that because the player made him that way.

Here's a summary of my thoughts on the meaning of rr-ing (some of them are contradictory)
1. Subjective.
2. Players lose agency to the GM, but not necessarily in a bad way.
3. Player choices that should matter don't.
4. GM abusing his power in order to control the PCs.
5. GM breaking the game rules or the rules of the game-world's 'reality'.
6. Negative connotations.


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## Nifft (Jul 1, 2010)

Umbran said:


> I just note that it is not an intuitive definition to attach to "railroad".  Your definition specifies that the appearance and the actuality are different.  When was the last time you stepped on a train, and you had the perception that you could steer that turned out to be false?



 Analogies are imperfect.

Railroad apartments, for example, have existed for ages, and they don't move on rails. Nor is there a conductor. Nor does one buy tickets for them. Nor does one call their building's lobby a "station".

- - -

However, all that's less than relevant in this case, because in this case, we're not building a term from first principles. We're seeking to nail down a term that has already come into use.

Cheers, -- N


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## Desdichado (Jul 1, 2010)

BenBrown said:


> Here's a shot at a definition.
> 
> Railroading occurs when it appears that the characters have, or should have a choice of actions which lead to different results, but in fact have no choice.
> 
> ...



That's a pretty fair definition.  Contrary to eveileeyore's claims upthread, I firmly believe that railroading is in the eye of the railroadee; i.e., if the railroadee doesn't _feel_ like he's being railroaded, then he's not.  You can only be railroaded if you feel that valid actions are disallowed by DM fiat.

_Ergo_... the way I see the term, no module can actually be a railroad.  Some modules encourage railroading more than others, definitely, but fundamentally a railroad is something that happens _at the table_.  No game inherently has a railroad structure, railroads only happen in the interpersonal interaction between GM and players.


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## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

pemerton said:
			
		

> The pressures are the result of a shared view that anything less granular is in a certain sense "cheating", not allowing the action resolution mechanics to do there thing and _really_ tell us what is happening in the gameworld.




"You see gum on the street, leave it there. It's not free candy."

I don't know where you picked up that view. I don't recall ever playing with folks who held it. I certainly did not find it in any rules-set of my acquaintance.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> Another way to overcome the problem is to build various sorts of limits on the action resolution mechanics into the rules.




Then you can call it "unlimitedism", or "pervy modeling", for that Edwards touch.



> What he says about simulationism made sense to me when I was a purist-for-system simulationist (Rolemaster, to be precise).




What he says seems not to have much to do with simulating, which is typical of his "-isms" and other jargon. His usage is pretty weirdly at odds with how most other people use the terms.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> I don't think there's anything particularly compelling about running together purist-for-system and high-concept simulationism.




What is so compelling about the faux-academic enterprise? Anyhow, it's a safe bet on principle that _you're wrong!!_ about what high-concept-simulationism is. Someone should be along in the next hundred posts to inform you that it's really just scene-framing, or sub-meta-post-structuralism, or maybe a cigar.



			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> One might almost say the whole reason for the Forge's existence is the belief that White Wolf's 'storytelling system' is very inappropriately named.




It's appropriate if you consider GM-fiat railroading a 'system", I guess. It comes as sort of a punchline, though, after all those pages of points allocations and calculations, special procedures and tabulated data and funky dice-rolling schemes.



			
				Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> What's the difference between action-resolution and task-resolution?




Action resolution is a general category that includes task resolution and conflict resolution.

The difference is that for conflict resolution you wear a beret, smoke unfiltered cigarettes, and dig Mose Allison. Plus, if you don't get the result you want, then it was obviously _task_ resolution and you need new, hip dice.


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

evileeyore said:
			
		

> So?  You have anything to add or subtract from what I said or are you just admiring your own voice?



I thought I had added it pretty plainly.

The subtraction is the notion that just giving NPC X a shopping list constitutes a "linear scenario" in the sense under discussion. It does not.

The only way that becomes a linear scenario is with railroading.


----------



## Beginning of the End (Jul 1, 2010)

ExploderWizard said:


> Geography is simply the lay of the land. An adventure that takes place in a canyon does not need to be a linear scenario and an adventure set in a city with 1000 streets can easily be set up as one.
> 
> What do you mean by constricted information?  Information is just that. The players may find all there is to find or might not. Either way life (and the adventure) moves on. If this information bottleneck brings the whole scenario to a screeching halt then there was obviously something that the players were _required _to do and thus (being denied a choice) a railroad.




Imagine a simple 3-room dungeon: Room A has a door to Room B. Room B has a door to Room C.

Imagine a simple 3-location mystery: Location A has a clue to Location B. Location B has a clue to Room C.

Structurally those scenarios are identical*, but you seem to be saying that one is linear and the other isn't. This makes no sense to me. And I'm not really comfortable describing "you have to open the door before you can walk through it" as being a railroad.

(*Caveat: A typical dungeon door is usually obvious and clues are typically difficult to find. Ergo, designing a 1 door = 1 clue equivalence isn't quite accurate. The latter will tend to encourage railroading since the PCs are "expected" to find the clues and the scenario stops working if they don't.

But this distinction is largely irrelevant: If you use the Three Clue Rule you'll generally make the linear mystery robust. And if you make all the doors in the linear dungeon secret doors you'll generally make that scenario fragile.)

EDIT: Okay, I take that back. It's not largely irrelevant. It's the entire point. Fragility is one of the defining qualities of railroaded scenario design. And in order for that fragility to exist, a linear design is almost always a prerequisite. But linearity, by itself, is not inherently fragile. So if we're looking for the distinction between "linear design" and "railroaded design", that fragility would be one of the things I would look at.

The other would be the GM mandating that the PCs have certain goals.



Hobo said:


> That's a pretty fair definition.  Contrary to  eveileeyore's claims upthread, I firmly believe that railroading is in  the eye of the railroadee; i.e., if the railroadee doesn't _feel_  like he's being railroaded, then he's not.  You can only be railroaded  if you feel that valid actions are disallowed by DM fiat.




I would disagree with this on the grounds that "invisible railroading" or "illusionism" still has a very real effect on gameplay, and those effects are very similar to and arise from the same root causes as visible railroading.

IOW, I think there's a useful distinction between visible and invisible railroading. But the two are still clearly joined at the hip.


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

As to Acerak's pretty linear tomb and similar, I reckon it a 'railroad' when -- as was the case in the tournament context -- the only way out is Game Over.

That was perfect for tournament judging! Each team faces the same tests. Just look at how far the bodies fall, and the last one standing is MVP.

As time went on, there were more modules available. As the investment in rules-books went up, there was probably selection for people with more money to spend on modules (which increasingly were regarded rather as 'adventures').

If turning away from the tomb means one can go on playing, choosing one's moves on the "game board" of the world, then it's not a railroad.

If it's always Hobson's choice -- the DM's chosen 'adventure' or nothing -- then there's always a little choo-choo ride, no matter what the rest of the scenario is like.

It's basically replacing the campaign game with the tournament game.


----------



## Desdichado (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I would disagree with this on the grounds that "invisible railroading" or "illusionism" still has a very real effect on gameplay, and those effects are very similar to and arise from the same root causes as visible railroading.



I don't think so.  What effects?  What root causes?  What similarities are you vaguely referring to?

The whole point of your so-called "invisible railroading" is that the players never actually know or feel like they're being railroaded.  There may be some obvious similarities to the GM's POV, but if the players don't ever see it, then there is a _massive_ difference in game play.

Historically, and in all the discussion I've seen online on this for years and years before the sandbox crowd started coopting and attempting to change well-known and well-used RPG jargon, your "invisible railroad" wasn't a railroad at all; those were tips and techniques for GM's who needed a well-prepared game and specifically wanted to _not_ railroad their players, but who were unable (for whatever reason) to roll with the punches very well.


----------



## Umbran (Jul 1, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Analogies are imperfect.




Not looking for perfection.  Looking for intuitive quality.

If you wanted just a term, you could call it "flapdoodling," give a precise definition, and there you go, one perfectly good piece of jargon.

The point of using a term that invokes an analogy is to enhance understanding quickly.  An important (I'd even say *the* important) part of BenBrown's definition is the issue of expectation - the players expect to have an effect, and don't.

Real world railroads are pretty darned obvious.  So, you'll still have to explain the term frequently, as it fails to match a major operative portion of the definition.


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## BenBrown (Jul 1, 2010)

Hobo said:


> I don't think so.  What effects?  What root causes?  What similarities are you vaguely referring to?
> 
> The whole point of your so-called "invisible railroading" is that the players never actually know or feel like they're being railroaded.  There may be some obvious similarities to the GM's POV, but if the players don't ever see it, then there is a _massive_ difference in game play.




Some days I think I'd like to run a campaign a group of vocal "sandbox" types, then after it's all over, see how much of my moving things around behind the scenes they noticed.  My guess?  Very little.



Hobo said:


> Historically, and in all the discussion I've seen online on this for years and years before the sandbox crowd started coopting and attempting to change well-known and well-used RPG jargon, your "invisible railroad" wasn't a railroad at all; those were tips and techniques for GM's who needed a well-prepared game and specifically wanted to _not_ railroad their players, but who were unable (for whatever reason) to roll with the punches very well.




There _wasn't_ a lot of discussion about railroading before the sandbox crowd got involved.   There were gamer horror stories, but I don't recall any cases of the gamer horror stories eliciting the reply "that's not a railroad".


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:
			
		

> I would disagree. Let's assume a simple mystery structure of "solve for the location".




Sure, if you _enforce_ your assumed structure, then it's as linear as you please. Otherwise, players are as free as ever to move where and when and as they choose.

It's this donning of blinders by DMs, this insistence that players _must_ jump through some set of hoops because that -- not what the players choose to do -- is "the" adventure, that is the root of railroading.

Some players like it, _want_ the DM to manipulate them into doing just what the DM wants them to do, don't want to come up with adventures on their own.

Like it or not, that is where it starts.


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jul 1, 2010)

I'm a bit influenced by the literal meaning of the term myself. I tend to see rr more in terms of controlling the movement of the PCs thru the adventure, what pemerton refers to as 'plot authority' in post #231, ie control over whether the players can move to scene B, C, D or maybe just location B, C, D (in D&D, scenes and locations are usually the same, anyway), as opposed to whether the PCs can win in a particular scene.

So I see rr being more about the GM controlling movement and transportation, rather than determining the result of a combat, NPC dialogue or BBEG escape.

Admittedly winning or failing usually has a big influence on the nature of the next scene. If the PCs lose a fight, the next scene might be the PCs in prison, or new characters if it's a TPK.


----------



## Reynard (Jul 1, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Imagine a simple 3-room dungeon: Room A has a door to Room B. Room B has a door to Room C.
> 
> Imagine a simple 3-location mystery: Location A has a clue to Location B. Location B has a clue to Room C.
> 
> Structurally those scenarios are identical*.




I would argue that there's a third kind -- an "event based" scenario in which event A is followed by event B which is followed by event C. Assuming the events are inevitable, it is a linear scenario.

But as I tried to show upthread, linear doesn't necessarily mean railroad. If the PCs still have the freedom to act, which includes the fredom to ignore or otherwise refuse to interact with the linear scenario elements -- be they location or event based, then it isn't a railroad. A train needs more than a track: it needs a conductor (the DM) and an engine (a prescribed pace of plot).


----------



## Nifft (Jul 1, 2010)

Umbran said:


> Not looking for perfection.  Looking for intuitive quality.
> 
> If you wanted just a term, you could call it "flapdoodling," give a precise definition, and there you go, one perfectly good piece of jargon.



 Again, great points if we were making new stuff up out of whole cloth, but 100% useless when we're refining a term that already exists.



Umbran said:


> The point of using a term that invokes an analogy is to enhance understanding quickly.  An important (I'd even say *the* important) part of BenBrown's definition is the issue of expectation - the players expect to have an effect, and don't.
> 
> Real world railroads are pretty darned obvious.  So, you'll still have to explain the term frequently, as it fails to match a major operative portion of the definition.



 In fact, the term "railroading" has been used to successfully communicate for quite a few years now, and pretty much everyone here knows that already, so you're going to need to be *really* persuasive to convince anyone otherwise. I suspect the DC is going to be ... impractical for you to hit.

If you're curious as to why it's been successful as a tool of communication, then let me remind you that analogies are not used exclusively to indicate similarities. They are also used to highlight differences.

- - -

For example, let's consider the commonplace analogy "like beating a dead horse", as applied to an unproductive argument. Are we saying that the argument under discussion has four legs? Are we saying that the argument under discussion was a mammal? Are we saying that the argument under discussion is sometimes eaten by French people?

No, that would be idiotic.

What we are doing is contrasting "beating a dead horse" with the more usual "beating a horse" (which may induce movement). There is no chance of provoking movement from a dead horse.

Cheers, -- N


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

Ben Brown said:
			
		

> This means that a dungeon crawl, no matter how linear, isn't really railroading, since there is no appearance of choice. It's still usually bad design, but it's not railroading.




Your sample base for that "usually" is pretty bizarre from my perspective of over 30 years of "dungeon crawling".

In the first place, an old-style expedition is not 'railroading' because _it's not enforced by the DM_. If it's 'linear', then that is not 'designed' by the DM. The players plan it. They go where they want to go, whether along this route or that through the underworld, or into the wilderness, or across town.

The decision is theirs, not the DM's. That's what makes it an adventure, in the sense of "a venture, project or undertaking, especially one that requires boldness or effort".

Not only is there "the appearance of" choice, but there are a myriad of choices, an incalculable number of possible paths through the environment, of histories for _the players_ to make.

The only way I can see it as 'bad design" is if what you are really after is in fact just what you decry.


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

Hobo said:
			
		

> I firmly believe that railroading is in the eye of the railroadee




Fine. When someone calls something a railroad, just take it as stipulated that "if I were the railroadee" is to be understood.

Problem? Problem solved.

If it actually comes down to practical relevance in a game, the people in my circle are not likely to raise such quibbles.

"Unless there's an actual victim frothing and convulsing right here and now, we can't very well call this strychnine or that cyanide _poison_, can we?"

Yes, we can. We can say the same of alcohol, too, regardless of how much however many people like to consume it.

Is chocolate poisonous to dogs? Well, we are not speaking in terms of dogs.


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 1, 2010)

Hobo said:
			
		

> _Ergo_... the way I see the term, no module can actually be a railroad. Some modules encourage railroading more than others, definitely, but fundamentally a railroad is something that happens _at the table_.  No game inherently has a railroad structure, railroads only happen in the interpersonal interaction between GM and players.




Great.

"Railroad" now means nothing except "Bleh!" or "Yuck!" or ... I think we already have words enough to say "I don't like it".

Can't use it any more to refer to the Guaranteed TPK at the start of _Vecna Lives!_, without ... what?

I mean, people "misusing" the word is supposedly some sort of big, bad problem.

How can it be misused if it just means that So-and-So, as just a personal foible, finds something "icky"?

If other people happen to find the same things the same way, then we're right back where we started. Which is other people pointing fingers and accusing them of having "changed the definition" in order to be mean to all the wonderful new linear meta-jiggery thingamabobs.


----------



## Desdichado (Jul 1, 2010)

Ariosto, you're being silly.

I've heard railroad used in that sense for _years._  I'm not making up some 
"new, confusing" definitions.  Your condescending insinuations that I (and obryn, or whomever) are impediments to conversation at every turn are both false and insulting.

Why don't you cut it out.


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

BenBrown said:
			
		

> There _wasn't_ a lot of discussion about railroading before the sandbox crowd got involved.




There wasn't a freaking _game_ "before the sandbox crowd got involved". The "sandbox crowd" _invented_ it. They had no need to talk about 'sandbox', though, because that's just a newfangled euphemism for what they called a 'campaign'.


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## Nifft (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> There wasn't a freaking _game_ "before the sandbox crowd got involved". The "sandbox crowd" _invented_ it. They had no need to talk about 'sandbox', though, because that's just a newfangled euphemism for what they called a 'campaign'.



 You think "sandbox" = "tactical skirmish wargame"?

I'm getting confused here.


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

Hobo said:
			
		

> Ariosto, you're being silly.




Also, observing a pretty plain truth.

In the end, the Humpty Dumpty rule cannot satisfy those who are not satisfied with the present state of affairs.

It simply does not alter that state of affairs in any substantive way.

"It just means what I mean" -- and Bob and Cindy happen to mean the same thing, so we understand each other.

But the O-man don't like it. (You know he really hates it!)

D.D.S.S., bah


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

Nifft said:
			
		

> You think "sandbox" = "tactical skirmish wargame"?
> 
> I'm getting confused here.




You were already confused. D&D campaign does not = "tactical skirmish wargame".*** At least, it did not originally. Are you suggesting that's the a la mode meaning, or what?

That the meaning had changed so much made it seem meet to come up with a word to distinguish the old one. That may be the case with 'railroad' as well, for one meaning or another.

*** Even if an undertaking is largely made up of "skirmish wargames", without any grand-tactical component, it is the _strategic_ elements that define the higher-level structure called a _campaign_. So, for instance, one might not only keep personnel records for regiments in _The Sword and The Flame_ but produce the table-top engagements via map maneuvers.


----------



## Nifft (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> You were already confused. D&D campaign does not = "tactical skirmish wargame". At least, it did not originally. Are you suggesting that's the a la mode meaning, or what?



 Nope, I'm reminding you that -- to your apparent surprise -- D&D came out of tactical wargaming, specifically small-unit tactical stuff.

You said this:


Ariosto said:


> There wasn't a freaking _game_ "before the sandbox crowd got involved". The "sandbox crowd" _invented_ it.



 ... so apparently you think the "sandbox crowd" == the inventors of D&D.

History tells us that the inventors of D&D were the tactical wargame crowd.

Now do you see why what you're saying is rather confusing?

Cheers, -- N


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

Nifft said:
			
		

> History tells us that the inventors of D&D were the tactical wargame crowd.
> 
> Now do you see why what you're saying is rather confusing?




Because you didn't read the bloody rulebooks??

Because you just arbitrarily decide to _ignore_ everything except "tactical skirmish wargames"??

I don't know, man. You tell me which it is.


----------



## Nifft (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Because you didn't read the bloody rulebooks??
> 
> Because you just arbitrarily decide to _ignore_ everything except "tactical skirmish wargames"??
> 
> I don't know, man. You tell me which it is.



 Well, I've been playing D&D since Red Box. I have read up on Chainmail (which is the direct ancestor of D&D, and is 100% tactical wargame).

I think that you don't know what you're talking about, and I'm certain that being insulting isn't helping your argument.

Ciao, -- N


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

> Well, I've been playing D&D since Red Box.



Well, I've been playing since Brown Box.


> I have read up on Chainmail (which is the direct ancestor of D&D, and is 100% tactical wargame).



I have _played_ Chainmail.
I have played Swords & Spells, too, FWIW.
Neither of those by itself is _The First Fantasy Campaign_ or _Dungeons & Dragons_.


> I think that you don't know what you're talking about, and I'm certain that being insulting isn't helping your argument.



I know very well what I am talking about. I most certainly know "what I think" better than do you! I have offered no insult.


----------



## Nifft (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> I know very well what I am talking about.



 You keep equating things that are very different.



Ariosto said:


> I have offered no insult.



 You're now claiming that this is your idea of civil discourse: 







Ariosto said:


> Because you didn't read the bloody rulebooks??



 ... do you consider that to be a civil question because *you* didn't read the "bloody rulebooks"?

Oh well, -- N


----------



## BenBrown (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Your sample base for that "usually" is pretty bizarre from my perspective of over 30 years of "dungeon crawling".
> 
> In the first place, an old-style expedition is not 'railroading' because _it's not enforced by the DM_. If it's 'linear', then that is not 'designed' by the DM. The players plan it. They go where they want to go, whether along this route or that through the underworld, or into the wilderness, or across town.
> 
> ...




I believe I may not have been clear.

Let me state a few things as clearly as I can.

1) A "dungeon crawl", that is to say an incident within a campaign (I'm trying not to use the word "adventure" which gives a pretty good idea of the semantic level to which this sort of argument has sunk), which takes place at a particular mapped out site, with finite limits in which are creatures, traps, and treasure, is not a railroad, no matter if the "dungeon" consists of a single corridor in which each creature/trap MUST be encountered before moving on to the next one.  It's entirely linear.  The only options are to go forward or go back, but it is not a railroad.

2) When I speak of "the sandbox crowd" I speak of the people who in the last few years have posited an ideal "sandbox" campaign, which, as far as I can tell from their discussions, is a site-based adventure on a world-spanning site.  Everything has a place, and nothing is altered for dramatic reasons EVER.  The people who posit this claim, rather vocally, that this is the way things were originally done.  There is some merit to this claim in a general sense, however, as the original campaigns were made up as they went, along with the original rules, I can't imagine that the ideal pre-set sandbox is anything more than an ideal.

I like drama.  I like having characters that are strongly tied to the world they're in, and not just wandering through it.  I like having an overarching plot in which the player characters accomplish great deeds.  I like having dramatic scenes.  In my last big campaign, I wanted to have a scene where a political ally of theirs was assassinated, because there was a neat dramatic situation that the players would have fun resolving when this was set off.  I had several candidates for the assassin.  The players took out my prime candidate early, so I switched to a backup.  This was actually a dozen or more sessions before the assassination scene, so it wasn't like I told them there was an assassination, let them stop the assassin, then had another one show up.   I like that sort of drama.  I like putting the player characters in situations beyond their control and watching them get control of them.

I do not like being told that this is wrong.

If that's railroading, then fine.  Choo choo.


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

Nifft, "lecturing" people who were _actually there_ in the "history" that came before you, with such an attitude on top of such ignorance, can use up patience quickly. When you take it to such absurd lengths that it is hard to believe you can even fool yourself that you have read the books, and you ask me to speculate as to why you are confused ...

Really, you've got to tell me which it is.

Because anyone who _does_ read the books can verify that it's not the books that are missing the discussion of the D&D campaign. It's definitely you.


----------



## Nifft (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Nifft, "lecturing" people who were _actually there_ in the "history" that came before you, with such an attitude on top of such ignorance, can use up patience quickly. When you take it to such absurd lengths that it is hard to believe you can even fool yourself that you have read the books, and you ask me to speculate as to why you are confused ...
> 
> Really, you've got to tell me which it is.
> 
> Because anyone who _does_ read the books can verify that it's not the books that are missing the discussion of the D&D campaign. It's definitely you.



 Well, see, I was asking you to clarify, and you answered with insulting bluster.

You were there? Great. *I was there too*. Your experience is not the only valid one, and the fact is that yours disagrees with the experiences of quite a few other people -- I think you're the only one in the thread who thinks D&D grew out of "sandboxing".

Nobody asked you to speculate on my mental state. I have asked if you understand why what you've said doesn't make sense, given the context.

Cheers, -- N


----------



## TheAuldGrump (Jul 2, 2010)

Folks, it is turning a trifle toxic around here, can we please limit the personal attacks? (Says the person who threatened to hit Hussar with a Nerf hammer.)

When writing an adventure I tend to view any overly linear plot as a railroad, and avoid it. The result can be plots that seem much more complex than they actually are, or than they need to be. But there are ways to chivvy the PCs back on plot without telling them what their characters are doing. But I prefer confusion to dragging the PCs from encounter to encounter. (I prefer to use a clue club rather than a lasso.) And, honestly, it doesn't take long for the players to adjust to my style of play, aside from the plaintive and occasional 'where's the dungeon?' 

As a player, I tend to feel I am being railroaded when the GM either offers no choices or over rules any choices that the players may make. And I have quit games over this. (My favorite being the time _everyone_ quit the game, without conferring with each other... I guess we all planned on quietly not bothering to show up - I was the only one who bothered officially quitting the campaign, and giving reasons. A year later the GM had the same thing happen again, with a completely new group... I guess he missed the clue club hitting him on the head.)

I don't want to run a game that I wouldn't enjoy playing.

The Auld Grump


----------



## Obryn (Jul 2, 2010)

TheAuldGrump said:


> Folks, it is turning a trifle toxic around here



Turn*ing*?

-O


----------



## TheAuldGrump (Jul 2, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Turn*ing*?
> 
> -O



What can I say? I am fond of understatement and irony. 

The Auld Grump, come think, I threatened to hit Hussar with a Nerf hammer when I was _agreeing_ with him.... Now I am going to need to pull out the really _big_ Nerf hammer.


----------



## Umbran (Jul 2, 2010)

We'll keep this simple - *Ariosto* and *Nifft*, both of you have been around here a good long time, and should know better than to get personal like that.  Stop it, please, if you wish to continue participating.


----------



## pemerton (Jul 2, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> One might almost say the whole reason for the Forge's existence is the belief that White Wolf's 'storytelling system' is very inappropriately named.



Pithy!



Doug McCrae said:


> What's the difference between action-resolution and task-resolution?





Ariosto said:


> Action resolution is a general category that includes task resolution and conflict resolution.
> 
> The difference is that for conflict resolution you wear a beret, smoke unfiltered cigarettes, and dig Mose Allison. Plus, if you don't get the result you want, then it was obviously _task_ resolution and you need new, hip dice.



More or less what Ariosto said, minus the snark - D&D combat has always been more conflict resolution than task resolution, for example.

Task resolution: think 3E skills - the player specifies the task to be attempted, the GM sets the DC, the dice are rolled, the player knows whether or not the PC succeeded at the task. But it is still up to the GM (not necessarily on a whim, but based on his/her overall role in refereeing the game) to determine if success at the task gets the PC where the player whats him/her to be. So the dice determine whether or not I succeeded at opening the safe, but not whether or not I succeeded at finding the incriminating documents that are my real concern.

Perhaps the most prominent example of poor D&D task resolution mechancis is 3E Diplomacy checks - no matter how well you roll how often, there is no mechanical, non-GM mediated conduit to persuading someone of something. (AD&D hide in shadows can have similar problems - what most players really want is a Sneak skill, where if they roll well then it follows that they've won the contest and their enemies can't see them.) Contrasts very markedly with 3E combat.

Conflict resolution: think 4e skill challenges or D&D combat - rolling the dice doesn't tell us so much whether or not a particular task was successful, but whether or not a particular goal has been achieved (enemies dead, in the case of combat).

The line between the two can blur. RQ and RM use task resolution in combat, for example - unlike D&D they have complex rules for defence, armour, injuries, death spirals etc - but because of their damage rules it is quite possible for enough task successes to produce goal successes (ie enemies dead). A pretty common line one hears is that an RPG needs complex rules for combat but not social - my reading of this is that what is really going on is that complex rules for consequences of tasks can turn task resolution into conflict resolution, and most RPGers want the combat rules of their game to resolve conflicts (ie tell them whether or not the PCs beat the enemies). Another example, in 3E, of a complex subsystem to turn task resolution into conflict resolution is the crafting rules.

In a game where most skills are physical, and the use of them is to move around a tactical space (eg 4e stealth, acro, athletics) then task resolution can amount to conflict resolution without much complexity. But as soon as the tactical space disappears, the limits of task resolution become clear eg How many swimming checks do I need before I get across the English Channel? One? One per mile? One per 6 second round? In a conflict resolution system this issue of check-mongering (whether by GM's, which generally makes it harder for players to win, or by players with good bonuses in a system that grants XP per check) is done away with - frame the scene in terms of the conflict at stake, and then resolve it. If the conflict is a short combat, fine. If the conflict is a swim across the Channel, fine. Roll the dice and see who wins - PC or opponent. This also illustrates the downside of typical conflict resolution mechanics - it can make things very abstract, tends to do away with tactics, and leaves the burden on the players and GM to introduce a lot of the flavour (see eg AD&D combat, notorious among critics as nothing but a series of dice rolls, or 4e skill challenges, notorious among critics for the same reason).

Another feature of confict resolution mechanics is that, if there is no conflict, then the mechanics don't come into play ("say yes or roll the dice!"). If everyone at the table is happy with it, it happens. This can facilitate framing scenes and closing them. And it is unlike classic RM-style task resolution, where even simple manoeuvres in uncontested situations (like a high level mage casting a light spell) require dice rolls to see what happens (and thus create a risk of spell failure). These sorts of mechanics create pressure in favour of "continuous play" without much overt scene-setting. This can in turn create somewhat grindy play - too much detail for the sake of it - or else lead to the GM suspending the action resolution mechanics for some purposes - the White Wolf "Golden Rule", which I agree with Edwards (based on experience of D&D GMs applying it) is an invitation to railroading.


----------



## pemerton (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> Who is calling that 'railroading'?



Upthread, discussing the cursed sword scenario, ExploderWizard suggested that if the GM puts an element into the gameworld not because it emerges out of the inherent logic of the gameworld, but because of a metagame desire to cater to or accomodate a player's PC, then this is railroading.

EDIT: also, when you say this:


Ariosto said:


> It's basically replacing the campaign game with the tournament game.



you tend to imply that there are only two options - what you call "campaign" gaming, which most others here are calling sandboxing, and what you call "tournament" gaming, which you've already identified as a railroad. Which of these categories do you think that the sort of play I was talking about - GM metagaming play to give effect to the choices made by players in building content-heavy PCs - fits into? My view is that it doesn't fit into either, but that however you want to label it, and whether or not you enjoy it, it is pretty clearly not railroading.



Ariosto said:


> "You see gum on the street, leave it there. It's not free candy."
> 
> I don't know where you picked up that view. I don't recall ever playing with folks who held it. I certainly did not find it in any rules-set of my acquaintance.



I wouldn't expect you to know where my experiences come from. That's part of what makes them mine and not yours! I was just reporting them. And based on my experience with other RPGers both in the flesh and on the internet (I'm thinking especially of the ICE boards, but also threads that I've seen here and at RPGnet), I'm not the only one who feels that strong purist-for-system sensibilities mitigate against handwaving the action resolution mechanics in order to advance the game past the boring bits.

Even if the rulebook says "ignore the boring bits", it may pragmatically contradict this by giving heaps of rules for the boring bits (eg costs for food, starvation tables, etc, or haggling tables, or whatever). Also, part of the appeal of purist-for-system play is that the mechanics produce interesting bits in a somewhat unpredictable emergent fashion - so too much handwaving in order to skip over the boring bits runs the risk of losing the benefits of that playstyle. And handwaving, like the White Wolf Golden Rule, can be an invitation to railroading (or illusionism, but I'm not a big fan of that either).

So for me, the solution to the boring bits hasn't been to stick to purist-for-system gaming and add in some handwaving. It's been to look for a game that keeps a lot of the mechanical crunch that I enjoyed in my "pervy" purist-for-system days, but which supports a more thematic and bang-centred approach to play from the ground up. At the moment, that game happens to be 4e. Burning Wheel would probably also do the job.


----------



## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

BenBrown said:
			
		

> I speak of the people who in the last few years have posited an ideal "sandbox" campaign




All of those I have seen have been opponents of 'sandbox' campaigns. People who like old-style campaigns, I have found, tend to have their hands full with actual-factual practicalities!

The way the "positing an ideal sandbox" routine goes, in my experience, is that it's used as the first premise in a tortured logic supposed somehow to "prove" something or other about a whole lot of fantasy campaigns from 1970 to the present.

Obviously (well, apparently not to some), those of us who have been participants in such play are likely to believe our own eyes rather than such rhetoric. We are not the intended audience, methinks!



			
				BenBrown said:
			
		

> nothing is altered for dramatic reasons EVER




The rules did not stipulate a category of "dramatic reasons" to move pieces, switch cards, change the way dice landed, and so on, in _Rail Baron_ or _The Russian Campaign_, or other games.

Neither did they in miniatures rules sets, such as Chainmail.

Neither did they in D&D.

So, I reckon that how many people do this or that is likely to depend on just what you mean by "dramatic reasons".



> I like having an overarching plot in which the player characters accomplish great deeds.



A great cosmic conflict (Law vs. Chaos being the default) has been recognized from early days as a background element that adds gravitas, in part by reminding even the most godlike of player-characters that there are greater powers. A high-level character might accomplish some deed of significance in that larger scheme, without ever fully comprehending it.

If what you mean is the plot of a story, in which the characters are like an author's story-characters, their survival and success guaranteed (or doomed) for the sake of the tale, then that is something else. It could be another game, but the wags who call old D&D "bad design" would be right if the intent had indeed been to produce such a convenience for the armchair novelist/stage director.



> I do not like being told that this is wrong.



In the context of old D&D, it's no more wrong than trying to do the same thing with any other device not designed for it. It tends to be awkward -- although even an awkward tool in the hands of a master can deliver quite impressive results! Some people, strange as it may seem, are going to play the game pretty much according to the description and instructions, rather than expecting it to be something else.

It's not that something else can't be splendid, just that it is, well, something else. People wanting something else might have chosen something else in the first place. There are other tools that are probably, off the shelf, better suited to the job.

A more recent game called D&D may be just that, in fact!

The "story-telling" game, by whatever name, has been over recent decades a burgeoning field of new developments going beyond, e.g., Castle Ravenloft.

I doubt that many people see any _moral_ aspect to the choice of one or the other pastime.



> If that's railroading, then fine.  Choo choo.



Right on!


----------



## pemerton (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> What is so compelling about the faux-academic enterprise?



Because I'm a humanities academic trying to understand his RPGing experiences? Doesn't seem that surprising to me!


----------



## pemerton (Jul 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I would disagree with this on the grounds that "invisible railroading" or "illusionism" still has a very real effect on gameplay, and those effects are very similar to and arise from the same root causes as visible railroading.
> 
> IOW, I think there's a useful distinction between visible and invisible railroading. But the two are still clearly joined at the hip.



Agreed.


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## BenBrown (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> The rules did not stipulate a category of "dramatic reasons" to move pieces, switch cards, change the way dice landed, and so on, in _Rail Baron_ or _The Russian Campaign_, or other games.
> 
> Neither did they in miniatures rules sets, such as Chainmail.
> 
> Neither did they in D&D.




original D&D didn't have rules for a lot of stuff.

AD&D1 had rules for stuff that nobody ever used because the rules sucked.

What was written in the rulebooks was not the whole of D&D, and still is not.

By the way, the current "game called D&D" as you so cleverly backhand it, is no more conducive to my style of play than AD&D or original D&D.  Probably less so, to be honest.


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## pemerton (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> The rules did not stipulate a category of "dramatic reasons" to move pieces, switch cards, change the way dice landed, and so on, in _Rail Baron_ or _The Russian Campaign_, or other games.
> 
> Neither did they in miniatures rules sets, such as Chainmail.
> 
> Neither did they in D&D.



Gygax included some rooms in Castle Greyhawk, such as the Fraz-Urb'luu room or (I think) the trapped godlings room, _not_ because the rules of the game (eg random tables) dictated that they be there, _nor_ because pre-existing ingame logic dictated that they be there, _but_ because he knew that particular players would enjoy taking their PCs through these rooms.

To me, this looks like a pretty clear case of "altering things" for dramatic reasons. But to me it doesn't look remotely like railroading. I'm not sure if you think of this as a standard part of "campaign play" or not - but I think there is a pretty big difference between a campaign where most of the ingame elements are placed using the rules for terrain and dungeon generation plus the application of ingame logic, and a campaign where most of the ingame elements are placed because they will appeal to particular players of particular PCs.

Oversimplifying a little, but not too much: The former is the sort of game that rulebooks like Modlvay/Cook Basic/Expert, AD&D 1st ed DMG, the Wilderness Survival Guide, and 1980s White Dwarf and Dragon taught me to play (I then discovered that Rolemaster delivered this sort of game in a way that better suited my tastes). The latter is the sort of game that rulebooks like 4e DMG and DMG2, HeroQuest, The Dying Earth and Burning Wheel have taught me to play. In my view, these are pretty different rulebooks teaching pretty different games.

Now you seem to be a big stickler for "reading the rulebooks". Did I read the rulebooks right or wrong? Did Gygax, in placing the Fraz-Urb'luu room, follow the rules that he wrote? If the whole campaign is nothing but Fraz-Urb'luu rooms, but I'm still using the AD&D character build and action resolution mechanics, am I doing it wrong?


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## pemerton (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> If turning away from the tomb means one can go on playing, choosing one's moves on the "game board" of the world, then it's not a railroad.
> 
> If it's always Hobson's choice -- the DM's chosen 'adventure' or nothing -- then there's always a little choo-choo ride, no matter what the rest of the scenario is like.





Ariosto said:


> Sure, if you _enforce_ your assumed structure, then it's as linear as you please. Otherwise, players are as free as ever to move where and when and as they choose.
> 
> It's this donning of blinders by DMs, this insistence that players _must_ jump through some set of hoops because that -- not what the players choose to do -- is "the" adventure, that is the root of railroading.
> 
> Some players like it, _want_ the DM to manipulate them into doing just what the DM wants them to do, don't want to come up with adventures on their own.



When you talk about it being the GM's adventure or nothing - or about the GM insisting, or manipulating - I'm not sure what you mean. 

If the GM rings up the players the day before the schedule session and says, "I've just bought this new module for level 12 characters - turn up tomorrow with a level 12 PC and I'll run you through it" this is a case of teh GM insisting on running his adventure, but I don't see the railroad. Railroading is an approach to play, and this isn't an instance of play. It's an instance of preparing to play.

On the other hand, imagine that in the course of a session the PCs learn about a secret cult that is the power behind the throne, and the players decide that it would be really cool for their PCs to join that cult. If the GM says "No, you can't", or kills off the PCs (literally or through level drains and similar penalties) via alignment/blue bolts from the sky mechanics, _then_ I can see a railroad. This is the GM interfering with the players' agency in the course of play.

You also talk about the _players _being able to keep on playing, and to move where and when and as they choose. I'm having trouble following this too - of course the players are free (unless the GM kidnaps them!) but in most games the PCs aren't free to do whatever they please (eg they can't jump to the moon unless they're wearing pretty special boots of springing). If you mean that the players are free to specify actions for their PCs - well, that can be consistent with railroading, if the GM contrives things so that all actions have the same result - but the absence can be consistent with no railroading - eg if a monster casts a dominate spell then the GM gets to specify the PC's actions, but this doesn't mean the game has become a railroad.

I think I prefer the accounts of railroading given by Doug and BegginingOfTheEnd upthread - they fit pretty well with my own experience and intuitions.

EDIT: The main reason for stressing the player vs PC thing is that an account of railroading which equates player freedom with PC scope of action in the gameworld is already making assumptions about playstyle, and the relationship between mechanics and playstyle, that aren't even true of all D&D games, let alone all RPGs.


----------



## Beginning of the End (Jul 2, 2010)

Hobo said:


> > I would disagree with this on the grounds that "invisible railroading"  or "illusionism" still has a very real effect on gameplay, and those  effects are very similar to and arise from the same root causes as  visible railroading.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




You might try reading the thread. It's not that hard and it's a lot easier than me re-posting the same crap every three pages because you can't be bothered.

But to sum up: The net result of railroading is that player impact on the scenario is dampened or eliminated. It's true, as I said in the post you're responding to, that there is a difference between invisible and visible railroading. But I think that difference, while significant, is still minor compared to the much larger commonalities created by limiting the potential playspace.

If you want an analogy, consider _The Truman Story_: Things clearly changed when Truman figured out that his entire life was being staged. (When the invisible railroad became a visible railroad.) But that doesn't mean that his life wasn't being meaningfully impacted before the railroad-analogy became visible. (His ambitions to travel the world had been quashed and his entire personal life was warped.)

There's also the commonality in how railroaded scenarios are designed. The guys practicing invisible railroading are better at keeping the servants out of sight (so to speak), but they're using the same basic techniques. Robust non-linear scenarios, on the other hand, are fundamentally different in their design.



Hobo said:


> Ariosto, you're being silly.
> 
> I've heard railroad used in that sense for _years._  I'm not making  up some
> "new, confusing" definitions.  Your condescending insinuations that I  (and obryn, or whomever) are impediments to conversation at every turn  are both false and insulting.




Ariosto does seem to be taking this all a little personally.

But it's also true that people have been using the term "railroad" to refer to published adventures for decades now. The use of the term as such is just as prevalent as the use of the term to describe behavior at the actual gaming table. (Do a search on "Dragonlance" and "railroad" if you don't believe me.)

So I think artificially trying to slice out that half of the term's meaning is counter-productive. I'm more interested in understanding why so many people are using the term that way than I am in claiming that they're all using it wrong.



Nifft said:


> ... so apparently you think the "sandbox crowd" ==  the inventors of D&D.
> 
> History tells us that the inventors of D&D were the tactical wargame  crowd.
> 
> Now do you see why what you're saying is rather confusing?




Oh, c'mon. I'm trying to figure out which of your unexamined premises is more ridiculous:

(1) That Arneson and Gygax couldn't play tactical wargames and ALSO run sandbox campaigns.

(2) That Arneson and Gygax played D&D as if it were a tactical wargame and nothing more.

Or the deep implication that people couldn't run sandbox campaigns until the term "sandbox" was invented. Which is highly questionable since the term was specifically adopted in the tabletop RPG industry to describe a type of campaign that had explicitly existed since the 1970's. (i.e., the Wilderlands)

I think we could all work a little harder to read the other guy's post with a view of understanding their viewpoint rather than distorting their words through a prism of our own prejudices or a misguided faith in their bad intentions.


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## pemerton (Jul 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> But it's also true that people have been using the term "railroad" to refer to published adventures for decades now. The use of the term as such is just as prevalent as the use of the term to describe behavior at the actual gaming table.



This is true of me - I describe some adventures (eg many of the Planescape ones that I've encountered) as railroads. I also, in this very thread, have been one of those who argue that railroading is mostly about the actual play at the table!

How do I reconcile this apparent contradiction? By making much the same move the Forge-ites do when they get caught using GNS to label games rather than actual play. That is, in calling a module a railroad, what I _think_ I'm doing is saying that I can't see any way of playing this module, as written, without the GM railroading pretty strongly by (i) handwaving over action resolution mechanics at what, for most players, are at least presenting themselves as crucial moments of play, and/or (ii) dictating to the players what their loyalties and thematic concerns shall be.

Modules that _don't_ do that include some classic site-based ones - a lot of people think of KotB or other D&D classics, but my personal favourites are some of the Shadow World and other ICE modules. These give the GM stats, NPCs, a spread of motivations and so - in short, a situation - into which the players then step. More recent modules that I'm familiar with, and that are neither site-based nor railroading, are the Penumbra modules for 3E. That is, I can easily see how they can be run more-or-less as written without the GM having to force the game in either of ways (i) or (ii) identified above.


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## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

Nifft said:
			
		

> I think you're the only one in the thread who thinks D&D grew out of "sandboxing".




I think that the contents of the booklets are plain for anyone to see. I _know_ what I, and  everyone I know of, produced by following those instructions. I know what I read in FFC, and TSR, and TD, and elsewhere.

Draw up dungeon levels beneath a castle (ruined or otherwise). Map the area surrounding that, and the village, town or city closest to the dungeons. What lies beyond is the Wilderness. It actually includes castles and towns as well as wild land.

The players start with a blank hex map, and via exploration discover the lay of the land. In this way they can select sites on which to build their strongholds. The construction of a castle, tower or whatever can take place at any time the player/character wishes (assuming sufficient funds).

"Each player who builds should draw an extra set of plans and specifics for the referee. Surprises, intakings, sieges and so on can take place."

Right there, I think, is one reason the 'sandbox' term seemed suitable. There's a lot of fun to be had in building castles and knocking them down! The same holds in general for projects that make a mark on the world.

Specialists and men at arms can be found and hired. An alchemist, or 100 longbowmen or light horsemen?

Chainmail is quite suitable for medieval battles, using scale factors similar to those in WRG 'Ancients' rules of the time (e.g., a 1:20 model:man ratio). D&D rounds out the set of battle and siege rules with aerial and naval combat. There are a number of fine later rules sets for battles as well.

The referee will make available information, misinformation and legends, usually obtainable by making the rounds of taverns and inns and spreading gold.

Building a stronghold in the wilderness (as opposed to a town) frees a player from personal upkeep costs. It also allows clearing the countryside of monsters and so establishing a barony. The baron gets tax revenue, and can also profit from investments in the territory.


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## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

pemerton said:
			
		

> To me, this looks like a pretty clear case of "altering things" for dramatic reasons.




It was not for nothing that I wrote:



			
				me said:
			
		

> I reckon that how many people do this or that is likely to depend on just what you mean by "dramatic reasons".







			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> So the dice determine whether or not I succeeded at opening the safe, but not whether or not I succeeded at finding the incriminating documents that are my real concern.




That's a classic! The "quantum documents" soon raise all sorts of questions. For instance, why am I rolling to find the documents? Isn't that a task? Don't I have a 'real concern' beyond that?

If the documents are in the safe, then one can get the documents by opening the safe. The basic idea is that one might like to make a _role-playing game_ of finding out where the documents are, you see.

Dice are tools. That is all (but it's quite a bit, if one cares to know what odds one is actually producing).



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> When you talk about it being the GM's adventure or nothing - or about the GM insisting, or manipulating - I'm not sure what you mean.




It's pretty simple. When my friend K. is DM, he's got an 'adventure' planned, and we can either go through it or play something other than D&D. If we say, "No, we're not going to go get this thing for that guy" -- or whatever the 'plot' may be -- and go off to try something else, then he's just going to close up shop. He's not prepared for that.

(We have not put him to the test, mind you! That's just the word, and sometimes we'll end a D&D session earlier than expected because he has run out of material.)

I think we might be able to retrain him to let us pick from open options at the end of one session, so he could prepare to run _our_ adventure in the next. The trouble is that he's one of those "epic story teller" types (for all that he's the only one who can keep the story straight).

That's cool. I would prefer more of a real game, but it's just an entertaining pastime, part of the social gathering. We'll do different things other times.

What does it mean not to insist? Let go, let the players jump through the hoops or not, and there's no place to which to build rails. It's just a game, you're the ref, the players can play.

What's manipulation? It's a whole host of techniques, with 'railroading' being an extreme. It's how you get players back on track.

There's no need if there are no tracks. There's no need for tracks without a destination.

Of course, some players want the destination, the tracks, the whole enchilada.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> You also talk about the _players _being able to keep on playing, and to move where and when and as they choose.




Yes. Who else but "the _players_" (as you italicized it) should be playing? What I wrote was:


> If turning away from the tomb means one can go on playing, choosing one's moves on the "game board" of the world, then it's not a railroad.



In the tournament, you've got no other option -- at least if you want to stay in the tournament. The Tomb is all there is. Leaving the scenario basically means leaving the game. (I suppose a DM might have been allowed to run something else had that actually happened with a whole table of players).

That's just SOP for tournaments. They're about presenting teams with the same battery of tests.

In an old-style campaign, you would not have been forced to quest for the tomb in the first place. If you nonetheless came, saw, and said, "Forget this!", then you could head off whichever way you pleased. That's what those hex-maps were for.

On the other hand, there might be "commuter express line" occasions in a campaign. Then again, what one guy might spring at will, another DM would instead attach to a specific location or item.

The idea, always, is to present a fun game. Different people have different ideas of what makes a fun game for them.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 2, 2010)

In hopes of adding to the confusion, here's another possible meaning.

Instead of a threshold, railroad is seen as one direction on a continuum, the other direction being referred to as sandbox. Railroad means less player freedom, sandbox means more. There is, probably, no such thing as a perfect railroad or a perfect sandbox in actual play. Neither railroading nor sandboxing is inherently good or bad, they are just tools to be used by individual gaming groups, and adjusted to taste.

I accept that this goes against the most popular definition of railroad, which is that of a threshold, going beyond that threshold being a bad thing.

This definition fits with the idea of railroading not being inherently bad but rather a sometimes useful 'push' from the GM to move the player characters in a direction that makes for a more enjoyable game. Also known as Awesome Town. It is, I think, close to the sense in which evileeyore uses the term.

As has been said, this actually fits the literal meaning of the analogy very well, better than the negative sense in fact. There is nothing bad about railway lines, they are a useful tool for getting where you want to go.


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jul 2, 2010)

pemerton said:


> This is true of me - I describe some adventures (eg many of the Planescape ones that I've encountered) as railroads. I also, in this very thread, have been one of those who argue that railroading is mostly about the actual play at the table!



Yeah, if one is looking for a term with which to criticise, or even just describe, the scene in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade where the PCs are chasing the carriage, I can't think of a better, more succinct, term than railroad. The PCs can actually catch the carriage, and the sorcerer NPC driving it, but the BBEG, the titular vampire who is sleeping inside when the encounter starts, must escape. (He does so by turning into a bat or mist.)

The first Dragonlance module, DL1 Dragons of Despair, has a map where the PCs can, at first, go anywhere, but as the adventure goes on, draconian armies advance pushing the PCs towards Xak Tsaroth, the dungeon where the scenario culminates. Railroad? I dunno, but it's definitely a major application of pressure on the PCs.



> Event 7: The Dragonarmies March. Just after
> dusk on the fifth game night, the dragonarmies
> begin to march and conquer all the lands
> to the south; every 4 hours thereafter, one
> ...





PS Thanks for the explanation of task and conflict resolution - very helpful.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> It's pretty simple. When my friend K. is DM, he's got an 'adventure' planned, and we can either go through it or play something other than D&D. If we say, "No, we're not going to go get this thing for that guy" -- or whatever the 'plot' may be -- and go off to try something else, then he's just going to close up shop. He's not prepared for that.



Is that what you would call a railroad, when the GM only has one adventure prepared?


----------



## Doug McCrae (Jul 2, 2010)

I remember a thread a while back, Hobo was heavily involved in it, where the OP had a very extreme definition of railroad. Though it really seemed to be coming more from his group than from him.

Afaics, this guy's group would call it a railroad if the players were given a stronger reason to do A than B. So for example if they have two separate job offers to clear out orc lairs, and one pays 1000gp and the other 900gp, but they are otherwise pretty similar, then that's a railroad because the PCs would obviously take the 1000gp job. Or if they are offered two similar jobs but one is eight day's journey away and the other only three days then that is also a railroad cause they would have a stronger reason to take the nearer one.

Sounds crazy, I know, but these people are out there, using words wrong. Or, at least, damn weirdly.


----------



## Desdichado (Jul 2, 2010)

BenBrown said:


> Some days I think I'd like to run a campaign a group of vocal "sandbox" types, then after it's all over, see how much of my moving things around behind the scenes they noticed.  My guess?  Very little.



I'd probably agree.  I think from the front side of the screen, a lot of these styles are mostly indistinguishable when utilized by a halfway decent GM.

Then again, maybe the most vocal sandboxy types are going to be adamant on ignoring any plot hooks and going around inventing their own.  I almost get that impression from... well, from a lot of discussion that I've been involved with lately.


			
				BenBrown said:
			
		

> There _wasn't_ a lot of discussion about railroading before the sandbox crowd got involved.   There were gamer horror stories, but I don't recall any cases of the gamer horror stories eliciting the reply "that's not a railroad".



I heard it discussed plenty, although I agree that it was less in the theoretical framework and more in the "this really sucks, so don't do it, and here's some ways to help you not do it."  Or, as you say, horror stories passed from gamer to gamer as cautionary tales.


----------



## Desdichado (Jul 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> You might try reading the thread. It's not that hard and it's a lot easier than me re-posting the same crap every three pages because you can't be bothered.



Good heavens.  Really?


			
				Beginning of the End said:
			
		

> But to sum up: The net result of railroading is that player impact on the scenario is dampened or eliminated. It's true, as I said in the post you're responding to, that there is a difference between invisible and visible railroading. But I think that difference, while significant, is still minor compared to the much larger commonalities created by limiting the potential playspace.



That's not very specific.

And I still venture to say that from the front side of the screen, the difference is usually indistinguishable, unless the GM is remarkably poor.


			
				Beginning of the End said:
			
		

> There's also the commonality in how railroaded scenarios are designed. The guys practicing invisible railroading are better at keeping the servants out of sight (so to speak), but they're using the same basic techniques. Robust non-linear scenarios, on the other hand, are fundamentally different in their design.



I think your attempt to coin the new terms invisible and visible railroad will probably fail.  What you call "invisible railroad" is just what most gamers I've ever talked to call "the game."


			
				Beginning of the End said:
			
		

> But it's also true that people have been using the term "railroad" to refer to published adventures for decades now. The use of the term as such is just as prevalent as the use of the term to describe behavior at the actual gaming table. (Do a search on "Dragonlance" and "railroad" if you don't believe me.)



No, you're right.  And as I said already (oh, hey, you mean now _I'm_ repeating myself over and over again too?) certain modules certainly are more conducive to a railroad experience.  Such modules might be called railroads because they're written as such, or they're so frequently played as such that that's the experience many players had with them, if they were run as written.

But I'm trying to further refine the discussion a little bit.  They call such modules railroads because either 1) their experience with them was a railroad, or 2) as written, they anticipate that the experience with them would be a railroad.  Fundamentally, it's the experience at the table that is really the railroad, and by calling the module itself a railroad, it's semantic transferrance.

And I don't say that in an attempt to coopt or change the term; again, just to approach it from a different angle and refine the discussion a bit.


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## Desdichado (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> It's pretty simple. When my friend K. is DM, he's got an 'adventure' planned, and we can either go through it or play something other than D&D. If we say, "No, we're not going to go get this thing for that guy" -- or whatever the 'plot' may be -- and go off to try something else, then he's just going to close up shop. He's not prepared for that.
> 
> (We have not put him to the test, mind you! That's just the word, and sometimes we'll end a D&D session earlier than expected because he has run out of material.)
> 
> ...



Well, that's a Melkor waiting to happen right there!


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## Desdichado (Jul 2, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> In hopes of adding to the confusion, here's another possible meaning.
> 
> Instead of a threshold, railroad is seen as one direction on a continuum, the other direction being referred to as sandbox. Railroad means less player freedom, sandbox means more. There is, probably, no such thing as a perfect railroad or a perfect sandbox in actual play. Neither railroading nor sandboxing is inherently good or bad, they are just tools to be used by individual gaming groups, and adjusted to taste.



I tried to frame the discussion in those terms in the thread you mention that I was involved with.  

Didn't fly very well.  Personally, I still feel that that's a perfectly reasonable definition, and one that is frequently used.  However, clearly, fine semantic differences in how one uses the word railroad clearly permeate the community here, since we all seem to be arguing frequently about what _exactly_ makes a railroad and what doesn't.


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## Raven Crowking (Jul 2, 2010)

Hobo said:


> And I still venture to say that from the front side of the screen, the difference is usually indistinguishable, unless the GM is remarkably poor.





I have a wide variety of experience with both styles, both as a player and as a GM, with many players and GMs over several decades and in several locations (due to moving, particularly when I was in the US Army).  

My experience is that the difference is usually *very easily* distinguishable, regardless of who is GMing, and almost irregardless of who the players are, from the front of the screen.

Certainly, not each incidence of "dramatic change" is noted, but the cumulative effect is almost always noted, regardless of GM skill.  In fact, my experience suggests that a more skilled GM doesn't hold the illusion longer, because the really skilled GMs I have been lucky enough to know aren't in the business of trying to trick the players about the nature of the game they are playing.  That hardly fosters GM trust.

Some players want a more linear, plotted, game.  Some want a more free, player-driven game.  Good GMs are pretty open about what they are presenting, so that players know what they are signing up for.  That way, you can pick the GM that suits what style of game you want.  

IME, it is most often the poorer GMs who lie to the players about the nature of the game that they are presenting, and who then imagine that the players are somehow unable to parse out their experiences and realize how the game is rigged.  And I have met quite a few of these types of GM.  

Some of them are successful at running a game because they have other qualities that make them good GMs.  Some of them, I understand, keep players because they are the "only game in town".  Some of them have rotating groups of players because no one wants to stick around after they've figured it out.  All of them, IMHO and IME, would be better GMs if they were a bit more honest about what they were doing.

IMHO, and IME.  YMMV.


RC


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## the Jester (Jul 2, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> My experience is that the difference is usually *very easily* distinguishable, regardless of who is GMing, and almost irregardless of who the players are, from the front of the screen.




Yeah, eventually you notice the scenery moving outside and realize you're just along for the ride.

IME the players have to actively work to delude themselves to miss this when they are on an adventure sufficiently to the railroady side of the spectrum.


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> [snip]...Right there, I think, is one reason the 'sandbox' term seemed suitable. There's a lot of fun to be had in building castles and knocking them down!...[snip]




If this is a widely accepted view of what makes a game a sandbox then I see two ways this has caused friction and negativity in the community. 

First is the insistence that this is the One True Campaign by the rules. That other styles of Campaigns are wrong as they don't follow The Rules set out by the creators of the game. As pointed out by another poster, the original rules were not all inclusive and therefore other emergent styles of Campaign play are no more wrong than developing rules for how a character can jump a gorge. Those who insist or imply that the type of Campaign you describe is the One True Way are the first cause of friction and ill feelings related to this subject among those in our greater gaming community.

Second is any insistence or inference that Railroading is the antonym of Sandboxing. That any campaign that doesn't follow the style you describe above is automatically a Railroad. Even if you try to pry of the negative connotations related with the word, it still puts forth an implicaton that one style of campaign is *objectively* better than another.

My take on things is a bit different. The style of campaign you describe above is more "Explore and Conquest" or "Hexcrawling" than "Sandboxing" in the way I understand things. I believe the DM of such a campaign is obviously encouraged to apply Sandbox behavior to the campaign, but could just as easily Railroad his players as in any other style of campaign. While I do enjoy a good "Hexcrawling" campaign, I mainly run campaigns that focus less on the players exmploring sites or hexes and more on exploring the plots and motivations of NPCs. We've also moved away from conquest (gathering henchmen and building strongholds) entirely. If the only two definitions of campaign styles are what you describe as "Sandboxing" or "Railroading" this is the point where I (and I'm geussing many others) take offense, because my campaigns do not espouse the behaviors of a railroad.

You mention your DM K. above (I'm also DM K. and I hope you're not one of my players, because if you are we need to talk) having one adventure prepared. Because of the necessities of life I'm in the same boat as K. But even so this doesn't make my campaign a Railroad. I've got plenty of room within what I've prepared to take things in most of the directions my players would want to go. One thing that helps is knowing my players and agreeing in what type of general game we like to play up front.* If they do take an unexpected turn, I try to improvise. If we get to the point where I think my lack of preparedness will damage my players enjoyment of the game I may call the game to a halt, but only so I can prepare better for the route the players have chosen.

*Someone above noted that players wanting to join an evil cult and being disallowed by the DM are being railroaded. If, as a group, you agree to play a heroic non-evil campaign, does this make the entire campaign a railroad? I'm curious how people view these pre-agreed limitations to player choice.


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## Raven Crowking (Jul 2, 2010)

Vyvyan Basterd said:


> *Someone above noted that players wanting to join an evil cult and being disallowed by the DM are being railroaded. If, as a group, you agree to play a heroic non-evil campaign, does this make the entire campaign a railroad? I'm curious how people view these pre-agreed limitations to player choice.




This is why usurpation of player agency is important in my definition; players have the right to give away any agency they so desire.  If I agree to play _Savage Tide_, for instance, I have no cause to go crying that the DM is forcing me to play an AP.  If the DM creates unnatural limitations on how I can approach the material because the scenarios as written do not envision my going a certain way, or using a certain tactic, that would still be railroading, because agreeing to play ST does not mean that I agree my actions can be curtailed in this way.

Nor, BTW, does it follow that simply because the players wish their PCs to join an evil cult, that the evil cult wishes to have them as members.


RC


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## Raven Crowking (Jul 2, 2010)

Vyvyan Basterd said:


> First is the insistence that this is the One True Campaign by the rules. That other styles of Campaigns are wrong as they don't follow The Rules set out by the creators of the game.





Hmmm.

I think you are reading too much into this.

I think that neither (1) that a given set of rules were written with a particular playstyle in mind, or (2) that a given set of rules supports a particular playstyle better than another particular playstyle (especially if the second is philosophically opposed to the first), is entirely a subjective observation.

Whether or not railroading is the antonym of sandboxing or not, I would say that the idea of allowing players to have reasonable agency is philosophically opposed to the usurpation of that agency.  While "allowing players to have reasonable agency" does not define -- and is not exclusive to -- sandbox play, it is a core tenet.


RC


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 2, 2010)

Vyvyan Basterd said:


> First is the insistence that this is the One True Campaign by the rules. That other styles of Campaigns are wrong as they don't follow The Rules set out by the creators of the game. As pointed out by another poster, the original rules were not all inclusive and therefore other emergent styles of Campaign play are no more wrong than developing rules for how a character can jump a gorge. Those who insist or imply that the type of Campaign you describe is the One True Way are the first cause of friction and ill feelings related to this subject among those in our greater gaming community.



I was wondering about this. In several places, 1974 OD&D says the GM must have a mega-dungeon ready before play can begin. Wilderness and town adventures are also discussed but they are more of an adjunct to the centrepiece of play, the dungeon, which is vast.

There's also a fair amount of material on building a stronghold and fighting involving armies. In some respects, OD&D is halfway between rpg and wargame. It even describes itself as a "fantastic-medieval wargame".

Otoh it says that play does not have to be medieval, that it can "stretch from the prehistoric to the imagined future, but such expansion is recommended only at such time as the possibilities in the medieval aspect have been thoroughly explored."



> The most extensive requirement is time. The campaign referee will have to have sufficient time to meet the demands of his players, he will have to devote a number of hours to laying out the maps of his "dungeons" and upper terrain before the affair begins.






> First, the referee must draw out a minimum of half a dozen maps of the levels of his "underworld", people them with monsters of various horrid aspect, distribute treasures accordingly, and note the location of the latter two on keys, each corresponding to the appropriate level.






> Before it is possible to conduct a campaign of adventures in the mazey dungeons, it is necessary for the referee to sit down with pencil in hand and draw these labyrinths on graph paper. Unquestionably this will require a great deal of time and effort and imagination.






> The so-called Wilderness really consists of unexplored land, cities and castles, not to mention the area immediately surrounding the castle (ruined or otherwise) which housed the dungeons. The referee must do several things in order to conduct wilderness adventure games. First, he must have a ground level map of his dungeons, a map of the terrain immediately surrounding this, and finally a map of the town or village closest to the dungeons (where adventruers will be most likely to base themselves).
> 
> "Blackmoor" is a village of small size (a one-horse town), while "Grayhawk" is a large city. Both have maps with streets and buildings indicated, and players can have town adventures roaming around the bazaars, inns, taverns, shops, temples, and so on. Venture into the Thieves' Quarter only at your own risk!




Whether this is how the game had to continue is another question. AD&D 1e puts far less emphasis on mega-dungeons than OD&D. Ariosto's preferred playstyle is a very OD&D-influenced brand of AD&D, imho.


----------



## awesomeocalypse (Jul 2, 2010)

whatever you want to call the playstyle, and I'm absolutely fine with calling it a "railroad" even if others are bothered by the stigma, adventures with some sort of largely preplanned plot are just about the only types of game I've ever enjoyed. 

Above all, I play d&d to feel like the hero of a fantasy story--not the "protagonist", or the "main character", and certainly not just "some dude who lives in a fantasy world", but the *hero* (or one of them, at least). 

Far too many "sandbox" campaign I've played have utterly failed to deliver on this point--we've walked around doing what "we want", in the sense of pursuing individual goals that happen to interest us, and we've come into conflict with NPCs who stand at odds with those goals. But I've never played in a sandbox which organically produced the "the world needs saving, and you're the only ones to do it" plot structure that I look for. 

In other words, I don't want to be some guy strolling around the shire or skirmishing with orcs on the plains of Rohan. I want to be frikkin Aragorn or Gandalf or Frodo, the "chosen one", "big damn hero", "here to save the world" guy whom the entire world essentially revolves around in a metaplot sense. Maybe thats narcissistic, but its what I look for, and if I don't get it then I generally don't have fun.

In my experience even an average DM if given time to prepare and lay out a campaign can reliably produce this sort of experience. Producing it organically out of pure sandbox play is much, much harder--I'm not saying its impossible, but I've never played in a game in which it happened.


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> I think that the contents of the booklets are plain for anyone to see. I _know_ what I, and  everyone I know of, produced by following those instructions.






Raven Crowking said:


> I think you are reading too much into this.




I may be, but being told that the instructions of the game tell me "This Is The Way It Is" kind of lead me into that line of thinking.

I'm not saying everyone who speaks on this subject believes this. I'm not even saying that Ariosto believes this. But my perception is that I'm being told that I'm doing it wrong because I'm not following the instructions.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 2, 2010)

> Fascinating look at D&D stuff from before my time, thanks!



It's a bit before my time too, I started in 1982. By then, mega-dungeons were dead. We learned to play from Moldvay red box D&D, AD&D, modules, White Dwarf magazine, and a wide variety of other rpgs, such as Call of Cthulhu, Traveller and RuneQuest. Play was very module-influenced, the GM would have one adventure prepared and that was that. I've actually never experienced mega-dungeon play ever.


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 2, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> That's a classic! The "quantum documents" soon raise all sorts of questions. For instance, why am I rolling to find the documents? Isn't that a task? Don't I have a 'real concern' beyond that?
> 
> If the documents are in the safe, then one can get the documents by opening the safe. The basic idea is that one might like to make a _role-playing game_ of finding out where the documents are, you see.
> 
> Dice are tools.




The basic misunderstanding here arises from failing to understand that task resolution and conflict resolution are different tools and they're used for different reasons.

You're basically mocking a screwdriver for not being a hammer.

Task resolution, as you note, is useful for players who are only interested in roleplaying (i.e., making decisions as their character). Task resolution allows you to explore the game world as if you were your character.

Conflict resolution, on the other hand, is useful for giving players a degree of narrative control.

In a task resolution system, the player is saying: "I would like to open the safe. Let's use the mechanics to see if I can do that." It's an exploration of the game world.

In a conflict resolution system, the player is saying: "I want the incriminating documents to be inside the safe. Let's use the mechanics to see if that is true." It's a _definition_ of the game world.

This distinction is often muddled up by people who want to describe D&D combat as a conflict resolution system. It looks similar, but identifying it as such requires you to equate mechanical outcome ("reduce enemy hit points to 0") with the player's desired outcome by default. And if you do that, then the distinction between task resolution and conflict resolution becomes non-existent.

Take the "opening the safe" vs. "finding incriminating documents" demonstration, for example. The distinction between task resolution and conflict resolution disappears if you equate the mechanical outcome ("does the PC open the safe?") to the player's desired outcome ("I want to open the safe").

Conversely, let's look at D&D combat but change the player's desired outcome to "I want to make the bad guys run away" or "I want to impress the princess by beating my rival in single combat". This clearly demonstrates that treating D&D combat as a conflict resolution system is an illusion created by assuming that the player's goals will equate to the system's outcomes.

Now, if we changed the rules for D&D combat so that a player who reduces an enemy's hit points to 0 gets to dictate how the combat is resolved ("they die", "they fall unconscious", "they surrender", "they run away screaming in terror"), we would then have a conflict resolution system.

One of the reasons that the RAW version of 4th Edition skill challenges fail is because they're mechanically trying to wed a task resolution mechanic onto a conflict resolution mechanic, but can't quite figure out how to make that work. Which is why most people who having success in using skill challenge mechanics have consciously or unconsciously modified them to either become a fully dedicated conflict resolution system (in which the PCs are defining the path they want to take); turning them into a railroaded task resolution system (in which the GM predefines acceptable task-based paths to success); or simply discarding the conflict resolution portion of the mechanic when it conflicts with the task-resolution portion of the mechanic (or, less commonly, vice versa).



> For instance, why am I rolling to find the documents? Isn't that a task?  Don't I have a 'real concern' beyond that?




The problem with the "infinite regression" argument is that it can be applied with equal validity to task resolution.

For example, I want to search a door for traps. Or do I want to search the entire room for traps? Or do I want to search the entire dungeon for traps? Conversely, if I want to search the door for traps don't I have to search the handle, the keyhole, the lintel, the frame, and the hinges?

Do I make one check for the entire dungeon complex? Or do I make 5 separate checks for every door? There's a rather huge range of abstraction between those points. (Which aren't even the end points of those progressions.)

The decision of exactly how much task is going to be resolved by a single die roll is ultimately an arbitrary one guided by our sense of what will be fun. IME, it will frequently vary depending on circumstance.

The same applies to conflict resolution. Is it theoretically possible in a sufficiently flexible conflict-based system to make a single roll against "I want to catch the bad guy"? Sure.

Should the system be used that way? Maybe. But probably not.

Just as you probably don't require your players to make 5 different Search checks every time they check a door for traps.


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## Desdichado (Jul 2, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> This is why usurpation of player agency is important in my definition; players have the right to give away any agency they so desire.  If I agree to play _Savage Tide_, for instance, I have no cause to go crying that the DM is forcing me to play an AP.  If the DM creates unnatural limitations on how I can approach the material because the scenarios as written do not envision my going a certain way, or using a certain tactic, that would still be railroading, because agreeing to play ST does not mean that I agree my actions can be curtailed in this way.



This is exactly why the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the only meaningful railroading can happen at the table.  A module that's designed and written to be played as a railroad probably will be as often as not, without major rework from the GM.  But if the players voluntarily surrender some of their control over their characters, if the GM doesn't disallow actions that they think are reasonable for arbitrary reasons, if they buy into it and do it together; the most structured adventure in the world might not really be a railroad.

The only really _meaningful_ definition of a railroad is the describe the experience at the actual gaming table, with the correllary that by transference, you can also call an adventure that is structured so that a railroad experience is likely a railroad too.


Raven Crowking said:


> Hmmm.
> 
> I think you are reading too much into this.



I think there's also quite a bit of transference of percieved accusations of blame here.  By which I mean, although you (or Ariosto, or whomever) may not actually be saying something, it is still part of the conversation because of past experiences with people who have "bundled" certain opinions together frequently.  I.e., some diehard sandboxers have a "bundle" of opinions that includes exalting sandbox as the ordained method of play, and all other methods of play are wrong.  Even if they can accept them as, "hey, whatever floats  your boat" there's a need to create denigrating labels for them, since they are no longer "not a game" or "not D&D" or whatever.

Again; I'm not specifically calling anyone out in this thread as saying that, but I think it's come up because it's something that's expressed frequently.

And to nip in the bud the call for "Cite?", that's absurd.  I know this because I've had it expressed to me clearly.  It's a personal experience.  I don't cite personal conversations or experiences, and the notion (which was expressed frequently in the other thread a couple of months or so ago on this same topic) that anyone won't believe my personal experience without a citation so they can look at it for themselves is both insulting and cretinous.


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 2, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:


> Instead of a threshold, railroad is seen as one direction on a continuum, the other direction being referred to as sandbox. Railroad means less player freedom, sandbox means more. There is, probably, no such thing as a perfect railroad or a perfect sandbox in actual play. Neither railroading nor sandboxing is inherently good or bad, they are just tools to be used by individual gaming groups, and adjusted to taste.




As I mentioned a couple pages ago, I don't think this works well because the opposite of "railroad" isn't "sandbox" and the opposite of "sandbox" isn't "railroad".

Severity of railroad generally goes from macro- to micro-. If the GM insists that the player's take an adventure hook because it's the adventure hook he has prepared but the PCs are free to do whatever they want to accomplish the adventure's goal, most people would describe that as very light railroading. The severity of the railroad increases as the GM

Sandboxes, OTOH, are defined from macro- to micro-. If the PCs are free to go anywhere in the world and pick up any adventure thread they want, most people would define that as a sandbox even if some (or all) of the individual adventure hooks aren't perfectly non-linear.

Or, to put it another way: The term "railroad" generally applies to adventure design. The term "sandbox" generally applies to campaign design. Putting them on the same continuum just distorts the meaning of one or both of the terms.


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## Desdichado (Jul 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Task resolution, as you note, is useful for players who are only interested in roleplaying (i.e., making decisions as their character). Task resolution allows you to explore the game world as if you were your character.
> 
> Conflict resolution, on the other hand, is useful for giving players a degree of narrative control.
> 
> ...



I've never once heard those two terms used that way.  That's an interesting concept, although I think coining that vocabulary amongst gamers as a whole would be tricky.  I rather like the more straightforward description of conflict resolution systems as systems that exist to resolve conflict between characters.

Therefore combat is absolutely a conflict resolution systm, because two characters (presumably a PC vs. an NPC, but clearly not necessarily) are using the combat mechanics to resolve a conflict.  For that matter, a skill system can also be conflict resolution, if, for example, a character is attempting use a Bluff skill vs. a Sense Motive or whatever.  That's character conflict, and the rules exist to resolve them.  Hence, conflict resolution.

I mean, I like your concept of narrative control mechanics as an interesting discussion item (personally I don't really like mechanics for players to determine whether or not their are papers in the safe, but that's neither here nor there), but I think your labels for them are all wrong.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Or, to put it another way: The term "railroad" generally applies to adventure design. The term "sandbox" generally applies to campaign design. Putting them on the same continuum just distorts the meaning of one or both of the terms.



Good point. I agree that that is how both terms, railroad and sandbox, are most frequently used.


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## Desdichado (Jul 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> Or, to put it another way: The term "railroad" generally applies to adventure design. The term "sandbox" generally applies to campaign design. Putting them on the same continuum just distorts the meaning of one or both of the terms.



I think that's a useful theoretical distinction.  I mean, as a point of devil's advocacy, there isn't always such a sharp line between adventures and the campaign in many games, particularly those of a sandboxy variety, where there isn't necessarily going to be much in the way of adventure design in the traditional sense, but still.  I think that's a good point.

However, I think that as _playstyles_ they still stand out as antonyms.  A sandbox playstyle is one that focuses on freedom of character action, and casts the GM in a reactive role.  A railroad is one that focuses on setting action, and casts the players in a more reactive role.

A little context around how the words sandbox or railroad are being used in a given conversation is obviously pretty crucial to determining exactly in what way it's meant.  The quick and dirty definitions given in the paragraph above are obviously as broad as possible, and can apply to design goals, experience at the table, or simply playstyle more generally.

And, as has been mentioned many times in this thread and others, I'd imagine that by far most gamers don't really like either endpoint on that particular spectrum, and prefer some hybrid that uses a few elements of both.


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 2, 2010)

Hobo said:


> I think your attempt to coin the new terms invisible and visible railroad will probably fail.




I wasn't even the first person to use it in this thread. And a quick Google reveals the term "invisible railroad" has been used since at least 2005. Google Groups indicates usage dating back more than a decade.



> > _You might try reading the  thread. It's not that hard and it's a lot easier than me re-posting the  same crap every three pages because you can't be bothered._
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Lemme know when you're interested in having an actual discussion. Right now you're just trolling.



Doug McCrae said:


> I was wondering about this. In several  places, 1974 OD&D says the GM must have a mega-dungeon ready before  play can begin. Wilderness and town adventures are also discussed but  they are more of an adjunct to the centre-piece of play, the dungeon,  which is vast.




I'm going to dispute this. While the megadungeon was clearly a very important part of the game, the original White Box included more rules for non-dungeon play than for dungeon play. And some surprising aspects of the rulebooks had a primary focus on non-dungeon play. For example, the class descriptions. And the monster listings. (You weren't generating 30-300 goblins as a random encounter for the dungeon.)

In many ways, I think it can be argued that OD&D was the edition of the game which was _least_ focused on the "kick down the door" style of play.

Although, ironically, it's also the edition of the game which serves as the strongest proponent for the megaduneon.

I don't view this as a contradiction.


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 2, 2010)

Hobo said:


> I've never once heard those two terms used that way.  That's an interesting concept, although I think coining that vocabulary amongst gamers as a whole would be tricky.  I rather like the more straightforward description of conflict resolution systems as systems that exist to resolve conflict between characters.




Doing a Google for "conflict resolution RPG", I literally can't find anyone defining "conflict resolution" the way you do. Everyone defines it the way pemerton, Ariosto, and I do.

Including the people who, AFAICT, coined the term.


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## Desdichado (Jul 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I wasn't even the first person to use it in this thread. And a quick Google reveals the term "invisible railroad" has been used since at least 2005. Google Groups indicates usage dating back more than a decade.



Finding _*a*_ link doesn't demonstrate what you seem to think it demonstrates.


			
				Beginning of the End said:
			
		

> Lemme know when you're interested in having an actual discussion. Right now you're just trolling.



When I'm trolling, you'll know it.  Right now I'm disagreeing with you.  If that's your defense against disagreement--baseless accusations of trolling--then yeah, we won't have much of a conversation here.


Beginning of the End said:


> Doing a Google for "conflict resolution RPG", I literally can't find anyone defining "conflict resolution" the way you do. Everyone defines it the way pemerton, Ariosto, and I do.



:shrug:  I don't need to google.  I've talked about conflict resolution thousands of times on the internet in the last fifteen years and never once heard of some kind of narrativist mechanic described as "conflict resolution."

The much more intuitive use of "conflict resolution" as being mechanics for, y'know, _*resolving conflict between characters*_ I've heard _every.  single.  time._

:shrug again:  I'm not saying that your definition might not be in vogue in certain discussions somewhere... just that I've never seen it.  And I've been talking about RPGs on the internet since there was an internet.  I think you're _way_ overstating the prevalence of your rather idiosynchratic usage.


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Jul 2, 2010)

Raven Crowking said:


> I think you are reading too much into this.




Also, the verb railroad has had negative connotations since the 1800s and I find it disingenuous that people are claiming it to merely mean "different" from their own style of play.

Meanings of Railroad:

1. compel by coercion, threats, or crude means
2. to push (a law or bill) hastily through a legislature so that there is not time enough for objections to be considered
3. to convict (a person) in a hasty manner by means of false charges or insufficient evidence

None of the definitions of the verb (other than the ones that pertain to actual railroads) have a positive aspect.


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## Doug McCrae (Jul 2, 2010)

Beginning of the End said:


> I'm going to dispute this. While the megadungeon was clearly a very important part of the game, the original White Box included more rules for non-dungeon play than for dungeon play.



You make a good case, maybe 'adjunct' is going too far. Vol 3 is called 'The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures' after all. Of its 36 pages, 11 concern the underworld, 6 the wilderness, 4 are about the PCs building castles and 11 are about mass battles on land, air and sea. We can say from that that dungeons are significantly more important than wilderness, but also that building castles and wargaming are more important than dungeons.

OD&D is not far removed from Chainmail. The idea seems to be that the game starts off as a rpg, in the dungeon, and becomes a wargame once the PCs are high enough level to build a stronghold and attract a body of men.

I would still maintain though that the dungeon is the centrepiece. That's where play starts, it's the only part the rules say the GM must create, the rest being optional. And play may never leave the dungeon, though OD&D does assume a long-term game where it eventually will.


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## Ariosto (Jul 2, 2010)

Doug McCrae said:
			
		

> Is that what you would call a railroad, when the GM only has one adventure prepared?




I call it a railroad if that 'adventure' is arbitrarily our only possible move, because otherwise there is no game and so no move.

If it's _our_ adventure, in the old style, then that is not so bad. A DM with many players in a campaign would tend to give preference to those with well-organized adventures. Of course, he or she would also tend to have a campaign set up as the books instructed, and so be equipped to handle impromptu explorations.

Just how much railroading matters after that first "offer you can't refuse" is going to depend in part on how easy it is for the players to see the rails. We have already been given the ultimatum, and accepted it. As we want to play, we will do our best to stay on the track. If we wander, it's because we can't see the "right" (i.e., the DM's) way to go.

Then again, it could be a "commuter express". The 'railroad' mechanism simply serves to whisk the characters into some new environment or situation. After that, normal, free, game conditions resume.


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## Raven Crowking (Jul 2, 2010)

Hobo said:


> This is exactly why the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the only meaningful railroading can happen at the table.  A module that's designed and written to be played as a railroad probably will be as often as not, without major rework from the GM.




A module can be written as an adventure; the adventure doesn't happen until the module is used at the table.  A GM could certainly prevent such a module from being an adventure, but it would require some work!

A module can be written as a railroad; the railroad doesn't happen until the module is used at the table.  A GM could certainly prevent such a module from being a railroad, but it would require some work!

Just as a module isn't an "adventure" until it is played out, neither is a module a "railroad" until it is played out.  Yet, when most people refer to a module as an "adventure", they know what they mean.  Likewise, when they refer to a module as a "railroad".

IMHO & IME.  YMMV.



Vyvyan Basterd said:


> Also, the verb railroad has had negative connotations since the 1800s and I find it disingenuous that people are claiming it to merely mean "different" from their own style of play.




Well, sure it does.

If you accept my definition, those negative connotations exist for good reasons, because the GM is *taking* agency that should belong to the players.  

The GM being *given* that agency by players who have both the knowledge that it is being given, and the option of doing otherwise, is something different.  

IMHO.  YMMV.


RC


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## Beginning of the End (Jul 2, 2010)

So to sum this up, you start by claiming that I'm coining terms out of thin air which have actually been used previously in this very thread; in this forum since at least 2005; and on the 'net since at least 1999. And then...



Hobo said:


> > I wasn't even the first person to use it in this thread. And a quick  Google reveals the term "invisible railroad" has been used since at  least 2005. Google Groups indicates usage dating back more than a decade.
> 
> 
> 
> Finding _*a*_ link doesn't demonstrate what you seem to think it demonstrates.




(1) You lie above what I said, while quoting me saying something completely different from what you claim I said. (Or perhaps you're simply ignorant of what Google is? Check it out at Google. It's pretty cool.)



> :shrug:  I don't need to google.  I've talked about conflict resolution thousands of times on the internet in the last fifteen years and never once heard of some kind of narrativist mechanic described as "conflict resolution."
> 
> The much more intuitive use of "conflict resolution" as being mechanics for, y'know, _*resolving conflict between characters*_ I've heard _every.  single.  time._




(2) You respond to evidence contradicting your claims with unreferenced anecdote and argumentum ad verecundiam.



> When I'm trolling, you'll know it.




(3) But you're not a troll. No, really, you're not.

Well, you've earned yourself a second strike. But the offer to have a meaningful discussion with you as soon as you're interested in having a meaningful discussion still stands.


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## Umbran (Jul 2, 2010)

Just last night, I had to warn a couple of people to stop getting personal, and to behave themselves.  We should not have to give two such warnings in a 24 hour period at this point.

The thread's been going a good long time, and has reduced to butting heads?  Time to close it.  Thanks to all of you who kept things pleasant.


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