Quote from: TonyLBSuppose I prepared a scenario in which the PCs are kidnapped by forces they couldn't possibly oppose, and dumped in room A with only one possible exit (to room B).  Suppose further that exit instantly locked behind them leaving them in room B with only one possible exit (room C) and so on and so on until room Z and beyond.  If I did that then I think many people would feel that I'd railroaded my players, even though all of the constraints were in the prep-work from the start.

Have you seen -

I can't picture adventure design or if-then statements as railroads.  Fortunately, I don't think that's what we're getting at here...

For example, for my Arcana Evolved game, I will throw a bunch of situations at the party.  They are not forced to do any of them - that's not the way I run my games.  However, I do like to have a fair idea of where they would like to go next at the end of each session.  I only have a certain amount of prep time, and although I want that game to be player-driven, I would prefer to have at least some interesting hooks figured out ahead of time.  I do major prep for the planned adventure, and some minor prep (which is basically one typed page) I call "current events."  This plots out what the other active groups are doing, some mini-stat-blocks, and so on.  I may try to plan out a bit further, exploring what may happen if X or Y events occur.

Now, it can happen that - when they decide to go about things - they either go about them in a way I completely didn't anticipate, or else they decide not to do that one thing after all.  I leave that up to them.  The game may not be as tight and complex, but it will be there and it is still theirs to control.

-O

Quote from: -E.I'm not sure what you're saying.

Let's say that I start up a game with:

"You have the ring of power. The only way to destroy it is to throw it into Mount Doom. There are Dark Riders looking for you. The NPC wizard tells you to go meet a ranger a town or two over."

Is the fact that the PC's have a mission a railroad?

Cheers,
-E.

It depends.

If the players can honestly refuse to follow the mission, it's not railroading. If they can't, then it's railroading.

I'm not against a little railroading, as long as it's just a little. If you overuse it, it gets annoying.

As most things in this life, it's just a question of gradation.

If my PC was kidnapped, and locked in room A, whence there's only a way out, which leads to room B, etc, I could roll with it. If my PC was kidnapped a second time, and locked in another room, whence there's only a way out, etc, I would think, "What the fuck!!" :violent-smiley-078:

Quote from: TonyLBThat's very sensible.  I don't take issue with that in the same way that I took issue (earlier) with: You're not merely saying that you want the decision to matter, but that you want your decision to matter in a specific way.  You want input on (in this case) how quickly you find the princess.

Sort of. Viewing it as an interest in "how quickly you find the princess" also misses the mark. The primary interest is in "whether you find the princess". The goal is "find her". With that as a given, if I sense manipulation of progress toward the goal simply to draw things out or ramp up tension, I feel frustrated.

Time is just an indicator, is another way of putting it. If your actions meaningfully affect whether you rescue the princess, common sense says that doing well will get you to your goal faster. True, there are artificial situations, like soccer matches, where doing well doesn't speed things up. Nevertheless, in any situation, if you have a goal, and you're given to believe that a certain decision will have an impact on whether you reach the goal, then either it really does have an impact, or the GM is engaging in covert railroading by undermining the player's input.

If I sense something like that going on, I'm either going to lose interest, or I'm going to focus my attention somewhere else and not really worry about the strategic/tactical implications. This has a dual effect: first, any interest in applying knowledge or working out plans goes right out the window. But second, the game-world seems less real: a decision or gamble that's challenging or difficult from the perspective of the characters is just grist for the mill from the perspective of the player. The more these perspectives diverge, the more I'm aware that the primary activity going on is "storytelling"--regardless of who's telling the story--rather than experiencing what it would be like to be in the character's shoes.

QuoteOther play-groups might legitimately want input on other stuff ("Do we face the fire-demons first, or the ice-demons first?") and not care whether they had any impact on how quickly they found the princess.  For those groups, the moving princess routine wouldn't be a railroad ... yes?

Again, "quickly" is a red herring, and phrasing the issue the way you did loses sight of the original example. Which was: the players believe the princess is really in one specific castle. With that knowledge, the sense of manipulation is almost unavoidable if the GM is known for stage-managing the pacing. You could take a similar setup, though, and fix it by introducing a superficial artificiality--yet one that restores the link between character & player perception. Just say the princess is in a magical dimension that can't be reached until three parts of some magic item are located, one in the Castle of the Moon, one in the Castle of the Earth, one in the Castle of the Sun. Now you've got your ice demons, fire demons (and, uh, dirt devils?), and it's up to the players in pretty much the same way that it's up to the PCs.

I fear Elliot´s carefully laid out points aren´t really understood by many people, woh never have experienced such a form of RPGing.

Just remember how puzzled people where, when Balbinus explained how he runs a mystery, whereas it was the only viable way, if you wanted to keep it a mystery.

Quote from: Thanatos02In those cases, -E, things are fine until the DM mishandles the situation. If the PC's decide (for whatever reason) that they are going to scram, because this situation is over their heads, then the DM should be prepaired. Players can get creative or not take hooks the DM might consider obvious.

For example, what would happen if:

The characters decided to hop a few towns over and try to get more competant adventurers or enforcement to deal with the issue? Say, petition the local lord to send a contingent of knights with his wizard to deal with the infestation? (Kind of likely, depending on how feudal the game is. After all, it would be the lord's resposibility.)

The characters decide to jet, leaving the town to fend for themselves?

The characters mobilize the village and, with a thousand refugees in tow, head towards the largest city in the region?

The characters throw in with the undead?

The characters try to negotiate with the force behind the undead push?

It's kind of like Lord of the Rings. Some people are going to opt to throw the ring in the volcano. Some are really going to be jonesing to see what the Ring of Power can do when they claim it.

I completely agree with this -- for me, if I feel like no amount of creativity will affect the direction of the game, it's a railroad (Or a computer game...)

You presented several creative solutions to the undead-attacking problem -- the sort of thing a railroading GM (IMO) would likely dismiss because they're "off the tracks."

For me, that goes beyond whether the GM says "no" or not, but the manner in which it's done.

I might be fine if none of those suggestions above really worked (exception: the Blow Town one... if the GM really won't let you leave town, that's almost *always* a railroad IMO) if I felt that the GM was being fair and giving the consideration a fair shot...

This is an area where I think some transparency in the GM's thought process can be valuable (even if it breaks immersion a bit -- although when you've got frustrated players, immersion is probably already broken...)

Again, though: I think there are definitions of railroading in play here that are considerably more restrictive than that.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: ClaudiusIt depends.

If the players can honestly refuse to follow the mission, it's not railroading. If they can't, then it's railroading.

Right...

And, in the Lord of the Rings scenario Frodo *can* refuse the mission -- but at a terrible cost...

The LoTR scenario is also interesting because if he *does* accept, he doesn't have too many options beyond the mission presented in the book: it's established that the only way to save Middle Earth long-term is to destroy the ring and the only way to do that is the fires of Mt. Doom...

I've seen people suggest creative solutions beyond an over-land march (the Fellowship) but basically if the GM runs a LoTR scenario, and you're playing Frodo, you don't have many options beyond

• Going on the adventure pretty much as presented in the books (maybe with minor variations, such as choice of bodyguards and route)
• Abdicating responsibility and watching the world end
• Casting your lot in with the forces of evil and becoming a slave to the ring

Which, by some calculations, means he doesn't have any choice at all and could be considered a railroad.

My feeling is that, while it *is* a somewhat restrictive scenario, it's not a railroad based on starting condition alone (as I said above, the test comes during play), but I suspect mileages vary.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: SpikeIn Roleplaying Games, the Term Railroading refers to form of behavior from the 'Game Master' where upon the 'Players' of the game are denied freedom of choice in action during the game itself.  Railroading may take overt and covert forms, but should not be confused with 'Illusionism'.  Railroading, as defined in this theorum, is a disruptive method of play and should be resolutely avoided.

OK, here I think there's an interesting issue. I think Illusionism and its associated techniques are used a lot for the purpose of railroading; what Shamus describes in his blog article is a lot like Illusionism, after all. It is very easy for a GM to use Illusionist techniques to neutralise the effect of the players' choices, to make the end result in-game pretty much the same as if they'd gone with the choice he wanted them to make in the first place.

A lot of players (including myself) would argue that if you nullify the effects of our choices through Illusionism then that's pretty much the same as giving us no choice at all in the first place. To use a real-world example, supposing there are two candidates in an election who have made a secret deal in a backroom somewhere to the effect that the same policies will be adopted no matter who wins. If that deal became known to the general public there'd obviously uproar; even though the public had a purely cosmetic "choice" between two candidates, the effects of their choice would be the same no matter who they vote for.

It's at this point that the proponents of Illusionist railroading say something along the lines of "What the players don't know won't hurt them," which is fair enough, but let's face it: sooner or later, someone's going to catch you out - if not during the campaign, then after it's all over and the players and you are sitting around talking about it. "What would have happened in the end if we'd decided to trust NPC X?" "Oh, he'd have ended up playing the role NPC Y ended up taking", that kind of thing.

Note that I don't necessarily think Illusionism in a game is a bad and terrible thing; in fact, I consider it the least objectionable form of railroading. I do, however, feel that practicing Illusionism without telling your players is a dick thing to do. By all means don't alert the players whenever you do it - that would ruin the point of it - but at least do me the courtesy of telling me when you are recruiting me for the campaign "This is my GMing style, if it's going to be a deal-breaker you might want to sit this one out" or something along those lines.

Quote from: -E.I don't think of the Lord of the Rings scenario as being a railroad; I'd like to understand your perspective a bit better.

As you stated it in your earlier post, would.

Unless you were actually happy with the player just pocketing the Ring or tossing it in a bush and saying "To hell with Mount Doom, I'm going north to find dwarven gold!"

QuoteWould *any* game situation where some GM-controlled force is acting be considered a railroad?

No.

QuoteThese are all situations where the GM is not forcing any action and the PC's are free to ignore the situation with no consequences

OK. I am going to assume that going after treasures is the only scenario option open to the players in this particular campaign when answering. Let's see which I would consider railroading.

QuoteYou learn there's a treasure buried in the old, undead-infested graveyard. You  can choose to go in and get it... or not. If you don't, you're pretty sure there are other treasures out there.

Totally not railroading. It's even less like railroading if I find out about this as part of a list of other rumours and adventure seeds my character can collect while he's in town.

Quote

• You learn there's a treasure in the graveyard. You can choose to pursue or not... but if you don't, you may not discover the location of another treasure.

OK, if the only scenario option is "go look for treasures", and this is the only treasure I've learned about, then I don't see how I can ignore this with "no consequences": if I don't go for that treasure, the game is basically over for the evening. That might not be a negative IC consequence for my character, but it's a pretty severe OOC consequence.

Quote

• You learn about the treasure. There are *other* treasures out in the world, but you're low-level. If you go after a better-defended one, you're likely to get killed

This one is a bit more difficult to answer.

If you, as the GM, are making it clear to me that going after these other treasures will, 99% of the time, lead to me dying horribly, then it's railroading. "Go collect that treasure first, or your character either die or not go adventuring at all". (Again, I say that's a breach of your "no consequences for ignoring it" promise.)

If you, as the GM, are just saying "It's a bit more dangerous, your character might not be ready for the other treasures," but you're willing to run me through the attempts to get the more dangerous treasures in case I come up with a really smart idea, then that doesn't strike me as railroading. It'd still be smarter to go for the graveyard treasure, but freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes.

QuoteThese are all situations where something is happening and if the PC's don't take actions there will be consequences to their world

OK, gotcha.

QuoteUndead are emerging from the graveyard every night and threatening a nearby town. If you deal with the threat, you'll get a bounty.

Not railroading.

QuoteUndead are emerging from the graveyard every night and threatening *YOUR* town. If you don't deal with the threat, people in your town will likely be injured or killed

Why is this happening to my town?

If, for IC reasons established in previous adventures, someone or something is causing the dead to rise, and it's happening in my town - perhaps because some NPC I've pissed off is responsible and wants to get back at me or something - that's not railroading.

If it's happening because you've decided that having undead pop up in my PC's town will force me to get involved in an undead-bashing adventure, that's railroading: you've basically decided that my PC is going to go on this adventure and battle the undead, and you've thrown them at my town to make sure I have investment. I stress that this is not a bad thing in the slightest if I've signed up for the sort of game where stuff gets thrown at people I care about to prompt me to act: again, there's a distinction between dumping someone on a railroad unexpectedly and letting the players buy their tickets and sit down on the train if they want to.

QuoteUndead are coming to your town. They're powerful and you're not. Your only real chance to save the town is to recover a powerful relic from a nearby ruin.

Exactly how unwilling are you to consider alternate plans? Supposing I trick the undead leaders into a trap in a mountain valley and dump rocks on them, enough that it'll take them ages to dig out - will that give us enough time to evacuate the town, or will the undead burst out in a mildly surprisingly short time to enforce the time limit?

The only way to stop the undead might be to use that relic to render them unto dust, and that's fair enough, but my first priority might be to get the townsfolk out of harm's way before I worry about putting down those liches - a priority that I can't really do much about if I'm blundering about in a ruin. I think it is mildly railroady to make blanket assumptions about what the PCs should prioritise in a situation, and to nix proposed courses of action on that basis.

QuoteJust to be clear: I see some of these as being more-restrictive than others, but I wouldn't consider any game a railroad just because of starting situation (I see railroading as something that happens in-play, when the GM mishandles decisions).

I think here is where we differ: I think the starting situations set up by the sort of GM who railroads are going to be markedly different from the starting situations set up by a non-railroading GM. (Non-railroaders generally have multiple things happening at game start which the PCs can choose to get involved with, for example, where as railroaders present the "Adventure of the Week" to the players.)

Example number 3 in the second group is a good example of this. That's a starting situation with, built into it, a very strong assumption of what precisely the PCs are going to have to do in order to deal with it. That, right there, is the beginning of a railroad: the PCs begin at point A, and they pretty much have to go to point B if they are going to accomplish anything.

Quote from: -E.Yeah -- if you're unwilling to accept a complex and somewhat restrictive starting situation, you rule out a *lot* of cool adventures.

Once again, I have to reiterate that I DON'T THINK RAILROADING IS ALWAYS A BAD THING. I am not "unwilling to accept" a complex and restrictive starting situation in a game, but at least give me a heads-up that that's the sort of campaign you want to run. "Your characters will start out in a tight spot, so be prepared to hit the ground running!", that kind of thing.

"Railroading" has bad connotations only because of people using it and its associated techniques in a hamfisted manner, and because of GMs promising a degree of freedom of choice in their games which they don't actually deliver.

QuoteAlso, if you require that the GM explain up front everything that happens, you lose any sense of surprise and a lot of sense of wonder.

That's a pretty spectacular misreading of what I am saying. All I am expecting is that GMs will say, when they're pitching a game "This is going to have some railroading in it". They can use whatever euphemism they're comfortable with if they don't like the connotations of railroading - "This will be a mission-based game," "This game will have a strong plot," whatever, but just give me some indication.

Quote from: JimBobOzMaybe. But on the other hand, some players are a bit lost without being told what to do.

That's true, and some players (like me) sometimes want an active campaign, and sometimes want a reactive campaign.

What I'm railing against isn't railroading, it's railroaders-in-denial: people who have been told that Railroading Is Bad, and so don't admit to themselves that they actually use railroading (to good effect) in their games. They end up plugging their games to both kinds of players and end up with a mix of people who are up for an active campaign where the characters are doing their own thing and people who want a reactive campaign where the PCs follow the path set out by the GM and solve puzzles and battle monsters along the way, or whatever. Lo and behold, the game turns to shit.

Conversely, I find that GMs who actually sit down and think about how they want to GM a particular campaign, and say as much when they are pitching it, tend to run more successful games, because they're willing to say "Here's my GMing style. If you can work with that, great. If you can't see any common ground or room for compromise, you probably don't want to be playing this game."

Quote from: WarthurOK, here I think there's an interesting issue. I think Illusionism and its associated techniques are used a lot for the purpose of railroading; what Shamus describes in his blog article is a lot like Illusionism, after all. It is very easy for a GM to use Illusionist techniques to neutralise the effect of the players' choices, to make the end result in-game pretty much the same as if they'd gone with the choice he wanted them to make in the first place.

.

Understand that my intent was not to establish the goodness or badness of Illusionism or wether or not it was a type of 'railroading' or not. Certainly you can apply my SMRG criteria to an 'Illusionism' senario and determine wether or not it is, or is not in fact 'Railroading'.  

The purpose is to pare down the term to a bare, testable definition. I'm sure some fancy-schmancy white coat could do it in a way that meets some criteria for defining theories, but I don't have the money, time or interest to hire one.

Still... that was the only response? Man, I feel like the entire thread has me on ignore. :raise: Talk about a tough room.

Pardon? I agreed with you explicitly.

Wait, does he have me on ignore?

Quote from: SpikeStill... that was the only response? Man, I feel like the entire thread has me on ignore. :raise: Talk about a tough room.

I didn't respond for a couple of reasons.

1) It's a decent definition, but the problem isn't finding a decent definition, it's finding one that everyone can agree on. I can agree (mostly) with this one, but others in the thread have demonstrated that they have incompatible definitions.

2) It applies a judgement call. While I agree withthe judgement it's placing on railroading as a practice, I don't think it's the purview of definitions to have opinions. And it definitely ensures that you won't get everyone to agree on the definition, because not everyone will hold the same opinion as you.