That's why it's Named, James. So you can use it freely and everyone important will know exactly what judgement is being used. Since it's written down and all it's inflexible and immutable.


If someone disagrees with the judgement used they can write their own damn theory and name it something else!  Then, instead of disagreeing about what railroading is or is not, we can discuss the relative merits of any given Railroading Theory, form camps and even declare war!

Ah, I assumed you wanted something useful, not something divisive. Ignore me.

This is Spike we are talking about - y'know, shoots electricity? Eats other pikas?  You were expecting something useful and non-divisive???



-clash

Sorry, I let the new avatar fool me. It won't happen again, sir!

Now that Spike's explained again why he's taking the tack he's taking, I agree completely. Except, we should forget about this "theory" stuff. Spike's providing a definition, not a theory. Theory comes after.

I had a hack at some definitions a while back in my livejournal. What I came up with was "neutral GMing", "covert motivated GMing", and "overt motivated GMing". The latter two then interact with player interest to produce the subjective phenomena known as Illusionism & Railroading.

Looking back, it's pretty dense, but here's the link: link.

Yes. It's useful AND divisive... like Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, to great tastes that taste great together! Plus, you get to steal candy from this Reece guy....

White Rabbitt, that sounds true but it's so abstract!

Using my example in post 20, what would YOU do?

Quote from: WarthurOnce 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.

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.

Just as you find railroading a neutral term, I think you're seeing unnecessarily harsh criticism in my words, where none is intended.

But I'm not sure I agree that "all they have to do" is use a euphamism. The GM may well not be sure if the scenario is railroading or not:

If I ran the undead scenario described above (the second one, where they show up in your town), it would probably be because

1) It fit the internal integrity of the world (your criteria for it not being a railroad)
2) Because I expect that you'll be engaged due to the threat to your town (a railroad!)

I'm not sure it's possible to run a game without thinking about what might be interesting to the players or engaging -- to be safe (to avoid any possibility of denial railroading), I think the GM would have to

1. Have *no* proactive situations -- everything in the game is a situation you can walk away from or is a direct and obvious reaction to something you've done

or
2. Vett every scenario with you prior to play:

"I'm going to run this undead game. I... have this, you know, expectation that... well, that your character might be interested. That might be a railroad."

Nothing wrong with either of those, yeah? But if any expectation of player reaction could be railroading, I think you're asking for a lot more explanation than "this is a mission based game."

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityLately, Buccaneerville on the Lawless Coast has been rocked by the power struggle between old timer Cpt. Baldric the Bald and the mysterious Zebulon and his Barque of Hooded Mages (TM). With whom will the PCs side?

Neither, it turns out. They decide on a whim that pirates are dull and make inland into the jungle for the hidden pyramid of Textjer'rteqb, which the GM had foolishly introduced as an inconsequential local color rumor.

The game is 3.x. The group plays once a month, not once a week. Given this, every night is supposed to be FUN. The decision to head for the jungle has been made 10 minutes into the game. 6 hours to go.

Question: what to do?

a) Railroad (and openly tell players as to why);

b) Waste the evening with walking PCs through boilerplate expedition prep and the statistical average of 2.79 equally boilerplate jungle encounters;

c) Shame us all by mad improv skillz... slightly hampered by equally mad flipping through assorted supplements for NPC/monsters stats (a Rakshaza would be cool in general and in a jungle in particular, but screwed if I have all its spells & abilities at my fingertips.)

With D&D 3.x, I doubt very many DMs could do anything other than (a). But I think there are ways to reduce the likelihood of being boxed in like that. Such as:

• A simpler system that makes prep and improv easier.

• A stock of pre-prepped NPCs, both average Joes and big names.

• Random encounter tables keyed by region/terrain. Remember that every encounter has a backstory, particularly if it involves humans or creatures that are outside their usual environment.

• A random dungeon system tempered by some common sense, with inspiration possibly taking over as appropriate. (I.e., you look at the random corridors, and all of the sudden it all starts to make sense, so you go with it.)

• Most important: you ask the players at the end of each session what they'll be doing NEXT session, try to get them to prep right then or via email, and then when the adventure comes, don't distract them with caveats and irrelevancies. You want them to decide on the pyramid today, and next month you set them off on the expedition (or even have them right at the gateway). No "by the way, as you're setting out, X happens" crap. The players have framed their own adventure, so give it to them.

Well, E, if you would simply Apply SMRG criteria to your situation you would realize that it is not railroading at all... provided the GM does nothing to prevent the players from reacting however they chose to the rise of the undead in the village.

they can, in fact, flee. If he puts unreasonable obstacles in their path, it's covert railroading. If he simply says 'you can't flee' then it's overt.

If you allow them to attempt to make allies of the Necromancer it's not railroading, though you don't have to let them succeed at it either. Simply not allowing them to make the attempt, or dismissing very valid arguments they may make for the alliance based simply on your distaste for the idea is railroading. Deciding the necromancer only wants perfectly obeident (eg Undead) allies and won't listen is not.  they still get to make the attempt, it's just doomed to failure for reasonable reasons.

Yes, you still need to make value judgements about reasonable opposition, but having undead rise is not inherently railroady.


On the other hand, if they had sought out and killed all the necromancers, blessed or burned all the bodies in the graveyard and otherwise taken steps to prevent any undead risings adn there was STILL an uprising... that is covert railroading, the PC's actions proved to have no affect on the course of the game.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityWhite Rabbitt, that sounds true but it's so abstract!

Using my example in post 20, what would YOU do?

Personally, I would choose your option C, but I'd rely on the fact that the PCs won't be finding the Pyramid this session, because the need to find out that it only materializes on the prime material plane when the stars are right.  Which means next session at the earliest.  And they don't even know where to go yet to find it.  So this session they need to talk to local natives, fight dino-riding spider-people, and avoid posionous snakes.

So madass improv plus some stalling.

Also, I'd never agree to run a game like that for 6 friggin' hours.  In an all-improv situation I'll be out of mojo by hour three.

Quote from: jrientsPersonally, I would choose your option C, but I'd rely on the fact that the PCs won't be finding the Pyramid this session, because the need to find out that it only materializes on the prime material plane when the stars are right.  Which means next session at the earliest.  And they don't even know where to go yet to find it.  So this session they need to talk to local natives, fight dino-riding spider-people, and avoid posionous snakes.

So madass improv plus some stalling.

Also, I'd never agree to run a game like that for 6 friggin' hours.  In an all-improv situation I'll be out of mojo by hour three.

This is fine, and so are Elliott's points. But here's the thing. I said "once a month," simply because that has been my usual gaming frequency throughout my life. But it's dawning on me how important a factor that may be re. railroading or not.

The less often you game, the less leeway for improv. In a game where players need to be reminded of the main villain's name every session you can't stall/fool around. Everything has to be tight and focused, every session has to be self-contained and rewarding by itself.

EDIT: AND every session has to be six hours, not three. No way around it.

You can't say "guys, I'm burnt out and the idea well is dry. Let's quit early"?

If my players were that demanding I'd engineer a TPK whenever I needed a break. Eventually someone else who didn't mind being pulled past the breaking point would start running games and we'd be happy all around.

Quote from: WarthurConversely, 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."

If you put it like that, then almost every player in existence is going to say, "okay," and play. I'm not saying that a GM shouldn't lay out their preferences of railroady vs open or any other game elements we can think of. I'm just saying that players may nod enthusiastically when really they don't think it's a good idea, because they want to play, they want to fit into the group. So laying it all out doesn't guarantee everyone's going to be happy.

Let's just step out of the realms of theoretical stuff and come down to the basic human reality of it. Let's take Jane. Jane gamed back in uni, but hasn't done it for a while - kind of fell out of it when she finished uni and went to work. One day she's moving house and finds all her game books. A bunch of White Wolf stuff - Jane loved the flavour fic. She sits down and looks through them and gets all nostalgic. When she's moved and settled in, those game books come out of the carboard boxes and she puts them on her shelf by her computer, says to herself, "hey, if they're where I go every day to check my email and surf the web, I might remember to do something about them." So one day she does, and goes looking to see if there are any mailing lists or message boards for gamers in her home town. There are! Awesome. She joins up, asks about games.

There's a game. She'd posted saying she wanted a game group, and some bunch of guys playing some D&D answered. They've had a player storm out because the GM, Bob, wouldn't accept the "PWN ALL" Feat that he'd found in a rubbishy d20 pdf he'd bought from some dodgy online store, they need a new player, and have a critical fumble in their pants at the thought of a female gamer. Jane is not really keen on D&D, and says, "Do you just dungeon-crawl, or could we have some angsty stuff?" GM Bob's not really sure about that, but figures he can put some in, and says so.

Then Jane arrives at the first session, loaded down with heaps of cheetos, and with a nice new box of crystal dice she's just bought. Bob says, "I had a think about the angsty stuff, I'll try to put some in. It'll still be mostly dungeon-crawl stuff, though, that's just the way I run things."

So what does Jane do? She just arrived all eager, hasn't gamed for ages. She's got a funny feeling that the gaming's not going to be the best, especially because of the way Larry, the one who always plays drowlesbianstripperninjas, is staring at her boobs. But hey, she wants to game. And she's new to the group, she doesn't want to make a fuss. Everyone tries to tone things down a bit and fit in when they're new, right? So she says, "okay, fine," and plays. If it's not perfect, she can ask the GM to change things a bit later, or the other players.

And that's the thing - when people are new to each-other, they try to fit in. So if the GM lays things out, "this is how I'll do it," then players are almost always going to agree to whatever the GM says. Because they figure,

• "Well, that sounds extreme, it can't be that extreme in play, though."
• "If it is, I can try it out, maybe I'll like it."
• "If I don't like it, I can ask the GM to change a bit, the GM will change things a bit to make players happy, won't they?"
• "Well they'll change things when they've got a player they like and know well and want to keep, anyway."
• "If the GM won't change things, maybe some of the other players won't be happy with it, and I can get them to put pressure on the GM and get them to change."
• "If the GM still won't change, maybe I could run something with these players?"
• "Anyway I am just new so I better not rock the boat, whatever they say I'll just agree to it, once I'm well-established in the game group then I can get them to try other stuff."
• "Fuck there aren't any other groups around anyway, this is sort of okay, I'll stick with it till something better comes up."

and so on and so forth. There are a zillion rationalisations people use to be not entirely honest with each-other and themselves about the sort of stuff they like in games.

Now, I'm very much in favour of people saying the stuff they like, and people trying to fit their different styles together - more often than not, differences complement, not clash. But I still recognise that communication is made imperfect by people trying to not rock the boat. So the GM or some player says, "this is the way it should be." It takes quite a bit of confidence to say, "no way!" Lots of people aren't confident enough for that.

Some might call this kind of thing cowardice. I would say, maybe, but it's also optimism and a spirit of compromise, very human decency. It's a very positive thing, really, "okay it's not perfect but I'll make an effort to get it going better."

So those are the reasons that even when the GM is entirely upfront about their preferred playstyle, people will often go along with it but still be unhappy.

For a real live example, in my own group I've made that wide-open world I described earlier - lots of interesting things are happening in this game world, and will happen with or without you, you just decide what interests you and mess around with, I'll make sure that each thing happening at least one character has a particular reason to be interested in, that event ties into your character in some way. I laid this all out for the players. They all nodded and said, "wow, such freedom, great. No, we don't want the wizard in the tower to give us missions instead." But in practice they tend to just blow shit up.

My attitude is that it's an ongoing thing. Ideally we'd have some GNS-style list of preferences we could lay out - maybe a little form to fill out with numbers - put that out there, and either match if with a campaign that already existed, or have some GM make us the ideal campaign matching those preferences. But people fudge their preferences for the reasons I've described, so that doesn't work. Also, people's preferences change - the guy who wants to kick arse and take names today wants a thespy scene tomorrow. So really a good GM and good players are going to be constantly adjusting things, trying to balance it all out. It's not, "decide where we're going, lay a course and travel in a straight line there," but more, "we'll decide generally where we're going, and find our way as we go, but maybe we'll change destinations before we get there."

I'm not saying that a GM shouldn't lay out their preferences of railroady vs open or any other game elements we can think of. I'm just saying that players may nod enthusiastically when really they don't think it's a good idea, because they want to play, they want to fit into the group. So laying it all out doesn't guarantee everyone's going to be happy.

I still think it's a good idea to try to put expectations out there before beginning play. Even if people don't use those as a screening device, it can help them understand what's going on and avoid unpleasant surprises.

Just as a for example, if I say I'm going to let the dice fall as they may, and the players should expect an occasional PC death, someone might still come in who prefers strong script immunity, but at least they're less likely to feel hurt or make a scene if their character dies. They might even use the announcement to adjust expectations and help them figure out how to have fun playing in a different way from what they're used to.