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Lorsa
2016-03-08, 06:28 AM
There are those who enjoy participationism and don't regard railroading as a problem. I recognize that. This thread is not about arguing whether or not railroading is a problem, it is stated as a premise. If you don't agree with the premise, you are still free to participate in the thread, but I am not writing this to debate that point.

In order to provide some background; I recently bought the 5e core rulebooks, and decided to pick up an adventure module as well, which ended up being "Horde of the Dragon Queen". I haven't read a written adventure in a very long time, so one could hope my eyes were fresh and untouched by prior judgement. However, it occurred to me that the only way to run the adventure was to railroad. It was even implied in the text with sentences such as "Before the characters arrive, X event must take place" (not a direct quote). What followed was also something that can best be described as a "cut-scene" where the assumption was that the PCs mainly sit and watch as an NPC talks to them.

This got me thinking about the railroading problem again, which by the many stories told, seem to be far too common around roleplaying tables across the world. Mainly, I am curious as to why it is so common, and possible also what can be done to minimize its occurrence.

Reading the adventure book, the answer to the first question seemed rather obvious. It seems as though prospective DMs simply suffer from lack of inspirational material.

A roleplaying game can not be set up like a book, or a movie, or a computer game. Yet this is the place where most people seem to draw their inspiration from. The phrase "if you want to tell a story, go write a book" is a common anti-railroading DM sentiment. But why do DMs try to write books at their table? Well, that's what they are familiar with, the source material for their creativity if you will.

This makes it doubly disappointing that written adventures follow the same railroading model, as they are the only other source available to most DMs. It appears as though the only non-railroading inspirational source is other roleplaying games where the current DM has already learnt to avoid it. Otherwise, there is really nothing.

So, can we do anything to solve this issue? Is it possible to write adventure modules that are inherently non-railroady in nature? Can the DMG offer advice or inspiration? Basically, is there a way in which we can provide inspirational material for DMs to help them construct games not as books or movies, but more fitting to the roleplaying medium?

Nobot
2016-03-08, 07:25 AM
Working on the premise that this is an issue, then I would say it's practically impossible to avoid a certain degree of railroading when using a prepared adventure. I mean, you have to give your guys/gals a gentle nudge towards what is there, right? You have to at least show them where the adventure is and try to pull them in. And then, sure, you can leave it up to them to either take the bait or not.

It's also possible to write an adventure that railroads as little as possible. This would basically come down to working out locations and perhaps a sequence of events that your players can influence or--if they choose not to participate--that culminates in a certain event that may or may not influence them. And that adventure may end up being as vague as my previous sentence, but at least it will not do too much to railroad.

So how to get GMs that can host a non-railroady adventure?

I would say that GMs that railroad do so because they want to: they are focused on their idea for the game/story. After all, GMs are no blank slates that sacrifice themselves so that others can have fun; they have expectations of their own and play the game for their own entertainment. Oftentimes (and especially with new GMs) these expectations are in the form of knowing what story they want to play. That doesn't mean they 'lack inspirational material;' it means they have a certain goal for their own entertainment.

To solve this, you'd need GMs who focus on a different part of the role-playing experience and are perhaps more interested in group dynamics, applications of rules, detailed world-building, and so on. Unfortunately for you, most GMs get into the game because they enjoy playing out the story they have in their heads. I don't think you should dismiss these people by saying 'go write a novel' as much as you should dismiss people who don't want to be railroaded by saying 'go play in a sandbox.' Over time, these guys/gals can grow to like the hobby for other reasons than just projecting their story and may become more flexible.

But it's not all GMs, though. A non-railroady adventure requires players that can deal with that freedom to be fun. And to be fair, a lot of players may complain about railroading, but are often way too laid back in the game to be able to make decisions without some sense of direction, a few gentle nudges, or even being outright told what to do.

I am fairly sure that there is a way to try to teach GMs the skills necessary to improvise and avoid railroading, but the conclusion of my story is that a lot of GMs simply do not want to (yet) because they find it less entertaining :smallsmile:

Lorr Titanscale
2016-03-08, 10:58 AM
So, can we do anything to solve this issue? Is it possible to write adventure modules that are inherently non-railroady in nature? Can the DMG offer advice or inspiration? Basically, is there a way in which we can provide inspirational material for DMs to help them construct games not as books or movies, but more fitting to the roleplaying medium?

I would say the best way to go about this would be with a published flowchart as part of the module.

While one could argue the entire idea of a module is a railroad (do THIS adventure, etc); you would need to publish a module that is not just "The Lair of the Ice Queen" or something similar.

Your module would now need to be a geographic region and a flowchart of possibilities.

So it would not be a railroad per se; but a branching series of choices that try their darnedest to second guess a typical groups' decision making.

The group comes upon a seemingly abandoned village.. there's blood in the snow and footprints to the west (Go to Pg 10); there's faint smell of something cooking to the north (go to pg 13), someone has a vision of a small girl running to the east (go to pg 16); etc.. with enough details on the buildings and what they could contain, adventure or information.. to give the group a number of hooks to bait themselves.

and perhaps the module could pontificate about what one could do if the players start really going off the page, so to speak

And each of these hooks, could lead to more hooks.. and more hooks.. until you've decided this module is full. In effect you wouldn't be publishing a module so much as publishing a bunch of related story hooks; with a loose guide for how they tie together.. so one group might wind up freeing children from a den of werewolves, only to realize the wolves are their parents.. while another group may decide to seek treasure in the lair of the ice queen (and hope they don't get turned into werewolves.. synergy); and even better is that your group now has to decide amongst themselves what to do; full well knowing there is no 'right' answer.. so now they are left with whats best for the groups dynamic; not the DM's endgame..

Sorry, back to the basic issue; I had done something similar in a DCA game; allowing for each encounter to have at least 3 possible outcomes; and each one leading to a separate follow-up encounter; or a bonus in the next encounter, or a separate entry point to next section. The players would only play thru this flowchart once, so they wouldn't know the other options; AND there is no set track of how to accomplish the advancement to the end stage (in this case, it was to free Santa Claus.. lol)

Lastly, IF you published such a module, I would defnlee include a link to a forum or other internet site; where users can collaborate on other outlandish ideas or 'monkeywrenches' they may have faced. You can't prepare for anything, but you can defnlee try; or at least give the illusion of.

Segev
2016-03-08, 11:21 AM
A certain degree of buy-in to the storyline - which can be viewed as an acceptance of railroading - is essential to any game that isn't 100% pure sandbox. And even those require just a little bit of buy-in to the notion that your PCs should at least work together well enough to share screen-time 95% of the time.

When running any sort of module - prepared, pre-written, or just some notes the DM has put together of the next arc - it requires enough buy-in from the players that they agree they want to pursue plot hooks the DM lays out.

The problematic form of railroading, then, is generally that which steps beyond assuming the players are interested in playing the game, and into the territory of denying the players the choice in how to go about it. It assumes actions or inactions on their part, or it denies them the ability to make a meaningful effort in any way, or it requires them to apply the star-shaped peg to the star-shaped hole with no means of working around it no matter how creative they are nor how well-suited other powers and talents they may have are to resolving the situation.

Prepared modules sin most greatly here with "boxed text." Too much boxed text assumes, as Lorsa notes, that the PCs are passive observers. They're not going to - and, depending on how good the DM is at improvising, not allowed to - interrupt the boxed text. It will play out.

Boxed text done right describes scenery, some quick what's-going-on-as-you-arrive details, and then lets the players react. If a speech must be given by an NPC, there should be a note to the DM as to what happens if he's interrupted, or at least clarity in the module as to what reasonably could. (Interrupting the king with an attempt to shoot him from the crowd with a fireball is going to spark a response from his guards, for example. The module should also note what security measures, if any, the king has taken for his protection while giving such a speech! Assuming PCs are going to resort to violence is probably a safe "first order derailment" contingency.)

But the main point is this: when designing modules, make sure that the situation without the PCs present is well laid-out, and that NPCs' plans and events that will happen absent player intervention is discussed. Hooks are potential ways the PCs can get involved, and advice for the most likely course of action taken by the PCs should be given, but nothing should assume they will do something.

Old pre-written dungeons had a lot of "if/then" clauses. "If the players have the Mask of Darjo from Room 67, then they can wear it here to be accepted by the robed statues as a legitimate priest of the order," or the like. It doesn't assume the players have already been to Room 67 and taken the mask; it specifies a possible action they may have taken which will alter something in the current room.

Too many modern adventures - professionally written and homebrewed - make assumptions about what the PCs will have already done. Unless those actions are essential to have gotten to the point being described, "if/then" clauses - including at least one default "if they've managed to get here without doing any of that stuff" clause to catch-all - are essential.

And one final biggie: never assume PC success or failure, unless that is specifically what brought the PCs to the current situation. And, when that's the case, it should be organic: what happens if they failed/succeeded should be known. If "failure" brings them to Subplot C, Room A, then "success" should also have a means of continuing the main module (perhaps through Subplot B). It is, however, acceptable to have success be the only way to continue an adventure...if you're okay with the adventure ending should the party fail. Be aware of whether you're okay with this or not at any given juncture! (A TPK is a good example of such a module-ending failure.)

The better a job the module does of spelling out the situation and who's doing what without the PCs' actions, and who is looking for somebody (who could be the PCs) to do something, the easier it is to run it as a non-railroad. The key, I think, is in writing the situation, rather than the solution.

JAL_1138
2016-03-08, 12:19 PM
Agreed with Segev. Some "railroading" will happen in anything but an absolutely pure sandbox with no restrictions on PVP.

Same point as Segev, just shorter, it ultimately boils down to DMs creating plots rather than situations or scenarios. A plot has a specific way it's going to work from point A to B to C. There's one (or more) planned outcome(s) that rely on an assumption of player behavior. A situation may have conditions and prerequisites, but otherwise doesn't assume, and the DM alters it as needed to account for player actions or inactions. As Segev said, Basic, 1e and several (definitely not all *cough*Dragonlance*cough*) 2e modules were usually better about presenting situations instead of plots.

Most players chafe at railroading when it prevents them from doing something they want to do or forces them to do something they don't. A more subtle form of railroading that's easier for a DM to fail to realize they've done, but that will usually result in the same player resentment, is crafting a plot when you think you're crafting a situation, such that it plays out the same as if you'd plotted it--taking away too many options or having too few acceptable solutions. Narrowing the ways a situation can be interacted with and resolved until only one way to do it (or very specific ways the players aren't thinking of) remains, so that the players feel forced to do it the DM's way or not at all.

Segev
2016-03-08, 12:42 PM
Indeed. The problem of railroading is really one of player perception. I don't mean that players perceive something that isn't there; I mean that it's a problem when players recognize it's happening and it upsets them. This usually comes about because the players want to do something and the module won't let them. Note: not the game won't let them (e.g. a wizard wanting to enter into a rage or use a flurry of blows will fail, because he doesn't have mechanics that let him do that). The module won't let them. Because the NPC is talking and won't be interrupted until his boxed text is over, or the module only allows the carborundum skull to be traded to the kobold chief for his amulet of princess-rescuing, and nothing else, and won't let the party even try to take it by force because the module demands they go get the carborundum skull and use it for this specific purpose.

When the module sets things up such that nothing but a predefined solution (or set of solutions) will work, it feels like railroading (because it usually is). It tells players that their 24 strength half-ogre barbarian can't shatter a simple wooden door because the solution requires them to find the key to unlock it, instead. Or that the door is actually adamantine, despite it making no sense for that to exist in the location it does.

The common counter-argument is, "But I don't want to just let them have whatever they suggest work! That's just happy wish-fulfillment time, and there's no accomplishment if they always succeed no matter what they try!"

That's a false dichotomy. The middle ground the GM should seek (and the module writer should try to design) is one where there are many possible solutions based on the design of the scenario, not ONLY the ones the module-writer or GM thought up when he developed the scenario.

A good warning sign is that any time you find yourself working with numbers whose values amount to "enough" - such that statting out what the PCs attempt is pointless unless they find another set of numbers that are "enough" to help them - it's probably railroading. This isn't always bad, but if it's used, it should make sense and it should be mainly used to help the players go for what they bought into when they signed up for the game.

Kol Korran
2016-03-08, 02:12 PM
Hmmmm... My playing group has for a long played with content we have made (Perhaps based in a setting, but the adventure, campaign and such were made by us), Until about 2 years ago, when I had less time due to RL (I am the GM), and so we opted to try a published Adventure Path, namely The Wrath of The Righteous by Paizo. I've made an extensive log about it, though we have recently stopped.

Part of the main reasons we stopped, was due to the railroading, and the assumptions. The party wanted to go on very divergent routes from the modules, or explore vastly different interests. There are some situations in the paths that. as mentioned, assume a very set way of solving stuff, and really give no thought, or no space to other solutions...

At this point I'd like to mention An excellent summary which Yora made some time ago, about the same subject (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303155-Task-based-adventures-and-published-adventure-modules&highlight=Paizo+modules). She sums it up quite nicely, and have an idea for an for a solution, which she called the "Task based adventures". In short, she suggests the modules would detail the setting in which the adventure takes place, a conflict/ occurrence/ which requires/ involves the PCs, and the main forces (antagonist, allies, other NPCs, entities and organizations), and their plans and resources to accomplish their goals, along with a few mentions of "If X happens, then Change Y will occur". but other than that- no set assumed actions, no harsh requirements.

Or in short- The module should detail a more contained setting, one or more conflicts, and the means of each major powers to try and achieve them. Through in the PCs, and just see what happens, and... adjust and improvise, as needed.

For example: In a small duchy, the duke has become more and more recluse since the death of his wife, and his sheriff has "taken liberties" securing the area, and is accumulating power. yet he is corrupt, and various outside forces start making advances- be them orc marauders, the "spider king" ettercap in the forest, or a new religious sect that built anew temple in one of the smaller villages, but which gains popularity, and fast.

The module describes the situation, major NPCs, major areas, and "common stat blocks" (Say... mercenaries by the sheriff, the dukes's guards, sample orc marauders, and so on...) Then, for each major force/ "mover and shaker", the module details some plans, along with "if X happens, then change Y will occur", and resources... For example- The sheriff will try to frame his major opponent on another ton for a crime, uncover the rebellious group hiding in X, and is secretly organizing the orc raids, in order for him to enforce stricter laws, and possibly be allowed to bring in mercenaries. He has such and such funds, such and such men at his disposal, such and such allies, knowledge of the secret entrances to the duke's fort, a magical item that conceals his lies, and so on... If the PCs stop the framing, he will do X, if they manage to show it is him, he may arrest them/ try to assassinate them with Y and so on...

I think this can be quite good, and some modules of other systems take a very similar approach. (For example, some Shadowrun modules). I'd highly suggest to find the Fate Core basic book, (You can find it on a "Pay what you want" basis), and read their chapter about adventure and campaign planning. It's.. .quite a different approach, and faaaar more open. (Though that may be possible due to the narrativistic style of play, and far easier ability to improvise on the spot in such a system).

two more side notes:
1. I have long been thinking about a campaign I'd like to plan and run, which will most likely be written as a very detailed task-task based module. It will take some time 9RL doesn't give me a lot of time), but I may do it here on the site- a log not of a campaign, but of campaign planning. I'll try to check for interest later).
2. I once heard a brief definition of railroading which I quite liked, here on these forums, though sadly I don't remember who wrote it: Railroading isn't saying "There is a wall there", but saying "there is a wall everywhere but there".

I am intrigued by this discussion... :smallsmile:

JAL_1138
2016-03-08, 03:58 PM
At this point I'd like to mention An excellent summary which Yora made some time ago, about the same subject. She sums it up quite nicely, and have an idea for an for a solution, which she called the "Task based adventures". In short, she suggests the modules would detail the setting in which the adventure takes place, a conflict/ occurrence/ which requires/ involves the PCs, and the main forces (antagonist, allies, other NPCs, entities and organizations), and their plans and resources to accomplish their goals, along with a few mentions of "If X happens, then Change Y will occur". but other than that- no set assumed actions, no harsh requirements.

That used to be how adventures were written, back in the day. To a large degree, Dragonlance kicked off the "story-driven" adventures with heavy plot focus. Pre-Dragonlance modules tended to be written either as straight sandboxes or in exactly the manner you're describing--set up the maps, the loose scenario (if that--many didn't do much there), the villains/opponents/enemies, the treasures, and turn you loose, with some loose guidelines of how player behavior would affect each element.

johnbragg
2016-03-08, 04:07 PM
That used to be how adventures were written, back in the day. To a large degree, Dragonlance kicked off the "story-driven" adventures with heavy plot focus. Pre-Dragonlance modules tended to be written either as straight sandboxes or in exactly the manner you're describing--set up the maps, the loose scenario (if that--many didn't do much there), the villains/opponents/enemies, the treasures, and turn you loose, with some loose guidelines of how player behavior would affect each element.

So maybe the solution is "buy really old modules from DriveThruRPG and update them to 3.5/PF/5e"?

I'm serious. I think I am, anyway.

Segev
2016-03-08, 04:24 PM
I have had a rough sketch of a campaign idea for a long while. I've run parts of it a couple of times; the only part I'm really happy with is the first module. I may try re-examining it, because I didn't approach it from a first-principles basis when I first started writing it.

Heck, since part of my problem is certain modules "in the middle" to help build the background for the endgame, maybe I'll throw it open on the forums here as a group exercise in figuring out how to do this well.

Hyooz
2016-03-08, 04:28 PM
So maybe the solution is "buy really old modules from DriveThruRPG and update them to 3.5/PF/5e"?

I'm serious. I think I am, anyway.

I don't know if you need to go that far. Just use current modules as a guideline, rather than strict tracks, and you're fine.

Things like the 'boxed text' or previously described 'cut-scenes' can be distilled down to key information instead. The players need X information - if they choose to sit and listen, the boxed text plays out as written, but maybe they do something else instead. All that's really important to the module, however, is that they get X information somehow before Y event. Any number of events A, B, and C can happen before Y, so work X information in there somewhere and then Y can happen naturally from there.

Hyooz
2016-03-08, 05:03 PM
I have had a rough sketch of a campaign idea for a long while. I've run parts of it a couple of times; the only part I'm really happy with is the first module. I may try re-examining it, because I didn't approach it from a first-principles basis when I first started writing it.

Heck, since part of my problem is certain modules "in the middle" to help build the background for the endgame, maybe I'll throw it open on the forums here as a group exercise in figuring out how to do this well.

Honestly, this is pretty typical for me as well, but I don't see it as a real problem, per se.

Imo, with these sorts of things, the beginning and end should be the most fleshed out and inclined to a bit of railroading. You want to start and end strong, and just having a vague idea of what the PCs can/should accomplish in the middle gives them the freedom to explore the story/world a bit while still having some goals in mind on your end.

The game building aspect of FATE has helped me out a lot with this too. Having a strong idea of the organizations and major players in your world, as well as their goals and motivations, helps a lot with reacting naturally to actions your players take.

So really, your problem is kind of my SOP. Have a beginning and ending planned out in a fair amount of detail, and then general modules for the middle that I can work into a lot of different scenarios that give the players what they need to get to the endgame. Not a bug, but a feature. :smallbiggrin:

JAL_1138
2016-03-08, 05:49 PM
So maybe the solution is "buy really old modules from DriveThruRPG and update them to 3.5/PF/5e"?

I'm serious. I think I am, anyway.

It's not necessary by any stretch, but there were some really great modules back in the old days that would be good to update (or just mine for material to use elsewhere), so I'd suggest doing this anyway, more because the material is good than as a solution to railroading.

Being a bit of a grognard, I'd suggest just running them in AD&D (1e or 2e largely doesn't matter for running modules--1e material needs slight updating to give enemies THAC0s if using 2e; but 2e modules can be used as-is in 1e) instead of updating to 3.PF, but that's neither here nor there :smalltongue:

Darth Ultron
2016-03-08, 06:33 PM
So, can we do anything to solve this issue? Is it possible to write adventure modules that are inherently non-railroady in nature? Can the DMG offer advice or inspiration? Basically, is there a way in which we can provide inspirational material for DMs to help them construct games not as books or movies, but more fitting to the roleplaying medium?

Railroading gets it's bad name from the extreme, it's like saying fire is bad as it can burn down a house. Yes, there are extreme jerk and extreme bad type DM that railroad ''the way'' everyone does not like, but that does not make all railroading wrong.

To have any plot or story or even ''a series of lineal events'' the PC's must be railroaded.

When writing an adventure, it's good to add the ''what if'' type things, but they are only a partial solution. After all most will only add two or three things that happen. And you'd need to do it for every action possible. And every ''what if'' possible too. You'd quickly get a tangle of ''if that happened or this did not happen, but this did and that did not..."

I think the big problem here is what the players expect from the game. Somehow, lots of players got the idea that the game should be this vague, random, thing that just, um, happens or something. And that really makes no sense.

If the DM was not ''writing a book'', what exactly would the DM do? Just make up random stuff at random? And even if the DM did that, if they wanted to add even a tiny bit of ''common sense lineal reality'', they would need to start railroading, or just stop the game.

Knaight
2016-03-08, 06:37 PM
As has been stated upthread, some limitations are necessary regardless. Every campaign requires some degree of buy-in, and even the broadest scope sandbox will have some restrictions. Hashing out the intended scope of the campaign ahead of time is probably a good idea, as is getting everyone on board with it. Things like the geographical scope of the campaign, the sorts of characters that will work for it, etc. should probably be defined. Even actions taken will generally have restrictions; there are things that PCs can't do in setting because of things like physiology, and then things that are just not what the group wants to deal with. These aren't just on the player side either - the GM is also restricted. If the group as a whole wants something that might be serious but isn't completely depressing, the GM shouldn't run a game that basically comes down to doing harm mitigation for a plague and subsequent societal collapse, with every session involving events like walling in sections of cities that have become extended leper colonies and setting them on fire. What's notable here, is that specific paths don't necessarily need to be restricted.

Modules and the like are often even more restricted. They cover smaller areas, they need to have broader appeal, so on and so forth. Again though, the specific narrative path taken by characters doesn't need to be restricted. It frequently is, because of how modules are often designed, but that's a quirk of a particular design framework. Probably the most common way of designing them is by delineating either a path or a set of branching paths that the adventure can take. There are major advantages to this - it's easy to run, it doesn't take as much GM skill and judgement as other designs, it's easy to write, it provides a common framework, etc. If branched paths aren't too railroady for you, all's well. If they are, you need another design framework.

Fortunately, there are other design frameworks. I can't do a very good job with a broad overview of what they are, as I generally don't know them that well. I'm familiar with the path and branched path because I've seen it in modules and been a player for that sort of game. I'm familiar with the concept of a sandbox as a whole because it's a pretty obvious concept. It's also an extensive category that contains a lot of different design frameworks, and of those I'm only really familiar with mine, a little method I like to call Roster-Response. It can work for modules, although not the sort that can be run on GM autopilot. So the question is, how does it work?

Roster-Response
Defining Scope
Everything I was talking about for defining the scope above? That still applies here, and is even more critical. If your game is supposed to be about members of the alchemists guild in the port city of Alhabri, then the scope is geographically limited to the port city of Alhabri (and maybe some surrounding areas), with player characters being limited to members of the alchemists guild. If it's about the crew of a space ship, then the geographical scope is probably limited to a particular collection of planets and the player characters are limited to members of a particular space ship crew. Get this established early, as in before character creation. If people are going to have a problem with a scope of the game, it's better to cancel it entirely than have it come to a crashing halt in session 4.

Assembling The Roster
The Roster is essentially a list of significant GM tools for the game. You've got your places, your people, your items, your organizations, etc. What goes here depends a lot on what sort of game you're running - it might have no specific people at all, it might only have specific people and not organizations, it might be a list of places and items more than anything else. It should also be restricted to things that are actually important. If you're running a game about espionage in the late 20th century, you don't need a list of every spy there is. The heads of major spy agencies are probably important. You don't need a list of every last spy gadget. If you're planning on involving a brief case that launches nuclear weapons, that should probably make the list. It's a judgement call as to what ends up on the roster, but there are some best practices.

Conflicts - The heart of the game is conflicts, and the easiest way to make this happen is to have entities on the roster that want different things. In an extremely simple game, you could have a roster defined with just two organizations, each of which wants the other destroyed. As a rule that's boring though, particularly for a longer campaign. Instead, build so that multiple conflicts can break out, with different stakes and different scales. There's disputes over how to handle limited resources, there's major ideological conflicts by camps that despise each other, there's disputes between people who have fairly similar goals about how to make them happen, what's worth giving up to do it, what they can justify to achieve their goals. As you build a roster, build in different tensions, and have them start with a different effect. Some tensions will be completely underlying, existing as a potential future issue but at present not presenting one. Some are already being expressed through some stage of conflict.

Activity Levels - Some organizations and individuals are more proactive than others. It's essential that some are proactive though; a completely stable status quo is a bad idea. I'll be talking about response and reaction a bit later, but it's important to have entities actively trying to do things. When building organizations or individuals, make goals that they will actively try to achieve, and give them aspects of the existing situation that they like and are going to try and preserve. The distribution of these two can vary; something like a revolutionary group is liable to be heavy on the goals, the leader of a crumbling nation might be keyed much more heavily towards preservation. When building these for different roster elements, keep in mind the value of conflicts. Set up tensions that position different agents as actors and reactors.

Roster Size - There are two traps that can be fallen into with roster size. One is having too few elements, which limits the number of responses a GM can reasonably make. The other is having a bloated roster, which tends to be a lot to manage for the GM and a bit much to remember for the players. The key thing to remember with roster size is that when adding an element to a roster, you aren't just adding one thing. You are adding a set of relations between the new element and some of the elements already in the roster, and the more relations that involves, the more complexity you add. If you have 5 faction elements, adding a 6th major faction could easily add 5 major relations. Adding an interesting individual tied to a particular faction is probably going to add 1 or 2. This is something that you'll have to work out for yourself as a GM, but a good starting point for a short campaign is something like 4 significant factions, a dozen or so listed individuals, and maybe a particularly important item or so. Be willing to tweak this though.

Involving the PCs - Part of building the roster is figuring out where the PCs fit into it. Maybe they are complete outsiders with no established ties whatsoever; even then you might want some sort of likely response thought up for different roster elements. If they're actually tied in, this gets that much more important.

Starting Conditions - There's a number of different ways to start. Once you have a roster built, you probably have everything existing in either an unstable equilibrium, or moving in a particular direction. That's not a bad place to have it, but it could use a minor change. I generally would establish a status quo (which may include some sort of ongoing change), and then give it a nice hard shove. You've got your prosperous port city, working under normal conditions. That might involve some conflicts between guards and smugglers, old school nobles who built their wealth on agriculture and emerging mercantile nobles, the different classes, religious factions, etc. Still, it has a normal conditions, and that's not necessarily interesting for PCs. So you give it a nice kick. The mayor is murdered, and everyone is grabbing at a power vacuum. Famine hits, people are trying to stay alive, discontent towards the nobility and merchant class from laborers is coming into focus, smugglers start bringing in food at outrageous prices and thus shift who their enemies are, and somewhere in this mess is the PCs.

Shocks - In addition to the elements representing things that are already in your rosters, it's worth having a class of things outside of them that can be introduced, and which have a major influence. These will come up again in the response section, but for now consider things like invasions, famine, sudden deaths of a character not caused by the shifts in the system you designed, and other such things. A GM can often handle this completely by improvisation, but for less improvisational GMs and module design you want this worked out ahead of time.

Adjudicating The Response
Response as Roster-Element Action - The obvious way to look at a response is at the level of the Roster-Element. Something changes, the element responds. These can be simple reactions, or they can be starting a proactive pursuit of some goal or other due to a change in conditions. This is one of the things you'll want to be thinking about when it comes to how your game works, particularly when the PCs do something drastic. Keep it in mind.

Response as GM Action - With that said, there are a number of different responses possible, and it's the model of response as GM action that helps you pick which, particularly once shocks get involved. The players do their thing (or sit around waffling for too long), and as a GM you choose a response. The roster elements are your tools for building that particular response, and once it's built you then cascade the changes as need be. At any given time, you'll likely be both building a new response and adjudicating changes for existing ones as they ripple through the campaign. This is your tool for working in pacing, for working in events, and for a lot else, and while it can be tempting to see yourself entirely as an adjudicator of what the setting response is, thinking of the roster as your tools for your actions can make the game stronger.

Response, not Reaction - I've been using the term response here a lot, and it's worth separating that from just systems of reactions. The response system can be reduced into the PCs doing something, those directly affected reacting, the PCs reacting to that, etc. Don't let that happen. Keep in mind the roster as your tools as a GM, and employ them actively.

Roster Change - One of the big things that can happen due to a response is that the roster changes. Existing roster elements can morph into new things, new roster elements can appear, and roster elements can be completely removed. Factions fade, individuals die, items break, places tend to be more permanent but even then can be wiped off the map. It can be tempting to resist this, to try and preserve your roster. Don't. Revel in the changes, and be entirely willing to watch your hard work come crumbling down. Heck, give it a good shove every so often.

Shocks - Shocks are one of the big tools you have as a GM for being proactive, and for building in major changes as a module designer. These are where the introduction of new elements comes in, the sudden upheavals appear, so on and so forth. You don't want to overuse them, but when the game starts getting a bit too reaction heavy, introducing a shock can help with that. Just remember that they are a roster element like any other, part of your tool box, and as such if you're doing codified adventure design you might want to have them built in.

Unused Elements - Depending on where the game goes, some roster elements won't see use or won't see much use. Others will end up cropping up over and over. This is completely fine, and shoehorning in underused elements is a mistake. With that said, if the game is feeling a bit overly simplistic, it can be an effect of the roster in use being a bit too small. So, you give that a nice shock, bring in some new elements, and keep things moving. Still, it's likely for a campaign to end and for your roster to have completely unused characters sitting on it. That's not a problem at all.

Anonymouswizard
2016-03-08, 07:31 PM
To solve this, you'd need GMs who focus on a different part of the role-playing experience and are perhaps more interested in group dynamics, applications of rules, detailed world-building, and so on.

Playing under such a GM, I can say that it can be hard to steer them back towards running the game, and not continue describing the dwarven tram system (I'm sure the fact none of us knew tracks were used in place of roads was just a coincidence). It's certainly fun, and having played under both him and a 'novel' GM (who literally had ideas for two comic series based on the game's backstories, and liked the idea of using the campaign to complete the 'trilogy'), I can say that the stories from the first were just more engaging. In his homebrew worlds we players at least have a decent idea of where powers come from and what to expect, rather than the 'anything goes' from the second meant that making plans could be a waste of time.

I think the difference is that one went in with a plot for the story, and the other with a plot for the characters. As in, the entire story in my current game (with GM #1, who I met later) is about the PCs stumbling around trying to deal with two unconnected but related plots, and the GM always has useful stuff for us to do even if the game goes completely off the rails, which has made us engaged enough with the plot to follow the rails. In the campaign I was in with #2 I never really felt like my characters fit in (as I'm not really into Marvel/DC style superheroes), and the plot seemed to focus much more around what the villains had already done rather than what the PCs were doing. It was enjoyable, but it got annoying when overpowered versions of the villains (he admitted up front that they were more powerful than in his planned final battle) were used to have us thrown into the afterlife just so that we wouldn't be around to see the villains crush our organisation (now wouldn't that have been a cooler game?). Oh, and the complaining whenever we took too long to go to the obvious plot points was grating, I just wanted to have some fun that session and explore the gloomy extradimenionsal town for a bit, but no, we had to go and fight the bad guy in the central tower. At least GM #1 is nice enough to let us search for most of the tasty tasty plot, making it all the more enjoyable when we finally catch some guys to question (it took like 10 weeks to get some lowly minions! Partially because we spent like 7 weeks without more than a round of combat happening in total).

My solution has been to learn to improvise, but I've run into the opposite problem where I present the situation and the players whine about the lack of plot (and I suppose a bunch of zombies appearing in London is an everyday occurrence?), and so have had to try and relearn railroading.

goto124
2016-03-08, 08:42 PM
Things like the 'boxed text' or previously described 'cut-scenes' can be distilled down to key information instead. The players need X information - if they choose to sit and listen, the boxed text plays out as written, but maybe they do something else instead.

Which makes me wonder why the DM doesn't just distill the information.

Or why the players are so impatient as to not listen to the information.

Or why the story is so boring the players won't even stop for a moment to listen.

Segev
2016-03-08, 08:45 PM
Which makes me wonder why the DM doesn't just distill the information.

Or why the players are so impatient as to not listen to the information.

Or why the story is so boring the players won't even stop for a moment to listen.

Usually, the complaint about railroading during boxed text has more to do with the PCs having reason to act within the middle of it. For instance, if they feel that person needs to be silenced or stopped, or if the boxed text includes actions being taken with which they would like to interfere.

Anonymouswizard
2016-03-08, 09:23 PM
Which makes me wonder why the DM doesn't just distill the information.

Or why the players are so impatient as to not listen to the information.

Or why the story is so boring the players won't even stop for a moment to listen.

Because an entertaining monologue is hard. It's much easier to keep people entertained if two people are talking. The general idea with IC discussions is to keep players attention, and if I can't use replies I've thought up I'll tend to not pay attention.

The main reason I can see for distilling information is to deliver it in a discussion instead of a speech, so that the players still feel like there's agency.

JoeJ
2016-03-08, 11:40 PM
At this point I'd like to mention An excellent summary which Yora made some time ago, about the same subject (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303155-Task-based-adventures-and-published-adventure-modules&highlight=Paizo+modules). She sums it up quite nicely, and have an idea for an for a solution, which she called the "Task based adventures". In short, she suggests the modules would detail the setting in which the adventure takes place, a conflict/ occurrence/ which requires/ involves the PCs, and the main forces (antagonist, allies, other NPCs, entities and organizations), and their plans and resources to accomplish their goals, along with a few mentions of "If X happens, then Change Y will occur". but other than that- no set assumed actions, no harsh requirements.

One place where I have seen this done is in superhero RPGs. Quite a few of the published adventures I've seen, in several game systems, give you the villains' goals, resources, plans, and timeline, and leave the PCs free to deal with it however they choose.

Knaight
2016-03-09, 01:12 AM
Usually, the complaint about railroading during boxed text has more to do with the PCs having reason to act within the middle of it. For instance, if they feel that person needs to be silenced or stopped, or if the boxed text includes actions being taken with which they would like to interfere.

There's also the matter of how module box text tends to suck.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-09, 04:56 AM
I could expound at great lengths on how I personally avoid railroads while simultaneously maintaining plot, but it honestly depends on the system I'm playing and the feel I'm going for. But I can give some ideas:

Look into Stars Without Number and its Faction/GM Turn section. It's a free PDF, so there isn't any cost except time cost. The GM Turn is handy for creating large-scale worlds with many factions that are in conflict. It is incredibly portable and can easily be reskinned to fit most settings. It takes a bit of homebrewing, but who hasn't tweaked a few things and/or slapped on some new names?

For small-scale problems I typically use a system similar to Apocalypse World's Fronts. Basically, each Front is made of multiple Threats. Each Threat has a cast of characters, a dark ambition/future and a countdown clock that moves closer to zero either over time generally or according to triggering events. (Even other countdown clocks reaching certain stages)

These systems are both potentially influenced by PC actions. In the former, if the PCs become powerful enough they may actually PARTICIPATE in the GM Turn and guide their faction. Until then, their influence will be relatively small.
In the latter, the PCs have much greater influence over the results of the countdown clocks, and their actions will probably make it necessary to change/remove/add countdown clocks pretty regularly. (Which is why you always have so many. To make sure that something, somewhere, is on the verge of collapse and ruination. )

Otherwise, my usual advice is to treat the whole world like an NPC. Think about what's happening off-screen. (Basically, imagine what the villain is doing while the PCs are farting around in the dungeon. Imagine what the Hightower Pirate Fleet is plotting. Imagine what corruption Gritch is whispering into precious Margo's beautiful ears. Think about these things and put the signs of the coming storm into the sky. Put the darkness in their hands in little ways. "You find a necklace in the mud. It has blood on it."
"The dirt is freshly dug off the side of the road. It smells of smoke and burning fat."
"You knock on Margo's door. No one answers."

Also, generally speaking, describe weird details to your players. It weirds them out and puts them off balance. Zoom in on pointless details. Like...
"So you grab him from behind, and as you wrench his neck sharply to the side, you feel his last breath hit your fingertips. It strikes you that even though he had stubble, his lips were very soft."

"The photos on the pinboard are held up with novelty pins with little pictures from cities on the heads. A Las Vegas one, a Cincinatti one, etcetera. One of them, though, the head broke off at some point."

Both of those are weird little details to throw into the general description. Do it sparingly, but at least once or twice per session. Just watch how they react to just slightly more detail than necessary. It's a fun time.

Ravens_cry
2016-03-09, 05:44 AM
One of the best, though hardest, solutions, to pre-written module railroading is have the forced decisions be things that the players want. Taking a trip is a lot better if you like the destination. Of course, this requires a keen ear for player desire and a healthy round of playtesting to make sure that you're not just navel gazing.
Also, take cues from games like the Telltale Walking Dead games in that most choices are really side routes that all take you back to the same place.
Little changes as well as big ones are also important, like having someone you saved run into you and hale you as their rescuer instead of a family member or loved one mournfully wishing you could have done more but ultimately admitting you did your best. Not every choice has to Change Everything! in some world shattering way.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-09, 06:55 AM
I tend to avoid solutions offered by videogames except to novice GMs or those who are really bad at improv.

The reason why isn't because they're bad solutions per se, they're good solutions. The thing about it is, they are good solutions for VIDEOGAMES, where all possibilities within the game must be made ahead of time, and the game has no ability to improvise new situations. Tabletop games don't necessarily fall into these traps, so we are able to use different (and better) solutions because we have the power of imagination, which the computer lacks.

But again, for those of us with less experience, these are good starter solutions to build yourself up to the harder, but way cooler stuff. I'm saying this as someone who used to use a lot of the simple solutions talked about, and now after 13 years as perma-GM (I had an 8 year period of never being a Player even once in the middle there) I've expanded my bag of tools. It's a skill. Practice, try new things, don't be afraid to make dumb decisions and apologize for them later. Just let your players know you'll be trying something new, and to expect hiccups and oddities.

JAL_1138
2016-03-09, 07:58 AM
One thing you can do with modules is to mine them for material instead of run them. Ignore the module plot and just pilfer the maps, treasures, NPC stats, enemy encounters, and suchlike. Use them--several at once, usually--to cut down on your prep time for your own game. Ready-made maps and encounters are a godsend to a lazy DM like myself. They can really take a lot of work off you, and help you improvise quickly. Then, instead of running a defined plot, figure out the setup for the game, the setting for the game, the antagonists and their motives, and go largely session-by-session. Don't plan an ending, or be willing to scrap it if you do. Adjust the game as you go.

Have a few different hooks, different things going on, that the PCs could get involved in, and follow what they latch onto instead of herding them toward a specific planned adventure. Allow the players to go places you haven't planned for--you can call a short break and use bits and pieces of modules to give you quick session material if they've gone completely off from what you prepped. If you had an area worked out that they've skipped, for example a small town, you can file the proverbial serial numbers off and use that material later on in the campaign (or even in another campaign later) in another town or city to cut down prep time. It's important to tweak it so as to not have a "quantum ogre" scenario, and to use it in a place it could logically go without forcing the players into it, but done right you can still reuse prior prepwork without anyone noticing. After the session, figure out how the various factions and locations would respond to the player actions during the session, as in Knaight's method, and build the next session from there. Don't get too far out ahead of the players.

It's less work --and also less open in some ways since less is designed and available for the PCs from the start--than a "real" sandbox game, but since you're not defining a "plot" ahead of time and can fairly easily allow the players to do what they want or skip content or go where you didn't expect, it can still carry a lot of the same open-ended feel.

Beleriphon
2016-03-09, 09:06 AM
There are those who enjoy participationism and don't regard railroading as a problem. I recognize that. This thread is not about arguing whether or not railroading is a problem, it is stated as a premise. If you don't agree with the premise, you are still free to participate in the thread, but I am not writing this to debate that point.

In order to provide some background; I recently bought the 5e core rulebooks, and decided to pick up an adventure module as well, which ended up being "Horde of the Dragon Queen". I haven't read a written adventure in a very long time, so one could hope my eyes were fresh and untouched by prior judgement. However, it occurred to me that the only way to run the adventure was to railroad. It was even implied in the text with sentences such as "Before the characters arrive, X event must take place" (not a direct quote). What followed was also something that can best be described as a "cut-scene" where the assumption was that the PCs mainly sit and watch as an NPC talks to them.

It is a bit railroady but I think the issue you're having is that the adventure is designed as series of site based adventures that require previous sites be dealt with before the next opens up. For the most part players can deal with each site as they see fit. There adventure evens goes to some length to try and explain why the characters are the only ones capable of dealing with the threat. There are problems with Horde of the Dragon Queen, but the structure is probably the least of them.

Most of the WotC adventure paths thus far are best viewed as a series of gated scenarios where completing one scenario opens up the next. After a fashion they're really just a bunch of individual adventures linked by a common story.


This got me thinking about the railroading problem again, which by the many stories told, seem to be far too common around roleplaying tables across the world. Mainly, I am curious as to why it is so common, and possible also what can be done to minimize its occurrence.

Reading the adventure book, the answer to the first question seemed rather obvious. It seems as though prospective DMs simply suffer from lack of inspirational material.

A roleplaying game can not be set up like a book, or a movie, or a computer game. Yet this is the place where most people seem to draw their inspiration from. The phrase "if you want to tell a story, go write a book" is a common anti-railroading DM sentiment. But why do DMs try to write books at their table? Well, that's what they are familiar with, the source material for their creativity if you will.

This makes it doubly disappointing that written adventures follow the same railroading model, as they are the only other source available to most DMs. It appears as though the only non-railroading inspirational source is other roleplaying games where the current DM has already learnt to avoid it. Otherwise, there is really nothing.

So, can we do anything to solve this issue? Is it possible to write adventure modules that are inherently non-railroady in nature? Can the DMG offer advice or inspiration? Basically, is there a way in which we can provide inspirational material for DMs to help them construct games not as books or movies, but more fitting to the roleplaying medium?

Is there a way to stop railroads? Sure stop building them, but that isn't really good advice. Nor is it strictly necessary in my view. The worst railroads are the ones where the GM wont the players try anything different. But a published adventure needs to have structure which can look a lot like a railroad. Some are better at providing this structure then others, but there needs to be some kind of structure to make an adventure function. The players always need to do at least some of A, B or C to get to X, Y and Z, the only difference is how well that requirement is hidden by offering a variety of goals to be completed as gates to the next part.

To be completely devoid of railroad tends to lead to action paralysis since most players want some kind of clear goal, even if that goal is just go kill stuff in the Mountains of Madness.

Lorr Titanscale
2016-03-09, 09:11 AM
One thing you can do with modules is to mine them for material instead of run them.

This is a really good piece of advice, IMHO. Your players, either on purpose or by accident, will eventually 'break' the module (let's throw the prince in the river!).

You defnlee need contingencies in place; but they shouldn't ignore any changes caused by the players; but embrace them.


Though that's not the point I wanted to add, just wanted to comment on JAL's advice.


As a player and GM/DM; I've seen the video-gamer attitude become more and more prevalent amongst players.. I think defeating this outlook; or at least, massaging it away is intrinsically linked to the Railroad problem. Because if players just want a game where Key A opens Door A; kill all monsters and get loot; and that's all they are conditioned to expect.. railroading is the inevitable follow-up.. and they'll avoid instances of choice and just wait for the DM to tell them where to go so they can roll dice more.

And that's kinda not the point to the whole RP aspect of RPG's..

So yeah, a player who 'video-games' might be part of the source of the railroad problem.. and they might need a little more encouragement towards acting in-character, but once they see that an RPG is more then just smacking things with their sword, or cane, or axe.. but that they can influence the world around them with their words and non-violent actions; woo boy.. we're off to the races..

and of course, this requires the GM/DM to use NPC's as more than just 'Text Box Dispensers'; but movable pieces of the plot.

Lorsa
2016-03-09, 10:14 AM
Lots of posts, which is good! I will try to reply a little to most, but don't be sad if you are left out.


The better a job the module does of spelling out the situation and who's doing what without the PCs' actions, and who is looking for somebody (who could be the PCs) to do something, the easier it is to run it as a non-railroad. The key, I think, is in writing the situation, rather than the solution.

So why isn't this "the standard"? Many DMs follow the concept of official adventures and write situation+solution+next situation+event-to-take-place-to-give-plot-hook+solution etc. My assertion was that it boils down to a lack of inspirational material, but how come official adventures fall into this trap as well? Is there a reason why modules are inherently railroady?



Most players chafe at railroading when it prevents them from doing something they want to do or forces them to do something they don't. A more subtle form of railroading that's easier for a DM to fail to realize they've done, but that will usually result in the same player resentment, is crafting a plot when you think you're crafting a situation, such that it plays out the same as if you'd plotted it--taking away too many options or having too few acceptable solutions. Narrowing the ways a situation can be interacted with and resolved until only one way to do it (or very specific ways the players aren't thinking of) remains, so that the players feel forced to do it the DM's way or not at all.

Why is it so easy to tall into this trap you think? What can be done to help DMs avoid it?



When the module sets things up such that nothing but a predefined solution (or set of solutions) will work, it feels like railroading (because it usually is). It tells players that their 24 strength half-ogre barbarian can't shatter a simple wooden door because the solution requires them to find the key to unlock it, instead. Or that the door is actually adamantine, despite it making no sense for that to exist in the location it does.

The common counter-argument is, "But I don't want to just let them have whatever they suggest work! That's just happy wish-fulfillment time, and there's no accomplishment if they always succeed no matter what they try!"

That's a false dichotomy. The middle ground the GM should seek (and the module writer should try to design) is one where there are many possible solutions based on the design of the scenario, not ONLY the ones the module-writer or GM thought up when he developed the scenario.

A good description of why one (the?) counter-argument to railroading doesn't hold up. The question then is; since this is so obvious, how come railroading is so common?



Part of the main reasons we stopped, was due to the railroading, and the assumptions. The party wanted to go on very divergent routes from the modules, or explore vastly different interests. There are some situations in the paths that. as mentioned, assume a very set way of solving stuff, and really give no thought, or no space to other solutions...

This is also the reason why I have avoided pre-written adventures for the most part of my roleplaying career. I have occasionally used dungeons created by others, but that is another story I find.


Or in short- The module should detail a more contained setting, one or more conflicts, and the means of each major powers to try and achieve them. Through in the PCs, and just see what happens, and... adjust and improvise, as needed.

For example: In a small duchy, the duke has become more and more recluse since the death of his wife, and his sheriff has "taken liberties" securing the area, and is accumulating power. yet he is corrupt, and various outside forces start making advances- be them orc marauders, the "spider king" ettercap in the forest, or a new religious sect that built anew temple in one of the smaller villages, but which gains popularity, and fast.

The module describes the situation, major NPCs, major areas, and "common stat blocks" (Say... mercenaries by the sheriff, the dukes's guards, sample orc marauders, and so on...) Then, for each major force/ "mover and shaker", the module details some plans, along with "if X happens, then change Y will occur", and resources... For example- The sheriff will try to frame his major opponent on another ton for a crime, uncover the rebellious group hiding in X, and is secretly organizing the orc raids, in order for him to enforce stricter laws, and possibly be allowed to bring in mercenaries. He has such and such funds, such and such men at his disposal, such and such allies, knowledge of the secret entrances to the duke's fort, a magical item that conceals his lies, and so on... If the PCs stop the framing, he will do X, if they manage to show it is him, he may arrest them/ try to assassinate them with Y and so on...

I think this can be quite good, and some modules of other systems take a very similar approach. (For example, some Shadowrun modules). I'd highly suggest to find the Fate Core basic book, (You can find it on a "Pay what you want" basis), and read their chapter about adventure and campaign planning. It's.. .quite a different approach, and faaaar more open. (Though that may be possible due to the narrativistic style of play, and far easier ability to improvise on the spot in such a system).

This is exactly what I'd like to get out of a module as well, and how I would write one myself. But I still haven't really found the answer to the question; why aren't they written this way?



That used to be how adventures were written, back in the day. To a large degree, Dragonlance kicked off the "story-driven" adventures with heavy plot focus. Pre-Dragonlance modules tended to be written either as straight sandboxes or in exactly the manner you're describing--set up the maps, the loose scenario (if that--many didn't do much there), the villains/opponents/enemies, the treasures, and turn you loose, with some loose guidelines of how player behavior would affect each element.

So if that is how things used to be, how come it stopped?



Railroading gets it's bad name from the extreme, it's like saying fire is bad as it can burn down a house. Yes, there are extreme jerk and extreme bad type DM that railroad ''the way'' everyone does not like, but that does not make all railroading wrong.

To have any plot or story or even ''a series of lineal events'' the PC's must be railroaded.

When writing an adventure, it's good to add the ''what if'' type things, but they are only a partial solution. After all most will only add two or three things that happen. And you'd need to do it for every action possible. And every ''what if'' possible too. You'd quickly get a tangle of ''if that happened or this did not happen, but this did and that did not..."

I think the big problem here is what the players expect from the game. Somehow, lots of players got the idea that the game should be this vague, random, thing that just, um, happens or something. And that really makes no sense.

If the DM was not ''writing a book'', what exactly would the DM do? Just make up random stuff at random? And even if the DM did that, if they wanted to add even a tiny bit of ''common sense lineal reality'', they would need to start railroading, or just stop the game.

I believe I have seen this argument form you before, and it seems to me that you suffer from exactly the very problem I described in my first post. You can't imagine how a roleplaying game could be different from a book, simply because you haven't seen it.

It is true that in order to have a series of pre-defined linear events, you must railroad. However, ALL events will appear linear when viewed in retrospect, so the question comes down to if you want them to be pre-defined or not.

What the DM is to do instead of writing a book? Running the world. Coming up with situations that happens to the characters at the place they are located right now (as apart from where the DM wants them to be in the future).

The roleplaying medium is unique in the sense that it allows changes to the events that takes place based on all participants, instead of just the author. If you take away this uniqueness, it is actually worse than books, movies or video games, which are much better at conveying pre-written stories.

Common sense comes from ascribing plausible consequences to the players' actions, not from controlling them.



Fortunately, there are other design frameworks. I can't do a very good job with a broad overview of what they are, as I generally don't know them that well. I'm familiar with the path and branched path because I've seen it in modules and been a player for that sort of game. I'm familiar with the concept of a sandbox as a whole because it's a pretty obvious concept. It's also an extensive category that contains a lot of different design frameworks, and of those I'm only really familiar with mine, a little method I like to call Roster-Response. It can work for modules, although not the sort that can be run on GM autopilot. So the question is, how does it work?

Roster-Response

How do we get DMs to get in contact with these other design frameworks? Can we make them more easily available somehow?



Which makes me wonder why the DM doesn't just distill the information.

Or why the players are so impatient as to not listen to the information.

Or why the story is so boring the players won't even stop for a moment to listen.

Many of these "boxes" includes actions taken by NPCs other than talking. For example, in the Horde of the Dragon Queen, one NPC comes up to the characters, sticks her dagger into their food plates, stirs around and takes up some root? that is used as poison. After this, she explains this was put there by a group the characters are watching and how they (the characters) should come and speak with her. Problem is that it assumes a lot of things from the players, starting with them eating breakfast at all, to allowing an unfamiliar person to stir around in their food uninterrupted. So the choices you are limited to as a DM are; describe the events fast enough for the players to have no chance to react, have the NPC cast Mass Hold Person or something if they try to act, or simply tell the players "you can't do that".

It's not about players being impatient, as it's about it being logical for them to act.



I could expound at great lengths on how I personally avoid railroads while simultaneously maintaining plot, but it honestly depends on the system I'm playing and the feel I'm going for. But I can give some ideas:

How did you learn how to avoid railroads? Did you have any experience with a prior DM who also did such, or did you have to come up with it yourself? Would you say it was natural to you, or did you learn it over many years?


I tend to avoid solutions offered by videogames except to novice GMs or those who are really bad at improv.

Agreed. Video game solutions don't need to be applied to a medium that can skip or bypass the problem entirely.

JAL_1138
2016-03-09, 11:30 AM
Why is it so easy to tall into this trap you think? What can be done to help DMs avoid it?


I'm not sure why it happens so often. Usually because of trying to design something to play out a particular way because you think it'll be cool, or good for the story, or because it'll help move the campaign a certain direction, or because you want to use a certain encounter in certain terrain. To avoid it, be aware of it, and let things the players suggest work if they're at all reasonable instead of trying to force it to go how you'd planned.

Brief anecdote: I had an orc encampment set in a canyon in some cliffs. I meant for it to be a tough fight. There's really just one way in or out, other than rappelling down the cliffs (which would result in getting picked off by archers). The Fighter says he looks up at the cliffs to see if there's a dead pine tree. I think for a minute and agree that there would probably be one, but I don't know where he's going with it. So he climbs the cliffs (passes the check), chops the tree down, pushes it so it falls right into the middle of the encampment (passes the Str check). Then he throws a lit flask of oil onto it. If you've ever seen a dead pine tree catch fire, they go up like they're made of some innovative solid form of kerosene. The camp could have survived a Fireball or Burning Hands because those are fairly brief sources of flame--bits of it may have smoldered but things wouldn't have gone up in an inferno. But with a large burning pine tree in the middle of it, the camp is set ablaze. Due to the fire, the orcs try to leave out of the narrow entrance to the canyon, can't see well due to the smoke, are taking damage from the fire and smoke, and the fight is more of a massacre by the PCs than the tough fight I intended.




So if that is how things used to be, how come it stopped?


Lots of reasons. A few might be:

Partly because of Dragonlance. Dragonlance was really innovative at the time--published modules had never really had such a tight story focus before, even if the Dragonlance adventures were quite railroady. And they sold, and sold quite well. So that style of module-writing spread to other properties to cash in, and story-driven, linear modules became more of a thing. Epic stories replaced epic locations.

Also because it's easier to write linearly in some respects. You have to take fewer contingencies into account, and you can determine how the story goes much more than you can with an open-ended one. When trying to "write a module," most people seem to naturally think in terms of an overarching story to tie it together instead of having a bunch of maps and enemy stats.

It's easier to sell, in some ways--you need less experience to run a linear module than to run an open-ended one, and you can pitch it as an epic story of plot twists and betrayals and triumphs and such instead of "a new area to explore."

New, inexperienced DMs--who you need to reach to sell products--may have craved more guidance and structure than the old modules gave.

And because the old module-writers who wrote the more open-ended ones gradually shifted out and were replaced.

EDIT: Organized play is also a factor. To maintain setting consistency for multiple groups, events largely have to flow from one to another A to B to C, so that one character didn't end up defeating the BBEG in the second adventure of Season 1 while another didn't, and one table to have thwarted the plan to destroy the city when Season 2 is written on the assumption it's been destroyed.

CharonsHelper
2016-03-09, 11:40 AM
Some amount of railroading is inherent in a pre-written adventure path. However, I have wondered if you could make a linked campaign which is less railroad-y with a sufficient library of modules.

If any of you have played PFS - you know that it is based around dozens of modules - maybe hundreds by now - which you can play. Each one is for a decent level spread (1-5/1-7/5-9 etc.) and have at least 2-3 difficulties of play based around the level of the participants. So, for a 1-5 module, there's a level 4-5 version, and a level 1-2 version where the enemies are weaker, and perception DCs are lower etc. If the group averages level 3, they vote to play 'down' for safety or 'up' for more risk/treasure. This means that at any level, there are a good chunk of potential module options to choose from.

Now - each module is a bit railroad-y. You are basically part of an adventuring guild, and they're set up like Mission Impossible episodes - "This module, if you choose to accept it...". It works pretty well for random PCs playing together.

However, I've wondered whether they, or modules like them, could be linked in a sort of pick-a-path style for home games. Where, at the end of your current module, the GM - within the campaign through NPCs etc. - tells you about potential adventure hooks you can choose, and that dictates which module the GM prepares for the next session. Would that still be too railroad-y?

JAL_1138
2016-03-09, 12:11 PM
Some amount of railroading is inherent in a pre-written adventure path. However, I have wondered if you could make a linked campaign which is less railroad-y with a sufficient library of modules.

If any of you have played PFS - you know that it is based around dozens of modules - maybe hundreds by now - which you can play. Each one is for a decent level spread (1-5/1-7/5-9 etc.) and have at least 2-3 difficulties of play based around the level of the participants. So, for a 1-5 module, there's a level 4-5 version, and a level 1-2 version where the enemies are weaker, and perception DCs are lower etc. If the group averages level 3, they vote to play 'down' for safety or 'up' for more risk/treasure. This means that at any level, there are a good chunk of potential module options to choose from.

Now - each module is a bit railroad-y. You are basically part of an adventuring guild, and they're set up like Mission Impossible episodes - "This module, if you choose to accept it...". It works pretty well for random PCs playing together.

However, I've wondered whether they, or modules like them, could be linked in a sort of pick-a-path style for home games. Where, at the end of your current module, the GM - within the campaign through NPCs etc. - tells you about potential adventure hooks you can choose, and that dictates which module the GM prepares for the next session. Would that still be too railroad-y?

I do that to some degree in my games (using 5e material instead of PF), although not so strictly, and I don't often adhere to the "story" of each module, adjusting the adventure hooks and NPC behavior and setting to fit my game and my players' actions. But I steal the maps and encounters liberally, and occasionally some of the NPCs and initial setup for adventure hooks. I also steal the encounters in 5e adventurers' league modules to replace ones in material I've stolen from 2e modules and don't want to rework from scratch.

If you want to stick closer to the modules, then I'd say don't run them quite as-is, instead be willing to run them in a more open-ended way than they're written (which will very likely mean you'll need to pull stuff from other modules and/or wing it a fair bit to kitbash the session together when the players jump the module's rails), and they can potentially work fine.

Segev
2016-03-09, 12:41 PM
There's also the matter of how module box text tends to suck.That's really independent of whether they're railroading or not. So it's a separate complaint entirely.


So why isn't this "the standard"? Many DMs follow the concept of official adventures and write situation+solution+next situation+event-to-take-place-to-give-plot-hook+solution etc. My assertion was that it boils down to a lack of inspirational material, but how come official adventures fall into this trap as well? Is there a reason why modules are inherently railroady?Other posts have answered the marketing reasons for this. The reason, I think, also comes down to the same problem you pointed out in your OP: people have novels and movies and video games as examples of what they think they're emulating in a TTRPG. Of these, the first two are inherently railroads by design: the reader is a passive observer of decisions made by characters controlled entirely by the author. Video games, meanwhile, are going to have railroad elements that are inescapable because everything must be pre-programmed. If there's going to be story, only a finite number of story outcomes and events can possibly happen. And each one accounted for takes more development time. It may increase replay value, but when people oft complain about single-play-through time being too short...

So, when the new guy is hired to write a module for the TTRPG his employer is publishing, he thinks of a cool story, first. He may have an understanding that he can't know the PCs, but he still conceptualizes a party with motivations in a general cluster of possibilities, with goals he simply assumes they'll be motivated to perform, with the plot mostly being a series of pass/fail challenges. Pass the challenge to continue to the next plot point (see, again, many cRPGs, particularly FF games).

It is an entirely different design philosophy to creative writing to build a world, build NPCs with goals and plans and resources, and then...let somebody else decide how to work with or against them. And it's a balancing act, too; some amount of the "cRPG mindset" is needed in TTRPGs: the quest-givers need to have reason to seek out and interact with the PCs. The hooks need to be there.

The unavoidable part of railroading extends to the hooks: some amount of buy-in from the players, accepting that yes, they WILL at least be interested in the conflict(s) present in the game, is necessary, or they'll wind up sitting in the tavern all day. (Fortunately, if you're creative, you can provide a few varieties of hooks through various potential side-quests that all eventually lead to interacting with the plot elements to resolve them.)

But the "plot" is not "this event, this resolution, the PCs do this." Not as written in the module. The "plot" in this mindset has to center around what will happen without the PCs, and a series of hooks for how the PCs might become interested and who might care about their involvement. And that's very difficult to write without assuming things about the PCs, because it means a lot of your hooks go unused in any particular game, which makes the adventure seem shallower/shorter to those who are just paging through it looking for how long a game they can get out of it.



Why is it so easy to tall into this trap you think? What can be done to help DMs avoid it?Mainly, it's easy to fall into because the DM has one or more solutions he thought of as "possibilities," and then thinks anything else doesn't sound plausible. So, rather than exploring it with the players, he just says, "nope, that couldn't possibly work." To his conscious thought process, he's not dictating the "only solution," because he'll accept anything "that could work."

The only way to help a GM is through advice, and the best advice for avoiding this, I think, is to stat out your challenges ahead of time. Don't think in terms of what they're to prevent. Or, if you do, think in those terms as what the NPCs involved would seek to prevent, and HOW they'd go about preventing it. Keep in mind reasonable resource limits for the NPCs in question. Then, let players try things. Don't just say, "that's impossible," unless they are literally trying to do things the rules of the game won't let them try (e.g. a 1st level fighter declaring that he casts fly and floats across a chasm). Thinking of complications is fine, but don't do it in the adversarial, "This will stop you," way. Just be aware of what you've pre-determined is out there. Then let it play out. You may well be surprised.

One example we've seen in this thread is a GM who had an orc encampment. The fighter asked if there was a dead pine tree; the DM could have gone into "suspicious" mode, or into "railroad" mode, and refused to allow for that extraneous detail. He may even have had good reason to. But he didn't; he allowed it, as he thought it reasonable to be there. And that led to an entirely different encounter than what he'd planned. He avoided the trap of one true solutionism disguising itself as "anything, except everything but this."



A good description of why one (the?) counter-argument to railroading doesn't hold up. The question then is; since this is so obvious, how come railroading is so common?Because people think in terms of plots. Even when they consciously recognize that PCs will do unexpected things, they have a mental model of a PC or party thereof, and expect them to do certain things.

In the case of those boxed texts, such as the one where an NPC stirs poison into the PCs' breakfasts right in front of them, the writer probably thought it was a cool scene to characterize the NPC. It never occurred to him that the PCs might object during a cut-scene. Because the protagonists he pictured didn't.

Railroading in boxed text and in modules in general usually falls into the video game category: the motives and actions of the PCs are conceived of as constrained, because the writer has a plot in mind and forgets that PCs may not go along with every detail he puts forth.

It may also be that a lot of module writers are hired after being novelists. I don't know that for sure, but it is a definite skill set that seems reasonable to draw from if you don't appreciate how the media differ.

For GMs, the problem is that they have a story in mind, and anywhere that story could be "broken" by the PCs, they'll have a tendency to be blindsided (when it never even occurred to them the PCs would object/act differently), or to try to "force" it. IF they're aware of railroading but falling for the above trap, they'll think something along the lines of, "Well, this HAS to happen for plot reasons, so I'll just set things up so that nothing can prevent it. Then, it's not railroading; things are just that way." This can work. But must be done sparingly...and often isn't. Because knowing how and when to do it is a skill, and it takes practice.






How do we get DMs to get in contact with these other design frameworks? Can we make them more easily available somehow?No idea. It would probably require a series of well-written and highly-proliferated modules of this design in the system(s) most popular and common.

Perhaps the GitP community could put together some 5e and 3.5/PF modules designed in this fashion, and try to disseminate them?

Knaight
2016-03-09, 12:52 PM
How do we get DMs to get in contact with these other design frameworks? Can we make them more easily available somehow?

We absolutely could, it's just that there's a lot of work involved. At the very least you'd need well written standalone articles, but then you'd need to embed them in something, so you'd also need a game that goes with them, or a successful blog, or just a whole bunch of these articles bundled together. You might be able to get away with just having a module, but even that's a pretty significant project. You'd need some sort of way of getting your larger scale work into the hands of a lot of people. It's doable, but it's not easy.

I like my Roster-Response method; it's suited me very well, I've explained it before; I honestly consider it among the best conceptual design work I've done. Even with that level of investment, I'm still blanching at the idea of the work. So, the only ways Roster-Response would ever get published would be either someone else liking it enough to do all the work after getting the information from me (not likely), or someone else coming up with the same idea and then publishing it (significantly more likely), or someone taking someone else's same idea and publishing it (I'm really not liking these odds). The same issue is going to exist for most models GMs have built for themselves.

Amphetryon
2016-03-09, 01:36 PM
Also, generally speaking, describe weird details to your players. It weirds them out and puts them off balance. Zoom in on pointless details. Like...
"So you grab him from behind, and as you wrench his neck sharply to the side, you feel his last breath hit your fingertips. It strikes you that even though he had stubble, his lips were very soft."

"The photos on the pinboard are held up with novelty pins with little pictures from cities on the heads. A Las Vegas one, a Cincinatti one, etcetera. One of them, though, the head broke off at some point."

Both of those are weird little details to throw into the general description. Do it sparingly, but at least once or twice per session. Just watch how they react to just slightly more detail than necessary. It's a fun time.I've seen two results from this tactic. Either the PCs take the minor detail zoom as an indicator that 'Plot Lies This Way' - and either tilt at the windmill or decry the railroad - or essentially ignore the 'useless fluff detail', with or without commentary on whether the GM's extra details are nonsensical, useful, etc.

I personally would not call those positive outcomes.

Segev
2016-03-09, 01:39 PM
Well, let's take an example of an unfinished campaign arc that has two core "module" ideas, and will have a number of the railroading issues in its first inception. I can take this to a separate thread if Lorsa or others feel it too much distracts from the topic of the OP.

This is one I've run the first part of with moderate success in the past. It started with a desire to have a variant on the classic "rescue a princess from a dragon" scenario. That's effectively the last adventure/module in the planned arc. We'll get to details on that later.

First, the source of a lot of potential railroading problems: I have a general plot path in mind for some of my NPCs, but it can depend heavily on PCs helping it along in certain ways. Exploring ways to fix this can be a useful exercise, I think, but for now, bear with me as I describe the plot I start with in mind.

This adventure arc takes place in a relatively isolated duchy that recently - within the last six months - was ravaged by a viscious red dragon. The Duke's army either killed it or drove it off (depending on the rumor), but suffered tremendous losses in the process.

In the vacuum of the able-bodied men-at-arms, kobold bandits have been growing more and more bold, to the point of practically choking travel and trade within and into and out of the duchy. The Duke simply doesn't have the resources to police this much activity, let alone hunt down all the kobolds' lairs. Even with his only daughter, the little princess Elizabeth, vanished in one such bandit attack while she was travelling with guards to visit her cousin the crown prince, he can't do anything about it. So the party is recruited (whether by hook of being paid a bounty, or some other means) to solve the problem.

Extermination of all the kobolds would take a while, if it's even doable; they have lairs all over the place. In point of fact, most of them disbursed from the dragon's service after it was defeated, and went to ground.

In the first town the party gets to, they find things in dire straits, as if the town were under siege. The only thing keeping it on its feat is an elven merchant with some levels of bard who routinely braves the roads to sneak goods in and out past the kobold bandits. He's doing rather well for himself, obviously, but tries to keep people from starving with whatever he can. He even feeds orphan kids regularly from his own stores.

The orphans include some thieves who think they mgiht get more from stealing from the visiting party. If the PCs catch and detain the kid, they'll meet Tag, the oldest of the group of orphans who rely on the merchant's largesse, as he first attempts to rescue the thief and then berates him for his behavior. As I had a paladin in the party when I ran this, he was able to tell that both kids were Evil aligned, which, for this party, was a tip off that something was up. Kids radiating an active evil alignment is, after all, weird. Only the newest orphan to join the gang, Bert, doesn't radiate this evil.

Long story short, the kids were all infected were-rats (thus LE). Even Bert; Bert just hadn't voluntarily shifted and hadn't failed a saving throw under the full moon. The others had either failed the will save or voluntarily shifted, or both. Specifically, infected by the merchant-bard, who had also infected kobolds that he installed as chiefs over the individual lairs around the duchy. The kobold tribes are engaged in such excessive banditry out of fear of what he'll do to them if they don't keep paying him tribute. He has a lot of wealth under his house.

Defeating him at least stops the kobolds from engaging in quite so ruinous a level of banditry, allowing trade to resume at a more normal rate. Negotiation is also possible, once the bard is dealt with; anybody who can take out their boss's boss can intimidate them into going into hiding and backing off.

Tag actively supports finding a cure for the lycanthropy; he feels protective of and responsible for the younger kids, and some may even have families to which they could be returned in other villages if they weren't a danger to them. He, himself, likes the power that the curse gives him, and doesn't want to be cured, however. He is particularly supportive of curing Bert before the curse sets in completely.

This served as an impetus for the next quest: seeking a cure for lycanthropy to be used on dozens of people.

Bert is actually Elizabeth, who survived the attack but was bitten by the kobold chief before running off and hiding successfully. She's hiding her identity and is afraid she is infected, having recognized a lycanthrope when she saw one, and is little enough to pass for a boy. She hopes to be cured before going home. Tag discovered her secret sometime after she joined the gang of orphans working for the elf wererat. He's genuinely concerned for the kid, but also has the ulterior motive of hoping to improve his station in life by being taken on as a page or something at her father's castle if he helps rescue her. Lawful Evil, after all.

Something that shouldn't come out for a long while is that Tag, himself, is actually Tagarthun Driaxis, the juvenile red dragon the Duke's armies drove off. He escaped by donning a powerful magic item he had in his possession. The Ring of Humanity transforms ANYTHING that puts it on into a human, and makes it count as human for all purposes while the ring is worn. This is why he was vulnerable to the lycanthropic curse. This ring is mentioned a few times in his description, as he has a tendency to play with it, but won't take it off.

The concept behind this one is that Princess Elizabeth, now old enough to be betrothed, gets kidnapped by the dragon, who has returned! The Duke, in desperation, has offered her hand to anybody who can rescue her. With that would come being his heir, by virtue of being married to his only child. The party, obviously, is meant to join or perpetrate this rescue operation. Tag, who has become a servant or page in the castle staff and is good friends with (and probably crushing on) the Princess, volunteers to go along. He clearly wants that hand-in-marriage reward, as well as being genuinely concerned for her.

Sometime over the course of this, it should become clear that this dragon is not the same one as before. In fact, one possibility is that the party discovers upon slaying it that it transforms back into a kobold.

The truth of what's going on is that Tag, lusting for power and the Princess (as well as liking her as a friend; hey, LE people can have friends and loved ones!), has concocted this plot as a Batman gambit. He coerced one of the kobolds that used to work for him into impersonating the dragon via polymorph, specifically so he could quest to rescue Elizabeth and claim her hand.

Obviously, getting to the last adventure requires a number of things to have happened in the interim. Ideally, the party has made friends with the Duke, his daughter, and Tag over the course of intervening adventures. But that's hand-wavable if they left and came back. The other things that have to happen include the party getting Bert back to her father, allowing Tag to become an accepted part of Elizabeth's entourage or at least the Duke's household, and not discovering Tag's secret before the plot can thicken.

This means Bert can't die or be abandoned, it means the party can't kill or ditch Tag (though that can be solved if he's determined enough to follow whether they want him to or not, and they aren't willing to kill him), and probably a number of other things.

Run as a stand-alone, the last module can work with all the pre-established relationships existing by fiat, but run as intended, with potential for greater emotional investment by the players in these NPCs, it can presume a lot of railroading. Not the least being the effort to earn that emotional investment in the first place!

I have 2 other modules that I put together for this, centering around the pursuit of a cure for lycanthropy (which I determined involved tomatoes grown on a grave, wheat harvested under the light of a full moon, and cheese curdled by the gaze of a basilisk...and would be used to make grilled cheese sandwiches to dip in tomato soup) and a few other things. I can elaborate on them if people would like, but they honestly can be wholly replaced without changing the two main ones listed here.

So, I open it up to discussion. While I've spoiler-tagged stuff, it's mostly for brevity and organization. Please feel free to ruin any "plot twists" you like in developing this further. Let's see how we can reframe these with as little railroading as possible. How do we account for the possibilities that the players may take a DISlike for key NPCs, or not want to help them/have them along? How do we best set these up in the format we've been discussing, as modules for a TTRPG rather than frameworks for a novel (as they better serve right now)? My original intent was for it to run from level 1 in the first module's beginning point through at least the CR of a Juvenile red dragon by the end of the final module.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-09, 02:21 PM
To answer the questions posed to me:
It was a little bit of all of those things.

I started GMing at 12, and my first campaign was actually a pretty long one (I took to GMing more naturally than I did to being a Player, though I still enjoy both) and it had a pretty vague storyline. But the thing was, I made it up as I went along. I always used what happened in the previous session to decide what should happen in the upcoming session, and often made narrative decisions based on what the PCs seemed to be investigating. Basically, I tried to make everything that they investigated into something interesting and worth pursuing.

I think I was helped by the fact that I never touched an adventure module (I skimmed through one once about a year ago, but that was the first and last time) and that "Your Decisions Matter!" Was the big tagline of videogames at the time, and this has always left an impression on me.

Over time, my GMing style developed into something more Sandboxy but decidedly less...guided. This was the beginning of my move away from D&D and into other systems. The first of these was Apocalypse World, then Stars Without Number, then a rapid cycle of various systems over the past 2-3 years that has led me on a journey of rather rapid discovery of better ways to do what I want to do as a GM. I was blessed with very kind, patient, and awesome players who were willing to try that first system and because it went so well, were ready to go on the journey with me. Some of them weren't big fans of some of the systems, but as a collective group we stayed together despite long distances. (One of my players lives in the Netherlands, another in Michigan, One in Idaho, and two in Massachusets. Thanks, internet!)

I think that branching out into new systems is the best and fastest way to refine one's GMing. Especially systems that actually tell you how to GM them. (Most Apocalypse World-based systems do this.) D&D tries to do that but doesn't really do it. It mostly just says "There's lots of ways to be a DM. Ask your players what kind they like and do that. Also forge a whole story from day 1 even though that literally never works out as planned. Just plan for everything, even though you can't."

The problem is, as with all creative endeavors, there isn't much by way of How-To for GMing that is always correct, except for what I call the Two Core Laws for Having a Good Time. (Which still has one qualifier)
1. Treat your players like grownups (unless they are literally, actually children.)
2. Make sure you're playing the system best suited to your needs. (Narratively AND mechanically.)

Outside of those two pieces of advice... things get really fuzzy and will begin to depend heavily on differences between peoples' wants.

So, long story short...

Railroading was never really a thing I did thanks to a combo of Lazy GMing and having never bought in to the myth of "DM is Lord of Story and Fun." DM is just the player who plays everything that isn't a PC. It's the system's job to be fun, which is subjective anyways. (Though the DM IS capable of screwing up the fun, but that's true of everyone involved.)

If you play the world like it's an NPC, collect tools to put the big decisions out of your hands and into the hands of the players or dice, let the story be the result of what happens during play and not something written before, and spend time getting to know players (the media they consume, the styles of play they enjoy, the funnest parts of a system to them, etc) then you can avoid railroading and have a story by the end. It's really cool.


I've seen two results from this tactic. Either the PCs take the minor detail zoom as an indicator that 'Plot Lies This Way' - and either tilt at the windmill or decry the railroad - or essentially ignore the 'useless fluff detail', with or without commentary on whether the GM's extra details are nonsensical, useful, etc.

I personally would not call those positive outcomes.

That's why you use it sparingly, not constantly. And tune according to group. In D&D where thoughts are more Strategic, you may want to avoid doing it. In Narrative-driven systems, it can be very positive. The goal is to sprinkle weird details that make the world feel real. You can say the same about describing that the table they're sitting at has a sticky spot. It takes 2 seconds but makes a difference in how the world is seen. Don't go into sweeping details. If it takes longer than 5 seconds, you're wasting time.

goto124
2016-03-09, 09:54 PM
Some of the details (e.g. talking about an NPC's lips) do sound a bit creepy. Might want to avoid those.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-09, 11:23 PM
The thing is that any RPG is artificial. No RPG is even close to an alternative reality simulation. An RPG is a very focused spotlight on a couple characters. That is it. And for their to be that focus, the world must be artificial. The world must revolve around the characters. And the only way that can happen is if it is forced.

I think a lot of people are just saying they are not railroading, as they just don't like the idea and want to be viewed by others as something special , and then they go right ahead and do it.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-09, 11:43 PM
Some of the details (e.g. talking about an NPC's lips) do sound a bit creepy. Might want to avoid those.

Depends on the feel being shot for. That little detail makes that fictional person more human. It suggests a life outside of being a peon whose neck you just snapped.
And that makes people feel uncomfortable.

And maybe that's exactly how I want them to feel.


The thing is that any RPG is artificial. No RPG is even close to an alternative reality simulation. An RPG is a very focused spotlight on a couple characters. That is it. And for their to be that focus, the world must be artificial. The world must revolve around the characters. And the only way that can happen is if it is forced.

I think a lot of people are just saying they are not railroading, as they just don't like the idea and want to be viewed by others as something special , and then they go right ahead and do it.

Stars Without Number GM Turn mechanic disproves this notion entirely.

So...there's that.

goto124
2016-03-09, 11:57 PM
That little detail makes that fictional person more human. It suggests a life outside of being a peon whose neck you just snapped.

Erm, no. The lips example makes the experience feel more sexual, which is why it's uncomfortable - "I'm fighting him, why is the DM being a creeper by describing his lips? Ewww..."

Unless he's an incubus and you're deliberately invoking sexual discomfort. But that requires player buy-in for hopefully obvious reasons.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-10, 12:32 AM
Stars Without Number GM Turn mechanic disproves this notion entirely.

So...there's that.

Um, sure, random RPG game disproves whatever. Oh and random RPG game disproves everything Everyone types.

Yep, that is the way it works.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-10, 12:33 AM
Erm, no. The lips example makes the experience feel more sexual, which is why it's uncomfortable - "I'm fighting him, why is the DM being a creeper by describing his lips? Ewww..."

Unless he's an incubus and you're deliberately invoking sexual discomfort. But that requires player buy-in for hopefully obvious reasons.

Lips are lips. If I was describing what was in his pants in a sensual way, sure.

But your hand is on his face, over his mouth. You're going to feel his lips. How would you not? That's why it gets explained.

EDIT: Granted, if I were to add that detail to virtually any other situation, it would be really out of place and creepy. But when your character literally has their hand over a person's mouth, I get to mention their mouth.

kyoryu
2016-03-10, 12:59 AM
I like my Roster-Response method; it's suited me very well, I've explained it before; I honestly consider it among the best conceptual design work I've done.

It's a good write-up of the technique, absolutely. I think the basic idea of "you have some NPCs/factions that have motivations, and they respond to the actions of the players and of the other NPCs/factions" is probably the base of a large number of "active sandbox" or "world in motion" designs.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-10, 01:17 AM
Um, sure, random RPG game disproves whatever. Oh and random RPG game disproves everything Everyone types.

Yep, that is the way it works.

To explain further,

The GM Turn can be influenced by the PCs only in subtle ways. For the most part, the Factions of Stars Without Number are interplanetary powerhouses with budgets in the hundreds of trillions of credits, that operate entire fleets/armies/political parties with the same ease as PCs use firearms. Their machinations are, for the vast majority of the game, outside of the grasp of the PCs. The PCs may be able to destroy or damage individual assets, but destroying a whole faction would be extremely difficult.

The drama immediately surrounding the characters is smaller scale. They are the couriers, smugglers, etc that discreetly move product for the bigger factions, or are hired guns for those factions of a more...violent nature. However, SWN campaigns don't really feature a BBEG or a traditional D&D story structure at all.

There is a story that ends up being created by what the PCs do, and most motivations for the PCs are internal rather than external. (They get xp for completing character goals, for instance. Doing something simple rewards a little bit, doing something very hard rewards a lot.)

To put it simply, there is more than one way to structure a narrative, and SWN is an example that disproves the blanket statement made before.

(For further proof that there are multiple ways to structure a narrative, see As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. For this in movies see The Fountain. These are all really drastic shifts of narrative ordering, so as to better illustrate the point.)

Milo v3
2016-03-10, 06:36 AM
The thing is that any RPG is artificial. No RPG is even close to an alternative reality simulation. An RPG is a very focused spotlight on a couple characters. That is it. And for their to be that focus, the world must be artificial. The world must revolve around the characters. And the only way that can happen is if it is forced.

I think a lot of people are just saying they are not railroading, as they just don't like the idea and want to be viewed by others as something special , and then they go right ahead and do it.

The primary issue with this is "An RPG is a very focused spotlight on a couple characters." =! "The world must revolve around the characters." I mean, in real life your only seeing things about a relatively small number of characters, but the world doesn't revolve around you and your friend group.

I don't railroad... but it's hard to specifically not railroad because railroading is nearly necessary when it comes to "Plots". It just happens that most published adventures are plots because... well the writer has written a story in a medium that is limited to "The only things in the story are things that ended up in the story". It's hard to write and publish non-railroad adventures, because once you start making the adventure your putting assumptions on how the adventure will go.

neonchameleon
2016-03-10, 07:28 AM
In my experience there are two basic ways of avoiding railroading.

1: oD&D style "Obstacle course play". You present the dungeon or the other static emplacement to the players and have them plan a heist on it. You set up the obstacles in advance by setting up a large world. But the PCs get to tackle it on their terms. A goal they don't have direct mechanics for is ideal (in oD&D the mechanics were for fighting and follower management - but XP were mostly gained from GP). The world is mostly set up in advance and responds to the PCs - but it's the PCs with the initiative.

2: Improv heavy play. The GM goes in with no story in mind - and the world is built largely collaboaratively.

But we need to take a step back. Why do GMs railroad. The following is of course non-exhaustive.

Because they think that they are meant to - isn't directing the story the GM's job? (Not helped by the "Storyteller System")
Because they think they have AWSUM IDEAS ™
Because it's what adventure paths do so it's what they have learned.
Because moving reactively with what the players decide to do is hard work.


The fourth one is important and something that's system dependent. To illustrate:

If I'm running 3.X and you've decided for whatever reason to fight the Elite Palace Guard that I'd not statted up because I didn't think you were that daft, but I know are all about sixth level and some are spellcasters I'm going to be swearing at you. To write their statblocks properly takes time. Level them up. Choose feats. Choose equipment. Calculate everything. A good five minutes per guardsman. (Yes, I'm aware an experienced GM will have a feel for the numbers and can short-circuit most of that - but you have to get to experienced first).

If I'm running Fate and you choose to fight the Elite Palace Guard I hadn't statted up? Ehh. I need to give them aspects that are mostly obvious from their description, a fight stat, and maybe a stunt or two.

(If I'm running Apocalypse World I don't even need that).

So. If I'm running 3.5 I would really like (a) someone to do the labour intensive preparation of providing me with those statblocks please and (b) you to not fight the people I don't expect you to fight because it will bring the game to a screeching halt and cause me to have to scribble frantically. If I'm running Fate or Apocalypse World I really don't care.

Lorsa
2016-03-10, 08:34 AM
The fourth one is important and something that's system dependent. To illustrate:

If I'm running 3.X and you've decided for whatever reason to fight the Elite Palace Guard that I'd not statted up because I didn't think you were that daft, but I know are all about sixth level and some are spellcasters I'm going to be swearing at you. To write their statblocks properly takes time. Level them up. Choose feats. Choose equipment. Calculate everything. A good five minutes per guardsman. (Yes, I'm aware an experienced GM will have a feel for the numbers and can short-circuit most of that - but you have to get to experienced first).

I will reply more to your, and others' post(s) more later, but I just wanted to quickly say what went through my mind when reading about your EPG.

Taking away magic items, which may affect AC and/or damage values by +1 to +2, this is what I'd use:

Level 6 Fighter:

Attack bonus: 9-12 / 4-7, no dual wielders (because that's weird for a palace guard).
Damage: weapon dmg +3-6
AC: 19-21 depending on if they have shields or not (assuming full plate as it looks cool), alternatively 17-19 if they have less awesome armour.
HP: 52 +-7
Saves: Will figure it out if ever relevant, but Ref and Wil are probably around 5 with Fort around 9.
Feats: Power Attack / Cleave on the big weapon types, Weapon expertise on the defensive types, otherwise most of the feats are in the statblock.

Spellcasters are a bit tricker but basically:

Attack bonus: ~5 for ranged if relevant
AC: 20 (or 21 if especially good)
HP: 25+-5
Saves: Only care if relevant, roll die first to see if you even need to figure it out
Spells: Choose from basic formula of Blaster / Controller, probably Lightning bolt as it's cool.

neonchameleon
2016-03-10, 09:17 AM
I will reply more to your, and others' post(s) more later, but I just wanted to quickly say what went through my mind when reading about your EPG.

Taking away magic items, which may affect AC and/or damage values by +1 to +2, this is what I'd use:

Level 6 Fighter:

Attack bonus: 9-12 / 4-7, no dual wielders (because that's weird for a palace guard).
Damage: weapon dmg +3-6
AC: 19-21 depending on if they have shields or not (assuming full plate as it looks cool), alternatively 17-19 if they have less awesome armour.
HP: 52 +-7
Saves: Will figure it out if ever relevant, but Ref and Wil are probably around 5 with Fort around 9.
Feats: Power Attack / Cleave on the big weapon types, Weapon expertise on the defensive types, otherwise most of the feats are in the statblock.

Spellcasters are a bit tricker but basically:

Attack bonus: ~5 for ranged if relevant
AC: 20 (or 21 if especially good)
HP: 25+-5
Saves: Only care if relevant, roll die first to see if you even need to figure it out
Spells: Choose from basic formula of Blaster / Controller, probably Lightning bolt as it's cool.

Part of the point is that that's a veteran's approach. Yes, you can do that. But you do that based on how much experience? Newbies struggle a lot more to do that sort of thing.

JAL_1138
2016-03-10, 09:57 AM
There's also the assumption that there should even be a predefined plot in a home game. You can certainly run a game where "the story" is only there in hindsight, because the PC actions aren't set and the outcomes aren't predetermined--and it's up to the PCs whether they bite any hooks or decide to do their own thing instead, and their actions determine how things play out moving forward.

My players (same group with the tree-felling Fighter from earlier) ignored two major hooks and several minor ones I had and decided that a crazy cult, which I had just used in some filler material to salvage a session when they went off somewhere I hadn't prepped for, must have been one cell of a larger organization. They actually had some pretty reasonable grounds when discussing it amongst themselves that it might be the case and they couldn't afford not to investigate it--the cult had to learn their rituals somewhere, had some specialized equipment they probably didn't make themselves, and if there turned out to be more of them they might be far more dangerous in the long run than any of the other problems. They wanted to follow that up more than they wanted to do anything I had set up for.

And I ran with it, which has turned out to be really good for me because I have an easier time prepping cultist stats that can be applied to multiple NPCs if/when combat comes up, can pilfer more encounters out of Season 2 and Season 3 Adventurers' League modules so I have even less prepwork to do, can get a lot more mileage out of a given location as they scour it for clues, and they're really engaging the NPCs to try and figure out which ones, if any, are cultists, or if anybody knows anything about the cult, or knows something that might point them in the cult's direction. They still go places I don't expect them to, which frequently results in something interesting happening that has ramifications beyond the session at hand. My main difficulty now is avoiding railSchröding/quantum-ogre, the impulse to use a specific thing regardless of which direction they go, which would be really easy given the non-structure of the campaign now. I have to let them be wrong or chase a false lead every now and again or it'll start to strain credulity. And I need to have the cult start being more proactive now that the PCs are a known quantity acting against them. But ultimately, I'm reacting to the PCs rather than telling a story I've devised.

Turning what was originally a one-off, session-salvager kind of thing into the campaign focus because that's what the PCs wanted to do has made my job so much easier and really improved the game. Trying to force a plot I'd thought up ahead of time wouldn't have been nearly as good as the current campaign has been. I have no idea where, when, or how it's going to end, either. I'll get that from the PCs' actions and deductions. Theirs tend to be more interesting than mine.

But to get a bit edition-war-ish, IMO it's so much easier to run a less-structured, less-railroady game in lighter systems with less-complicated monster stats. 3.PF statting is a real pain, one reason I don't use it and never much cared for it. In 2e and 5e, monster/NPC stats are simple and creating (or better yet stealing) encounters is quick. And instead of carefully building custom-crafted opponents to just run a group of palace guardsmen, it's pretty effective to just use larger numbers of the standard enemies from the MM, and spellcaster PCs aren't as much of a nightmare to deal with.

Even in 3.PF, though, something that can save a lot of headaches is to reskin enemies and use them elsewhere later. Those palace guards have stats that could be used for enemy mercenaries or soldiers or bandits somewhere else in the campaign.

EDIT: Here's how that palace guard encounter goes in 5th:
*calls a smokebreak, looks in MM, finds statblock for fighter type, does quick calculation of how many for party level, finds statblock for enemy spellcaster, does quick calculation of how many for party level, digs out spell cards for what's listed in statblock, starts running combat 10 minutes or less later.*

Kyberwulf
2016-03-10, 12:07 PM
The answer is in the question poised. The Problem's source is the players. The Solution is to let it go.

Railroading is a term invented so you can whine and cry at every little thing. Yes I agree that railroading happens, but not nearly as everyone makes it out to be.

The Problem is Players can't see that EVERYTHING in that happens in the game is on tracks. Roleplaying Games aren't life. There is no arbitrary force that drives everything forward. When a group of people come together for a game, things are going to happen that some people won't like. Unfortunately you can't walk away and continue playing the game. So your stuck doing what other people want. Even if there was no DM, the group as a whole will do something and Someone will feel railroaded.

The unfortunate role of the DM is to be a Scapegoat for that reason.

The source of the Problem is Players, trying to make a Mock Battle simulator into The Sims. This game wasn't designed to be a life simulator. It was designed so that you can come together with your friends and pretend to be in a movie or series. The problem is that the Players want the plot to revolve around them, and can't see that the game has Other characters that want the plot to revolve around them.

The Problem is that the DM is stuck having to be the person to come up with a story and characters that tell the story. Then he is also saddled with the responsibilty of having to cater to the mewling of players who want the story to serve their story. The sad truth is that Players can't see that without a railroad, the story Any of the stories wouldn't drive forward. Everyone would come together and then after a bit. The stories would diverge into everyone's individual story.

This is the 10,000 spoons part. I often hear, about DMs, that if they should go write a story and keep their plotlines out of the game. While, the Players should also go write a story about their special snowflake. Keep their Plotlines out of the game.

And that is the Solution to the problem. Everyone should keep their stories out of the game, and just play the game.

Aliquid
2016-03-10, 12:10 PM
But we need to take a step back. Why do GMs railroad. The following is of course non-exhaustive.

Because they think that they are meant to - isn't directing the story the GM's job? (Not helped by the "Storyteller System")
Because they think they have AWSUM IDEAS ™
Because it's what adventure paths do so it's what they have learned.
Because moving reactively with what the players decide to do is hard work.


The fourth one is important and something that's system dependent. To illustrate:

Another example of the fourth one:

The characters come across a small troop of goblins patrolling the road. The DM expects this to be a small obstacle that the PCs deal with by either battle, or maybe finding a different route and avoiding them... but the Players decide differently. They say "Hey, these goblins are just grunts, lets follow them back to their lair and take out the whole colony... lets find their leader and find all the treasure they have taken from travellers".... the DM hasn't designed a "lair", or a leader or... anything, and has to make this up on the fly.

Sure, as neonchameleon suggested with his example, an experienced DM could make something up on the spot, but a junior DM would freak out.

JAL_1138
2016-03-10, 12:27 PM
Another example of the fourth one:

The characters come across a small troop of goblins patrolling the road. The DM expects this to be a small obstacle that the PCs deal with by either battle, or maybe finding a different route and avoiding them... but the Players decide differently. They say "Hey, these goblins are just grunts, lets follow them back to their lair and take out the whole colony... lets find their leader and find all the treasure they have taken from travellers".... the DM hasn't designed a "lair", or a leader or... anything, and has to make this up on the fly.

Sure, as neonchameleon suggested with his example, an experienced DM could make something up on the spot, but a junior DM would freak out.

Which is sad, because there's at least two fairly easy ways to handle this that don't require building a colony lair from scratch--yoink a suitable map for a goblin lair from a module and tweak the map so it's not recognizeable; run the encounters from the module (reskin non-goblins from the module if needed, or use MM goblins in appropriate-ish numbers), so very little prep is needed and it can be done quickly, or, if no modules are available to yoink from, let the players follow the small group of goblins back to the very small cave this troupe uses as its hideout, and there simply isn't a larger colony there because this group is acting independently (but maybe there could be clues as to where a larger colony might be, so they can go next session when the DM's had time to do more prep for it).

JAL_1138
2016-03-10, 12:45 PM
Not that a goblin lair is difficult to make for a DM who can eyeball encounters and has built a few dungeons, but those are easy ways to punt the work while without taking away the PCs' intention to go track down the goblin lair.

DMs are given little advice for improvising.

They don't get told the goblin leader doesn't really need special stats, or can be run using bugbear stats skinned as a goblin, or given max instead of average HP, and that a dungeon doesn't need a lot of meticulous planning--I've been wanting to crack out my random dungeon generator d12 for a while now, and I'd bet it could work. That all they need for this goblin lair are a few rooms with encounters (doesn't matter if they're fairly samey encounters in terms of statblocks for a quick dungeon--give the goblins different tactics and behavior each time and they'll feel different enough) and terrain features--a ledge here, a wall there, some stalagmites there--some rooms with no encounters, some hallways/tunnels, and some random treasure from the loot tables. Maybe some moderate-DC traps. For a low-level party this'll take, I dunno, 15-20 minutes? EDIT: Less, since you've got goblin stats already written up and just need to figure out how many goblins in how many rooms. But a new DM has no idea it can be that simple.

neonchameleon
2016-03-10, 02:03 PM
Not that a goblin lair is difficult to make for a DM who can eyeball encounters and has built a few dungeons, but those are easy ways to punt the work while without taking away the PCs' intention to go track down the goblin lair.
...
DMs are given little advice for improvising.

This.

I can't decide which annoys me more. 3.X which might as well have been set up to be inimical to improvising. Or 4E which was designed to be excellent for improvising - and none of the ways it's excellent for improvising were made terribly explicit in the PHB1/MM1/DMG1 (or even any later books - but it was utterly buried by the first few books).

3.X is inimical to improvising because of things experienced DMs ignore. @Lorsa does things the right way, above - but what you're actually told to do unless you use cookie cutter monsters that people will get tired of is design them like PCs. It's not that you can't do things other ways - it's that you need to ignore the rules to do so and fall back on rule 0. The detailed skill DCs are almost as bad. Stop. Look up the DC. Check the rulebook for spell rules. Ack.

4e on the other hand has amazing improv tools in the design - but the gremlins who wrote the rulebooks never actually presented them to show what you can do. Skill Challenges? As presented by the gremlins they are a horrible bleh way of doing things. But for an improv tool? The PCs make their plan - whatever it is, no matter how off the wall. The tool gives you a "Three strikes and you're out" structure to work to and handles the numbers, meaning the GM can get back to the game. If the PCs are trying a plan you've no idea how to handle it's probably a skill challenge - an amazing tool. For monster design? MM3 on a business card (http://blogofholding.com/?p=512) handles the math. Think about what the monster does most of the time in combat. That's their at wills. Give them an eyecatching schtick or two and that's their encounter powers. And you're done. The rest of the fight? Draw a map. Draw something interesting to interact with (if it does damage you've DMG p42 for the math). And let everyone have fun throwing everyone else into the fire. You get intense and evocative fights created in less than a minute without any monster manual or looking things up just by using the rules as written.

The designers created amazing improv tools - better for just in time scene creation than any other RPG I know. And then there must have been an attack of Illithids before the rulebooks were actually written because they display literally none of that. DMs are given amazing improv tools by the 4e designers and then never actually shown how to use them by the 4e rulebooks. Which is doubly ironic because the 4e DMGs provide pretty good systemless improv advice - while never showing how to use the tools 4e provides for improv.

Talakeal
2016-03-10, 02:46 PM
So the adventure I am currently working on doesn't have any plot, instead it is more "site based," there are places for the PCs to explore, monsters for them to fight, NPCs for them to talk to, and treasures to find. They don't need to be done in any order and there is no overarching story at the moment.

However, I still expect the players to visit each of the locations that I have gone to the trouble of preparing, because if they don't they will a: be missing out on some vital information about the world, b: there won't be enough content to fill the session, and c: because I spent a lot of time prepping it that will feel wasted.

How does this sort of design measure up as a railroad?


Also, anyone have any idea how I can encourage the PCs to go to the various points of interest? Its not like the PCs are stuck in one place and everything around them is relevant, these are seemingly unrelated places that are a good distance apart and with a lot of stuff in between. I planned on putting a lot of hints and hooks around to lead the PCs, but PCs (especially mine) are notorious for not picking up on subtle clues.

Lorsa
2016-03-10, 03:05 PM
I'm not sure why it happens so often. Usually because of trying to design something to play out a particular way because you think it'll be cool, or good for the story, or because it'll help move the campaign a certain direction, or because you want to use a certain encounter in certain terrain. To avoid it, be aware of it, and let things the players suggest work if they're at all reasonable instead of trying to force it to go how you'd planned.

To sum it up, it seems you are saying railroading happens because of narrow-mindedness. Did I get that right?


Brief anecdote: I had an orc encampment set in a canyon in some cliffs. I meant for it to be a tough fight. There's really just one way in or out, other than rappelling down the cliffs (which would result in getting picked off by archers). The Fighter says he looks up at the cliffs to see if there's a dead pine tree. I think for a minute and agree that there would probably be one, but I don't know where he's going with it. So he climbs the cliffs (passes the check), chops the tree down, pushes it so it falls right into the middle of the encampment (passes the Str check). Then he throws a lit flask of oil onto it. If you've ever seen a dead pine tree catch fire, they go up like they're made of some innovative solid form of kerosene. The camp could have survived a Fireball or Burning Hands because those are fairly brief sources of flame--bits of it may have smoldered but things wouldn't have gone up in an inferno. But with a large burning pine tree in the middle of it, the camp is set ablaze. Due to the fire, the orcs try to leave out of the narrow entrance to the canyon, can't see well due to the smoke, are taking damage from the fire and smoke, and the fight is more of a massacre by the PCs than the tough fight I intended.

Similar things have happened in my games on multiple occassions.

At one time, I had planned for a fight against a really tough opponent, but instead the PC recruited the NPC for her organisation. It was a move I hadn't forseen even in my wildest dreams, but the player made a good case which made it total sense for the NPC in question to join.



Lots of reasons. A few might be:

Partly because of Dragonlance. Dragonlance was really innovative at the time--published modules had never really had such a tight story focus before, even if the Dragonlance adventures were quite railroady. And they sold, and sold quite well. So that style of module-writing spread to other properties to cash in, and story-driven, linear modules became more of a thing. Epic stories replaced epic locations.

Also because it's easier to write linearly in some respects. You have to take fewer contingencies into account, and you can determine how the story goes much more than you can with an open-ended one. When trying to "write a module," most people seem to naturally think in terms of an overarching story to tie it together instead of having a bunch of maps and enemy stats.

It's easier to sell, in some ways--you need less experience to run a linear module than to run an open-ended one, and you can pitch it as an epic story of plot twists and betrayals and triumphs and such instead of "a new area to explore."

New, inexperienced DMs--who you need to reach to sell products--may have craved more guidance and structure than the old modules gave.

And because the old module-writers who wrote the more open-ended ones gradually shifted out and were replaced.

I understand how Dragonlance was innovative and thus successfull. I still don't fully understand why it continued to be the trend.

Are most people really so incapable of coming up with things on their own that they need to have a module that holds their hand the entire way? Doesn't that relegate most DMs into simple robots? Where's the fun in that?



Some amount of railroading is inherent in a pre-written adventure path. However, I have wondered if you could make a linked campaign which is less railroad-y with a sufficient library of modules.

Most likely you could do that. It might require a very large library though.



Other posts have answered the marketing reasons for this. The reason, I think, also comes down to the same problem you pointed out in your OP: people have novels and movies and video games as examples of what they think they're emulating in a TTRPG. Of these, the first two are inherently railroads by design: the reader is a passive observer of decisions made by characters controlled entirely by the author. Video games, meanwhile, are going to have railroad elements that are inescapable because everything must be pre-programmed. If there's going to be story, only a finite number of story outcomes and events can possibly happen. And each one accounted for takes more development time. It may increase replay value, but when people oft complain about single-play-through time being too short...

So, when the new guy is hired to write a module for the TTRPG his employer is publishing, he thinks of a cool story, first. He may have an understanding that he can't know the PCs, but he still conceptualizes a party with motivations in a general cluster of possibilities, with goals he simply assumes they'll be motivated to perform, with the plot mostly being a series of pass/fail challenges. Pass the challenge to continue to the next plot point (see, again, many cRPGs, particularly FF games).

It is an entirely different design philosophy to creative writing to build a world, build NPCs with goals and plans and resources, and then...let somebody else decide how to work with or against them. And it's a balancing act, too; some amount of the "cRPG mindset" is needed in TTRPGs: the quest-givers need to have reason to seek out and interact with the PCs. The hooks need to be there.

So why don't they hire guys who know the strengths of the TTRPG medium and design things for it?




Because people think in terms of plots. Even when they consciously recognize that PCs will do unexpected things, they have a mental model of a PC or party thereof, and expect them to do certain things.

In the case of those boxed texts, such as the one where an NPC stirs poison into the PCs' breakfasts right in front of them, the writer probably thought it was a cool scene to characterize the NPC. It never occurred to him that the PCs might object during a cut-scene. Because the protagonists he pictured didn't.

Railroading in boxed text and in modules in general usually falls into the video game category: the motives and actions of the PCs are conceived of as constrained, because the writer has a plot in mind and forgets that PCs may not go along with every detail he puts forth.

Seems like an odd thing to forget to me. It was actually the first thing that came to my mind when I read it.

"This is impossible to run because the players might decide to act and stop it halfway."


It may also be that a lot of module writers are hired after being novelists. I don't know that for sure, but it is a definite skill set that seems reasonable to draw from if you don't appreciate how the media differ.

For GMs, the problem is that they have a story in mind, and anywhere that story could be "broken" by the PCs, they'll have a tendency to be blindsided (when it never even occurred to them the PCs would object/act differently), or to try to "force" it. IF they're aware of railroading but falling for the above trap, they'll think something along the lines of, "Well, this HAS to happen for plot reasons, so I'll just set things up so that nothing can prevent it. Then, it's not railroading; things are just that way." This can work. But must be done sparingly...and often isn't. Because knowing how and when to do it is a skill, and it takes practice.

I've always thought it best to assume the story could be broken anytime, anywhere. In fact, don't even think of a story. You can certainly have a BACKstory, but that is a different thing entirely.


No idea. It would probably require a series of well-written and highly-proliferated modules of this design in the system(s) most popular and common.

Perhaps the GitP community could put together some 5e and 3.5/PF modules designed in this fashion, and try to disseminate them?


We absolutely could, it's just that there's a lot of work involved. At the very least you'd need well written standalone articles, but then you'd need to embed them in something, so you'd also need a game that goes with them, or a successful blog, or just a whole bunch of these articles bundled together. You might be able to get away with just having a module, but even that's a pretty significant project. You'd need some sort of way of getting your larger scale work into the hands of a lot of people. It's doable, but it's not easy

Maybe we should do just that...



So, I open it up to discussion. While I've spoiler-tagged stuff, it's mostly for brevity and organization. Please feel free to ruin any "plot twists" you like in developing this further. Let's see how we can reframe these with as little railroading as possible. How do we account for the possibilities that the players may take a DISlike for key NPCs, or not want to help them/have them along? How do we best set these up in the format we've been discussing, as modules for a TTRPG rather than frameworks for a novel (as they better serve right now)? My original intent was for it to run from level 1 in the first module's beginning point through at least the CR of a Juvenile red dragon by the end of the final module.

You are certainly free to discuss your module ideas here. If I have more time, I will give you some comments also.

However, if you start a new thread, you might find some people that would stay far away from a thread with railroading in the title...



It was a little bit of all of those things.

I started GMing at 12, and my first campaign was actually a pretty long one (I took to GMing more naturally than I did to being a Player, though I still enjoy both) and it had a pretty vague storyline. But the thing was, I made it up as I went along. I always used what happened in the previous session to decide what should happen in the upcoming session, and often made narrative decisions based on what the PCs seemed to be investigating. Basically, I tried to make everything that they investigated into something interesting and worth pursuing.

I think I was helped by the fact that I never touched an adventure module (I skimmed through one once about a year ago, but that was the first and last time) and that "Your Decisions Matter!" Was the big tagline of videogames at the time, and this has always left an impression on me.

I also started without any modules, which just makes me go back to the main point.

It seems like DMs either have to learn non-railroading adventure design by themselves, or by experiencing it from another DM. In fact, the offcial material might even be bad for you!


The problem is, as with all creative endeavors, there isn't much by way of How-To for GMing that is always correct, except for what I call the Two Core Laws for Having a Good Time. (Which still has one qualifier)

Well, reading books can certainly give you how-to for writing them, and watching movies will give you how-to for directing them. Getting inspiration for roleplaying games is more tricky.



But we need to take a step back. Why do GMs railroad. The following is of course non-exhaustive.

Because they think that they are meant to - isn't directing the story the GM's job? (Not helped by the "Storyteller System")
Because they think they have AWSUM IDEAS ™
Because it's what adventure paths do so it's what they have learned.
Because moving reactively with what the players decide to do is hard work.



So your list is basically: I have no idea how to do it different and by the way it seems hard?

Somehow it makes me a bit depressed. Is this what humanity has become?

*sighs*



Part of the point is that that's a veteran's approach. Yes, you can do that. But you do that based on how much experience? Newbies struggle a lot more to do that sort of thing.

Well, I was first introduced to D&D about 12 years ago I think, and have been roleplaying (and GMing) for 20-21 years.

Of course things are more tricky when you are new, but people also give more leeway to someone who is new, if they have to take a break to stat up a monster or something such.

However, if you never start improvising, you'll never get better.



There's also the assumption that there should even be a predefined plot in a home game. You can certainly run a game where "the story" is only there in hindsight, because the PC actions aren't set and the outcomes aren't predetermined--and it's up to the PCs whether they bite any hooks or decide to do their own thing instead, and their actions determine how things play out moving forward

I've never really been a fan of that assumption. My question is; where does it come from, and how do we avoid people getting it?



Railroading is a term invented so you can whine and cry at every little thing. Yes I agree that railroading happens, but not nearly as everyone makes it out to be.

Yeah, no. That's not why railroading was invented. I have no idea what brings you to this conclusion.

Segev
2016-03-10, 03:31 PM
To sum it up, it seems you are saying railroading happens because of narrow-mindedness. Did I get that right?To a degree. It's more that it seems that, despite the age of the medium, few even in the forefront of the business really understand how it differs from other media.


So why don't they hire guys who know the strengths of the TTRPG medium and design things for it?Because most of those are successful hobbiest GMs, and are not successful professional writers. It's not a field with a lot of money in it, so hiring the "best" talent can be very difficult. Labors of love can be exquisite, but often are...not. And it's more likely that you'll find people who love the medium but are not the best of the best at running it are those you can afford to pay.



You are certainly free to discuss your module ideas here. If I have more time, I will give you some comments also.

However, if you start a new thread, you might find some people that would stay far away from a thread with railroading in the title...Fair enough. I've transposed the post here to start a new thread on the exercise. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?481149-TTRPG-Module-Design-an-Exercise-in-Practical-Exploration-of-the-Medium&p=20524299#post20524299)





Ultimately, the problem is that the momentum is coming from what has sold well in the past, with limited alternatives and limited experience pools in the professional field from which to draw alternatives. Innovation that impacts sales requires a number of things, amongst them a generally larger market than TTRPGs usually sell to. Add in that a lot of people don't really understand the medium, even amongst those who love it, and it gets messier still.

This is not unique, by the by: MOST consumers of media don't really understand what goes in to making great examples thereof. They know what they like. They may even be able to go on at length about why they like it. But what they will list will have little to do with the elements of craft which made it what they loved. They will identify visible things, aspects which worked well as used, finished product-scenes and characters who've developed and delivered beautifully. They won't, for the most part, be able to spell out HOW that was done. This is why so many fanfics and even professional but lower-quality works fall flat when attempting to mimic the "awesome parts" of other, superior works: the writer/creator doesn't really understand what was done to make those "awesome parts" so awesome.

Writing well is hard work. And even writing well for one medium doesn't translate to writing well for another, unless you have talent or skill in the second medium and know (instinctively or consciously) how to adapt the techniques you're employing from one to another.

This is one reason why "the book was better" is a common statement about movies based on novels: the adaptation of techniques that made things great in a novel to the Big Screen is nontrivial, and can actually be harder than writing a new story tailored specifically for the movie medium.

Interestingly, I would say The Martian made a better movie than book; the book was written by somebody with a lot of experience in comic layout, and reads...well, like a screenplay. The movie translates that to screen spectacularly, making for a hilariously funny drama that hits all the right notes. And it's because the talents and skills for writing a web comic translated better to screenplay than to novel.

So it's not surprising that a low-budget field of media would be less able to hire talent that is the best at such a narrow market, and that even the people producing the products may not appreciate what it is that makes their medium inherently different from other media, no matter the genre.

I kind-of hope that us, in this forum, trying to develop modules with specific TTRPG medium needs, limitations, and capabilities in mind might serve as a starting point for opening it up as a consciously-examined and -understood medium, with examples of how to do it right and techniques to exploit its unique strengths rather than trying to force it to act like a medium it isn't.

JAL_1138
2016-03-10, 04:17 PM
To sum it up, it seems you are saying railroading happens because of narrow-mindedness. Did I get that right?

Partly. I wouldn't call it that necessarily, but unwillingness to accept other solutions is one of several reasons it could happen.



I understand how Dragonlance was innovative and thus successfull. I still don't fully understand why it continued to be the trend.

It sold. Like hotcakes. Players were really flocking to story-driven modules like that--not only were they new and innovative in terms of even having a story focus, but Dragonlance modules told really good stories in spite and/or because of the railroading (which many later modules attempting to cash in on the story-focus success didn't). And TSR and others also realized it was easier to pitch a story instead of a location, an epic tale instead of a series of dungeons connected by loose story threads that didn't really connect up 'till you needed an excuse to go from one dungeon to the next. Story sold product, and so it became a dominant style. It still sells. Just going by anecdotal, unscientific evidence from the number of times I've seen people saying they're running which adventure path, Rise of the Runelords for Pathfinder is much more popular than Kingmaker, a kingdom-building sandboxy type module that's fairly open-ended from what I'm given to understand (haven't read it).

I realize I've made it sound like I'm bashing Dragonlance as the worst thing ever, and it really wasn't. People just ran with the style way too much. The existence of railroady linear adventures isn't inherently bad until it's overdone and/or done poorly (and it's massively, massively overdone now). DL just (was one of the primary things that) kicked off the trend.




I also started without any modules, which just makes me go back to the main point.

It seems like DMs either have to learn non-railroading adventure design by themselves, or by experiencing it from another DM. In fact, the offcial material might even be bad for you!
Depending on the material. I learned a lot of what I know from DMs I played under, but also from old-school modules--especially ones that gave instruction on how to keep things in the background moving on their own. If they don't meet so-and-so here, so-and-so has their own agenda and will attempt X. If they've got the mystical doohickey when they get to Room 37, Y happens, but if they don't, Z happens, and if they skip Room 37, those monsters will patrol the dungeon eventually, and so on, stuff like that, and from old modules that told you who was who, which monsters were where, which treasure to give out for a resolution, and cut you loose.




So your list is basically: I have no idea how to do it different and by the way it seems hard?

Somehow it makes me a bit depressed. Is this what humanity has become?

*sighs*
Without knowing that it can be done differently, or having spent five hours on a dungeon and not wanting to have wasted it, or the system being so crunchtastic that reacting to players going off the rails is going to take hours to stat up new content for, and a DMG that gives little to no advice on how to react to unexpected actions or how to reskin and reuse old prepwork, it's a little more understandable.



Of course things are more tricky when you are new, but people also give more leeway to someone who is new, if they have to take a break to stat up a monster or something such.

However, if you never start improvising, you'll never get better.
Agreed. And jumping on a newbie for being unprepared is likely to make them railroad harder, so that players can't go where they haven't prepped for.



I've never really been a fan of that assumption. My question is; where does it come from, and how do we avoid people getting it?
Lots of places. Modules, videogames, books, movies, playing a game that looks like it had a definite story in hindsight without realizing how much the DM was reacting and winging instead of planning ahead, the idea of storytelling in general. Plot is such a universal, common idea in so much creative media, and even when people tell stories of how their D&D games in the past went--they look like they had plots in hindsight. How to avoid it? Discussion, teaching new DMs, improvisation advice, I guess.

Hyooz
2016-03-10, 06:44 PM
Lots of places. Modules, videogames, books, movies, playing a game that looks like it had a definite story in hindsight without realizing how much the DM was reacting and winging instead of planning ahead, the idea of storytelling in general. Plot is such a universal, common idea in so much creative media, and even when people tell stories of how their D&D games in the past went--they look like they had plots in hindsight. How to avoid it? Discussion, teaching new DMs, improvisation advice, I guess.

In addition to this, because the general goal for a game is to be fun and interesting for the people participating, it behooves most DMs to have something fun and interesting for the characters to actually do in mind. The fact of the matter is, even in these high-fantasy epic worlds, 99.98% of people live fairly boring lives. Outside of extraordinary circumstances, people tend to find a stable way of life and stick to it. Even Heracles got married and tried to live a normal family life, and probably would have stayed there if Hera hadn't railroaded him into murdering them and then forced him into servitude to atone for what she made him do.

Even if you have particularly proactive people who are looking for adventure and something to do, more often than not in most worlds, there just isn't a whole lot going on. Some wars, maybe, some struggles for smaller realms of power, but what is there for a small band of powerful proactive people to do? Pick a side and hope they can eventually gain rank?

So the GM comes up with something unique happening so the players have something to get involved in, where they can have a real effect. And then, well, you have the beginnings of a plot.

Segev
2016-03-10, 06:50 PM
In addition to this, because the general goal for a game is to be fun and interesting for the people participating, it behooves most DMs to have something fun and interesting for the characters to actually do in mind. The fact of the matter is, even in these high-fantasy epic worlds, 99.98% of people live fairly boring lives. Outside of extraordinary circumstances, people tend to find a stable way of life and stick to it. Even Heracles got married and tried to live a normal family life, and probably would have stayed there if Hera hadn't railroaded him into murdering them and then forced him into servitude to atone for what she made him do.

Even if you have particularly proactive people who are looking for adventure and something to do, more often than not in most worlds, there just isn't a whole lot going on. Some wars, maybe, some struggles for smaller realms of power, but what is there for a small band of powerful proactive people to do? Pick a side and hope they can eventually gain rank?

So the GM comes up with something unique happening so the players have something to get involved in, where they can have a real effect. And then, well, you have the beginnings of a plot.

That's entirely independent of the question. You need not have a plot with planned-for PC roles and actions that must happen to advance it in order to have interesting things for the PCs to do. You do need some planned-for PC roles, but these should not be "the PCs must fill this role," unless that's literally how you start the campaign. They certainly don't need "the PCs must make this choice in this fashion," nor "the problem must be solved in this way."

One can set up these plot hooks such that the PCs choose which one(s) to bite upon, and the game reacts to their actions once they've bitten. Where the PCs do not act, the game should have a way it will go anyway. The plot should evolve from how the PCs' choices perturb what would have been without them.

LastCenturion
2016-03-10, 07:36 PM
It's not super relevant to the discussion, but a quick quote from Tomb of Horrors when I played it recently:


"Plot railroads are not a valid target for Metal Shape"

It seemed applicable here. Railroading with how to deal with railroading. Meta-railroading.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-10, 07:41 PM
How does this sort of design measure up as a railroad?


Also, anyone have any idea how I can encourage the PCs to go to the various points of interest? Its not like the PCs are stuck in one place and everything around them is relevant, these are seemingly unrelated places that are a good distance apart and with a lot of stuff in between. I planned on putting a lot of hints and hooks around to lead the PCs, but PCs (especially mine) are notorious for not picking up on subtle clues.

If the DM ''wants'' anything, most will call it railroading. Though I'm not even sure your example really qualifies as a game. After all why will the characters explore and go places if there is no plot, other them metagame reasons. You kinda need a plot of a reason.

For hooks and clues, you can always make them over the top so they can't miss them. And if all else fails, bribe them. The players will run at light speed to a fountain of wishes that grants one wish a lifetime, for example.

neonchameleon
2016-03-10, 07:41 PM
I understand how Dragonlance was innovative and thus successfull. I still don't fully understand why it continued to be the trend.

1: Hardcore dungeon exploration is a minority interest. DL was a huge break from that towards something more mainstream.
2: The reason dungeon exploration was the norm was that it kept the complexity of the antagonists relatively low. Political campaigns are hard work and most people are their own worst critics.


So why don't they hire guys who know the strengths of the TTRPG medium and design things for it?

1: Surprisingly few people do. I'm barely exaggerating when I say that I can't think of a good new class based (as opposed to packaged points buy) RPG between oD&D and Apocalypse World in 2010.
2: Any successful games company wants to make money. The things that make money for big companies are in descending order 1: tie-in novels. 2: Licensing. 3: Subscription materials to read on the loo (WoD Metaplot, 2E Gazetteers, Paizo Adventure Paths, Shovelware Splatbooks). 4: Rules that everyone buys. 5: DM specific materials.
3: RPGs are one of the cheapest hobbies around. I can buy a copy of Apocalypse World in PDF for $10 (I think). That game might last my group about 100 hours. Five players, 100 hours of RPG. That's 2 cents each per hour. no money in it.

Now work out where the skilled people who want decent salaries go.


I also started without any modules, which just makes me go back to the main point.

It seems like DMs either have to learn non-railroading adventure design by themselves, or by experiencing it from another DM. In fact, the offcial material might even be bad for you!

Basically, yes. I'm not claiming conspiracy - but see my previous point about where the money is made.


So your list is basically: I have no idea how to do it different and by the way it seems hard?

The final point in my list is that complex and so-called realistic rulesets might as well have been designed to make it harder. And it's hard to know what's possible unless you've seen it done (and even then you might not recognise a good improv GM at work).


I've never really been a fan of that assumption [that there should be predefined plot]. My question is; where does it come from, and how do we avoid people getting it?

It comes from most of the media we consume and is amplified by a lot of published materials from the GM being called the Storyteller in White Wolf games to the way Paizo's Adventure Paths work.

We can push back against it and people do. Apocalypse World and its derivatives like Monsterhearts actively tell you to not have a plot. Grey Ranks entirely takes out the GM while Torchbearer limits them (so does the AW family). Fate adds power to the players to establish and create aspects making spoking the GM's wheels much easier. Guidance and advice books like Play Unsafe help.


Edit:
So the adventure I am currently working on doesn't have any plot, instead it is more "site based," there are places for the PCs to explore, monsters for them to fight, NPCs for them to talk to, and treasures to find. They don't need to be done in any order and there is no overarching story at the moment.

However, I still expect the players to visit each of the locations that I have gone to the trouble of preparing, because if they don't they will a: be missing out on some vital information about the world, b: there won't be enough content to fill the session, and c: because I spent a lot of time prepping it that will feel wasted.

How does this sort of design measure up as a railroad?

Too little info. Few people mind being ferried to the start of each new section of a game. Railroading only gets really obnoxious when you decide not just what the PCs will do in each place but how they are going to do it. So far it doesn't sound like a railroad, but if you have decided that only the predetermined methods will work it is one.


Also, anyone have any idea how I can encourage the PCs to go to the various points of interest?

Give them a light framing story. The quest for the Rod of Seven Parts was a classic for a reason. And was basically a framing story/McGuffin Quest to link seven unrelated locations so the PCs would go to them all.

flond
2016-03-10, 08:44 PM
If the DM ''wants'' anything, most will call it railroading. Though I'm not even sure your example really qualifies as a game. After all why will the characters explore and go places if there is no plot, other them metagame reasons. You kinda need a plot of a reason.

For hooks and clues, you can always make them over the top so they can't miss them. And if all else fails, bribe them. The players will run at light speed to a fountain of wishes that grants one wish a lifetime, for example.

I believe the traditional reason is "finding your fortune" :P

And for the record, I count it as railroading if a gm has a predetermined outcome in mind which they manipulate events toward. Is this general? Yes. Is it broad? Yes. Is some amount of it sometimes acceptable? Yes. Is it technically impossible to determine without telepathy? Yes. But, it's generally possible to intuit heavy railroading over the long game (or the short game if done blatantly.)

But, the thing is, "reasonable consequences" aren't railroading. Premaking an adventure or dungeon isn't railroading either, if you use reasonable consequences once the players deal with it. And...some players like going on the rails, which makes it fine if you're upfront with it. But, this doesn't mean every game is railroaded, and every GM is a railroader. It's entierly possible to do the dungeoncrawling thing, make a series of dungeons, towns etc, premake all your encounters and play everything as it lies, with adjucation.

Thrudd
2016-03-10, 10:30 PM
So the adventure I am currently working on doesn't have any plot, instead it is more "site based," there are places for the PCs to explore, monsters for them to fight, NPCs for them to talk to, and treasures to find. They don't need to be done in any order and there is no overarching story at the moment.

However, I still expect the players to visit each of the locations that I have gone to the trouble of preparing, because if they don't they will a: be missing out on some vital information about the world, b: there won't be enough content to fill the session, and c: because I spent a lot of time prepping it that will feel wasted.

How does this sort of design measure up as a railroad?


Also, anyone have any idea how I can encourage the PCs to go to the various points of interest? Its not like the PCs are stuck in one place and everything around them is relevant, these are seemingly unrelated places that are a good distance apart and with a lot of stuff in between. I planned on putting a lot of hints and hooks around to lead the PCs, but PCs (especially mine) are notorious for not picking up on subtle clues.

That is how it is done if you do not intend to railroad the players. The way to get them to go to all the points is to make sure that the game rewards them for going to those places and doing the things you hope they will do. Make sure the players know what the objective of the game is and the types of things that enable them to reach that objective.

IE: The goal of the game is to become rich and powerful enough to build a castle and rule your own kingdom, or conquer an already existing one. The means to do this is found in the lost treasures and magic of fallen civilizations. Your characters will gain XP and increase in level when they retrieve treasure from those types of places, usually guarded by monsters. You design a series of such dungeon locations, and the players will seek them out. Any possible place they can find treasure and gain levels they will want to go, all you need to do is seed the information in the game world. Even if they pass up one place in favor of another, they will eventually come back to it if they want more XP (and they always will, that's the point of the game.).

If the goal of the game is something else, then make sure there is some objective and mechanical way to measure their progress in achieving it, and make sure they know the actions they need to take to achieve that progress (collecting something, reaching different locations, whatever). They will seek to do whatever it is that lets them advance in the game, and you just need to make sure your prepped things line up with the players' goals to advance in the game.

The most "railroady" thing you should need to do (which I don't really consider railroading, unless you aren't giving them a choice at all), is reuse a map you've drawn at a location different from where you originally placed it because the players wandered off the edge of the original map, or change the contents of a location slightly in order to make it sound more appealing to the players who aren't wanting to go there for some reason: now there is a legendary spell book in a lost temple to the god of magic, instead of a legendary sword in the bowels of a lost demonic temple. Maybe the players thought demonic temple sounded too dangerous, but if it's a magic temple where they know they will find spells, well that's different.

kyoryu
2016-03-10, 10:58 PM
How does this sort of design measure up as a railroad?

Depends. Are you okay with it if the PCs *don't* go there? I mean, that's kind of fundamentally the differentiator, right? Whether or not the GM forces a particular course of actions that the players do not wish to engage in.

JAL_1138
2016-03-10, 11:44 PM
One way to avoid the issue of "I prepped this, so go there" is to buy in to the idea that anywhere they skip, the prep isn't truly wasted. You can break it up, reskin it, use the encounters and statblocks, use pieces of the maps, use (tweaked, renamed, reskinned, etc) versions of the NPCs, and suchlike elsewhere. You might use it to fill in an area you hadn't planned for (the palace guards get reskinned as bandits harrassing a town, the left half of the goblin-cave dungeon becomes a smuggler's den in a cave by the bay or dug out beneath the docks, the shopkeeper at the podunk village's general store runs a dry-goods store in the city, etc., etc., so on and so forth), or you might use it in the next campaign instead. The players never see your campaign notes. Instead of being "wasted," it's just saved you time later on.

Talakeal
2016-03-11, 02:44 PM
Depends. Are you okay with it if the PCs *don't* go there? I mean, that's kind of fundamentally the differentiator, right? Whether or not the GM forces a particular course of actions that the players do not wish to engage in.

If the PCs don't go where I have prepped there really isn't a game, at best it would just be wandering around rolling random encounters all night.


One way to avoid the issue of "I prepped this, so go there" is to buy in to the idea that anywhere they skip, the prep isn't truly wasted. You can break it up, reskin it, use the encounters and statblocks, use pieces of the maps, use (tweaked, renamed, reskinned, etc) versions of the NPCs, and suchlike elsewhere. You might use it to fill in an area you hadn't planned for (the palace guards get reskinned as bandits harrassing a town, the left half of the goblin-cave dungeon becomes a smuggler's den in a cave by the bay or dug out beneath the docks, the shopkeeper at the podunk village's general store runs a dry-goods store in the city, etc., etc., so on and so forth), or you might use it in the next campaign instead. The players never see your campaign notes. Instead of being "wasted," it's just saved you time later on.

But in this case all of the locations have relevance to the world and a reason for the PCs to go to them, whether it is a famous monster to slay, a famous NPC to interact with, or a famous treasure to loot. It is kind of hard to swap that around.

Like, for example, if the good witch tells Dorothy to follow the yellow brick rode to get the Wizard of Oz to help her go back to Kansas and she decided to go into the swamp of darkness instead it is kind of hard to just move the whole emerald city into the swamp of darkness even if you do file off the serial numbers.

Segev
2016-03-11, 02:52 PM
Talekeal, as has been said, part of it is getting buy-in from your players. If they want to play the game, they'll bite on a plot hook. Just make sure the hooks are interesting to them. Heck, you can, at the start of a game, tell your players, "Tell me why your PC is engaged in the starting plot hook."

For instance, if you have a hook that involves going to see the Wizard of Oz, you can tell your players, "Tell me why your character wants to go see the Wizard of Oz." That's not railroading; that's telling them what the game's initial premise is and what they should keep in mind to make sure they're playing characters that will participate in it.

Lorsa
2016-03-11, 03:22 PM
Again, I will try to answer more later, when I have the time, but I just wanted to reply quickly to something.


If the PCs don't go where I have prepped there really isn't a game, at best it would just be wandering around rolling random encounters all night.

Generally speaking, this is where improvisation comes into play.


But in this case all of the locations have relevance to the world and a reason for the PCs to go to them, whether it is a famous monster to slay, a famous NPC to interact with, or a famous treasure to loot. It is kind of hard to swap that around.

Like, for example, if the good witch tells Dorothy to follow the yellow brick rode to get the Wizard of Oz to help her go back to Kansas and she decided to go into the swamp of darkness instead it is kind of hard to just move the whole emerald city into the swamp of darkness even if you do file off the serial numbers.

The problem is with the above example is that you are doing the exact same thing that my OP stated was a problem; you are drawing inspiration from a movie. When writing a movie script, you can have a witch tell Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road, and then prepare the Emerald city and never having to bother with the swamp of darkness.

However, in a roleplaying game, it's perfectly possible (even likely), that for some reason the players would choose not to follow the road and instead go to the swamp!

This is why you can't just plan for an Emerald city and then throw your hands up in the air when the players don't go there and say "ah well, no game then!". You either need to:

1) Improvise depending on the players' actions.
2) Prepare something for wherever they are located right now.
3) Prepare material for the places they are actually heading.

Or preferably, all of the above.

So basically, where they are right now there might be a witch that tells them they should follow the yellow brick road. The players instead decide to go to the swamp. Improvise a few things that might happen along the road (which could be taken from a pre-made list of generic "on the road" stuff), and then prepare the swamp for the next session.

The ability for the players not to follow the yellow road as the witch says is exactly the strength the roleplaying medium has over all other storytelling media.

obryn
2016-03-11, 03:29 PM
I am really, really sad that the term "railroading" has been expanded to include all kinds of adventures beyond the pure sandbox.

Segev
2016-03-11, 03:30 PM
Not entirely sure I agree, Lorsa. There is a required amount of buy-in that the players are there to play the game being presented. The DM says, "I am running The Tomb of Horrors," and the players show up and say, "Nah, we want to go on an expedition to Barrier Peak instead," then the DM, who may not have nor want to run The Expedition to Barrier Peak, is not obligated to run the game they demand; he told them what he was running when they agreed to play.

However, assuming the players are not jerks out to ruin the DM's fun, there is presumably a REASON they want to go into that swamp rather than to the Emerald City. That should give the DM an idea of how to craft an adventure for that location. IF players are making their own hooks, let them. Feel free to try to use them to lure the players towards your set locations with stuff going on. I think, if you have players regularly ignoring all the prepared locations and going off to random points, they're either thinking they have an objective there (in which case, you should find out what it is they seek to accomplish and use that in future hooks), or they are confused as to what your hooks are dragging them to (in which case, you need to find out what it is they think is there, and make sure they understand what their characters should understand).

Talakeal
2016-03-11, 03:38 PM
The problem is with the above example is that you are doing the exact same thing that my OP stated was a problem; you are drawing inspiration from a movie. When writing a movie script, you can have a witch tell Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road, and then prepare the Emerald city and never having to bother with the swamp of darkness.

However, in a roleplaying game, it's perfectly possible (even likely), that for some reason the players would choose not to follow the road and instead go to the swamp!

This is why you can't just plan for an Emerald city and then throw your hands up in the air when the players don't go there and say "ah well, no game then!". You either need to:

1) Improvise depending on the players' actions.
2) Prepare something for wherever they are located right now.
3) Prepare material for the places they are actually heading.

Or preferably, all of the above.

So basically, where they are right now there might be a witch that tells them they should follow the yellow brick road. The players instead decide to go to the swamp. Improvise a few things that might happen along the road (which could be taken from a pre-made list of generic "on the road" stuff), and then prepare the swamp for the next session.

The ability for the players not to follow the yellow road as the witch says is exactly the strength the roleplaying medium has over all other storytelling media.

Note that I was not saying that this was a good structure for an adventure.

I was specifically responding to the idea that you could simply swap around unused plot elements.

IF you were running an adventure where all the NPCs you met talked up some big important NPC and detailed what he could do and what he was like and where he lived and how to get there and all that, and then the PCs don't bite, it would become really suspicious if you suddenly picked up and moved the entire adventure and put it in their new path.

The quantum ogre works fine in a vacuum, but it relies on ignorance and misdirection. The more firmly the "ogre" is built into the fabric of the setting the harder it gets to move it without the players decided, if I can continue the metaphor, to peek behind the curtain and see it for what it is.

I merely picked wizard of Oz because it was a well known example of a character who is very well known and lives in a very specific place which can be reached in a very specific manner, not because it was an ideal adventure structure.




Also, my current situation has me living over a thousand miles from my players and we only get together for gaming a couple times a year. Simply throwing out what I have planned on the spot and preparing something else for "next session" isn't really feasible as abandoning a gaming session requires me to throw waste a ton of valuable time, effort, and cold hard cash.

Furthermore, my particular players are not very proactive. If they don't follow my hooks, they sit around bored and helpless doing nothing rather than looking for adventure. The only goals they ever have are to "power up" and the only thing I ever have to "railroad them" into NOT doing is sitting around town training and crafting magic items for years on end.

Beleriphon
2016-03-11, 04:08 PM
Even if you have particularly proactive people who are looking for adventure and something to do, more often than not in most worlds, there just isn't a whole lot going on. Some wars, maybe, some struggles for smaller realms of power, but what is there for a small band of powerful proactive people to do? Pick a side and hope they can eventually gain rank?

So the GM comes up with something unique happening so the players have something to get involved in, where they can have a real effect. And then, well, you have the beginnings of a plot.

To a degree you're right. A good start can be as simple as the way Avernum games operate. They're essentially big open sandboxes. The first game is starts with make the party, get dumped into Avernum/exile and go. The first plot is basically crazy dude has taken over the small complex where you get teleported in and you have to get out. The game expects you to fight the guy, but a TTRPG could negotiate or even join him. The game justifies his reaction upon being talked to as 1) a combat tutorial and 2) he's nuts and 3) he doesn't want to fight his way out since he'll be murder faced the soldiers outside if he does it without enough people (there's only him and three thugs at the time).

Talakeal
2016-03-11, 05:09 PM
I am really, really sad that the term "railroading" has been expanded to include all kinds of adventures beyond the pure sandbox.

Judging by Lorsa's last post it looks like even a sandbox counts as a railroad if it is prepped beforehand rather than running off pure improv ;P


Snark aside, I honestly think that railroading is probably best looked at as a continuum rather than an absolute, and the question of "is this railroading" should instead asked as "What is the point on the spectrum where my players will have the best time."

Segev
2016-03-11, 05:16 PM
As another poster put it, it's rare that players mind "riding the rails" to get to the starting point of the adventure, or even taking them a little ways in just to get introduced to the important figures. The usual point at which railroading becomes obnoxious is when the players start to take initiative and are thwarted, not by the game's mechanics, but by the demands of the plot-rails. Usually, players start to take pro-active action when they see something interesting to pursue, or think they understand the problem enough to seek out solutions to it.

If they're jumping "off the rails" to something genuinely un-prepared, then it's probably best to roll with it.

If your instinct is to thwart them because you've got nothing there for them to do, find out what they hope to accomplish, as that will help you figure out how to develop it and maybe even suggest what "quantum ogres" to move into place from elsewhere in the environment.

If your instinct is to thwart them because they'll sequence-break, the fact that sequence-breaking is a concern should be a warning sign to you that you've got this too plot-planned. Back it off a bit, and allow them to sequence-break, even short-circuit the whole plot, if needs be. Recycle the rest of what they left untouched for another plot in the future, as you try again without creating a "must do it this way" style.

Really, the only time most players complain about a "railroad" is when they see something they want to do that's off the rails...and they're not allowed to despite having no reason they shouldn't be able to.

JAL_1138
2016-03-11, 06:13 PM
If the PCs don't go where I have prepped there really isn't a game, at best it would just be wandering around rolling random encounters all night.



But in this case all of the locations have relevance to the world and a reason for the PCs to go to them, whether it is a famous monster to slay, a famous NPC to interact with, or a famous treasure to loot. It is kind of hard to swap that around.

Like, for example, if the good witch tells Dorothy to follow the yellow brick rode to get the Wizard of Oz to help her go back to Kansas and she decided to go into the swamp of darkness instead it is kind of hard to just move the whole emerald city into the swamp of darkness even if you do file off the serial numbers.

You don't put the Emerald City in the swamp. They go to the Swamp of Darkness, not the Emerald City. You use bits and pieces of the Emerald City next time you need a city or town, or anywhere else they could fit. Some of the layouts and encounters if there's a dungeon there might be useful as a ruin or as part of the Wicked Witch's Castle, or whatever. The city guards probably have decent statblocks for bandits, reskinned. Use the Wizard's statblock sometime way later if you need a con man or quest-giver. The flying monkeys and the sleep-inducing flowers can be used pretty much anywhere with a reskin.

You're not using it wholesale. Famous monster? Keep the stat block. Cut it down some, drop a few abilities off it, switch a damage type, whittle down its numbers (since you want to keep the "real" one special in case they do go after it eventually) and reskin it as a different creature for a decent monster elsewhere (easier than statting a new one from scratch). Famous treasure? You might use the left half of part of one of the levels of the dungeon it's in somewhere, redrawn as a cave system instead of a ruined temple, with the demons in it reskinned as other critters, and make up a plot hook for it (e.g., villager says "Please help, good sers, the monsters in Bleakmire Cave have been capturing the trade wagons and we've no more medicine for the bog-sickness. Can you help us?" or something.)

Famous NPC? Keep the statblock; you can do the same trick with the monster and whittle it down some for use for a different NPC, but also where does s/he live? You've got your temple, dungeon, town, whatever where they're meeting this NPC that can be broken up, rearranged, used piecemeal.

But what you're not doing is putting the exact thing they decided to skip into the place they decided to go; that's a Quantum Ogre or "RailSchröding," which is not what I'm suggesting. Bits and pieces, where and when applicable. That may not be the next place they go. That might not even be in the same campaign. But you've still got it done, so you can still use it somewhere, sometime, and so it wasn't wasted. This is especially true for statblocks and encounters, but maps work very, very well too.

It's kind of hard to get used to the idea of winging a location. I often steal from modules for filler stuff, often--so much of module content can be dropped in wherever with some on-the-fly tweaking if you ignore the module "plot" and figure out how to readjust the setup 'till it makes some kind of sense. And you will almost certainly have to call a break to do it (I do, at least), but your players might not realize you're making it up at the table and instead assume you had the location planned but not fully prepped.

goto124
2016-03-11, 07:02 PM
By the way, Talakeal, if you want to use JAL's method, don't plan too hard about what will happen in your campaign, otherwise there's not much you can do.

If your players really are that lacking in proactiveness, maybe (don't take my advice on this bit, I want to see what other posters say) announce you're running a railroad and just go along with it like a prewritten adventure module?


Usually, players start to take pro-active action when they see something interesting to pursue, or think they understand the problem enough to seek out solutions to it.

I suddenly realize, that I have never reached a point where I understand the problem enough to seek out solutions to it. Which explains why I'm rather alright with following what the game or other players suggest - I don't have any better ideas anyway.

JAL_1138
2016-03-11, 07:54 PM
By the way, Talakeal, if you want to use JAL's method, don't plan too hard about what will happen in your campaign, otherwise there's not much you can do.


This is true. I rarely have any idea where it's going to go beyond the next session, and I usually only figure that out about an hour or two after the current one is over. I'm making this up as I go. Like I said upthread, I wasn't even intending to run the campaign in its current form--the cult that's now the main focus of it was something I yoinked and reworked from an Adventurers' League module to fill a session when they ended up skipping the hooks I had planned for. I've been winging it since then and hoping they don't notice.

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/234/765/b7e.jpg

Segev
2016-03-11, 08:36 PM
RailSchrödingI absolutely adore this word. Thank you for it!

goto124
2016-03-11, 08:39 PM
I didn't get it until I realized it meant Schrödinger's railroads.

JAL_1138
2016-03-11, 09:33 PM
I absolutely adore this word. Thank you for it!


I didn't get it until I realized it meant Schrödinger's railroads.

I can't take credit; I heard it elsewhere (I forget where, likely in the FLGS). I'm fond of it as an alternate for "Quantum Ogre," since it's a broader-seeming term.

What I do is arguably a version of it--using bits here and there, or even using already-planned things wholesale that the players had no idea were originally meant to go someplace they skipped (although I don't do that often), isn't necessarily bad. It's an issue when the players deliberately skip something, and it turns out to be where they end up, or when it otherwise strips them of agency (including the ability to be wrong).

The Quantum Ogre is an easier thing to summarize--the players take a safer path to avoid the one that's rumored to have an ogre on it, and get attacked by an ogre on the path they took, because the DM spent an hour on that ogre fight, dangit, and they're going to fight it one way or the other. But it's a narrow-sounding term (encounters), when it really has other applications, like dropping the Emerald City in the Swamp of Darkness...or if the players have gone to the dungeon because they think the talky bits that happen whenever they're in town are boring, making the only way to get through the dungeon be to diplomatically resolve a dispute outside the entrance between two factions led by the NPCs you were going to put in the city. RailSchröding is a broader-sounding term that seems like it'd be easier to apply to more situations.

Also, it's a funny word. :smalltongue:

OldTrees1
2016-03-12, 07:47 AM
Snark aside, I honestly think that railroading is probably best looked at as a continuum rather than an absolute, and the question of "is this railroading" should instead asked as "What is the point on the spectrum where my players will have the best time."

Talakeal gets it.

Your example of "creating the area for this session, but the PCs need to go there if we are to have a session" lands somewhere on that spectrum.

I like sandboxes and my characters tend to have motives beyond the plot (Ex: Creating a mage college), as such my typical characters might barely fit such a campaign. However given forewarning of the structure of the campaign or in session given the metagame explanation that you only have time to plan one area per week, I would be more than willing to give the campaign a try. Many of my players' preferences land further away from sandboxes on that spectrum so I expect they would give your type of campaign an even warmer welcome. So while we can't speak for all players, or even for your players, I can say that your campaign is at a place on the spectrum that some players will enjoy.

Lorsa
2016-03-12, 08:42 AM
I am really, really sad that the term "railroading" has been expanded to include all kinds of adventures beyond the pure sandbox.

I don't think railroading applies to adventures at all. Rather, it involves an action taken by the DM. Certain types of adventuires encourages railroading, or even require it.



Not entirely sure I agree, Lorsa. There is a required amount of buy-in that the players are there to play the game being presented. The DM says, "I am running The Tomb of Horrors," and the players show up and say, "Nah, we want to go on an expedition to Barrier Peak instead," then the DM, who may not have nor want to run The Expedition to Barrier Peak, is not obligated to run the game they demand; he told them what he was running when they agreed to play.

I agree that there players have to buy-in to the premise of the game. This all then depends on what that premise is.

If you say "I want you to play adventurers explore the Tomb of Horrors", then that's what the players should create (and do). Similarly, if you say "I want you to to play adventurers following the yellow road to the Wizard of Oz and get back to Kansas", then you can (and should) expect them to reach the Emerald City.

For example, for the game I will be running next weekend for my two friends looking for "classic fantasy", I said they should play two siblings, that they grew up on a small thorpe outside of a small village far away from the main civilization. They were raised solely by their mother, and had no memories of their father.

As you can imagine, I have some backstory to all of that, but what the players decide to do once it comes crashing down on them is up to them.

So yes, they do need to agree to the buy-in. No doubt. Railroading happens later, if the DM has decided some actions must be taken by the PCs, but "forgot" to tell them beforehand.



However, assuming the players are not jerks out to ruin the DM's fun, there is presumably a REASON they want to go into that swamp rather than to the Emerald City. That should give the DM an idea of how to craft an adventure for that location. IF players are making their own hooks, let them. Feel free to try to use them to lure the players towards your set locations with stuff going on. I think, if you have players regularly ignoring all the prepared locations and going off to random points, they're either thinking they have an objective there (in which case, you should find out what it is they seek to accomplish and use that in future hooks), or they are confused as to what your hooks are dragging them to (in which case, you need to find out what it is they think is there, and make sure they understand what their characters should understand).

There'll always be a reason to the players' actions. If that reason the players are jerks out to ruin the DM's fun, then those are not players you should be playing with!



Note that I was not saying that this was a good structure for an adventure.

I was specifically responding to the idea that you could simply swap around unused plot elements.

I'm sorry if I seemed hostile towards you. I was short on time and saw a possible pitfall with comparing roleplaying adventures with movie scripts.

As you can see, I agree with you that you shouldn't just change the location of the Emerald city. But I also don't think you should force your players to follow the yellow road unless they want to.


Also, my current situation has me living over a thousand miles from my players and we only get together for gaming a couple times a year. Simply throwing out what I have planned on the spot and preparing something else for "next session" isn't really feasible as abandoning a gaming session requires me to throw waste a ton of valuable time, effort, and cold hard cash.

Furthermore, my particular players are not very proactive. If they don't follow my hooks, they sit around bored and helpless doing nothing rather than looking for adventure. The only goals they ever have are to "power up" and the only thing I ever have to "railroad them" into NOT doing is sitting around town training and crafting magic items for years on end.

Individual game situations will obviously complicate matters. My first post, I hope, made it clear that I do not judge people on the way they want to play. Participationism is fine if that's what people have agreed to.

I don't think many players are so proactive as to start doing things in a vacuum. Providing things for them to react to isn't railroading, that's what DMs are expected to do.



Judging by Lorsa's last post it looks like even a sandbox counts as a railroad if it is prepped beforehand rather than running off pure improv ;P

That's not what I said.

My point was that if you prepare locations beforehand, expecting players to go there, and force them there anyway if decided not to, THEN it is railroading. IF you are so fond of your pre-planned locations that you somehow can't avoid doing this, then prepping in advance is probably a bad idea. That was my argument.

I encourage DMs to pre-plan as many locations as possible. There is nothing wrong with that. But you have to let the players' choices have logical consequences.

Suddenly meeting a crazy wizard that teleports them to the city east when the players decided to go west is NOT a logical consequence (for example, not that it has been suggested).



As another poster put it, it's rare that players mind "riding the rails" to get to the starting point of the adventure, or even taking them a little ways in just to get introduced to the important figures. The usual point at which railroading becomes obnoxious is when the players start to take initiative and are thwarted, not by the game's mechanics, but by the demands of the plot-rails. Usually, players start to take pro-active action when they see something interesting to pursue, or think they understand the problem enough to seek out solutions to it.

If they're jumping "off the rails" to something genuinely un-prepared, then it's probably best to roll with it.

If your instinct is to thwart them because you've got nothing there for them to do, find out what they hope to accomplish, as that will help you figure out how to develop it and maybe even suggest what "quantum ogres" to move into place from elsewhere in the environment.

If your instinct is to thwart them because they'll sequence-break, the fact that sequence-breaking is a concern should be a warning sign to you that you've got this too plot-planned. Back it off a bit, and allow them to sequence-break, even short-circuit the whole plot, if needs be. Recycle the rest of what they left untouched for another plot in the future, as you try again without creating a "must do it this way" style.

Really, the only time most players complain about a "railroad" is when they see something they want to do that's off the rails...and they're not allowed to despite having no reason they shouldn't be able to.

That's basically my definition of railroading. The players are prevented from doing something there is no reason they shouldn't be able to do.



I suddenly realize, that I have never reached a point where I understand the problem enough to seek out solutions to it. Which explains why I'm rather alright with following what the game or other players suggest - I don't have any better ideas anyway.

It is a skill just like any other. My advice is to try and play in a solo campaign, where you don't have other players to rely on. Then you have to follow your own ideas and instincts.

goto124
2016-03-12, 09:07 AM
It is a skill just like any other. My advice is to try and play in a solo campaign, where you don't have other players to rely on. Then you have to follow your own ideas and instincts.

I have played several solo campaigns before. Results fall into two categories:

- I follow the DM's ideas
- Even the DM has no ideas, and the campaign fizzles out (no really, I asked "so what's supposed to happen now?" and the DM replied "I dunno, I thought YOU knew!")

I suck.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-12, 01:37 PM
If the PCs don't go where I have prepped there really isn't a game, at best it would just be wandering around rolling random encounters all night.

One of the big reasons that railroading exists is for this reason. The PC's have to go to where the DM has prepared. Only like three DM's in the whole world can create an encounter in one second and without looking anything up, all the rest need time to prepare.



That's basically my definition of railroading. The players are prevented from doing something there is no reason they shouldn't be able to do.


That is just to vague and has the ''it's whatever a player does not like problem''.

Thrudd
2016-03-12, 03:34 PM
Railroading happens when the players want to do things that the GM hasn't prepared for, right? It is used because the GM has an expectation about what the game should be, the players don't know or care about the GM's expectation and have their own.

I think this is really a problem of a lack of structure. Not narrative structure, but game structure. In a game, the players need to know what it is they are meant to be doing. A game has an objective, and rules which dictate how that objective is achieved and known parameters around which the players can form strategies. In a board game, the objective and strategies may be very simple and very limited.
An RPG is more open, but the rules should still provide all the "rails" you need. The GM needs to make clear the rules they will be using in a very specific way, if it at all contradicts or adds to what is written in the book. It is the GMs role not just to plan the contents of the game, but also to plan the meta-environment so that the players can function as players. In other words, player goals are dictated by the rules of the game, regardless of your planned story or the characters they have chosen.
If you want them to participate in the game in a certain way, make sure the rules of the game give them reason to do so.

In too many RPGs, the players and GM both come into the game with a preconceived expectation of how to play the game, irrespective of the game's actual or implied rules, and those expectations do not always line up. It falls on the GM to make sure players understand his/her expectations as well as provide rules that will give the players actual incentive to follow those expectations.

Early D&D was able to work with non railroad adventures because the DM and players both were usually clear on what it is players want and how they get it in the game: xp from treasure.

There are new ways to look at D&D and RPGs in general, but the fact still remains that these are games. So if you want your game to be about players acting out roles in a story you have devised, then you need to think about what their game objective should be and how the game will reward them for accomplishing objectives. What will draw the players to the material you have prepped without reservation, and will not lead them to look elsewhere in the game world for better ways to meet the objective. Participating in the material you have prepared should be what the players want, because the game makes them want it.

Knaight
2016-03-12, 03:40 PM
One of the big reasons that railroading exists is for this reason. The PC's have to go to where the DM has prepared. Only like three DM's in the whole world can create an encounter in one second and without looking anything up, all the rest need time to prepare.

There are particular systems in which this is the case, and even in them if you have general preparation you'll likely be fine. In others, the ability to improvise is extremely common, as the mechanical aspect is faster and that's the only real limiting rate on a whole bunch of people.

kyoryu
2016-03-12, 03:53 PM
If the PCs don't go where I have prepped there really isn't a game, at best it would just be wandering around rolling random encounters all night.

Why? You can't sketch out some useful NPCs on the fly, or throw together a quick floorplan for a kobold cave or something?

Amphetryon
2016-03-12, 04:14 PM
Why? You can't sketch out some useful NPCs on the fly, or throw together a quick floorplan for a kobold cave or something?

At a certain point, that argument devolves into 'the GM is just there as a servant of the Players.' Is it your contention that the GM should just never prepare anything in advance, since it's both irrelevant and easy to always improvise? It's also not always easy to sketch out such things in a way that makes sense to any over-arching plot the PCs may be working toward. This is particularly true if the PCs regularly ignore whatever the GM prepares to go off at random. . . and yes, I have seen (from both sides of the GM screen) Players who fought vehemently against GM Plot while simultaneously whinging about how the various adventures were far too random to make any sort of cohesive sense.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-12, 04:37 PM
One of the big reasons that railroading exists is for this reason. The PC's have to go to where the DM has prepared. Only like three DM's in the whole world can create an encounter in one second and without looking anything up, all the rest need time to prepare.


I'll take "D&D problems for 100, Alex."

Yeah, I find that a significant number of the systems I play don't require me to do much prep.

All PbtA systems are extremely low preptime with very high narrative cohesion because AW is really well designed to do exactly that.


SWN is midling preptime, but nothing like D&D.

Shadowrun is like D&D for prep...or worse.

Basically, the more your system relies on Statblocks and maps, the more of a headache your prep will be. The less it relies on those, the easier it will be.

AW uses neither NPC statblocks nor Combat maps. (You can use maps if you think they're important, but that's pretty rare.)

SWN uses a little bit of stats but has tons of prebuilt NPCs. No maps unless needed.

Shadowrun and D&D tend to use intense statblocks and lots of maps.

This may not be a perfect analysis for why preptime can be high, but it feels like the start of something.

Talakeal
2016-03-12, 05:42 PM
I'll take "D&D problems for 100, Alex."

Yeah, I find that a significant number of the systems I play don't require me to do much prep.

All PbtA systems are extremely low preptime with very high narrative cohesion because AW is really well designed to do exactly that.


SWN is midling preptime, but nothing like D&D.

Shadowrun is like D&D for prep...or worse.

Basically, the more your system relies on Statblocks and maps, the more of a headache your prep will be. The less it relies on those, the easier it will be.

AW uses neither NPC statblocks nor Combat maps. (You can use maps if you think they're important, but that's pretty rare.)

SWN uses a little bit of stats but has tons of prebuilt NPCs. No maps unless needed.

Shadowrun and D&D tend to use intense statblocks and lots of maps.

This may not be a perfect analysis for why preptime can be high, but it feels like the start of something.

I actually find D&D to be one of the easier games to run on the fly because most monsters can be ported straight out of the book. It takes a lot more time for me to, say, make an NPC in WoD than it does to pull something out of the MM.

neonchameleon
2016-03-12, 06:24 PM
I actually find D&D to be one of the easier games to run on the fly because most monsters can be ported straight out of the book. It takes a lot more time for me to, say, make an NPC in WoD than it does to pull something out of the MM.

Well, yeah. That's because WoD really isn't very designed for improvising.

On the other hand Knaight is a fan of Fudge. ImNotTrevor is a fan of Apocalypse World. Neither system has or really wants a MM - it'll take you about as long to create an NPC in Fudge as to look a monster up in the MM, and that's slow by AW standards.

In other words in this case you're saying "My lorry is fuel efficient for getting me places" to a guy in a Prius (Knaight) and a guy on a motorbike (ImNotTrevor). By lorry standards it is...

Hyooz
2016-03-12, 06:25 PM
That's why I mostly play FATE these days. A couple of Aspects and like, two relevant skills. Bam.

Talakeal
2016-03-12, 06:49 PM
Yeah, there are certainly rules light RPGs that don't need stat blocks at all. I was just pointing out that it is hardly a "D&D" problem and more a problem of any RPG that needs written statblocks for NPCs.

I also find that balancing the difficulty of the encounter takes a fair bit of time, at least as much as actually looking up / writing out the stats for the opponents.

Knaight
2016-03-12, 06:58 PM
At a certain point, that argument devolves into 'the GM is just there as a servant of the Players.' Is it your contention that the GM should just never prepare anything in advance, since it's both irrelevant and easy to always improvise?

I'm not buying this. There are GM's who need a planned structure, but improvisation is hardly being a servant of the players. I can personally say that I prefer the game being unpredictable, players driving things in unexpected directions, and other such things to making and then enacting a plan. The latter is just really boring for me as a GM; I know that I'm not alone on this.

On top of that, improvisation doesn't mean that you should never prepare anything. There are people who can improvise an entire campaign from nothing, but there are also heavily improvisational GMs who do a lot of prep are the very beginning to build a setting they know extremely well, who then do essentially no prep for the rest of the campaign, coasting on their encyclopedic knowledge of their own setting and the sort of understanding of game structures that comes with experience.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-12, 08:23 PM
On top of that, improvisation doesn't mean that you should never prepare anything. There are people who can improvise an entire campaign from nothing.

I don't think you can improvise a whole campaign. Unless your just talking about sitting down and thinking things up. And sure a DM can just randomly improvise random things for everything the PC's do, but that is not exactly a ''campaign'' and is more of a ''sandbox''. And if everything is all improvised the game will be sloppy and make no sense, it will just be a bunch of random, unrelated encounters. Like a DM could say ''you open the door and the room is full of illithids and a black dragon!''. Ok, so cool fight, but there has to be a reason they are in the room, doing nothing, waiting for the Pcs. And as soon as the DM stops and takes a couple minutes and makes a reason, they are not ''improvising'' any more, they are just doing ''normal game creation''.

kyoryu
2016-03-12, 09:39 PM
I don't think you can improvise a whole campaign.

Why not?

You just answer one question at a time, keeping in mind the previous things you've established.

Thrudd
2016-03-12, 09:55 PM
Why not?

You just answer one question at a time, keeping in mind the previous things you've established.

I basically improvised a whole d6 Star Wars campaign, apart from the opening scenario. The players loved it. It was successful because at that point I knew the game and setting so well I could (and did) run it without the book. A detailed setting goes a long way to making such a thing possible and believable.

Amphetryon
2016-03-12, 10:16 PM
I'm not buying this. There are GM's who need a planned structure, but improvisation is hardly being a servant of the players. I can personally say that I prefer the game being unpredictable, players driving things in unexpected directions, and other such things to making and then enacting a plan. The latter is just really boring for me as a GM; I know that I'm not alone on this.

On top of that, improvisation doesn't mean that you should never prepare anything. There are people who can improvise an entire campaign from nothing, but there are also heavily improvisational GMs who do a lot of prep are the very beginning to build a setting they know extremely well, who then do essentially no prep for the rest of the campaign, coasting on their encyclopedic knowledge of their own setting and the sort of understanding of game structures that comes with experience.

NB: Not every experience I have had in TTRPG has been as follows, but what follows was not a single, isolated example.

When anything you prepare is rejected by the Players (perhaps, as in my experience, to cries of 'railroad!') then exactly what should you prepare, and why? If improvisation is as easy and spontaneous as kyoryu's apparent argument posits, why would the GM waste an hour or more of prep time, rather than just going 'seat-of-the-pants' with the whole adventure? This question is particularly important if the first point is also true - that most anything which appears prepped ahead of time gets rejected as a railroad. Lastly, there really IS a vocal minority (I sure hope it's still a minority) that posits that the preceding is true, and that the truth within those two premises leads to the conclusion that GMing is both easy and not intended to promote any particular agenda of the GM's, other than ensuring that the folks who AREN'T the GM are entertained. I have read, heard, and seen firsthand folks who start from the premises to which I responded and reach exactly those conclusions, regardless of whether you are 'buying it' or not.

kyoryu
2016-03-12, 11:29 PM
When anything you prepare is rejected by the Players (perhaps, as in my experience, to cries of 'railroad!') then exactly what should you prepare, and why?

The world. The factions in it. Interesting encounters that may (or may not) occur.


If improvisation is as easy and spontaneous as kyoryu's apparent argument posits, why would the GM waste an hour or more of prep time, rather than just going 'seat-of-the-pants' with the whole adventure?

It's not (usually) a matter of *not* prepping. It's prepping *differently*. It's not a list of encounters that the players engage in, it's a situation, and NPCs in that situation with their own resources and plans. And then when the players screw everything up (which is their job), you extrapolate how the NPCs react. You might prep some of the encounters - if you're dealing with a thieves' guild, you'd probably want to make sure to have stats for the thieves, maybe some guards, etc. If you know that the thieves want to get into the castle for whatever reason, stat up some of the guards and knights. You know the theives will try to get the PCs to do their dirty work for them, so at least have some stuff prepared there. But don't assume that's what *will* happen, and be prepared for the PCs to decide not to work with the thieves at all, but to work against them, or throw their lot in with a third faction.

By knowing what all of your NPCs are doing, it makes it easier to figure out how the world responds to the PC actions. The prep then helps you no matter *what* the PCs choose, rather than just leaving you with nothing if the PCs don't go down your path.

And then as far as doing improv, it's a matter of fitting new pieces into the existing framework. Real example: In a campaign once, players decided they wanted to go to the Mage's Guild. I hadn't even really planned on there being one. But I said "sure, why not" and let them go there. Because they were onto some veeeeery interesting stuff, they got a meeting with one of the higher up mages, who was veeeeeery interested in gaining some of this power for himself (but didn't really let that on himself). It was a matter of just thinking of "okay, what complications could come out of this?" and running with it. The NPC, and his motivations, and everything else were poofed up on the spot. However, after that session he became just like any other NPC, got fleshed out a bit, and started interacting with the other NPCs in the scenario.


This question is particularly important if the first point is also true - that most anything which appears prepped ahead of time gets rejected as a railroad.

Again, what is prepped and the type of prep is as important as the fact that prepping is taking place. I rarely run games completely spontaneously, but the prep I do is much more about the characters involved, their plans and motivations than it is the specific fights the PCs will happen.


Lastly, there really IS a vocal minority (I sure hope it's still a minority) that posits that the preceding is true, and that the truth within those two premises leads to the conclusion that GMing is both easy and not intended to promote any particular agenda of the GM's, other than ensuring that the folks who AREN'T the GM are entertained.

This seems rather silly. The fact that the GM doesn't constrain the PCs actions doesn't mean the GM doesn't have their own preferences, and that those don't come out through the elements the GM puts on the table in the first place, as well as how the various NPCs react.


I have read, heard, and seen firsthand folks who start from the premises to which I responded and reach exactly those conclusions, regardless of whether you are 'buying it' or not.

People believe all sorts of things, usually in various forms of false equivalences or false dichotomies.

Segev
2016-03-12, 11:37 PM
I have played several solo campaigns before. Results fall into two categories:

- I follow the DM's ideas
- Even the DM has no ideas, and the campaign fizzles out (no really, I asked "so what's supposed to happen now?" and the DM replied "I dunno, I thought YOU knew!")

I suck.

That doesn't mean you suck. It means you're more of a passive player. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. It can be easier for certain kinds of GM to run for you; it can be harder for other kinds. Games are there to have fun; you're not "doing it wrong" if you don't happen to mind rails.

kyoryu
2016-03-12, 11:45 PM
Games are there to have fun; you're not "doing it wrong" if you don't happen to mind rails.

And as someone vocally talking in favor of the *possibility* of non-railroading, let me reiterate - there's nothing wrong with railroading if that's what you and your group are into.

What I'm talking about is that you *can* do stuff without having it pre-scripted, and *how* to do so if you want.

Segev
2016-03-13, 01:34 AM
And as someone vocally talking in favor of the *possibility* of non-railroading, let me reiterate - there's nothing wrong with railroading if that's what you and your group are into.

What I'm talking about is that you *can* do stuff without having it pre-scripted, and *how* to do so if you want.

Certainly; I was directing my last post specifically at the quote, because the guy seemed to think he was doing something wrong for being a player who enjoys being led through an adventure by other players or the DM. I wasn't accusing anybody in this thread of telling people they were having badwrongfun.

goto124
2016-03-13, 01:40 AM
What I'm talking about is that you *can* do stuff without having it pre-scripted, and *how* to do so if you want.

I've been throwing around the idea of I, the player, doing stuff without having it pre-scripted, but the methods of how to do so are all loaded on the GM side instead of the player side.

There's no point to the GM giving all the freedom and space if the player can't do anything with it.

kyoryu
2016-03-13, 02:11 AM
Certainly; I was directing my last post specifically at the quote, because the guy seemed to think he was doing something wrong for being a player who enjoys being led through an adventure by other players or the DM. I wasn't accusing anybody in this thread of telling people they were having badwrongfun.

Nope, we're in agreement. It was more of a "yes, and also" than anything else :)

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-13, 05:00 AM
Yeah, there are certainly rules light RPGs that don't need stat blocks at all. I was just pointing out that it is hardly a "D&D" problem and more a problem of any RPG that needs written statblocks for NPCs.

I also find that balancing the difficulty of the encounter takes a fair bit of time, at least as much as actually looking up / writing out the stats for the opponents.

I don't know that I continue to agree with Rules Light as the factor for ease. Rules Light suggest there are fewer rules and so less game or something. It tends to be used on this forum almost condescendingly.
(Not saying the poster quoted or anyone in this thread has, but I have seen it.)

Apocalypse World isn't particularly Rules Light. The rulebook is still 200 pages long-ish and only a spare few are taken up by art (usually the first page of any chapter.)
The thing is that Apocalypse World comes at gaming from an entirely different perspective than D&D does.

Apocalypse World is built on narrative first, with rules to guide and enhance the narrative. Rules focus not on the HOW of the thing you are doing, but on the WHAT and the WHY.

In D&D you attack somone and either hit or miss.

In AW you have two ways to attack someone based on the sort of violence (Go Aggro for one-way violence and threats, Sieze By Force for two-way violence and violent acquisition) that can end in a much larger array of consequences. Ie,

On a 10+ Go Aggro, there are two potential outcomes (this is a success, by the way!)
-The target caves and does what you want (be it Dying or Giving you what you want) or they suck it up and take what's coming (good for well-armored opponents.)
On a 7-9, lots more things can happen. The enemy can...
• get the hell out of your way
• barricade themselves securely in
• give you something they think you want
• back off calmly, hands where you can see
• tell you what you want to know (or what you want to hear)
On a Miss, the GM gets to make a counter move (which perpetuates the Moves Snowball, where moves and countermoves just be crazier and crazier)
What are the GM's Moves? Well, that will depend.
If it is just a Joe Schmoe enemy, then...
• Separate them. (Literally or metaphorically)
• Capture someone. (Literally or metaphorically)
• Put someone in a spot.
• Trade harm for harm (as established).
• Announce off-screen badness.
• Announce future badness.
• Inflict harm (as established).
• Take away their stuff.
• Make them buy.
• Activate their stuff’s downside. (Your gun jams, your car breaks down/runs out of gas, etc.)
• Tell them the possible consequences and ask.
• Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost.
• Turn their move back on them. (The enemy goes aggro now)
• Make a threat move (from one of your fronts). (Unleash a whole new set of moves!)
• After every move: “what do you do?” (this is always done)

If it is from a front, and is a Threat?
Well, that depends on the kind of Threat.
There are 5 kinds of Threats.
Each with 6 subtypes that inform about its particular nuances.
Each kind of threat has 8-11 moves of its own, possibly including custom move made by the MC.

So when you attack someone in one particular way in AW there are a minimum of 29 different categories of outcome. (There are, by quick estimaton, 27 outcomes for Seize by Force.)

Does that sound Rules Light, or really complicated in a manner entirely different from how D&D is complicated?

I would vote for the latter.

Apocalypse World is really light on prep, but that is because as the GM of AW you need to be a lot more engaged in the narrative of what is happening, the movement of dangers off-screen, the consistent fiction of the world, and in perpetuating the back-and-forth escalation that Apocalypse World does so much better than any other system. When things start going downhill in AW, they go downhill in a way that escalates quickly, dramatically, and with tension beyond "my hitpoints are low" and "the loot is getting away."

It isn't to say that these things cannot happen in D&D, but D&D isn't built around this concept. D&D is really numbers-heavy.
AW is concepts-heavy. You need a different approach to GM it correctly. Which the book actually helps you with, unlike D&D's "You are the DM, you know best!" approach which is entirely unhelpful.

Am I ranting? Maybe. But yeah. AW is not Rules Light. It's Prep Light and Statblock Light. But the Rules are intensive. Just not numbery.

Lorsa
2016-03-13, 05:39 AM
I have played several solo campaigns before. Results fall into two categories:

- I follow the DM's ideas
- Even the DM has no ideas, and the campaign fizzles out (no really, I asked "so what's supposed to happen now?" and the DM replied "I dunno, I thought YOU knew!")

I suck.

You should never talk about yourself in ways like "I suck". At worst you can be "not very good at", but preferably you should stick with "I could get better at".

Talk about yourself in the positive rather than the negative!



One of the big reasons that railroading exists is for this reason. The PC's have to go to where the DM has prepared. Only like three DM's in the whole world can create an encounter in one second and without looking anything up, all the rest need time to prepare.

So one second is really the cut-off line for you then? If you take three seconds then it becomes "preparation"?

Firstly, the Monster's Manual exists for a reason. Which is to help DMs improvise encounters by quickly looking up monsters in it.

Secondly, it's perfectly possible to do it in one second.

Like this:

"A bunch of bandits attack the PCs on their way to [non-prepared location X]."

Everybody rolls initiative, just assume your bandits has +1 or +2, probably it won't matter anyway as the D20 has such high spread.

When a bandit attacks, roll the die. While the die is in the air, just decide "15 is a hit" or some other number that makes sense given the PCs AC compared to your bandit level (which we assume is 3-5). Alternatively, don't decide exactly which number the bandit hits on unless the die is in the 11-15 range. Everything above 15 is probably a hit anyway, and everything below 11 is a miss. So there's only 25% chance the exact number is even relevant.

Anyway, while the players take their usual time to think during their turn, work out what the NPC spellcaster (if there even is any) will do. Assume Scorching Ray by default and come up with something more interesting if the players give you enough time.

When a bandit takes a hit, decide how much AC they have. Or, better yet, you don't even need to decide unless the player's attack total is in the 14-18 region. If it's below 14, it's a probably a miss, and if it's above 18, it's probably a hit (unless it's on the spellcaster, because everyone knows they have at least 19 AC if they aren't somehow average or lower in Dex). So again, it's only a 25% chance that the bandit AC is even relevant! But yeah, just decide on a number for each bandit when it becomes relevant (the leader might get higher).

Do the same for HP. Most likely, your bandit has a HP range of 20-30. So if your players are below or above this range, it means either alive or dead bandit. When a player does damage to make it end up in that range, decide on a value. For example "this was the sucky bandit so he has 23 and dies" or "this was the leader bandit, so she get 29".

More complicated encounters require more complicated handling. But there are still some "generic formulas" one can follow. Such as, take inspiration from the players.

The spells the party wizard uses are probably good/optimized spells, so enemy wizards will use similar ones (although not identical in all respects). Whatever attack values the party fighter has is probably a good baseline to work with for enemy figther attack values. +2 to -5 depending on level/coolness difference.



That is just to vague and has the ''it's whatever a player does not like problem''.

All definitions are vague. That's in the nature of definition. It's much easier to say when a definition is wrong than when it's right (the latter is impossible).

That's why physics have moved to operating definitions. You learn the definition of a thing by seeing how it's used.

So the best way for me to explain railroading is to provide a bunch of examples, and then let you figure out the definition from there. Anything else is a fool's errand.



Railroading happens when the players want to do things that the GM hasn't prepared for, right? It is used because the GM has an expectation about what the game should be, the players don't know or care about the GM's expectation and have their own.

Railroading can happen when the players want to do things the GM hasn't prepared for. It's hardly the one and only reason though, and definitely not sufficient in itself.

Different expentations however, is a big problem in itself, and can give many more problems than simple railroading. That's one of the biggest issue in all group activities.



At a certain point, that argument devolves into 'the GM is just there as a servant of the Players.' Is it your contention that the GM should just never prepare anything in advance, since it's both irrelevant and easy to always improvise? It's also not always easy to sketch out such things in a way that makes sense to any over-arching plot the PCs may be working toward. This is particularly true if the PCs regularly ignore whatever the GM prepares to go off at random. . . and yes, I have seen (from both sides of the GM screen) Players who fought vehemently against GM Plot while simultaneously whinging about how the various adventures were far too random to make any sort of cohesive sense.

You don't need to have everything make sense to the over-arching plot. Some things are just things on their own.

Also, some players shouldn't be players just as much as some GMs shouldn't be GMs.



Well, yeah. That's because WoD really isn't very designed for improvising.

That depends what WoD system we are talking about. Basic mortal Wod? Vampire? Mage? They're on a scale from "easy" to "almost impossible".

I've found WoD in general to be just as easy to improvise in as D&D. Unless you are talking about Mage. But since the players take like forever to look up their own spells, noone could blame the ST for doing the same.



I don't think you can improvise a whole campaign. Unless your just talking about sitting down and thinking things up. And sure a DM can just randomly improvise random things for everything the PC's do, but that is not exactly a ''campaign'' and is more of a ''sandbox''. And if everything is all improvised the game will be sloppy and make no sense, it will just be a bunch of random, unrelated encounters. Like a DM could say ''you open the door and the room is full of illithids and a black dragon!''. Ok, so cool fight, but there has to be a reason they are in the room, doing nothing, waiting for the Pcs. And as soon as the DM stops and takes a couple minutes and makes a reason, they are not ''improvising'' any more, they are just doing ''normal game creation''.

I'm sorry, but what is improvising to you?

To me, improvising is whatever thought processes take place during the game session, without significantly haltering it. Again, vague, but all definitions are. I can give you a few example of what I mean if you give me some example of what you mean.

Because reading the above, it seems like you are saying "improvising is not thinking at all, therefore improvising can not make a campaign, because they require thinking". That's simply not what basically everyone else mean when they say improvising.

I would say I agree with you that you can't improvise a whole campaign, but for a very different reason.

After the first session, it's almost impossible to stop your brain from thinking about the campaign outside of the game sessions. Therefore, there will always be *some* prepwork done, even if it's just in your head.

That doesn't mean most of the campaign won't be improvised, probably like 90% of it.



NB: Not every experience I have had in TTRPG has been as follows, but what follows was not a single, isolated example.

When anything you prepare is rejected by the Players (perhaps, as in my experience, to cries of 'railroad!') then exactly what should you prepare, and why? If improvisation is as easy and spontaneous as kyoryu's apparent argument posits, why would the GM waste an hour or more of prep time, rather than just going 'seat-of-the-pants' with the whole adventure? This question is particularly important if the first point is also true - that most anything which appears prepped ahead of time gets rejected as a railroad. Lastly, there really IS a vocal minority (I sure hope it's still a minority) that posits that the preceding is true, and that the truth within those two premises leads to the conclusion that GMing is both easy and not intended to promote any particular agenda of the GM's, other than ensuring that the folks who AREN'T the GM are entertained. I have read, heard, and seen firsthand folks who start from the premises to which I responded and reach exactly those conclusions, regardless of whether you are 'buying it' or not.

I'm not sure I follow the logic to how you reach the conclusion that the GM's only agendy should be to entertain only the folks who aren't the GM.

What exactly were the premises and what was the conclusion?



This seems rather silly. The fact that the GM doesn't constrain the PCs actions doesn't mean the GM doesn't have their own preferences, and that those don't come out through the elements the GM puts on the table in the first place, as well as how the various NPCs react.


People believe all sorts of things, usually in various forms of false equivalences or false dichotomies.

I rarely do it, but I wanted to add in a QFT.

Milo v3
2016-03-13, 06:53 AM
That depends what WoD system we are talking about. Basic mortal Wod? Vampire? Mage? They're on a scale from "easy" to "almost impossible".

I've found WoD in general to be just as easy to improvise in as D&D. Unless you are talking about Mage. But since the players take like forever to look up their own spells, noone could blame the ST for doing the same.
In my experience, all WoD/CoD games are horrible when it comes to improvisations since it doesn't have enough example characters/monsters/etc. so you have to make up so much yourself compared to something like D&D.

goto124
2016-03-13, 08:39 AM
Maybe look for player-made versions of what's essentially WoD MM?

JAL_1138
2016-03-13, 08:45 AM
I don't think you can improvise a whole campaign. Unless your just talking about sitting down and thinking things up. And sure a DM can just randomly improvise random things for everything the PC's do, but that is not exactly a ''campaign'' and is more of a ''sandbox''. And if everything is all improvised the game will be sloppy and make no sense, it will just be a bunch of random, unrelated encounters. Like a DM could say ''you open the door and the room is full of illithids and a black dragon!''. Ok, so cool fight, but there has to be a reason they are in the room, doing nothing, waiting for the Pcs. And as soon as the DM stops and takes a couple minutes and makes a reason, they are not ''improvising'' any more, they are just doing ''normal game creation''.

We apparently have different definitions of improvising. I'm not doing things minute by minute, room by room--I either do it before the session as normal, or call a break to whip something up in a few minutes, but the campaign has no preplanned direction, is sometimes built at the table during the session, and still makes sense.

I think most of us talking about improvisation in this thread wouldn't say it stops being improvisation just because it takes 15-20 minutes to come up with something instead of doing it seamlessly, 100% on the spot with no pause at all. Maybe that's a technical definition, but it's likely not the one most of us are using here. There's nothing wrong with taking a prep break when it's needed, as long as it's quick enough you've still got time for a decent session.

There's a difference between "improvised" and "random," too. They aren't the same thing; you're conflating them (as well as conflating "random" with "nonsensical" or "disjointed"). Reasons can be improvised as well. It just means you didn't pre-plan it and are winging it to some extent, not that it's utterly disjointed and nonsensical. They can still make sense, follow logically from prior events and have internal consistency.

"Random" can be done without improvisation; improvisation can be done with very little randomness.

One can roll on the random dungeon tables and come up with an entire huge, sprawling, completely randomized dungeon far in advance of gameplay. That's random, but not at all improvised.

One can also improvise a dungeon based on what would logically be there and on the logical reasons the players went there. For instance, if they're tracking goblins to their lair, the lair should probably be a cave or ruined fort or other typical goblin-y place; have rooms for food storage, sleeping, cooking, working; treasure storage; some defensive spaces; a nearby water source; and the encounters inside should consist primarily of goblins. That's improvised, but not randomized.


(Tangentially, you can also create a set of parameters and selection criteria for randomization that will result in fairly cohesive content with consistent themes, which is how procedural generation and roguelikes work. Random doesn't have to mean totally-disjointed.)

JoeJ
2016-03-13, 03:33 PM
Some games explicitly give the players a lot of narrative control. In Prowlers and Paragons (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/115309/Prowlers--Paragons-Quickstart-Issue?manufacturers_id=5026), the dice don't determine what happens, they determine which player gets to decide what happens. Other players can then add embellishments that alter what happens as long as they don't negate what the first player decided.

Amphetryon
2016-03-13, 04:02 PM
I think most of us talking about improvisation in this thread wouldn't say it stops being improvisation just because it takes 15-20 minutes to come up with something instead of doing it seamlessly, 100% on the spot with no pause at all. Maybe that's a technical definition, but it's likely not the one most of us are using here. There's nothing wrong with taking a prep break when it's needed, as long as it's quick enough you've still got time for a decent session.
Having seen more than one Player criticize and/or walk out on more than one GM who called a 15-20 minute pause in order to come up with something, on the grounds that "the GM was obviously not prepared to seriously run the game today," I'm forced to disagree with your apparent definition of improvising. I must likewise disagree with your assertion that 'there's nothing wrong with taking a prep break,' since doing so has caused more than one game to end prematurely, and has cost the games I've seen more than one PC or GM.

Segev
2016-03-13, 04:38 PM
Having seen more than one Player criticize and/or walk out on more than one GM who called a 15-20 minute pause in order to come up with something, on the grounds that "the GM was obviously not prepared to seriously run the game today," I'm forced to disagree with your apparent definition of improvising. I must likewise disagree with your assertion that 'there's nothing wrong with taking a prep break,' since doing so has caused more than one game to end prematurely, and has cost the games I've seen more than one PC or GM.

Frankly, if that's their attitude when it's clear the GM is doing so because he had something planned and they caught him by surprise, then that's their choice, but perhaps they should find a different game, with a GM who is either better at improvising or better at guessing their actions. Not every GM and player are meant to play together, but "the GM obviously wasn't ready to seriously run the game" is a remarkably arrogant and condescending thing to say, to which could be equally snidely replied, "Clearly, you weren't ready to seriously play the game if you can't wait for him to pull something together to cater to your whimsical desire to har off in another direction."

Darth Ultron
2016-03-13, 06:40 PM
Why not?

You just answer one question at a time, keeping in mind the previous things you've established.

Doing a bunch of random improvisation and calling it a campaign, is like calling jelly beans food. It is true, but misleading.


The world. The factions in it. Interesting encounters that may (or may not) occur.

Well, now wait, if you do all that your not improvising.



By knowing what all of your NPCs are doing, it makes it easier to figure out how the world responds to the PC actions. The prep then helps you no matter *what* the PCs choose, rather than just leaving you with nothing if the PCs don't go down your path.

And this is railroading. I know your trying to deflect it away from yourself by saying the NPCs that you created and control somehow ''come alive'' in your mind and tell you what to do and your just sitting there all innocent as the game just flows around you.....but that is just beyond silly.




"A bunch of bandits attack the PCs on their way to [non-prepared location X]."

Everybody rolls initiative, just assume your bandits has +1 or +2, probably it won't matter anyway as the D20 has such high spread.

When a bandit attacks, roll the die. While the die is in the air, just decide "15 is a hit" or some other number that makes sense given the PCs AC compared to your bandit level (which we assume is 3-5). Alternatively, don't decide exactly which number the bandit hits on unless the die is in the 11-15 range. Everything above 15 is probably a hit anyway, and everything below 11 is a miss. So there's only 25% chance the exact number is even relevant.

Well, now wait....is not this an example of a DM : just doing things on their whims, utterly ignoring the rules of the game that everyone must follow and the DM being not being consistent?



I'm sorry, but what is improvising to you?

To me, improvising is whatever thought processes take place during the game session, without significantly haltering it. Again, vague, but all definitions are. I can give you a few example of what I mean if you give me some example of what you mean.

Because reading the above, it seems like you are saying "improvising is not thinking at all, therefore improvising can not make a campaign, because they require thinking". That's simply not what basically everyone else mean when they say improvising.

Well, improvising, in this sense is to ''deliver without previous preparation''.




I think most of us talking about improvisation in this thread wouldn't say it stops being improvisation just because it takes 15-20 minutes to come up with something instead of doing it seamlessly, 100% on the spot with no pause at all. Maybe that's a technical definition, but it's likely not the one most of us are using here. There's nothing wrong with taking a prep break when it's needed, as long as it's quick enough you've still got time for a decent session.



Ok, so a normal DM making a thing takes 15-20 minutes. An improvising DM making a thing takes 15-20 minutes. Both DMs can even take the time to look up things. So.....how are they different? The normal DM has decided that Lord Doom will be the BBEG at the climax of the current story line; the improvising DM knows that vaguely and randomly there must be a BBEG and a climax to the current story line...but they are just sort of pretending Lord Doom, the only big bad evil guy currently in the campaign, won't be that guy?

Cosi
2016-03-13, 07:00 PM
In my experience, all WoD/CoD games are horrible when it comes to improvisations since it doesn't have enough example characters/monsters/etc. so you have to make up so much yourself compared to something like D&D.

I very much agree with this. One of the biggest selling points of D&D (in whatever edition) is the Monster Manual. The fact that when the players decide to go into the Underdark, you can just grab some Grimlocks, an Earth Elemental, or an Aboleth and roll initiative makes it much easier to deal with a campaign that goes off the rails. You can set up the first encounter, spend some time during it thinking about a hook, drop a second encounter based on that, and then break to work out the details for next week's session. That's much harder to do in games that don't come with an entire book full of potential enemies.

IMHO, any game that puts significant emphasis on the combat minigame should drop an MM or equivalent ASAP. Even games that don't should probably have a book full of potential antagonists.

flond
2016-03-13, 07:21 PM
Once again Darth Ultron, I think you mistake railroading with adjudication. One is having a preplanned target, the other is "deciding what the world's responses are to actions, and what the world does." The second is the primary driver for the first, but that doesn't make all examples of the second examples of the first. Ideally, you adjudicate by some variations on "what makes sense". It's railroading when you have some grand plan, sceme, goal or story. (And yes, this is fuzzy. Behaviors are fuzzy.)

goto124
2016-03-13, 07:53 PM
Without a level of fuzziness, one might as well play a pre-scripted computer game or a novel where everything is planned and written beforehand.

Milo v3
2016-03-13, 08:26 PM
Doing a bunch of random improvisation and calling it a campaign, is like calling jelly beans food. It is true, but misleading.
The random improvisation itself isn't the campaign, the total result of the improvisation + player interaction slowly develops into a campaign.


And this is railroading.
Nope. Since there was no... well railroading. NPC's doing things =! railroading.


So.....how are they different? The normal DM has decided that Lord Doom will be the BBEG at the climax of the current story line; the improvising DM knows that vaguely and randomly there must be a BBEG and a climax to the current story line...but they are just sort of pretending Lord Doom, the only big bad evil guy currently in the campaign, won't be that guy?
1. Where does the vaguely + randomly come in?
2. Why must there be a BBEG? There should only be one if it makes sense.
3. There might not even be a "current storyline" per se.
4. Why would it have to be Lord Doom? It can easily be someone else.
5. If it is Lord Doom, then it's Lord Doom and there is no pretending involved....


I very much agree with this. One of the biggest selling points of D&D (in whatever edition) is the Monster Manual. The fact that when the players decide to go into the Underdark, you can just grab some Grimlocks, an Earth Elemental, or an Aboleth and roll initiative makes it much easier to deal with a campaign that goes off the rails. You can set up the first encounter, spend some time during it thinking about a hook, drop a second encounter based on that, and then break to work out the details for next week's session. That's much harder to do in games that don't come with an entire book full of potential enemies.

IMHO, any game that puts significant emphasis on the combat minigame should drop an MM or equivalent ASAP. Even games that don't should probably have a book full of potential antagonists.
I really think not having enough generic statblocks is a major weakness that a lot of games seem to have. I mean, if you play CoD 2e, there are rules for taking the shape of animals and controlling animals and templates you add on animals.... but no animal stats except for a single blog post on a website.

neonchameleon
2016-03-13, 09:26 PM
Doing a bunch of random improvisation and calling it a campaign, is like calling jelly beans food. It is true, but misleading.

And your calling improvising consequences and continuations "random" means that any ending of that sentence is not relevant to anything a good improv GM does.



Well, now wait, if you do all that your not improvising.



And this is railroading. I know your trying to deflect it away from yourself by saying the NPCs that you created and control somehow ''come alive'' in your mind and tell you what to do and your just sitting there all innocent as the game just flows around you.....but that is just beyond silly.



Well, now wait....is not this an example of a DM : just doing things on their whims, utterly ignoring the rules of the game that everyone must follow and the DM being not being consistent?


Well, improvising, in this sense is to ''deliver without previous preparation''.

My Improv Drama teachers would disagree that having a stock you know how to use is not improv as long as what you actually do is improvised at the time.


Ok, so a normal DM making a thing takes 15-20 minutes. An improvising DM making a thing takes 15-20 minutes.

Only under systems that are uttelry unsuited to improv. In a decent improv system handling stats really doesn't take long.


randomly

You keep using that word. And like Railroading I do not think it means what you think it means.

JoeJ
2016-03-13, 09:29 PM
I don't think it's useful to think in terms of an either/or dichotomy. It's more of a continuum, ranging from the GM decides everything and the players have no control on one end, to every player has total control with nothing that can overrule them on the other end. Obviously, neither of these extremes is actually role playing. The first is the GM telling a story, and the second is just going to be an argument. Role playing falls in between the two ends, and is sometimes closer to one end than the other. "Railroading" means you've moved closer to the first end than the players, or some of the players, are happy with.

Lorsa
2016-03-14, 02:06 AM
Doing a bunch of random improvisation and calling it a campaign, is like calling jelly beans food. It is true, but misleading.

Why does your improvisation has to be random?



Well, now wait, if you do all that your not improvising.

Maybe not improvising *everything*, but certainly improvising *most* things.



And this is railroading. I know your trying to deflect it away from yourself by saying the NPCs that you created and control somehow ''come alive'' in your mind and tell you what to do and your just sitting there all innocent as the game just flows around you.....but that is just beyond silly.

That's not railroading at all. What language are you speaking? Please communicate in the same language the rest of us are using, or there is no point of discussion.



Well, now wait....is not this an example of a DM : just doing things on their whims, utterly ignoring the rules of the game that everyone must follow and the DM being not being consistent?

Uhm, no? All DMs have to make decisions. If you count a decision as "doing things on their whims" then everything is a whim. But that is a stupid definition so I'll ignore it.

Furthermore, if you read the example, you'll see that it fits very well with lower level PCs before they've hoarded tons of magic items. Ignoring the rules would be having the bandit hit regardless of what the D20 show.

Also, how is it not consistent? Once you've decided upon a number for a bandit, you stick with it. That's being consistent.



Well, improvising, in this sense is to ''deliver without previous preparation''.

Okay, great!

Now can you stop referring to improvisation as random?



Ok, so a normal DM making a thing takes 15-20 minutes. An improvising DM making a thing takes 15-20 minutes. Both DMs can even take the time to look up things. So.....how are they different? The normal DM has decided that Lord Doom will be the BBEG at the climax of the current story line; the improvising DM knows that vaguely and randomly there must be a BBEG and a climax to the current story line...but they are just sort of pretending Lord Doom, the only big bad evil guy currently in the campaign, won't be that guy?

How an improvising DM is different is that they prep things in according to what the players have decided to do.

The difference between a railroading and a non-railroading DM is that the non-railroading one knows that there is a BBEG but does not acknowledge that it must be climax of the current story. Also note that I said story and not story line. A non-railroading DM knows that story must not necessarily happen in a line.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-14, 03:00 AM
I don't think it's useful to think in terms of an either/or dichotomy. It's more of a continuum, ranging from the GM decides everything and the players have no control on one end, to every player has total control with nothing that can overrule them on the other end. Obviously, neither of these extremes is actually role playing. The first is the GM telling a story, and the second is just going to be an argument. Role playing falls in between the two ends, and is sometimes closer to one end than the other. "Railroading" means you've moved closer to the first end than the players, or some of the players, are happy with.

The second is Freeform Roleplay or "Everyone Is GM" games like Fall of Magic.

Though I do agree that "Railroading" lies on a spectrum, I think it is a range on that spectrum but isn't the spectrum itself. The Spectrum is based on how much control the GM wields. If the GM wields full control over everything, then that's some kind of one-person rpg. (There is only GM, who has literally all authority) The other end is Freeform RP/ Gm-less games (There are only players, who hold literally all authority.)

Railroading as most of us understand it begins at some point in this spectrum. What an individual character bucks as "railroading" (aka, they feel they do not have sufficient control) will be much more variable. There are certainly people who can't stand having any form of GM at all, so they will only ever do Freeform RP or GM-less games. There are also those who are pretty much entirely ok with railroading, and so they will keep playing even as GM control gets pretty high. So basically, just because someone calls it railroading doesn't make it that. Just because someone calls Railroading bad doesn't mean it is, no more than pointing at a rabbit and vehemently insisting it is a dog will have any bearing on the truth.

kyoryu
2016-03-14, 12:40 PM
And this is railroading. I know your trying to deflect it away from yourself by saying the NPCs that you created and control somehow ''come alive'' in your mind and tell you what to do and your just sitting there all innocent as the game just flows around you.....but that is just beyond silly.

You seem to be driving things into a false dichotomy. Either everything is utterly random, or it's a railroad.

Similarly, either an encounter is utterly randomized with no information to guide it, or it's railroaded.

These are not the definitions in use by at least 99% of the hobby.

Specifically, the argument seems to be constructed as a "defense" of railroading, by placing impossible constraints on "not-railroading" and therefore claiming that everyone railroads, and therefore railroading is okay.

However, even if that's your definition, most people would agree that there's a difference between "the GM has plotted all of the things will happen, and the players will go from plotted event to plotted event" and "the players choose their course in the world and where they go and what they do, and the GM will determine what happens there and how the world responds". Clearly, the second model *can* be used as a cover for the first (see: illusionism) but it can also be done honestly.

The topic here isn't "railroading is bad", so the argument to "defend" railroading is unnecessary. The topic is "how do you engage in the second model in an honest fashion?".

Cosi
2016-03-14, 02:07 PM
You seem to be driving things into a false dichotomy. Either everything is utterly random, or it's a railroad.

I don't think that's even really a dichotomy. In a railroad, you (the player) have no agency because the only path forward is to do whatever the DM wanted you to do. If everything is random, you have no agency because nothing exists for you to interact with and your choices have no meaning.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-14, 04:29 PM
1. Where does the vaguely + randomly come in?
2. Why must there be a BBEG? There should only be one if it makes sense.
3. There might not even be a "current storyline" per se.
4. Why would it have to be Lord Doom? It can easily be someone else.
5. If it is Lord Doom, then it's Lord Doom and there is no pretending involved....


1.Well, if there is no plan/plot/story, then everything is vague and random.

2.There does not need to be. I don't use them myself. But they are standard in most games.

3.Right, might be random vague stuff.

4.Well, again in normal games, you need a set up. You need to introduce a character and then have them be ''that guy''. But that takes planning and detail and doing things like not improvising.

5.OK?


Why does your improvisation has to be random?

Well, how is it not? Ok the DM has no plan, plot or story....so no real interconnected fluff. Just the crunchy bits of the NPC's and some very vague notes.

And if you do any more then that your not ''improvising''. When you make lots of detailed notes, that is called ''planning''.



Maybe not improvising *everything*, but certainly improvising *most* things.

I guess if you want to say your ''improvising'' when your just being a normal DM, sure.




That's not railroading at all. What language are you speaking? Please communicate in the same language the rest of us are using, or there is no point of discussion.

Railroading=taking the power of choice and ''agency'' away from the players. In this case, the poster said they ''know what the NPC's are doing'' so they can ''respond to the PC's actions''. So, the DM has a set plan, maybe even plot and ''knows'' what will happen or not. That is railroading. It's the classic defination of the DM forcing the players to do things or not do things they want done.




Uhm, no? All DMs have to make decisions. If you count a decision as "doing things on their whims" then everything is a whim. But that is a stupid definition so I'll ignore it.

Furthermore, if you read the example, you'll see that it fits very well with lower level PCs before they've hoarded tons of magic items. Ignoring the rules would be having the bandit hit regardless of what the D20 show.

Also, how is it not consistent? Once you've decided upon a number for a bandit, you stick with it. That's being consistent.

In the bandit example given the DM is just randomly making up things. The bandits have an AC of 20 and have a +5 to hit, for no reason other then the DM wants them too. The DM is not creating bandit characters and giving them class levels, abilities, feats and equipment. They are just saying ''plus this and that''.

To just say ''oh if the bandits roll a 15, they hit'' is not playing D&D at all, really.

And when the DM just randomly says stuff, they will never be consistent. This is why the game has rules. The DM can't just say ''oh that guy has an AC of 25'' and then when the players look at the guy he is in normal peasant clothing, and has no magic or any other game effect that would give him that AC. It's as bad as the other side where that foe will be in full plate and the DM will say ''oh, um, AC 11''. Or when the DM has a 5th level wizard cast a 10d10 damage fireball.

Now, yes, there are ways in the rules to do somethings like the above..but we are not talking about that. We are talking about just ''randomaly making up random stuff''.



The topic here isn't "railroading is bad", so the argument to "defend" railroading is unnecessary. The topic is "how do you engage in the second model in an honest fashion?".

I'll say just railroad, railroading is good.

Segev
2016-03-14, 05:53 PM
You do realize that there is a difference between "random," "arbitrary," and "tactical," right?

Think of gaming as a series of moves. Like in any other game. The GM need not make "random" moves. He actually probably won't; at "worst," they'll be arbitrary, because he selects them as he goes along. But he can also have a set of moves in mind, an overall strategy to developing the game, to which he plays by making moves which allow the players to interact with what he knows is there and which presents them with options. You keep trying to call having a rock fall because the PCs drop it "railroading" if the PCs claim they wanted it to hover in mid air. That's not railroading. And claiming that it is is being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative.

Milo v3
2016-03-14, 06:12 PM
1.Well, if there is no plan/plot/story, then everything is vague and random.
This is the primary flaw in your argument. Since it doesn't have to be vague nor random simply because there is no plan/plot/story. I've done sandbox games that were not vague or random without any difficultly..... I actually don't know how someone would run a game that was random without it simply being infinite dungeoncrawls.


I'll say just railroad, railroading is good.
Wrong. Railroading is a tool. It is not good or bad, it is simply a tool that can be used well or used badly.

kyoryu
2016-03-14, 06:36 PM
If you don't understand that many people draw a difference between:

1) The GM coming up with a predefined list of encounters that the players *will* engage in, generally in a predefined order, with no ability to further the "plot" in any other way than what the GM has defined

and

2) The GM having a background and NPCs, but allowing the PCs to engage with this in any way they want to, with a result unknown to the GM ahead of time

then I really don't know what to say, or how further conversation on this topic can be useful.

Lorsa
2016-03-15, 05:25 AM
1.Well, if there is no plan/plot/story, then everything is vague and random.

No it isn't.


3.Right, might be random vague stuff.

Or might be clear logically consistent stuff.


4.Well, again in normal games, you need a set up. You need to introduce a character and then have them be ''that guy''. But that takes planning and detail and doing things like not improvising.

You can improvise a character and then have him be "that guy". It doesn't require planning at all.



Well, how is it not? Ok the DM has no plan, plot or story....so no real interconnected fluff. Just the crunchy bits of the NPC's and some very vague notes.

That doesn't make it random. Stop using words you don't understand.


And if you do any more then that your not ''improvising''. When you make lots of detailed notes, that is called ''planning''.

When you make lots of detailed notes in advance it's called planning. When you make them during the game, it's just called "taking notes".



I guess if you want to say your ''improvising'' when your just being a normal DM, sure.

Yeah, I am improvising when I am being a normal DM. I'm also planning. They both have their place.

However, you could improvise most of your campaign. The only issue I raised with why you couldn't, is that it's very hard to stop yourself from thinking about the campaign between sessions. Still, most of what goes on at the table DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PLANNED. Which means it requires improvising.



Railroading=taking the power of choice and ''agency'' away from the players. In this case, the poster said they ''know what the NPC's are doing'' so they can ''respond to the PC's actions''. So, the DM has a set plan, maybe even plot and ''knows'' what will happen or not. That is railroading. It's the classic defination of the DM forcing the players to do things or not do things they want done.

Are you deliberately misreading stuff or is there some missing piece keeping you from understanding what he was talking about?

Knowing what the NPCs are doing is not the same as knowing what they will do. The NPCs have to adapt to the players' actions. If they do not, but the DM instead forces the players to act certain ways so the NPC actions can follow a prepared course of action, then that is railroading.

Stop saying "table" instead of "furniture" when the rest of us are only talking about "tables".



In the bandit example given the DM is just randomly making up things.

Wrong. Randomly would be "roll d20 +8 to determine AC". The DM is making a decision, which is neither random nor arbitrary.

Get your words straight.


The bandits have an AC of 20 and have a +5 to hit, for no reason other then the DM wants them too. The DM is not creating bandit characters and giving them class levels, abilities, feats and equipment. They are just saying ''plus this and that''.

First of all, any class levels, feats, equipment etc are given because the DM wants them to have it. Secondly, it was a possible spellcaster that had an AC of 20, which is what any decent spellcaster will have (Mage armor + Shield + 14 Dex). Thirdly, the DM is creating bandit characters, just "on the fly" so to speak. Which is called improvising. If you create the bandits before the game session, it's called preparation.


To just say ''oh if the bandits roll a 15, they hit'' is not playing D&D at all, really.

Why not?

Bandits are in general Warriors. A 4th level warrior has 4 BAB, probably either 16 Str and Power Attack or 14 Str and Weapon Focus. That's a +7 hit. My 5th level PCs will have an AC in the 18-22 range. So clearly they hit on 15. If they roll less than 15, then you have to work it out in more detail. But for a "you have to decide in ONE SECOND", which was your idiot requirement for improvisation (seriously, why not 5 seconds?), then 15 = hit in this scenario is the best educated guess a DM can make.

If you don't wan to follow the D&D rules, you can say that your 4th level warriors will hit on 2+. THAT is not playing D&D.


And when the DM just randomly says stuff, they will never be consistent. This is why the game has rules. The DM can't just say ''oh that guy has an AC of 25'' and then when the players look at the guy he is in normal peasant clothing, and has no magic or any other game effect that would give him that AC. It's as bad as the other side where that foe will be in full plate and the DM will say ''oh, um, AC 11''. Or when the DM has a 5th level wizard cast a 10d10 damage fireball.

Noone ever randomly says stuff. That's impossible, unless you somehow believe our brains are gigantic randomizers (which they are not).

Consistency comes from keeping with a decision you have already made. There is nothing that says you can't be consistent with your one second decisions. Just remember them. Or write them down if you have bad memory.

A bandit will have stuff like leather armor, studded or normal, or scale armor. Dex scores will be in the 12-16 range (higher for the ones with leather). They might have a shield. What AC values does that equate to?


Now, yes, there are ways in the rules to do somethings like the above..but we are not talking about that. We are talking about just ''randomaly making up random stuff''.

Why are we talking about randomly making up random stuff?

I thought we were talking about improvising an encounter within the D&D rules. There was a claim it couldn't be done. I gave an example of how it could be done, while being consistent with the rules.



I'll say just railroad, railroading is good.

While people have different preferences, I'll say railroad as little as possible. Railroading is bad. Sometimes it might be necessary, but most often it is not.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-15, 06:53 AM
I see Ultron is doing that thing again. Best to ignore him rather than engage him.

I'm pretty sure he has had consistent bad experiences leading to him becoming a GM so salty that he need only rub his fingers together over his french fries.

Like, imagine the saltiest old fisherman you can. Now make him a GM.
Explains a lot, right?

So yeah, better to just acknowledge the saltiness and move on with your day.

Lorsa
2016-03-16, 02:50 AM
Alright, taking NotTrevor's advice for now, there was another thought that occurred to me while reading the replies.

A standard modern module contains *everything*. The story, the locations, the encounters etc. Even some of the description, as in "read this to your players when...". Basically it leaves very little for the GM to actually do.

Is this really what people want? Are most people really so story-inept that they can't come up with something interesting on their own?

What I would want out of a module is something that helps spur my imagination. Give me new ideas, but don't write it in a way that forces me to railroad. For example, the old D&D 3 Forgotten Realm's guide did exactly that for me. It gave me names and locations, and added some plot hooks in every country that made me go "oohhh, now THIS is something I could do here". Sometimes just reading the description of a country was enough to give me ideas.

Why aren't more modules written this way?

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-16, 03:28 AM
Alright, taking NotTrevor's advice for now, there was another thought that occurred to me while reading the replies.

A standard modern module contains *everything*. The story, the locations, the encounters etc. Even some of the description, as in "read this to your players when...". Basically it leaves very little for the GM to actually do.

Is this really what people want? Are most people really so story-inept that they can't come up with something interesting on their own?

What I would want out of a module is something that helps spur my imagination. Give me new ideas, but don't write it in a way that forces me to railroad. For example, the old D&D 3 Forgotten Realm's guide did exactly that for me. It gave me names and locations, and added some plot hooks in every country that made me go "oohhh, now THIS is something I could do here". Sometimes just reading the description of a country was enough to give me ideas.

Why aren't more modules written this way?

Because it's harder to argue that a module like that is worth the usual price tag.
That, and they DO exist.
They're called Settings.

goto124
2016-03-16, 03:32 AM
Is this really what people want? Are most people really so story-inept that they can't come up with something interesting on their own?

But that's the point of a pre-written module!

In addition, if you have everything, it's much easier to discard anything you don't like and come up with your own stuff anyway, than to be forced to come up with something you're drawing a blank on.

Milo v3
2016-03-16, 04:04 AM
Why aren't more modules written this way?

Because that's not a module?

Knaight
2016-03-16, 04:21 AM
In addition, if you have everything, it's much easier to discard anything you don't like and come up with your own stuff anyway, than to be forced to come up with something you're drawing a blank on.

Up to a point, sure. Past a certain point though you hit the problem of trying to find information in an increasingly large book.

At the very least, straight up boxed text is usually redundant. Diagrams, bullet points, and other more condensed information that the GM can pull from when describing is more than adequate, and should avoid the issue where the module text inevitably is some combination of off and bad.

Lorsa
2016-03-16, 04:53 AM
Because it's harder to argue that a module like that is worth the usual price tag.
That, and they DO exist.
They're called Settings.

Alright then. Unfortunately setting books doesn't seem to be released as much anymore.



But that's the point of a pre-written module!

In addition, if you have everything, it's much easier to discard anything you don't like and come up with your own stuff anyway, than to be forced to come up with something you're drawing a blank on.

What is the point of a pre-written module then? To teach people how to railroad?

The problem is, the way modules are written, you are either forced to discard more or less everything after the first few pages, or you have to start railroading.

Also, if you get everything as a GM, what is left for you to do? Isn't it more fun to be creative than just being a robot that recites from a book?



Because that's not a module?

Fair enough. Why aren't more books released that helps GMs with adventure creation that isn't inherently railroading?

Milo v3
2016-03-16, 05:21 AM
Alright then. Unfortunately setting books doesn't seem to be released as much anymore.
Paizo seem to do it rather regularly.


What is the point of a pre-written module then? To teach people how to railroad?
It's for GM's who don't have time to make adventures.


The problem is, the way modules are written, you are either forced to discard more or less everything after the first few pages, or you have to start railroading.
I currently have my players halfway through the second book of an Adventure Path and still haven't railroaded so it's not impossible.


Fair enough. Why aren't more books released that helps GMs with adventure creation that isn't inherently railroading?
Probably because it'd have to be either ridiculously generic and basic, which is covered in DMG's/GMG's normally already, or because it'd just be plot hooks which is covered by campaign setting books.

neonchameleon
2016-03-16, 09:43 AM
Alright, taking NotTrevor's advice for now, there was another thought that occurred to me while reading the replies.

A standard modern module contains *everything*. The story, the locations, the encounters etc. Even some of the description, as in "read this to your players when...". Basically it leaves very little for the GM to actually do.

Is this really what people want? Are most people really so story-inept that they can't come up with something interesting on their own?

I'm convinced that most modules are sold to be read on the loo. And I recall Paizo saying something about them selling Pathfinder modules to non-players along the lines of Ideal Homes magazine to people who aren't going to buy them. Pathfinder modules are great to read because they have all these beautiful backstories for NPCs you aren't ever going to meet - but that makes them actually harder to run.

Segev
2016-03-16, 09:47 AM
I'm sensing a contradiction in purpose, here, when you say that a module has "everything" and list out all the NPCs, the relevant small-scale setting information, etc. etc., and then complain that modules are too much of a railroad.

Rails exist because they constrict the viewer to what is visible from the rails. They serve, in module-writing, to ensure that the player never steps off the "map" of the plot. By analogy, a rail shooter would break horrifically if you could step off the (near literal) rails, because every place you cannot see from the rails...doesn't really exist. So you'd have a horribly empty map with probable holes in the very terrain.

The equivalent in a TTRPG that is on rails is that there is nothing developed outside of what the rails allow you to do. Sure, the imaginations of the players can make it so that they see a tavern or few when they go down this street that wasn't written up in the module, and even the most railroad-intensive DM is probably able to describe a backdrop of scenery in which his nothing-except-increasingly-desperate-efforts-to-drive-you-back-to-the-plot can happen. But the whole reason things run on rails tends to be that there's only one "position" in the state space of the module from which you see developed, useful things.

If a module really has all the details - the NPCs, their motives, their resources, and what people will do in response to setbacks of various types - as well as the setting elements that could be useful, then it's not really on rails. Complaining that there's "nothing for the DM to do" seems counterproductive, here. Not only does the DM still have to figure out where in the state space the party is, but he has to figure out how to use the elements provided given the PCs' positioning to move things forward in a believable, interesting fashion.

The whole point of modules is to give DMs something they don't have to do a lot of prep-work on. Something that they can crack open, read through, and run effectively without being masterful story-writers or setting developers.

goto124
2016-03-16, 09:54 AM
The equivalent in a TTRPG that is on rails is that there is nothing developed outside of what the rails allow you to do.

If a module really has all the details - the NPCs, their motives, their resources, and what people will do in response to setbacks of various types - as well as the setting elements that could be useful, then it's not really on rails.

I suppose the modules have a lot of description... within the rails? Also, wouldn't the details you mention there be in campaign settings, not modules?

Segev
2016-03-16, 10:25 AM
I suppose the modules have a lot of description... within the rails? Also, wouldn't the details you mention there be in campaign settings, not modules?

Depends on the relevance to the module, I think.

My post to which you're replying is specifically expressing bafflement over the complaint that a module has "too much" information from the person who started this thread on the notion of "scenarios, not plots."

You need a fair bit of spread-out information to set up scenarios. If you want to avoid spreading out a lot of information on every potentially-relevant actor and resource, then you have to write it more on rails so that you can constrain PC "vision" to what's been prepared. If the DM is going to make things up anyway (so he has "something to do"), then that's fine; he can take the module off the rails on his own.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what Lorsa was getting at?

Flickerdart
2016-03-16, 10:30 AM
Looks like it's time for a metaphor!

The railroad
The railroad is a great way to plan what's going to happen. You embark, ride the train until the conductor announces your stop, and then disembark. The railroad is a very useful tool for getting from one place to a different place very quickly. However, the railroad grows boring fast. Have you ever spent a week on a train? I have.

The hike
The diametric opposite of the railroad is when you have to hoof it yourself. This has its charms - you can go anywhere and do anything - but also drawbacks. For instance, most of "anywhere" is wilderness and most of "anything" is trudging through miles of forest. While walking is a great way to explore an area once you've arrived, it's a terrible way for getting anywhere.

The drive
Driving rules. Hop in your two-ton steel deathtrap and charge down a ten-lane superhighway at a bajillion miles an hour. Stop whenever you want to eat stacks of bacon pancakes at roadside diners. Turn off the interstate and down the small, twisting local streets to get a quick glimpse of a charming town and its antique shops/centuries-old church/local celebrity pumpkin/the mayor who is also a cat.

What does this have to do with anything? I'm glad you asked.

Pacing is crucial to a good game. Use the right transportation method to achieve the right pacing.

There are situations when a railroad is just what you need. The railroad is like Chipotle - you want lunch, you don't want to think too hard about where to go, Chipotle is fine. Areas of the game that must logically take place, but nobody's super involved in, can be railroaded no problem. The trick is letting your players disembark when they need to, and take a higher-fidelity mode of transport. As soon as the PCs get from "random wilderness with nothing" to "town with things of interest" the campaign should switch from the rails to the road, not go straight to the hike. There are still restrictions on where the PCs can go, and the restrictions are still fairly obvious, but they have much greater flexibility. Things don't go as fast, the DM needs moments to improvise or repurpose materials ("where is that generic shopkeeper NPC's statblock?") but it's pretty frictionless if you know what you're doing.

By comparison, walking - the "totally random" improvisation - should be reserved for relatively rare occasions. You expected the PCs to look for quests in the tavern or the church or the mansion or the castle...but they decided to set up a fish oil refinery. Suddenly the campaign is in unexplored territory. The DM needs to make this clear to the PCs. A good DM, like a good navigator, will lead the hiking PCs to things that exist - other roads than the one they were on. A bad DM will insist they get back to the road they were on, and put up invisible walls. A terrible DM has slashed the party's tires back at the train station, so their only other option was to get back on the train.

The rail is not bad. The road is not bad. The hike is not bad. But you don't hike to China, and you don't take the train to the bathroom.

Segev
2016-03-16, 10:37 AM
But you don't hike to China, and you don't take the train to the bathroom.

I don't know about you, but I don't think I could take a train to China, either. That Pacific Ocean gets in the way!

Sorry, I had to.

Thrudd
2016-03-16, 12:19 PM
What is and should be in a "module" depends entirely on the game system. What amount and type of "railroading" is appropriate to use is also dependent on the system.
In D&D, which we seem to be specifically talking about, a good module should have a few things. It should have one or more adventure locations/dungeons mapped out and keyed with encounters. An overworld map. Random encounter tables for the overworld and the dungeon. One or more towns or cities will usually be there, as well, with some NPCs described, though not necessarily. The important thing is it provides a location you can insert into your game, with an adventure for the players to tackle. It could give suggestions for why the characters may be drawn to this area, including rumors about the dungeon or people asking for help, or whatever.
It should save the DM a lot of time by having the maps, monsters, and treasure already prepared. The reasons for the players to go there and the exact manner in which they do so are things that can happen more spontaneously according to the DM's specific game.

Good examples of these sorts of modules are B2 (Keep on the Borderlands) and X1 (Island of Dread) from Basic/Expert D&D, and T1 (village of Homlet) from AD&D. Another early module with some excellent elements is A1, iirc, because of the way it handles its wandering monster tables. It specifically details the total population of monsters in an area, and says that random encounters should be subtracted from this population. In addition, it will say where some of those wandering monsters are originating from and where those not on patrol will be found.

kyoryu
2016-03-16, 12:43 PM
The DFRPG and Spirit of the Century modules available on DriveThruRPG don't railroad. They're also pretty hard to use if you're not used to that style of running games (from experience).

Hyooz
2016-03-16, 01:25 PM
The DFRPG and Spirit of the Century modules available on DriveThruRPG don't railroad. They're also pretty hard to use if you're not used to that style of running games (from experience).

FATE is an interesting system in this discussion. It is very player-driven in general, what with Declarations and the like, but also has a sort of mutually-agreed-railroading built in through the Aspects. I am a fan.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-16, 09:17 PM
A standard modern module contains *everything*. The story, the locations, the encounters etc. Even some of the description, as in "read this to your players when...". Basically it leaves very little for the GM to actually do.

Is this really what people want? Are most people really so story-inept that they can't come up with something interesting on their own?

Yes, a good half of the gamers like this sort of thing. First off, all the casual gamers only play this sort of game. They get together, roll some dice and have fun. They want it to be simple, easy and straightforward. Second, they are used by new DM's as it gives them everything they need. And third, they are used by all the DM that are simply not creative. Fourth, there are the DM's with no time. And fifth, some DM's cherry pick, so they need lots of detail to pick from.



What I would want out of a module is something that helps spur my imagination. Give me new ideas, but don't write it in a way that forces me to railroad. For example, the old D&D 3 Forgotten Realm's guide did exactly that for me. It gave me names and locations, and added some plot hooks in every country that made me go "oohhh, now THIS is something I could do here". Sometimes just reading the description of a country was enough to give me ideas.

Why aren't more modules written this way?

A module is an adventure so it will need a plot and story and railroad. Things like guides or other books full of plot hooks are nice, but they are not enough to run an adventure. There are lots of guide books, you can find some for each fictional land in some campaign settings, for example. But they are not an adventure by themselves.

The basic problem for a module is space. A module sets out a plot and story and railroad to follow, with a couple of twists and turns.

But how would you do it with no plot, story or railroad. Well, you just describe random people, places and things. And for each one have like three pages of ''well, ok, if the PC's meet this npc, you might have one of the 25 following things happen...unless this has happened first or this or this has not happened or will happen or and on and on. You can't really be vague and just list everything that might or might not happen with no context.



What is the point of a pre-written module then? To teach people how to railroad?

The problem is, the way modules are written, you are either forced to discard more or less everything after the first few pages, or you have to start railroading.

Also, if you get everything as a GM, what is left for you to do? Isn't it more fun to be creative than just being a robot that recites from a book?

The railroad is your friend, drive the train.

And sure, it's fun for some people to ''be creative'', but note not everyone has the ability to be creative. And not everyone has the will or the time too.



Fair enough. Why aren't more books released that helps GMs with adventure creation that isn't inherently railroading?

It is very simply one of the things that can not be taught. A DM has a moment where they become a good, creative DM....or they don't. It just has to come from somewhere inside.

Segev
2016-03-17, 12:09 AM
The insistence that anything that isn't "a railroad" is "random" wreaks of the No True Scottsman fallacy: "If it isn't 100% random, it's a railroad," "But what about these things which aren't 100% random which aren't railroads?" "Those are railroads because they're not 100% random."

What would be a module of the sort discussed here, without being a railroad, would be one which describes not "random" NPCs, but instead describes a situation, and the plots and plans of the NPCs and organizations involved. It would discuss actions they have taken already by the time the PCs are involved, timetables or flow charts of activities they will take absent the players' actions, and some ideas of how they might adapt if they encounter opposition.

It will likely have several "if the PCs help them do X, then this other group will respond with Y" sorts of concepts. These need not be rail-tight nor road-specific. They can be as broad as, "without help, the Howling Goldfish won't be able to get ahold of the Carp of Dungeon Mining, but if they get that help and get ahold of it, their plan to undermine Castle Wotturlahg will go off at THIS time."

And, where other plots and plans are in play, it will include notes such as, "Should the Howling Goldfish manage to use the CarpDM, it will interfere with this group's plan in this fashion."

With enough detail, shoudl the PCs do something totally off-the-wall, as long as they don't just leave the environs of the module entirely, the DM has sufficient tools and suggestions to formulate what the various NPCs will do in response. All without "railroading," because nothing the PCs do is no-sold to preserve plot requirements.

Lorsa
2016-03-17, 02:49 AM
Depends on the relevance to the module, I think.

My post to which you're replying is specifically expressing bafflement over the complaint that a module has "too much" information from the person who started this thread on the notion of "scenarios, not plots."

You need a fair bit of spread-out information to set up scenarios. If you want to avoid spreading out a lot of information on every potentially-relevant actor and resource, then you have to write it more on rails so that you can constrain PC "vision" to what's been prepared. If the DM is going to make things up anyway (so he has "something to do"), then that's fine; he can take the module off the rails on his own.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what Lorsa was getting at?

With "too much", I mean it is giving story, plot, location, NPC stats and even scene description (as apart from location description). There is really 0 stuff for the DM to add, unless the players decide to go outside of the module, in which case the DM needs to add *everything* instead.

I could imagine being given a story, or locations, or NPC stats, but having to fill in some blanks myself. That would make me used to "filling in blanks" and thus wouldn't have such a hard time when my players decide to go somewhere else.

But if you're given *everything*, you don't really get better at anything.

Milo v3
2016-03-17, 02:58 AM
There is really 0 stuff for the DM to add
And that is the entire point.

Brookshw
2016-03-17, 05:50 AM
What would be a module of the sort discussed here, without being a railroad, would be one which describes not "random" NPCs, but instead describes a situation, and the plots and plans of the NPCs and organizations involved. It would discuss actions they have taken already by the time the PCs are involved, timetables or flow charts of activities they will take absent the players' actions, and some ideas of how they might adapt if they encounter opposition.

I'm wondering how Expidition to Castle Ravenloft would be measured in this conversation. A series of non obligatory locations w/ carrots randomly attached to them and some indication of actions that result if no player involvment is forthcoming (the latter less frequent than the former). Countrary to this it's a closed world can't-go-offmap set up.

Segev
2016-03-17, 10:41 AM
I'm wondering how Expidition to Castle Ravenloft would be measured in this conversation. A series of non obligatory locations w/ carrots randomly attached to them and some indication of actions that result if no player involvment is forthcoming (the latter less frequent than the former). Countrary to this it's a closed world can't-go-offmap set up.

Sounds like the kind of thing being discussed. There's a reason "dungeon modules" are classics. The trouble seems to arise when we leave "dungeons" and get into the framing story. The framing story is rarely developed in the same fashion as a dungeon, and is instead a series of set pieces and assumed choices. Develop the framing story that leads to various dungeons in the same way you develop the dungeons, and you'd probably have a much stronger, more robust module without having to railroad PCs through events.

OldTrees1
2016-03-17, 11:11 AM
Sounds like the kind of thing being discussed. There's a reason "dungeon modules" are classics. The trouble seems to arise when we leave "dungeons" and get into the framing story. The framing story is rarely developed in the same fashion as a dungeon, and is instead a series of set pieces and assumed choices. Develop the framing story that leads to various dungeons in the same way you develop the dungeons, and you'd probably have a much stronger, more robust module without having to railroad PCs through events.

Unexpectedly accurate. Dungeons are know for offering a list of ways to go by using walls to keep the PCs from straying. Limiting the players to a prewritten list of options would be an unwise way of running a framing story, however writing a module as such would result in better modules than set pieces & assumed choices. Although I would advise against using Tome of Horrors' map as a guide since it is rather linear :smallbiggrin:.

Segev
2016-03-17, 11:30 AM
There is a paradigm-shift in conceptualization required to really write a framing-story sort of module as a "dungeon." There isn't a physical location map as much as there is a flow chart of "access points." Encounters are, in this paradigm, analogous to "rooms" in the dungeon. Entire organizations can be "dungeon floors," with the "dungeon" allowing non-linear access to several floors at once.

Just as you might have to accept that players could use passwall or simple digging tools to bypass a corridor and skip from one to another, you have to be ready to accept that players may come up with ways of bypassing obstacles other than those expressly set out in the module. This can allow "sequence breaking," in the sense that they might talk to Organization Y or NPC Z before they actually even meet NPC X and get MagGuffin A. So you need to have "default" states which can be called upon for DMs to reference should, somehow, the PCs get there without doing anything else in the module. Having conditional relationships between things you expect the PCs to do is very helpful, and having a "most likely" path through the module is fine, as long as it's acknowledged in the design that that is only the "most likely" path, and not the only one.

Design the framing story such that the PCs can explore it the way they would a dungeon, and I think it will work better as a module. Don't assume they'll take a given quest; instead, set up who offers quests and why, and what happens if the quest is taken or not, if it succeeds or fails, etc.

A lot of if/then switches on your scenes, which can be arrived at when the PCs choose to get there and trigger them, will be more robust than an assumption that the PCs will go there when they have specific things done. And if/then switches throughout, including "if the PCs interrupt X, Y happens," should be present. ALWAYS assume PCs are going to take action if something goes on for longer than a "surprise round" worth of events, and even then assume it's possible for a PC to be acting in that "surprise round." So have sufficient information on who's doing what and why to let the DM react appropriately!

This may sound like I'm advocating "RPG time," where nothing happens until the PCs get there, but I'm not. One of the "if/then" trigger conditions can always be "if X time has passed, then Y event has happened, so Z."


Of course, PCs can always try to "leave the dungeon," which means they're not biting on the module at all. This is a failure of buy-in, or a sign that the PCs have given up on this entirely, and it's time to wrap up that arc or campaign and try something different. Just as if the PCs decided they were through with the Sewers of Saberheim that you'd prepared and left them, quest unfinished, because they don't want to do that dungeon.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-17, 07:10 PM
What would be a module of the sort discussed here, without being a railroad, would be one which describes not "random" NPCs, but instead describes a situation, and the plots and plans of the NPCs and organizations involved. It would discuss actions they have taken already by the time the PCs are involved, timetables or flow charts of activities they will take absent the players' actions, and some ideas of how they might adapt if they encounter opposition.

What you are describing is the part of the module known as ''The Introduction''.



With enough detail, shoudl the PCs do something totally off-the-wall, as long as they don't just leave the environs of the module entirely, the DM has sufficient tools and suggestions to formulate what the various NPCs will do in response. All without "railroading," because nothing the PCs do is no-sold to preserve plot requirements.

See, this is just ''forcing things'' and not calling it the ''R word'' so everyone feels better. So jerk tyrant wants the players to do X no matter what is railroading. But if the DM wants nothing, but still forces the players to do X no matter what, but hides behind ''um, it's not me that is what (I say) NPC X would do'', then it's not railroading. And that makes no sense.

Like jerk tyrant DM wants to toss the characters in prison so he can run a cool prison life and escape game segment, so he forces that to happen. Then you have the blank DM just sitting there, forcing the exact same game segment, but they say ''Oh, it's not me or my idea. The imaginary NPC that i control is telling me what to do. I'm just an innocent pawn''.

Milo v3
2016-03-17, 08:36 PM
See, this is just ''forcing things'' and not calling it the ''R word'' so everyone feels better.
No forcing of anything was in what you quoted.


So jerk tyrant wants the players to do X no matter what is railroading.
Correction: DM who makes players do X no matter what is railroading.


But if the DM wants nothing, but still forces the players to do X no matter what, but hides behind ''um, it's not me that is what (I say) NPC X would do'', then it's not railroading. And that makes no sense.
If the DM forces the players to do X no matter what, then it's railroading. But that wasn't what was described in what you quoted.

Lorsa
2016-03-18, 05:33 AM
The DFRPG and Spirit of the Century modules available on DriveThruRPG don't railroad. They're also pretty hard to use if you're not used to that style of running games (from experience).

Which goes back to my original post. How does a GM gain experience with non-railroady games?



Yes, a good half of the gamers like this sort of thing. First off, all the casual gamers only play this sort of game. They get together, roll some dice and have fun. They want it to be simple, easy and straightforward. Second, they are used by new DM's as it gives them everything they need. And third, they are used by all the DM that are simply not creative. Fourth, there are the DM's with no time. And fifth, some DM's cherry pick, so they need lots of detail to pick from.

Interestingly enough, I have yet to find a single player that prefers to be railroaded over not being so. Even if they want simple and straightforward fights, they still prefer a non-railroading game. If they think they do, and is introduced to the alternative, they've always preferred the alternative.



A module is an adventure so it will need a plot and story and railroad. Things like guides or other books full of plot hooks are nice, but they are not enough to run an adventure. There are lots of guide books, you can find some for each fictional land in some campaign settings, for example. But they are not an adventure by themselves.

Most modules I have read are indeed "adventures in advance", and require railroading to go through. They are exactly enough to run a railroading game, but nowhere near enough to run a non-railroading game.

So, as I stated in my first post; how is a GM to learn that it can be done differently, and that adventures can be "adventures in retrospect" instead?



The basic problem for a module is space. A module sets out a plot and story and railroad to follow, with a couple of twists and turns.

But how would you do it with no plot, story or railroad. Well, you just describe random people, places and things. And for each one have like three pages of ''well, ok, if the PC's meet this npc, you might have one of the 25 following things happen...unless this has happened first or this or this has not happened or will happen or and on and on. You can't really be vague and just list everything that might or might not happen with no context.

I don't think you need to describe "25 following things" at all. Just describe the people, their motivations and the conflicts. What will happen can be left out to player action and GM imagination.



The railroad is your friend, drive the train.

I find it sad that you actually believe the railroad is your friend.



And sure, it's fun for some people to ''be creative'', but note not everyone has the ability to be creative. And not everyone has the will or the time too.

Technically, I think it's fun for everyone to be creative. I bet there's some dopamine-based biochemistry involved in the process. If everyone has the ability or not, well, everything gets better with practice. But if you never start practicing, you are sure to never get it.



It is very simply one of the things that can not be taught. A DM has a moment where they become a good, creative DM....or they don't. It just has to come from somewhere inside.

This is contrary to my original assertion. I believe it can be taught. Or at the very least, DMs can be inspired to becoming good, creative DMs, given the right sources. Everything that happens inside people is based on some external input after all.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-18, 05:57 AM
Which goes back to my original post. How does a GM gain experience with non-railroady games?

Perhaps this borders on advertising, but whatever.
Run Apocalypse World. Not just any way, but EXACTLY how Apocalypse World tells you to run it as an MC.
It was the best handbook on GMing I've ever read. Seriously.
And I've read several.

Or don't, whatever.




Interestingly enough, I have yet to find a single player that prefers to be railroaded over not being so. Even if they want simple and straightforward fights, they still prefer a non-railroading game. If they think they do, and is introduced to the alternative, they've always preferred the alternative.

I have one friend who prefers linear stories. Not railroading per se, but he likes to do the "VERY GIANT RED ARROW POINTING AT EXACTLY WHERE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GO" method. He disliked Skyrim because the level of freedom left him feeling the effects of Decision Paralysis. These people DO exist. They just aren't often found in this hobby since CRPGs do what they want just as well and with prettier graphics.




I don't think you need to describe "25 following things" at all. Just describe the people, their motivations and the conflicts. What will happen can be left out to player action and GM imagination.

It can help to have a basic framework of what would happen if the PCs didn't exist. adjust these events as PCs change them.




I find it sad that you actually believe the railroad is your friend.

It's a tool. It has its place and its usefulness, otherwise no one would use it. It's biggest advantage is that it is SUPER easy. Like, "I pulled it off successfully when I was 12 and running my first campaign ever" levels of easy.




Technically, I think it's fun for everyone to be creative. I bet there's some dopamine-based biochemistry involved in the process. If everyone has the ability or not, well, everything gets better with practice. But if you never start practicing, you are sure to never get it.

I know people who are pitifully uncreative in the areas TRPGs demand. They are creative in other fields, but not this one. Creativity takes many shapes, not all of which involve the capacity to be an awesome GM.
They will still play, because they are attracted to certain aspects. But GMing isn't what they want.



This is contrary to my original assertion. I believe it can be taught. Or at the very least, DMs can be inspired to becoming good, creative DMs, given the right sources. Everything that happens inside people is based on some external input after all.
Being contrary doesn't mean he's wrong. He actually has a good point in that not everyone has the brain for every kind of creativity. Some people who are DMs do it because they are creative at setting up dungeons and their plots are there to shoestring the dungeons together. That's totally fine so long as it is what everyone wants/is okay with.

goto124
2016-03-18, 06:09 AM
He disliked Skyrim because the level of freedom left him feeling the effects of Decision Paralysis. These people DO exist.

I myself face Decision Paralysis when trying to choose a flavor of ice-cream, and always end up regretting whatever I choose.

Segev
2016-03-18, 10:25 AM
What you are describing is the part of the module known as ''The Introduction''.Done as I described, that'd be a very, very long introduction. With multiple parts, probably divided into chapters, and... wait, so the whole module is an introduction? :smalltongue:


See, this is just ''forcing things'' and not calling it the ''R word'' so everyone feels better. So jerk tyrant wants the players to do X no matter what is railroading. But if the DM wants nothing, but still forces the players to do X no matter what, but hides behind ''um, it's not me that is what (I say) NPC X would do'', then it's not railroading. And that makes no sense.

Like jerk tyrant DM wants to toss the characters in prison so he can run a cool prison life and escape game segment, so he forces that to happen. Then you have the blank DM just sitting there, forcing the exact same game segment, but they say ''Oh, it's not me or my idea. The imaginary NPC that i control is telling me what to do. I'm just an innocent pawn''.


No forcing of anything was in what you quoted.


Correction: DM who makes players do X no matter what is railroading.


If the DM forces the players to do X no matter what, then it's railroading. But that wasn't what was described in what you quoted.Milo responded well, but I want to add my own two cents, since Darth Ultron was talking to my post.

Nothing in what I wrote indicates the GM or the module has one specific thing it's "forcing" to happen. Nor did I anywhere suggest that an "imaginary NPC" was "telling the GM what to do." Such derisive misrepresentations of what was said are known as "straw men," and these are particularly inept representations of the fallacy.

What I said was that the GM, having this hypothetical module, would know enough about what the NPCs are like - their motivations, goals, personalities, flaws, likes, dislikes, etc. - to be able to figure out what such a person might do in response to whatever the PCs do.

"This King is barely into his teens and is insecure in his position, feeling worried that he is inadequate and that others will recognize it and view him as weak. He views praise as unearned, but craves a sense of approval, and tries to show a strong face to insults because he fears they're true."

This is not much, but it would provide enough ammunition not only to spark some story ideas just from interaction with other NPCs in the story, but to help guide his reaction to PCs based on what they do. Respectful treatment might be met with what this youth believes is strong but wise authority, while any questioning of his judgment that isn't extremely carefully phrased might be met with stubborn anger. Praise may or may not endear a PC to him, depending on whether the PC can pierce his fear that it's insincere and convince him that it really is meant.

Generally, the GM can use those guidelines to determine what the King will do in response to various things the PCs might do, without having to "force" the PCs to do one specific thing; e.g. "when they inevitably offend him, he throws them in the dungeon." The module written as I suggest would have whatever the badly-written railroad version requires them to be in the dungeon to do/learn/receive be in the hands of an NPC, who could be encountered elsewhere. Or not require it at all, but merely have "if they have the MacGuffin from the Castle Dungeons, then the Dragon League will let them in without facing the Trial of Feathered Scales" somewhere else in the module.

It becomes a series of encounters-as-"rooms" and maps out various ways to interact with the setting, giving enough information about each organization and major NPC to let the DM figure out how each would react when the PCs introduce their unique choices to the mix.

None of this is "railroading." Railroading involves forcing certain outcomes regardless of PC actions. Notice how that is exactly not present in the above discussion: instead, the information present allows the DM to have the world react to PC actions, treating them as meaningfully impacting how the NPCs, organizations, etc. interact and react.


I myself face Decision Paralysis when trying to choose a flavor of ice-cream, and always end up regretting whatever I choose.
When this happens to me, I try to reduce my choices to one of two, and then flip a coin. If I am disappointed by the result, I take the other one: clearly, I wanted the other one more after all if I was disappointed that I got this one.

kyoryu
2016-03-18, 01:08 PM
Like jerk tyrant DM wants to toss the characters in prison so he can run a cool prison life and escape game segment, so he forces that to happen. Then you have the blank DM just sitting there, forcing the exact same game segment, but they say ''Oh, it's not me or my idea. The imaginary NPC that i control is telling me what to do. I'm just an innocent pawn''.

Nooooope.

More like "in this situation, the characters decide to do something which would attract the attention of the guards. They fail to escape the guards, and end up in jail. They decide to escape, so we have a prison escape scene."

They could have not gone that way by:

1) Not choosing to do thing which would anger the guards
2) Successfully escaping the guards
3) Not decide to escape, and instead wait for their trail

The *only* decision that's being made is that the guards would become involved after they did something visible and illegal and guard-worthy.


Which goes back to my original post. How does a GM gain experience with non-railroady games?

Another vote for AW.

Also, I wrote this a while ago. While it's for Fate Core, it's pretty applicable to non-railroading games in general.

https://plus.google.com/+RobertHanz/posts/K2E4ivswdQZ

Ultimately, you get some advice, and you *do* it. You'll stumble a bit at first, and it'll be weird at first, but then you'll get it figured out.


I myself face Decision Paralysis when trying to choose a flavor of ice-cream, and always end up regretting whatever I choose.

Yeah, again, "hey, these things are likely, so I'll use a randomizer to choose between them" is a good solution. It also prevents you from always doing the "most likely" thing, which can make the world more interesting.

Another good tie-breaker is "which would be the most interesting thing to happen?"

Frozen_Feet
2016-03-18, 04:16 PM
"How does a GM gain experience of non-railroad games?"

By playing them.

Which is difficult if you have no other experienced GMs around, but fortunately, computer games can help.

They just have to be right sort of computer games.

Dwarf Fortress, Unreal World, Nethack, ADOM and other roguelikes were basically designed to be simulations of Old School play. They show what random generation can do in practice and illustrate what sorts of freedom a player can have.

Exile III: Ruined World and Star Control 2: Ur-Quan Masters both illustrate how to mix strong storylines into a wide open world, and how a game world can react to absence of player action.

On the more linear end, we have Legend of Zelda series, of which I talked of at length in an earlier thread about these issues. Zeldas, especially newer ones, tend to have fairly linear plots and are full of single-solution puzzles, but they are also full of open-world exploration and allow the player to run off chasing wild geese (or cuccos, as the case might be). They reward the player for being proactive and trying weird things.

There are also non-RPGs, computerized and not, which a prospective GM really ought to take a look at, like Werewolf and Diplomacy. The appeal of those games is in PvP, which helps accustom a person to the idea, but more importantly they provide examples of how conflict between players can create content and excitement! On the computer game side, some strategy games like Space Empires come to mind.

Knaight
2016-03-18, 05:17 PM
I have one friend who prefers linear stories. Not railroading per se, but he likes to do the "VERY GIANT RED ARROW POINTING AT EXACTLY WHERE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GO" method. He disliked Skyrim because the level of freedom left him feeling the effects of Decision Paralysis. These people DO exist. They just aren't often found in this hobby since CRPGs do what they want just as well and with prettier graphics.

There's also the matter of how what people prefer can vary. I hate sandboxes in videogames, and while part of that is them just feeling so limited compared to a tabletop game (where the GM can improvise, and the videogame can't), part of it is that I actually do favor linear storytelling in that medium. In this one? No. Then also, no.

I also have a friend prone to decision paralysis. She's also one of the people who would probably appreciate railroading the least in my group. She's also a pretty decent GM, who doesn't railroad. The decision paralysis is easily worked around - she has to do a bit more setting prep than is typical in our group (so, probably way less than average still), prefers pre-gens when working with new systems that she doesn't know yet, and really doesn't appreciate being rushed in Microscope.

Brookshw
2016-03-18, 06:44 PM
rushed in Microscope.

Sorry but I'm not sure what this portion means, could you clarify? By microscope are we talking specific/minutia details?

goto124
2016-03-18, 08:38 PM
Microscope is a game system (http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/). The fact that "Microscope" had its first letter capitalized should've tipped you off :smallbiggrin:

I rarely get Decision Paralysis in RPGs, because I never come up with that many possible options to begin with. I must be extremely creative to come up with three options to pick from. When I have two options, one of them is clearly the "you're going to kill yourself in a very stupid manner" option. Or the "you're completely leaving the space of the game, do this too often and no one will RP with you again" option.


When this happens to me, I try to reduce my choices to one of two, and then flip a coin. If I am disappointed by the result, I take the other one: clearly, I wanted the other one more after all if I was disappointed that I got this one.

That doesn't solve the "always end up regretting whatever I choose" part! At best, I regret choosing a boring mediocre flavor. At worst, I regret choosing a flavor so bad I'd rather have [insert another bad-tasting food here].

Come to think of it, that's how I feel when I play roleplaying games. It's a choice between 'boring game' and 'bad game'. Why is it that everyone else has fun, but I get intensely frustrated and eventually blow up?

Somehow computer games don't have the same effect on me. Probably because a lot of teeth is taken out of consequence, and I get to play at my own time & pace instead of having to cater to other players. Plus, I get comfort in staying on the rails - I know that when I do an action, all its consequences are part of the plot and I'm going in the right direction. In a computer game, if I try something and it summons a demon, I know I'm doing the right thing by virtue of the game world reacting to my actions at all. In a TTRPG? Who knows?

Now that I've typed everything out, it seems I expect the world not to react to my actions at all* unless it's the 'right' action, where 'right' actions are those that push me towards a certain happy ending. Even if they don't seem that way at first, but I need the reassurance and confidence that the 'seemly wrong' actions are actually 'right'.

I'm messed up, aren't I? For one thing, I started classifying actions into 'right' and 'wrong'. Which surely doesn't apply in a TTRPG.

* This is why I freak out whenever I admire a store's goods and a sales assistant approaches me. "Argh I just wanted to look, please don't interact with me!"

Brookshw
2016-03-18, 09:54 PM
The fact that "Microscope" had its first letter capitalized should've tipped you off :smallbiggrin:

I rarely get Decision Paralysis in RPGs, because I never come up with that many possible options to begin with.

Never heard of a system called Decision Paralysis either, is it fun? :smallwink:

Darth Ultron
2016-03-19, 01:17 PM
None of this is "railroading." Railroading involves forcing certain outcomes regardless of PC actions. Notice how that is exactly not present in the above discussion: instead, the information present allows the DM to have the world react to PC actions, treating them as meaningfully impacting how the NPCs, organizations, etc. interact and react.


So it's only railroading if you say it's not? That is a great way to view things.

The DM makes NPC's ''do things'' if the players do things, that force things to happen to the players...but that is not railroading.

Can you explain how ''the DM making up stuff about how an NPC will react'' is different from ''a DM just making up stuff''? If a DM just says ''well you must go to the Iron Pit'' it's a railroad, but if the DM says ''Oh, NPC Tosk takes your characters to the Iron Pit'' it's not railroading. But the Pc's still have no choice in either.

Saying that the DM just ''makes up how things react to the Pcs'' is just a disguise to say ''railroading''.

Thrudd
2016-03-19, 01:54 PM
So it's only railroading if you say it's not? That is a great way to view things.

The DM makes NPC's ''do things'' if the players do things, that force things to happen to the players...but that is not railroading.

Can you explain how ''the DM making up stuff about how an NPC will react'' is different from ''a DM just making up stuff''? If a DM just says ''well you must go to the Iron Pit'' it's a railroad, but if the DM says ''Oh, NPC Tosk takes your characters to the Iron Pit'' it's not railroading. But the Pc's still have no choice in either.

Saying that the DM just ''makes up how things react to the Pcs'' is just a disguise to say ''railroading''.

Railroading requires a destination, an intent to force the characters into a story or a plot. An NPC that tries to arrest the PCs for commiting a crime is not railroading if the PCs chose to commit the crime, if they have a chance to resist and escape arrest, and if the DM isn't doing it because they have planned a plot about going to prison. This is the npcs and game world reacting sensibly to the actions of the characters.

A railroad requires that the DM has a specific plot or outcome they want to happen, and this happens no matter what the players do. There is no escape from the NPC, even if they roll a crit that should knock him down, even if they have a teleport spell or are invisible, even if they don't commit a crime at all, the DM still comes up with an excuse for the characters to get arrested and sent to jail. That would be railroading.

If the DM doesn't care whether or not they get arrested, doesn't care if they kill the NPC or get caught, doesn't care if they want to commit crimes or not, then there could be no railroad regardless of what results. The DM will create a story out of whatever the players do and wherever they go, instead of writing a story beforehand and making the players participate in it. That is how to avoid railroading.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-19, 03:49 PM
Railroading requires a destination, an intent to force the characters into a story or a plot. An NPC that tries to arrest the PCs for commiting a crime is not railroading if the PCs chose to commit the crime, if they have a chance to resist and escape arrest, and if the DM isn't doing it because they have planned a plot about going to prison. This is the npcs and game world reacting sensibly to the actions of the characters.

So a DM plans to have the characters arrested for a crime they commit and thrown in prison that is railroading. If the DM is just there and pathetically says ''Oh NPC Ton arrests your characters for the crime and throws you all in prison'', that is not railroading.




A railroad requires that the DM has a specific plot or outcome they want to happen, and this happens no matter what the players do. There is no escape from the NPC, even if they roll a crit that should knock him down, even if they have a teleport spell or are invisible, even if they don't commit a crime at all, the DM still comes up with an excuse for the characters to get arrested and sent to jail. That would be railroading.

This seems to be the common defense on the board: If the DM is a blank, mindless, shell of a Dm that just wants to randomly not do stuff in the game...then they are not railroading.

So if DM A wants X to happen, and does anything to make it happen is railroading. If DM B wants nothing to happen ever, and does some random stuff that makes X happen, is not railroading.



If the DM doesn't care whether or not they get arrested, doesn't care if they kill the NPC or get caught, doesn't care if they want to commit crimes or not, then there could be no railroad regardless of what results. The DM will create a story out of whatever the players do and wherever they go, instead of writing a story beforehand and making the players participate in it. That is how to avoid railroading.

I guess for you this gives you and out for any railroading. A Dm can do some horrible railroading, and then claim(aka lie) and say ''Oh, I don't care'' and it is all good.

Thrudd
2016-03-19, 04:17 PM
So if DM A wants X to happen, and does anything to make it happen is railroading. If DM B wants nothing to happen ever, and does some random stuff that makes X happen, is not railroading.
Correct.
Except, it isn't "random stuff" if the DM is portraying the game world sensibly and reacts to the players. A DM has to have a game world populated by people and monsters which act in prescribed ways and follow the rules of the game. They have to decide how these denizens act and react to the players. None of that is railroading.

The DM wants some things to happen in a very general sense, proscribed by the objective of the game itself. The GM wants players to go on adventures in dungeons and face challenges in return for rewards. They make a world were they can do that. What happens otherwise depends on the players and the rules of the game.

In the arrest scenario, it is a railroad if the DM determines that the players are arrested and put in jail without allowing them to do anything about it. If the arrest scenario came about because of something the players did of their own free will, and the DM lets them try anything they can think of when the npc comes to get them, and lets the games rules decide the result of their actions, then it is not a railroad. They could avoid getting arrested.

To avoid railroads in D&D, don't plan plots and stories. Plan the world and its inhabitants and then set the players to pursue the objective of the game, and role play the world as it reacts to them.

Talakeal
2016-03-19, 04:49 PM
This seems to be the common defense on the board: If the DM is a blank, mindless, shell of a Dm that just wants to randomly not do stuff in the game...then they are not railroading.


This is almost entirely contrary to my experiences.

In my experience genuinely strong and confident people can sit back and let things occur naturally and it is usually only people with very weak egos who are powerless in real life that have the compulsive need to always be in control and micromanage every aspect of a game.

Lost in Hyrule
2016-03-19, 05:03 PM
http://www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-railroading/

Many written modules are linear. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a "railroad". The best way to learn is to read through the module you're going to run, understand the way the characters would think about their situation, and then try to make consistent choices for them.

Later, check with your players. If they're having fun, you're doing fine!

Darth Ultron
2016-03-19, 05:05 PM
Correct.
Except, it isn't "random stuff" if the DM is portraying the game world sensibly and reacts to the players. A DM has to have a game world populated by people and monsters which act in prescribed ways and follow the rules of the game. They have to decide how these denizens act and react to the players. None of that is railroading.

What your saying is that a Dm can do whatever he wants, including railroading, as long he can defend his actions to the players. And the best way to fool the players is for the DM to lie and say ''the game and the rules are just reacting to the players'', but the DM is an innocent bystander.




In the arrest scenario, it is a railroad if the DM determines that the players are arrested and put in jail without allowing them to do anything about it. If the arrest scenario came about because of something the players did of their own free will, and the DM lets them try anything they can think of when the npc comes to get them, and lets the games rules decide the result of their actions, then it is not a railroad. They could avoid getting arrested.

This is the old ''theoretically'' argument. As long as the characters might ''theoretically'' be able to avoid something, then it's not railroading.



To avoid railroads in D&D, don't plan plots and stories. Plan the world and its inhabitants and then set the players to pursue the objective of the game, and role play the world as it reacts to them.

Now the problem with this statement is that it only works for the first couple minutes of the game.

Ok, so the DM makes up all sorts of random, unrelated stuff. Including ''instructions'' to himself as to what will happen in the game when the characters do things in the game. And the Dm is ready to defend himself by saying he did not make up the stuff or instructions and things just happened somehow.

So, then the game starts. The DM describes things, with no story or plan or plot. So the players just have their characters wander around and aimless and randomly do things. And this might be enough of a game for everyone.

But lets say everyone wants a little bit more out of the game other then just random stuff. So the DM with no plan or story or plot just asks the players ''ok day, what do you guys want to do?'. The players talk it over, vote and then tell the DM they would like to kill a dragon. So the DM looks in the stack of stuff he made, and randomly picks out one that says ''dragon''.

Ok...so now the players have picked and adventure and the near useless DM has done nothing. So as the DM has no plot or plan or story all he can really say is ''um, the dragon is to the west''. So the characters go west, at some point find and fight and slay the dragon and a good game is had by all.

But, ok, lets say everyone wants just a tiny bit more out of the game then that. With no plot or plan or story, how does the DM advance the game at all and the only way events can happen in the game is in reaction to the player?

Thrudd
2016-03-19, 06:58 PM
What your saying is that a Dm can do whatever he wants, including railroading, as long he can defend his actions to the players. And the best way to fool the players is for the DM to lie and say ''the game and the rules are just reacting to the players'', but the DM is an innocent bystander.




This is the old ''theoretically'' argument. As long as the characters might ''theoretically'' be able to avoid something, then it's not railroading.



Now the problem with this statement is that it only works for the first couple minutes of the game.

Ok, so the DM makes up all sorts of random, unrelated stuff. Including ''instructions'' to himself as to what will happen in the game when the characters do things in the game. And the Dm is ready to defend himself by saying he did not make up the stuff or instructions and things just happened somehow.

So, then the game starts. The DM describes things, with no story or plan or plot. So the players just have their characters wander around and aimless and randomly do things. And this might be enough of a game for everyone.

But lets say everyone wants a little bit more out of the game other then just random stuff. So the DM with no plan or story or plot just asks the players ''ok day, what do you guys want to do?'. The players talk it over, vote and then tell the DM they would like to kill a dragon. So the DM looks in the stack of stuff he made, and randomly picks out one that says ''dragon''.

Ok...so now the players have picked and adventure and the near useless DM has done nothing. So as the DM has no plot or plan or story all he can really say is ''um, the dragon is to the west''. So the characters go west, at some point find and fight and slay the dragon and a good game is had by all.

But, ok, lets say everyone wants just a tiny bit more out of the game then that. With no plot or plan or story, how does the DM advance the game at all and the only way events can happen in the game is in reaction to the player?

The DM has a plan, for the whole world and how it works and what the players will find there. This is different than a plot involving specific events and characters. It also doesn't mean there is no meta-plot. The DM may decide that the game will feature an invasion of giants into civilized lands. This happens at a certain time, and the players are free to deal with this, or not, as they see fit. Maybe the king even asks them to help fight the giants. But a non-railroad doesn't require that they accept. The DM will gave other stuff for them to do besides fight giants. Maybe they even leave the kingdom and go to a whole different continent, in search of whatever it is that motivates their characters.

The players make characters that want something. The DM makes a world where what they want is found by going on adventures. The players aren't randomly doing stuff, they are pursuing specific goals. The DM isn't randomly choosing things, he/she is using what the players want to create exciting scenarios for their characters. Over time, potential plots emerge as the players' goals bring them in contact with NPCs that have their own goals. Stories are told about things the characters did in pursuit of their goals.

Cosi
2016-03-19, 07:16 PM
But, ok, lets say everyone wants just a tiny bit more out of the game then that. With no plot or plan or story, how does the DM advance the game at all and the only way events can happen in the game is in reaction to the player?

Not Railroading: The evil vizer is poisoning the king so that his allies outside the kingdom can sweep in, conquer the place, and unleash the demon trapped in a nearby dormant volcano. The PCs need to stop that from happening, which they can do any number of points. They could do an intrigue adventure where they out the vizer, a conquest adventure where they fight the outside allies, or a dungeon delve where they kill the demon before people let it out. Or probably some other stuff depending on specifics. Or they could switch sides. Or they could go run off and deal with a dragon, or a elven kingdom, or an ancient laboratory full of constructs, or whatever.

Railroading: You discover the vizer is evil. After you kill him, you find notes pointing to an army waiting to invade. After you beat them, you discover that the demon trapped inside the volcano is about to get out.

Do you really not see any difference between those two situations? Do you really see nothing for the DM to do in the first situation?

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-20, 01:48 AM
Remember folks:
Darth Ultron does not function on the same logic as we do. GMing exists in a strictly binary state of either Absolute Narrative Control or Utter Randomness with no inbetween.

Darth, I suggest you look into something called Rollplay: Swan Song.

It's a series GM'd by a guy named Adam Koebel, half of the creative team behind Dungeon World. They use rhe system Stars Without Number, and nothing about what happens is railroaded. If you check Adam's channel, you can watch a good portion of his GM prep.

It might be educational into how a group might run without railroading and without randomness, but something inbetween the two.

As for everyone else, remember what I said. Not worth engaging. I don't know if it's an elaborate bait scheme or just a very odd logic system, but either way it's not worth engaging. You'll get mad and he'll feel smug. No point.

goto124
2016-03-20, 03:09 AM
Do you have to discover the vizer is evil? Vizers are always evil! :smalltongue:

*mumbles about what to do if the players discover a critical plot point too early*

Darth Ultron
2016-03-20, 01:41 PM
Stories are told about things the characters did in pursuit of their goals.

So your definition of railroading is simply the DM forcing the players to do what they want them to do. Ok, that is a fine definition. Though I'd wonder if when the players force the DM to do something you'd call that railroading too.



Railroading: You discover the vizer is evil. After you kill him, you find notes pointing to an army waiting to invade. After you beat them, you discover that the demon trapped inside the volcano is about to get out.

Do you really not see any difference between those two situations? Do you really see nothing for the DM to do in the first situation?

How are the examples railroading? If the DM randomly creates the army and..um..has the NPC general tell the DM in some sort of delusion that he the imaginary NPC wants to invade...everyone says that is not railroading.

OldTrees1
2016-03-20, 02:29 PM
So your definition of railroading is simply the DM forcing the players to do what they want them to do. Ok, that is a fine definition. Though I'd wonder if when the players force the DM to do something you'd call that railroading too.

First, pick up a piece of paper and then try to force the universe to turn that paper into gold. Which are you asking about?
Player: Darth Ultron tries to pick up the piece of paper.
DM: That is clearly within their abilities, they succeed.
or

Player: Darth Ultron tries to turn the piece of paper into gold.
DM: That is clearly not within their abilities, they fail.

In the first case, the Player is not railroading the DM.
In the second case, the Player is unable to force the DM.

Cosi
2016-03-20, 02:32 PM
So your definition of railroading is simply the DM forcing the players to do what they want them to do. Ok, that is a fine definition. Though I'd wonder if when the players force the DM to do something you'd call that railroading too.

I suppose you would, though I don't know of any RPGs that have problems with too much player empowerment.


How are the examples railroading? If the DM randomly creates the army and..um..has the NPC general tell the DM in some sort of delusion that he the imaginary NPC wants to invade...everyone says that is not railroading.

Because the PCs can't solve the problem creatively. They don't know about the army till the fight the vizer. They can't go off and instead resolve succession problems among the Frost Giants, or investigate the caverns left by the Lord Ruler which contain the seven pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts, or do something else that interests them. They don't have any agency.

It's the difference between setting up a problem (the vizer plans to unleash a demon by poisoning the king, which will allow the army to invade, which will allow their warlocks to remove the forbiddance that keeps the demon trapped) and setting up a solution (you need to kill the vizer, then defeat the army, the kill the demon).

Knaight
2016-03-20, 04:06 PM
How are the examples railroading? If the DM randomly creates the army and..um..has the NPC general tell the DM in some sort of delusion that he the imaginary NPC wants to invade...everyone says that is not railroading.

You are literally the only person here who seems to think that anybody is convinced their NPCs are talking to them. However, since previous analogies aren't working at all, I'm going to use a dramatically different one.

A large part of what the GM does is creating a set of interconnected systems, most of which are dynamic. The exact way in which this works varies highly, but the set of interconnected dynamic systems is pretty constant. Imagine, if you will, a network of chemical reactions*. You've got a whole bunch of different reactants, a bunch of different products, things which are a reactant in one reaction and a product in another, etc. It's a complex system, and it's not necessarily completely predictable (let alone easily predictable). It's also probably not at equilibrium, and will change on its own. The players are then put in a position to influence it somehow. They're the people who are doing process control by tweaking temperatures, adding and removing chemicals, etc. They don't know everything that's going on there, and particularly for poorly thought through plans what they think they're doing by adding a given chemical might not be anywhere near what they're doing, but they are still doing something.

Now, in this system, nobody is saying that the GM should be doing nothing. They built the system, and while part of what they are doing is just figuring out how it responds to input (as they know what's in it), just about everyone here is saying that (to use the chemical system analogy again), they should also feel free to introduce chemicals, separate things out, change temperatures, etc. Doing any of that sort of thing isn't railroading.

What is railroading is giving the players a bunch of access points that look like they pour their chemicals into a reactor somewhere but actually dump them in a bucket stored elsewhere, along with a dial that claims to change temperature but actually just moves thermometer fluid around a bit. There the reaction system is entirely predictable for the GM, and entirely controlled by the GM. It would also be railroading if the players just didn't have any access points and were there to watch the reaction, but maybe watch it a bit faster or slower. In that case though, it's at least open participationism, which some people legitimately enjoy.

*I'm assuming that you at least vaguely remember high school chemistry and are familiar with the concept of side reactions here.

Lorsa
2016-03-21, 05:52 AM
Perhaps this borders on advertising, but whatever.
Run Apocalypse World. Not just any way, but EXACTLY how Apocalypse World tells you to run it as an MC.
It was the best handbook on GMing I've ever read. Seriously.
And I've read several.

Or don't, whatever.

While I might, at the very least, read AW (unfortunately the time I have for roleplaying is almost 0 these days), it's not me seeking advice.

I want to know if railroading occurs because GMs just don't know any better, and how we can make them know better.

If AW is the way to go, how do we get the message out there?




It's a tool. It has its place and its usefulness, otherwise no one would use it. It's biggest advantage is that it is SUPER easy. Like, "I pulled it off successfully when I was 12 and running my first campaign ever" levels of easy.

Well, of course it is super easy. It's easy to play God when the rules tell you that you are, in fact, God. That doesn't mean taking away free will is the way to go.



I know people who are pitifully uncreative in the areas TRPGs demand. They are creative in other fields, but not this one. Creativity takes many shapes, not all of which involve the capacity to be an awesome GM.
They will still play, because they are attracted to certain aspects. But GMing isn't what they want.


Being contrary doesn't mean he's wrong. He actually has a good point in that not everyone has the brain for every kind of creativity. Some people who are DMs do it because they are creative at setting up dungeons and their plots are there to shoestring the dungeons together. That's totally fine so long as it is what everyone wants/is okay with.

Luckily not everyone has to be GM.

I do believe everyone can get better at all types of creativity. It's not like skills function on a "you either know it or you never will". Practice is a thing that exist, and it works.

If you want to make the assertion that GMing is somehow a type of creativity that can never get better with practice, I think we need to get some neuroscientists to tell us who of us is right.



I myself face Decision Paralysis when trying to choose a flavor of ice-cream, and always end up regretting whatever I choose.

What happens when you let others choose for you? Or when there's no choice (as in, someone is offering Ice cream, but only has one flavor)?



Another vote for AW.

Also, I wrote this a while ago. While it's for Fate Core, it's pretty applicable to non-railroading games in general.

https://plus.google.com/+RobertHanz/posts/K2E4ivswdQZ

Ultimately, you get some advice, and you *do* it. You'll stumble a bit at first, and it'll be weird at first, but then you'll get it figured out.

I am still at a bit of loss how we get this message out to new prospective GMs. Ideally all rulebooks sold should give advice, but it seems they don't.



"How does a GM gain experience of non-railroad games?"

By playing them.

Which is difficult if you have no other experienced GMs around, but fortunately, computer games can help.

As I feared, we are back to the "you have to experience it first" problem. There has to be a better way.



I'm messed up, aren't I? For one thing, I started classifying actions into 'right' and 'wrong'. Which surely doesn't apply in a TTRPG.

You do seem to be a bit messed up, yes. It's okay though, we're all messed up in one way or another. This seem to affect your quality of life quite a lot however, so my advice would be to read about the psychology of decision-making, and/or find a professional to talk to. Maybe one day you will be an executive decision-making monster?



So a DM plans to have the characters arrested for a crime they commit and thrown in prison that is railroading. If the DM is just there and pathetically says ''Oh NPC Ton arrests your characters for the crime and throws you all in prison'', that is not railroading. .

Railroading:

The DM plans to have the characters commit a crime, so they can be arrested for it. Alternatively, if the players are so resilient to his "subtle" manipulation that they never commit the crime, the DM plans to have the characters arrested for a crime they didn't commit (as in, being set up).

The DM plans to have the characters arrested for a crime so they can end up in prison. If the players somehow try to fight back the guards, they are much better than the characters, somehow being able to counter the players' every moves. If the players somehow try to get their characters killed, the guards will spare them or help/heal them.

The DM plans to have the characters ending up in prison so they can meet NPC PlotPoint. NPC PlotPoint will tell them something very revealing about The Villain, let's say that he has been (*gasp*) the King all along!

The DM plans to have the PlotPoint revealed so the characters will want to fight the King. Once the reveal has taken place, the "Escape from Prison" scene will take place.

The DM plans to have NPC PlotPoint being broken out of prison by the help of his group The Rebellion. As it is clear the characters are also against the King, they will bring them along.

The DM plans to have the characters meet with The Rebellion, so they can be part of the Assassinate the King! plan. Being very competent adventurers, the DM plans to have The Rebellion ask the characters to use a diversion created to sneak in, follow the map The Rebellion gives them to the King's chambers and kill him. If the players somehow says no and wants to go somewhere else, the DM won't really know what to do, probably have The Rebellion assume they are in league with the King and thus try to kill them until the players come to their senses and say "sorry, we were just joking", or whatever.

The DM plans to have The Rebellion give them info on how to reach the King so the characters can kill him and thus end The Story. Hurray!

Not railroading:

The characters commit a crime. The DM sends city guards to try and arrest the players.

The Villain is the King. He has learnt the characters are in the city and sends city guards to try and arrest the players for a crime they didn't commit.



Now the problem with this statement is that it only works for the first couple minutes of the game.

Ok, so the DM makes up all sorts of random, unrelated stuff. Including ''instructions'' to himself as to what will happen in the game when the characters do things in the game. And the Dm is ready to defend himself by saying he did not make up the stuff or instructions and things just happened somehow.

So, then the game starts. The DM describes things, with no story or plan or plot. So the players just have their characters wander around and aimless and randomly do things. And this might be enough of a game for everyone.

But lets say everyone wants a little bit more out of the game other then just random stuff. So the DM with no plan or story or plot just asks the players ''ok day, what do you guys want to do?'. The players talk it over, vote and then tell the DM they would like to kill a dragon. So the DM looks in the stack of stuff he made, and randomly picks out one that says ''dragon''.

Ok...so now the players have picked and adventure and the near useless DM has done nothing. So as the DM has no plot or plan or story all he can really say is ''um, the dragon is to the west''. So the characters go west, at some point find and fight and slay the dragon and a good game is had by all.

But, ok, lets say everyone wants just a tiny bit more out of the game then that. With no plot or plan or story, how does the DM advance the game at all and the only way events can happen in the game is in reaction to the player?

First of all, you again show you have misunderstood everything. The DM can advance the game by having events happen that are not in reaction to the players. That's called "setting up a situation", or "presenting a problem". What the DM can't do, however, is decide how the players should respond to this situation, or set up a situation that shouldn't be "solved", as it is just a way to get the players to the NEXT situation, which in turn shouldn't be solved either as it should just funnel the player to the NEXT situation, which exist to bring the players to the CLIMAX, where they finally kill the villain.

If you have things happen which the players are allowed to respond to, in whichever way they choose, then you are not railroading. The grey area, of course, is where the DM sets up a situation which is impossible to solve (unbeatable city guards for example), or can only be solved in One and only ONE way. I would say those fall under railroading (in the first case) and poor adventure design (in the second).

Secondly, your dragon example is flawed.

If the players say "we want to kill a dragon", the correct reply from the DM should be "so, what do you do to find a dragon?".

The players might then say "we ask around town, everywhere from the lowly Inns, to marketplaces to the Wizard Academy and Royal library". Depending on your type of game, you can either:

a) Roleplay a few of these encounters, perhaps with one or two interesting situations occurring (players being dragged into bar brawls at the lowly Inns, asked to participate in some magical research at the Wizard Academy or whatever).

b) Just have them roll some appropriate skill and give them the results such as:

- People at the lowly Inn either laugh loud in the face of you when you talk about dragons, or get excited and tell you a story from their adventuring days when they battled an epic Red Dragon in the Sun Smitten Desert.
- A merchant at the marketplace tells you how she spotted a dragon soaring over the Cloudy Mountains when she was traveling with a caravan a year or two ago.
- The archmage at the Wizard Academy gets excited about your dragon quest, tells you that he is certain one lives in the Swamps of Doom and asks you to bring the heart of the dragon to him, for which he will pay greatly.
- One of the books at the library tells a legend about the Scaly Forest, which was a home of a whole family of dragons back in the age of king [something or other].

After that you let the players decide what to do about this new information.

Also, the game doesn't have to end with killing the dragon. Could be that the players find some information in the dragon's lair that a king has bribed the dragon to attack another country. Then you ask the players again what they want to do. If they say "we want to stop the dragon-allied king", you ask them "how do you intend to do that?" and let the game proceed from there. If they say "we don't care about this king business, we want to find another dragon!" then you ask "what do you do to find a dragon?" and the game proceeds from there!

See how it works?



As for everyone else, remember what I said. Not worth engaging. I don't know if it's an elaborate bait scheme or just a very odd logic system, but either way it's not worth engaging. You'll get mad and he'll feel smug. No point.

I thought people could get banned for trolling? Or maybe that was just a in my dreams.

Amphetryon
2016-03-21, 06:29 AM
I want to know if railroading occurs because GMs just don't know any better, and how we can make them know better. The first part of your sentiment here reads as an honest inquiry. The second part of your sentiment here reads as predicated on the assumption that the first part is not a query, but a true statement in all cases. That it is not, in fact, a true statement in all cases - not all railroading occurs because GMs just don't know any better, as this thread should ably demonstrate - puts the two parts of your sentiment in conflict with each other.

Lorsa
2016-03-21, 06:58 AM
The first part of your sentiment here reads as an honest inquiry. The second part of your sentiment here reads as predicated on the assumption that the first part is not a query, but a true statement in all cases. That it is not, in fact, a true statement in all cases - not all railroading occurs because GMs just don't know any better, as this thread should ably demonstrate - puts the two parts of your sentiment in conflict with each other.

Fair enough.

I believe my phrasing should be "if that is indeed the cause, how do we them know better?".

neonchameleon
2016-03-21, 11:22 AM
While I might, at the very least, read AW (unfortunately the time I have for roleplaying is almost 0 these days), it's not me seeking advice.

I want to know if railroading occurs because GMs just don't know any better, and how we can make them know better.

If AW is the way to go, how do we get the message out there?

I think that even Vincent Baker would strongly deny that AW is the way to go. It is however a good way to go - and it's a mix of game design, advice, and modelling good behaviours in a way that doesn't resemble quoting Monty Python to try to be unexpected. All three should be in a lot of good games. (Evil Hat games and games project managed by Cam Banks (there is some overlap) are also good at this - and don't have the obnoxiousness of Vincent Baker's writing).


If you want to make the assertion that GMing is somehow a type of creativity that can never get better with practice, I think we need to get some neuroscientists to tell us who of us is right.

Or at least some GMs who have got better over time. *waves hand* (That said I don't think IamNotTrevor was making that claim so much as most people attracted to GMing have some talent that way).


I am still at a bit of loss how we get this message out to new prospective GMs. Ideally all rulebooks sold should give advice, but it seems they don't.

And some of them give bad advice - sometimes accidentally, sometimes possibly because strong improv systems tend not to sell many books as there's little point in supplements.

[What is the point of Ignore Lists if everyone is just going to quote Darth Ultron using his unique definitions of railroading again?]

Thrudd
2016-03-21, 11:40 AM
AW and Fate may be great games, but their solutions to avoid railroading may not always be applicable to other games. Dungeon World is not simply a superior, non-railroading version of D&D. It is a completely different game with different rules and objectives. So the answer, for say, a D&D DM that feels there are a lot of railroady modules is not "play a different RPG instead".

Railroading is not inherently baked into the rules of D&D, with no hope of redemption. It is created by an assumption that the game is about "telling stories", which admittedly even the designers now promote, and by the assumption that D&D stories should look and behave like the kinds of stories found in other media, again with designers not helping to dispell this idea.

Taking the actual rules of the game at face-value, disregarding promotional material and published adventure paths, the objective and mechanisms of the game do not require railroading and will not create it, inherently.
Lots of advice has been given here and found elsewhere, regarding good adventure design. If some of the designers and writers would include more of that advice in the rule books and modules it would help a lot. And start publishing material for the game that not only has standards of production and writing quality but also meets more stringent game design standards. QA for these things should include a "railroad check".

Segev
2016-03-21, 11:50 AM
That doesn't solve the "always end up regretting whatever I choose" part! At best, I regret choosing a boring mediocre flavor. At worst, I regret choosing a flavor so bad I'd rather have [insert another bad-tasting food here].Ah. See, I think the reason it works for me is that I have decided, once I realize I was disappointed in the result of the coin-flip, that I either a) care enough that the alternate choice is what I really wanted, or b) would not have been satisfied either way, and thus have no real reason to be disappointed in getting one of them.

If it's b), going with the alternate choice at least guarantees that I'm not passing up something with which I MIGHT have been satisfied.


Can you explain how ''the DM making up stuff about how an NPC will react'' is different from ''a DM just making up stuff''?It isn't. It also isn't what anybody has said.


If a DM just says ''well you must go to the Iron Pit'' it's a railroad, but if the DM says ''Oh, NPC Tosk takes your characters to the Iron Pit'' it's not railroading. But the Pc's still have no choice in either.Indeed they do not! By having the starting point of the DM's decision-making process be, "I want the PCs to go to the Iron Pit, no matter what they do," it's a railroad.

Note that having the Iron Pit be a place he's established in his world, and one where plot hooks exist if the PCs wind up there, doesn't mean the DM is locked into, "I want the PCs to go to the Iron Pit."


Saying that the DM just ''makes up how things react to the Pcs'' is just a disguise to say ''railroading''.Since nobody's actually said that, your straw man is not even worth discussing.

What has been said is that the PCs actions should have impact on the world. Which also means "consequences."

You keep starting with the assumption that "PCs get arrested" is because the DM wants to force the PCs to go to prison. You keep insisting that anything else is "randomly making stuff up."

So, tell me, Darth Ultron: you are in New York City, New York, in the USA. You decide to mug a hot dog vendor. Nobody tells you to; you just decide you want to. Are you being railroaded when the police come to arrest you?

Let's say it's not IRL, but you're playing in a game set in New York City, New York, in the USA. Your PC, Ulth Dartron, is a scoundrel and a thug, and mugs a hot dog vendor. Is the DM railroading you when he has the police come to arrest your character?

Is he "randomly making stuff up" when he has the police come to arrest your character?

neonchameleon
2016-03-21, 01:47 PM
Railroading is not inherently baked into the rules of D&D, with no hope of redemption. It is created by an assumption that the game is about "telling stories", which admittedly even the designers now promote,

As they have from memory since the days of Moldvay and Mentzer. And Gygax has said so as well.


and by the assumption that D&D stories should look and behave like the kinds of stories found in other media, again with designers not helping to dispell this idea.

And this is the problem. D&D encourages a couple of types of story (the fight against the odds, "By this axe I rule", Remake the World) but it does nothing to promote the sort of story that the presentation seems to encourage. By that I mean Dragonlance or, to use a more modern example of something that's on TV right now, The Shannara Chronicles.

If you look at Shannara (as in 2016 it's a good example of trash fantasy) you've three basic protagonists and possibly a DMPC or possibly a hamstrung fourth, all with strengths and weaknesses on an epic quest full of fights against monsters to save the world. One's a magic user and one's a thief (I gave up watching before I worked out what class the princess was). Should be a slam dunk? And yet no. Really not. The party splits a lot and there's quite a bit of inter-party tension as everyone has slightly different objectives. Does anyone care about the difference between a glaive and a guisarme?

Because that's exactly the sort of fiction that D&D appears to be able to do and far from doing anything to help you with it actually gets in the way (other than 4e the magic system is actively harmful to this sort of story in addition to anything else).

I'd also point out that none of this is remotely new. In Dragon #36 Gygax wrote up some stats for Conan the Barbarian in AD&D (http://deltasdnd.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/gygax-on-conan.html) - and Conan was explicitly one of the inspirations for AD&D (and should be a very good match for "By this axe I rule"). And the whole thing is an utter mess - including him needing his own personal multiclassing rules to jump between two incarnations. But D&D has always generated stories from the life stories of PCs to the story of what happens when two level draining vampiric warbands meet in mid air (answer: undead monster type was by hit dice - and when you level drain a wraith it becomes a mummy and loses the ability to fly).

Thrudd
2016-03-21, 02:53 PM
As they have from memory since the days of Moldvay and Mentzer. And Gygax has said so as well.



And this is the problem. D&D encourages a couple of types of story (the fight against the odds, "By this axe I rule", Remake the World) but it does nothing to promote the sort of story that the presentation seems to encourage. By that I mean Dragonlance or, to use a more modern example of something that's on TV right now, The Shannara Chronicles.

If you look at Shannara (as in 2016 it's a good example of trash fantasy) you've three basic protagonists and possibly a DMPC or possibly a hamstrung fourth, all with strengths and weaknesses on an epic quest full of fights against monsters to save the world. One's a magic user and one's a thief (I gave up watching before I worked out what class the princess was). Should be a slam dunk? And yet no. Really not. The party splits a lot and there's quite a bit of inter-party tension as everyone has slightly different objectives. Does anyone care about the difference between a glaive and a guisarme?

Because that's exactly the sort of fiction that D&D appears to be able to do and far from doing anything to help you with it actually gets in the way (other than 4e the magic system is actively harmful to this sort of story in addition to anything else).

I'd also point out that none of this is remotely new. In Dragon #36 Gygax wrote up some stats for Conan the Barbarian in AD&D (http://deltasdnd.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/gygax-on-conan.html) - and Conan was explicitly one of the inspirations for AD&D (and should be a very good match for "By this axe I rule"). And the whole thing is an utter mess - including him needing his own personal multiclassing rules to jump between two incarnations. But D&D has always generated stories from the life stories of PCs to the story of what happens when two level draining vampiric warbands meet in mid air (answer: undead monster type was by hit dice - and when you level drain a wraith it becomes a mummy and loses the ability to fly).

Exactly, D&D generates stories. You don't go into it with the story planned out. I'm distinguishing that as story "telling" vs story "generating". D&D does appear to be a mess of mechanics not suited to what they tried to do with it. That hasn't changed, really. New games came along that do narrative better. D&D does what D&D does, and people's mistake is trying to use it for something its rules are terrible for. They should be looking at the rules and figuring out what those rules will be good for.

Hyooz
2016-03-21, 03:49 PM
I think the goal of "getting it out there" is a little misguided. Even in the OP you admit that not everyone sees this as a problem, and as long as everyone is having fun, you aren't doing it "wrong," so while I definitely am in favor of sharing ideas for avoiding it or getting around it for people who need some pointers to fix what they already perceive to be a problem, I don't think there's a necessity to "spread the word" because people, in general, tend to go looking for solutions to problems.

This is just something that varies so much DM to DM and even group to group. I've DMed groups in the past that thrived in highly impromptu environments and loved generating their own story in the world. My current group really thrives when they get to play the characters in the story and make their own impact in it. They want me to come to the table with a plot in mind, but that doesn't mean they like to be railroaded - they just like structure. They're more interested in how their characters handle the situations the story places them in rather than making their own story 'wholesale.'

Both styles have their own unique challenges, and are perfectly valid as long as it suits the group. I've had to do very different things to avoid railroading both groups, and a general 'how not to railroad' pamphlet or whatever would have only been so helpful. This might just be an issue that requires too much individual coaching to be really worth getting the word 'out there.'

Darth Ultron
2016-03-22, 09:04 PM
Indeed they do not! By having the starting point of the DM's decision-making process be, "I want the PCs to go to the Iron Pit, no matter what they do," it's a railroad.

Note that having the Iron Pit be a place he's established in his world, and one where plot hooks exist if the PCs wind up there, doesn't mean the DM is locked into, "I want the PCs to go to the Iron Pit."

Right, so the normal DM creates things that they want to use in the game. And the alternative DM creates things, but does not want to use them. That makes no sense.




So, tell me, Darth Ultron: you are in New York City, New York, in the USA. You decide to mug a hot dog vendor. Nobody tells you to; you just decide you want to. Are you being railroaded when the police come to arrest you?


Well, it's a railroad if the DM ''wants'' you to be arrested, right?

But really this is just a smokescreen as the DM gets to decide what the consequences are....and they will be whatever the DM wants. And if the DM wants anything, it's a railroad.



Let's say it's not IRL, but you're playing in a game set in New York City, New York, in the USA. Your PC, Ulth Dartron, is a scoundrel and a thug, and mugs a hot dog vendor. Is the DM railroading you when he has the police come to arrest your character?

Is he "randomly making stuff up" when he has the police come to arrest your character?

Yes, and this is the worst video game type railroading. You know them games where if you do a ''crime'' every single NPC knows about it and won't have anything to do with your character.

And it does come back to what the DM wants to do. You sure seem to be saying that the only reaction to the hot dog crime is the police come. And lots of DM's seem to have the same idea, if you do X then Y will happen as it's ''consequences''. You can see the posts every couple of days of like ''the PC's attacked the king so they must absolutely suffer the consequence of being locked up in prsion, what can I do to save my game?

Consequences is just a deflection tactic to hide the railroading.

Milo v3
2016-03-22, 09:11 PM
Right, so the normal DM creates things that they want to use in the game. And the alternative DM creates things, but does not want to use them. That makes no sense.
I create things I don't end up using all the time.


Well, it's a railroad if the DM ''wants'' you to be arrested, right?
Not necessarily. But want is irrelevant in this case. It's not railroading if the DM doesn't force it. If the players can "not get arrested" through their actions, then they haven't been railroaded into being arrested.


Yes, and this is the worst video game type railroading. You know them games where if you do a ''crime'' every single NPC knows about it and won't have anything to do with your character.
Except that wasn't mentioned at all, please stop making up random crap and pretending that someone else said it.


You can see the posts every couple of days of like ''the PC's attacked the king so they must absolutely suffer the consequence of being locked up in prsion, what can I do to save my game?
Except that consequences =! absolute. If you don't want to do railroading it shouldn't be ''the PC's attacked the king so they must absolutely suffer the consequence of being locked up in prsion" it should be ''the PC's attacked the king so they are wanted by the guards with the aim of putting them in prison."

Those two are very very different. First is railroading, second isn't.

Segev
2016-03-23, 12:04 AM
Right, so the normal DM creates things that they want to use in the game. And the alternative DM creates things, but does not want to use them. That makes no sense.You...don't actually read what others write, and make up what you want to read in it, don't you. Do you think that an author uses everything he creates for his setting in one story? I can point to one who's trying, and it's ruining his book series. (George R.R. Martin) I can point to another who has a TON of stuff that he hasn't yet used in his various settings, and starts new stories to further explore those things rather than bogging down the current one. (Brandon Sanderson)

GMs will do similarly. The beauty of establishing a setting that has stuff that may or may not get used this time around is that it's there, ready to go if the PCs make choices that take them that way in the future. Or to use in another game, later.


Well, it's a railroad if the DM ''wants'' you to be arrested, right?It's a railroad if the DM forces you to be arrested no matter what choices you make or want to do.


But really this is just a smokescreen as the DM gets to decide what the consequences are....and they will be whatever the DM wants. And if the DM wants anything, it's a railroad.Has nothing to do with the DM "wanting" it, and everything to do with whether the PCs' actions and the players choices made any difference to what happens. Is this really so hard to understand?


Yes, and this is the worst video game type railroading. You know them games where if you do a ''crime'' every single NPC knows about it and won't have anything to do with your character.Nonsense. I never said that. I asked if, when you mugged the hot dog vendor, it was railroading for the police to try to arrest you.

But sure, let's run with this a bit.

Railroading: You are going to jail. The DM tries to set you up to commit a crime, which, if you do, everybody will know you did it. Then the police will arrest you, and you won't be able to avoid them or stop them from doing so. If you refuse to commit a crime, the DM contrives to have you framed for one.

Not railroading: You only get the police after you if you commit a crime and people can report it. Mug a vendor, and witnesses (or the vendor himself) call the police, who come and try to find the mugger (you). Cover up your crime, or don't commit it at all, and the police never learn about it (assuming you do a good enough job covering it up). If you're powerful or skilled enough to defeat or avoid the police, they escalate (in the face of resistance) or eventually give up (after they lose your trail entirely); if not, you get arrested and thrown in jail.

Notice how "not railroading" involves a lot of consideration for the PCs' actions. For their choices, their successes, their failures. All of these impact the final result (including whether or not they go to jail). Nothing in that was "the DM randomly makes something up." He has a city with a police force which responds to reports of crimes. He has witnesses who will call the cops, and victims who will do likewise. He also doesn't have them randomly calling the police just because you're there; you have to make a choice which leads to them wanting to. Again: player choice and PC action leading to consequences. Not "randomly chosen" consequences, but logical ones.


And it does come back to what the DM wants to do. You sure seem to be saying that the only reaction to the hot dog crime is the police come.It was a simplified scenario. What would you want to have happen? Do you do anything to prevent the police from coming? If so, what? Does the DM let your choice of action lead to activity in-game which will ultimately determine if the police come or not?


And lots of DM's seem to have the same idea, if you do X then Y will happen as it's ''consequences''. You can see the posts every couple of days of like ''the PC's attacked the king so they must absolutely suffer the consequence of being locked up in prsion, what can I do to save my game?

Consequences is just a deflection tactic to hide the railroading.This is a nonsensical statement full of non sequitur. If a PC says, "I let go of my sword," and the DM says, "It clatters to the ground," is that railroading? Because it sure sounds like what you just said.

Consequences are the believable reaction of the setting and its inhabitants to others' choices and actions. They're the opposite of railroading. Railroading removes consequences entirely; the only thing a railroad will allow to happen is the next event along the rails. It doesn't matter what the PCs do. Consequences only happen because of PC action. The PCs' actions choose the consequences. The DM absolutely makes them up to a degree, but he makes them up in response to their choices. If the PCs have a highly simplified choice between mugging a hot dog vendor or not, then their choice to not do so leads to the police not being called, but their choice to do so leads to the police being called. If they choose to do it and make effort to ensure the police are not called, the game is played out to see how successful their efforts to prevent the police from being called are. IF they succeed, they get away with the mugging. If they don't, the police are called, and now they have to choose to run, hide, fight, or submit. And their success at each of the first three is determined by gameplay. If they run or hide successfully, they may still get away with it. If they fight successfully, they may wind up forcing an escalation, or terrifying the powers that be into letting them be above the law (depending on how mighty they are in their fighting). If they fail or submit, they probably get arrested.

What in that is a railroad? It's the exact opposite: every step of the way, the consequences change based on their choices and successes/failures.

Talakeal
2016-03-23, 12:32 AM
I wonder what would happen if you had multiple DM's each with their own role.

Say, one guy who designs the setting, one guy who decides how the NPCs will react to the PC's actions, and one guy who serves as a referee to settle arguments and interpret vague rules. You might even have someone else roll the dice or narrate the scene.

All of the DM's have final say within their sphere of authority. For example, DM A decides there is a CE dragon in room X but not how it acts, DM B chooses how it acts but can't change its abilities, and DM C can determine what will happen if the PC decides to expose the dragon to brown mold but can't decide that there was no dragon after all.

How would railroading work in such a game?

goto124
2016-03-23, 01:07 AM
... that sounds really hard to manage, to be honest. So many DMs managing different aspect of a single game. A co-DM typically manages rollling dice and adding up numbers in combat, which is quite different from what you described.

The different aspects of a game just not meshing up could result in illogical situations. "Wait the dragon is now evil? We didn't even get any clues, no foreshadowing at all! Why are we in jail now? The act of drinking an woman's coffee is now illegal?"

Okay, examples may be extreme here.

Milo v3
2016-03-23, 01:27 AM
I wonder what would happen if you had multiple DM's each with their own role.

Say, one guy who designs the setting, one guy who decides how the NPCs will react to the PC's actions, and one guy who serves as a referee to settle arguments and interpret vague rules. You might even have someone else roll the dice or narrate the scene.
How deep does the "designs the setting" go? I mean, right now I am running a game using the setting of a Pathfinder Adventure Path, rules are settled by group vote, and I the DM determine how NPC's react in accordance to the setting.

I've also played games where there is no DM, and setting/NPC reactions/rules interpretations were done by all players communally.

flond
2016-03-23, 02:39 AM
... that sounds really hard to manage, to be honest. So many DMs managing different aspect of a single game. A co-DM typically manages rollling dice and adding up numbers in combat, which is quite different from what you described.

The different aspects of a game just not meshing up could result in illogical situations. "Wait the dragon is now evil? We didn't even get any clues, no foreshadowing at all! Why are we in jail now? The act of drinking an woman's coffee is now illegal?"

Okay, examples may be extreme here.

For what it's worth, remember larps, mushes and board based rps commonly HAVE to use multiple GMs. While what you describe does come up, mostly they get around it by communicating with each other between scenes and rolling with it if someone else rules something.

RazorChain
2016-03-23, 06:14 AM
I always let the players make a short background for their characters and populate the world a bit with friends, relatives and rivals/enemies. Then I just involve their creations in plot hooks and voila they jump at the chance to get involved in a story with their own npc's.

This is railroading at it's worst because the players don't even know they are being railroaded :smallsmile:

Player choice is all about illusion.

The players walk north and get ambushed by the bandit queen
The players walk south and get ambushed by the bandit queen
The players walk west and get ambushed by the bandit queen
The players walk south....oh you get it already!!!

Your work as a GM is to disguise your devious plots and make them think they have a choice.

OldTrees1
2016-03-23, 08:30 AM
This is railroading at it's worst because the players don't even know they are being railroaded :smallsmile:

Player choice is all about illusion.

Your work as a GM is to disguise your devious plots and make them think they have a choice.

I recognize that you enjoy that. Personally, I would not enjoy that as either a Player(presuming I found out about the deception*) or a DM.
*Even without finding out, the DM who already knows, would also know my preference in the matter.

As a Player I come expecting my PC to be able to impact some, but not all things.
As a DM I come expecting my Players will attempt to impact the story.

So say I had placed a Bandit Queen in my campaign world. The low level PCs made an enemy of her by attacking a couple of her camps (Queens have more than 1 camp/band right?). At this point the PCs are inside the Queen's territory and thus have hostile camps in all 4 cardinal directions (probably not straight in those direction though). In this example there are things the PCs can impact(direction and method of travel) and things they can't impact(the Bandit Queen's hostility and camps to the N,S,E,&W). At most one of those directions leads to an ambush with the Bandit Queen, the rest lead towards the other camps. Even then the PCs might be able to avoid the ambush from the camp closest to their path. However the Bandit Queen's hostility will not abate until they get satisfaction, or it becomes too costly to continue seeking satisfaction. As such I take the same plot as you wanted to include, but tailor it to my higher preference for Player Agency.

RazorChain
2016-03-23, 11:17 PM
I recognize that you enjoy that. Personally, I would not enjoy that as either a Player(presuming I found out about the deception*) or a DM.
*Even without finding out, the DM who already knows, would also know my preference in the matter.

As a Player I come expecting my PC to be able to impact some, but not all things.
As a DM I come expecting my Players will attempt to impact the story.

So say I had placed a Bandit Queen in my campaign world. The low level PCs made an enemy of her by attacking a couple of her camps (Queens have more than 1 camp/band right?). At this point the PCs are inside the Queen's territory and thus have hostile camps in all 4 cardinal directions (probably not straight in those direction though). In this example there are things the PCs can impact(direction and method of travel) and things they can't impact(the Bandit Queen's hostility and camps to the N,S,E,&W). At most one of those directions leads to an ambush with the Bandit Queen, the rest lead towards the other camps. Even then the PCs might be able to avoid the ambush from the camp closest to their path. However the Bandit Queen's hostility will not abate until they get satisfaction, or it becomes too costly to continue seeking satisfaction. As such I take the same plot as you wanted to include, but tailor it to my higher preference for Player Agency.


Not really what I meant about the bandit queen. I have a plot hook about the bandit queen and I'll throw it in whatever direction the players travel. Of course the players can choose how they interact with the bandit queen, that is their agency.

Let's take another scenario. The players are solving a mystery and are missing a vital clue. I will make sure they will get that clue whatever way they go about it. I wont just say "ok the clue is in that house and if they don't go there they won't solve the mystery". I will place the clue in their way so they can resolve the mystery. The players don't know where the clue was supposed to be in the first place.

Yet another scenario. I throw out a plot hook about a nefarious tomb and try to peak their interest, in the tomb is an evil artifact that they don't know about. The characters decide instead to build a castle. Oh wait....when they are building the foundations of the castle they unearth the entrance to an ancient temple....that contains an evil artifact of course. Now let's say the characters refuse to explore the ancient temple and decide to build their castle in another place. Then of course somebody else finds the evil artifact and will come into contact with the characters only to complicate their lives.

Of course the players should impact the story, that is what RPG is, a collective storytelling game. The players always have a free agency in the term that the GM should never dictate their actions, they can choose to dig a hole in the ground and stay there if they want to but that would not be a fun session or a campaign.

But some GM's are so staid simulationists that sometimes I want to pull my hair out. I remember on Call of Chtulu game where we, the characters, literally had to search every house in the village twice to find the vital clue that would progress the adventure, just because of a failed spot hidden roll. That was 8 hours badly spent.

Segev
2016-03-23, 11:19 PM
Not really what I meant about the bandit queen. I have a plot hook about the bandit queen and I'll throw it in whatever direction the players travel. Of course the players can choose how they interact with the bandit queen, that is their agency.

Let's take another scenario. The players are solving a mystery and are missing a vital clue. I will make sure they will get that clue whatever way they go about it. I wont just say "ok the clue is in that house and if they don't go there they won't solve the mystery". I will place the clue in their way so they can resolve the mystery. The players don't know where the clue was supposed to be in the first place.

Yet another scenario. I throw out a plot hook about a nefarious tomb and try to peak their interest, in the tomb is an evil artifact that they don't know about. The characters decide instead to build a castle. Oh wait....when they are building the foundations of the castle they unearth the entrance to an ancient temple....that contains an evil artifact of course. Now let's say the characters refuse to explore the ancient temple and decide to build their castle in another place. Then of course somebody else finds the evil artifact and will come into contact with the characters only to complicate their lives.

Of course the players should impact the story, that is what RPG is, a collective storytelling game. The players always have a free agency in the term that the GM should never dictate their actions, they can choose to dig a hole in the ground and stay there if they want to but that would not be a fun session or a campaign.

But some GM's are so staid simulationists that sometimes I want to pull my hair out. I remember on Call of Chtulu game where we, the characters, literally had to search every house in the village twice to find the vital clue that would progress the adventure, just because of a failed spot hidden roll. That was 8 hours badly spent.
This is the "quantum ogre" approach, and it can work very well. It's technically a bit of a railroad, but unless the PCs were deliberately trying to AVOID your "bandit queen" or your "evil artifact," it isn't the sort to which people usually object.

Thrudd
2016-03-23, 11:41 PM
Not really what I meant about the bandit queen. I have a plot hook about the bandit queen and I'll throw it in whatever direction the players travel. Of course the players can choose how they interact with the bandit queen, that is their agency.

Let's take another scenario. The players are solving a mystery and are missing a vital clue. I will make sure they will get that clue whatever way they go about it. I wont just say "ok the clue is in that house and if they don't go there they won't solve the mystery". I will place the clue in their way so they can resolve the mystery. The players don't know where the clue was supposed to be in the first place.

Yet another scenario. I throw out a plot hook about a nefarious tomb and try to peak their interest, in the tomb is an evil artifact that they don't know about. The characters decide instead to build a castle. Oh wait....when they are building the foundations of the castle they unearth the entrance to an ancient temple....that contains an evil artifact of course. Now let's say the characters refuse to explore the ancient temple and decide to build their castle in another place. Then of course somebody else finds the evil artifact and will come into contact with the characters only to complicate their lives.

Of course the players should impact the story, that is what RPG is, a collective storytelling game. The players always have a free agency in the term that the GM should never dictate their actions, they can choose to dig a hole in the ground and stay there if they want to but that would not be a fun session or a campaign.

But some GM's are so staid simulationists that sometimes I want to pull my hair out. I remember on Call of Chtulu game where we, the characters, literally had to search every house in the village twice to find the vital clue that would progress the adventure, just because of a failed spot hidden roll. That was 8 hours badly spent.

The solution to this conundrum is simply: don't design adventures or campaigns that require specific actions or rolls to progress. Also don't design adventures that require railroading or illusionism. Then you won't need to railroad or trick the players, and players won't be stuck looking for a single clue and trying to guess the DM's mind. The problem is designing a plot which must go from A to B to C.
If you want to run a game where the players have no choice but to engage with a specific adventure, then tell them. Get the railroading out of the way before the session and tell them where their characters are and why they are there: On the road, looking for the ancient temple where they want to recover an artifact. Don't pretend they have a choice of doing sonething else if they really don't. Just say it's an episodic campaign, with an overarching story, where they will be directed to the start of each "episode".

Lorsa
2016-03-24, 02:56 AM
But sure, let's run with this a bit.

Railroading: You are going to jail. The DM tries to set you up to commit a crime, which, if you do, everybody will know you did it. Then the police will arrest you, and you won't be able to avoid them or stop them from doing so. If you refuse to commit a crime, the DM contrives to have you framed for one.

Not railroading: You only get the police after you if you commit a crime and people can report it. Mug a vendor, and witnesses (or the vendor himself) call the police, who come and try to find the mugger (you). Cover up your crime, or don't commit it at all, and the police never learn about it (assuming you do a good enough job covering it up). If you're powerful or skilled enough to defeat or avoid the police, they escalate (in the face of resistance) or eventually give up (after they lose your trail entirely); if not, you get arrested and thrown in jail.

Notice how "not railroading" involves a lot of consideration for the PCs' actions. For their choices, their successes, their failures. All of these impact the final result (including whether or not they go to jail). Nothing in that was "the DM randomly makes something up." He has a city with a police force which responds to reports of crimes. He has witnesses who will call the cops, and victims who will do likewise. He also doesn't have them randomly calling the police just because you're there; you have to make a choice which leads to them wanting to. Again: player choice and PC action leading to consequences. Not "randomly chosen" consequences, but logical ones.

I think I explained this to DU a few posts up-thread. Since he didn't respond, we can assume he understood what we mean?

goto124
2016-03-24, 07:34 AM
This is the "quantum ogre" approach, and it can work very well. It's technically a bit of a railroad, but unless the PCs were deliberately trying to AVOID your "bandit queen" or your "evil artifact," it isn't the sort to which people usually object.

It's often seen as a crutch - since GMs aren't perfect and can't cover every possible player action, nor make up stuff all the time for every single thing, Quantum Ogre can keep a fun game running without making the players feel invalided.

Helps that players can't replay TTRPG campaigns to realise what the GM's doing, though I wonder if players ever caught on to the GM railschroding.

JAL_1138
2016-03-24, 08:19 AM
It's often seen as a crutch - since GMs aren't perfect and can't cover every possible player action, nor make up stuff all the time for every single thing, Quantum Ogre can keep a fun game running without making the players feel invalided.

Helps that players can't replay TTRPG campaigns to realise what the GM's doing, though I wonder if players ever caught on to the GM railschroding.

I don't really consider it railschröding, or at least not problematic railschröding, unless the players are forced into it after an attempt to do otherwise, or it's blatant, or it contradicts prior information. Dropping an encounter somewhere when the players have no idea that the encounter could take place is one thing; dropping in the encounter despite the fact that the players have made a choice to do something else is another.

If you were planning to have the players just stumble onto a dungeon to the north and had given no hints of its existence or location, it doesn't really matter if it's north or south. The dungeon doesn't exist in the world yet, so its final location is irrelevant, and the players aren't really being forced into it.

Once you've hinted that it exists but not given clues to its location, though, it gets more dubious--if they go looking for it, and you just put it wherever they go to look, every time something like that comes up, they'll catch on eventually and realize their agency is limited. Some false leads before they get to the dungeon (sometimes--you don't want to get into a predictable pattern) could help, perhaps. If they hear about it and decide not to investigate, and you put it wherever they go to anyway, then the rails become really obvious.

The very worst is when you've given clues not only to the thing's existence but its location as well, and still drop it wherever the players go regardless. If the townsfolk speak in hushed whispers about the Tomb of Horrors in the frozen north, and the players go south, they should not run smack into the entrance to the Tomb of Horrors in the balmy south. If there's rumored to be a troll under the bridge, and the players ford the river a mile upstream instead, they shouldn't fight the bridge troll anyway.

But when nothing points to the encounter existing beforehand? Say, you want to introduce the Bandit Queen and her horde for the first time in the game, prior to which they haven't been mentioned and about whom the characters don't have prior knowledge from their backgrounds or other sources? Yeah, it really doesn't matter one whit if the players get jumped while they're going north or south, so long as it's plausible for the area they're in.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 08:49 AM
Not really what I meant about the bandit queen. I have a plot hook about the bandit queen and I'll throw it in whatever direction the players travel. Of course the players can choose how they interact with the bandit queen, that is their agency.

^This is precisely what I thought you meant. I recognize that you enjoy these quantum modules. Personally, I would not enjoy that as either a Player or as a DM. As you can see from the replies upthread, preferences on this vary.

Frozen_Feet
2016-03-24, 09:35 AM
There's a spectrum of design decisions and GM judgement calls which separate different adventure structures. It's also vital to distinquish between different elements which must happen "no matter what".

For example: the sun moving across the sky, weather changing, day turning to night or spring turning to summer are in-universe eventualities. Traditional RPGs rarely give agency over these to players, but it would be folly to say a GM is railroading because time is passing.

An enemy finding the player characters, or player characters finding an enemy, are in-setting probabilities. Traditional RPGs give characters, and by extension, players a lot of agency over these. Hence when these things are placed in "must happen no matter what" category, it feels like a bigger violation of player agency.

There are games where these assumptions are toyed with. Sometimes, players are given considerable power to set the scene (time, place, weather), but what is going to happen and with who is turned into an in-game eventuality. (Even if it's not an in-setting eventuality.)

I would be much more fine with the latter sort of game if I could avoid the feeling that in such games, when and where are considered unimportant details, while who and what are stressed to the point where deviations from a game script are frowned upon.

Segev
2016-03-24, 09:36 AM
^This is precisely what I thought you meant. I recognize that you enjoy these quantum modules. Personally, I would not enjoy that as either a Player or as a DM. As you can see from the replies upthread, preferences on this vary.

I'm curious: would it bother you if you had no way of knowing it? Let's assume that, as another poster said, the Bandit Queen is a new element and the PCs have not heard about her or her bandits yet. The DM planned to introduce her by having the PCs run across her ambush.

Obviously, it's irritating when it's used such that the PCs hear about The Bandit Queen, research where she is, and deliberately avoid her...only to have her relocated to where they're going anyway. That's obvious railshroeding. But when it's just a matter of, "I have this clue/hook I want the PCs to encounter; I will look for an opportunity to introduce it organically in whatever they happen to be doing," does that really bug you? Would you want to dig into your DM's notes to find out if that's what happened, or just trust that maybe you found Hook A because it was in Location B, and if you'd gone to Location C, you'd have gotten Hook Omega?

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 09:54 AM
I'm curious: would it bother you if you had no way of knowing it? Let's assume that, as another poster said, the Bandit Queen is a new element and the PCs have not heard about her or her bandits yet. The DM planned to introduce her by having the PCs run across her ambush.

Obviously, it's irritating when it's used such that the PCs hear about The Bandit Queen, research where she is, and deliberately avoid her...only to have her relocated to where they're going anyway. That's obvious railshroeding. But when it's just a matter of, "I have this clue/hook I want the PCs to encounter; I will look for an opportunity to introduce it organically in whatever they happen to be doing," does that really bug you? Would you want to dig into your DM's notes to find out if that's what happened, or just trust that maybe you found Hook A because it was in Location B, and if you'd gone to Location C, you'd have gotten Hook Omega?
Short answer: Technically no, effectively yes

Long answer:
It would be against my preferences and my DM would know my preferences. Them willingly violating my preferences in a deceptive manner is also against my preferences.

So while ignorance might prevent me, personally, being bothered by it(solely due to my ignorance of the betrayal), my DM possesses enough theory of mind to recognize they are doing something that would bother me.

My group is based on trust. Trust can be violated without the victim becoming aware.

Segev
2016-03-24, 10:48 AM
Short answer: Technically no, effectively yes

Long answer:
It would be against my preferences and my DM would know my preferences. Them willingly violating my preferences in a deceptive manner is also against my preferences.

So while ignorance might prevent me, personally, being bothered by it(solely due to my ignorance of the betrayal), my DM possesses enough theory of mind to recognize they are doing something that would bother me.

My group is based on trust. Trust can be violated without the victim becoming aware.

Pity, because it makes a DM's job a lot harder when it doesn't need to be. But I suppose that's up to you.

My personal line is drawn only when the DM's railshroeding directly invalidates my choices and efforts. Which isn't possible if I had no idea of the hook/clue/encounter coming and thus wasn't trying to avoid it. I am a curious sort and enjoy a peek behind-the-scenes, so might ask a DM if I suspected railshroeding of this nature were occurring, but as long as I can look at it and say, based on what I knew IC, my character would have not had reason to know to try to avoid it, it doesn't bug me. Just amuses me to know if I really "stumbled on" something or if it was laid in my path.

Most GMs I know use a form of the "quantum hook" method in general: they're looking for excuses to push hooks and clues into the paths the PCs are taking. Not to the point of it being ridiculous, but trying to ensure that PCs aren't going to miss the entrance to the plot.

Note, here, I use "plot" to mean "what's going on," not "the one path the PCs must follow through set pieces of defined events." If you have a political assassination plot, the PCs could miss it entirely or they could be in the thick of it, depending on whether they notice the hooks or not.

There was a particularly bad investigation module in a living Rokugan campaign where the hooks required acting against every RP instinct the prior modules had tried to drive into your heads as PCs in the setting, and to notice they were unusual in the first place without so much as having a chance to roll to have your character notice something if the player didn't.

Many tables - mine included - were bored as they drifted aimlessly through it, fruitlessly looking for plot hooks that were well-hidden, and only found out about it when the assassination went off without a hitch in front of them. Those who found their way into it had a lot of choices they could make, choosing sides, who to help and hinder, and could make major differences in whether or not the assassination happened, the culprit was caught, etc.

Note, none of the HoR modules used railshroeding, but the GM was still supposed to have various hooks seek out the players in most of them, if the players weren't able to find them, themselves. This one was just .... really bad. Because the hooks practically hid from you if you didn't behave more like an adventurer and less like a samurai, when "behave like an adventurer" was strongly discouraged by all the prior modules.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 10:59 AM
Pity, because it makes a DM's job a lot harder when it doesn't need to be. But I suppose that's up to you.

I usually DM so I do see how it makes the DM's job harder. It incentivizes a more sandbox style. Think of a few hooks (large trigger areas are good), decide where they will be, and then see if the PCs encounter & pick one.


When players (& DM) are fine with quantum hooks then the DM can use the more module style that you described quite well in another one of these thread (The one trying to define railroading IIRC). This gives the DM back some of the narrative control: they can keep trying to add a module until they find a place it would fit, thus they can run earlier modules presuming that this module will happen eventually (provided they are open to the slim chance it won't ever fit in).

Amphetryon
2016-03-24, 11:32 AM
I usually DM so I do see how it makes the DM's job harder. It incentivizes a more sandbox style. Think of a few hooks (large trigger areas are good), decide where they will be, and then see if the PCs encounter & pick one.


When players (& DM) are fine with quantum hooks then the DM can use the more module style that you described quite well in another one of these thread (The one trying to define railroading IIRC). This gives the DM back some of the narrative control: they can keep trying to add a module until they find a place it would fit, thus they can run earlier modules presuming that this module will happen eventually (provided they are open to the slim chance it won't ever fit in).

Please explain how hooks which Players might run across, depending on where they go, are substantively different than the Quantum Ogre issue, from the perspective of a person without intimate access to the GM's notes. Please clarify how adding a hook in the manner you propose is differentiated from the use* of a Quantum Ogre, from the PC's POV and assuming no pre-existing OOC disclosure of the Quantum Ogre or 'module.'

*Please restrict responses to reasonable places for a Quantum Ogre to be encountered; I am not disagreeing with the notion that a monster that is wildly out of its natural environs without a compelling in-game reason is generally inappropriate.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 11:45 AM
Please explain how hooks which Players might run across, depending on where they go, are substantively different than the Quantum Ogre issue, from the perspective of a person without intimate access to the GM's notes. Please clarify how adding a hook in the manner you propose is differentiated from the use* of a Quantum Ogre, from the PC's POV and assuming no pre-existing OOC disclosure of the Quantum Ogre or 'module.'

*Please restrict responses to reasonable places for a Quantum Ogre to be encountered; I am not disagreeing with the notion that a monster that is wildly out of its natural environs without a compelling in-game reason is generally inappropriate.

What are you asking?

Are you asking if the player would be able to differentiate between the "DM create hook, place hook, PCs travel" and "DM creates hook, PCs travel, DM moves the hook to where the PCs went"? If that is your question then:
1) You missed a vital detail: Trust is still violated even if the victim is unaware.
2) There would be no observable difference with which to differentiate between the two from the limited knowledge of the Player in their body. Both the DM and the DM's mental model of the Player(the DM has a theory of mind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind)) are different stories.

Are you asking how the two cases are different to a player with such preferences and a DM that knows those preferences? In one case the the DM did not violate the player's trust and in the other the DM violated the player's trust.

Once you clarify which question you are asking, I can make the answer more concrete if needed.

JAL_1138
2016-03-24, 12:24 PM
Large trigger areas?

So, if the orc camp is in the east side of the 20-square-mile forest, they don't have to actually go to the exact geographic coordinates of 42°35'33"N 88°26'4"W but may be able to trigger it by getting into the general area, say a few miles on the map? If so, then congratulations, you're railschröding, if ever-so-slightly. Now it's just a question of the size of the trigger area and the number of hooks available.

JoeJ
2016-03-24, 12:33 PM
I usually DM so I do see how it makes the DM's job harder. It incentivizes a more sandbox style. Think of a few hooks (large trigger areas are good), decide where they will be, and then see if the PCs encounter & pick one.

It also raises the possibility of the players getting bored just wandering around hoping to stumble on to a plot hook.


When players (& DM) are fine with quantum hooks then the DM can use the more module style that you described quite well in another one of these thread (The one trying to define railroading IIRC). This gives the DM back some of the narrative control: they can keep trying to add a module until they find a place it would fit, thus they can run earlier modules presuming that this module will happen eventually (provided they are open to the slim chance it won't ever fit in).

What about things that aren't plot hooks? For example, what if the DM creates a quantum inn, expecting that sooner or later the party will want to find a place to stop and spend the night? The inn isn't particularly related to any story, it just adds color to the world. The reason I ask is that if I don't do something like that, nearly every inn the party encounters will be completely bland, with no interesting NPCs to interact with. I can't think up interesting details fast enough to create them during the game, and I don't remotely have the time or the energy to create every inn in the kingdom ahead of time.

JAL_1138
2016-03-24, 12:49 PM
It also raises the possibility of the players getting bored just wandering around hoping to stumble on to a plot hook.



What about things that aren't plot hooks? For example, what if the DM creates a quantum inn, expecting that sooner or later the party will want to find a place to stop and spend the night? The inn isn't particularly related to any story, it just adds color to the world. The reason I ask is that if I don't do something like that, nearly every inn the party encounters will be completely bland, with no interesting NPCs to interact with. I can't think up interesting details fast enough to create them during the game, and I don't remotely have the time or the energy to create every inn in the kingdom ahead of time.

No kidding. If I couldn't do this kind of thing, I wouldn't have the time or energy to DM at all. As it is I already steal liberally from published modules and file the metaphorical serial numbers off.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 01:50 PM
Large trigger areas?

So, if the orc camp is in the east side of the 20-square-mile forest, they don't have to actually go to the exact geographic coordinates of 42°35'33"N 88°26'4"W but may be able to trigger it by getting into the general area, say a few miles on the map? If so, then congratulations, you're railschröding, if ever-so-slightly. Now it's just a question of the size of the trigger area and the number of hooks available.
Large trigger areas
Example: The marching Orc army has a camp, scouts, and the long column. All of these can make spot checks if the PCs get in range of them. So there is a large geographical region that the PCs could encounter the Orc army. They could still miss/sneak past the army, or even have headed out in the opposite direction(east rather than north). (I hope I don't need to mention running across the camp would differ from running across the scouts)

Even when camped, the army has the main camp, some periphery camps, scouts, guards, and foragers. Quite a large geographic region. (I hope I don't need to mention running across the camp would differ from running across the scouts)

So no, not your strawman at all. All of these were placed in advance of the player movement and did not move in response. (I hope I don't need to mention running across the camp would differ from running across the scouts)


It also raises the possibility of the players getting bored just wandering around hoping to stumble on to a plot hook.
Yes, increased player agency does increase the possibility of player boredom. Strangely players that enjoy sandbox games don't seem to mind (partly because they are creating story, and partly because they are seeking story). From your word choice, I expect you have different preferences that would be better suited to less player agency(Segev's module based campaign system sounds ideal for you).



What about things that aren't plot hooks? For example, what if the DM creates a quantum inn, expecting that sooner or later the party will want to find a place to stop and spend the night? The inn isn't particularly related to any story, it just adds color to the world. The reason I ask is that if I don't do something like that, nearly every inn the party encounters will be completely bland, with no interesting NPCs to interact with. I can't think up interesting details fast enough to create them during the game, and I don't remotely have the time or the energy to create every inn in the kingdom ahead of time.

This was in response to the part of my post that said "those that enjoy module based campaigns enjoy module based campaigns". Initially that confused me.

Rather than using a quantum inn, I improv the inn (since there are way too many inns to create even a fraction in advance). Improv can create interesting NPCs and avoid blandness(when appropriate). This would not be a good style for you, but it works for me.

Talakeal
2016-03-24, 02:45 PM
Large trigger areas
Example: The marching Orc army has a camp, scouts, and the long column. All of these can make spot checks if the PCs get in range of them. So there is a large geographical region that the PCs could encounter the Orc army. They could still miss/sneak past the army, or even have headed out in the opposite direction(east rather than north). (I hope I don't need to mention running across the camp would differ from running across the scouts)

Even when camped, the army has the main camp, some periphery camps, scouts, guards, and foragers. Quite a large geographic region. (I hope I don't need to mention running across the camp would differ from running across the scouts)

So no, not your strawman at all. All of these were placed in advance of the player movement and did not move in response. (I hope I don't need to mention running across the camp would differ from running across the scouts)


Yes, increased player agency does increase the possibility of player boredom. Strangely players that enjoy sandbox games don't seem to mind (partly because they are creating story, and partly because they are seeking story). From your word choice, I expect you have different preferences that would be better suited to less player agency(Segev's module based campaign system sounds ideal for you).




This was in response to the part of my post that said "those that enjoy module based campaigns enjoy module based campaigns". Initially that confused me.

Rather than using a quantum inn, I improv the inn (since there are way too many inns to create even a fraction in advance). Improv can create interesting NPCs and avoid blandness(when appropriate). This would not be a good style for you, but it works for me.

At the risk of sounding like Darth Ultron, I genuinely don't understand what the difference is between prepping something in advance and improvising it on the spot in regards to player trust. In either case it is something the DM came up with that previously didn't "exist" in the campaign world until the players interacted with it.

I normally come down fairly strongly on the side of "Simulationist"play over "Narrativist" play, but in this case trying to simulate a real world is an exercise in folly. There is no way a DM can plan out an entire world in advance without some form of "fudging", there just aren't enough hours in the day.

Furthermore, even if the DM did, they are just wasting everybody's time, because the PCs won't find 99% of the stuff the DM prepped, and 99% of the PCs time will simply be wandering around blindly.

Almost all of fiction relies on coincidence; people being in the right place at the right time. Gandalf's friend just happened to stumble on the One Ring, R2D2 Just happened to be sold to the forgotten son of Anakin Skywalker, the crook Spider Man let go just happened to shoot Uncle Ben. Without these coincidences most stories won't happen.

Think about real life; there is cool and exciting stuff happening all around us all the time, but without the hand of "fate" to put it in our path we miss almost all of it. The average person only has a couple "adventures" in their entire life because the world is just too big and time too vast for them to experience the things that would turn an ordinary life into an extraordinary one.

JAL_1138
2016-03-24, 02:49 PM
OldTrees--not trying to strawman you, asking and hypothesizing, since the exact manner of your "large trigger areas" was not described. That's one way to do them, not the only one. Hence the phrase in there "if so." Since you're not using large trigger areas in that manner, it doesn't apply.

JoeJ
2016-03-24, 02:52 PM
Yes, increased player agency does increase the possibility of player boredom. Strangely players that enjoy sandbox games don't seem to mind (partly because they are creating story, and partly because they are seeking story). From your word choice, I expect you have different preferences that would be better suited to less player agency(Segev's module based campaign system sounds ideal for you).

There's no difference whatsoever in player agency between a quantum encounter and two separate encounters, both of which are unknown to the players. Neither one allows a meaningful choice.

slowplay
2016-03-24, 02:59 PM
XDM by Tracy Hickman is the answer to the original question. It may or may not have been metioned already, but this book is soooo helpful it's worth repeating.

JoeJ
2016-03-24, 03:19 PM
Rather than using a quantum inn, I improv the inn (since there are way too many inns to create even a fraction in advance). Improv can create interesting NPCs and avoid blandness(when appropriate). This would not be a good style for you, but it works for me.

Six of one, a half dozen of the other. When the DM creates the inn has absolutely no bearing on whether or not they're railroading, or on the social contract of the game.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 04:28 PM
At the risk of sounding like Darth Ultron, I genuinely don't understand what the difference is between prepping something in advance and improvising it on the spot in regards to player trust. In either case it is something the DM came up with that previously didn't "exist" in the campaign world until the players interacted with it.
Your confusion is reasonable because you are missing a vital piece of the equation.
If a player does not want Quantum Ogres, but the DM uses Quantum Ogres despite knowing the Player's strong preferences on the matter,
Then we have a case where the Player trusted the DM, the DM violated that trust, but the Player is unaware of the violation.

So while technically I would still be oblivious(and thus not technically bothered) if my DM used a Quantum Ogre, my DM would know that this would bother me if I knew about it(and due to the DM having a Theory of Mind and the relevant information, this would effectively bother me).

As for why I have a strong preference against Quantum Ogres? The amount of value I place on player choices mattering makes me dislike the retcon of the world/invalidation of the player choice of direction inherent to the quantum ogre. I don't expect everyone to share this preference. But I do expect people to recognize my preferences just as I recognize theirs.


Edit: I just reread your post. Are you thinking that I am against Improv? or that I think there is a difference on player agency between pregenerating something & placing it in the world vs improvising it on the spot? I was talking about the difference between those 2(I use both of them) and pregenerating something & moving it in front of the players whenever the players change directions.


OldTrees--not trying to strawman you, asking and hypothesizing, since the exact manner of your "large trigger areas" was not described. That's one way to do them, not the only one. Hence the phrase in there "if so." Since you're not using large trigger areas in that manner, it doesn't apply.
I apologize. Thank you for clarifying.


There's no difference whatsoever in player agency between a quantum encounter and two separate encounters, both of which are unknown to the players. Neither one allows a meaningful choice.


Six of one, a half dozen of the other. When the DM creates the inn has absolutely no bearing on whether or not they're railroading, or on the social contract of the game.

I recognize you don't see a difference of note. I dislike your insistence that my preferences shouldn't either.

Frozen_Feet
2016-03-24, 04:46 PM
Excusing lazy design on GM's part because "players can't tell the difference" is flat-out moral decay on the GM's part.

This said, this "quantum inn" talk is yet another example of semantic dilution that I've talked about in earlier threads on the same subject.

If you come up with an inn but are not sure where to place it or what should happen there, it's a random encounter. Ditto for improvising. You're focusing overmuch on the "quantum" part and uncertainties of location while forgetting the intent which makes quantum ogres bad: the attitude that when and where are unimportant details, while who and what are ironclad.

Once you file off the serial numbers to a sufficient degree, when you are willing to change more than just details so the inn or ogre actually makes sense, you've moved from railroading and "railschroding" to entirely different waters. Failure to realize this leads to obtuse arguments like claiming improvization is railroading, or that any decision period made by the GM is railroading, as Darth Ultron likes to claim.

SethoMarkus
2016-03-24, 04:49 PM
-snip- "pregenerating something & moving it in front of the players whenever the players change directions."

Just for clarity, what if the inn is pregenerated but not placed? If its position is "the next inn the PCs encounter"? Would this still violate the social contract, or would it be a fringe case?

Additionally, given improv, even if an encounter or situation is not fully fleshed out in advance, what of the DM using ideas that were thought up previously but not explicitly planned for the game (that is, must the improv be entirely original, or can it utilize elements thought up while daydreaming in class or from watching a movie)?

JoeJ
2016-03-24, 05:04 PM
I recognize you don't see a difference of note. I dislike your insistence that my preferences shouldn't either.

You're free to prefer whatever you wish. That doesn't change the fact that your characterization of the quantum as allowing for less player agency than DM improvisation was inaccurate. Player agency is unaffected by when the DM creates content.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 05:14 PM
Just for clarity, what if the inn is pregenerated but not placed? If its position is "the next inn the PCs encounter"? Would this still violate the social contract, or would it be a fringe case?

Additionally, given improv, even if an encounter or situation is not fully fleshed out in advance, what of the DM using ideas that were thought up previously but not explicitly planned for the game (that is, must the improv be entirely original, or can it utilize elements thought up while daydreaming in class or from watching a movie)?

Improv does not need to be entirely original in my opinion.

That fringe case was well chosen for clarifying as it made me learn my own preferences better.

I, personally, dislike:
A) Something the DM moved after it was placed to make the Players encounter/not encounter it without in game reason for the movement.
B) Something the DM decided would be encountered and placed in a superposition to ensure the PCs encounter it without in game reason for the superposition.
A and B have lots of overlap.

Storing and later using improv/pregenerated material is not by itself enough (storing such material is a good idea).


You're free to prefer whatever you wish. That doesn't change the fact that your characterization of the quantum as allowing for less player agency than DM improvisation was inaccurate. Player agency is unaffected by when the DM creates content.
I believe we are suffering from a miscommunication. Please read my response to SethoMarkus.

I believe we will still disagree since you require a player choice to be informed for it to be part of player agency. Thus moving unencountered encounters to force the party to encounter them would not affect player agency in your definition, because the players are unaware their choice lead them away from the unencountered encounter. I do consider those choices to be valuable and thus dislike them being invalidated. Since those choices have consequences, have differences, and are valuable, I consider them part of Player Agency.

SethoMarkus
2016-03-24, 05:29 PM
Ah, I feel I understand your position much better now, thank you. Between your "large trigger area" and this latest clarification, I think a lot of the disagreements here are mostly caused by the language used on both sides.

Please let me know if I get these examples correct.

A) DM creates an NPC adventurer who often travels, planning that the PCs will encounter her eventually and placed her in the same town/tavern as the PCs rather than a set town at game start. The PCs are left to notice/interact with her. This is acceptable.

B) DM wants PCs to encounter an evil necromancer as an enemy. He is held in reserve until a good opportunity arises, but he will be used at some point. Borderline acceptable, depends on execution.

C) A mugger waits for the PCs in a dark alley, PCs avoid alley and leave town. Same mugger is in dark alley in the new town. This is unacceptable.

Darth Ultron
2016-03-24, 05:29 PM
At the risk of sounding like Darth Ultron, I genuinely don't understand what the difference is between prepping something in advance and improvising it on the spot in regards to player trust. In either case it is something the DM came up with that previously didn't "exist" in the campaign world until the players interacted with it.

Yup, everyone is saying if the DM has any sort of plan it's automatically a bad railroad and if the DM just randomly improvises things it's a good and awesome non-railroad.



Almost all of fiction relies on coincidence; people being in the right place at the right time. Gandalf's friend just happened to stumble on the One Ring, R2D2 Just happened to be sold to the forgotten son of Anakin Skywalker, the crook Spider Man let go just happened to shoot Uncle Ben. Without these coincidences most stories won't happen.

This gets to the heart of why railroading exists: to make the fictional plot story possible. Fiction can not be like real life. For the most part real life is boring...really, really boring. And boring is not fun, and the game needs to be fun.

So I wonder how all the non-railroading DM's do it? So, as a DM you make an encounter that will be fun and interesting for both the DM and the players. So how do you run the encounter?

1.Pure metagame. You just say to the players ''I made a fun encounter'' and that encounter just inexplicably happens with no sense of game reality.

2.Railroad. You force the players to go to the encounter.

3.Random. Ok, so you made the encounter but you don't ''want'' to run it and in no way want to ''force'' the players to go on it. So you want to somehow just drop the encounter it into the game, maybe by using the old ''oh, um, NPC Zord wants to have the encounter, no me the DM'', but also give the players at least three ways to utterly avoid the encounter and end up not running it at all...but that is ok, as the DM did not really ''want'' to run the encounter at all(and you really wonder why the DM even made the encounter in the first place).

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 05:40 PM
Ah, I feel I understand your position much better now, thank you. Between your "large trigger area" and this latest clarification, I think a lot of the disagreements here are mostly caused by the language used on both sides.

Please let me know if I get these examples correct.

A) DM creates an NPC adventurer who often travels, planning that the PCs will encounter her eventually and placed her in the same town/tavern as the PCs rather than a set town at game start. The PCs are left to notice/interact with her. This is acceptable.

B) DM wants PCs to encounter an evil necromancer as an enemy. He is held in reserve until a good opportunity arises, but he will be used at some point. Borderline acceptable, depends on execution.

C) A mugger waits for the PCs in a dark alley, PCs avoid alley and leave town. Same mugger is in dark alley in the new town. This is unacceptable.
Yes. 3/3 That is an accurate understanding. I apologize for my part in the language caused confusion.

The only case missing is a variation on B&C)
D) A specific mugger waits on the road out of town regardless of which road(North, South ,East or West) the PCs take. (Same mugger on all 4 roads). This is a case I don't like.

Knaight
2016-03-24, 05:52 PM
Yup, everyone is saying if the DM has any sort of plan it's automatically a bad railroad and if the DM just randomly improvises things it's a good and awesome non-railroad.
Oh look, a point that most of us aren't making being attributed to us.


That fringe case was well chosen for clarifying as it made me learn my own preferences better.

I, personally, dislike:
A) Something the DM moved after it was placed to make the Players encounter/not encounter it without in game reason for the movement.
B) Something the DM decided would be encountered and placed in a superposition to ensure the PCs encounter it without in game reason for the superposition.
A and B have lots of overlap.

Storing and later using improv/pregenerated material is not by itself enough (storing such material is a good idea).

So, looking at both A and B.
A) Does something count as placed if it's a nebulous future concept that's not actually had any influence yet. There's a distinction to be made between some NPC that the players have yet to see but who the GM has been running in the background having an effect showing up somewhere, and something like an encounter concept that has a worked out small scale map somewhere, but which has never actually had any influence.

Basically, there's the question of when a GM can edit. I'd argue that if your setting work has yet to actually show up in any way, it's still in a place where you can decide to revise it, and that might put something in the PCs path.

B) How much does it need to be ensured to count? Take the inn example - yeah, you have an idea for an inn which can be substituted in for the next inn that shows up, but in that case you're basically doing the same sort of work as when you improvise, but earlier. If it only shows up if the players decide to go to an inn, calling it railroading seems pretty ridiculous. The same thing can apply to characters - maybe you have an idea for a mercenary that's interesting, that can show up next time a mercenary shows up; if that character only appears if the PCs do something relevant to them showing up (e.g. looking to hire mercenaries), it's again an abuse of the term railroading.

JoeJ
2016-03-24, 06:01 PM
I believe we will still disagree since you require a player choice to be informed for it to be part of player agency. Thus moving unencountered encounters to force the party to encounter them would not affect player agency in your definition, because the players are unaware their choice lead them away from the unencountered encounter. I do consider those choices to be valuable and thus dislike them being invalidated. Since those choices have consequences, have differences, and are valuable, I consider them part of Player Agency.

You're right, we will disagree, since I don't consider a meaningless choice to be agency. That applies not just to decision in a game, but all decisions. If you're required to decide between two medicines, without any idea of what either one does, your "choice" is meaningless. Appearances notwithstanding, the result is that you were randomly given one of the medicines. If no have no better way to decide than by rolling a die, you have no agency.

Consider a party of PCs in a game. They know that there are gnolls and orcs around, and if they leave town they might run into them. Nobody in town knows where the various monsters are located, and the party doesn't have any useful means of divination, and no particular reason to go in one direction rather than another.

1) The DM has decided that if they travel north or east, they'll encounter gnolls. If they travel south or west, they'll encounter orcs.

2) The DM has decided to roll a d6 when they leave town. On a result of 1-3, they'll encounter gnolls. On a result of 4-6, they'll encounter orcs.

These two scenarios have exactly the same amount of player choice. The only difference is who is rolling the die. Now add a third scenario:

3) The DM rolled the die ahead of time and it came up 2, so if the party leaves town, they'll encounter gnolls.

Player agency is still the same as in the previous two scenarios. In fact, this is exactly the same as scenario 2, except that the DM only has to do half as much work.

Player agency is still preserved in whether or not they leave town at all, how they prepare if they do leave, whether they travel openly or stealthily, and how they deal with whatever they encounter (fight, hide, run away, negotiate, bluff, etc.).

Now if they PCs do have a way of finding out which group of monsters is where, and if they make an effort to go after the orcs that reasonably ought to work, then that's what they should encounter. But without knowledge they have no agency.

Lorsa
2016-03-24, 06:03 PM
To use the quantum mechanics analogy, there will always be an uncertainty in your preparation.

It is practically impossible to create a whole world, including all NPCs and wandering monsters, with their locations AND time schedules. Most people seem to be so fixed on the where that they forget the when. If you want to go with the fully-prepared-everything-at-their-place-waiting-for-players approach, then you always need to know when your Ogre is at the road. Probably that isn't all the time, so then you need to ask your players about their exact time of departure and traveling speed and how often they stop etc.

Nobody does that. It's incredibly impractical.

So, let's face it,, there will always be an uncertainty with what, when and where players will encounter things. In quantum terms, you have a wave function that measures the probability of encountering X.

The important thing to remember is that you shouldn't tend towards the lower probability all the time. In the long run, it will ruin player immersion ("how come the ritual ALWAYS start EXACTLY by the time we arrive?" or "how come we ALWAYS encounter undead when we have no cleric in the party but NEVER when we do?"). Remember also that most of your wave functions are bound by a potential of sorts, they are not infinitely spaced. If they players does something that brings them out of your uncertainty wave, then it is no longer possible.

To give a few examples:

If you have a Really Shady Inn prepared, it IS within the probability to let the players encounter it if they say "we head to the first Inn we see". It is outside of the wave function if they say "we look and ask around for a Really Good Inn", as then they have done something that makes your Really Shady Inn impossible (or at the very least highly improbable).

If you have a bandit Queen that operates "in the forest", it is within your probability function to have the players encounter her regardless of the direction they go, as long as it is "in the forest". However, if they learnt that she operates in the East, it is highly improbable that they would find her in the west.


So, whenever you present something to your players, you have to ask yourself where it places on the quantum probability density chart. It is okay to occasionally use low probability encounters, but you should definitely avoid too many of them. Also, pay attention to when your players move outside of the bounds completely (don't have them get attacked by a goblin war band in your big city marketplace just because they didn't travel to the wilderness like you wanted them to).

As long as you stay on the high probability end of the spectrum, basically all players I have encountered will be happy.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 06:19 PM
Oh look, a point that most of us aren't making being attributed to us.
Luckily many/most/all? have stopped listening to Darth's depictions of other people's positions.



So, looking at both A and B.
A) Does something count as placed if it's a nebulous future concept that's not actually had any influence yet. There's a distinction to be made between some NPC that the players have yet to see but who the GM has been running in the background having an effect showing up somewhere, and something like an encounter concept that has a worked out small scale map somewhere, but which has never actually had any influence.

Basically, there's the question of when a GM can edit. I'd argue that if your setting work has yet to actually show up in any way, it's still in a place where you can decide to revise it, and that might put something in the PCs path.
That is a harder question with a gray area due to the breadth of the question. So to get the easy stuff out of the way:
Details not relevant to previous choices even paths untaken? Bias towards leaving them as they are, but free game to change. The bias is because nothing is ever entirely irrelevant.
The edit is to force an encounter/prevent an encounter? No, please don't.
The middle ground is a gray area balancing the inconsistency added vs the improvement the edit creates.



B) How much does it need to be ensured to count? Take the inn example - yeah, you have an idea for an inn which can be substituted in for the next inn that shows up, but in that case you're basically doing the same sort of work as when you improvise, but earlier. If it only shows up if the players decide to go to an inn, calling it railroading seems pretty ridiculous. The same thing can apply to characters - maybe you have an idea for a mercenary that's interesting, that can show up next time a mercenary shows up; if that character only appears if the PCs do something relevant to them showing up (e.g. looking to hire mercenaries), it's again an abuse of the term railroading.
Those sound perfectly fine (I bolded an important facet).

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 06:32 PM
You're right, we will disagree, since I don't consider a meaningless choice to be agency. That applies not just to decision in a game, but all decisions. If you're required to decide between two medicines, without any idea of what either one does, your "choice" is meaningless. Appearances notwithstanding, the result is that you were randomly given one of the medicines. If no have no better way to decide than by rolling a die, you have no agency.
North leads towards the mountains. West leads towards the ocean. The DM placed some bandits on the west road. The PCs went north. The PC's choice was not random nor were both options identical(towards mountains vs towards ocean). Invalidating the choice by moving the bandits from the west road to the north road for no in game reason and merely to force an encounter is what I am talking about.

You consider the PC's choice to be a meaningless choice devoid of player agency. I don't. At this point I agree to disagree.

I discarded the rest of your post because it was irrelevant. I hope this post's added clarification makes it clear why. If not, then recognize I considered it irrelevant which might be enough clarification to explain why.


To use the quantum mechanics analogy, there will always be an uncertainty in your preparation.

So, whenever you present something to your players, you have to ask yourself where it places on the quantum probability density chart. It is okay to occasionally use low probability encounters, but you should definitely avoid too many of them. Also, pay attention to when your players move outside of the bounds completely (don't have them get attacked by a goblin war band in your big city marketplace just because they didn't travel to the wilderness like you wanted them to).

As long as you stay on the high probability end of the spectrum, basically all players I have encountered will be happy.
Good advice in general. I think I might be the first exception you have encountered. Which is good, since that means your players fit the playstyle you provide and you have a demonstrated a skilled grasp of that playstyle.

Knaight
2016-03-24, 07:42 PM
Luckily many/most/all? have stopped listening to Darth's depictions of other people's positions.
That's probably the better decision.


That is a harder question with a gray area due to the breadth of the question. So to get the easy stuff out of the way:
Details not relevant to previous choices even paths untaken? Bias towards leaving them as they are, but free game to change. The bias is because nothing is ever entirely irrelevant.
The edit is to force an encounter/prevent an encounter? No, please don't.
The middle ground is a gray area balancing the inconsistency added vs the improvement the edit creates.
Let's start with the encounter avoiding/creating situation, because I have some decent examples here. The starting scenario in the last campaign I ran was a dockside fire while the PCs were on a dockside market - in their official capacities with the alchemist's guild, selling some very flammable stuff. That could be counted as a starting encounter, although I'd consider that pushing the term. However, there were several things that could have caused an encounter that happened. One of the PCs got a bucket line organized, which couldn't really provoke an encounter. Another decided to do crowd control, and if that meant waving weapons around at people who were panicky so they would run away. That could have provoked an encounter - there were a number of different ways the crowd could reacted, and embedded within the crowd was the person who deliberately started the fire and was inclined to interpret weapons being pulled as being found out. That could be interpreted as avoiding a probable encounter, but the character could have gone either way in that direction, and decided to just flee. Then, there was one PC who decided to see if in the confusion anyone had anything valuable to steal, which somehow morphed into sneaking up onto a boat, trying to steal a nobles expensive earring, and then murdering him when he notices.* The noble was a completely improvised character, and all I knew about him at the time was that he was rich, he was watching the fire from his boat, and he had a very nice earring on. After he was killed, there were several obvious questions, like "who is going to react to this and how". I decided that he had a son who would likely swear revenge, added them to the character list, and moved on. However, you can argue that by doing so I edited things to force an encounter. Granted, the encounter was only a possibility (although once the PC in question decided to try and sell the thing while it was widely known that two days ago in game a very rich noble was murdered and had an earring stolen from them it was pretty much a foregone conclusion). So the question is, is that railroading?

I'd argue that it absolutely isn't. It's not undermining a players choice, instead it's one of the things that made that choice matter a lot in the long run. There was no rail there, the entire concept that someone might come after the PCs for murdering their father in cold blood didn't even exit until that PC murdered an older guy in cold blood.

Or, for a non-encounter example, later in the game the PCs fled to a different city, which was the hometown of one of the characters. So, I made my usual list of NPCs, organizations, and short notes about both, and called that enough prep for the foreseeable future. On that list, as people of potential interest, were a pair of smugglers. One of them was a former noble, one was literally born on the docks, I jotted down a note about their forbidden love as some quick character motivation for both of them, and moved on. The entire organization of smugglers then proceeded to see almost no use, and didn't end up being all that relevant. Every so often they'd show up at the sidelines, and that was about it. Had I decided that the pair of characters was kind of trite, could I have changed them without it being called railroading? I'd say yes. There were some established details I couldn't change - the leader of the smugglers had a bit of an attitude about nobles and it showed in the organization, there were two important people who did a lot for the organization, all these things had actually mattered, and while most of them probably had no effect on PC decisions, they did effect things that had actually happened in game and altering them would be a bit of a retcon (albeit probably a completely unnoticed one), but the rest could be changed pretty dramatically without it impacting anything that had already happened or anything that the players actually knew.

So, would changing that be railroading? The future, altered smugglers could change what the PCs were doing pretty dramatically, if they happened to rise to relevance first. I'd argue that it's a clear no, but it sounded like your original definition might include things like that, and maybe be a bit iffy. Given the reaction to other examples, I doubt it's intended to,


Those sound perfectly fine (I bolded an important facet).
That's absolutely an important facet. I'm certainly not suggesting that doing something like coming up with a cool inn and then trying to force the group to go to the inn isn't railroading. I'm just saying that maintaining a flexible library of people and places that can be used instead of improvisation for the same situation isn't, and that it's also a good idea for people who work better with planning.


Good advice in general. I think I might be the first exception you have encountered. Which is good, since that means your players fit the playstyle you provide and you have a demonstrated a skilled grasp of that playstyle.
I don't think you are an exception though. You said you have no problem with the undetermined inn which can show up if the players send their PCs off to go look for an inn, and that would be a pretty good example of a high probability response. It's not guaranteed though - they could look for an inn, be informed of where it is, and where they get there find a blasted ruin full of smoldering corpses (assuming that they didn't decide to just turn the other direction once they saw smoke and heard noises). That's also on the probability chart, but it's significantly lower probability. It might even qualify as forcing a planned encounter by your metrics, if the core idea of a pyromaniac sorcerer getting in a fight in the city that gets completely out of hand had been filed away somewhere (it could also be improvised). Is the first situation at all a problem though, let alone railroading? Is the second, provided that it doesn't happen with high frequency?

I'd argue that if your preparation style was to have a library of plausible events to be slotted in when they come up (and they many never come up), and you slot them in where they fit, there's no railroading. It's when you've got a series of these to be played in order regardless of what the PCs do, or they're being slotted in not because they come up and would make sense but because they're a good way to get the PCs to do what you want them to do that they become a problem. In isolation, happening upon a particularly destructive bar fight and figuring out what to do about it and how to do it when you were just looking for an inn is fine. If the reasoning behind it is something like "no, the party can't rest until they've had their six encounters, I'll just have the inn be another fight" then it's a pretty clear case of railroading.

*This was, of course a new player. My general strategy for dumb murderhobo nonsense in new players is to just roll with it, and then let whatever they bring crashing down on their heads come crashing down on their heads. Usually it works pretty well - the new player gets that the people in the setting react like people, and start treating it less like a video game. In this case they did end up toning the character down a bit, and on request have generally made other characters more functional since.

SethoMarkus
2016-03-24, 07:48 PM
I think the distinction OldTrees1 is getting at has to do with Actual Player Agency vs Percieved Player Agency. Percieved Player Agency is the agency the Players feel they have within the game.

From the Players perspective, if their actions (and informed inaction) has consequences within the game world, they have the perception of agency. This often times overlaps with Actual Player Agency, but not always.

Actual Player Agency is more from the DMs perspective. How much do the players' actions affect the world outside of their knowledge as well as within. If the players are unaware of a choice they make and it still affects the game world, they have actual agency within the game.

Compare these two encounters:
There are bandits waiting outside of the town. The PCs leave on the north road and encounter the bandits. Had they left on the south road they also would have encountered the bandits.
There are bandits preying on travellers that leave the town. They have scouts watching the roads out of town with a strike force ready to move in when their quarry is spotted. The PCs leave on the east road, and are quickly spotted by the scouts (who made a Spot check against the PCs who were not actively hiding). The striker party moves in, and several minutes later, and several hundred meters out of town, the PCs encounter the bandits. The PCs are given the opportunity to make checks to notice the incoming bandits before they meet on the road and to react accordingly. Had they left on the south road, the same would happen (unless the PCs were hiding or the bandits failed their checks, etc).

Now, from the players' perspectives, they had the same amount of agency, but in the second example there was much more of an in-game effect by the PCs. I agree that there is not much of a difference practically (and that much of that difference is in level of detail), but there is a difference. Namely, the second example is a living world the Players just happen to be a part of.

Is this what you are trying to emphasize, OldTrees1?

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 07:56 PM
I think the distinction OldTrees1 is getting at has to do with Actual Player Agency vs Percieved Player Agency. Percieved Player Agency is the agency the Players feel they have within the game.

From the Players perspective, if their actions (and informed inaction) has consequences within the game world, they have the perception of agency. This often times overlaps with Actual Player Agency, but not always.

Actual Player Agency is more from the DMs perspective. How much do the players' actions affect the world outside of their knowledge as well as within. If the players are unaware of a choice they make and it still affects the game world, they have actual agency within the game.

Compare these two encounters:
There are bandits waiting outside of the town. The PCs leave on the north road and encounter the bandits. Had they left on the south road they also would have encountered the bandits.
There are bandits preying on travellers that leave the town. They have scouts watching the roads out of town with a strike force ready to move in when their quarry is spotted. The PCs leave on the east road, and are quickly spotted by the scouts (who made a Spot check against the PCs who were not actively hiding). The striker party moves in, and several minutes later, and several hundred meters out of town, the PCs encounter the bandits. The PCs are given the opportunity to make checks to notice the incoming bandits before they meet on the road and to react accordingly. Had they left on the south road, the same would happen (unless the PCs were hiding or the bandits failed their checks, etc).

Now, from the players' perspectives, they had the same amount of agency, but in the second example there was much more of an in-game effect by the PCs. I agree that there is not much of a difference practically (and that much of that difference is in level of detail), but there is a difference. Namely, the second example is a living world the Players just happen to be a part of.

Is this what you are trying to emphasize, OldTrees1?

Yes, that is a much better way to word it. Whether as a DM or as a Player, the amount of Actual Player Agency I prefer the Players to have exceeds the maximum amount of Player Agency that can be observed from the Player PoV.

So while a Quantum Ogre(bandits in the encounters listed in SethoMarkus' post) can be imperceptible from the Player PoV, it is less than the amount of Actual Player Agency I prefer.


That's absolutely an important facet. I'm certainly not suggesting that doing something like coming up with a cool inn and then trying to force the group to go to the inn isn't railroading. I'm just saying that maintaining a flexible library of people and places that can be used instead of improvisation for the same situation isn't, and that it's also a good idea for people who work better with planning.

Having a flexible library one draws from is not railroading. (I am suddenly concerned, when did you add the word railroading into the discussion?) I have a preference for DM not enforcing encounters by moving encounters in front of the players or by surrounding the players with a superposition such that any direction triggers the encounter. Unless there are in game reasons for those.


I don't think you are an exception though.
Their post was couched in examples of using superpositions to enforce an encounter happening while describing how to know what shape the field is and what density to use as a minimum to collapse the superposition into the enforced encounter. They said that players tend to be okay with the superpositions provided they only collapse at high density. I am an exception to their observations to date in that I dislike the superposition despite it not being visible from the player PoV. This is fine, since it means that their DM style fits their players' preferences.

Knaight
2016-03-24, 08:40 PM
Their post was couched in examples of using superpositions to enforce an encounter happening while describing how to know what shape the field is and what density to use as a minimum to collapse the superposition into the enforced encounter. They said that players tend to be okay with the superpositions provided they only collapse at high density. I am an exception to their observations to date in that I dislike the superposition despite it not being visible from the player PoV. This is fine, since it means that their DM style fits their players' preferences.

The superposition is the same thing as the library though, just explained differently. There's two known elements in the library, a really shady inn and a forest bandit queen; both can be put down given a reasonable spot - the inn in an inn in an area that wouldn't have a nice inn in it, and the forest bandit queen in a forest near an area that's established as being terrorized by bandits.

Amphetryon
2016-03-24, 08:58 PM
Ah, I feel I understand your position much better now, thank you. Between your "large trigger area" and this latest clarification, I think a lot of the disagreements here are mostly caused by the language used on both sides.

Please let me know if I get these examples correct.

A) DM creates an NPC adventurer who often travels, planning that the PCs will encounter her eventually and placed her in the same town/tavern as the PCs rather than a set town at game start. The PCs are left to notice/interact with her. This is acceptable.

B) DM wants PCs to encounter an evil necromancer as an enemy. He is held in reserve until a good opportunity arises, but he will be used at some point. Borderline acceptable, depends on execution.

Again, could you - or someone - please clarify how the Players will know the difference between a Type A encounter and a Type B encounter, barring access to the DM's notes? One borders on unacceptable, while the other is perfectly fine, yet both will look remarkably similar as encounters to the PCs (and will be entirely invisible if their 'opportunities' do not arise).

SethoMarkus
2016-03-24, 09:18 PM
Again, could you - or someone - please clarify how the Players will know the difference between a Type A encounter and a Type B encounter, barring access to the DM's notes? One borders on unacceptable, while the other is perfectly fine, yet both will look remarkably similar as encounters to the PCs (and will be entirely invisible if their 'opportunities' do not arise).

Really, they wouldn't. I'm not arguing one way or the other, just pointing out there is a difference. The Players would "know" by trusting their DM to uphold their agreement to do so (which goes back to the "breach of trust" OldTrees1 had brought up prior).

I don't see any reason why someone can't have such a preference.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 09:33 PM
@SethoMarkus
Thanks for helping point out the difference.



The superposition is the same thing as the library though, just explained differently. There's two known elements in the library, a really shady inn and a forest bandit queen; both can be put down given a reasonable spot - the inn in an inn in an area that wouldn't have a nice inn in it, and the forest bandit queen in a forest near an area that's established as being terrorized by bandits.


Superposition: The PCs are in a forest. They have to choose a direction. DM decides that regardless of Player choice, they will encounter the bandit queen without an in game reason for Player choice to not affect the matter.

My understanding of Library: The PCs wander into a forest. They run into a forest encounter. The DM selects one of their "forest encounters" from their library. It is a bandit queen.

Are those really the same thing?

RazorChain
2016-03-24, 10:00 PM
Short answer: Technically no, effectively yes

Long answer:
It would be against my preferences and my DM would know my preferences. Them willingly violating my preferences in a deceptive manner is also against my preferences.

So while ignorance might prevent me, personally, being bothered by it(solely due to my ignorance of the betrayal), my DM possesses enough theory of mind to recognize they are doing something that would bother me.

My group is based on trust. Trust can be violated without the victim becoming aware.

Ok so you prefer a true sandbox. To the north is the old man in the mountain, to the south is the bandit queen, to the west is a town and to the east is a forest with faeries.

As as a husband and a father of three I don't have time to make a true sandbox, even though I run my own settings. I make plot hooks and place them where appropriate. My players enjoy taking part in a narrative or getting embroiled in something, though they also have their own plans (like building a castle). What they don't want is for nothing to happen. My job is to complicate things, provide drama and make sure we have fun and also to provide interesting action/scenes/plots/encounters.

How I place my plot hooks doesn't matter if it's done in a believable manner and doesn't break immersion.

My group is also based on trust. That trust extends to that I don't kill PC's indiscriminately and that they can put themselves at risk and not always take the optimal choice without being punished for it, in fact it might lead to interesting complications. That I'm not an adversary but we are all part of a collective storytelling. They can trust that there will be consequences to their actions and that I will involve their Npc's and backgrounds in my plots and stories.

Knaight
2016-03-24, 10:04 PM
Superposition: The PCs are in a forest. They have to choose a direction. DM decides that regardless of Player choice, they will encounter the bandit queen without an in game reason for Player choice to not affect the matter.

My understanding of Library: The PCs wander into a forest. They run into a forest encounter. The DM selects one of their "forest encounters" from their library. It is a bandit queen.

Are those really the same thing?

Yes. Either way, the PCs go into a forest, and they run into something there (in this case a bandit queen), picked by the GM (or randomly rolled off a table the GM made or something). Behind the scenes, either way, what the GM is thinking is that they need to figure out what to put in the forest, and that they have a particular thing established as being in the forest (again, the bandit queen) which would make a great deal of sense there, at which point the bandit queen is put in the forest. It's presumably a large organization, and there's a good chance that there's some sort of encounter - maybe this is that a bandit sees the party and moves back to report, maybe it's that the PCs see a bandit patrol in the distance, maybe it's just that the forest seems weirdly low on large animals and then the PCs see a stray arrow somewhere indicating that someone is there.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 10:09 PM
Ok so you prefer a true sandbox. To the north is the old man in the mountain, to the south is the bandit queen, to the west is a town and to the east is a forest with faeries.

As as a husband and a father of three I don't have time to make a true sandbox, even though I run my own settings. I make plot hooks and place them where appropriate. My players enjoy taking part in a narrative or getting embroiled in something, though they also have their own plans (like building a castle). What they don't want is for nothing to happen. My job is to complicate things, provide drama and make sure we have fun and also to provide interesting action/scenes/plots/encounters.

How I place my plot hooks doesn't matter if it's done in a believable manner and doesn't break immersion.

My group is also based on trust. That trust extends to that I don't kill PC's indiscriminately and that they can put themselves at risk and not always take the optimal choice without being punished for it, in fact it might lead to interesting complications. That I'm not an adversary but we are all part of a collective storytelling. They can trust that there will be consequences to their actions and that I will involve their Npc's and backgrounds in my plots and stories.

Sounds like your group is in good hands. You are providing the experience your players trust you will provide while also enjoying yourself and balancing DMing with your life.


Yes. Either way, the PCs go into a forest, and they run into something there (in this case a bandit queen), picked by the GM (or randomly rolled off a table the GM made or something). Behind the scenes, either way, what the GM is thinking is that they need to figure out what to put in the forest, and that they have a particular thing established as being in the forest (again, the bandit queen) which would make a great deal of sense there, at which point the bandit queen is put in the forest. It's presumably a large organization, and there's a good chance that there's some sort of encounter - maybe this is that a bandit sees the party and moves back to report, maybe it's that the PCs see a bandit patrol in the distance, maybe it's just that the forest seems weirdly low on large animals and then the PCs see a stray arrow somewhere indicating that someone is there.

Interesting.
In one case the GM has already decided what the PCs will encounter and forces them to encounter it regardless of which direction they go.
In the other case the GM uses a random encounter when the PCs action results in a random encounter.

If you see those as identical, (not merely identical for all details you find significant, but actually unable to see any differences that perhaps the person you are talking to might be finding significant) then perhaps we should end this subthread.

RazorChain
2016-03-24, 10:13 PM
Rather than using a quantum inn, I improv the inn (since there are way too many inns to create even a fraction in advance). Improv can create interesting NPCs and avoid blandness(when appropriate). This would not be a good style for you, but it works for me.

Wait a second? Improvising is nothing different from a "quantum ogre". If I make a plothook on the spot it didn't exist until I made it and placed it. It doesn't differ if the plothook I place is premade or just made up on the spot. Most of a GM job is improvising especially when you're not using modules written by somebody else. There is no difference from an NPC I make up on the spot or an NPC I made two days before play but hadn't decided where to place.

Read your later posts and got the answer:smallsmile: Yes I usually don't place my plothooks, I store them and place them where needed. Apart from Major settlements and Npc's and their machiniations.

OldTrees1
2016-03-24, 10:25 PM
Wait a second? Improvising is nothing different from a "quantum ogre". If I make a plothook on the spot it didn't exist until I made it and placed it. It doesn't differ if the plothook I place is premade or just made up on the spot. Most of a GM job is improvising especially when you're not using modules written by somebody else. There is no difference from an NPC I make up on the spot or an NPC I made two days before play but hadn't decided where to place.

Edit: Saw your edit.

For clarity sake (although I think you already got this) I would like to mention that your improvising via your premade material is not what the term "quantum ogre" usually refers to.

JoeJ
2016-03-24, 10:37 PM
North leads towards the mountains. West leads towards the ocean. The DM placed some bandits on the west road. The PCs went north. The PC's choice was not random nor were both options identical(towards mountains vs towards ocean). Invalidating the choice by moving the bandits from the west road to the north road for no in game reason and merely to force an encounter is what I am talking about.

You consider the PC's choice to be a meaningless choice devoid of player agency. I don't. At this point I agree to disagree.

I see what you're saying. But from my POV, if the bandits on the west road are not foreshadowed in any way - the PCs either couldn't or didn't do anything to gain a hint of their presence - then the bandits aren't actually on the west road at all. They aren't anywhere. Only what the players have discovered about the world is real; the rest is just a bunch of ideas that the DM might or might not eventually decide to use.

On a different but related note, do you see a difference between a DM moving a set encounter with bandits from the west road to the north road, and the DM creating a wandering encounter with bandits that the players have X% chance of running into no matter what route they take?

Knaight
2016-03-24, 10:39 PM
In one case the GM has already decided what the PCs will encounter and forces them to encounter it regardless of which direction they go.
In the other case the GM uses a random encounter when the PCs action results in a random encounter.

In both cases the GM picks something when the PCs do something that results in a random encounter. The case where the GM has decided what the PCs will encounter and forces them to encounter it isn't what's being described by the superposition model. In the superposition model, if the PCs go somewhere where the forest bandit queen wouldn't be, they don't run into the bandit queen. You're just using an example after the encounter trigger (which was going into the forest) for one model and one before for the other and saying they look different.

The point of the superposition model is that there's always some amount of GM choice in what happens. The PCs go into the forest, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the encounter happens. For instance, there could be a very severe windstorm that forces the bandits to take cover, while the PCs push through it and never run into them. They could walk right through the forest, just so happening to never run into bandit patrols. The bandit camp could have suffered a major attack from some local authority, and as such have some close patrols near key things but are holding the part of the forest the PCs pass through less tightly, so the PCs slip through. There is always some level of GM influence, even at whether or not PC actions introduce an encounter. Some are vastly more likely to do so than others - for instance, if they found out about the bandit camp ahead of time and decided to walk straight into it, pull out their weapons, and yell threats that would probably start something. On the other hand, it could happen to be deserted, it's just vanishingly unlikely.