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DRD1812
2017-08-23, 09:36 AM
I've got a longer write-up about the problem under this comic (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/brilliant-escape-plan), but it boils down to this. If a GM want the PCs to get captured, tied up, and left at the villain's mercy, you've got two options.


Railroading. Players lose agency, and don’t get to escape until some helpful plot device shows up to spring them.
Incompetent Villains. The captors forget to take the rogue’s lock picks or that the party sorcerer can, ya know, cast spells.

The former option pisses off players, and the latter option makes your BBEG seem like an idiot. Is there a better way that I'm just not seeing? Have you ever seen a "captured" scenario work well in-game?

Thrudd
2017-08-23, 10:15 AM
No, not really any good way to plan for it. It's generally a bad idea to intend or expect for the PCs to get captured. This isn't to say that it couldn't happen in an organic way - enemies who specifically are fighting to capture and not kill, leaving the PCs alive with subdual damage or who stabilize them after dropping them, the PCs surrender (hah, yeah right).

But if that happens it is silly to expect that the captors have taken no precautions - known spell casters will be gagged and bound - probably everyone would be gagged and bound just to be safe, in a world where spell casters are known to be somewhat common. All weapons, spell books, and anything of value will have been confiscated, stripped of armor, too, if they have time to do it. It does depend on the motive of the captors

Barring a deus ex machina or a lucky occurrence of a randomly rolled encounter that causes enough chaos for the PCs to break free, the PCs should be at their captor's mercy indefinitely (until they have been deposited in whatever prison or brought to whatever place they are being brought to). Of course, there's always exceptions - maybe a really strong character manages to snap the restraints somehow, and gets lucky with some improvised action hero shenanigans, or a hidden familiar or animal companion follows in the distance and secretly helps out- but the success of such a thing can never be guaranteed.

In the "Slave Lords" tournament modules, the final module is a "captive" scenario where the PCs wake up having been captured, naked and disarmed, deposited in a subterranean cavern through a hole they have no way to reach - they need to explore the caverns full of myconids and other stuff to find the exit. But the point of this is a challenge to players to see if they can use ingenuity to survive without any gear (and the characters are somewhere between lvl 5 and 8, meaning they have some decent HP at that point). It was designed as a one-shot thing people would play at a convention with pre-gen characters.

Beneath
2017-08-23, 12:29 PM
I've rarely heard complaints of railroading because the GM provided an escape opportunity that the players didn't make themselves. Usually the railroading in capture scenarios is when the GM arranges for them to be captured unavoidably because they want to run an escape scenario. After they're captured, anything's fair game.

PersonMan
2017-08-23, 02:34 PM
I think that having the PCs decide to get captured (say, to access something inside the enemy base they can't get to, or to link up with a spy who can re-equip them and so on) would allow one to both sidestep the "forced to lose and get captured" and the "either get stuck or get incompetent jailers" issue. Possibly have some things not go according to plan - the spy is delayed, or suspected, and the PCs now have to bust out of prison with only the few small tools they were brought before they could be returned to full effectiveness.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-23, 03:01 PM
The party being captured only works when it's a spontaneous and not a planned thing.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-23, 04:37 PM
Railroading. Players lose agency, and don’t get to escape until some helpful plot device shows up to spring them.
Incompetent Villains. The captors forget to take the rogue’s lock picks or that the party sorcerer can, ya know, cast spells.

The former option pisses off players, and the latter option makes your BBEG seem like an idiot. Is there a better way that I'm just not seeing? Have you ever seen a "captured" scenario work well in-game?

Well, there are a couple ways:

1.Railroad--The character get caught as the DM says so.
2.Quantum Ogre-The character's will get caught no matter what they do.
3.The Perfect Fall-The DM can create an encounter that has a high chance of capturing all the characters. Technically, the players can still escape the capture encounter...maybe...so many DM's will say this is ''ok, not railroading'' even if the chance is only like 1%.
4.The Fair and Balanced Combat Encounter-The DM can make, in their mind at least, a fair and balanced encounter and ''just sit back and watch'' as the encounter takes on a life of it's own and might capture the characters. Then the DM can hide behind the idea that it was ''just'' a normal encounter and they ''did nothing''(other then control the whole encounter and game excpet for the Pcs, wink, wink).
5.The Fair and Balanced Pile of Sand-For the Dm's that like to wave ''sandbox'' flags around in front of the game. This DM will sit back and have the game and the NPC ''animate and come to life'' as the DM sits back and watches. So the NPC, that the DM ''knows so well'' might do something to catch the players, but the DM's hands are clean as they were just sitting back and watching(and controlling the whole game except for the Pcs, wink, wink).
6.Character By-In- The players might do the silly trick the DM does and their ''character'' might surrender in game to a foe, while the players just sit back and watch (and control everything the character does including surrender, wink wink).
7.Random Randomness-You could just have random things happen in the game at random times in random ways and more random random. And maybe, someday, somehow, some way the characters will randomly be captured. Just keep on gaming, it might happen eventually.
8.Final Straw-Last but not least, the DM can just roll over and ask, or beg, the players to have or let the capture take place.


I myself go with Number One (though most players in my game will think it's Number Three...lol).

FreddyNoNose
2017-08-23, 04:50 PM
I've got a longer write-up about the problem under this comic (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/brilliant-escape-plan), but it boils down to this. If a GM want the PCs to get captured, tied up, and left at the villain's mercy, you've got two options.


Railroading. Players lose agency, and don’t get to escape until some helpful plot device shows up to spring them.
Incompetent Villains. The captors forget to take the rogue’s lock picks or that the party sorcerer can, ya know, cast spells.

The former option pisses off players, and the latter option makes your BBEG seem like an idiot. Is there a better way that I'm just not seeing? Have you ever seen a "captured" scenario work well in-game?

So you are saying the character should never be captured? FYI, I am not talking to the narrative play style types here.

icefractal
2017-08-23, 05:01 PM
Indeed, this is why I generally (IC) treat being captured as an equally big threat to death. Because if the captors are competent, it's not likely to be escapable in any reasonable span of time, and unless the captors are such nice people that it's questionable why you were fighting them to begin with, it's not great odds of being unscathed either.

Although admittedly, this is because I dislike "because tropes" as a reason for anything. YMMV.

Incidentally though, I did think of a prison that would be extremely hard to escape without the RP impediments of being unable to talk. Sepia Snake Sigil to put people in a sleep where they don't need to eat or even breathe. Then a modified form of Dream to put them in a shared dream world (the second part's not necessary for simply holding people, but it would be for any kind of rehabilitation or questioning). Expensive, but cheaper than permanent AMFs and the kind of guards who could handle high-level prisoners.

2D8HP
2017-08-23, 05:07 PM
The "capturing" is easy (knock 'em unconscious), it's the escape that's hard.

It will take a lot of "breadcrumbs", but I suggest that you go full-bore The Count of Monte Cristo (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo)

Tinkerer
2017-08-23, 05:08 PM
So you are saying the character should never be captured? FYI, I am not talking to the narrative play style types here.

I think he's saying that it's hard to make being captured work because either the opponents are idiots or the players get saved by a deus ex machina.

I'm fairly fond of a prison style environment where there is always a few holes. Or one character getting away to attempt a rescue. Or sometimes the players have to do what the villains want, I mean I assume they are wanted for something hence why they weren't executed on the spot. Can they find a way to do it while holding on to their values? Bear in mind if the players are captured then they probably aren't in any immediate danger, otherwise they'd be dead already.

The big question is why were the players captured in the first place.

Amphetryon
2017-08-23, 05:12 PM
I have often seen folks around here advocate capturing the party as an alternative to a TPK. Generally, this is due to circumstances where the party does something unexpected ("We'll bypass the 3 towns being controlled by the BBEG and attack her straight off... without leveling three times in the process!"), forgets their own tactical options ("Leeroy Jenkins!"), or gets bitten by the RNG ("That's three consecutive Critical Hits for the BBEG.... and 3 consecutive 1s from the party's heavy-hitter. Maybe rolling in the open isn't always best.").

If capturing the party is bad, TPKs are bad, and coddling the party is bad... good luck?

Psikerlord
2017-08-23, 07:41 PM
The party being captured only works when it's a spontaneous and not a planned thing.

I agree. Save your captured scenario idea for when the party ends up genuinely captured, when it otherwise might have been a TPK or whatever. Even then, it can seem like a cop out.

Alternatively: only use the captured scenario as the very start of your 1st level campaign or zero level funnel.

RazorChain
2017-08-23, 07:55 PM
I've got a longer write-up about the problem under this comic (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/brilliant-escape-plan), but it boils down to this. If a GM want the PCs to get captured, tied up, and left at the villain's mercy, you've got two options.


Railroading. Players lose agency, and don’t get to escape until some helpful plot device shows up to spring them.
Incompetent Villains. The captors forget to take the rogue’s lock picks or that the party sorcerer can, ya know, cast spells.

The former option pisses off players, and the latter option makes your BBEG seem like an idiot. Is there a better way that I'm just not seeing? Have you ever seen a "captured" scenario work well in-game?

The first mistake is what the GM wants. The GM wants them captured to run the ubercool prison escape. Instead it should be the bad guy wants the PC's capture and sends somebody to capture them.

In my recent game I ran the PC's got arrested and they didn't even resist...even though they were technically guilty and didn't know what evidence could bring them down. They didn't even want to get arrested and could have fought their way out or just tried to leg it.

The PC's opted for trial of ordeal and managed to prove their "innocence".

So there you have it. A capture without any kind of railroading and no stupid escape plan.

Arbane
2017-08-23, 08:03 PM
Alternatively: only use the captured scenario as the very start of your 1st level campaign or zero level funnel.

I'd argue level 1 characters are screwed enough already, thanks.

(Had a campaign that started this way. It was something of an ordeal.)

Quertus
2017-08-23, 08:15 PM
I've got a longer write-up about the problem under this comic (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/brilliant-escape-plan), but it boils down to this. If a GM want the PCs to get captured, tied up, and left at the villain's mercy, you've got two options.


Railroading. Players lose agency, and don’t get to escape until some helpful plot device shows up to spring them.
Incompetent Villains. The captors forget to take the rogue’s lock picks or that the party sorcerer can, ya know, cast spells.

The former option pisses off players, and the latter option makes your BBEG seem like an idiot. Is there a better way that I'm just not seeing? Have you ever seen a "captured" scenario work well in-game?

Well, despite the fact that I loathe the capture scenario, I have actually seen it work out well a handful of times.

The key is, you have to be captured by someone who legitimately wants to capture you - generally because you are simultaneously so utterly inferior as to be no threat, and yet somehow more valuable alive than dead. Maybe you're no threat because they're a god, and you're a mortal. Maybe you're no threat because they're an army, and you're one man. Maybe you're valuable because you're royalty, and good for a hostage / reward / political currency / whatever. Maybe you're valuable because you should have looked closer at the fine print of being the "chosen one" - chosen sacrifice to Ynarlathomel, drinker of marrow, isn't exactly a great destiny.

As to times I haven't been ready to flip the table... I recall once when my beggar beat his way out of prison with nothing but his begging bowl. It also tends to work well as an opening to an adventure, or when you're ready to time skip a decade to when the prisoner is released / broken free / no longer a threat / whatever. Along those lines, another time that worked well was when Armus was introduced to the existing party as a prisoner. Now, his drow captors were somewhat inarguably, undeniably, unfathomably incompetent, but that was supposed to be a clue to the party.

As a general rule, "if the GM wants" = "railroad", which, as you said, is loss of player agency. The GM should, IMO, build the skills necessary to not want things if they intend to avoid cries of railroading in their games.

Potatomade
2017-08-23, 08:17 PM
I have often seen folks around here advocate capturing the party as an alternative to a TPK. Generally, this is due to circumstances where the party does something unexpected ("We'll bypass the 3 towns being controlled by the BBEG and attack her straight off... without leveling three times in the process!"), forgets their own tactical options ("Leeroy Jenkins!")

This is what happened to my group the one time we ever had a captured situation. One of the players opted to go off on a two-day journey through enemy territory alone, got detained, and couldn't talk their way out of it or fight their way out of it (because they had decided to go alone). Instead of killing her (seemed kinda harsh), I had the villains capture her. And in this case at least, there was a good in-game reason: she and the rest of the PCs knew sensitive info that the enemy wanted, so there was a whole interrogation thing and so on. While that was going on, the other PCs mounted a rescue mission that capsized my entire campaign, but was awesome (giant glowing lobster-shark monsters were involved), so all was well.

I think that's how it has to happen for it to be good: organically, caused by a PC's poor decisions, where the players are able to figure their own way out, and with a DM who's ok with letting stuff go nuts. It's not the kind of thing you should railroad, either in the capture or the escape. But if it's the players' own stupid fault, they should be more willing to let it happen, especially when the alternative is death.

Hypersmith
2017-08-23, 10:49 PM
I captured my pc when I first started DMing. It was awful. They felt like their agency was taken away, like they couldn't do anything, I felt like it wasn't having the narrative impact it was supposed to, there was no way they were going to escape naturally, but they didn't want to use the hooks I'd set up (clumsily).
Just no, never again. Not unless I really know what I'm doing.

Kane0
2017-08-23, 11:23 PM
I've had my fair share of captured party situations.

Best thing I've found is the same as my general plot or encounter advise: Never try to guess or assume what the players will or won't do. Therein lies the path of madness.

Instead what you do is set the situation and see how it plays out. Avoid having a set solution planned, that way you won't get disappointed nobody thought of it and the players won't get frustrated that they can't guess it. This dodges the 'Guess what the is DM thinking' game.
Let the players come up with their own plans and go with the first one that sounds halfway feasable. This way you don't have to plan for every eventuality and the players get to feel smart for getting themselves out of a bind.

The problem with this is if you are the type who likes to have everything planned out. Doing this will feel half-done, and you will feel compelled to think 'but what if...' and keep working. Nothing wrong with that, but its the first step towards setting in your own mind only a select few valid answers to the problem you are presenting. The idea is that you are supposed to be surprised by player enginuity, you are outnumbered after all.

Psikerlord
2017-08-23, 11:42 PM
I'd argue level 1 characters are screwed enough already, thanks.

(Had a campaign that started this way. It was something of an ordeal.)

I actually think it would be fun as a funnel with PCs dropping left and right as they struggle to escape, but I hear you.

Max_Killjoy
2017-08-24, 12:06 AM
The Capture works in fiction because the author can arrange things perfectly and control what every character does.

It does not work in an RPG unless the players "play along" or the GM uses a very heavy hand. Neither, IME, makes for a great game session.

Inspector Valin
2017-08-24, 01:30 AM
Interestingly I've seen 'the PCs start captured' a fair few times in published Adventure Modules. Way of the Wicked, Skulls & Shackles, Tattered Fates, From the Shadows... Adventure Writers seem to enjoy opening with the move, and I've played a couple of those.

I think opening with captive PCs is a bit more forgivable than a capture midgame: any opening requires a spot of railroading. I'd mostly just caution against making it too hard on the PCs if you start them low level. Tattered Fates I remember had us trying to climb out of an almost sheer pit... and none of the party had climb *whistles* Escape from a well functioning jail is a task for higher level PCs. For low levels, either give them some advantage to help, or use a prison setup with less active guards. (From the Shadows had the PCs having to try and escape without their heads, and Tattered Fates had them left at the bottom of a pit in a larger complex)

Kane0
2017-08-24, 04:15 AM
Oh yeah, totally forgot that Out of the Abyss pulled this move.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-24, 07:14 AM
I agree. Save your captured scenario idea for when the party ends up genuinely captured, when it otherwise might have been a TPK or whatever. Even then, it can seem like a cop out.

Disagree. If the capture might make a good story or follow a plot, then do it.


As a general rule, "if the GM wants" = "railroad", which, as you said, is loss of player agency. The GM should, IMO, build the skills necessary to not want things if they intend to avoid cries of railroading in their games.

This is a hugely broad net to cast 'railroading' over and would mean the DM can't do anything in the game, and really might as well not show up for the game. Unless your just talking about the weird stuff where the DM sits back and the ''game and npc animate and come to life'' as the DM just watches. I mean I know that when NPC Trom does something to capture the Pc's that it's the DM that is controlling that NPC and the DM wants to capture the PCs and railroad......but if you want to say ''NPC Trom'', somehow, comes to life and captures the Pcs as the DM controls NPC Trom and makes him do that (and the DM wants to capture the PCs and railroad), but say it's not the DM that is doing it(but, of course it is), then...well, ok?


It does not work in an RPG unless the players "play along" or the GM uses a very heavy hand. Neither, IME, makes for a great game session.

I can agree and say the Heavy Hand works and it can make for a great game session. It does require the player agreement of ''I'm here to have fun and I'm willing to at least try anything'' that is not too common with most modern players.

Being captured, imprisoned, escape/evasion and even clearing ones name, can like anything else, make for a great game session. But it does depend on how it is played.

Psyren
2017-08-24, 07:25 AM
I've got a longer write-up about the problem under this comic (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/brilliant-escape-plan), but it boils down to this. If a GM want the PCs to get captured, tied up, and left at the villain's mercy, you've got two options.


Railroading. Players lose agency, and don’t get to escape until some helpful plot device shows up to spring them.
Incompetent Villains. The captors forget to take the rogue’s lock picks or that the party sorcerer can, ya know, cast spells.

The former option pisses off players, and the latter option makes your BBEG seem like an idiot. Is there a better way that I'm just not seeing? Have you ever seen a "captured" scenario work well in-game?

There is a third option - multiple factions. Make your villains competent, but have La Resistance or even some rival villains pull off an upset that the main one(s) didn't see coming.

Altair_the_Vexed
2017-08-24, 07:27 AM
I actually think it would be fun as a funnel with PCs dropping left and right as they struggle to escape, but I hear you.

I totally did this as a starting adventure - using Basic edition D&D (very fast character generation).

The PCs were part of a mass breakout of captive Adventurers' Guild Apprentices, when the higher level NPC they were all imprisoned with managed to sacrifice himself to get them out of their cells.


How were they all captured? Sleep has no save in this edition. No railroad needed, just the rules of the game.
How did they escape? The NPC wrestled the hobgoblin guard and disarmed him, but was killed in the process (he'd been weakened during capture). The 1st level PCs had no access to healing to save him - by the rules of the system.


The party then consisted of the players' characters leading, plus an indeterminate number of fellow apprentices. When a PC was killed (and MANY were), the player generated a new PC to step up and take their place. They had to scavenge everything from the dungeon - torches, weapons, armour, etc...

It was a light-hearted session, but set the stage for the rest of the game - taking vengeance on their kidnappers. The nebulous nature of the number of non-combatants in the party inspired one of the players to name their next character, a dwarf, "Heisenberg".

The rest of the campaign was the adventures of the survivors.

Jay R
2017-08-24, 09:08 AM
There are two legitimate ways to arrange the capture. Either turn a TPK into a capture (in which they are happy that their PCs are captured instead of dead), or start the campaign in the prison or the hull of a slave ship.

As for the escape - don't plan it. Let them come up with ideas (tunneling, picking the pocket of a guard, bribing a guard, etc.) and let one of their ideas work.

But I urge you to arrange a pretty quick reward for escaping. If they were chained to the oars of a galley ship, then once they win themselves and their fellow slaves free, they are now have a ship. If they were in a prison, then their cellmate is a captured duke or prince.

Oh - one more thing. These should be low-level characters. High-level ones aren't challenged by mere bars and locks.

Psyren
2017-08-24, 03:04 PM
There is a third option - multiple factions. Make your villains competent, but have La Resistance or even some rival villains pull off an upset that the main one(s) didn't see coming.

Quoting myself to add examples. You can have a smart and totally genre-savvy villain that still gets thwarted, simply because he's too focused on the PCs and misses what the little guy - a weaker NPC - is doing. That's a big part of storytelling too.

Example 1 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0784.html)
Example 2 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1008.html)
Example 3 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0655.html)

Arbane
2017-08-24, 03:11 PM
Oh - one more thing. These should be low-level characters. High-level ones aren't challenged by mere bars and locks.

I remember a while back there was a thread about what needs to be done to keep a 10th-level spellcaster imprisoned. Said prisoner probably would've PREFERRED decapitation - less traumatic, and easier to recover from.

(Might have been higher-level? It was a while ago.)

Tinkerer
2017-08-24, 03:15 PM
I remember a while back there was a thread about what needs to be done to keep a 10th-level spellcaster imprisoned. Said prisoner probably would've PREFERRED decapitation - less traumatic, and easier to recover from.

Does... does every world not have anti-magic restraints? Every world I've ever created has had them. It's either that or when you get captured you kill all the mages.

Inspector Valin
2017-08-24, 03:19 PM
I remember a while back there was a thread about what needs to be done to keep a 10th-level spellcaster imprisoned. Said prisoner probably would've PREFERRED decapitation - less traumatic, and easier to recover from.

Hahahaha! :smallbiggrin:

Why not both?

This module has the wizard king, Azalin capture the PCs and use them as part of another plan. Since he's a wizard he's removed their heads from their bodies, so he can use their heads for Wacky Timetravel Shinnanigan spellcasting, while keeping their bodies around for manual labour. The PCs can get some control of their bodies back but they have to take care for a while to avoid losing their heads. :smallwink:

icefractal
2017-08-25, 01:51 AM
Does... does every world not have anti-magic restraints? Every world I've ever created has had them. It's either that or when you get captured you kill all the mages.If you go by the rules, those are considerably expensive, not something that most groups are going to have access to.

Thrudd
2017-08-25, 02:27 AM
Does... does every world not have anti-magic restraints? Every world I've ever created has had them. It's either that or when you get captured you kill all the mages.

Yes, they are called ropes, cords, and gags. Cover their mouth, bind their hands, take away their spell components and spell books and foci, and nobody is casting any spells. Even magic items usually need a command word to activate them.

PersonMan
2017-08-25, 02:49 AM
Yes, they are called ropes, cords, and gags. Cover their mouth, bind their hands, take away their spell components and spell books and foci, and nobody is casting any spells. Even magic items usually need a command word to activate them.

Though it does depend on the system/setting, it's entirely possible to have a few tricks up one's sleeve in the form of "cast this no matter what" or similar.

TeChameleon
2017-08-25, 03:10 AM
Yes, they are called ropes, cords, and gags. Cover their mouth, bind their hands, take away their spell components and spell books and foci, and nobody is casting any spells. Even magic items usually need a command word to activate them.

There's a fairly sharp limit as to how long you can keep the magic-users bound and gagged- presumably, you want them alive for whatever reason, so you're not going to just let them starve, which in turn necessitates uncovering their mouths. That same assumption extends to, you also having to allow them to care for themselves to whatever extent one considers proper for a dungeon. If nothing else, if you force them to sit bound in their own waste, you risk having a humiliated and extremely pissed off magic user out for your head once you finally get around to doing whatever it is that you want to do with them.

And all that presumes that you don't have any Sorcerors or the like in the mix.

Anyway, there's one other scenario that hasn't really come up yet- in the campaign I'm playing in, the party actually got captured relatively recently. The party was mistaken for spies upon entering a fiefdom in a relatively unknown corner of the world- said fiefdom was basically at war with a bunch of bandit clans, so any outsiders were regarded with suspicion.

The party was... well... very politely asked to come into custody, and it was fairly clear from the start that the only thing stopping us from just leaving was our reluctance to slaughter hordes of guardsmen who were simply doing their jobs. So I guess the 'prisoner of conscience' thing would work as another way to keep a high-level party contained- if they're good-aligned, generally speaking, they won't want to casually murder a boatload of also-good-aligned guards.

... amusingly, a silence spell was cast on my wizard PC, but to keep him from screwing up diplomacy attempts rather than anything relating to spellcasting :smalltongue:

Quertus
2017-08-25, 06:40 AM
This is a hugely broad net to cast 'railroading' over and would mean the DM can't do anything in the game, and really might as well not show up for the game. Unless your just talking about the weird stuff where the DM sits back and the ''game and npc animate and come to life'' as the DM just watches. I mean I know that when NPC Trom does something to capture the Pc's that it's the DM that is controlling that NPC and the DM wants to capture the PCs and railroad......but if you want to say ''NPC Trom'', somehow, comes to life and captures the Pcs as the DM controls NPC Trom and makes him do that (and the DM wants to capture the PCs and railroad), but say it's not the DM that is doing it(but, of course it is), then...well, ok?


I'm still recoiling from shock at you describing something as a wide net for railroading. Isn't part of your shtick that all the game's a railroad?

I haven't thought it through very well yet, but, yes, I am creating a dichotomy between "sandbox" and "railroad", and defining the difference by whether the DM places the pieces with intent ("and this is the part where the party gets captured") vs just builds a world ("well, the army of the red hand is matching down the main road towards North Haven. If they see the party, they will attempt to capture them. Their main goal is the capture of the town, so if the party flees, they will not pursue. If the fight goes poorly, the lieutenant will kill himself to prevent being captured. Their morale is average. Their provisions..." Etc).

So, yes, I am talking about the "weird stuff" where the GM isn't just reading a story to the PCs, but actually letting them forge their own destinies.


High-level ones aren't challenged by mere bars and locks.


I remember a while back there was a thread about what needs to be done to keep a 10th-level spellcaster imprisoned.

For high level PCs, trapping them on a planet, and making them believe it is actually their homeworld, tends to work.

Who's to say the PCs aren't imprisoned right now?

Darth Ultron
2017-08-26, 12:58 PM
I'm still recoiling from shock at you describing something as a wide net for railroading. Isn't part of your shtick that all the game's a railroad?

Yes, but I admit it. I'm talking here more about the Dm's that claim they never railroad and come up with elaborate ways to railroad, but don't call it that, and then still say they don't do it. A common one on the boards is for the DM to ''know the NPC so well'' that the ''NPC does the railroad bit'' and then the DM (who was controling the NPC the whole time) sits back and says "I did not railroad, it was the NPC!''



I haven't thought it through very well yet, but, yes, I am creating a dichotomy between "sandbox" and "railroad", and defining the difference by whether the DM places the pieces with intent ("and this is the part where the party gets captured") vs just builds a world ("well, the army of the red hand is matching down the main road towards North Haven. If they see the party, they will attempt to capture them. Their main goal is the capture of the town, so if the party flees, they will not pursue. If the fight goes poorly, the lieutenant will kill himself to prevent being captured. Their morale is average. Their provisions..." Etc).

Kinda odd, as again with your definitions I would not be Railroading? But your example is a bit vague. And your doing the bias that Railroading is Bad Wrong Fun Always. Like your saying railroading is the DM saying ''your characters wake up after the long walk yesterday AND GET CAPTURED! Hahahahahah! Your characters are now in jail! Hahahahah!" And the players just blink and say ''ok''.



So, yes, I am talking about the "weird stuff" where the GM isn't just reading a story to the PCs, but actually letting them forge their own destinies.

I would still ask how this happens without Railroading(or Quantum Ogre, as that is the same thing). Like say the DM rolls over on the ground and lets the great players ''forge their own destinies''. Ok, now assuming it's not a random game, stuff still has to happen in the game. So how does the game stay on the demanded player forged destiny without any DM Agency?

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-26, 02:19 PM
I would still ask how this happens without Railroading(or Quantum Ogre, as that is the same thing). Like say the DM rolls over on the ground and lets the great players ''forge their own destinies''. Ok, now assuming it's not a random game, stuff still has to happen in the game. So how does the game stay on the demanded player forged destiny without any DM Agency?

For the hundredth time. The GM providing a situation is not railroading. The GM providing a situation and forcing a specific outcome from that situation is railroading.

1) I make some bandits and have them attack the PCs and what happens next comes as a result of dice luck and player decisions. - Not Railroading

2) I want the PCs to be captured by bandits, so I specifically design a group of bandits that I know will handily defeat the PCs and I also fudge dice, if necessary, to ensure that the PCs lose the fight. - Railroading

I have no confidence that you will understand the difference between the two, of course.

Honest Tiefling
2017-08-26, 02:30 PM
I have often seen folks around here advocate capturing the party as an alternative to a TPK.

I've done this in games where the players asked me not to kill their characters. Usually, I have a few plans for them to escape with (and yes, incompetent guards is sometimes in play, if there's a reason for such, such as corruption, favoritism, or it being a part of the villian's plan), but sometimes they get slapped with penalties such as curses, death of valuable NPCs, death of allied NPCs, etc.


If you go by the rules, those are considerably expensive, not something that most groups are going to have access to.

I'd imagine breaking jaws/hands/knees would be fairly standard practice in some circles. It's cheap, readily available and healing magic to fix those issues is cheaper then the anti-magic restraints.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-26, 06:20 PM
For the hundredth time. The GM providing a situation is not railroading. The GM providing a situation and forcing a specific outcome from that situation is railroading.

1) I make some bandits and have them attack the PCs and what happens next comes as a result of dice luck and player decisions. - Not Railroading

2) I want the PCs to be captured by bandits, so I specifically design a group of bandits that I know will handily defeat the PCs and I also fudge dice, if necessary, to ensure that the PCs lose the fight. - Railroading

I have no confidence that you will understand the difference between the two, of course.

Right, well your example is just fine. But your missing the point.

1)Is a random game with no plot or story: The DM is doing random things for no reason, then sits back and lets dice and only the players decisions decide things.

2)Is a normal classic game with a plot and story: The DM is doing specific things to advance the plot, story and gameplay...no matter ''whatelse'' happens.

My point has all ways been, you can't have a plot and story without railroading.

Of course, your seeing the bandits as a pointless nuisance waste of time random non-encounter, but I see the Bandit Encounter as a major game event. And, yes I do ''pointless nuisance waste of time random non-encounters'', but they have no railroading as they are pointless nuisance waste of time random non-encounters.

So to compare, we'd need a whole thread, and you'd have to understand the difference between a ''random encounter'' and a ''planned adventure encounter'', though I'm not sure you will....

Quertus
2017-08-26, 06:38 PM
I'd imagine breaking jaws/hands/knees would be fairly standard practice in some circles. It's cheap, readily available and healing magic to fix those issues is cheaper then the anti-magic restraints.

****. Remind me not to have my wizards break the law in your games.


Kinda odd, as again with your definitions I would not be Railroading?

Gotta admit, I'm practicing being too senile to remember the specifics of your style. But,


The GM providing a situation is not railroading. The GM providing a situation and forcing a specific outcome from that situation is railroading.

1) I make some bandits and have them attack the PCs and what happens next comes as a result of dice luck and player decisions. - Not Railroading

2) I want the PCs to be captured by bandits, so I specifically design a group of bandits that I know will handily defeat the PCs and I also fudge dice, if necessary, to ensure that the PCs lose the fight. - Railroading

Mostly this. I draw the line a little farther over, though.


But your example is a bit vague.

How so? If you already know the outcome ("party will be captured"), it's railroading. If, otoh, you simply set up the world, and let the party interact with it, or not, the way that they choose, it's not railroading. The Red Hand is marching down one particular road, whether the party exists or not. The party comes into contact with them, or not, based on what direction they travel. If they happen to go that way, happen to fight to the bitter end, and happen to get captured, not a railroad.

So, if I were to try to give a larger example,

A) GM decides that this is where the party well be captured by Das Über. Railroad.

B) GM starts the game with the first level party already fighting the epic level Das Über. Naturally, Das Über wins, and captures the party. Railroad, even though the GM "played it honest" once the battle began.

C) GM notes that the 10th level party a) is missing some vital information; b) is exploring a ruins that would be of interest to an NPC who has the information that they need. GM...

C1) decides that said NPC is at the ruins, and let's the party encounter the NPC to get the information they need. Mild railroad - most players won't care.

C2) determines the probability that the the NPC - and several other potentially interested parties - are currently our have been at these ruins, and rolls for it. If the NPC was there, has the party encounter his "mark"; if he is there, as above; if not, has said NPC roll to hear of the party's exploits, to ask them about that ruins he wants to visit. Not a railroad.

When the party meets the NPC, they decide to kill him. The GM...

C3) fudges dice to make sure that their pet NPC wins. Railroad. The conclusion is predetermined, even though the players picked the path.

C4) lets the dice fall where they may, and the NPC dies, kills the party, or captures the party. Not a railroad. Neither the outcome nor the path there is predetermined.


And your doing the bias that Railroading is Bad Wrong Fun Always.

Possibly. I personally hate railroads. I recognize that not everyone shares my preferences, but thay may well be coloring my word choice.


Like your saying railroading is the DM saying ''your characters wake up after the long walk yesterday AND GET CAPTURED! Hahahahahah! Your characters are now in jail! Hahahahah!" And the players just blink and say ''ok''.

If everything you wrote ties together, then I think I see the issue. No, it doesn't (usually) play out like that, but, if the GM's campaign notes already have the story written as, "and then the PCs are captured by the Red Hand / by Das Über / whatever", and they force events to follow their script, then it's a railroad.


I would still ask how this happens without Railroading(or Quantum Ogre, as that is the same thing). Like say the DM rolls over on the ground and lets the great players ''forge their own destinies''. Ok, now assuming it's not a random game, stuff still has to happen in the game. So how does the game stay on the demanded player forged destiny without any DM Agency?

... I love how you get us to think about the things we just take for granted.

Imagine if 4 people set down to play a game of, say, Risk, but none of them had ever played the game before. So I / you agree to sit there, and adjudicate the rules for them. They're all trying to win; we're just a neutral 3rd party explaining and enforcing the rules of the game. That's how I like a GM to feel.

But what does that have to do with the question you asked? Well, imagine that, instead of being a rules arbiter for "red", "green", "blue", and "yellow", we instead are following rules for "the party", "The Red Hand", "The Cult of Squiggy", "Conan the Librarian", etc. The difference is, (usually) we are also role-playing every one of those except "the Party".

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-26, 07:41 PM
1)Is a random game with no plot or story: The DM is doing random things for no reason, then sits back and lets dice and only the players decisions decide things.

2)Is a normal classic game with a plot and story: The DM is doing specific things to advance the plot, story and gameplay...no matter ''whatelse'' happens.

The source of the bandit attack is not relevant to the example. It could be because the GM wanted a bandit fight to kill time, or it could be because ten sessions ago the PCs pissed off the bandit leader and he swore bloody revenge. The second one probably makes for a better game, but has no bearing on if it's railroading or not.

If you present a situation and force your desired outcome from that situation then you are railroading. It's not difficult.

icefractal
2017-08-27, 12:38 AM
I'd imagine breaking jaws/hands/knees would be fairly standard practice in some circles. It's cheap, readily available and healing magic to fix those issues is cheaper then the anti-magic restraints.And this is why PCs fight tooth and nail against ever being captured. :smalltongue:

VoxRationis
2017-08-27, 01:15 AM
If your PCs get captured by random enemies in a sandbox format, they should probably just get let out after being ransomed.

Thrudd
2017-08-27, 10:04 AM
If your PCs get captured by random enemies in a sandbox format, they should probably just get let out after being ransomed.

Depends on who captures them. Maybe they wake up in a cage with an orcish butcher getting ready to make dinner.

shadowkat678
2017-08-27, 10:44 AM
I think you just have to make it logical.

Would a opponent want to capture them for any reason instead of killing? You can do that. Because it's what that NPC would want to do, not the GM. Make the world react. That's a natural thing and if players complain about it remind them of that.

For escaping, sometimes random things DO happen. What are the odds of meeting someone you know in a city of many thousands, in a random place at a random time? Not high, and yet I still have that happen to me. Low chances are still chances, and as long as you can make it feel organic and not have it be a 100% chance of success, let the abductors encounter bandits on their way back to the BBEG's lair with the characters, and give them a chance to use that distraction. And that's just an example of one time.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-27, 10:55 AM
How so?

Because context matters.



Possibly. I personally hate railroads. I recognize that not everyone shares my preferences, but thay may well be coloring my word choice.

The two big things to notice about your examples are: Mild Railroad and the bit where the players won't care.



Imagine if 4 people set down to play a game of, say, Risk, but none of them had ever played the game before. So I / you agree to sit there, and adjudicate the rules for them. They're all trying to win; we're just a neutral 3rd party explaining and enforcing the rules of the game. That's how I like a GM to feel.

This is really a bad example though, unless your saying you play an all combat roll playing type game.



But what does that have to do with the question you asked? Well, imagine that, instead of being a rules arbiter for "red", "green", "blue", and "yellow", we instead are following rules for "the party", "The Red Hand", "The Cult of Squiggy", "Conan the Librarian", etc. The difference is, (usually) we are also role-playing every one of those except "the Party".

So, are you saying here that in your game the characters just endless fight each other until one rules the world? Really, Risk is a bad example.



If you present a situation and force your desired outcome from that situation then you are railroading. It's not difficult.

True, but it's not just a question of ''what is a railroad''?

The context matters, lets try:

Set Up: We have a solo game with a single player with a single character and the DM. The character has previously encountered some Swamp Orcs and is wounded with a wounded spell(this does 1 point of damage per round until healed/cured) and the character has no way to stop the continuous wounds.

Start: The Character is moving through the Dark Swamp wounded. The map of the Dark Swamp shows nothing in the immediate area the character is in, especially has the character only has 20 rounds to live.

The Other Game: The DM does not ''do anything''. Well, ok, something random happens. And chances are whatever random stuff happens the character will die in a couple more rounds. Or nothing happens, and the character just dies. Like say the

The Railroad Game: The DM does not want the character to die, so the DM picks from one of the hundred or so ways this can happen. And the DM picks #22 : encounter and be captured by some Swamp Elves. It does not matter what the map or the random encounter tables say: 'Pop' the Swamp Elves are there as the DM says they are and it is so. The Swamp elves will attack and capture the character, and once the character is restrained, heal the character (so the character will stay alive long enough until the big Elf Dinner at sunset, where they will be the main meal. And lead to the next bit of adventure: Escape from Being Dinner). Note the Railroad DM could also pick one of the other hundred or so ways of saving the character...we just picked ''captured'' as it is the thread theme.

And remember that the silly Quantum Ogre counts as Railroading (I call it Reverse Railroading). So if the Other DM says ''oh, behind the next tree your character finds a potion of healing floating in mind air all cool video game like'', then that is Railroading.

And yes there are ways for a Other DM to ''fix'' things before the game even starts:
1)The DM can houserule or remove wounding, poison, traps, hit point damage or anything else they don't ''like'' from the game. Then, of course, it will never be a problem.
2)The DM can force the player's character to be a set class or have a set ability or item (Slam! "You must gestalt as a cleric to play in my game and that is final!")
3)Or the DM can sneakily set things up ahead of time (The Dark Swamp has 1 billion Flowers of Healing in it and any character can find one in 1-2 rounds with a special spot check of DC 5).

But, of course, the above only focus on a very narrow thing: making sure a character either does not have to worry about getting healed or making healing quick and easy. And for a game, the DM would have to make such special rules for everything that might be a problem. Until you just get to the silly ''rings of wishing grow on all tress and you can find 10-100 on each tree''.

So with the set up of: Character can do nothing to save themselves, Player can do nothing to save their character(other then beg the DM not to), the Game World can do nothing to save the character and the Game Rules can do nothing to save the character. The only one left is the DM, who can act and do anything.

But, anything the DM does is Railroading as it is present a situation and force your desired outcome from that situation then you are railroading, in this case save the characters life.

So, others will say they can ''somehow'' never, ever use the Bad Wrong Fun Railroading, but somehow still have complex games and don't kill characters and such. So with the above example, and the fact that anything the DM does to actively save the character is Railroading.....how does the other DM do it?

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-27, 12:20 PM
Set Up: We have a solo game with a single player with a single character and the DM. The character has previously encountered some Swamp Orcs and is wounded with a wounded spell(this does 1 point of damage per round until healed/cured) and the character has no way to stop the continuous wounds.

Well, the sensible GM probably should have avoided giving the swamp orcs a spell that will kill the character with no possible counter available to the PC if he was concerned about the PC dying. That seems like a dumb move to me.

But for the sake of the argument let's say that there was a good reason for the PC to be taking bleeding damage in the first place. Perhaps one of those funny 2e critical hit tables that give bleeding damage on certain results. If the PC is in a place with no way to heal that damage then yes, they should probably die. I wouldn't mind a hail mary roll to represent the fact that the GM can't plan everything about the setting out, say on a 19-20 or something maybe there are healing herbs in the swamp. But otherwise, yes, intervening is certainly railroading and not a good thing to be doing. If the PC legitimately earned their death, then they should die. If the GM is going to step in and save you from yourself then what's the point of even playing in the first place? None of your decisions even matter at that point. Maybe the PC lost the game at the point where they decided to go into the swamp in the first place without packing some healing potions for the trip.

If this is unpalatable there are certainly other solutions available. Solutions like not using a fairly lethal ruleset for your solo adventure if you're not okay with the possibility of randomly dying.

Quertus
2017-08-27, 01:28 PM
1)Is a random game with no plot or story: The DM is doing random things for no reason, then sits back and lets dice and only the players decisions decide things.

2)Is a normal classic game with a plot and story: The DM is doing specific things to advance the plot, story and gameplay...no matter ''whatelse'' happens.

My point has all ways been, you can't have a plot and story without railroading.

Hmmm... Sort of.

Yes, a railroad plot, rife with things like, "and this is where the party gets captured", where the path and the outcome are known before the game begins, generally requires railroading. That's fair.

But not all games require that the outcome be known before the game begins. In fact, as one can tell from my posts, I generally only care for games where the players have the freedom to choose - to the extent that they are able within the rules and the capabilities of their characters - both the path, and the outcome. Ie, they choose to try to kill the monster, or subdue the monster, or parley with the monster, or bribe the monster, or run from the monster, and then they follow the rules to determine the outcome of their action.

There can be plenty of plots going on - the Red Hand is marching on North Fork; the Cult of Squiggy is trying to gain favor from other worldly entities (and, if no-one does anything, they will try to sacrifice Mrs. Burgan's cat); Conan the Librarian wants people to pay their late fees and be quiet in his library, etc.

If the party didn't exist, the Cult of Squiggy would be wiped out to the man (because cat), Conan the Librarian would break into their temple to recover the books they borrowed from the library, and the Red Hand would take North Fork after an extended siege.

Since the party does exist, they can change the outcome of these events in any number of ways, or these events can simply be the backdrop for whatever story they decide to tell.

There are plenty of plots, plenty of stories, but what matters is the story that the party tells. And the stories that the players tell about the events afterwards.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-27, 05:05 PM
Well, the sensible GM probably should have avoided giving the swamp orcs a spell that will kill the character with no possible counter available to the PC if he was concerned about the PC dying. That seems like a dumb move to me.

Right, like I said you can make the game custom, maybe even simple, by just getting rid of anything you think might cause a problem. Like you can remove ''hit point damage'' from the game so the character can never die from ''hit point damage''. This is a massive change to the game, of course.



But otherwise, yes, intervening is certainly railroading and not a good thing to be doing. If the PC legitimately earned their death, then they should die. If the GM is going to step in and save you from yourself then what's the point of even playing in the first place?

Well, if your willing to just let the character die, guess you'd let anything bad happen in a game. Guess it is a good way to not ever Railroad, though it's also going to have a huge effect on the game play. You won't be able to do any traditional classic storytelling or plots, but I guess that is what you want. I guess it is one way to play the game, but I can't see many people liking the just do random stuff endlessly.



If this is unpalatable there are certainly other solutions available. Solutions like not using a fairly lethal ruleset for your solo adventure if you're not okay with the possibility of randomly dying.

You could use a more simple and fun game system with easy and safe rules. Like where the bad guy will just hit the good guy and they will fall down and go boom. If you use any other type of game, it just gets weird. Like you can remove Hit Points from D&D and just play ''I'll just say when someone dies when I feel like it on a whim''.


But not all games require that the outcome be known before the game begins.

Right, but don't so Super Crazy Overboard where your going to say: Railroading is All Ways when the DM nitpicks, controls and micromanages Every Single Tiny Detail about everything in the game all the time.

Like I said before, in a normal game I DM can choose when to Railroad.



Since the party does exist, they can change the outcome of these events in any number of ways, or these events can simply be the backdrop for whatever story they decide to tell.

There are plenty of plots, plenty of stories, but what matters is the story that the party tells. And the stories that the players tell about the events afterwards.

This is true, for all it's vagueness. And it sounds great for ''real life'', but we are talking about ''a game''.

For example, in real life people go missing and are never, ever found....and real life goes on.

Now, in a game, when the players are searching for a lost elven princess the part where the DM says ''sorry guys have chosen wrong, you loose. You never, ever find the lost elven princess. Everyone can go home. New game next week at the same time" does not make for a good game. I guess some people would be fine with that type of game, though for it to happen every week is a real downer.

The whole point of Railroading is it gives the players a chance. It's not the DM being a jerk and just saying in the first two minutes of game play ''wow, you guy blink once and save the world, high five!". It's the DM keeping the game on the rails so the player's characters have a chance to find and save the elven princess.

And it's not the the player's characters can ''never loose'', but they should always have a chance to ''fight back and try and win''. To just do the ''well, you players made the wrong choice, game over" is cruel.

VoxRationis
2017-08-28, 12:14 AM
Depends on who captures them. Maybe they wake up in a cage with an orcish butcher getting ready to make dinner.

But from a gameplay perspective, having your characters unceremoniously eaten by orcs isn't satisfying. Losing resources but continuing with the game is more fun.

PersonMan
2017-08-28, 01:52 AM
Right, like I said you can make the game custom, maybe even simple, by just getting rid of anything you think might cause a problem. Like you can remove ''hit point damage'' from the game so the character can never die from ''hit point damage''. This is a massive change to the game, of course.

So your argument is that you're forced to put the solo PC in a "die or be saved by fiat" situation because you're forced by some magical force to include everything because it's in the rules / stat block, and that the only alternative is to remove the HP system?

This is basicaly saying "you need to wear helmets inside because it hurts your head to run into doors", and when someone says "or, don't run into doors?", the response is "well, you could remove all doors from your house, if you want".

Hopeless
2017-08-28, 04:59 AM
Has anyone suggested Session Zero this?

So you ask your players how did their characters end up imprisoned and in the process explaining why this happened and what resulted in their release at the start of the game?

So only starting equipment any unsuitable equipment such as magic items are initially unavailable because whoever imprisoned them isn't a idiot but has no reason unless you gave them one to do anything nasty to your characters?!

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-28, 05:01 AM
Right, like I said you can make the game custom, maybe even simple, by just getting rid of anything you think might cause a problem. Like you can remove ''hit point damage'' from the game so the character can never die from ''hit point damage''. This is a massive change to the game, of course.

Not giving orcs a certain problematic ability is not the same thing as making a massive change to core systems.


Well, if your willing to just let the character die, guess you'd let anything bad happen in a game. Guess it is a good way to not ever Railroad, though it's also going to have a huge effect on the game play. You won't be able to do any traditional classic storytelling or plots, but I guess that is what you want. I guess it is one way to play the game, but I can't see many people liking the just do random stuff endlessly.

What is "traditional classic storytelling"? I suspect I am going to be telling you to go write a book instead in a minute. A (good) RPG session does not have a plot. It has interesting situations which the PCs can freely choose how they interact with.


You could use a more simple and fun game system with easy and safe rules. Like where the bad guy will just hit the good guy and they will fall down and go boom. If you use any other type of game, it just gets weird. Like you can remove Hit Points from D&D and just play ''I'll just say when someone dies when I feel like it on a whim''.

Playing a game that is designed around something other than lethal tactical combat is not the same thing as clumsily hacking a game that is about lethal tactical combat. http://www.animated-smileys.com/emoticons/animated-smileys-rolleyes-07.gif

Darth Ultron
2017-08-28, 07:26 AM
So your argument is that you're forced to put the solo PC in a "die or be saved by fiat" situation because you're forced by some magical force to include everything because it's in the rules / stat block, and that the only alternative is to remove the HP system?


My argument has always been ''Railroading is not All Ways Bad Wrong Fun''. Railroading, like most things, has a good and bad side. It's like saying fire is bad as it can burn you so never use it to cook, heat a place or do anything else.

My example was made to be direct. The problem with this type of dissuasion is people will ''move things around'' to make themselves right in the worst, crazy ways. You can take the basic idea though: If anything the DM does to effect the outcome of anything in the game is railroading, how do you do any type of complexity?

But yes, the basic idea does stand. To have a complex game a DM must either Railroad or change the basic rules of the game beforehand. Or, of course, just run a simple game.


Not giving orcs a certain problematic ability is not the same thing as making a massive change to core systems.

Well, you could just give the orcs poison, or even just do normal hit point damage. If a character is down to say just three hit points, they will be in trouble with even a weak random encounter.



What is "traditional classic storytelling"? I suspect I am going to be telling you to go write a book instead in a minute. A (good) RPG session does not have a plot. It has interesting situations which the PCs can freely choose how they interact with.

Well, an adventure with a story and a plot that has a start. middle and end. And the players do not know any of the details, other then what their character discovers, and the players don't have DM god control over the game., they only control their characters.

And interesting situations are fine. You can make a game out of just having a bunch of random interesting situations. This would be a very simple game, and it can be tons of fun for people that just like simple, easy and casual gaming.

But once you ''link'' an interesting situation to another interesting situation and another interesting situation and then to a Big Idea, or an Arc or A Series of Events. And that is the story and the plot. Like both of our games might have the group encounter the interesting situation of some Drow Merchants. But in your game the Drow Merchants are just interesting cardboard cut outs with nothing about nothing and nothing. Because you say you don't have a plot or story, and if the Drow are anything, that would be a plot and story, right? Now the Drow Merchants have a large backstory (story) and a reason for being on the surface(a fiendish plot) and are connected to the world in dozens of ways (more plots and stories here).

But I'm sure you will say your game has all that stuff that my game has....but you will say it is not a story or plot, for some reason. So my game has the Drow Merchant plot and story of them attempting to dominate the 'dark' trade of the city. And your game has the same thing, but you will say it's not a story or plot.

But lets say the players choose to oppose the drow. So my game has the plot all ready to go and be followed. I have the Drow spots marked on the map, all the npcs and monsters and encounters are premade, and I even have a vague drow time table of what they will be doing in the near future. So now the players are free to choose how and when and why and all that of how they will stop the Drow. And the players just do whatever they want to do, or try to do. And lots of things will happen, and lots more depending on what and when the players characters do things or don't do things. The climax will be the Dark Meet, where the Drow will meet up with the current underworld trade humans....and the drow plan to kill them all. So I will railroad the characters up and down and sideways so they not only find out about the Dark Meet, but gets other details like it's location. And then the players can, once again, choose what to do.

Though, I'm not sure how your game works here. You don't make an adventure with a plot and story, as you have said, so you don't make up all the stuff that I do. I guess you'd make a couple of random interesting situations? The whole Dark Meet Drow Double Cross is most definitely a fiendish plot, and you say your game does not have any plots, so your game does not have that. And really anything in the game world happening in sequential order is a 'plot', so I guess nothing can even happen in your game world. Sure the characters can do random stuff, but then nothing happens, right? If anything happens that would be a plot, right?

Really I can't see even having an RPG without a plot. But you say you do it...somehow.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-28, 11:27 AM
Well, you could just give the orcs poison, or even just do normal hit point damage. If a character is down to say just three hit points, they will be in trouble with even a weak random encounter.

Which is why I didn't quibble overly much about that specific example. There are certainly legitimate ways for the PCs to be in trouble and yes, if that trouble would result in them dying, then they should probably die. However, I do want to make a distinction here which you don't seem to be getting. Something being contrived is not necessarily railroading.

To go back to your original example, the PC is dying, so you pop up a bunch of swamp elves that had no reason to be there. That's a contrived situation, but it isn't railroading. Something being contrived may or may not be bad anyway, depending on the style of game and player preferences, but if it is bad it's bad for different reasons than why railroading is bad.

If the swamp elves pop up up with your express intention of capturing the PC and saving them and you fudge dice to get that result, that's where it becomes contrived and railroading. If the elves show up and the PC is free to fight them and possibly kill them, or run away, or try to negotiate, then it's contrived but not a railroad.


But once you ''link'' an interesting situation to another interesting situation and another interesting situation and then to a Big Idea, or an Arc or A Series of Events. And that is the story and the plot. Like both of our games might have the group encounter the interesting situation of some Drow Merchants. But in your game the Drow Merchants are just interesting cardboard cut outs with nothing about nothing and nothing. Because you say you don't have a plot or story, and if the Drow are anything, that would be a plot and story, right? Now the Drow Merchants have a large backstory (story) and a reason for being on the surface(a fiendish plot) and are connected to the world in dozens of ways (more plots and stories here).

The GM presenting a situation is not railroading.
The GM presenting a situation is not railroading.
The GM presenting a situation is not railroading.

You are entirely free to have all kinds of interesting reasons why the drow are on the surface. It becomes railroading if you force the PCs to do a specific thing with these Interesting Drow Merchants.

If you throw down some fiendish plot drow merchants it's not railroading. If the PCs bump into them it's not railroading, though perhaps mildly contrived. It becomes railroading when the PCs aren't free to decide what they do with these drow, from attacking them on the spot, to ignoring them and wandering off to do something else instead, or anything in-between.

JenBurdoo
2017-08-28, 12:58 PM
My own preferred method of starting a campaign is "You all meet in a cell." Only PCs with Rogue-type careers are there because they've been arrested - the rest are there because the mayor/PM/Queen needs a party for something and these are the suckers she rounded up. Easiest place for them to secretly meet is the dungeon because half the party is already there.

A coworker ran a very successful "beginners'" campaign by making everybody the prisoners of a tyrant who arrested them on trumped-up charges and tossed them into a gladiatorial arena. They spent half the campaign in that arena, learning the rules and leveling up, then won their freedom and went on to become the classic sort of heroes.

In the case of taking already free PCs prisoner, I would use it as an alternate to a TPK. If the party is overwhelmed, I give them an out, and instead of wiping the party, it wakes up in a cell, perhaps to be offered a new and irresistible mission. There are a number of games - Dark Heresy and Call of Cthulhu among them - where capture is a fate worse than death and likely to be preferred by the villain. He could kill the party, but then he wouldn't have anything to sacrifice!

Ultimately, I'd say don't deliberately capture them. Set out to do so, but consider the possible consequences and find a way to make the game just as interesting if they avoid the trap, kill the goons sent to capture them or otherwise escape. Set a situation with multiple possibilities at the end - They might be captured by the villain, they might be on the run, they might be victorious. What will the villain do in all of these cases? These can all lead to interesting scenarios and you don't have to worry that the campaign will be upended if, against all odds, they escape your fiendish trap.

PersonMan
2017-08-29, 01:48 AM
My argument has always been ''Railroading is not All Ways Bad Wrong Fun''. Railroading, like most things, has a good and bad side. It's like saying fire is bad as it can burn you so never use it to cook, heat a place or do anything else.

Then argue that instead of making implications that you're unable to change the rules?


My example was made to be direct. The problem with this type of dissuasion is people will ''move things around'' to make themselves right in the worst, crazy ways. You can take the basic idea though: If anything the DM does to effect the outcome of anything in the game is railroading, how do you do any type of complexity?

To be honest, the example is less of an issue - it's a good "bad situation that creates a bit of a dilemma and is therefore a good case to look at" type thing.

My issue is just that when someone said "well I think the underlying setup here is flawed" you responded with "the only way to not have this setup is do delete core game mechanics".


But yes, the basic idea does stand. To have a complex game a DM must either Railroad or change the basic rules of the game beforehand. Or, of course, just run a simple game.

I've got a question for you, because I'm fairly certain this is just a matter of mismatching definitions. Take the following situation:

The GM is running a game for four players, whose characters are now powerful enough in-world to be among the strongest people in any given region - except for the Cult of Vague Badness. The CoVB is trying to perform the Ritual of Vague Badness, to bring general misfortune upon the world, and the characters are not fans of that, so they go around rooting out CoVB covens and killing their members. Now, being very powerful and not connected to anyone politically, they tend to make rulers nervous because they're dealing with people who could match their Elite Royal Guard.

The GM has a plan for this session which fits into the over-arching "characters stop the RoVB" plot. The idea is that the characters have a meeting with the ruler of this area, do their usual thing of "here's proof the CoVB is probably working to overthrow/undermine you, this is what we're planning to do, also we can give you some of the loot to make you feel better, please give us official permission so no one loses face here", and then go on to squish the cultists.

But things hit a snag. The characters suspect, for some reason based partially on hints dropped in the past about rulers working with the cult, that this ruler is working with the CoVB, and that meeting with them would just tip their hand. So they instead avoid the meeting, and begin heading towards the cultist's hideout.

The GM responds in one of the following ways; which of these would you consider railroading? Would they all be, because of presumable former railroading before this situation?
- The GM gives the characters a bit of information that makes them realize that the local ruler is not with the cult, and that meeting with them is safe. This way, the meeting can go as planned.
- The GM does nothing outside of what they had originally planned, apart from cutting the now non-relevant info.
- The GM gives the Elite Royal Guard a massive power upgrade and uses them to beat the PCs into submission if they don't go to the meeting.


So I will railroad the characters up and down and sideways so they not only find out about the Dark Meet, but gets other details like it's location. And then the players can, once again, choose what to do.

I think the big difference in styles is that the other people here would say "well I wouldn't force them to find this information, I'd just put it somewhere they could find". Like putting references to the Dark Meet in looted books and so on, or in messages the drow send between each other. Plenty of opportunity to find it, but no compulsion.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-29, 07:58 AM
To go back to your original example, the PC is dying, so you pop up a bunch of swamp elves that had no reason to be there. That's a contrived situation, but it isn't railroading. Something being contrived may or may not be bad anyway, depending on the style of game and player preferences, but if it is bad it's bad for different reasons than why railroading is bad.

If the swamp elves pop up up with your express intention of capturing the PC and saving them and you fudge dice to get that result, that's where it becomes contrived and railroading. If the elves show up and the PC is free to fight them and possibly kill them, or run away, or try to negotiate, then it's contrived but not a railroad..

But your just slipping hairs, right? To nitpick every detail and say ''this is or is not something'' based on whims?

Is it only a railroad then if the DM fudges the dice? That seems to be the only difference. My Swamp Elves pop out of nowhere and have a cleric with them, and ''storywise'' they will capture and eat any intruder in their lands. So all of that is not railroading? And if I just ''let the dice fall where they may'', then it's all no railroading ever?



If you throw down some fiendish plot drow merchants it's not railroading. If the PCs bump into them it's not railroading, though perhaps mildly contrived. It becomes railroading when the PCs aren't free to decide what they do with these drow, from attacking them on the spot, to ignoring them and wandering off to do something else instead, or anything in-between.

It would seem here that your falling back on to the Jerk DM Railroading is the only Railroading. Like your talking about where the DM either takes control of the characters (''ok, your characters walk into the Forest of Doom because I say so") or the DM does the video game style (''there is just one road and trees grow on both sides of the road... like a cheep 8-bit natural wall, and absolutely nothing you can do ever ever can get your characters past the trees. So, you walk down the road...")


The GM responds in one of the following ways; which of these would you consider railroading? Would they all be, because of presumable former railroading before this situation?
- The GM gives the characters a bit of information that makes them realize that the local ruler is not with the cult, and that meeting with them is safe. This way, the meeting can go as planned.
- The GM does nothing outside of what they had originally planned, apart from cutting the now non-relevant info.
- The GM gives the Elite Royal Guard a massive power upgrade and uses them to beat the PCs into submission if they don't go to the meeting.

1)I would not consider just giving information as ''railroading''. After all the players are free to act or not act on the information. And all information could be true or false or other (like the ruler does work with the cult as far as they know, but he really is opposing them from the inside).

2)I guess this is just ''the game setting rolls on with the character actions'', right? So this is not a railroad.

3)This still does not force an action, so it would still not be railroading.

So....

4)The Elite Royal Guard(they would already be 'tough' in my game) or some Bounty Hunters/Clerics of Peace/Other Group working for/with the ruler attack, defeat, arrest, and capture the PCs (note I just about always do Let the Dice Roll Where They Roll, but still a optimized capture squad with most likely beat the more general PCs) and then drag the PCs to the meeting kicks and screaming. Railroad.




I think the big difference in styles is that the other people here would say "well I wouldn't force them to find this information, I'd just put it somewhere they could find". Like putting references to the Dark Meet in looted books and so on, or in messages the drow send between each other. Plenty of opportunity to find it, but no compulsion.

The Railroad part here is the players ''have to'' go to the Dark Meet, as that is where the adventure is. For the players to say ''On the dark meet night our players go to the tavern and drink all night" is just a jerk move. And sure, some rare times the players might have some big meta plan, but the other 99% they are just being jerks that don't want to play the game.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-29, 08:57 AM
But your just slipping hairs, right? To nitpick every detail and say ''this is or is not something'' based on whims?

Is it only a railroad then if the DM fudges the dice? That seems to be the only difference. My Swamp Elves pop out of nowhere and have a cleric with them, and ''storywise'' they will capture and eat any intruder in their lands. So all of that is not railroading? And if I just ''let the dice fall where they may'', then it's all no railroading ever?

Again, not railroading, but possibly still bad GM practices for different reasons. Railroading is explicitly when you deny the players the ability to make meaningful choices, either overtly or covertly. I personally still think it's bad to come up with contrived reasons for PCs to avoid their deserved fate, but it's a separate topic and it's probably fine for some groups and playstyles.


It would seem here that your falling back on to the Jerk DM Railroading is the only Railroading. Like your talking about where the DM either takes control of the characters (''ok, your characters walk into the Forest of Doom because I say so") or the DM does the video game style (''there is just one road and trees grow on both sides of the road... like a cheep 8-bit natural wall, and absolutely nothing you can do ever ever can get your characters past the trees. So, you walk down the road...")

And again I'm left with the impression that you don't actually know what railroading is and that's a big source of all these arguments the entire forum constantly has with you. Railroading is when you deny the players the ability to make meaningful choices. There are certainly some forms of railroading that are worse than others, and some forms that could be looked at more like minor sins.

Max_Killjoy
2017-08-29, 10:35 AM
And again I'm left with the impression that you don't actually know what railroading is and that's a big source of all these arguments the entire forum constantly has with you.


That's the conclusion that several of us have come to over the last year.

Well, close to it. It's reached the point where we concluded that it's not a matter of not knowing, but rather a matter of deliberately diluting the definition of "railroading" until it covers anything in a game that isn't purely random, just so that the position "railroading isn't bad" can be justified.

ImNotTrevor
2017-08-29, 10:44 AM
DU does not operate with the same definitions we do, and is incapable of understanding distinctions like:

Railroading is about limiting OUTCOMES, not about the presentation of a scenario.

Railroading, therefore, often leads to nonsensicalities in order to maintain these limited or singular outcomes.

It is worth noting that old school D&D does not bother with plots. That's a more recent thing, the product of Adventure Modules rather than the intended or best playstyle of the game.

Originally, in 1e, the most common playstyle involved worlds that were consistent but parties that were not. You would gather a set of dudes and raid one of the various dungeons. If someone else had already raided it, there would be nothing there for you. Too bad. Etc.

The irony is that DU appeals to the "classic" way of playing tabletop, when in fact his pre-planned, story-by-numbers style is the new kid on the block, not open world style. Which makes me chuckle heartily.

In short, I'm really not sure why people continue to engage with him. I'm by no means a psychiatrist, but I do notice many parallels between the ways DU approaches an argument and the ways the adolescent patients on the psych unit I work at do.
(Ignoring valid points, selective attention, single-minded, no acknowledgement of own faulty logic, appeals to "normalcy" that isn't actually normal, etc.)
Not saying this has anything to do with his mental health, but he argues in a manner as frustratingly backwards as a child uses. He doesn't prove himself right, he just makes people tired of pointing out the ways in which he's wrong. Which I guess makes him feel good just the same?

Just stop engaging.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-08-29, 10:59 AM
DU does not operate with the same definitions we do, and is incapable of understanding distinctions like:

Railroading is about limiting OUTCOMES, not about the presentation of a scenario.

Railroading, therefore, often leads to nonsensicalities in order to maintain these limited or singular outcomes.

It is worth noting that old school D&D does not bother with plots. That's a more recent thing, the product of Adventure Modules rather than the intended or best playstyle of the game.

Originally, in 1e, the most common playstyle involved worlds that were consistent but parties that were not. You would gather a set of dudes and raid one of the various dungeons. If someone else had already raided it, there would be nothing there for you. Too bad. Etc.

The irony is that DU appeals to the "classic" way of playing tabletop, when in fact his pre-planned, story-by-numbers style is the new kid on the block, not open world style. Which makes me chuckle heartily.

In short, I'm really not sure why people continue to engage with him. I'm by no means a psychiatrist, but I do notice many parallels between the ways DU approaches an argument and the ways the adolescent patients on the psych unit I work at do.
(Ignoring valid points, selective attention, single-minded, no acknowledgement of own faulty logic, appeals to "normalcy" that isn't actually normal, etc.)
Not saying this has anything to do with his mental health, but he argues in a manner as frustratingly backwards as a child uses. He doesn't prove himself right, he just makes people tired of pointing out the ways in which he's wrong. Which I guess makes him feel good just the same?

Just stop engaging.

<revival preacher>Amen, I say. Can I get an Amen?</revival preacher> To all of this. Knowing when to disengage is a skill I've had to learn to maintain (what's left of) my sanity.

Amphetryon
2017-08-29, 11:14 AM
That's the conclusion that several of us have come to over the last year.

Well, close to it. It's reached the point where we concluded that it's not a matter of not knowing, but rather a matter of deliberately diluting the definition of "railroading" until it covers anything in a game that isn't purely random, just so that the position "railroading isn't bad" can be justified.

It's even more fun when playing with folks who:
1. Use this definition of Railroading
2. Consider Railroading bad
3. Bemoan inconsistencies that arise from a purely random approach.

Quertus
2017-08-29, 11:24 AM
My argument has always been ''Railroading is not All Ways Bad Wrong Fun''. Railroading, like most things, has a good and bad side. It's like saying fire is bad as it can burn you so never use it to cook, heat a place or do anything else.

Well, no, your stance has always been, "every game is a railroad". You seem to have since refined your stance to, "every story is a railroad; every game is either a story railroad or something random". Which, while still demonstrably false, at least makes it more clear what you're trying to say.

Now, as it so happens, my stance happens to have included, "railroads are bad", but, having encountered people who apparently enjoy being railroaded, that portion has been refined to, "I personally hate railroads - all railroads are bad for me".


This is true, for all it's vagueness. And it sounds great for ''real life'', but we are talking about ''a game''.

For example, in real life people go missing and are never, ever found....and real life goes on.

Now, in a game, when the players are searching for a lost elven princess the part where the DM says ''sorry guys have chosen wrong, you loose. You never, ever find the lost elven princess. Everyone can go home. New game next week at the same time" does not make for a good game. I guess some people would be fine with that type of game, though for it to happen every week is a real downer.

The whole point of Railroading is it gives the players a chance. It's not the DM being a jerk and just saying in the first two minutes of game play ''wow, you guy blink once and save the world, high five!". It's the DM keeping the game on the rails so the player's characters have a chance to find and save the elven princess.

And it's not the the player's characters can ''never loose'', but they should always have a chance to ''fight back and try and win''. To just do the ''well, you players made the wrong choice, game over" is cruel.

... Such strange dichotomies you make.

I mean, on the one hand, you're right, it is a game, and fun is perhaps the most important thing.

But if the 1st level PCs see a sunburnt orphan, and decide to make it their quest to extinguish the sun before it rises again, I think they're in for some well-deserved failure. Given that your response to PCs who attempt to solo encounters well above their pay grade is to give them their well deserved death, I can only assume that you agree on this point, and would not railroad a "more enjoyable" success story.

Also, railroading isn't about giving people "a chance" - it's about removing chance from the equation. It's about the GM deciding how things will turn out, and forcing events towards his conclusion.


My example was made to be direct. The problem with this type of dissuasion is people will ''move things around'' to make themselves right in the worst, crazy ways. You can take the basic idea though: If anything the DM does to effect the outcome of anything in the game is railroading, how do you do any type of complexity?

But yes, the basic idea does stand. To have a complex game a DM must either Railroad or change the basic rules of the game beforehand. Or, of course, just run a simple game.


Well, an adventure with a story and a plot that has a start. middle and end. And the players do not know any of the details, other then what their character discovers, and the players don't have DM god control over the game., they only control their characters.

And interesting situations are fine. You can make a game out of just having a bunch of random interesting situations. This would be a very simple game, and it can be tons of fun for people that just like simple, easy and casual gaming.

But once you ''link'' an interesting situation to another interesting situation and another interesting situation and then to a Big Idea, or an Arc or A Series of Events. And that is the story and the plot. Like both of our games might have the group encounter the interesting situation of some Drow Merchants. But in your game the Drow Merchants are just interesting cardboard cut outs with nothing about nothing and nothing. Because you say you don't have a plot or story, and if the Drow are anything, that would be a plot and story, right? Now the Drow Merchants have a large backstory (story) and a reason for being on the surface(a fiendish plot) and are connected to the world in dozens of ways (more plots and stories here).

But I'm sure you will say your game has all that stuff that my game has....but you will say it is not a story or plot, for some reason. So my game has the Drow Merchant plot and story of them attempting to dominate the 'dark' trade of the city. And your game has the same thing, but you will say it's not a story or plot.

But lets say the players choose to oppose the drow. So my game has the plot all ready to go and be followed. I have the Drow spots marked on the map, all the npcs and monsters and encounters are premade, and I even have a vague drow time table of what they will be doing in the near future. So now the players are free to choose how and when and why and all that of how they will stop the Drow. And the players just do whatever they want to do, or try to do. And lots of things will happen, and lots more depending on what and when the players characters do things or don't do things. The climax will be the Dark Meet, where the Drow will meet up with the current underworld trade humans....and the drow plan to kill them all. So I will railroad the characters up and down and sideways so they not only find out about the Dark Meet, but gets other details like it's location. And then the players can, once again, choose what to do.

Though, I'm not sure how your game works here. You don't make an adventure with a plot and story, as you have said, so you don't make up all the stuff that I do. I guess you'd make a couple of random interesting situations? The whole Dark Meet Drow Double Cross is most definitely a fiendish plot, and you say your game does not have any plots, so your game does not have that. And really anything in the game world happening in sequential order is a 'plot', so I guess nothing can even happen in your game world. Sure the characters can do random stuff, but then nothing happens, right? If anything happens that would be a plot, right?

Really I can't see even having an RPG without a plot. But you say you do it...somehow.

You keep conflating ideas.

How much is going on with a given NPC in a game - whether they are a cardboard cutout, have a rich backstory, detailed personality, plots within plots, etc - is entirely independent of whether the GM railroads a particular interaction or outcome with those NPCs.

Meet Ned. Ned is an NPC merchant. Ned could be...

A) a boring cardboard cutout, that the GM lets the party interact with however they see fit;

B) a boring cardboard cutout, that the GM railroads the party into using as their fall guy;

C) a rich character, full of personality, plans, story hooks, etc, that the GM lets the party interact with however they see fit; or

D) a rich character, full of personality, plans, story hooks, etc, that the GM railroads the party into using as their fall guy.

Totally independent ideas.

If you're going to try to introduce some new variable, please make it clear - especially to yourself - that this is a new, independent variable, and that it is relevant to the current conversation for reasons which you will forthwith explain. Stop "moving things around to make yourself right in the worst, crazy ways", and stick to the topics under discussion, please. The topic was, if I'm not too senile again (I've been wrong before) about railroading, especially as relates to capturing PCs.

So, how can you have plots without a railroad? Well, as I said before,


Hmmm... Sort of.

Yes, a railroad plot, rife with things like, "and this is where the party gets captured", where the path and the outcome are known before the game begins, generally requires railroading. That's fair.

But not all games require that the outcome be known before the game begins. In fact, as one can tell from my posts, I generally only care for games where the players have the freedom to choose - to the extent that they are able within the rules and the capabilities of their characters - both the path, and the outcome. Ie, they choose to try to kill the monster, or subdue the monster, or parley with the monster, or bribe the monster, or run from the monster, and then they follow the rules to determine the outcome of their action.

There can be plenty of plots going on - the Red Hand is marching on North Fork; the Cult of Squiggy is trying to gain favor from other worldly entities (and, if no-one does anything, they will try to sacrifice Mrs. Burgan's cat); Conan the Librarian wants people to pay their late fees and be quiet in his library, etc.

If the party didn't exist, the Cult of Squiggy would be wiped out to the man (because cat), Conan the Librarian would break into their temple to recover the books they borrowed from the library, and the Red Hand would take North Fork after an extended siege.

Since the party does exist, they can change the outcome of these events in any number of ways, or these events can simply be the backdrop for whatever story they decide to tell.

There are plenty of plots, plenty of stories, but what matters is the story that the party tells. And the stories that the players tell about the events afterwards.

Like that.

The PCs could find out about the Cult of Squiggy, or not. They could oppose or join the Cult, or use them as a contact & ask them what they know about various things, or just try to borrow our scam money off them, or whatever else that choose to do.

And succeed or fail at those endeavors based on their skill, luck, and understanding of the situation.

The party could encounter Conan the Librarian, or not. They could oppose his tyrannical insistence on quiet in the library, use him as a resource to borrow books, run afoul of him if they forget to return said books, use him as a resource for a fitness routine, or whatever else they think to do.

And succeed or fail at those endeavors based on their skill, luck, and understanding of the situation.

The party could encounter the Red Hand, or hear word of their exploits, or live under a rock to avoid hearing of them altogether. The party could attempt to oppose them, infiltrate them, join them, hire them, or anything else they can think of.

And succeed or fail at those endeavors based on their skill, luck, and understanding of the situation.

Afterwards, the players will tell the story of the rich world, busy doing its own things while they were off raiding ruins and rescuing lost princesses. And how they, once or twice, got involved with the "local color".

Or the GM could railroad the game, and force the plot to include the party coming to North Fork for a particular rare book, forcing the party to make noise in the library so that they meet Conan the Librarian who informs the party that said book is currently on loan (and overdue), force the party to uncover the Cult of Squiggy to get the book, then force the party to be captured by the Red Hand on their way back to their original quest, so that the Red Hand can gain access to the rare book, thus launching them into the next preplanned plot arc.

While it's a perfectly fine story, it's not the only possible story with that setup.

If, instead, the PCs choices, stats, rolls, etc, have them going door to door looking for the book until they find it, then use profession:scribe to copy it, then leave town on a different path that has them bypass the Red Hand, and hear about the siege of the town later, that's a perfectly viable story, too.

Or, if the PCs find the library, and decide to a) wait for the book to come back on its own, and b) keep reading all the assorted strange volumes contained therein until the Red Hand shows up to siege the town, that's a perfectly viable story, too.

Or, if the PCs don't even go to the town themselves, but instead hire someone else* to retrieve the book for them, while they pursue other jobs / craft magic items / drink themselves silly, that's a perfectly viable story, too.

So, it's not a dichotomy of railroad vs random, it's a dichotomy of preplanned outcome vs unplanned outcome. If you force your stories to follow one particular path, you railroad. If, instead, you let them evolve naturally, you don't.

I personally only care for stories which evolve naturally, where the players have the freedom to interact with the toys in the sandbox - or not - however they see fit. Where the PCs forge their own destiny, instead of having the GM's story read to them.

Unless the PCs opt to surrender (and who does that?), capture scenarios rarely make sense / come up organically.

* bonus points if they choose to hire an agent of the Red Hand for this mission.

RazorChain
2017-08-29, 11:41 AM
@Quertus

You can explain it to him but you can't understand it for him

Numerous people have tried and mostly agree on the definition of railroading. DU just has his own definition.

You can of course keep at it because someone on the internet is wrong but mostly it just derails the thread into the same railroading argument for the umteenth time

Honest Tiefling
2017-08-29, 11:53 AM
The whole point of Railroading is it gives the players a chance. It's not the DM being a jerk and just saying in the first two minutes of game play ''wow, you guy blink once and save the world, high five!". It's the DM keeping the game on the rails so the player's characters have a chance to find and save the elven princess.

And it's not the the player's characters can ''never loose'', but they should always have a chance to ''fight back and try and win''. To just do the ''well, you players made the wrong choice, game over" is cruel.

Personally, I think that if your players cannot solve any challenge unless you limit their options completely and utterly to railroad them into success, you might need to start enforcing some sobriety rules at your table. Yes, weed is legal in more places then it was, please put down the roach.

Quertus
2017-08-29, 03:32 PM
DU does not operate with the same definitions we do, and is incapable of understanding distinctions like:

Railroading is about limiting OUTCOMES, not about the presentation of a scenario.

Railroading, therefore, often leads to nonsensicalities in order to maintain these limited or singular outcomes.

In short, I'm really not sure why people continue to engage with him. I'm by no means a psychiatrist, but I do notice many parallels between the ways DU approaches an argument and the ways the adolescent patients on the psych unit I work at do.
(Ignoring valid points, selective attention, single-minded, no acknowledgement of own faulty logic, appeals to "normalcy" that isn't actually normal, etc.)
Not saying this has anything to do with his mental health, but he argues in a manner as frustratingly backwards as a child uses. He doesn't prove himself right, he just makes people tired of pointing out the ways in which he's wrong. Which I guess makes him feel good just the same?

Just stop engaging.


<revival preacher>Amen, I say. Can I get an Amen?</revival preacher> To all of this. Knowing when to disengage is a skill I've had to learn to maintain (what's left of) my sanity.


@Quertus

You can explain it to him but you can't understand it for him

Numerous people have tried and mostly agree on the definition of railroading. DU just has his own definition.

You can of course keep at it because someone on the internet is wrong but mostly it just derails the thread into the same railroading argument for the umteenth time

I have noticed many of these traits. However, a) I have not myself actually given it a good try to explain railroading, "random games", etc (and, like DU, I was actually rather unimpressed with much of the former attempts); b) these conversations with DU force us to examine things we just take for granted, often facilitating learning; c) I cannot prove what the cause of DU's "symptoms" are; thus, until proven otherwise, I d) cannot discount the possibility that he is attempting to railroad us into learning things. Through a seemingly very backwards route, true, but humans are notoriously difficult creatures to teach. If he is merely playing devil's advocate so that we examine certain principles in certain ways that allow us to see things we wouldn't have seen otherwise, and wouldn't have believed if he had just told us, then I consider it a win.

If, on the other hand, the diagnosis of adolescent psych patient is more accurate, and our learning is merely coincidental, then one would expect us, like the Cult of Squiggy, to eventually stop learning hidden truths. Or, I suppose, in a statistical anomaly, keep learning hidden truths through no fault of our own, which is still a win, imo.

Not to mention the myriad other, seemingly far less likely scenarios. Like that he is neither a genius teacher not a beholder, but is actually a real boy whose experiences are so far afield from anything we know as to render meaningful discourse over shared ground nigh impossible.

But, until sufficient "scientific*" testing has been performed, I'll not blithely assume one conclusion as the definitive truth. Nor will I take the failure of others as sufficient evidence that I am unable to make headway, unless their techniques bear sufficient resemblance to my own.

However, as this thread is only tangentially related to this larger issue, I'll endeavor to refrain from derailing it with a thorough examination of the topic.

* yes, I know that I'm misusing the term, as I am unlikely to create sufficient alternate realities with sufficient DUs to perform a proper test of various scenarios. And how many DUs would I need to have in the control group?

Bulhakov
2017-08-29, 04:36 PM
A few thoughts on the topic from my experience as GM:


- the "captured" scenario is great for starting a new adventure (just look at all the Elder Scroll games, they all start with the main character as a prisoner) , the characters start with no gear and in a controllable environment, plus they will be highly motivated to cooperate to escape.
- in later adventures it is difficult to do without railroading, but there are some ways around it, e.g. make it a logical part of the players plan (they want to get captured to get to a specific NPC in prison), get the players used to difficult choices - "surrender or die" will then be just one of the ones they can make (in one of my more memorable adventures one of my players decided to end himself with a grenade to avoid capture, I let him roll for it, but he epically botched the throw).
- the "escape" scenario should always involve some key piece of information, skill or power in the hands of the characters, that the captors don't know about (or have no reason to expect the characters might have it). This gives the players something to hang on to and does not make the BBEG look stupid.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-29, 09:07 PM
Well, no, your stance has always been, "every game is a railroad". You seem to have since refined your stance to, "every story is a railroad; every game is either a story railroad or something random". Which, while still demonstrably false, at least makes it more clear what you're trying to say.

Odd, I though when I typed ''a complex game needs a Railroad '' that was my stance. I fully say a easy simple, Disney/cartoon game does not need a railroad.



Also, railroading isn't about giving people "a chance" - it's about removing chance from the equation. It's about the GM deciding how things will turn out, and forcing events towards his conclusion.

The difference is I think the removing chance is a good thing and you think it is all ways Bad Wrong Fun.

And any complex plot or story has to have things happen, without the express consent and choice of the players. It's not like the DM stops the game and asks the players and says ''ok, NPC Ned is a mile away from your players and is thinking about doing this. So God Players, how do you vote to alter the reality of the game." It's even worse if your say the characters somehow ''teleport'' anywhere in the game so their characters can ''make all decisions''.



You keep conflating ideas.

Kinda like where you say Railroading is Bad Wrong Fun, but then you do ''something exactly like it'', but then say you don't?



So, how can you have plots without a railroad? Well, as I said before,
To
While it's a perfectly fine story, it's not the only possible story with that setup.

See, your example makes no sense, as your saying if the players just randomly choose something that derails the whole game, you just sit back and do nothing. And, as I said it is a valid way to play, it just seems like a bad way.



So, it's not a dichotomy of railroad vs random, it's a dichotomy of preplanned outcome vs unplanned outcome. If you force your stories to follow one particular path, you railroad. If, instead, you let them evolve naturally, you don't.

So if they evolve naturally to a railroad, then it's ok, right? Like the Gate Guards are tough and powerful and the Pc's stand no chance against them...but they attack anyway and are defeated and captured. Any common sense thinking person would say that was ''pre planned'', but you also said you'd do that, right?

And the odd part is a railroad DM is planning ''to have the Pc's encounter monster X'' and have a fun encounter. The other DM is planning nothing and expect nothing to happen. Ok, so fun game of nothing? Or just random stuff, of course.




Unless the PCs opt to surrender (and who does that?), capture scenarios rarely make sense / come up organically.

Odd, that it feels railroad-like for a DM to decree in my game ''characters do not surrender'' and ''capture scenarios rarely make sense / come up organically'', I have spoken and this is final.

If your all into choices, should you not allow the Pc's to surrender if they want too? Are you really going to say ''no your characters can't surrender, as I say they can't".

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-29, 09:19 PM
So if they evolve naturally to a railroad, then it's ok, right? Like the Gate Guards are tough and powerful and the Pc's stand no chance against them...but they attack anyway and are defeated and captured. Any common sense thinking person would say that was ''pre planned'', but you also said you'd do that, right?

As usual, you're ignoring everything everyone has been telling you. But I do want to touch on one final point. GM motivation can matter for if something is a railroad or not.

If the encounter with the Gate Guards is predestined to end in the PCs being captured because the GM wants it to for the sake of The Story, that's a railroad.

If the encounter with the Gate Guards organically results in the PCs being captured because it makes sense for the guards to be powerful in this instance, and the PCs pick a fight with them and get captured, that's not a railroad. It all depends on if there was a realistic possibility of something else having happened or not.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-30, 08:18 AM
As usual, you're ignoring everything everyone has been telling you. But I do want to touch on one final point. GM motivation can matter for if something is a railroad or not.

If the encounter with the Gate Guards is predestined to end in the PCs being captured because the GM wants it to for the sake of The Story, that's a railroad.

If the encounter with the Gate Guards organically results in the PCs being captured because it makes sense for the guards to be powerful in this instance, and the PCs pick a fight with them and get captured, that's not a railroad. It all depends on if there was a realistic possibility of something else having happened or not.

But this goes back to it is only a Railroad if the players whine and complain it is. So if the DM can defend himself from the hostile players can convince them ''it makes sense'' to the players, it's not a Railroad. If not, it always is.

It is just such and odd and hostile way to play the game. Where the DM has to be extra super careful about everything they do and have a good defense and common sense, so as soon as the hostile players are like ''the DM is railroading!" the DM can say ''no I'm not, look at my proof''.

Though this is not really playing the game, it's just doing some twisted social nightmare where the players sit back and wait for the DM to make a mistake and go ''Gotcha!'' . I guess that is fun for some people.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-30, 08:22 AM
But this goes back to it is only a Railroad if the players whine and complain it is. So if the DM can defend himself from the hostile players can convince them ''it makes sense'' to the players, it's not a Railroad. If not, it always is.

Presumably the GM understands what's going on in his own head... You do, in fact, know if you were willing to have let something else happened.

Fooling other people about that fact is the difference between subtle and overt railroading. Both are bad, but one is certainly more blatantly obnoxious than the other. Blatant railroading just leads to the players realizing that you're a ****ty GM much more quickly than slowly cluing in to the more subtle version does.

Max_Killjoy
2017-08-30, 08:43 AM
Presumably the GM understands what's going on in his own head...

You do, in fact, know if you were willing to have let something else happened, whether other people are fooled or not.

Indeed. Railroading has that element of intent -- the outcome is predetermined by the GM regardless of what the players do. It's not a matter of IF the players figure it out, but WHEN.

And if someone is GMing for people who really do never figure it out... there might be a very strong connection between that and the sense that those players "need" to be railroaded to have fun. :smalleek:

icefractal
2017-08-30, 10:50 AM
I think looking for the strict definition of a railroad is somewhat pointless. It's not like people are so precise when they complain about one. What people generally mean is "That thing you did as GM sucked, because it reduced my agency"

And so obviously, the bar is lower when the result is itself something that reduces agency, such as being captured. Few players would complain if the GM made it overwhelmingly likely that they meet a traveling bard who tells them some news, but they would complain if it's a traveling disguised illithid who mind blasts them all and takes them to the slave pits. The end result is always a factor.

Which also means that following the right process is no absolute defense. If the PCs organically get captured, and organically have no chance to escape ... then the game will organically suck. It won't magically turn fun because the events were all logical in the game world.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-30, 10:56 AM
Which also means that following the right process is no absolute defense. If the PCs organically get captured, and organically have no chance to escape ... then the game will organically suck. It won't magically turn fun because the events were all logical in the game world.

Yes, there are indeed reasons other than railroading for a game to suck.

ko_sct
2017-08-30, 02:29 PM
Disregarding the question of wheiter or not everything that ever was or ever will is railroading...

I generally consider captured scenario fine as long as they make sense. Don't spring them on the players without a figthing chance, but their characters getting captured after a fight to be interrogated/eaten/sacrificied to an elder god is fine.

There's also the question of the type of game and the system. In a dnd game, the character wouldn't be captured until they surrendered or went down. But in a modern realistic game ? Yeah, if you are unarmed, surroundered by 10 cops, with no escape route and your character isn't some kind of MMA champion, I would simply describe how they wrestle your character to the ground and handcuff them.

No need to slow down the game with an impossible figh and trying to figure out the grapple rules of this particuliar system. Especially considering that in my experience, grappling rules are generally both arcane and inadequate.

Quertus
2017-08-30, 03:50 PM
The difference is I think the removing chance is a good thing and you think it is all ways Bad Wrong Fun.

Well, no. Historically, in other threads, you have bemoaned PCs who are good enough to just succeed at things you wanted to be a dramatic coin flip challenge, whereas I opened the "why the hate for win buttons" thread because I didn't understand any reason to dislike removing chance from the equation.

But that's about the players having some modicum of control over their own destiny.

As one school of gaming teaches, you don't put anything down to chance unless both outcomes are acceptable. So I see no reason not to allow players the ability to pick between acceptable options.

This differs from a more controlling GM mindset, that wants to control which outcomes are predetermined - railroaded - and which are in the hands of chance, and chafes at the notion of anything being in the hands of the players.


Kinda like where you say Railroading is Bad Wrong Fun, but then you do ''something exactly like it'', but then say you don't?

Citation please?

If you're talking about my current stance, as relates to running a sandbox, especially as expressed within the confines of this thread, I'm curious what you've misinterpreted / where I've been unclear.


See, your example makes no sense, as your saying if the players just randomly choose something that derails the whole game, you just sit back and do nothing. And, as I said it is a valid way to play, it just seems like a bad way.

Wow. I probably should just ignore everything else you've written, and focus here, because this paragraph is extremely content rich.

A) you can't "derail" the game if it isn't on rails to begin with.

B) I'm mildly confused how you are using your words that you can call something simultaneously "valid" and "bad".

C) the players aren't "randomly" choosing something, they're choosing something.

D) the GM doesn't exactly "sit back and do nothing", he, generally speaking, roleplays the world, and adjudicates the rules.

Let's say that "Darth Ultron" and "Quertus" are PCs in the Giant's sandbox. There is a little structure, like where discussions about various topics belong, and a few rules, like the requirement for a modicum of civility in discourse.

But, outside the enforcement of these few rules, the Giant does not force the discussions to go a particular, pre-planned way. He does not require that specific PCs will engage in specific discussions, does not require that threads will reach a particular conclusion.

Would you want to post on a forum where the moderator was such a control freak that they demanded control over which threads you posted in, how the thread would resolve, and which other threads would open up because of it?

This is what railroading is. It is the GM choosing what makes a valid story. It is the GM removing the option for the players to forge their PCs' destiny.


And so, E) the GM certainly doesn't act to curtail the PCs intended actions, outside the scope of the established social contract, beyond following the game physics to their logical conclusion - and certainly not to force a particular pre-planned conclusion.


So if they evolve naturally to a railroad, then it's ok, right? Like the Gate Guards are tough and powerful and the Pc's stand no chance against them...but they attack anyway and are defeated and captured. Any common sense thinking person would say that was ''pre planned'', but you also said you'd do that, right?

No need to add more elements here. If the PCs encounter the army of the Red Hand, and choose to attack them, and are overwhelmed, and choose to fight to the bitter end, and the Red Hand captures them, then, no, that's not a railroad, because the PCs had the option to do many different things there - those things you described as "random", like choosing a different path home, avoiding the army, fleeing, or not even going to the town in the first place (EDIT: and I forgot the seemingly unlikely possibility of the party actually defeating the army of the Red Hand). These are all valid choices, and all result in telling the story of what the party actually accomplished on their own merits.


And the odd part is a railroad DM is planning ''to have the Pc's encounter monster X'' and have a fun encounter. The other DM is planning nothing and expect nothing to happen. Ok, so fun game of nothing? Or just random stuff, of course.

Imagine if none of those elements are under the GMs control. Imagine if there isn't even a world for the GM to run, they are exclusively an arbiter of the rules.

Sounds odd, I know. But I've seen it. And I've talked with GMs who set up such huge multiplayer scenarios for cons. The GM simply sets up what he believes will make an interesting game, with different characters having different (often opposed) quests, and different pieces of different puzzles.

The GM neither has nor needs any control over who does what, or what the final outcome is, in order for the players to tell the story of their characters in that game.

It's a game of whatever the players make of a given interesting scenario. Kinda like this discussion. Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, TARDIS!


Odd, that it feels railroad-like for a DM to decree in my game ''characters do not surrender'' and ''capture scenarios rarely make sense / come up organically'', I have spoken and this is final.

If your all into choices, should you not allow the Pc's to surrender if they want too? Are you really going to say ''no your characters can't surrender, as I say they can't".

Oh, is this what you misread? In case I wasn't clear, let me try again: I was talking historic statistics and general player mentality. That is, contrary to "wanting to survive being in character for most PCs", very few PCs, IME, actually surrender. Most players would rather have their characters fight to the bitter end than surrender (or flee).

As to it not coming up organically... very few systems, IME, make it particularly easy to take prisoners. In D&D, to skirt the Playgrounder Fallacy, most monsters want to eat you, some aren't sentient enough to accept a surrender, and, outside intentionally taking a penalty to attack, it's rare for an attack to land a PC in "unconscious but stable" range, let alone to do so to an entire party of PCs. So, unless the opposition is clearly trying to take prisoners, it's unlikely to happen "organically".

And so, ignoring everything else, this is why I would chafe at most capture scenarios. They reek of railroad.

Amphetryon
2017-08-30, 04:09 PM
@Quertus:
The PCs choose to have an audience with the Prince of the region. They get that meeting through their own efforts. During the course of the interview, the party's Rogue picks up an unattended item that turns out to be valuable to the Prince. It is not discovered missing until after the PCs leave. Is this railroading? Is it railroading for the Prince to send mercenaries after the party in order to retrieve the item & bring the party to trial? If so, why?

The Fury
2017-08-30, 06:01 PM
As to it not coming up organically... very few systems, IME, make it particularly easy to take prisoners. In D&D, to skirt the Playgrounder Fallacy, most monsters want to eat you, some aren't sentient enough to accept a surrender, and, outside intentionally taking a penalty to attack, it's rare for an attack to land a PC in "unconscious but stable" range, let alone to do so to an entire party of PCs. So, unless the opposition is clearly trying to take prisoners, it's unlikely to happen "organically".

And so, ignoring everything else, this is why I would chafe at most capture scenarios. They reek of railroad.

Most monsters, sure. Though what are the most commonly fought monsters? That varies from group to group but in my own experience, I'm so used to fighting bandits, cultists, orcs, goblins and such that I'd consider them the standard fare. All of these are capable of accepting surrender and taking prisoners if they're convinced the situation warrants it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the Playgrounder Fallacy," but I'm assuming it's something to the tune of "all RPGs are D&D and all D&D is 3.5," if that's wrong please correct me. Accepting that, the standard bad guy in just about every other system I've played is still about as human(ish) as the character I'm playing and therefore can accept surrender just as well.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-30, 06:28 PM
Indeed. Railroading has that element of intent -- the outcome is predetermined by the GM regardless of what the players do. It's not a matter of IF the players figure it out, but WHEN.

And if someone is GMing for people who really do never figure it out... there might be a very strong connection between that and the sense that those players "need" to be railroaded to have fun. :smalleek:

Well....As a Offical Representative of the Hardcore Railroad Engineers 3000, I can tell you: The Players all most never know.

I'm a master of illusion, as I've mentioned before, so any player that is not a jerk really does not ''suspect'' anything. Like even when I know the group will get captured, no matter what, they will get like three bits where they ''all most'' escape.

But then it does fit with my general style of ''Long Encounters''. I really don't go for ''oh the characters are hit with a spell and caught, haha" type encounters. The vast majority of all my encounters are crazy action packed romps of a lot more ''Three Stooges/80's action movie/Southpark Rule of Cool '' then the ''My character takes a five foot step and then uses a standard action to...zzzzzzz".




A) you can't "derail" the game if it isn't on rails to begin with.

This ''rail'' here is the plot, not the railroad. It's where the players make a wrong turn while following the plot. Like say the players are looking for some buried treasure, misread a clue, and head way off yonder. A railroading DM will send them back ''nope, not this way, try again''. But in your game you'd just sit back and let the players go off into the yonder, never find the treasure and just eventually end the game and tell them ''oh well ".



B) I'm mildly confused how you are using your words that you can call something simultaneously "valid" and "bad".
Plenty of things are valid, but bad.



C) the players aren't "randomly" choosing something, they're choosing something.
But as it is a game they can't have ''super duper wild and crazy choose anything freedom''. It's kinda like Freedom of Speech: you can say what you want, but can't yell ''Fire!'' in a crowd. For there to be a game, there must be limits on the players choice.



D) the GM doesn't exactly "sit back and do nothing", he, generally speaking, roleplays the world, and adjudicates the rules.

Again, assuming the game makes sense and has a plot and goal and all...part of the DM's job is to keep the focus there. An RPG can easily wander far out into left field, and that is why the game has a DM there to make sure that does not happen.



Would you want to post on a forum where the moderator was such a control freak that they demanded control over which threads you posted in, how the thread would resolve, and which other threads would open up because of it?

Your example is missing the part of ''We agree to post for fun and what to have fun doing it, and agree that the moderator is not the enemy, but is here to create/run/abdicate the forum only so we (and they) have fun.



This is what railroading is. It is the GM choosing what makes a valid story. It is the GM removing the option for the players to forge their PCs destiny.

You seem to really be stuck on the All-might Special Player, and like how the DM and game should just bend over backwards and crawl on the ground behind them.



Imagine if none of those elements are under the GMs control. Imagine if there isn't even a world for the GM to run, they are exclusively an arbiter of the rules.

You really lost me here. What if the characters where just, what, floating in a blank nothingness? And what the players could just like each play a solo game where they get endless wishes? Or like where the player just stays home and writes their novel?



The GM neither has nor needs any control over who does what, or what the final outcome is, in order for the players to tell the story of their characters in that game.

Again this is back to the DM doing nothing proactive in the game and just sitting under the table, begging the players to do something so the DM can react to it...a little.

Again, I guess this casual DMing is valid. The DM can just sit back, and let the players just do whatever they want. Once in a while the DM can pop his head in to say something quick, but not too much. And when the players, from up on high, decide to do something, they drag the Dm over. ''We want to fight a troll, you DM, be the troll and we will fight you''.



Oh, is this what you misread? In case I wasn't clear, let me try again: I was talking historic statistics and general player mentality. That is, contrary to "wanting to survive being in character for most PCs", very few PCs, IME, actually surrender. Most players would rather have their characters fight to the bitter end than surrender (or flee).

I'm sure we encounter diffrent players. The vast majority of players I game with ''get'' and ''agree'' with the idea that sometimes it is just best to ''give up and surrender''.

Really, I find the only players that ''can't'' give up are the optimizing jerks who are so afraid of loosing the item(s) that make their special character so special. And it's a 3.5E/Pathfinder thing mostly.



As to it not coming up organically... very few systems, IME, make it particularly easy to take prisoners. In D&D, to skirt the Playgrounder Fallacy, most monsters want to eat you, some aren't sentient enough to accept a surrender, and, outside intentionally taking a penalty to attack, it's rare for an attack to land a PC in "unconscious but stable" range, let alone to do so to an entire party of PCs. So, unless the opposition is clearly trying to take prisoners, it's unlikely to happen "organically".


You know...D&D, at least 1-3E/Pathfinder make it really, really, really, really easy to take prisoners. There are tons of items, things, spells, abilities and such just for that. Really, even combat is perfect for that (as you know zero hit points is not auto die or anything). And sure there are some monsters that would just eat yummy characters.....but there are just as many that will not do that.

And slavery, and such, is very common in D&D.

Really, again, I find only the optimizing jerk players/DM to have the ''mustz killz everythingz'' mentality.


@Quertus:
The PCs choose to have an audience with the Prince of the region. They get that meeting through their own efforts. During the course of the interview, the party's Rogue picks up an unattended item that turns out to be valuable to the Prince. It is not discovered missing until after the PCs leave. Is this railroading? Is it railroading for the Prince to send mercenaries after the party in order to retrieve the item & bring the party to trial? If so, why?

Takes a guess at the answer: It depends on ''what the DM was thinking''.

A)If the DM was just a innocent butterfly and just innocently, ''but following common sense the players would agree with'' puts any unattended item anywhere, and the player chooses to take the item. No Railroad....and it is a beautiful game.

Z)(Me) The DM, knowing both Bob the player and Zork the Rogue, places an unattended item that he knows will catch the eye, somewhere it can be seen, with the predetermined intention of hopping to get the player character to take the bait and steal the item and the player sort of chooses(under the evil influence of the DM) to take the item. Then Railroad, Bad Wrong Fun.

Max_Killjoy
2017-08-30, 07:06 PM
Well....As a Offical Representative of the Hardcore Railroad Engineers 3000, I can tell you: The Players all most never know.

I'm a master of illusion, as I've mentioned before, so any player that is not a jerk really does not ''suspect'' anything.


Like I said above, this is far more likely to be your unique experience based on having, um, "special" players sit at your table.

Almost everything you post about GMing gives the impression of a lifetime of fringe-case players giving you a very odd set of expectations about what players are like, what they want, and how they behave.

To 99.whatever % of us who've GMed, your statements are completely alien.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-30, 08:53 PM
To 99.whatever % of us who've GMed, your statements are completely alien.

I agree I'm Unique.

Quertus
2017-08-31, 01:11 PM
Most monsters, sure. Though what are the most commonly fought monsters? That varies from group to group but in my own experience, I'm so used to fighting bandits, cultists, orcs, goblins and such that I'd consider them the standard fare. All of these are capable of accepting surrender and taking prisoners if they're convinced the situation warrants it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the Playgrounder Fallacy," but I'm assuming it's something to the tune of "all RPGs are D&D and all D&D is 3.5," if that's wrong please correct me. Accepting that, the standard bad guy in just about every other system I've played is still about as human(ish) as the character I'm playing and therefore can accept surrender just as well.

Pretty much dead on regarding the Playgrounder Fallacy. Usually, it's invoked when us Playgrounders hear a discussion, and just assume it's about D&D 3.5, and make comments based on that assumption.

As to opponents... In D&D, I'm usually fighting monsters; WoD Mages would probably rather not be brainwashed by the Technocracy; Chaos cultists and Imperium agents aren't likely to surrender to one another, and surrendering to Orcs, Tyrranids, or Necrons is suicide; I can't really remember a time Superman surrendered; and cortex bombs and groups dedicated to your extermination both tend to discourage surrendering. So, uh, no dice there, either.

It's not that some of those things aren't able to accept a surrender, it's that valiant defeat is generally preferable to the alternative.


Well....As a Offical Representative of the Hardcore Railroad Engineers 3000, I can tell you: The Players all most never know.

I'm a master of illusion, as I've mentioned before, so any player that is not a jerk really does not ''suspect'' anything. Like even when I know the group will get captured, no matter what, they will get like three bits where they ''all most'' escape.

But then it does fit with my general style of ''Long Encounters''. I really don't go for ''oh the characters are hit with a spell and caught, haha" type encounters. The vast majority of all my encounters are crazy action packed romps of a lot more ''Three Stooges/80's action movie/Southpark Rule of Cool '' then the ''My character takes a five foot step and then uses a standard action to...zzzzzzz".

Even if that's true, consider the following: a) railroading gets such a bad name how? Someone somewhere must be noticing; b) there is no guarantee that one of your players doesn't have more ranks in "spot railroad" than you put into "disguise railroad" (and there's more of them than there are of you); c) if railroading was a good thing, why would you need to disguise it?


This ''rail'' here is the plot, not the railroad. It's where the players make a wrong turn while following the plot. Like say the players are looking for some buried treasure, misread a clue, and head way off yonder. A railroading DM will send them back ''nope, not this way, try again''. But in your game you'd just sit back and let the players go off into the yonder, never find the treasure and just eventually end the game and tell them ''oh well ".

There are lots of plots that lots of NPCs are following. There is no "The Plot" in a sandbox, beyond what the PCs make. So, by definition, whatever the PCs are doing is "the plot". Just like whatever thread(s) we open here constitute "the plot".

And, just like when you have the monsters kill the PC who decided to solo a group way above his pay grade, the players need to develop the player skills to determine what can be a successful venture, because they are not guaranteed success at whatever they choose to make "the plot".


But as it is a game they can't have ''super duper wild and crazy choose anything freedom''. It's kinda like Freedom of Speech: you can say what you want, but can't yell ''Fire!'' in a crowd. For there to be a game, there must be limits on the players choice.

... You're not wrong. Usually, part of the "social contract" layer of the game deals with whether / how the players can add more toys to the sandbox, whether / how the GM can add toys to the sandbox, what kind of toys the players are looking to play with, what (if anything) everyone is hoping to get out of the sandbox. But such rules live at a different layer, and are independent of the concept of a sandbox, especially as regards defining it as something distinctly different from a railroad.

Actually, the "adding toys" bit is rather telling: a sandbox GM might add content to allow the players to visit a section of the map that they hadn't detailed; a railroad GM might add content to prevent the players from doing the same.


Again, assuming the game makes sense and has a plot and goal and all...part of the DM's job is to keep the focus there. An RPG can easily wander far out into left field, and that is why the game has a DM there to make sure that does not happen.

In a sandbox, creating a plot is the players' responsibility. The GMs job is to put interesting toys in the sandbox.


You seem to really be stuck on the All-might Special Player, and like how the DM and game should just bend over backwards and crawl on the ground behind them.

If getting to have a say in what the game is about makes a player "special", then yes. If the GM wants "GM's story time", where the GM reads the players a story and gets upset when they make noise, count me out.


Imagine if none of those elements are under the GMs control. Imagine if there isn't even a world for the GM to run, they are exclusively an arbiter of the rules.

Sounds odd, I know. But I've seen it. And I've talked with GMs who set up such huge multiplayer scenarios for cons. The GM simply sets up what he believes will make an interesting game, with different characters having different (often opposed) quests, and different pieces of different puzzles.

The GM neither has nor needs any control over who does what, or what the final outcome is, in order for the players to tell the story of their characters in that game.


You really lost me here. What if the characters where just, what, floating in a blank nothingness? And what the players could just like each play a solo game where they get endless wishes? Or like where the player just stays home and writes their novel?

Again this is back to the DM doing nothing proactive in the game and just sitting under the table, begging the players to do something so the DM can react to it...a little.

You took out the context for these two statements, so I included it above. It can be tough to grasp, so let me try again.

Imagine a game where the only interactive objects were the other PCs. Where a group of, say, 20-150 players were all role-playing, say, nobles at a ball. As a one-shot at a convention.

One noble has the goal to, say, turn his wealth and items into political power, get support for his bill from at least 3 of the 5 senators, and to try to slip poison into his rival's food.

Another noble might be trying to learn the identity of her father's killer, retrieve an old family heirloom, and prevent the previously mentioned bill from passing.

A third noble, who witnessed the previous character's father's death and can provide clues to the murderer's identity, is trying to hunt down a supply of rate herbs, and is mildly interested in one or two of the bills being discussed, but is mostly focused on trying to uncover the identity of a werewolf he believes to be at the ball.

One of the senators is secretly a werewolf, and is in possession of the aforementioned heirloom, believing it to help control his transformations. He desires to collect several more items which he believes contain magical powers, without drawing attention to himself.

The GM merely sets up the scenario, and lets the players have at it. The GM never takes any actions in this style of game, they merely exist to set it up, and to act as an arbiter of rules (if there are any rules to arbitrate).

In the scenario I was describing, the GM not only doesn't act, the GM doesn't even react, because there are no elements of the game under the GM's control for the GM to act or react with.

Similarly, one can simply set up interesting scenarios, wind up the NPCs, and let them go. The NPCs keep being very active in the background, and only come into the foreground when the PCs encounter them, or hear of the results of their actions.


You know...D&D, at least 1-3E/Pathfinder make it really, really, really, really easy to take prisoners. There are tons of items, things, spells, abilities and such just for that. Really, even combat is perfect for that (as you know zero hit points is not auto die or anything).

I think 0 HP was auto die until optional rules in 2e. But, even in 3e, even against d6 damage goblins, even if they don't score a crit, they're dropping you down to somewhere between 0 and -5. Assuming an even distribution over a 6-man party, by my math, that's (1-(.9^5))*(1-(.9^6))*(1-(.9^7))*(1-(.9^8))*(1-(.9^9)) = .41*.47*.53*.57*.61 = less than a 4% chance that someone won't die from blood loss unless attended to. So, no, not terribly bloody likely, even under the best of circumstances, to happen by chance.


@Quertus:
The PCs choose to have an audience with the Prince of the region. They get that meeting through their own efforts. During the course of the interview, the party's Rogue picks up an unattended item that turns out to be valuable to the Prince. It is not discovered missing until after the PCs leave. Is this railroading? Is it railroading for the Prince to send mercenaries after the party in order to retrieve the item & bring the party to trial? If so, why?


Takes a guess at the answer: It depends on ''what the DM was thinking''.

A)If the DM was just a innocent butterfly and just innocently, ''but following common sense the players would agree with'' puts any unattended item anywhere, and the player chooses to take the item. No Railroad....and it is a beautiful game.

Z)(Me) The DM, knowing both Bob the player and Zork the Rogue, places an unattended item that he knows will catch the eye, somewhere it can be seen, with the predetermined intention of hopping to get the player character to take the bait and steal the item and the player sort of chooses(under the evil influence of the DM) to take the item. Then Railroad, Bad Wrong Fun.

Hmmm... I'm gonna steal a notion from Koo. It may be contrivance for the GM to add elements that he knows that the PCs will react to in a certain way. But if he allows the PCs to steal the item, or not, then it's not a railroad. If the GM allows the PCs to avoid the mercenaries, or not; allows the PCs to attempt to bribe or kill the mercenaries, or not; allows the PCs to rig the trial, or not, then it's not a railroad. If they force one particular outcome, railroad.

Amphetryon
2017-08-31, 01:29 PM
Hmmm... I'm gonna steal a notion from Koo. It may be contrivance for the GM to add elements that he knows that the PCs will react to in a certain way. But if he allows the PCs to steal the item, or not, then it's not a railroad. If the GM allows the PCs to avoid the mercenaries, or not; allows the PCs to attempt to bribe or kill the mercenaries, or not; allows the PCs to rig the trial, or not, then it's not a railroad. If they force one particular outcome, railroad.

I would argue that leaving out any detail of items a party's Rogue (or Rogue-type) might want to pinch during a visit to the Prince's palace is more of a contrivance than having said items described.

I asked, because this is the sort of scenario with which I am extremely familiar as a Player in several systems, yet one that you apparently dismiss as "rarely coming up organically." This, in turn, tells me something about our play experiences, as reported here.

Quertus
2017-08-31, 02:49 PM
I would argue that leaving out any detail of items a party's Rogue (or Rogue-type) might want to pinch during a visit to the Prince's palace is more of a contrivance than having said items described.

I asked, because this is the sort of scenario with which I am extremely familiar as a Player in several systems, yet one that you apparently dismiss as "rarely coming up organically." This, in turn, tells me something about our play experiences, as reported here.

Personally, I prefer to have a kleptomaniac Paladin in the party, and the rogue to be skilled at returning items in the dead of night. :smalltongue:

If the party rogue is stealing things from benevolent authority figures, you turn him in, and/or kill him for working against the party (and, per social contract, this may just automatically work, or be a contested action if you have no rules against such).

So, no, if you let it, "rogue type is an idiot who gets himself and/or the party in trouble" comes up organically all the time. But, "people who are able to capture the party, whom the party is willing to be captured by"? Not so much.

Darth Ultron
2017-08-31, 05:33 PM
If getting to have a say in what the game is about makes a player "special", then yes. If the GM wants "GM's story time", where the GM reads the players a story and gets upset when they make noise, count me out.

The part I really don't get is the unfairness. You get all up in arms about no ''GM story time'', yet you bend over backwards for ''Player story time''.

I see it more as there is a game story, the combination of each players characters and the world together, where both the DM and all the players tell a part of the story.



The GM merely sets up the scenario, and lets the players have at it. The GM never takes any actions in this style of game, they merely exist to set it up, and to act as an arbiter of rules (if there are any rules to arbitrate).

You make the DM's roll out to be no fun and a burden, if not an out right punishment. I can't see very many people wanting to be a Dm in such a game. Like they will be told to just sit down and be quiet unless a player needs you to do something for them.



In the scenario I was describing, the GM not only doesn't act, the GM doesn't even react, because there are no elements of the game under the GM's control for the GM to act or react with.

I'd guess the DM could even just stay home? Or find another game?

The big difference is I want everyone in the game to have fun, both the DM and all the players. You, are overly player focused and just want to dismiss the DM or do worse to them. But I guess your style works in the ''other'' games out there where everyone just ''plays the game'' or something. (I'm not really sure what games, but I know there are tons of the ''I hate D&D so I made a better game!'' ones ). And I guess such a game works, if your playing with a bunch of people that think exactly like you do about everything.

I guess it safe to say you like things like ''sports games should not keep score as everyone is just playing to have fun playing'' and ''everyone all ways gets a trophy''. And that is fine, as long as your not forcing others to do it ''only your way''.

I guess this put us at the impasse though:

You want all DMs to have no fun and only have players have fun doing that in a game, and I want to run a fun game for everyone in the game(including the Dm).

I know you might say that when you typed ''the DM takes no actions'' you did not mean ''no actions as the DM does nothing'', but that is sure how it is read.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-08-31, 06:05 PM
If you need to railroad to have fun then that probably says something about you as a person.

ImNotTrevor
2017-08-31, 06:13 PM
The part I really don't get is the unfairness. You get all up in arms about no ''GM story time'', yet you bend over backwards for ''Player story time''.

I see it more as there is a game story, the combination of each players characters and the world together, where both the DM and all the players tell a part of the story.



You make the DM's roll out to be no fun and a burden, if not an out right punishment. I can't see very many people wanting to be a Dm in such a game. Like they will be told to just sit down and be quiet unless a player needs you to do something for them.



I'd guess the DM could even just stay home? Or find another game?

The big difference is I want everyone in the game to have fun, both the DM and all the players. You, are overly player focused and just want to dismiss the DM or do worse to them. But I guess your style works in the ''other'' games out there where everyone just ''plays the game'' or something. (I'm not really sure what games, but I know there are tons of the ''I hate D&D so I made a better game!'' ones ). And I guess such a game works, if your playing with a bunch of people that think exactly like you do about everything.

I guess it safe to say you like things like ''sports games should not keep score as everyone is just playing to have fun playing'' and ''everyone all ways gets a trophy''. And that is fine, as long as your not forcing others to do it ''only your way''.

I guess this put us at the impasse though:

You want all DMs to have no fun and only have players have fun doing that in a game, and I want to run a fun game for everyone in the game(including the Dm).

I know you might say that when you typed ''the DM takes no actions'' you did not mean ''no actions as the DM does nothing'', but that is sure how it is read.

1/10 strawmen. Too obviously not a thing they talked about at all. Not even an attempt at subtlety. Just outright lying about what another person said.

Ain't worth arguing with liars.

Amphetryon
2017-08-31, 08:50 PM
Personally, I prefer to have a kleptomaniac Paladin in the party, and the rogue to be skilled at returning items in the dead of night. :smalltongue:

If the party rogue is stealing things from benevolent authority figures, you turn him in, and/or kill him for working against the party (and, per social contract, this may just automatically work, or be a contested action if you have no rules against such).

So, no, if you let it, "rogue type is an idiot who gets himself and/or the party in trouble" comes up organically all the time. But, "people who are able to capture the party, whom the party is willing to be captured by"? Not so much.
Depending on GM and edition (I'm presuming you're moving the discussion to D&D, as opposed to the generic scenario with someone of roguish archetype, here), the kleptomaniac Paladin is losing his powers. Also, if you can explain how that somehow improves the scenario regarding social contract and the party's apparent responsibility to turn in the Paladin, I'd appreciate it.

Where did I include "benevolent," or any synonym thereof, in the scenario? If you are reading descriptors into scenarios that aren't included, that's one problem in our communication.


There's a fairly large gulf between "picks up unattended item" and "idiot who gets himself and/or the party in trouble." If you can't see the difference, that's another problem in our communication. The sly use of second person pronoun to place blame for the scenario was cute, though.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-01, 06:29 AM
If you need to railroad to have fun then that probably says something about you as a person.

It does, it says I like to play and run RPGs where everyone has fun all the time, no matter what. I think it is a good thing.



There's a fairly large gulf between "picks up unattended item" and "idiot who gets himself and/or the party in trouble." If you can't see the difference, that's another problem in our communication. The sly use of second person pronoun to place blame for the scenario was cute, though.

Humm...kind of interesting that this is player Railroading here...and it is a great example.

In a general sense, I'm never going to allow a single player to take an action that will derail the game that me, the DM, and the other players want to keep going. So the consciences will mostly just effect the single character. I'm a big fan of curses, so something like ''taking damage if the character steals'' would work.

But then there is the Jerk Railroading player , who is specifically playing the game to ruin it for the others, I'll show that character no mercy.


So lets just drop Railroading and say DM Agency. It's my cool new idea. DM Agency is a lot like player agency, except unlike player agency that is self centered and selfish, DM Agency is centered on the gameplay and is selfless (mostly). A player using player agency just wants some super special power to make a ''meaningful decision'' for their own character and interests to make the game for fun for just themselves. A DM using DM Agency wants to make the game fun(or interesting or exciting or such) for everyone all the time.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-01, 06:57 AM
It does, it says I like to play and run RPGs where everyone has fun all the time, no matter what. I think it is a good thing.


Weird how all my players and myself have fun without any need to railroad, since according to you that's basically impossible.

And yet, many of us do it.

In before "but ackshually ur jus railroading and sayin you arent" I'm really not. I prep NPC motivations and what they plan to do without PC involvement. Everything else I handle as it comes up. I even do things like let the players define and name problems. For example:
"So your town in currently in a state of mourning over a recent tragedy. What happened, and who's to blame?"
Then I take notes and this problem comes back later, and my players automatically care more because it's more personal to them.


On a more general note, maybe I can make a distinction here for the rest of us since DU will never agree to use common definitions, but maybe this will help someone else:

For a scenario:
An artificially imposed PREMISE = Contrivance.
An artificially imposed OUTCOME = Railroading.

You can have contrivance without railroading.
(There's randomly some thugs here in the Megamart for... no good reason. But it's 100% up to the players how they deal with it and what happens, in a way that makes sense.)

You can have railroading without contrivance
(There are royal guards here because it's the king's throneroom and that makes sense. No matter what you do or say, the King will become angry and the guards will easily capture all the PCs, no matter what they do or try.)

You can have both:
(There are goblins here in the farmer's barn for no reason. No matter what you do or say, they will escape)

You can have neither:
(The Sandtigers are here because you're miles within their territory, and that makes sense. How this situation resolves depends entirely on the actions of the PCs, in a way that makes sense.)

Saying that Contrivance and Railroading are the same thing is incorrect.

Contrivance deals with SETUP of a scenario
Railroading deals with OUTCOMES of a scenario.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-01, 07:18 AM
On a more general note, maybe I can make a distinction here for the rest of us since DU will never agree to use common definitions, but maybe this will help someone else:

For a scenario:
An artificially imposed PREMISE = Contrivance.
An artificially imposed OUTCOME = Railroading.

Yeah, that looks good to me. If something good has come of this stupid nonsense argument it was making me step back and consider this.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-01, 08:26 AM
Yeah, that looks good to me. If something good has come of this stupid nonsense argument it was making me step back and consider this.

Agreed. I will say that personally, I can't shake the feeling that everything is a contrivance to some degree or another. Everything in-game exists where it does because someone chose it to be, whether the DM, the setting builder, the scenario writer, or whoever. As a necessity, we gloss over or ignore the 90% of the absolutely boring things (adventurers rarely answer calls of nature "on-screen" unless something happens that makes it interesting, for example). We're effectively seeing the "good parts version" of the adventure. That makes me much more forgiving of contrivance than of railroading.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-01, 08:33 AM
Weird how all my players and myself have fun without any need to railroad, since according to you that's basically impossible.

Your mixing what I said though. I said you can't have complex plots and stories without DM Agency (aka Railroading). But you can have fun doing anything, really. And, as I have said, plenty of people like



And yet, many of us do it.

And, as I have said, plenty of people like simple, direct, casual games and have fun playing that sort of game. It's like playing Checkers over Risk.



In before "but ackshually ur jus railroading and sayin you arent" I'm really not. I prep NPC motivations and what they plan to do without PC involvement. Everything else I handle as it comes up. I even do things like let the players define and name problems. For example:
"So your town in currently in a state of mourning over a recent tragedy. What happened, and who's to blame?"
Then I take notes and this problem comes back later, and my players automatically care more because it's more personal to them.

Well, the ''side table Dming style'' is not a traditional game...not that there is anything wrong with it. But it's not a normal game.

And ''NPC reactions'' are only like part of the game.



On a more general note, maybe I can make a distinction here for the rest of us since DU will never agree to use common definitions, but maybe this will help someone else:

I wish we could agree. The problem is people want definitions like ''railroading is everything wrong ever'' and I want more detailed types.



For a scenario:
An artificially imposed PREMISE = Contrivance.
An artificially imposed OUTCOME = Railroading.

See the part that I really don't get is Railroading: An artificially imposed OUTCOME, AND that outcome is that the characters have a reasonable chance to play out the plot and make sure everyone has fun.

And it would seem like any traditional RPG with a all powerful/all knowing DM and players that choose to play out the game only through their individual characters, and a complex plot and story, has to do railroad things.



You can have railroading without contrivance
(There are royal guards here because it's the king's throneroom and that makes sense. No matter what you do or say, the King will become angry and the guards will easily capture all the PCs, no matter what they do or try.)

I'm going to take this as an example of the ''NPC motivation and reaction'' you mentioned above.

So if YOU make an angry king, it's not Railroading as you say it's not, right? But for me, anything I have the king do is Railroading?

And the ''fight'' is just full of endless questions. It depends on ''what kind of royal guards did the DM make?" and ''How aggressive will the DM be in the combat?" and "Will the DM optimize?'' and "Will the DM use strategy?'' . There is really no ''standard'' and even if the DM ''just'' makes the Royal Guards ''a challenge'' that still leaves a huge wide range of ''guard types and builds ". Simply put the DM can capture or really do anything they want to....even if they want to hide behind the rules and defend themselves from hostile players...because D&D is a complex game with lots of options a DM can do. So this along makes it very shady to know if any ''railroading '' when on or not.

And that is on top of the other questions like aggression and tactics. If you take a single encounter of X guards, and give it to two DM's, each can play it very differently. Some DM's, for example, might do the Dumb Movie thing where only a couple guards attack at once and the rest wait and watch. I'm more of the DM where each character will be attacked by a couple guards and the guards will work together and use a combination of skills, abilities, items and tactics on the characters. So in like two rounds, my well played guards can easily knock down, grapple, pin, hold and capture a character.

But me, as DM, simply playing good and capturing the players character is not railroading, right? In theory I could have rolled bad, and the player could have rolled good.....so it was possible, though very unlikely, that the character could have escaped.

So does that count, if the player just has a ''one in a billion'' chance, then it's on Railroading?



You can have both:
(There are goblins here in the farmer's barn for no reason. No matter what you do or say, they will escape)

But here are you talking like the DM just stands up and says ''the goblins escape, I have spoken''? Otherwise this comes back to the players just whining and crying when they don't like something. Like goblins, being goblins, make small sized escape plans. And again, this comes down to DM skill and role playing skills and roll playing skills. Some DM's can make the goblins escape easy enough, and the players will have very little chance of stopping them. Even an average DM might be able to do a fair escape. But it's not railroading if the players have a one in a billion chance, right?



You can have neither:
(The Sandtigers are here because you're miles within their territory, and that makes sense. How this situation resolves depends entirely on the actions of the PCs, in a way that makes sense.)

Sadly though, this is ''makes sense to the players''. And that is a big problem. As the players don't know all the details, they can very easily feel ''short changed or targeted''. The goblins pulls a quick move and get away...the players are fooled and never saw it coming. But instead of just accepting it, they will whine and cry and complain that the DM ''railroaded everything''.

It's back too the old ''railroading is whatever the players don't like''.


So if the Players a chance, no matter how small, then it is not railroading? And nothing else matters as long as the players have a chance?

So we are saying it's only Railroading if the DM is a Jerk, period.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-01, 08:50 AM
Agreed. I will say that personally, I can't shake the feeling that everything is a contrivance to some degree or another. Everything in-game exists where it does because someone chose it to be, whether the DM, the setting builder, the scenario writer, or whoever. As a necessity, we gloss over or ignore the 90% of the absolutely boring things (adventurers rarely answer calls of nature "on-screen" unless something happens that makes it interesting, for example). We're effectively seeing the "good parts version" of the adventure. That makes me much more forgiving of contrivance than of railroading.

I'm inclined to agree. When it comes to contrivance the amount of it seems like the important part. And I do think different groups and different games have different degrees of tolerance for that amount.

PersonMan
2017-09-01, 09:11 AM
So if YOU make an angry king, it's not Railroading as you say it's not, right? But for me, anything I have the king do is Railroading?

No. You do know there's a difference between "the king is mad" and the "the king gets mad at the PCs and orders them to be arrested", right?

The first you can react to, and work with. Maybe the king is angry now, but the PCs can calm him down if they present him the head of the orc warlord who has been attacking him for years.

The latter just happens. The PCs say all the right things, do everything right? The PCs give all their gear to the king and swear loyalty forever? Irrelevant, the king gets angry and throws them in prison and the guards just win any possible fight.


And the ''fight'' is just full of endless questions.

Which aren't relevant here.


I'm more of the DM where each character will be attacked by a couple guards and the guards will work together and use a combination of skills, abilities, items and tactics on the characters.

That's nice, but irrelevant.


So does that count, if the player just has a ''one in a billion'' chance, then it's on Railroading?

It's railroading if they're forced into that situation by the GM.

PCs walk into the king's throne room, and call him names. The king gets angry, and demands his guards arrest them. The PCs are too weak to win the fight and are captured. The PCs did something, and as a result are now in prison.

PCs walk into the king's throne room, succeed a very difficult (for their level) check to behave properly, use all the right titles, and so on. The king gets angry anyways, and demands his guards arrest them. The PCs are too weak to win the fight and are captured. The PCs did something, but it had no effect on the result, which is them being in prison.


Like goblins, being goblins, make small sized escape plans. And again, this comes down to DM skill and role playing skills and roll playing skills. Some DM's can make the goblins escape easy enough, and the players will have very little chance of stopping them. Even an average DM might be able to do a fair escape. But it's not railroading if the players have a one in a billion chance, right?

The difference is that, in a railroaded game, characters who search for and should find the hidden exits of the goblin tunnels cannot possibly find it because the GM wants the goblins to escape using those routes. Even if they plan for the goblins' escape strategies, and go to precisely where the GM knows the tunnel exits are, they will not find it, no matter what.

In a different game, the PCs might scout out the area and be able to find the escape tunnel exits, then cover them with boulders to prevent the goblins from escaping later. Without having to roll three consecutive natural 20s to do so.


Sadly though, this is ''makes sense to the players''. And that is a big problem. As the players don't know all the details, they can very easily feel ''short changed or targeted''. The goblins pulls a quick move and get away...the players are fooled and never saw it coming. But instead of just accepting it, they will whine and cry and complain that the DM ''railroaded everything''.

And they're wrong.

Does "people are sometimes wrong about X" mean no one can be right about X? No.


So if the Players a chance, no matter how small, then it is not railroading? And nothing else matters as long as the players have a chance?

It depends on what they want to do. It's more about outcome on a larger level, and how much the players have input. If the players choose to jump into a million-to-one fight, sure. If they cannot choose to not jump into a million-to-one fight, then there being a tiny chance doesn't make you not railroading.


EDIT: If you don't see how a campaign plot can work without railroading, I'll ask: at what point does a plot collapse because the PCs could have done something different? At what point does the mystery to solve the Crestpoint Murders implode because the PCs could have found the killer before there was a second victim, if they had chosen differently?

icefractal
2017-09-01, 10:48 AM
I think that while the railroading / contrivance distinction is clear theoretically, in practice a sufficiently strong contrivance is going to be called railroading by most people.

Like, the Duke is the only one who can grant border passports.
... and he massively hates and distrusts Dwarves, which two of the PCs are.
... and he tries to keep this fact a secret, so they havent heard about it.
... and his guards are retired 15th level adventurers who took the job because they just really love this town.
... and the tower used to belong to a conjurer, so this room is dimensionally locked.

Those are all setup, not execution, and they're even all somewhat plausible individually. But most people would call this a railroad, and really it effectively is one.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-01, 10:51 AM
I think that while the railroading / contrivance distinction is clear theoretically, in practice a sufficiently strong contrivance is going to be called railroading by most people.

Like, the Duke is the only one who can grant border passports.
... and he massively hates and distrusts Dwarves, which two of the PCs are.
... and he tries to keep this fact a secret, so they havent heard about it.
... and his guards are retired 15th level adventurers who took the job because they just really love this town.
... and the tower used to belong to a conjurer, so this room is dimensionally locked.

Those are all setup, not execution, and they're even all somewhat plausible individually. But most people would call this a railroad, and really it effectively is one.

A missing piece of the puzzle is the GM's intentions, I think. I find it impossible to believe that the GM presented this setup in good faith without the intention of also forcing the outcome.

icefractal
2017-09-01, 11:04 AM
A missing piece of the puzzle is the GM's intentions, I think. I find it impossible to believe that the GM presented this setup in good faith without the intention of also forcing the outcome.That's kind of a "death of the author" situation though. The players can't weigh the GM's heart against a feather, so they don't know what the intentions really were. Whether they accept it comes down to trust, and that depends more on their prior relationship with the GM than the merits of the current action.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-01, 11:10 AM
I think that while the railroading / contrivance distinction is clear theoretically, in practice a sufficiently strong contrivance is going to be called railroading by most people.

Like, the Duke is the only one who can grant border passports.
... and he massively hates and distrusts Dwarves, which two of the PCs are.
... and he tries to keep this fact a secret, so they havent heard about it.
... and his guards are retired 15th level adventurers who took the job because they just really love this town.
... and the tower used to belong to a conjurer, so this room is dimensionally locked.

Those are all setup, not execution, and they're even all somewhat plausible individually. But most people would call this a railroad, and really it effectively is one.

I feel that contrivance is required for serious railroading (because most situations have more than one viable solution unless one is forcibly closed) and at extreme levels, contrivance is a sign that railroading is probably going on. There's a large margin between "putting things in that are dubiously plausible because they're fun" and "everything is placed just so to prevent derailment."


That's kind of a "death of the author" situation though. The players can't weigh the GM's heart against a feather, so they don't know what the intentions really were. Whether they accept it comes down to trust, and that depends more on their prior relationship with the GM than the merits of the current action.

Trust in an RPG group is vital. If you don't trust the DM (and the DM doesn't trust the players), no amount of rules, mechanics, or anything else will work. After all, everything the characters see and experience is filtered through the DM's descriptions. Without trust, what's stopping the DM from selectively describing the scene for malicious purposes? Not much.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-01, 12:24 PM
That's kind of a "death of the author" situation though. The players can't weigh the GM's heart against a feather, so they don't know what the intentions really were. Whether they accept it comes down to trust, and that depends more on their prior relationship with the GM than the merits of the current action.

That's true, but irrelevant, I feel. While the players can't know the GM's intentions, it has no bearing on if something was railroading or not. If the GM presented that scenario with the intention of forcing a specific outcome then it was railroading. This is true regardless of whether the players correctly interpret his intentions or not.

Something can be a railroad without the players realizing it is (though I'm of the opinion that players will eventually clue into routine railroading in a campaign) and the players can accuse the GM of railroading without it being true.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-01, 12:43 PM
No. You do know there's a difference between "the king is mad" and the "the king gets mad at the PCs and orders them to be arrested", right?

The first you can react to, and work with. Maybe the king is angry now, but the PCs can calm him down if they present him the head of the orc warlord who has been attacking him for years.

So your adding in as long as the DM ''pretends'' like they ''don't know what they know'', right? Like it's ok for the king to get mad...but then the ''king'' and the DM have to be just blank slates and ''not think of anything'', then, maybe based on whatever random thing the players do or don't do and maybe based on how well the DM ''knows the king'' the king will have a random reaction or not.

But if the DM even has a slight though of anything, it's Railroading.



It's railroading if they're forced into that situation by the GM.

But this just goes round and round. The DM ''puts gold coins in the bank and make a tough secure vault with guards'', the players wanting rich characters try an rob the bank and all the characters are captured. Then the players whine and cry that they were ''forced'' to attack the bank.



PCs walk into the king's throne room, and call him names. The king gets angry, and demands his guards arrest them. The PCs are too weak to win the fight and are captured. The PCs did something, and as a result are now in prison.

This is really awkward, but guess your saying the DM can do anything...even railroad, if the players ''start it''? Odd, but Ok.




PCs walk into the king's throne room, succeed a very difficult (for their level) check to behave properly, use all the right titles, and so on. The king gets angry anyways, and demands his guards arrest them. The PCs are too weak to win the fight and are captured. The PCs did something, but it had no effect on the result, which is them being in prison.

Perfect example of DM crossing the line and becoming a jerk. And we all agree jerks are wrong.




The difference is that, in a railroaded game, characters who search for and should find the hidden exits of the goblin tunnels cannot possibly find it because the GM wants the goblins to escape using those routes. Even if they plan for the goblins' escape strategies, and go to precisely where the GM knows the tunnel exits are, they will not find it, no matter what.

In a different game, the PCs might scout out the area and be able to find the escape tunnel exits, then cover them with boulders to prevent the goblins from escaping later. Without having to roll three consecutive natural 20s to do so.

The problem is the ''middle third one''. To find the hidden tunnel is a DC 18. All the players get 18 or lower on all rolls, so their characters don't find the tunnels.....but the players don't know all the game details. Some DMs, but not all, do just lay everything out on the table and say ''you guys need Dc X'' or just tell the players any and all game details. And if the characters don't know, they will assume it's the first kind of game and that it was ''impossible''. But that was not true....the players just failed.




EDIT: If you don't see how a campaign plot can work without railroading, I'll ask: at what point does a plot collapse because the PCs could have done something different? At what point does the mystery to solve the Crestpoint Murders implode because the PCs could have found the killer before there was a second victim, if they had chosen differently?

Well, any plot can end if the players choose wrong. Like the killer is going after five people for revenge, the players make bad choices and all five targets die and the killer sulks away. So a some point after that the DM will just have to tell the players ''you all failed, the game is over.''

And, again, it is only if the game is complex, but you have the loss of something to the important to the players. And remember we are not talking like the players should never, ever experience loss or losing, we are talking about poor ways of doing it. Like the PC's favorite NPC is a target...and the PC's make a mistake and think the killer is like at a place a day travel away. The PC's go there and come back, taking two days, and find ''oh while you were gone on your wrong turn the NPC was killed.''

And it's far more likely a plot will just drag on then ''collapse''. Like the characters don't find X, and make all the wrong choices, and keep looking. So the ''other'' DM just sits back and lets them go on and on.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-01, 02:33 PM
Your mixing what I said though. I said you can't have complex plots and stories without DM Agency (aka Railroading). But you can have fun doing anything, really. And, as I have said, plenty of people like



And, as I have said, plenty of people like simple, direct, casual games and have fun playing that sort of game. It's like playing Checkers over Risk.

Hahahahahahahahaha
You've never been to one of my games if you think they're simple or direct. My usual games are full of conflicting factions, NPCs with interests in the PCs, complicated alliances and a wide variety of chaos.

To put one game as simply as possible, it involved:
The grandchild of an eldritch deity fighting with its grandfather for control over emotional power-harvesting
A PC put in complicated negotiations between a local mafioso and a despot who both want her allegiance
Conflict between supply runners and bandits
Conspiracy between two despots destined to end in betrayal in a grab for land and power.

So you can step off with your knowing jack about my table, thnx.



Well, the ''side table Dming style'' is not a traditional game...not that there is anything wrong with it. But it's not a normal game.
Fun fact:
The term "normal" means "within the norm." Meaning what is most common.
On this board, the non-railroading style is the norm. So no, contextually, it is ME who's style is normal.
Yours is the outlier, here.

(Feel free to declare otherwise, but definitionally you're incorrect.)



And ''NPC reactions'' are only like part of the game.

and?



I wish we could agree. The problem is people want definitions like ''railroading is everything wrong ever'' and I want more detailed types.

Where did I suggest this, as opposed to what I literally said?

Get your low-quality, baity strawmen outta here.



See the part that I really don't get is Railroading: An artificially imposed OUTCOME, AND that outcome is that the characters have a reasonable chance to play out the plot and make sure everyone has fun.

Literally the only thing I'm talking about is the limited outcomes.



And it would seem like any traditional RPG with a all powerful/all knowing DM and players that choose to play out the game only through their individual characters, and a complex plot and story, has to do railroad things.

My personal experience tells me that no, this is not true.



I'm going to take this as an example of the ''NPC motivation and reaction'' you mentioned above.
[QUOTE]
No. This is an example of railroading. Taking it as something it isn't is dishonest, and makes your strawmen even more obvious.

[QUOTE]
So if YOU make an angry king, it's not Railroading as you say it's not, right? But for me, anything I have the king do is Railroading?
Not according to ANYTHING in my examples, no.

If I determine beforehand everything the king will do, and there is no capacity for the PCs to affect that outcome, that's a railroad.

If the king has desires and goals like other normal human beings who aren't props, and the PCs can appeal to those desires, goals, and personality to get a wide variety of outcomes, that's not a railroad.

The difference is that the first artificially limits the number of outcomes. (No matter what, the king will be offended and become angry and there will be a fight.) The second allows outcomes to occur organically. (I don't know what the king will do going in, except maybe his opening statement. I DO know what the king wants and his personality.)



And the ''fight'' is just full of endless questions. It depends on ''what kind of royal guards did the DM make?" and ''How aggressive will the DM be in the combat?" and "Will the DM optimize?'' and "Will the DM use strategy?'' . There is really no ''standard'' and even if the DM ''just'' makes the Royal Guards ''a challenge'' that still leaves a huge wide range of ''guard types and builds ". Simply put the DM can capture or really do anything they want to....even if they want to hide behind the rules and defend themselves from hostile players...because D&D is a complex game with lots of options a DM can do. So this along makes it very shady to know if any ''railroading '' when on or not.

And that is on top of the other questions like aggression and tactics. If you take a single encounter of X guards, and give it to two DM's, each can play it very differently. Some DM's, for example, might do the Dumb Movie thing where only a couple guards attack at once and the rest wait and watch. I'm more of the DM where each character will be attacked by a couple guards and the guards will work together and use a combination of skills, abilities, items and tactics on the characters. So in like two rounds, my well played guards can easily knock down, grapple, pin, hold and capture a character.

I don't recall ordering this much herring.
Let alone ones that are painted red.



But me, as DM, simply playing good and capturing the players character is not railroading, right? In theory I could have rolled bad, and the player could have rolled good.....so it was possible, though very unlikely, that the character could have escaped.

So does that count, if the player just has a ''one in a billion'' chance, then it's on Railroading?

If the intent is to hide the rails, yes it is. Especially if the fight breaks logic.
If a group of random town guards are lvl 16 for a village where lvl 1 adventurers are starting....
The logic immediately breaks down.
I don't have a preplanned plot, though. So I only spend tine worrying about a logically consistent and chaotic world, not on enforcing a set series of events.



But here are you talking like the DM just stands up and says ''the goblins escape, I have spoken''?

I am talking about exactly the same amount of railroading as before. Read.



Sadly though, this is ''makes sense to the players''. And that is a big problem.
Do you enjoy being wrong? You run headlong into it a lot.
I said:
"According to what makes sense."
See that period at the end?
It means there's no more after that. Read what I SAID, not what would be more convenient if I'd said.

So many strawmen I'm getting hayfever.



As the players don't know all the details, they can very easily feel ''short changed or targeted''. The goblins pulls a quick move and get away...the players are fooled and never saw it coming. But instead of just accepting it, they will whine and cry and complain that the DM ''railroaded everything''.

Hmmm.... never had this problem.
But you're acting irritated enough about it that I'm thinking it's a problem YOU have.
Weird since you say they never detect your railroad, but you seem to harp real hard about how much it sucks to have players complain about rails....
Hmmmmmmmmm



It's back too the old ''railroading is whatever the players don't like''.

My offered distinction does not bother with the opinions of the players.
Good try tho.



So if the Players a chance, no matter how small, then it is not railroading? And nothing else matters as long as the players have a chance?

If you artificially limit the outcomes of the situation.
That is the only requirement.

If you're doing so for the purpose of artificially limiting outcomes, then yes.
If they have no chance because they're being stupid and picking a fight they logically could not win, then no. The PCs are choosing to die. Which is a valid choice.



So we are saying it's only Railroading if the DM is a Jerk, period.

Read what I wrote railroading to be. It's that. Anything else is your invention, and not my point.
A lie, if you will.

icefractal
2017-09-01, 03:58 PM
Trust in an RPG group is vital. If you don't trust the DM (and the DM doesn't trust the players), no amount of rules, mechanics, or anything else will work. After all, everything the characters see and experience is filtered through the DM's descriptions. Without trust, what's stopping the DM from selectively describing the scene for malicious purposes? Not much.It's vital, but it's not a binary state, and 100% trust is a high bar than I, or most people AFAIK, require from a GM.

There are GMs that I trust just fine for running a game in general, but it they started going into "magical realm" territory I'd be wary and ready to call a halt. There's a GM who I trust completely not to fudge (against the players anyway, he might do it to save a PC if the player was new) but he can and does railroad.

So "don't play with jerks" is accurate, but IME it only covers a small fraction of the situations where disagreement occurs.