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Stonehead
2021-09-26, 11:17 PM
I've been thinking a lot recently about the consequences of player actions, and what counts as railroading. Before I get into that, I need to talk a little about Schrodinger's Dungeon.

Basically, the idea is that the DM prepares a few rooms, or encounters, or pieces of treasure, and uses them as the need arises, without deciding beforehand on the order or location. I first heard about the idea from a post about a guy who prepared a 4-dimmensional hypercube dungeon, where each room had a different exit in each direction. The post continued about how the players lved it, because it felt like they had total freedom to explore hundreds of rooms; the catch was that the DM only prepared 6 rooms, and regardless of which direction the party went, they found the next room the DM had prepared.

From what I can tell general opinion on this practice is pretty mixed, some people think it's a great way for a DM to cut down on prep time, others hate it, saying it robs the players of any agency, and others consider it acceptable, so long as the illusion is never broken, and the players never find out.

One other issue that arises from that specific example is that a blind choice isn't a choice. In the hypercube example, the PCs were deciding between arbitrary doors, with no possible way to make an informed decision. The most fundamental property of an rpg that I can think of is that the players make decisions as these fictional characters, rather than themselves. If you reach a fork in the road, in a sense you're faced with the choice between going left and going right, but if you have no way of knowing what you're choosing between, you aren't making a choice. And if you aren't making a choice, you can't make the choice your character would have.

With all that out of the way, I can get to my main point, which is I have no idea how to handle the Schrodinger's Dungeon problem, and the more I think about it, the more the entire genre as a whole starts to fall apart. Most people are pretty comfortable condemning railroading as bad practice, because it takes away the player's ability to influence the game world. Regardless of what the players do, the end result is the same. So then, is Schrodinger's Dungeon just another form of railroading? That kind of makes sense, is you prepare one ogre fight, and regardless of where the players go or what they try to do, they encounter the ogre, then regardless of what they do, the result is the same.

If that's all there is too it though, then a lot of other common practices could comfortable fit under the umbrella of "railroading". A lot of improv-focused DMs will just come to the table with a general idea of where they want the story to end up. Isn't that kind of the same thing though? If you come to the table knowing that there's an informant who can tell the party about the king's shady advisor, you're going to find a way to bring the party to him. So then regardless of what the players do, they end up talking to this one npc.

Even examples that strike me as pretty good DMing, and adaptability could be considered railroading. Let's say the DM wants to start his campaign with the PCs as gladiators, and are freed by the quest giver, under the condition that they fulfill his request. The rogue throws a wrench in this plan, however, when he successfully escapes his chains before the fighting begins. The DM rolls with the punches, and says the quest giver was impressed with his skills, and offers him a high paying job. My gut reaction, is that the hypothetical DM did a good job of thinking on his feet, he doesn't have to rewrite his plot hook, and the player didn't have to participate in the gladiator match, so he feels like his actions affected the story. If you think about it though, the DM did kind of ensure that the result he wanted would come about, regardless of what the players did. Why doesn't that feel like he's railroading? Same thing applies to getting the party together, a good DM usually lets the players go wherever they want, but pull the strings so that they all meet up with eachother in session 1.

Or what about PC death? A lot of DMs don't like killing characters, and a lot of players don't like having their characters killed, so instead, it's fairly common to instead punish characters with setbacks of some kind. Instead of being killed my the minotaur, they get knocked out and wake up after the battle. Instead of falling to their death from the airship, they grab hold of the anchor at the last minute, and failing that, catch a ride on a passing roc. Instead of being executed for their crimes, they're locked in a prison that they'll inevitably escape from. These examples all start to sound like railroading when you really think about it. But that can't be true, can it? Doesn't everyone have more fun when their characters grab hold of a tree branch when they fail their balance check than when they fall to their death?

And that leads into the much bigger issue, that this applies to a lot more consequences than just death. Permanently losing gear is a big feel-bad moment for a lot of players, so a lot of DMs will always give an opportunity to recover it. But then regardless of what happens in the story, they'll end up with that same familiar sword. Where's the player choice? I remember in this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?634080-quot-Losing-a-fight-quot-vs-quot-losing-the-game-quot) it was brought up that consequences that are only temporary set backs are just a waste of time. Doesn't that cover most consequences though? I know there are plenty of DMs who are totally cool with having the party fail and the BBEG win, but a lot aren't, and I'm not going to say that all of them that aren't are just railroading their players.

I honestly don't know what the answer is. Why does Schrodinger's dungeon feel like railroading to me, when none of the other examples do? I don't know. I do have a couple of theories though. Maybe railroading isn't inherently bad, and it's only bad when the metaphorical leash is too tight. If the players are allowed to find the informant by following his tracks, or by talking to his business partners, maybe that's enough for the players to have agency, even if the end result is the same. Maybe the details, not the end result, are what actually matter. They're going to save the world either way, but the point of the campaign is to find out who they befriend, and who they kill on their way there; as long as the players are free to talk to who they like, and kill who they don't, it isn't railroading. Or, maybe Schrodinger's dungeon isn't railroading at all. Maybe preparing one encounter, and using it regardless of where the players go is fine, as long as you let them choose where they go. Or, maybe the difference is when the push happens. Railroading is when you force the end of a story to go how you want it, and being flexible is when you force the beginning of a story.

I'm really curious to hear other peoples' opinions because, as I said before, I don't have a good answer.

Telok
2021-09-27, 01:00 AM
Well, its going to depend on the system...

For the gear issue: most supers games certain pieces of PC gear can have various levels of plot immunity. Mostly because the original literature works that way and certain characters basically are their gear. Most supers systems also directly address this in their GMing sections, a PC can temporarialy lose access for a couple scenes but the genera and original fiction dictate that it comes back or gets replaced. In less equipment+stuff oriented systems like Risus or some of the PBtA ones, any gear is basically descriptive fluff. In certain systems like say, Lancer or D&D 4e, the "gear" is essentially part of the character and without it you don't have a filled in character sheet and don't play the game. Therefore the no-gear issue should simply never come up in those systems.

So the gear/no-gear thing is a system dependent issue. Any decent system that understands how characters work in the system will address the issue if it could cause problems. If you find yourself in a no-gear situation thats causing problems and the rule books don't provide any advice or rules you can go punch the author and steal something from a better system as a patch.

Schrodinger's dungeon will fall apart if there should be multiple paths and the PCs backtrack to follow another path. If the PCs just proceed through a series of rooms without loops or backtracking then any "dungeon" format is no different an experience for the players than a Schrodinger's dungeon. You can make a full multi-path interconnected web with a working ecology, factions, and dynamic responses. If the players take one path without detours or pauses, they can't tell the difference (double "can't tell" if they murderize their way through without talking to anything).

The 4d dungeon is actually a good place for the Schrodinger's dungeon method. Ideally all the transitions between rooms look similar and you can say that the rooms shift position through the 4th dimension in response to weight changes, thus making the doors PCs passed through look like they lead to new rooms. Yes, I've run a 4d dungeon and that was a trap room*. Thirty identical doors, the entrance vanished & replaced once more weight on the far side tilted the room in 4th D, the remaining doors were zero distance loops, solution was for everyone to stand far away from the exit re-tilting the room and send one person back out for some heavy furniture.

Railroading has always been a sort of sliding scale & personal preference thing. For me the step from "similar result by a different method" and "same result no matter what you do" has always been when the DM specifically frags some tactic, gear, or ability to force the party somewhere.

*ye gads, d&d 3e had been out less than six months by then. Feel old now.

NichG
2021-09-27, 01:10 AM
It's easy to get caught up in what things are called and lose track of why those things mattered in the first place. Whether something works or not at a given table will depend on the players, as well as how that thing is used, and the nuanced context of its use. My basic rule of thumb would be to first and foremost listen to what the players are trying to achieve or pursue, and then don't do things which undermine the idea that those things can be meaningful (e.g. by no-selling them, arranging things to fail, using an abstraction that renders the thing irrelevant like using fixed sell prices when the players want to explore merchant gameplay, etc).

If you remove the ability for the players to influence something they've never expressed an interest in influencing, certainly that can semantically fit as 'railroading'. But it's going to matter a lot less than if you nullify their efforts or desires. If you designed a map of a ruin in a valley that the players are exploring and they miss it (not consciously avoiding it, just literally they never go to the place you put the thing) and you end up reintroducing that same content on a different continent later in the campaign, with stuff scaled up and the flags and cultural markers and denizens changed appropriately, in some theoretical sense you negated their choice to rush through the valley without exploring it, but you're not really interfering with any expressed player desire. Now if those same players found the ruin, looked at it and said 'this looks like a death trap, lets skip', then putting that same ruin map in later in the campaign would be thwarting something the players expressed a desire about - in that case they made an active choice 'we don't want this content'.

OldTrees1
2021-09-27, 01:16 AM
1) Yes a Schrodinger's Dungeon is railroading. A Schrodinger's Dungeon is a room based example of the Quantum Ogre. The "Improv GM that wants the story to get to scene XYZ and thus guides it there" and the "GM that rewrites the plothook to catch a PC that derailed" are also examples of railroading.

2) Railroading (verb) references an agency spectrum/continuum rather than a binary. It is not inherently bad, but the noun "railroad" is usually used by players when they have a criticism of the current degree of agency.

Personally I like to run sandbox campaigns. I may make predictions about where the story will go, but ultimately I am enjoying the players pilot the ship wherever they want in the ocean I designed. Did you know there are players that don't want that much agency? It is important to listen to the group's preferences and finding what works best for the group.

3) Different players will care about different parts of player agency more or less than others.

The number of options per choice and the number of choices the PCs face could be too much (choice paralysis in a sandbox) or too little (too much railroading).
The types of choices might be meaningful to the player and PC, or they might be of little consideration.
The amount of information about the options of a choice might be excessively verbose or excessively sparse.
The predictive power / prediction accuracy of the information about the options of a choice might be excessively accurate or unreliable.

Logalmier
2021-09-27, 01:35 AM
A lot of improv-focused DMs will just come to the table with a general idea of where they want the story to end up. Isn't that kind of the same thing though? If you come to the table knowing that there's an informant who can tell the party about the king's shady advisor, you're going to find a way to bring the party to him. So then regardless of what the players do, they end up talking to this one npc.


Seems like one way to address this from the DM's perspective is make it so that there's not just one potential outcome to any encounter/dungeon/campaign. The DM could come up with 3 or 4 plausible outcomes, and have the player's actions determine where the story ends up in relation to them. Now, this doesn't really fix the fundamental issue you seem to be describing here - you're not getting rid of railroading, you're just adding more rails. But if those rails actually go different places, and players can choose between them in a semi-informed way, then I don't think it can be described as Schrodinger's Dungeon.

Unfortunately, this approach (and any solution to Schrodinger's Dungeon probably) means more work for the DM. That's why railroading exists in the first place - creating a branching story is way more effort than creating a linear one. I feel that most player's aren't going to scratch too deep beneath the surface, so the illusion of choice is just as effective most of the time, and saves the DM a bunch of hassle.

Stonehead
2021-09-27, 01:52 PM
I like the idea that it's intention that determines what matters. If the player just by chance doesn't go to the blacksmith where the important npc is, they've never made a choice to avoid them, and so you've never subverted their agency. That gets kind of weird when you start applying it to failure in general though. If there's a roll involved, you could argue that it's the dice exerting their influence on the story, not the DM so it doesn't count, but in most games I've ever been in, it's pretty common to fail without a roll. Sometimes it's clearly railroading, if you just auto fail any attempt to sneak into the castle's back door, or climb up to a window because you prepared a cool trap at the front door, that's pretty sketchy DMing. Failing to force open a door though, are less clear. The player's intention is clear, he wants the door to open, and the DM is overwriting that to instead force them to look for the key. Maybe it has something to do with believable results. There are a lot of doors that are just too tough for a human to knock down, that's kind of the point of a lock. So maybe forcing a result like this is only an issue if it doesn't make sense. If a villain was able to force open the door in a previous scene, then it does become an issue if the players can't even roll for it.

On the semantic side of things, it's interesting to think about why some things could be labeled as railroading, but I'm much more interested in why they start to become a problem. I was assuming people used "railroading" in a way that implied there was an issue of some kind.

Telok
2021-09-27, 03:01 PM
On the semantic side of things, it's interesting to think about why some things could be labeled as railroading, but I'm much more interested in why they start to become a problem. I was assuming people used "railroading" in a way that implied there was an issue of some kind.

Sci-fi game:
Player 1: "We need to visit this reclusive weirdo outside the city to get info."
Player 2: "Everything outside the domed city is a toxic radioactive blasted wasteland with tentacle elephants and acid pools."
Player 3: "So? We rent an air-car. We rode one in from the spaceport."
-- later after having to hijack an air-taxi because there are none for rent, sale, or theft --
DM: "After you land and get out a giant radioactive tentacle elephant rises up from behind the hut and attacks."
Player 1: "Its how big? ... Thats bigger than the hut."
Player 2: "How come we couldn't see a huge purple monster against gray rocks without any cover?"
DM: "I guess it has a good hide check? The adventure dosen't say. It gets a surprise round and attacks."
Player 3: "We get back in the air-car and shoot it to death from 100 feet up."
-- later after murderizing the only person in the hut, who refused to talk and just attacked --
DM: "When you come back out the air-car is a burning wreck and there are soldiers who start shooting at you. You guys missed some encounters by not walking and the adventure says you need to do them. So this is one and you have to walk back to town."

I mean, adventures can be railroady and inexperienced DMs can have problems when the PCs aren't tame little plot-robots, but that was pretty bad. Actually I think that whole adventure path had bunches of that sort of stuff. Didn't matter how fast or slow the party was, you were always plot distance behind the bad guys. Didn't matter how stealthy or perceptive, enemies always saw & ambushed you. Transport didn't matter, you were supposed to walk everywhere and weren't allowed more stuff than you could carry. A good, experienced, DM can usually handle this stuff but newer DMs feel they have to choose between the adventure working or the players getting to make meaningful decisions.

NichG
2021-09-27, 03:03 PM
I like the idea that it's intention that determines what matters. If the player just by chance doesn't go to the blacksmith where the important npc is, they've never made a choice to avoid them, and so you've never subverted their agency. That gets kind of weird when you start applying it to failure in general though. If there's a roll involved, you could argue that it's the dice exerting their influence on the story, not the DM so it doesn't count, but in most games I've ever been in, it's pretty common to fail without a roll. Sometimes it's clearly railroading, if you just auto fail any attempt to sneak into the castle's back door, or climb up to a window because you prepared a cool trap at the front door, that's pretty sketchy DMing. Failing to force open a door though, are less clear. The player's intention is clear, he wants the door to open, and the DM is overwriting that to instead force them to look for the key. Maybe it has something to do with believable results. There are a lot of doors that are just too tough for a human to knock down, that's kind of the point of a lock. So maybe forcing a result like this is only an issue if it doesn't make sense. If a villain was able to force open the door in a previous scene, then it does become an issue if the players can't even roll for it.

I think there's a difference between placing a surmountable obstacle in a player's path or providing opposing pressure, and actually negating a player's effort or intention. If you put an obstacle which is intended to force the player to change what they want, that's going to come off differently than an obstacle which makes the player work a bit or think a bit or have to weigh relative values but in the end allows the player to choose to keep their direction if they're willing to push through.

So e.g. the 'climb up to a window' thing:

If the player is really about 'my character is an acrobatic thief who does second-story hijinks, and is really good at them', and you say 'the wall is un-scalable', then you're no-selling that concept. If you say 'the wall has a DC of 35 to free-climb' but if the player tries a grappling hook+rope combo then it works just fine at DC 15, then you're probably not negating the player's effort or investment, even if in the end they have to use the tool rather than their skill check. And if the player really wants to push the raw skill free-climbing thing, well, in the future they can get a magic item to give a buff or have a party member buff them or try until they roll a 20 or whatever. Now, if the next smooth+rainslicked wall happens to have a DC of 50 because they managed to scare up +15 from sources between now and then, then yes, you're no-selling their effort.

If you say 'you scale the wall just fine, but through the window you see that 90% of the estate's guards happen to be collected in this bedroom for some reason, oh, and there's a powerful trap on the window (that was going to be on the front door)', then yeah, you're no-selling the implied intention of 'sneak in to avoid a fight' vs 'bust in'. If you put adamantine bars on the window, maybe that's fine and maybe it's not, but if you complain when they use an adamantine dagger to carve a second window out of the stone nearby then that's probably not.

Dice don't absolve you from that kind of reasoning, they just fuzz things a bit so it might be less clear that the DM has some intent to block a course of action. It's a classic DM manipulation to ask for more rolls when you want something to fail and not ask for rolls at all when you want something to succeed.

kyoryu
2021-09-27, 03:25 PM
Ultimately "railroading" (I prefer the term illusionism) is about pretending that players have a choice, while they don't.

As in, it's totally fine to run a completely linear game where the players have no real choice but to follow the tracks - just be honest about it

(Giving choices with no information is basically the same thing).

As long as you're not doing that, you're fine. There's a lot more stuff that can be done in terms of how to present consequences of actions and stuff like that to get away from railroading, but that's a bigger discussion.

BRC
2021-09-27, 03:26 PM
I honestly don't know what the answer is. Why does Schrodinger's dungeon feel like railroading to me, when none of the other examples do? I don't know. I do have a couple of theories though. Maybe railroading isn't inherently bad, and it's only bad when the metaphorical leash is too tight. If the players are allowed to find the informant by following his tracks, or by talking to his business partners, maybe that's enough for the players to have agency, even if the end result is the same. Maybe the details, not the end result, are what actually matter. They're going to save the world either way, but the point of the campaign is to find out who they befriend, and who they kill on their way there; as long as the players are free to talk to who they like, and kill who they don't, it isn't railroading. Or, maybe Schrodinger's dungeon isn't railroading at all. Maybe preparing one encounter, and using it regardless of where the players go is fine, as long as you let them choose where they go. Or, maybe the difference is when the push happens. Railroading is when you force the end of a story to go how you want it, and being flexible is when you force the beginning of a story.

I'm really curious to hear other peoples' opinions because, as I said before, I don't have a good answer.


Schrodinger's Dungeon is railroading because it doesn't really leave room for the Players to actually influence the story.

Railroading usually manifests in one of two ways: Lazy or Overbuilt

Lazy Railroading is where stuff springs up every time the PC's try to step off the intended path to put them back on track, because the GM is invested in them taking a specific path.


Overbuilt railroading is where the scenario works nicely to keep the PC's on the intended path, BUT it's a bit contrived and the players notice that they're being herded through artificial barriers, rather than working in a naturalistic scenario.


The escaped gladiator scenario isn't railroading because 1) Everything in that scenario flows perfectly naturally. "You escaped, this impressed me and I'm going to offer you a job", and 2) The Rogue could say no (Doing so would effectively mean not engaging in the campaign, but the SCENARIO isn't forcing them to say Yes).

Getting players to follow your plot hooks is part of GMing.


Schrodinger's Dungeon is a form of railroading (I've heard it called "The quantum ogre") because it deprives the Players of any actual agency in the scenario. This is different from Scenarios where there is an optimal choice (Like the Employer offering the gladiators freedom), or scenarios where there is implicit buy-in because saying "No" means just not engaging in the campaign (Like how a lot of session 1's go). It may seem fine because it's clever and the PC's don't notice, but they're not making any real decisions either:

This kind of ties into another rule which is that if you don't give the players sufficient information to make reasonable decisions, you're also depriving them of Agency, even without actually railroading.

Let's say you make a "Real" version of Schrodinger's Dungeon, a bunch of rooms with identical doors, and no information about what is behind each door. Even if you have everything mapped out, and stick to that strictly, you're still not giving the players any actual agency. Sure, you're not picking what they do, but neither are they.


I like the idea that it's intention that determines what matters. If the player just by chance doesn't go to the blacksmith where the important npc is, they've never made a choice to avoid them, and so you've never subverted their agency. That gets kind of weird when you start applying it to failure in general though. If there's a roll involved, you could argue that it's the dice exerting their influence on the story, not the DM so it doesn't count, but in most games I've ever been in, it's pretty common to fail without a roll. Sometimes it's clearly railroading, if you just auto fail any attempt to sneak into the castle's back door, or climb up to a window because you prepared a cool trap at the front door, that's pretty sketchy DMing. Failing to force open a door though, are less clear. The player's intention is clear, he wants the door to open, and the DM is overwriting that to instead force them to look for the key. Maybe it has something to do with believable results. There are a lot of doors that are just too tough for a human to knock down, that's kind of the point of a lock. So maybe forcing a result like this is only an issue if it doesn't make sense. If a villain was able to force open the door in a previous scene, then it does become an issue if the players can't even roll for it.

On the semantic side of things, it's interesting to think about why some things could be labeled as railroading, but I'm much more interested in why they start to become a problem. I was assuming people used "railroading" in a way that implied there was an issue of some kind.
The crime of Railroading is that you deprive your players of any chance to control the story. There are a lot of ways to do this.

It's a Problem when your players don't feel like they have any control over the outcome of the game, like they're just witnessing a story rather than actually playing.


A lot of Railroading as a problem is because the GM is effectively declaring their intent to not let the Players make any choices.


Like, "You need to break into the castle. The front gate is heavily guarded, but there is a back door"

"Can I climb the walls?" "No, the walls are magically unclimbable and constantly patrolled" "Can I get in through a window?" "No, all the windows are unbreakable and super-reinforced"
"Can I bribe a servant to let me in?" "No, all the servants and guards are fanatically loyal to the lord of the castle" "Can I use my Raven familiar to scout the castle?" "No, all birds that fly overhead are shot out of the sky by the guards".


The lack of realism is the problem because it's a declaration of intention. It shows that the GM cares more about keeping the players on-track than the scenario making any narrative sense.


Like, it's perfectly fine to build a scenario with only one reasonable approach in a way that makes perfect sense. If you do it over and over again your players might notice the pattern, especially if they want more narrative control over the game.

Railroading is usually when the players notice that none of their choices will actually matter.

Schordinger's Dungeon the players may not think that they're "On Rails", but the scenario depends on them being denied the knowledge they would need to make meaningful decisions, so it comes out the same way.

icefractal
2021-09-27, 04:25 PM
Dungeons are interesting, because they basically are linear unless you have some actual information behind the choice of path you make. For example:
* Visiting the same dungeon multiple times
* Having a map (not necessarily complete, but enough to make the choice informed)
* Having (and using) scouting and/or divination abilities

But for instance - a dungeon with a lot of branching where you choose from thousands of possible routes, and all of those are fully statted ... but all the choices are blind and you never backtrack or visit it again? That's effectively a linear series of encounters, and it might as well be fake branching because the players are getting no benefit from the real branching.

kyoryu
2021-09-27, 04:49 PM
Dungeons are interesting, because they basically are linear unless you have some actual information behind the choice of path you make. For example:
* Visiting the same dungeon multiple times
* Having a map (not necessarily complete, but enough to make the choice informed)
* Having (and using) scouting and/or divination abilities

But for instance - a dungeon with a lot of branching where you choose from thousands of possible routes, and all of those are fully statted ... but all the choices are blind and you never backtrack or visit it again? That's effectively a linear series of encounters, and it might as well be fake branching because the players are getting no benefit from the real branching.

That's why scouting is critical, as well as making some info about the dungeon available (usually within the dungeon).

Talakeal
2021-09-27, 04:58 PM
I have been thinking about railroading for a while now, as it seems my players (or sometimes the forumites) accuse me of it anytime the game doesn't go in the direction they would like, and I have come to realize that it isn't a single thing, rather it is a combination of multiple spectrums.

The first is campaign premise. This should probably be worked out before the game even begins. People who sign onto the premise should agree to be railroaded; if I sign up to play a game about gangsters in 1920s Chicago, and my character decides to get on a train to become a farmer in Arizona, well I don't think I am entitled to have the game change setting and genre on my account. And if all of the players decide that they want to do this, I don't think the GM should be forced to run a completely different game than he signed up for.


Next we have classical railroading. This is, in short, warping either the rules or the setting to tell a player no. But, this is a spectrum, and on the other side of the spectrum is not playing the game by the book (imo that's the center point) but rather warping the rules or the setting to tell players yes, i.e. the rule of cool.

And often times players will accuse you of railroading when you are playing by the book, for example the long litany of perfectly RAW reasons why I told the players that they couldn't ride a griffon they found one time. And of course, if you bend the rules some of the time, players will often consider it a form of railroading or sense inconsistency / unfairness.


Then we get into sandbox games vs. linear plots. At first glance the sandbox seems to be free of railroads, but on the other hand linear plots often give players more agency. In a fully fleshed out sandbox game, stuff is happening in the background all the time, and nothing guarantees players will be in the right place at the right time to affect the world in major ways; this rarely happens in linear games which make sure to put the PCs and their decisions front and center of most of the important things that are going on.


Then we have the improv vs. prepped GM. This thread has already discussed improv and railroading, but on the other hand, there are limits to preparation. And by definition, if you go outside of the material that has been prepped for you, the GM either has to resort to improv or, more likely, find some excuse to keep you from going out of bounds.


And the last trio is objectives, obstacles, and solutions.

These are things the GM puts in the world to make it interesting and give the players something to do. Without them, you risk players getting bored or frustrated.

An example would be "Some dawarves want you to get their mountain back (objective), but there is a large dragon guarding it (obstacle) who has a weak spot on his left breast (solution)."

Now, each of these are also spectrums. For example, an obstacle to killing a monster could range from "it has a high AC" or "it is immune to fire" to "it can only be killed by tapping the spoon of St. Cuthbert three times on its right wrist". Too high on the spectrum and they start to look like puzzles; which are often railroads and not much fun for anyone.

A common problem with all of these it someone (either the players of the DM) looking at these as straight-jackets and assuming that anything which was not explicitly spelled out is off the table. If the DM refuses to allow solutions (or objectives or even obstacles) not explicitly laid out by them, that can easily be railroading. But at the same time, if the players assume that the DM will shoot down anything they haven't explicitly put in front of the players, that can easily be perceived as railroading.

Stonehead
2021-09-27, 05:22 PM
I think there's a difference between placing a surmountable obstacle in a player's path or providing opposing pressure, and actually negating a player's effort or intention. If you put an obstacle which is intended to force the player to change what they want, that's going to come off differently than an obstacle which makes the player work a bit or think a bit or have to weigh relative values but in the end allows the player to choose to keep their direction if they're willing to push through.

So e.g. the 'climb up to a window' thing:

If the player is really about 'my character is an acrobatic thief who does second-story hijinks, and is really good at them', and you say 'the wall is un-scalable', then you're no-selling that concept. If you say 'the wall has a DC of 35 to free-climb' but if the player tries a grappling hook+rope combo then it works just fine at DC 15, then you're probably not negating the player's effort or investment, even if in the end they have to use the tool rather than their skill check. And if the player really wants to push the raw skill free-climbing thing, well, in the future they can get a magic item to give a buff or have a party member buff them or try until they roll a 20 or whatever. Now, if the next smooth+rainslicked wall happens to have a DC of 50 because they managed to scare up +15 from sources between now and then, then yes, you're no-selling their effort.

If you say 'you scale the wall just fine, but through the window you see that 90% of the estate's guards happen to be collected in this bedroom for some reason, oh, and there's a powerful trap on the window (that was going to be on the front door)', then yeah, you're no-selling the implied intention of 'sneak in to avoid a fight' vs 'bust in'. If you put adamantine bars on the window, maybe that's fine and maybe it's not, but if you complain when they use an adamantine dagger to carve a second window out of the stone nearby then that's probably not.

Dice don't absolve you from that kind of reasoning, they just fuzz things a bit so it might be less clear that the DM has some intent to block a course of action. It's a classic DM manipulation to ask for more rolls when you want something to fail and not ask for rolls at all when you want something to succeed.

The rain example raises some pretty interesting questions. To me, rain is a pretty believable, realistic occurrence. But here, the rain raising the climb DC to an impossible level seems like a form of railroading. Does it matter if it was raining before the players approach the castle? If the player attempts to climb the wall, and then the DM declares that it's raining, making the climb impossible, it feels like he's shutting down player choice. But if the DM anticipates that this PC is great at climbing, and establishes the rain beforehand, is that still railroading?

Or, what if the DM decides it's raining, for purely aesthetic reasons, but it still shuts down the climb plan. To me, the first two options at the very least feel like railroading, and the third one does not. Not super confident on why, just my gut reaction.


The escaped gladiator scenario isn't railroading because 1) Everything in that scenario flows perfectly naturally. "You escaped, this impressed me and I'm going to offer you a job", and 2) The Rogue could say no (Doing so would effectively mean not engaging in the campaign, but the SCENARIO isn't forcing them to say Yes).

Getting players to follow your plot hooks is part of GMing.


Schrodinger's Dungeon is a form of railroading (I've heard it called "The quantum ogre") because it deprives the Players of any actual agency in the scenario. This is different from Scenarios where there is an optimal choice (Like the Employer offering the gladiators freedom), or scenarios where there is implicit buy-in because saying "No" means just not engaging in the campaign (Like how a lot of session 1's go). It may seem fine because it's clever and the PC's don't notice, but they're not making any real decisions either:
Like, it's perfectly fine to build a scenario with only one reasonable approach in a way that makes perfect sense. If you do it over and over again your players might notice the pattern, especially if they want more narrative control over the game.

It seems to me like the "quantum ogre" can only exist behind blind choices. The original example was a combat encounter, but the same idea should apply to other forms of content, like talking to plot-important npcs. So if you have some traveler you want the players to talk to, and you have him sitting at the magic shop expecting the players to find him, but they go straight to the castle, missing him completely, I think it's fair to say he's a quantum ogre if you behind the scenes change your plans to have him wait at the castle. I think the big question is whether or not this is railroading (or whether or not it's bad railroading, if you think that could be a neutral term).

The way I see it there are a few options. Maybe it's ok, because the players had no intention to ignore him, so you haven't subverted their choices. Maybe it's not ok, because the players' actions had no impact on the next step in the story. Or maybe it depends on the circumstances, and if it would be believable for the traveller to still meet the party, then it's ok, and if not, then it's not.


Dungeons are interesting, because they basically are linear unless you have some actual information behind the choice of path you make. For example:
* Visiting the same dungeon multiple times
* Having a map (not necessarily complete, but enough to make the choice informed)
* Having (and using) scouting and/or divination abilities

But for instance - a dungeon with a lot of branching where you choose from thousands of possible routes, and all of those are fully statted ... but all the choices are blind and you never backtrack or visit it again? That's effectively a linear series of encounters, and it might as well be fake branching because the players are getting no benefit from the real branching.

Kind of a tangent, but is that how most people run dungeons? Whenever there's a fork in the road, most DMs I've played with will give you some kind of clue as to what's down each path. Some times it's obvious, like signs on doors, but usually it's just some kind of sensation, ie, you hear footsteps down one path, and nothing from the other; or torchlight is faintly glowing down one path, and the other is dark. Trying to navigate the dungeon with limited, but extant information is part of what makes it fun.

BRC
2021-09-27, 05:40 PM
It seems to me like the "quantum ogre" can only exist behind blind choices. The original example was a combat encounter, but the same idea should apply to other forms of content, like talking to plot-important npcs. So if you have some traveler you want the players to talk to, and you have him sitting at the magic shop expecting the players to find him, but they go straight to the castle, missing him completely, I think it's fair to say he's a quantum ogre if you behind the scenes change your plans to have him wait at the castle. I think the big question is whether or not this is railroading (or whether or not it's bad railroading, if you think that could be a neutral term).

The way I see it there are a few options. Maybe it's ok, because the players had no intention to ignore him, so you haven't subverted their choices. Maybe it's not ok, because the players' actions had no impact on the next step in the story. Or maybe it depends on the circumstances, and if it would be believable for the traveller to still meet the party, then it's ok, and if not, then it's not.


So, the real question is "What is the Next Step in the Story".

Generally speaking, the Players would have some REASON to go to the magic shop, or the Castle, or the Inn, or what have you. The real question is, does meeting this traveler prevent or invalidate any choices.

Railroading is bad when it replaces what SHOULD be meaningful choices.

If they're just going about their business, and you arrange things so they happen to run into this guy no matter where they go, that's fine, since 'Run into this guy" or "don't run into this guy" isn't really a meaningful choice. Their meaningful choice (Go to the Castle vs the Magic Shop) Still happens. Presumably they had a reason to go to the castle, and they still get to do castle stuff there, they just also run into this guy.

If running into this guy locks the story into a certain sequence, then you have other problems, but forcing the initial encounter isn't really one of them.


An example of where it might be a bad thing would be

The PC's arrive in town, they don't intend to stay very long, and only really have time to do one thing before they leave.

The GM expects them to go to the Magic Shop to restock their potions and scrolls. Instead, they decide the most important thing to do is meet with the Baron in-person to tell him what they found (Rather than leaving a letter).


They go to the castle, only to be told that the Baron is out today, but if they leave a note it will get to him. In the meantime, this random traveler guy is willing to talk to them.

In this case, the PC's chose a thing they wanted to do (Meet with the Baron), but the GM blocked that, and instead forced them to do the planned encounter (meet with this traveler). It's not super unreasonable that the Baron is out and unable to meet with them right now, nor is it unreasonable that this traveler happens to be at the Castle, but the PC's were given a decision (Pick 1 thing to do while in town), and when they chose "Wrong", their choice was invalidated and replaced.


Edit: The Quantum Ogre is different than, say, ogres on a random encounter table. Consider the following scenarios, which all end up the same way.

Scenario 1: There are three roads to take, the GM says "All 3 roads are menaced by Ogres". The PC's pick Road A, and fight an ogre.
This isn't, like, great GMing, but there's nothing wrong with it. Not every choice needs to be super meaningful.

Scenario 2: There are three roads to take, The GM says "Road B and C have ogres on them", the PC's pick Road A, still fight an ogre.
This is the Quantum Ogre, the PC's took a choice that they were told was not Ogre, but they still met the Ogre.

Scenario 3: There are three roads, The GM decides ahead of time "The PC's will fight an ogre as they travel along the road". The PC's Pick Road A for reasons unrelated to Ogres, and fight an Ogre.

This is fine. The reason the PC's picked Road A is still intact, they fact that they happened to fight an ogre there doesn't invalidate or eliminate any meaningful choices.

NichG
2021-09-27, 06:43 PM
The rain example raises some pretty interesting questions. To me, rain is a pretty believable, realistic occurrence. But here, the rain raising the climb DC to an impossible level seems like a form of railroading. Does it matter if it was raining before the players approach the castle? If the player attempts to climb the wall, and then the DM declares that it's raining, making the climb impossible, it feels like he's shutting down player choice. But if the DM anticipates that this PC is great at climbing, and establishes the rain beforehand, is that still railroading?

Or, what if the DM decides it's raining, for purely aesthetic reasons, but it still shuts down the climb plan. To me, the first two options at the very least feel like railroading, and the third one does not. Not super confident on why, just my gut reaction.

Well, it's because motive matters, and it matters even beyond a specific instance. Trust is built over time, passing through a number of situations where one party leaves themselves vulnerable to the other and isn't betrayed by that. So if the DM says before going to the estate that it's raining, and as a result the climbing fails, what matters for the ongoing relationship with that person is 'why was it raining?', not what actually happened in-game. If you later find out it was raining because the DM thought a few steps ahead 'I need climbing to not work and one of the PCs is an uber-climber, but I don't want to be caught making stuff up, so I'll establish beforehand that it's a rainy region, and I'll make a weather table where 8 out of 10 results are 'it's raining' and I'll roll for weather in the open in front of the players so I have plausible deniability', well, that DM did a whole bunch of stuff but their reasons were still problematic. They held an intent to thwart the players. How that intent was executed, whether it was hidden well or really obvious, doesn't really change what it means to be playing a game where the person you're giving the power to decide what happens doesn't want you to do get what you're looking for out of the game.

Similarly, it doesn't matter if the word railroading can be technically applied to a situation or not, what matters is: is this person going to work with you to help you enjoy yourself in the way you want to, or are they going to work against you or e.g. try to force you to enjoy what they like but you don't? How much can you trust them that the game will have been worth playing?

Stonehead
2021-09-27, 09:45 PM
Generally speaking, the Players would have some REASON to go to the magic shop, or the Castle, or the Inn, or what have you. The real question is, does meeting this traveler prevent or invalidate any choices.

Railroading is bad when it replaces what SHOULD be meaningful choices.

If they're just going about their business, and you arrange things so they happen to run into this guy no matter where they go, that's fine, since 'Run into this guy" or "don't run into this guy" isn't really a meaningful choice. Their meaningful choice (Go to the Castle vs the Magic Shop) Still happens. Presumably they had a reason to go to the castle, and they still get to do castle stuff there, they just also run into this guy.

If running into this guy locks the story into a certain sequence, then you have other problems, but forcing the initial encounter isn't really one of them.

Yeah, my dumb examples are really being pushed to their limits, but I think you have a point. The "intentions matter, not just any consequence" argument looks pretty strong.


Well, it's because motive matters, and it matters even beyond a specific instance. Trust is built over time, passing through a number of situations where one party leaves themselves vulnerable to the other and isn't betrayed by that. So if the DM says before going to the estate that it's raining, and as a result the climbing fails, what matters for the ongoing relationship with that person is 'why was it raining?', not what actually happened in-game. If you later find out it was raining because the DM thought a few steps ahead 'I need climbing to not work and one of the PCs is an uber-climber, but I don't want to be caught making stuff up, so I'll establish beforehand that it's a rainy region, and I'll make a weather table where 8 out of 10 results are 'it's raining' and I'll roll for weather in the open in front of the players so I have plausible deniability', well, that DM did a whole bunch of stuff but their reasons were still problematic. They held an intent to thwart the players. How that intent was executed, whether it was hidden well or really obvious, doesn't really change what it means to be playing a game where the person you're giving the power to decide what happens doesn't want you to do get what you're looking for out of the game.

Similarly, it doesn't matter if the word railroading can be technically applied to a situation or not, what matters is: is this person going to work with you to help you enjoy yourself in the way you want to, or are they going to work against you or e.g. try to force you to enjoy what they like but you don't? How much can you trust them that the game will have been worth playing?

I don't think all instances of planning on shutting down player abilities is railroading, or if it is, it isn't always bad. If you give the BBEG a mind-control shield because one of your players has been steamrolling over combat with his mind control, I think that's just making sure everyone can have fun in combat (and fairly realistic if the boss has any communication channels at all). The relationship idea is interesting though, because that would kind of hint at the frequency being an important factor too. Maybe if it's raining once, because the DM just can't figure out any other way to get the players through the front door that's acceptable, and the problem arises when random occurrences like this shut down their plans more often than not.

Tanarii
2021-09-27, 10:00 PM
Going straight to opinion: I find quantum ogres, Shrodinger's dungeon, sure thing 'plot' events (as part of an improvised game or not), saving PCs from death, and saving PCs equipment all distasteful. Both as a GM and as a player.

Btw on picking a dungeon door not being a choice ... different doors should be able to be examined. If they're all identical, block noise, air, heat, have the same amount of undisturbed dust around them, and directions are unknown (relative to the outside world and relative to the rest of the dungeon) ... yeah, then there's no choices to make. Passages usually carry even more hints to help make a choice, since sound and air travel more freely along them.

Pex
2021-09-27, 10:42 PM
I brought up something similar before calling it "trolley tracks", a light rail railroad. Playing a module is this, but it can also be a homebrew Campaign Plot. Some people call it a linear campaign. One-shot game sessions are also this. Players buy into it. They will do the Campaign Plot, whether it's a module or homebrew. No question, they're doing it, it's the point of coming to the game and play whatever it is the DM prepared. The player agency comes in by the players Solving The Plot by however they choose to do so. They decide where to go, what NPCs to talk to, how they approach an encounter, etc. The DM does not enforce anything to go a certain way, but there are consequences good and bad as appropriate to what the players do.

NichG
2021-09-27, 10:54 PM
I don't think all instances of planning on shutting down player abilities is railroading, or if it is, it isn't always bad. If you give the BBEG a mind-control shield because one of your players has been steamrolling over combat with his mind control, I think that's just making sure everyone can have fun in combat (and fairly realistic if the boss has any communication channels at all). The relationship idea is interesting though, because that would kind of hint at the frequency being an important factor too. Maybe if it's raining once, because the DM just can't figure out any other way to get the players through the front door that's acceptable, and the problem arises when random occurrences like this shut down their plans more often than not.

Well it comes down to this - is the GM going to use their power to work with the players to help them experience what they're looking for, or are they going to use their position to exchange player satisfaction for their own fun/ease of running/etc? If the GM gives the BBEG a mind-control shield when one player has been building up to 'I'm here to play a mind control fantasy', then that's working against what that player wants to explore. Now the GM does have to consider everyone, but maybe that means that instead of a mind-control shield that just no-sells the ability, the BBEG has a spell up providing that effect which can be dispelled. Or maybe the BBEG has multiple subminds where each successful control starts to co-opt the BBEG's action economy a bit at a time, letting the character target movement, attack, knowledge, etc. Or maybe the BBEG has a one-off (like Iron Heart Surge) which lets them throw off all negative effects once during the fight. Or maybe the BBEG just has a bunch of minions/summons/etc on the field, so even if they're mind-controlled during a surprise round there's still a fight as the minions try to kill the party or dispel the control.

The thing that matters is that the GM acknowledges how the player decides they want to interact with the world, and works with the player rather than against them in order to make that work. The semantics of whether something is technically railroading, whether it can be justified from realism or randomness, etc all just distracts from that point.

Tanarii
2021-09-27, 11:27 PM
I brought up something similar before calling it "trolley tracks", a light rail railroad. Playing a module is this, but it can also be a homebrew Campaign Plot. Some people call it a linear campaign. One-shot game sessions are also this. Players buy into it. They will do the Campaign Plot, whether it's a module or homebrew. No question, they're doing it, it's the point of coming to the game and play whatever it is the DM prepared. The player agency comes in by the players Solving The Plot by however they choose to do so. They decide where to go, what NPCs to talk to, how they approach an encounter, etc. The DM does not enforce anything to go a certain way, but there are consequences good and bad as appropriate to what the players do.
The examples given in the OP were a lot more than buy-in. Solid steel rails & medium engine at least.

Except for the gladiator / quest giver one. That one might not be. In that case it could be that NPC still needs the job done, and offering it to someone that has proven their mettle in an alternate way from winning gladiator fights is exactly what a smart NPC would do in that situation. Yay for the DM they still get to use their content ... if the PCs accept. Of course, if the NPC was the type to be more pissed off that a slave escaped, that might not happen not. Point is it's not automatically quantum or 'plot' driven. It's character and NPC driven.

Or it's not, because the DM is just scrambling around trying to get things back on the (trolly) rails.

Morgaln
2021-09-28, 03:50 AM
If that's all there is too it though, then a lot of other common practices could comfortable fit under the umbrella of "railroading". A lot of improv-focused DMs will just come to the table with a general idea of where they want the story to end up. Isn't that kind of the same thing though? If you come to the table knowing that there's an informant who can tell the party about the king's shady advisor, you're going to find a way to bring the party to him. So then regardless of what the players do, they end up talking to this one npc.


As someone who has an improv-heavy style of GMing: that's not how it works. I don't decide beforehand where my stories end up, because I'm not the only one affecting the story. The players have a big part in that too. Usually, I have a main problem that the story is about. I also tend to have 2-3 scenes in mind that I would like to incorporate into the game. Note, this is not per session, it is per chapter of a longer game, so over 5-10 sessions.
But often, I don't even know how and when these scenes will fit into the story. I will incorporate them if an opportunity arises. If I can't find a good time to have that scene, well, tough luck, it's not happening. Other than that, I provide the players with situations that I don't know how to solve. What that means is, I certainly could come up with ideas on how the situation could go and how to solve it, but I don't. I wait for how the players decide to tackle the situation, what solution they try for solving whatever problem(s) come up and have the world react to that.
So yes, I might have that informant show up at some place and tell the players about the shady advisor. But then, I will let players choose what to do with that information. It's completely up to them to try to expose the advisor, or blackmail him, or offer up the informant to him to get into his good graces or completely ignore that matter or anything else they can think of. I don't consider that railroading at all.

Admittedly, I have the advantage of playing with people I've played with for up to twenty years. I know how they think and how they will likely react.
For example, in a recent Werewolf: the Apocalypse game, the players ran across a human that was about to become a Fomor (=possessed by an evil spirit). This process is usually irreversible, and killing the human the proposed solution. However, I complicated matters by making said human a 15 year old girl. As expected, the players didn't really want to go and just slit her throat, so they set out to find a cure after all; and lo and behold, I had a game.
Note that this worked, because the characters where people who wouldn't just kill a girl. I have another game (same players, different characters) where this would have been over in five minutes, as those characters would have killed the girl without a second thought and consider it a mercy. So if you know your audience, you'll have an easier time guessing where the story might go.

Which is not to say that I haven't had games that went into completely different territory than I expected, and I'd roll with it. To steal Talakeal's example, if my players decide their 1920s gangsters want to go and become Arizona farmers, then that is the game we are playing. Have fun talking about the prices of seed and dealing with bad weather destroying your crops or coyotes killing your livestock :P Of course that doesn't mean the enemies they made in their former lives won't be able to track them down eventually...

oxybe
2021-09-28, 03:55 AM
I think it bares to mention that we should look at one of the longest standing railroads in TTRPGs, and one that doubles as a prime example of metagaming too.

GM: sits down at table, orders his notes and peers above the screen at the awaiting players
"Alright... You all meet at a tavern"

This trope right here is proof that presentation and intent matters.

Everyone at the table has (hopefully, due to a successful session 0) agreed to make characters that would be in this tavern and willing to take a job handed to them by some mysterious, cloaked old man while also working with 3-4 other strangers.

Experienced gamers may roll their eyes a bit at the trope being used, but it's still a beloved classic that exists just gets the ball rolling on that first adventure to baptize the party.

Everyone agrees to be metagame'd and railroaded into that first adventure.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-28, 05:39 AM
"Railroading" is not an exact technical term, it's a metaphor built on analogy: a train moves along set tracks and a passenger, once on board, has no control over where the train will go, only whether to get out or keep going at the next stop.

"Railroading" outside of games refers to a feeling of being socially pressured, of having your opinions and options negated in a negotiation (etc.) to reach a set outcome.

These are applicable to roleplaying games, but if a lot of distinct things start to sound like railroading, beyond of what the term is normally used for, then you're likely better off eliminating the analogy from your vocabulary alltogether. Just talk about the things that bug you directly and forget about whether they count as "railroading" or not.

Same goes Schrödinger's dungeon and Quantum Ogre. If you ask me, these are horrible misnomers created by appropriating terminology from unrelated field of science.

The "Quantum ogre" isn't quantum. It's inevitable. The game master has prepared an encounter with an ogre and by God there will be an encounter with an ogre. There is no quantum superposition anywhere, the game master has decided their next move will be placing the ogre no matter what move their players make.

The hypercube dungeon you describe is nothing like Schrödinger's cat experiment. The point of that thought experiment was to show how states reliant on a random element would be trapped in superposition, being both true and false until the outcome of the random element is resolved through observation. A true example of a "Schrödinger's dungeon" would just be a randomly generated dungeon, where the exact state of the dungeon isn't known until dice are rolled. Your example of a hypercube dungeon is not random at all, it is a linear dungeon that uses special geography to disguise the fact. A proper hypercube wouldn't even be linear, since it would have multiple ways of moving through the rooms.

Having imperfect information in a game rarely requires terminology stolen from theory of quantum mechanics to describe, so stop doing it. :smalltongue:

---

So, now that I've established the special terminology isn't useful, what seems to be the issue?

It seems to me, you want games to have choices. Okay. Well, a game master constantly making choices that counteract their players' choices will obviously reduce number of effective choices their players can make. And any game rule which relies on a random function for its outcome won't count as a player's choice. But these are relevantly different. A game master acting that way is typically eliminative, causing game paths to converge, while the latter is typically generative, causing game paths to diverge. Both have their uses for game design, so their mere presence somewhere in a game tree aren't worthy of concern. As a rule of thumb, don't fret about game master intervention if after a round of elimination there are still at least two distinct options per decision prompt, don't fret about randomness if for each random decision there is a decision reliant on the player. Only start to worry when either element becomes so dominant players are reduced to spectators for large fractions of real playtime.

As many people have already pointed out in slightly different ways, it's hard to tell a linear game from a non-linear game on one playthrough. The reality is even worse: it's possible to value having a lot of options, but it's impossible to experience all those options. The larger the move space of your game is, the harder it is to see more than a fraction of it. In a stochastically branching universe, there may be many possible futures, but only one will be actualized for you. You can't travel back in time to see if things could've gone differently than they did, no-one can. What you can do is check the movespace of your game to see if it allows for multiple paths through it in the first place and then put different playgroups through it to see if those different paths emerge. That's the information you want to prove choices exist and matter in a game.

Quertus
2021-09-28, 07:20 AM
Sci-fi game:
Player 1: "We need to visit this reclusive weirdo outside the city to get info."
Player 2: "Everything outside the domed city is a toxic radioactive blasted wasteland with tentacle elephants and acid pools."
Player 3: "So? We rent an air-car. We rode one in from the spaceport."
-- later after having to hijack an air-taxi because there are none for rent, sale, or theft --
DM: "After you land and get out a giant radioactive tentacle elephant rises up from behind the hut and attacks."
Player 1: "Its how big? ... Thats bigger than the hut."
Player 2: "How come we couldn't see a huge purple monster against gray rocks without any cover?"
DM: "I guess it has a good hide check? The adventure dosen't say. It gets a surprise round and attacks."
Player 3: "We get back in the air-car and shoot it to death from 100 feet up."
-- later after murderizing the only person in the hut, who refused to talk and just attacked --
DM: "When you come back out the air-car is a burning wreck and there are soldiers who start shooting at you. You guys missed some encounters by not walking and the adventure says you need to do them. So this is one and you have to walk back to town."

I mean, adventures can be railroady and inexperienced DMs can have problems when the PCs aren't tame little plot-robots, but that was pretty bad. Actually I think that whole adventure path had bunches of that sort of stuff. Didn't matter how fast or slow the party was, you were always plot distance behind the bad guys. Didn't matter how stealthy or perceptive, enemies always saw & ambushed you. Transport didn't matter, you were supposed to walk everywhere and weren't allowed more stuff than you could carry. A good, experienced, DM can usually handle this stuff but newer DMs feel they have to choose between the adventure working or the players getting to make meaningful decisions.

This sounds like it could have been a contender in my "worst module" thread.:smalleek:


Edit: The Quantum Ogre is different than, say, ogres on a random encounter table. Consider the following scenarios, which all end up the same way.

Scenario 1: There are three roads to take, the GM says "All 3 roads are menaced by Ogres". The PC's pick Road A, and fight an ogre.
This isn't, like, great GMing, but there's nothing wrong with it. Not every choice needs to be super meaningful.

Scenario 2: There are three roads to take, The GM says "Road B and C have ogres on them", the PC's pick Road A, still fight an ogre.
This is the Quantum Ogre, the PC's took a choice that they were told was not Ogre, but they still met the Ogre.

Scenario 3: There are three roads, The GM decides ahead of time "The PC's will fight an ogre as they travel along the road". The PC's Pick Road A for reasons unrelated to Ogres, and fight an Ogre.

This is fine. The reason the PC's picked Road A is still intact, they fact that they happened to fight an ogre there doesn't invalidate or eliminate any meaningful choices.

As much as I like this, there's the issue of The PC's Pick Road A for no stated reason, or The PC's Pick Road A for many reasons, an unstated one being related to Ogres.

BRC
2021-09-28, 09:40 AM
As much as I like this, there's the issue of The PC's Pick Road A for no stated reason, or The PC's Pick Road A for many reasons, an unstated one being related to Ogres.
What the PC's say is less relevant than what they've been told.

If they've been told that Road A does not contain Ogres, then if they go to road A, they shouldn't meet any Ogres. It doesn't matter if they said anything about Ogres when they picked Road A.

It kind of breaks down to 2 rules

1) PC's should be given meaningful choices

2) If the PC's make a choice, that choice shouldn't be invalidated.

If there are 3 roads, the PC's should have enough information about those roads such that choosing which one to take is a meaningful choice. It's fine for all 3 roads to have ogres, but if part of the information their given is "Road A is the road to take to avoid Ogres", then Road A better not have Ogres.


Thinking about it, Rule 2 is just a subset of Rule 1. If the PC's make a choice, and that choice is invalidated, then the choice wasn't meaningful.

Easy e
2021-09-28, 10:04 AM
Controversial post:

Railroading is good, IF the illusion of choice is never removed. The only thing bad about Railroading is clumsy railroading that breaks the illusion of choice.

Playing a game of D&D is just one big magic trick, there is the set-up, there is the distraction, and then there is the big-reveal (This is often called the 3-act method). The trick is getting players to feel like they have total freedom. However, the truth is that they do not have total freedom. There is no such thing.

Quantum Ogres and Schrodinger's Dungeon are just types of the magic trick, but the end result is that the illusion of choice is always present.

A corollary- The illusion of choice is only important if that is what your players need to have fun. If they do not need the illusion of choice to have fun, then there is no need to provide the illusion. Most Video games railroad the heck out of you as a player, but they are infinitely more popular that RPGs. Therefore, Railroading is not a bad game design; it is simply a game design style.

BRC
2021-09-28, 10:11 AM
Controversial post:

Railroading is good, IF the illusion of choice is never removed. The only thing bad about Railroading is clumsy railroading that breaks the illusion of choice.

Playing a game of D&D is just one big magic trick, there is the set-up, there is the distraction, and then there is the big-reveal (This is often called the 3-act method). The trick is getting players to feel like they have total freedom.

Quantum Ogres and Schrodinger's Dungeon are just types of the magic trick, but the end result is that the illusion of choice is always present.

A corollary- The illusion of choice is only important if that is what your players need to have fun. If they do not need the illusion of choice to have fun, then there is no need to provide the illusion. Most Video games railroad the heck out of you as a player, but they are infinitely more popular that RPGs. Therefore, Railroading is not a bad game design; it is simply a game design style.

The above is true, and also terrible advise that I would never give to any GM.

Yes, pre-planning everything while maintaining the Illusion of Choice theoretically opens the door to the best game.

BUT, doing so relies on 2 things

1) The GM can control the story while retaining the Illusion of Choice, which is to say, they have a 100% success rate in leading the PC's down the path they want them to take without the players noticing

2) The GM can perfectly predict how the players want the story to go.


Because there's more to "Meaningful Choices" than just tactical decisions. It's also a way for the Players to control how the story goes, and make sure the story they are playing through is one that they enjoy.


Every GM who railroads thinks that they can perfectly predict and control their players without them noticing the rails. They're almost always wrong.

kyoryu
2021-09-28, 10:37 AM
Ultimately, it's a linear game if the GM knows, in advance, what's going to happen and (for the most part*) in what order they're going to happen, and the GM will not allow anything to veer from that plan.

It's railroading/illusionism if the GM pretends that's not the case.

How you accomplish it is irrelevant, and things that can be used to railroad can also be used in non-railroad situations. I feel like a lot of times these discussions ignore the intent of the GM, and it kinda feels like that's done to come up with a set of "blessed" techniques to use for railroading.

I also highly disagree that well-executed illusionism is the best game. A) some people really do play games to make choices and see the results of them and B) I think it's always a bad idea to be dishonest about the nature of the game. If you want to run a linear game, do so - just be up front about it.

* there's a certain amount of optional encounters/side quests, and reordering of things that can be done while still being, effectively, a railroad. Every BioWare game is basically a railroad. Bethesda games are a little murkier (they're usually a railroad main story with lots of subquests and other systems that can be played through - the main/subquests are railroady but the fact that you can in many cases just play around in the sandbox with teh systems can be argued to move them away from that designation, but I'd still personally argue that they're railroads, just with a ton of emphasis on optional stuff)



Then we get into sandbox games vs. linear plots. At first glance the sandbox seems to be free of railroads, but on the other hand linear plots often give players more agency. In a fully fleshed out sandbox game, stuff is happening in the background all the time, and nothing guarantees players will be in the right place at the right time to affect the world in major ways; this rarely happens in linear games which make sure to put the PCs and their decisions front and center of most of the important things that are going on.

I'm not sure how that follows. A game with no real choices gives you more choice than a game with choices? Like, it might be a more interesting ride, but it's not one with more choices.

There's also lots of ways to keep players "in the plot" without locking them on rails - there are other models behind the classic "wander around and look for stuff" sandbox. Engaging players with the plot isn't railroading/linear if you as a GM don't know what will happen.



It seems to me like the "quantum ogre" can only exist behind blind choices. The original example was a combat encounter, but the same idea should apply to other forms of content, like talking to plot-important npcs. So if you have some traveler you want the players to talk to, and you have him sitting at the magic shop expecting the players to find him, but they go straight to the castle, missing him completely, I think it's fair to say he's a quantum ogre if you behind the scenes change your plans to have him wait at the castle. I think the big question is whether or not this is railroading (or whether or not it's bad railroading, if you think that could be a neutral term).

I mean, it probably is railroading. Is the NPC being thrown in their path to ensure that the players get back on the sequence of events the GM has planned? If so, railroad.


The way I see it there are a few options. Maybe it's ok, because the players had no intention to ignore him, so you haven't subverted their choices. Maybe it's not ok, because the players' actions had no impact on the next step in the story. Or maybe it depends on the circumstances, and if it would be believable for the traveller to still meet the party, then it's ok, and if not, then it's not.

Is it being done to ensure that the players stay on the GM's planned story, and going through the encounters the GM planned? If so, railroad. If not, no.


Kind of a tangent, but is that how most people run dungeons? Whenever there's a fork in the road, most DMs I've played with will give you some kind of clue as to what's down each path. Some times it's obvious, like signs on doors, but usually it's just some kind of sensation, ie, you hear footsteps down one path, and nothing from the other; or torchlight is faintly glowing down one path, and the other is dark. Trying to navigate the dungeon with limited, but extant information is part of what makes it fun.

Yeah, blind choices are just bad design for any number of reasons.



I don't think all instances of planning on shutting down player abilities is railroading.

Of course not. It's railroading if it.... forces players down a particular path the GM has planned.


I brought up something similar before calling it "trolley tracks", a light rail railroad. Playing a module is this, but it can also be a homebrew Campaign Plot. Some people call it a linear campaign. One-shot game sessions are also this. Players buy into it. They will do the Campaign Plot, whether it's a module or homebrew. No question, they're doing it, it's the point of coming to the game and play whatever it is the DM prepared. The player agency comes in by the players Solving The Plot by however they choose to do so. They decide where to go, what NPCs to talk to, how they approach an encounter, etc. The DM does not enforce anything to go a certain way, but there are consequences good and bad as appropriate to what the players do.

This is close to what I do, maybe. There's a "plot", but I don't plan what hte players will do. Buying into the plot is part of joining the game, but you can approach it how you want, and I don't know how it will resolve itself. I don't see this as railroading.... you agree to the premise, we sit down and find out what happens.


As someone who has an improv-heavy style of GMing: that's not how it works. I don't decide beforehand where my stories end up, because I'm not the only one affecting the story.

This. Exactly this.


The players have a big part in that too. Usually, I have a main problem that the story is about. I also tend to have 2-3 scenes in mind that I would like to incorporate into the game. Note, this is not per session, it is per chapter of a longer game, so over 5-10 sessions.

Pretty much. The "plot" is what happens when the players intersect with the problem.


Other than that, I provide the players with situations that I don't know how to solve. What that means is, I certainly could come up with ideas on how the situation could go and how to solve it, but I don't. I wait for how the players decide to tackle the situation, what solution they try for solving whatever problem(s) come up and have the world react to that.

Yes. 100%. If you provide problems and let the players come up with the solutions you pretty much automatically create agency, and have to deal with the results of their actions.

(Again, not the only way to run a game, but it's in the "not a railroad but not a wander about blindly" space that I personally prefer)


So yes, I might have that informant show up at some place and tell the players about the shady advisor. But then, I will let players choose what to do with that information. It's completely up to them to try to expose the advisor, or blackmail him, or offer up the informant to him to get into his good graces or completely ignore that matter or anything else they can think of. I don't consider that railroading at all.

Sure. The GM controls the world, including the NPCs and when they show up. As long as that's not being done to subert player choices, not railroading


And any game rule which relies on a random function for its outcome won't count as a player's choice.

Meh, not entirely sure I agree with that.

If I offer players two paths, one through the goblin woods and one through the ogre mountains, what they encounter might still be the result of a random roll - but it should be on different tables. So in that case the result is random, but agency is preserved.


What the PC's say is less relevant than what they've been told.

If they've been told that Road A does not contain Ogres, then if they go to road A, they shouldn't meet any Ogres. It doesn't matter if they said anything about Ogres when they picked Road A.

It kind of breaks down to 2 rules

1) PC's should be given meaningful choices

2) If the PC's make a choice, that choice shouldn't be invalidated.

If there are 3 roads, the PC's should have enough information about those roads such that choosing which one to take is a meaningful choice. It's fine for all 3 roads to have ogres, but if part of the information their given is "Road A is the road to take to avoid Ogres", then Road A better not have Ogres.


Thinking about it, Rule 2 is just a subset of Rule 1. If the PC's make a choice, and that choice is invalidated, then the choice wasn't meaningful.

Eh, mostly, though this isn't really railroading, per se. If you say "absolutely no Ogres" that's one thing, but I think it's fine to say "take this road to avoid Ogres", and have them be much lower on the random encounter chart (1 in 100 vs. 1 in 5).

If the Ogre is there because that's the encounter that you as the GM have decided on? Railroading.

Telok
2021-09-28, 11:12 AM
This sounds like it could have been a contender in my "worst module" thread.:smalleek:

Starfinder "Dead Suns" ap. Also known for several instances of "didn't do any math" face palming and a couple times the entire group stopped game to critique bad writing.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-28, 11:16 AM
Playing a game of D&D is just one big magic trick, there is the set-up, there is the distraction, and then there is the big-reveal (This is often called the 3-act method).

Or, you can ditch this three act method and just do something else with your time.


The trick is getting players to feel like they have total freedom. However, the truth is that they do not have total freedom. There is no such thing.

Or, you could be upfront about the fact that players have limited freedom and have to choose from few different options at each decision prompt. Even when you only have two distinct options per decision prompt, your game tree will grow exponentially.


Most Video games railroad the heck out of you as a player, but they are infinitely more popular that RPGs. Therefore, Railroading is not a bad game design; it is simply a game design style.

Honest-to-God railshooters offer more real agency than a badly railroaded tabletop game, because in the railshooter you can at least win or lose by your own effort. :smalltongue:

---



Yes, pre-planning everything while maintaining the Illusion of Choice theoretically opens the door to the best game.

Based on what? Many of the most popular games offer real choices, not just illusions, whether you're talking of tabletop roleplaying games, board games, videogames or sports.

BRC
2021-09-28, 11:25 AM
Based on what? Many of the most popular games offer real choices, not just illusions, whether you're talking of tabletop roleplaying games, board games, videogames or sports.

Based on the idea that the more you know what's going to happen, the more you can prepare for it and provide narrative detail and support. If the PC's decide "Let's go assassinate the King", the following sequence will be more fun if the DM has the palace map and guard routes planned out so they can make a fun and engaging scenario.

Most popular games offer real choices because real choices invest players in the game and make it more satisfying and fun. The general consensus (Which I agree with) is that this investment is worth more than the more focused prep work you get to put in if you railroad your players.


Theoretically, if you could have the best of both worlds: Heavy player engagement due to the story being driven by their choices, AND the ability to focus your prep work due to knowing exactly what was going to happen, you could run the best game ever.


But the two concepts are mutually exclusive. The only way to know exactly what is going to happen is to force it to happen (Railroading), and that means your players won't feel they have agency, and won't have the engagement that comes with making meaningful choices.

Easy e
2021-09-28, 11:44 AM
I find it odd how everyone is so hung up on giving player's agency and meaningful choices, but the GM does not get that same courtesy. They are suppose to be slaves to the characters decisions at all times?

Of course not! They have agency to the story as well, and helping determine the pace, flow, and plot of a game is not railroading. It is setting up a good game. I am a highly improvisational GM, but even I have to put some very bare bones in place, like the following:

1. Hook
2. Encounter Path - Key events that have to happen in the story to lead to the big finale
3. Big Finale

Is that a railroad? Is reducing the influence of the Paradox of choice and decision fatigue a railroad? Or is it actually being a good gamemaster?

I mean really, do you guys all sit down at the table and say, "Okay, what do you want to do now?" at the start of a session? In my experience, that leads to the worst games as everyone starts scattering and doing their own thing, with no unity, and often for the most mundane and miniscule of reasons.

I guess if comes down to what is the definition of a "real choice" I have a definition for myself. A meaningful choice is:

(Positive Outcomes / Negative Impacts) + Downstream Impacts to the Game = Meaningful Choice

Those can be created within a "pre-planned" story arc.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-28, 11:46 AM
@BRC: Ummmm... no.

There's an obvious third option of using all that prepwork to create real options for a player to choose from. You don't need to predict anything, just set them up.

Now, obviously, it requires exponentially more work as your game tree grows, but that's where procedural generation comes in. Instead of using all your effort to predict what your players will do or working everything out in advance, start investing in methods that will allow you to create more game based on what your players actually do when they do it.

Talakeal
2021-09-28, 11:47 AM
I'm not sure how that follows. A game with no real choices gives you more choice than a game with choices? Like, it might be a more interesting ride, but it's not one with more choices.

There's also lots of ways to keep players "in the plot" without locking them on rails - there are other models behind the classic "wander around and look for stuff" sandbox. Engaging players with the plot isn't railroading/linear if you as a GM don't know what will happen.

Of course there are a lot of other models, my whole point was that it is a spectrum, or rather multiple spectrums.

What I meant about a sandbox vs. a linear game is that a sandbox gives you more choices, but a linear game makes sure that the choices you make matter. Typically by ensuring that you are always in the right place at the right time to see the most interesting stuff unfolding and usually with a chance to interact with it or alter its course.

Deciding whether or not to go hunt kobolds in the hills or lizardmen in the marsh (or a dozen similar adventures) isn't terribly interesting, and if some epic kingdom shaking plot is unfolding in the background, you probably won't notice it, let alone be able to interact with it, unless you just so happen to stumble upon it.

But, if, say, the DM makes sure that on your way back from hunting kobolds, you stumble upon the king out hunting just as the assassins hired by the traitors go to assassinate him, you can save the entire kingdom! And, if he then rewards you by giving you a title, you can now play at kingdom level politics directly in a way that would have taken you years of working your way up normally without such a golden opportunity being dropped in your lap.

Easy e
2021-09-28, 11:55 AM
But the two concepts are mutually exclusive. The only way to know exactly what is going to happen is to force it to happen (Railroading), and that means your players won't feel they have agency, and won't have the engagement that comes with making meaningful choices.

I would argue they are not mutually exclusive, but more on a continuum.


Perhaps, I do not understand what "railroading" is, and what it really means. I can have pretty free form story based games, that still get from point A to Point B. That sounds like many would see that as a "railroad". To me, that is the basics of playing a game.

BRC
2021-09-28, 11:56 AM
@BRC: Ummmm... no.

There's an obvious third option of using all that prepwork to create real options for a player to choose from. You don't need to predict anything, just set them up.

Now, obviously, it requires exponentially more work as your game tree grows, but that's where procedural generation comes in. Instead of using all your effort to predict what your players will do or working everything out in advance, start investing in methods that will allow you to create more game based on what your players actually do when they do it.
Yes, exactly. That's precisely what I recommend doing...that's my point. The "Invisible Railroad" sounds good in theory, but doesn't actually work.

The third option you mention, giving every possible decision full pre-planning is impractically resource intensive.

The practical solution is not to build around specific Paths, but instead build a living scenario that can accommodate any given decision. Yes, you give up the ability to perfectly plot the entire session ahead of time, but the satisfaction of having agency is more fun than playing through a precisely plotted story.


I mean, what I mostly do is just time the big meaningful decisions to occur around the ends of sessions, then ask the Players "What are you planning to do next?" so my next session at least knows where their starting point is.



I would argue they are not mutually exclusive, but more on a continuum.


Perhaps, I do not understand what "railroading" is, and what it really means. I can have pretty free form story based games, that still get from point A to Point B. That sounds like many would see that as a "railroad". To me, that is the basics of playing a game.

Railroading, as the term is generally used, is about Denying Player Agency.

If point A is "We meet at the local tavern" and Point B Is "We kill the Dragon", it's not railroading to build the scenario around the assumption the Players will go kill the dragon.

If the players decide NOT to, it's fine to say "Well, I didn't prep for that, let's cut session so I can prep something else".


Railroading is saying "Okay, the Players will meet in the tavern, then go down this road, at which point they will get ambushed by Ogres and captured, only to be magically contacted by a mysterious Wizard who offers to free them and give them a dragon slaying sword in exchange for promising to give him the Dragon's heart. They accept, climb the mountain by the main road, sneak in through the secret passage, and slay the dragon with the dragonslaying sword."


The end result 'Kill the dragon" is the Goal. The Railroad is that the GM has planned out each step they will take (Taking that road, getting captured, accepting the Wizard's offer, ect), and forcing them to follow it.

Talakeal
2021-09-28, 12:13 PM
Railroading is saying "Okay, the Players will meet in the tavern, then go down this road, at which point they will get ambushed by Ogres and captured, only to be magically contacted by a mysterious Wizard who offers to free them and give them a dragon slaying sword in exchange for promising to give him the Dragon's heart. They accept, climb the mountain by the main road, sneak in through the secret passage, and slay the dragon with the dragonslaying sword."

The end result 'Kill the dragon" is the Goal. The Railroad is that the GM has planned out each step they will take (Taking that road, getting captured, accepting the Wizard's offer, ect), and forcing them to follow it.

I would argue that this is less a railroad and more just a linear plot. The railroad comes in when the players decide to do something else and the GM starts coming up with excuses to keep them from deviating.

BRC
2021-09-28, 12:15 PM
I would argue that this is less a railroad and more just a linear plot. The railroad comes in when the players decide to do something else and the GM starts coming up with excuses to keep them from deviating.
Yes, technically railroading is the methods by which the GM keeps the players on the linear plot, but if you don't Railroad, you don't really have a linear plot at all, just a bunch of scenes you happen to have put more planning into than others.

That's inefficient session prep, but it's not Railroading.

OldTrees1
2021-09-28, 12:18 PM
Controversial post:

Railroading is good, IF the illusion of choice is never removed. The only thing bad about Railroading is clumsy railroading that breaks the illusion of choice.

Playing a game of D&D is just one big magic trick, there is the set-up, there is the distraction, and then there is the big-reveal (This is often called the 3-act method). The trick is getting players to feel like they have total freedom. However, the truth is that they do not have total freedom. There is no such thing.

Quantum Ogres and Schrodinger's Dungeon are just types of the magic trick, but the end result is that the illusion of choice is always present.

A corollary- The illusion of choice is only important if that is what your players need to have fun. If they do not need the illusion of choice to have fun, then there is no need to provide the illusion. Most Video games railroad the heck out of you as a player, but they are infinitely more popular that RPGs. Therefore, Railroading is not a bad game design; it is simply a game design style.

You are right, that is controversial.

If the playgroup has a preference, trying to get away with going against the preference without the playgroup realizing, is knowingly attempting to deceive the playgroup about what game they agreed to play.

Video games like CRPGs are rather straightforward in stating there will be some illusion of choice and they ask if the potential player is okay with that precondition.

If a GM pretends there is no illusion of choice, but uses plenty of it, they are being deceptive and knowingly tricking the player into a game they did not agree to play.

The 3rd case is a GM that does not use illusion of choice. An RPG does not require illusion of choice. The GM possesses a general intelligence and thus is able to resolve choices that the computer can't (yet).

Get player buy-in. Don't try to con people into playing a game they would not play if they knew what kind of game it will be.

Talakeal
2021-09-28, 12:34 PM
Yes, technically railroading is the methods by which the GM keeps the players on the linear plot, but if you don't Railroad, you don't really have a linear plot at all, just a bunch of scenes you happen to have put more planning into than others.

That's inefficient session prep, but it's not Railroading.

Actually, re-reading your example, I agree with you. Not sure how you ensure that the players are captured by ogres without railroading.

OldTrees1
2021-09-28, 12:43 PM
I find it odd how everyone is so hung up on giving player's agency and meaningful choices, but the GM does not get that same courtesy. They are suppose to be slaves to the characters decisions at all times?

The GM has plenty of agency. I make the decisions for all the NPCs. We rarely talk about GM agency, because the GM controls their agency. We frequently talk about Player agency, because the only 1 player (the GM) controls the Player agency.


Of course not! They have agency to the story as well, and helping determine the pace, flow, and plot of a game is not railroading. It is setting up a good game. I am a highly improvisational GM, but even I have to put some very bare bones in place, like the following:

1. Hook
2. Encounter Path - Key events that have to happen in the story to lead to the big finale
3. Big Finale

Is that a railroad? Is reducing the influence of the Paradox of choice and decision fatigue a railroad? Or is it actually being a good gamemaster?

There is some railroading and some player agency in that example. It is a spectrum after all. Get player buy in for the PC choices YOU are making for the Player and you will have a great time.

For example I ran Curse of Strahd as a sandbox campaign but I knew 3 restrictions I wanted to mention in advance.
1) The characters start outside of Barovia and will be sent to Barovia via a house.
2) Once inside Barovia the PCs will be trapped in Barovia until they are no longer trapped in Barovia.
3) I knew Barovia would have moral temptations. So I asked the players have PCs that could be tempted.

That first is railroading. The PC has choices that could lead to not being sent to Barovia. So I asked for Player Buy In by stating in advance that this was the campaign premise and how the campaign was expecting to start. The other players agreed to this restriction.

The second is the natural consequence of Barovia, so it would not normally be a PC choice. It is a decrease in player agency so it is also a form of railroading. Since that aspect was put in place to confine the PCs to the campaign setting, I also asked for Player Buy In. Once again they agreed.

The third is not railroading. It is a precondition on what characters could join the campaign. However that is still something I wanted Player Buy In for, so I asked and I received.

Now most running Curse of Strahd would also have a finale with Strahd. That would also be railroading and would be another great time for player buy in. In my campaign I did not feel the need to make that the inevitable finale. It was the finale I expected, but I left it open based on PC choices. In the end I am glad I did since the outcome was interesting regardless.



I would argue they are not mutually exclusive, but more on a continuum.

Perhaps, I do not understand what "railroading" is, and what it really means. I can have pretty free form story based games, that still get from point A to Point B. That sounds like many would see that as a "railroad". To me, that is the basics of playing a game.

An inevitable Point B is not a precondition of playing the game. Having an inevitable Point B is railroading but you can ask your players for player buy in (See Strahd finale). The basics of the game are a bit broader than either the basics of my campaigns or the basics of your campaigns.

Jakinbandw
2021-09-28, 12:47 PM
Yes, technically railroading is the methods by which the GM keeps the players on the linear plot, but if you don't Railroad, you don't really have a linear plot at all, just a bunch of scenes you happen to have put more planning into than others.

That's inefficient session prep, but it's not Railroading.

I don't really agree with this. I've been using the inverted 3 clue method (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7985/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-3-inverting-the-three-clue-rule) in my games to great effect.

Steps:


At the end of each session I ask the players what they want to do next session.
I start planning the next session, and the scenes that i will prep
I write up the conclusion and one or two other cool scenes I want to run
I add in a few scenes that I think will be important to the adventure or likely to happen
I then go to each scene and add paths that lead to other scenes, only stopping when each scene has at least 3 paths pointing to it and away from it. These paths can be hints (you find a note on the assassin saying to bring your heads to the docks at 9pm tonight), interactions (the king asks you to check on what has been going on at the docks each evening), or geography (exiting the ship the players were on puts them on the docks that evening).
Finally I add some paths leading outwards towards possible next sessions (The books of the crime boss of the docks reveals he's being backed by a mysterious figure in Karnhime only known as L.)


In play, this means that even if the players skip everything and head right to the final confrontation, they will be given hints and reasons to loop back around and encounter most of the interesting stuff I've planned. The thing is, I don't see how this type of prep could ever be seen as linear, when players are free to approach it from any angle, and which ever angle they approach it from will lead to different paths through the prepared content for the session.

JNAProductions
2021-09-28, 12:50 PM
I would argue they are not mutually exclusive, but more on a continuum.

Perhaps, I do not understand what "railroading" is, and what it really means. I can have pretty free form story based games, that still get from point A to Point B. That sounds like many would see that as a "railroad". To me, that is the basics of playing a game.

A large part of what makes a railroad distinct from (or, I guess, a subset of) linear game is player buy-in.

If I tell my group "Hey, I'd like to run a classic adventure starting next week. Princess, kidnapped by a dragon, go save her and get rewards from the kingdom," and that's what we do next week, following a pretty linear path, that's not railroading.
If I tell my group "I have an idea for a campaign starting in a city, where there's various devious actors behind the scenes, and you can work towards your own goals," and then when they show up next week for the session, they can only chse down one devious actor and said devious actor is going to get away no matter what their efforts are... That's railroading.

Easy E, as was mentioned earlier, what you're advocating is functionally lying. You're telling the players-real people, mind you-that they have choice in this game, when they actually don't. And unless your players are really, really dumb, they'll realize it. Even if you're good at lying, they've got time to figure it out.

You also ask why GMs don't have agency-they do. They control literally the entire world, besides the PCs. But in the same way a player who wants to kill the BBEG can't tell another player "No, your PC doesn't cast Fireball on the BBEG, since I want to kill him," if the play group says "Northern road has ogres, and southern road has merchants. Let's head south," you shouldn't suddenly put ogres in their path. You don't have to have player plans always work perfectly-if they intend to sneak into a palace, it's fine if they get caught. It's not fine if they were going to be caught regardless of their plans and rolls.

Intent matters.

Easy e
2021-09-28, 12:50 PM
Here is a typical examples of one of my games. The pre-game "discussion: was that we were playing Monster of the Week, and the players choose their playbooks. We then followed the playbooks to set-up that this would take place in a private, college, in Maine where the players were students. It went like this:

1. I introduce a hook for the players
2. This leads to 1 to 3 key scenes that lead up to the finale
3. the Big Finale

An example in play is from a Monster of the Week game:

1. Hook- Players are crossing a park, when they encounter a corpse in the bushes. What do they do?

2. Key story beats are:
- Investigation reveals the victim and potentially supernatural cause of death
- Meeting an NPC/research on the nature of the killer
- Find the lair through some detective work

3. Complications include:
- Police investigating the death see character as a suspect as well
- Still need to do their day-to-day activities while investigating the killer

4. Big Finale
- Confrontation with the monster in its lair

This is a linear plot, but is it a railroad? Yes, it is a railroad but characters are free to make a lot of meaningful decisions such as; how to engage with the adventure hook, how to deal with the complications, how to conduct their investigation, and how to prepare for the big finale.

In the game, the players chose to call the police when they discovered the body, which dove tailed nicely into the Complications. As suspects, they decided they needed to find out the killer to clear themselves and stop it from killing again. They worked with a Professor at the local college and researched in his library to find the nature of the killer. They found out the monsters preferred habitat and then cased the area to find its lair. Meanwhile, they took precautions to set-up alibi's for their where-abouts while investigating to keep the cops off their trail. They then went after the monster armed with some knowledge, but ended up having to flee its lair after it ran them off. End of session.

Was this a railroad or a linear plot?

BRC
2021-09-28, 12:50 PM
I don't really agree with this. I've been using the inverted 3 clue method (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7985/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-3-inverting-the-three-clue-rule) in my games to great effect.

Steps:


At the end of each session I ask the players what they want to do next session.
I write up the conclusion and one or two other cool scenes I want to run
I add in a few scenes that I think will be important to the adventure or likely to happen
I then go to each scene and add paths that lead to other scenes, only stopping when each scene has at least 3 paths pointing to it and away from it. These paths can be hints (you find a note on the assassin saying to bring your heads to the docks at 9pm tonight), interactions (the king asks you to check on what has been going on at the docks each evening), or geography (exiting the ship the players were on puts them on the docks that evening).
Finally I add some paths leading outwards towards possible next sessions (The books of the crime boss of the docks reveals he's being backed by a mysterious figure in Karnhime only known as L.)


In play, this means that even if the players skip everything and head right to the final confrontation, they will be given hints and reasons to loop back around and encounter most of the interesting stuff I've planned. The thing is, I don't see how this type of prep could ever be seen as linear, when players are free to approach it from any angle, and which ever angle they approach it from will lead to different paths through the prepared content for the session.

Then you don't have a linear plot? I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. You're not railroading, and therefore don't have a linear plot.

JNAProductions
2021-09-28, 12:52 PM
Here is a typical examples of one of my games:

1. I introduce a hook for the players
2. This leads to 1 to 3 key scenes that lead up to the finale
3. the Big Finale

An example in play is from a Monster of the Week game:

1. Hook- Players are crossing a park, when they encounter a corpse in the bushes. What do they do?

2. Key story beats are:
- Investigation reveals the victim and potentially supernatural cause of death
- Meeting an NPC/research on the nature of the killer
- Find the lair through some detective work

3. Complications include:
- Police investigating the death see character as a suspect as well
- Still need to do their day-to-day activities while investigating the killer

4. Big Finale
- Confrontation with the monster in its lair

This is a linear plot, but is it a railroad? Yes, it is a railroad but characters are free to make a lot of meaningful decisions such as; how to engage with the adventure hook, how to deal with the complications, how to conduct their investigation, and how to prepare for the big finale.

In the game, the players chose to call the police when they discovered the body, which dove tailed nicely into the Complications. As suspects, they decided they needed to find out the killer to clear themselves and stop it from killing again. They worked with a Professor at the local college and researched in his library to find the nature of the killer. They found out the monsters preferred habitat and then cased the area to find its lair. Meanwhile, they took precautions to set-up alibi's for their where-abouts while investigating to keep the cops off their trail. They then went after the monster armed with some knowledge, but ended up having to flee its lair after it ran them off. End of session.

Was this a railroad or a linear plot?

What if the players decide "No, we don't want to deal with this."?

And, furthermore, what do you TELL your players? Do you tell them "This is an open-world game, where you can go anywhere and do anything."? Or do you tell them "This will be a monster-of-the-week campaign, with each session (or possibly multiple sessions, if it goes long) being about the next villain or creature."?

Again-player buy in matters. A lot. I'm not a huge fan of linear games-other people are. Neither of us are wrong, it's just preference. But don't tell me it's a sandbox game and then run a linear one.

Jakinbandw
2021-09-28, 12:55 PM
Then you don't have a linear plot? I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. You're not railroading, and therefore don't have a linear plot.

It's not inefficient.

BRC
2021-09-28, 01:00 PM
It's not inefficient.

Ah

I was saying that if you plan out a linear plot (A then B then C then D), but don't enforce it (Railroading), you're just doing inefficient session prep.


You're not planning out a linear plot, so that statement doesn't really apply. If you design the scenario for flexibility, additional prep isn't inefficient even if it's not used. Being prepared is one of your stated goals.

Easy e
2021-09-28, 01:00 PM
What if the players decide "No, we don't want to deal with this."?

And, furthermore, what do you TELL your players? Do you tell them "This is an open-world game, where you can go anywhere and do anything."? Or do you tell them "This will be a monster-of-the-week campaign, with each session (or possibly multiple sessions, if it goes long) being about the next villain or creature."?

Again-player buy in matters. A lot. I'm not a huge fan of linear games-other people are. Neither of us are wrong, it's just preference. But don't tell me it's a sandbox game and then run a linear one.

The discussion was that is was Monster-of-the Week that is based on episodic TV stories like Buffy and Lucifer. That's about it.

Then the cops will continue their investigation and try to pin the death on the characters, and more murders would happen as they were going to school at the town. The players initially did try to avoid the issue entirely, but the investigation made them realize that they could not do so. Therefore, I "railroaded" them into the game. Thus, I am a bad GM; perhaps the worst one ever!

End result, they had a lot of fun and went on to several more sessions including phantom hands, cult killers, gremlins, and more. Several NPCs from the initial session became recurring features as did the locations.

JNAProductions
2021-09-28, 01:22 PM
The discussion was that is was Monster-of-the Week that is based on episodic TV stories like Buffy and Lucifer. That's about it.

Then the cops will continue their investigation and try to pin the death on the characters, and more murders would happen as they were going to school at the town. The players initially did try to avoid the issue entirely, but the investigation made them realize that they could not do so. Therefore, I "railroaded" them into the game. Thus, I am a bad GM; perhaps the worst one ever!

End result, they had a lot of fun and went on to several more sessions including phantom hands, cult killers, gremlins, and more. Several NPCs from the initial session became recurring features as did the locations.

If that was the session zero, then I’d say the players made characters that should’ve been more inclined to bite the hook presented. Glad you all had fun, though.

kyoryu
2021-09-28, 01:34 PM
I would argue that this is less a railroad and more just a linear plot. The railroad comes in when the players decide to do something else and the GM starts coming up with excuses to keep them from deviating.

Yup. But railroading really can't exist without a linear plot.


Yes, technically railroading is the methods by which the GM keeps the players on the linear plot, but if you don't Railroad, you don't really have a linear plot at all, just a bunch of scenes you happen to have put more planning into than others.


Well, you can also have a group that's bought into the linear plot and goes along with it.

MoiMagnus
2021-09-28, 01:38 PM
That's why scouting is critical, as well as making some info about the dungeon available (usually within the dungeon).

This leads me to the following understanding:
+ If your table almost never scouts and usually take decision based on feelings rather than "what is the best choice", you're probably fine with Schrodinger's Dungeon.
+ If your table is the kind to gather as much info as possible to approach problems with the best possible angle, any "illusion of choice" is robbing them of this part of the game. You at the very least own to them some improvised advantages to the planned encounters to take in account their good ideas.

[Note: Obviously, don't expect the first kind of table to succeed at hardcore dungeons they will just die to the first trap when going to the front door because they didn't search for secondary entries. Game "difficulty" should be adjusted. I know that because my group of players (me included) is more of the first kind than the second.]

Easy e
2021-09-28, 01:46 PM
Can someone give me a counter-example to the one I provided so I can understand how you guys are approaching "Not Railroading".

i think I am understanding that it is just a matter of degrees, but I am not 100% sure and I want to wrap my head around the other side of the coin. What does one of your normal games look like?

Talakeal
2021-09-28, 01:54 PM
Yup. But railroading really can't exist without a linear plot.

I don’t know if I agree with that.

I can think of lots of situations where the players want to do something that the GM feels breaks the mechanics of the game or the social contract and tries to wrangle them back in line. Or even trying to force a single encounter to play out the way they want it to even if it is an isolated incident not connected to a larger plot.

Heck, sometimes you even need to railroad players to keep them inside of the sandbox.

BRC
2021-09-28, 02:02 PM
I don’t know if I agree with that.

I can think of lots of situations where the players want to do something that the GM feels breaks the mechanics of the game or the social contract and tries to wrangle them back in line. Or even trying to force a single encounter to play out the way they want it to even if it is an isolated incident not connected to a larger plot.

Heck, sometimes you even need to railroad players to keep them inside of the sandbox.

If we define Railroading as "The GM keeping the players on a specific path" it does.


There are plenty of things that manifest similar to railroading that I don't think apply.

For example, If the GM says "You're character wouldn't think of X solution" because They didn't plan for that, that's railroading.


If the GM says "Your character wouldn't think of X Solution" because the player is metagaming, and only came up with X solution because they'd already read the module cover-to-cover, that's a different story.

icefractal
2021-09-28, 02:10 PM
But the two concepts are mutually exclusive. The only way to know exactly what is going to happen is to force it to happen (Railroading), and that means your players won't feel they have agency, and won't have the engagement that comes with making meaningful choices.The only way to know exactly what will happen, but you can have freedom and prep together if the players are willing to be consistent and/or you're willing to sometimes have short sessions.

It's just by structuring things so that major choices happen at least a session before their results, giving you the time between sessions to prep those results. This does constrain the PCs a little (into sticking with what they decided last session), but most people consider that reasonable.

And if they decide that no, it really is vital that they change their plans now, no big deal. Just run as much as you can run well, and then end the session at that point. GMs aren't obligated to be an infinite content machine.

For that matter, you often don't even need to end things that early, just go into detail on some social interactions or fights that you'd normally abbreviate, maybe some things that will encourage intra-party discussion - players can generate quite a bit of content themselves in the right circumstances.


Some of the examples do raise another question though - is it railroading if the GM creates a premise where a particular threat can't plausibly be ignored? Say, for example:
* Liches are plotting to destroy the sun.
* The PCs (or people they care about) would be seriously harmed by that.
* The PCs are some of the best contenders to stop the liches.

Saying "meh, let's do something else instead" may be technically possible, but it's fairly nonsensical IC. And besides, the "something else" will probably be interrupted by the darkness and freezing once the sun is gone.

Talakeal
2021-09-28, 02:22 PM
If we define Railroading as "The GM keeping the players on a specific path" it does.


There are plenty of things that manifest similar to railroading that I don't think apply.

For example, If the GM says "You're character wouldn't think of X solution" because They didn't plan for that, that's railroading.


If the GM says "Your character wouldn't think of X Solution" because the player is metagaming, and only came up with X solution because they'd already read the module cover-to-cover, that's a different story.

Which is, of course, the problem with the term railroading; it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. In my experience, it mostly just boils down to telling a player "no".

For example, something that actually happened in a game of mine; a new player joined an existing game and came in with full WBL. He decided the game wasn't for him and didn't show up for the next session. The rest of the party wanted to murder his character and take his stuff. I told them they couldn't do that, as it was a move made with no in character motivation except to break the game by dropping an extra character's worth of loot into the party's hands, and instead he would journey with them to the next town and then leave the party peaceably. They were furious, and most of the people I shared the story with on the forum agreed that it was heavy handed railroading.

Absolutely nothing in there has anything to do with a "plot" linear or otherwise.

BRC
2021-09-28, 02:36 PM
Which is, of course, the problem with the term railroading; it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. In my experience, it mostly just boils down to telling a player "no".

For example, something that actually happened in a game of mine; a new player joined an existing game and came in with full WBL. He decided the game wasn't for him and didn't show up for the next session. The rest of the party wanted to murder his character and take his stuff. I told them they couldn't do that, as it was a move made with no in character motivation except to break the game by dropping an extra character's worth of loot into the party's hands, and instead he would journey with them to the next town and then leave the party peaceably. They were furious, and most of the people I shared the story with on the forum agreed that it was heavy handed railroading.

Absolutely nothing in there has anything to do with a "plot" linear or otherwise.

Yeah, but you'll run into that with any term.

Like, I define "Railroading" as "Denying the PC's any meaningful choices" because that's the definition I find most useful, but it's frustratingly vague and hard to apply.



The only way to know exactly what will happen, but you can have freedom and prep together if the players are willing to be consistent and/or you're willing to sometimes have short sessions.

It's just by structuring things so that major choices happen at least a session before their results, giving you the time between sessions to prep those results. This does constrain the PCs a little (into sticking with what they decided last session), but most people consider that reasonable.


I mean, that's what I generally do, and it works pretty well, but it just changes the scope of the question.
It lets me plan out sessions reasonably well (because the players told me what they're planning to do at the end of last session), but I'm not able to prep much of anything beyond the next session.

And even within the session, I only really have total certainty over the first scene, and there are plenty of theoretically fun storytelling tricks you can do that don't really make sense/ are substantially harder to pull off if you don't have the whole story plotted out.


I'm not complaining. Like I said, this is how I run my games, and it works quite well as far as being the Best of Both Worlds. It's the advice I'd give to any GM asking about this sort of thing.


But it's still a compromise, and doesn't give me as much control/ability to make every given scene 'Pop' as a hypothetical full railroad would.

Jakinbandw
2021-09-28, 03:03 PM
Which is, of course, the problem with the term railroading; it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. In my experience, it mostly just boils down to telling a player "no".

For example, something that actually happened in a game of mine; a new player joined an existing game and came in with full WBL. He decided the game wasn't for him and didn't show up for the next session. The rest of the party wanted to murder his character and take his stuff. I told them they couldn't do that, as it was a move made with no in character motivation except to break the game by dropping an extra character's worth of loot into the party's hands, and instead he would journey with them to the next town and then leave the party peaceably. They were furious, and most of the people I shared the story with on the forum agreed that it was heavy handed railroading.

Absolutely nothing in there has anything to do with a "plot" linear or otherwise.

Stuff like this is why I refuse to run for any character in the chaotic evil corner (including chaotic neutral and neutral evil).

OldTrees1
2021-09-28, 04:03 PM
Can someone give me a counter-example to the one I provided so I can understand how you guys are approaching "Not Railroading".

i think I am understanding that it is just a matter of degrees, but I am not 100% sure and I want to wrap my head around the other side of the coin. What does one of your normal games look like?

Sure, since it is a matter of degrees and counterfactuals I will give a couple examples:

As always, if and only if you get player buy in, then it does not matter if you cover the rails with illusion of choice. So it is good to get player buy in.


Here is a typical examples of one of my games:

1. I introduce a hook for the players
2. This leads to 1 to 3 key scenes that lead up to the finale
3. the Big Finale

An example in play is from a Monster of the Week game:

1. Hook- Players are crossing a park, when they encounter a corpse in the bushes. What do they do?

2. Key story beats are:
- Investigation reveals the victim and potentially supernatural cause of death
- Meeting an NPC/research on the nature of the killer
- Find the lair through some detective work

3. Complications include:
- Police investigating the death see character as a suspect as well
- Still need to do their day-to-day activities while investigating the killer

4. Big Finale
- Confrontation with the monster in its lair


1. I introduce a hook for the players
2. This might leads 0 to 3 prepared key scenes
3. Eventually the Big Finale against the Monster in its Lair

An example in play is from a Monster of the Week game:

1. Hook- Players are crossing a park, when they encounter a corpse in the bushes. What do they do?

2. What might the PCs do that I should prepare for?:
- Investigate the victim / scene of the killing
- Go somewhere to research
- Search the nearby woods for trails/tracks

3. Complications include:
- Police investigating the death see character as a suspect as well
- Still need to do their day-to-day activities while investigating the killer

4. Big Finale
- Confrontation against the monster in its lair


1. I introduce a hook for the players
2. The players do things
3. Eventually the Big Finale against the Monster (in its Lair?)

An example in play is from a Monster of the Week game:

1. Hook- Players are crossing a park, when they encounter a corpse in the bushes. What do they do?

2. What might the PCs do that I should prepare for?

3. Complications include:
- Police investigating the death see character as a suspect as well
- Still need to do their day-to-day activities while investigating the killer

4. Big Finale: How and where will the PCs decide to confront the monster?
- The monster has motivations XYZ
- The monster has habits ABC
- The monster has abilities DEF
Whatever the PCs plan, I can adjudicate the outcome


1. I introduce a hook for the players
2. The players do things
3. Eventually the Big Finale (with the Monster?) (in its Lair?)(Hostile?)

An example in play is from a Monster of the Week game:

1. Hook- Players are crossing a park, when they encounter a corpse in the bushes. What do they do?

2. What might the PCs do that I should prepare for?

3. Complications include:
- Police investigating the death see character as a suspect as well
- Still need to do their day-to-day activities while investigating the killer

4. How do the PCs plan on resolving the situation?
- The monster has motivations XYZ
- The monster has habits ABC
- The monster has abilities DEF
- Details about various other NPCs

Basically I moved along the spectrum by having the GM in question make fewer and fewer PC choices for the Players. Thus the Players had greater and greater agency over what their PC would choose to do. They are still bound by the in game reality but at the end I am not even assuming the PCs will choose to vanquish the monster. If I continued along this spectrum I would eventually reach a situation where there are several interesting events happening and the PCs get to choose whether to engage with any of them. Instead of it being a monster of the week, they find that there are multiple monsters in town and they will decide if they want to deal with any directly, or deal with any indirectly.


I provide context to the players about what the campaign setting is like. In this case there are small towns next to wilderness. The locals have several cryptozoological myths that everyone grew up "knowing" were false. Your PCs know each other and are currently in one of these towns. You probably all live here but maybe one of you is visiting. That is up to you. You are going about your daily lives when you will start to learn about strange events.

They create characters.

What are you doing now? Tell me about the daily lives of your characters.

*Some events happen offscreen* Depending on what the PCs were doing they may learn about some details of some of those events.

What do you do? (loop until campaign is resolved)

From the daily lives of the characters, the monster events that happened offscreen, and the PC choices, I will discover the consequences and complications resulting from the PC choices.



However any of these games sounds good, if the players can make an informed choice about whether they want to play that style of game. No trying to trick people into playing one of these by pretending it is another.

Tanarii
2021-09-28, 04:32 PM
Controversial post:

Railroading is good, IF the illusion of choice is never removed. The only thing bad about Railroading is clumsy railroading that breaks the illusion of choice.
Controversial alright. Illusionism is anathema that robs players of agency. Some quite good bloggers have written about why.

Two of my favorites on quantum ogres/illusionism, and railroading/player choice:
http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-how-illusion-can-rob-your-game-of.html
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36900/roleplaying-games/the-railroading-manifesto

Stonehead
2021-09-28, 05:16 PM
"Railroading" is not an exact technical term, it's a metaphor built on analogy: a train moves along set tracks and a passenger, once on board, has no control over where the train will go, only whether to get out or keep going at the next stop.

"Railroading" outside of games refers to a feeling of being socially pressured, of having your opinions and options negated in a negotiation (etc.) to reach a set outcome.

These are applicable to roleplaying games, but if a lot of distinct things start to sound like railroading, beyond of what the term is normally used for, then you're likely better off eliminating the analogy from your vocabulary alltogether. Just talk about the things that bug you directly and forget about whether they count as "railroading" or not.

Same goes Schrödinger's dungeon and Quantum Ogre. If you ask me, these are horrible misnomers created by appropriating terminology from unrelated field of science.

The "Quantum ogre" isn't quantum. It's inevitable. The game master has prepared an encounter with an ogre and by God there will be an encounter with an ogre. There is no quantum superposition anywhere, the game master has decided their next move will be placing the ogre no matter what move their players make.

The hypercube dungeon you describe is nothing like Schrödinger's cat experiment. The point of that thought experiment was to show how states reliant on a random element would be trapped in superposition, being both true and false until the outcome of the random element is resolved through observation. A true example of a "Schrödinger's dungeon" would just be a randomly generated dungeon, where the exact state of the dungeon isn't known until dice are rolled. Your example of a hypercube dungeon is not random at all, it is a linear dungeon that uses special geography to disguise the fact. A proper hypercube wouldn't even be linear, since it would have multiple ways of moving through the rooms.

Having imperfect information in a game rarely requires terminology stolen from theory of quantum mechanics to describe, so stop doing it. :smalltongue:


I actually disagree with this. I went back and read the original Quantum Ogre post, and it's about the location of the Ogre at the beginning of the session. If your plans just involve the players running into the ogre whichever path they go down, until they choose a path, it's in a superposition of all the different roads. It does assume the ogre is an entity that exists before it appears "on screen", but if so it seems exactly like a superposition to me.


Controversial post:

Railroading is good, IF the illusion of choice is never removed. The only thing bad about Railroading is clumsy railroading that breaks the illusion of choice.

Playing a game of D&D is just one big magic trick, there is the set-up, there is the distraction, and then there is the big-reveal (This is often called the 3-act method). The trick is getting players to feel like they have total freedom. However, the truth is that they do not have total freedom. There is no such thing.

Quantum Ogres and Schrodinger's Dungeon are just types of the magic trick, but the end result is that the illusion of choice is always present.

A corollary- The illusion of choice is only important if that is what your players need to have fun. If they do not need the illusion of choice to have fun, then there is no need to provide the illusion. Most Video games railroad the heck out of you as a player, but they are infinitely more popular that RPGs. Therefore, Railroading is not a bad game design; it is simply a game design style.

Personally, I disagree, but I'm glad someone with this viewpoint showed up to the thread. The problem I have with this style, is that once you're aware that this is a trick DMs use, it's ruined for you. You can't just choose to forget what you've learned, so there'll always be that thought at the back of your mind that none of your choices actually matter. It can also ruin the memory of some cool game moments. Miraculous close calls and lucky saves always make for the best stories and memories of campaigns, but if you learn that the DM was going to push until 1 step away from failure then give you success anyways, those memories lose a lot of their shine.


Ultimately, it's a linear game if the GM knows, in advance, what's going to happen and (for the most part*) in what order they're going to happen, and the GM will not allow anything to veer from that plan.

It's railroading/illusionism if the GM pretends that's not the case.

How you accomplish it is irrelevant, and things that can be used to railroad can also be used in non-railroad situations. I feel like a lot of times these discussions ignore the intent of the GM, and it kinda feels like that's done to come up with a set of "blessed" techniques to use for railroading.

I don't think it's that easy or clear cut. Especially if you include loose ideas of what's going to happen. The villains plans are usually going to be hidden from the players, at least early on in the campaign. If the DM knows the necromancer is going to invade the town early on in the campaign, and doesn't give the players the means to prevent it, is that really railroading?


Yes, exactly. That's precisely what I recommend doing...that's my point. The "Invisible Railroad" sounds good in theory, but doesn't actually work.

The third option you mention, giving every possible decision full pre-planning is impractically resource intensive.

The practical solution is not to build around specific Paths, but instead build a living scenario that can accommodate any given decision. Yes, you give up the ability to perfectly plot the entire session ahead of time, but the satisfaction of having agency is more fun than playing through a precisely plotted story.


I mean, what I mostly do is just time the big meaningful decisions to occur around the ends of sessions, then ask the Players "What are you planning to do next?" so my next session at least knows where their starting point is.




Railroading, as the term is generally used, is about Denying Player Agency.

If point A is "We meet at the local tavern" and Point B Is "We kill the Dragon", it's not railroading to build the scenario around the assumption the Players will go kill the dragon.

If the players decide NOT to, it's fine to say "Well, I didn't prep for that, let's cut session so I can prep something else".


Railroading is saying "Okay, the Players will meet in the tavern, then go down this road, at which point they will get ambushed by Ogres and captured, only to be magically contacted by a mysterious Wizard who offers to free them and give them a dragon slaying sword in exchange for promising to give him the Dragon's heart. They accept, climb the mountain by the main road, sneak in through the secret passage, and slay the dragon with the dragonslaying sword."


The end result 'Kill the dragon" is the Goal. The Railroad is that the GM has planned out each step they will take (Taking that road, getting captured, accepting the Wizard's offer, ect), and forcing them to follow it.

It's pretty obvious, and not very interesting when the DM is explicitly forcing the players to do things. I think the more interesting question is about the gray areas. Obviously violently pushing the players around in your story is bad. Making the Ogre encounter impossible to defeat, then homebrewing some magical chain when one of the players tries to escape is obviously railroading.

What I'm interested in is the subtler scenarios. You say an A->B story is fine, but an A->B->C->D->E->F->G... story is bad. What about an A->?->D->G story? Where a few middle steps exist?

Like, if you have it in your mind that it'd be a cool scene if the players caught in the middle of a kidnapping attempt of the king during a play. You don't have all the steps laid out, but being eye witnesses to the crime is probably a good clue for the players to follow. Then, on the day of the play, the party gets themselves almost killed by a random encounter, so they decide to skip the play to heal and watch it tomorrow. If the DM decides to delay the kidnapping, has he railroaded the players? Would it be better for them to just miss the kidnapping, and the DM to make up some other story?


Can someone give me a counter-example to the one I provided so I can understand how you guys are approaching "Not Railroading".

i think I am understanding that it is just a matter of degrees, but I am not 100% sure and I want to wrap my head around the other side of the coin. What does one of your normal games look like?

Not understanding this is the whole reason I made this thread.

Jakinbandw
2021-09-28, 05:36 PM
Can someone give me a counter-example to the one I provided so I can understand how you guys are approaching "Not Railroading".

i think I am understanding that it is just a matter of degrees, but I am not 100% sure and I want to wrap my head around the other side of the coin. What does one of your normal games look like?

1: Players choose a Goal at the end of the previous session, so I know what to prep for.
2: I design the scene where the pcs succeed.
3: I design a starting scene covering where I think the players are likely to first gain clues on how to complete their goal.
4: I design some cool other scenes I think would be fun to run.
5: I spend a few minutes interlinking each of the scenes, so that no matter which happens first, they link to other cool scenes.
6: I add a few links to out of session content so the players have option for what they want to work on next session.

This means that even if the players who want to assinate the king teleport in and kill him, they will be led into the cool encounters I had planned (ie a trap in the main entrance hall). These links are usually fairly easy to make work. Ie: The trap in the entrance hall uses interesting magic that certain individuals would pay well for. This pushes the players into that scene, while giving it completely differant context. If they did just go through the front door they would deal with the trap, find out about its value later and double back.

Or not. It's their choice.

Check out node based adventure design for more info.

Stonehead
2021-09-28, 06:36 PM
Check out node based adventure design for more info.

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7949/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-1-the-plotted-approach Link for the lazy. Honestly, every page of the alexandrian is worth reading.

Kymme
2021-09-28, 08:04 PM
Controversial post:

Railroading is good, IF the illusion of choice is never removed. The only thing bad about Railroading is clumsy railroading that breaks the illusion of choice.

Playing a game of D&D is just one big magic trick, there is the set-up, there is the distraction, and then there is the big-reveal (This is often called the 3-act method). The trick is getting players to feel like they have total freedom. However, the truth is that they do not have total freedom. There is no such thing.

Quantum Ogres and Schrodinger's Dungeon are just types of the magic trick, but the end result is that the illusion of choice is always present.

A corollary- The illusion of choice is only important if that is what your players need to have fun. If they do not need the illusion of choice to have fun, then there is no need to provide the illusion. Most Video games railroad the heck out of you as a player, but they are infinitely more popular that RPGs. Therefore, Railroading is not a bad game design; it is simply a game design style.

Alternatively, don't have to have a plan at all. You can just play to find out what happens, prep problems, and open up the door for your players to solve them in whatever creative ways they can come up with.

What is the need for these illusions, these tricks, trying to get your players to believe that they have total freedom? What's so wrong with just giving them total freedom? You sort of dismiss the concept completely in your post, but you don't really offer a compelling reason as to why 'There is no such thing [as total freedom].'

Player agency creates good games, in my experience. When players know that they can do what they want to, when they know that their actions and the actions of their character matters, that really weeds out a lot of problematic player behaviors. Nobody can do anything that 'breaks the story' when you as the GM don't plan out the story in advance.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-28, 11:25 PM
I actually disagree with this. I went back and read the original Quantum Ogre post, and it's about the location of the Ogre at the beginning of the session. If your plans just involve the players running into the ogre whichever path they go down, until they choose a path, it's in a superposition of all the different roads. It does assume the ogre is an entity that exists before it appears "on screen", but if so it seems exactly like a superposition to me.

I've read the original argument too, several times, and I'm telling you: it was bad from the get-go.

If you fixate on the fact the location of the ogre isn't known until observed, as with "Schrödinger's dungeon", the truest example of that would be a simple random encounter, where the existence of the encounter isn't decided before a random function is checked during play. Indeed, all mechanics that rely on deciding the exact location of the ogre during play would be "quantum" by that argument, and it fails to distinguish between them.

But if you're interested in player choice or availability of information, that isn't the relevant thing at all. What's relevant is that the game master has decided to respond to any player move by placing the ogre on their path. The process is just as deterministic as an opposing Chess player choosing to checkmate you during their next turn when they know based on rules of the game that there's nothing you can do to stop them. There is no superposition anywhere. There may be multiple different ways for them to checkmate you and they might have to pick one over the other based on what you do, but that doesn't matter. You may have failed to notice some or all of the ways they can checkmate you, but that doesn't matter either. What actually matters is that their chance of checkmating you is 1 and your chance of avoiding the checkmate are 0, your opponent knows this beforehand and could tell you. QED.

Morgaln
2021-09-29, 03:31 AM
So the question about quantum ogres is: if I decide there will be one random encounter for the players whichever way they go, did I also railroad them? If not, why is it different whether the encounter was random or pre-decided on?

As others have pointed out, it matters why the players choose one way or the other. If they have a choice between "faster road, but with a toll booth to pay" and "slower road but free," their decision was independent from the existence of ogres. So even if they encounter an ogre either way, their choice was meaningful and not invalidated (the free road is still free and slow).

If they are specifically told "this road has no ogres" and they still encounter an ogre, that could be railroading; however, if something is explicitly different like that, my first thought as a player would be that it is a plot hook. Why is there an ogre on the supposedly ogre-free road? Are the ogres planning an attack? Are they getting displaced by a greater threat they are trying to avoid? Did someone lure it here? The quantum ogre can actually create player agency, assuming the GM is willing to react to player interests. That's of course back to improv GMing and admittedly, it is a way of after the fact justification. But it means I don't see quantum ogres as inherently negative, as they can have a positive influence on the game.

OldTrees1
2021-09-29, 09:24 AM
So the question about quantum ogres is: if I decide there will be one random encounter for the players whichever way they go, did I also railroad them? If not, why is it different whether the encounter was random or pre-decided on?

As others have pointed out, it matters why the players choose one way or the other. If they have a choice between "faster road, but with a toll booth to pay" and "slower road but free," their decision was independent from the existence of ogres. So even if they encounter an ogre either way, their choice was meaningful and not invalidated (the free road is still free and slow).

If they are specifically told "this road has no ogres" and they still encounter an ogre, that could be railroading; however, if something is explicitly different like that, my first thought as a player would be that it is a plot hook. Why is there an ogre on the supposedly ogre-free road? Are the ogres planning an attack? Are they getting displaced by a greater threat they are trying to avoid? Did someone lure it here? The quantum ogre can actually create player agency, assuming the GM is willing to react to player interests. That's of course back to improv GMing and admittedly, it is a way of after the fact justification. But it means I don't see quantum ogres as inherently negative, as they can have a positive influence on the game.

Step 1: Did the Ogre exist before the choice?
In the quantum ogre case, yes it did exist.
In the guaranteed random encounter case, yes it did exist.

Step 2: Did the Ogre move to negate the choice?
In the quantum ogre case, yes it changed roads to be on the same road the PCs were on.
In the random encounter case, it probably depends. Is there any difference in the RNG depending on which way the group goes? Maybe the long safe route takes 12h with a 10% chance per 4 hours but the fast risky road takes 6 hours with a 15% per 3 hours. Or maybe there are different encounter tables for each road. Both of these changes means there were separate RNG monsters on each road.

Once you have an event that will move to negate the PC's change in direction, then you have one final question

Step 3: Is there an in fiction explanation for this power?
In the quantum ogre case, no. It is not some ogre magi diviner with a spy network
In the assassin case, yes. The assassins following the PCs have been tracking the PCs and the PCs have not succeeded in disguising their intentions.
In the random encounter case? It depends by generally it is a joke if given an in fiction explanation (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html).

The point of a quantum ogre is "Here is something that the GM prevented PC choice from having impact". It is separate from the question of "Were the PCs informed enough to make an informed choice". So if you have PCs choosing between roads, and you add a guaranteed random encounter that exists but will be placed in front of the PCs regardless of their choice, then the PCs can't have agency over that random encounter and there is no in fiction reason for the lack of impact.

So yes, random encounters that don't take PC choices as input, are a form of decreasing player agency on the continuous continuum from total PC agency to no PC agency. If your playgroup prefers more agency with respect to random encounters, I suggest starting by having different encounter tables for different areas and different chances of no encounter based on different areas.

However you would need to also handle the informed choice part of the equation (a part that comes after the ogre not being a quantum ogre). For that I suggest common knowledge about which paths are more/less dangerous and monster lore or local rumors helping indicate the differences in types of encounters in each area.


But it means I don't see quantum ogres as inherently negative, as they can have a positive influence on the game.
The positive aspects you listed are unrelated to the ogre changing location in response to the PC choice without an in fiction explanation for how the ogre's move is causally correlated with the PC choice. The same thing can be achieved if there was an ogre on the safe road and none on the dangerous road.

There are reasons players have different preferences on the agency continuum. If the Players want less agency, then some more railroading is not inherently negative.

Easy e
2021-09-29, 10:25 AM
What is the need for these illusions, these tricks, trying to get your players to believe that they have total freedom? What's so wrong with just giving them total freedom? You sort of dismiss the concept completely in your post, but you don't really offer a compelling reason as to why 'There is no such thing [as total freedom].'


A fair point. There are a few reasons I will lay-out on why some rail-roading is good:

1. There is no such thing as total freedom because their are always constraints. There are cultural, societal, physical, mechanical, and world-based constraints to the characters. No one ever has total freedom. Instead, we are all choosing from a constrained list of options based on these constraints.

2. Complete free form, no plan games are inefficient uses of precious hobby time. I have run complete sandbox games with no prep many times. They end up needlessly circling around as many players simply get lost in the paradox of choice. There are so many options of things to do, that they just end up frittering away their two to three hour block of time doing nothing. As a fellow player (the DM) this is boring.

As a fellow player (the DM) the players wasted MY time. As a player, I want to have fun too and free-wheeling around was not it.

3. The real world is full of complex choices. Decision fatigue and paradox of choice is a real thing. In a hobby game, creating the atmosphere of fun is critical. To avoid burn-out and confusion from your players, give them some set choices and then letting them decide avoids decision fatigue/analysis-paralysis. This allows them to still control the flow of the game and accomplish their goals, but not drown under it all.

4. It allows the GM to set up better set-pieces and build tension/drama. There is a reason the three act play/or set nodes are a thing. Most of us can not improve that well without a ton of practice. Having Nodes and some set-pieces allow the GM to prepare something a little more than a random encounter.

5. As a GM who knows all these tricks; I still find good application of the tricks to be fun when I play. For example, the three-act structure is older than Christ; yet it is still an effective form of story-telling. People have not stopped going to plays, reading novels, or seeing movies because the three-act story-telling is so old-hat. Instead they continue to go because it is effective at building tensions, drama, and suspense that leads to a satisfying conclusion.


Granted, I am a big proponent of adding narrative structures to games, and realize that is not the approach of all GMs. However, I would argue that even without narrative structure that some GM railroading can be a useful tool within session to move players along, give them a session goal, and allow for the GM to create something with a bit more "oompf".

Easy e
2021-09-29, 10:27 AM
1: Players choose a Goal at the end of the previous session, so I know what to prep for.
2: I design the scene where the pcs succeed.
3: I design a starting scene covering where I think the players are likely to first gain clues on how to complete their goal.
4: I design some cool other scenes I think would be fun to run.
5: I spend a few minutes interlinking each of the scenes, so that no matter which happens first, they link to other cool scenes.
6: I add a few links to out of session content so the players have option for what they want to work on next session.

This means that even if the players who want to assinate the king teleport in and kill him, they will be led into the cool encounters I had planned (ie a trap in the main entrance hall). These links are usually fairly easy to make work. Ie: The trap in the entrance hall uses interesting magic that certain individuals would pay well for. This pushes the players into that scene, while giving it completely differant context. If they did just go through the front door they would deal with the trap, find out about its value later and double back.

Or not. It's their choice.

Check out node based adventure design for more info.


Controversial post ahead......

Node based adventure design IS rail roading. It is the Quantum Ogre. It is Schrodinger's Dungeon only instead of rooms, it is Nodes. No matter where you go you will hit a Node. It is "All Roads Lead to Rome" which is rail roading.

It is no different than the three act structure I laid out of:

1. Hook
2. Encounter Path
3. Big Finale

You always start at the Hook node, can skip encounter Nodes on the path, but eventually you will get to the Big Finale Node. If what I laid out was rail-roading, then Node is no different.

BRC
2021-09-29, 10:42 AM
Controversial post ahead......

Node based adventure design IS rail roading. It is the Quantum Ogre. It is Schrodinger's Dungeon only instead of rooms, it is Nodes. No matter where you go you will hit a Node. It is "All Roads Lead to Rome" which is rail roading.

It is no different than the three act structure I laid out of:

1. Hook
2. Encounter Path
3. Big Finale

You always start at the Hook node, can skip encounter Nodes on the path, but eventually you will get to the Big Finale Node. If what I laid out was rail-roading, then Node is no different.

Except it's not.


Let's take the following scenario

1. PC's are in a tavern, hear about an evil wizard in a tower (Hook)
2. PC's do some stuff (Encounter Path/Nodes)
3. PC's fight the Wizard on top of his tower (Big Finale)

Even assuming that the Hook and the Finale are always the same (The PC's WILL end up fighting the wizard at the top of his tower), The nature of that fight changes DRASTICALLY depending on what they did in step 2.

Maybe they're exhausted, maybe they're fresh. Maybe they were able to figure out how to counter the Wizard's nastiest spells. Maybe they've looted his laboratory and are equipped with magic weapons. Maybe they've convinced his apprentices to betray him. Maybe they have allies, maybe the Wizard was able to complete his ritual and summon demons to assist him.

Maybe the PC's were able to free the Prisoners the Wizard had taken to use as test subjects.

Maybe at the end of the day, the tower stands and the PC's use it as a new headquarters? Maybe they burn it to the ground.

Maybe The Wizard dies, maybe he escapes. Maybe he does both.


The nature of the Finale, and what comes after, are dictated by choices the PC's make in Step 2. They go into the fight knowing that the version of the fight they go into has been constructed by their earlier choices, they have Agency over the story, even if it was always going to end with a fight against the wizard.

And after the wizard dies? The story continues, and all those things they did are still relevant.

Easy e
2021-09-29, 11:11 AM
Except it's not.


Let's take the following scenario

1. PC's are in a tavern, hear about an evil wizard in a tower (Hook)
2. PC's do some stuff (Encounter Path/Nodes)
3. PC's fight the Wizard on top of his tower (Big Finale)

Even assuming that the Hook and the Finale are always the same (The PC's WILL end up fighting the wizard at the top of his tower), The nature of that fight changes DRASTICALLY depending on what they did in step 2.

Maybe they're exhausted, maybe they're fresh. Maybe they were able to figure out how to counter the Wizard's nastiest spells. Maybe they've looted his laboratory and are equipped with magic weapons. Maybe they've convinced his apprentices to betray him. Maybe they have allies, maybe the Wizard was able to complete his ritual and summon demons to assist him.

Maybe the PC's were able to free the Prisoners the Wizard had taken to use as test subjects.

Maybe at the end of the day, the tower stands and the PC's use it as a new headquarters? Maybe they burn it to the ground.

Maybe The Wizard dies, maybe he escapes. Maybe he does both.


The nature of the Finale, and what comes after, are dictated by choices the PC's make in Step 2. They go into the fight knowing that the version of the fight they go into has been constructed by their earlier choices, they have Agency over the story, even if it was always going to end with a fight against the wizard.

And after the wizard dies? The story continues, and all those things they did are still relevant.

Yet no matter what they do, they end up at the roof of the Wizard's Tower. A railroad. There is no getting off the train at Wabasha station, you have to ride all the way to Central Station. Sure, maybe you take the C-train instead of the A-Train and Green Line, but ultimately you end up at Central Station. A rail road by another name is still a railroad.

All the agency in your example was simply illusion. They thought their choices mattered, but at the end of the day they ended up on the roof of the Wizard's tower. In a sense, you made my point that rail roading is in fact good and beneficial for a satisfying game. Calling a rail road an train network doesn't make it less of a rail road.

Morgaln
2021-09-29, 11:19 AM
Step 1: Did the Ogre exist before the choice?
In the quantum ogre case, yes it did exist.
In the guaranteed random encounter case, yes it did exist.

Step 2: Did the Ogre move to negate the choice?
In the quantum ogre case, yes it changed roads to be on the same road the PCs were on.
In the random encounter case, it probably depends. Is there any difference in the RNG depending on which way the group goes? Maybe the long safe route takes 12h with a 10% chance per 4 hours but the fast risky road takes 6 hours with a 15% per 3 hours. Or maybe there are different encounter tables for each road. Both of these changes means there were separate RNG monsters on each road.

Once you have an event that will move to negate the PC's change in direction, then you have one final question

Step 3: Is there an in fiction explanation for this power?
In the quantum ogre case, no. It is not some ogre magi diviner with a spy network
In the assassin case, yes. The assassins following the PCs have been tracking the PCs and the PCs have not succeeded in disguising their intentions.
In the random encounter case? It depends by generally it is a joke if given an in fiction explanation (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html).

The point of a quantum ogre is "Here is something that the GM prevented PC choice from having impact". It is separate from the question of "Were the PCs informed enough to make an informed choice". So if you have PCs choosing between roads, and you add a guaranteed random encounter that exists but will be placed in front of the PCs regardless of their choice, then the PCs can't have agency over that random encounter and there is no in fiction reason for the lack of impact.

So yes, random encounters that don't take PC choices as input, are a form of decreasing player agency on the continuous continuum from total PC agency to no PC agency. If your playgroup prefers more agency with respect to random encounters, I suggest starting by having different encounter tables for different areas and different chances of no encounter based on different areas.

However you would need to also handle the informed choice part of the equation (a part that comes after the ogre not being a quantum ogre). For that I suggest common knowledge about which paths are more/less dangerous and monster lore or local rumors helping indicate the differences in types of encounters in each area.


The positive aspects you listed are unrelated to the ogre changing location in response to the PC choice without an in fiction explanation for how the ogre's move is causally correlated with the PC choice. The same thing can be achieved if there was an ogre on the safe road and none on the dangerous road.

There are reasons players have different preferences on the agency continuum. If the Players want less agency, then some more railroading is not inherently negative.

I just can't wrap my head around this kind of thinking. There is a choice between two different roads (lets call them left and right). There has to be some kind of difference between both roads, or there wouldn't be any point in even having this choice in the game. Since the ogre will be encountered either way, the ogre is not that difference. Therefore, some other difference must still be there. Thus, the players' choice hasn't been invalidated and their agency hasn't been diminished, as their choice still affects everything that was up for choosing to begin with. The players' choice still has impact, it's just that the "encounter an ogre" state was never going to be impacted by their choice.
I honestly don't see what difference it makes whether a GM puts down two ogres with the exact same stats, one each on each road versus statting out one ogre and deciding to have it show up on whatever road the players take. Assuming, of course, that any kind of scouting, divination or other way the players have to determine what is awaiting them on the roads will remove the quantum state of the ogre and either put it on one road but not the other or reveal an ogre on each road.

BRC
2021-09-29, 11:30 AM
Yet no matter what they do, they end up at the roof of the Wizard's Tower. A railroad. There is no getting off the train at Wabasha station, you have to ride all the way to Central Station. Sure, maybe you take the C-train instead of the A-Train and Green Line, but ultimately you end up at Central Station. A rail road by another name is still a railroad.

All the agency in your example was simply illusion. They thought their choices mattered, but at the end of the day they ended up on the roof of the Wizard's tower. In a sense, you made my point that rail roading is in fact good and beneficial for a satisfying game. Calling a rail road an train network doesn't make it less of a rail road.


The point is that "Do we fight the wizard" is not the most interesting question here. It's not that "The PC's fight the wizard" is evil railroading, and "The PC's don't fight the wizard" is Player Agency.


The story doesn't end when the PC's show up at the top of that tower to fight the wizard. The PC's choices shaped how that fight goes.

In the "Railroad" metaphor, the PC's are not passengers, they are The Train (I guess they could be passengers stuck on the train?), constrained by the tracks, following a pre-determined path to their destination.

Yes, a Wizard Fight will always happen, but, depending on the PC's choices, It won't be the same wizard fight.

The PC's who sneak up the side of the tower are not the same PC's who fought their way through the interior. The Wizard who is at the cusp of completing his dark ritual is not the same wizard who lost his staff when the PC's convinced his apprentice to betray him.

The burning Tower is not the same Tower as one that isn't on fire.



Imagine you are at a restaurant, you sit down, you are handed the menu.

Railroading is when the menu just says "Spaghetti", only Spaghetti. Your only choices are to leave, or eat the Spaghetti.

If the Menu says more than Spaghetti, that's not a railroad (Or, less railroady). Yes, you'll have a meal, but the nature of that meal will change.

Stonehead
2021-09-29, 11:31 AM
I've read the original argument too, several times, and I'm telling you: it was bad from the get-go.

If you fixate on the fact the location of the ogre isn't known until observed, as with "Schrödinger's dungeon", the truest example of that would be a simple random encounter, where the existence of the encounter isn't decided before a random function is checked during play. Indeed, all mechanics that rely on deciding the exact location of the ogre during play would be "quantum" by that argument, and it fails to distinguish between them.

But if you're interested in player choice or availability of information, that isn't the relevant thing at all. What's relevant is that the game master has decided to respond to any player move by placing the ogre on their path. The process is just as deterministic as an opposing Chess player choosing to checkmate you during their next turn when they know based on rules of the game that there's nothing you can do to stop them. There is no superposition anywhere. There may be multiple different ways for them to checkmate you and they might have to pick one over the other based on what you do, but that doesn't matter. You may have failed to notice some or all of the ways they can checkmate you, but that doesn't matter either. What actually matters is that their chance of checkmating you is 1 and your chance of avoiding the checkmate are 0, your opponent knows this beforehand and could tell you. QED.

It's "quantum" from an in-game perspective. I think it's fine to describe random encounters as "quantum" too. The distinction is that pretty much everyone who signs up to play a ttrpg is cool with dice deciding indeterminate events. That's like one of the core premises. The DM deciding the results of indeterminate events is more contentious, thus the thread. The chess analogy seems pretty different to me, as it's about future moves, not unknowns.

The Ogre (at least to most of the people here) 'exists' when the session starts, it's position is just unknowable. Your future moves in a chess game don't exist until you make them. If you look at ttrpgs like a DM making moves against the players who respond with moves of their own, then maybe it makes sense, but I look at them more as a fictional world.


Step 1: Did the Ogre exist before the choice?
In the quantum ogre case, yes it did exist.
In the guaranteed random encounter case, yes it did exist.

Step 2: Did the Ogre move to negate the choice?
In the quantum ogre case, yes it changed roads to be on the same road the PCs were on.
In the random encounter case, it probably depends. Is there any difference in the RNG depending on which way the group goes? Maybe the long safe route takes 12h with a 10% chance per 4 hours but the fast risky road takes 6 hours with a 15% per 3 hours. Or maybe there are different encounter tables for each road. Both of these changes means there were separate RNG monsters on each road.

Once you have an event that will move to negate the PC's change in direction, then you have one final question

Step 3: Is there an in fiction explanation for this power?
In the quantum ogre case, no. It is not some ogre magi diviner with a spy network
In the assassin case, yes. The assassins following the PCs have been tracking the PCs and the PCs have not succeeded in disguising their intentions.
In the random encounter case? It depends by generally it is a joke if given an in fiction explanation (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0145.html).

The point of a quantum ogre is "Here is something that the GM prevented PC choice from having impact". It is separate from the question of "Were the PCs informed enough to make an informed choice". So if you have PCs choosing between roads, and you add a guaranteed random encounter that exists but will be placed in front of the PCs regardless of their choice, then the PCs can't have agency over that random encounter and there is no in fiction reason for the lack of impact.

I don't think counteracting the impact of a blind choice actually lowers player agency, or, if it does then not in a way that actually bothers most people. Like, if the different roads aren't different methods of going to the same place, but instead go to three different destinations, then your players are technically choosing which road to travel, but what they actually care about is where they're headed. If you put your quantum Ogre on all three paths, you haven't subverted your players' will at all. Their choice of which road to travel was totally blind, and only made because of which city the roads led to. To think about it another way, what if instead of the DM preparing 1 Ogre and not definitively placing him anywhere, he prepares 3 Ogres and puts one on each path? The end result is basically the same (outside of weird corner cases like the party splitting up), but there's no 'reacting to player choice' at all.

OldTrees1
2021-09-29, 11:59 AM
I just can't wrap my head around this kind of thinking. There is a choice between two different roads (lets call them left and right). There has to be some kind of difference between both roads, or there wouldn't be any point in even having this choice in the game. Since the ogre will be encountered either way, the ogre is not that difference. Therefore, some other difference must still be there. Thus, the players' choice hasn't been invalidated and their agency hasn't been diminished, as their choice still affects everything that was up for choosing to begin with. The players' choice still has impact, it's just that the "encounter an ogre" state was never going to be impacted by their choice.
I honestly don't see what difference it makes whether a GM puts down two ogres with the exact same stats, one each on each road versus statting out one ogre and deciding to have it show up on whatever road the players take. Assuming, of course, that any kind of scouting, divination or other way the players have to determine what is awaiting them on the roads will remove the quantum state of the ogre and either put it on one road but not the other or reveal an ogre on each road.

I think you are assuming a binary and that is the blocker you are facing when wrapping your head around my post.

Let's say there is a long costal road between city A and city B. There is a short well paved and patrolled forest road between city A and city C. The PCs can make an informed meaningful choice about destination, and travel time. Can they make an informed meaningful choice about the dangers they might face?

In campaign X the dangers on road AB are the same as on road AC. There will be 1 ogre (named John Doe) fight between start and finish.

In campaign Y the dangers on road AB are different from on road AC. The costal road is not patrolled since attacks are less frequent. It being a costal road means there is an increased chance of amphibious or flying enemies. The forest road is patrolled since attacks are more frequent. It had a greater chance of wolves or bandits attacking. The PCs know the coastal road will have more time between attacks and the attacks might be more dangerous than the attacks on the forest road. <Split the timeline> In one timeline the PCs go down the forest path and encounter an ogre bandit with a few orc bandits that ambush the party a few times that day. In the other timeline the PCs go down the costal path and encounter a flight of harpies on the first afternoon and a kraken while they camp on the 3rd day.

Campaign Y has more player agency than campaign X and all I did was 1) remove the quantum ogre and 2) allow the PCs to make an informed choice about what replaced the quantum ogre.

The amount of agency is a spectrum. Using a quantum ogre instead of an informed meaningful choice is a way to decrease player agency with respect to the encounters on that trip.

In part due to the amount of player agency is a spectrum, player preference will vary. This is why a quantum ogre is not inherently a bad thing, but it can be if it conflicts with the playgroup preferences. The same is true for the inverse, high player agency is not inherently a bad thing, but it can be if it conflicts with the playgroup preferences.


I don't think counteracting the impact of a blind choice actually lowers player agency, or, if it does then not in a way that actually bothers most people. Like, if the different roads aren't different methods of going to the same place, but instead go to three different destinations, then your players are technically choosing which road to travel, but what they actually care about is where they're headed. If you put your quantum Ogre on all three paths, you haven't subverted your players' will at all. Their choice of which road to travel was totally blind, and only made because of which city the roads led to. To think about it another way, what if instead of the DM preparing 1 Ogre and not definitively placing him anywhere, he prepares 3 Ogres and puts one on each path? The end result is basically the same (outside of weird corner cases like the party splitting up), but there's no 'reacting to player choice' at all.

Please read about campaign X and Y immediately above, they are examples of the informed impactful choice vs the blind counteracted choice (which might or might not appear informed to the players).

Counteracting the impact of a blind choice does not lower player agency. Counteracting the impact of an informed choice does lower player agency. Likewise removing the informed part of an informed choice lowers player agency. The quantum ogre describes just the counteracting step. A GM could use a quantum ogre OR an informed impactful choice. The former is lower player agency than the later.

On another side, there are separate player preferences on both of these aspects (informed vs counteracting). From various threads like these I can tell you there are players that dislike the GM counteracting the impact of a blind choice. I can also tell you there are players that don't mind the impact of a blind choice.*

Insert boilerplate "learn play group's preferences and get player buy in"

* Sidenote, the player preferences can get rather nuanced. Some players greatly prefer 3 ogres (1 per road) over 1 quantum ogre. However that seems to be more about verisimilitude and only partially swings back around to player agency in that verisimilitude impacts informing choices.

Jakinbandw
2021-09-29, 12:28 PM
Controversial post ahead......

Node based adventure design IS rail roading. It is the Quantum Ogre. It is Schrodinger's Dungeon only instead of rooms, it is Nodes. No matter where you go you will hit a Node. It is "All Roads Lead to Rome" which is rail roading.

It is no different than the three act structure I laid out of:

1. Hook
2. Encounter Path
3. Big Finale

You always start at the Hook node, can skip encounter Nodes on the path, but eventually you will get to the Big Finale Node. If what I laid out was rail-roading, then Node is no different.

Except that's not true. First, the players choose the adventure based on information they learned during a previous adventure where they had multiple options, including coming up with their own goals that I didn't present. This is why I ask for the goal of the next session at the end of the current session. The hook does not force buy in, in fact, the players have complete freedom to set their own goals. I'm just presenting a few options. To quote the doctor: “So… all of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will – where do you want to start?”

Second, the information gathering stage is made with the explicit expectation it might be skipped. If you find someone in town who has information on the tower, he will also be linked back to by the tower in case the PCs decide to do something else such as scry and teleport directly to the wizard as he is sleeping. The trick is, that now instead of the wizard being the big final encounter, it happens as the first (maybe second if you count the scry) part of the session. But now exploring the tower becomes part 2, and finding a guys family and returning them to him, brings us back to the hook as the emotional climax.

There is also nothing stopping the PCs from wandering away. I've timed myself and stating up enough nodes for 2 sessions takes me only half an hour. If the PCs kill the wizard and ignore all the links to the rest of the adventure, then I can easily tell them that I don't have anything else prepped yet, or call a short break and throw together another adventure. Write up a few more nodes, grab a few monsters from the manual, and bam, I'm done.

3rdly, nodes are useful because they inform what is around them. Imagine a node with an encounter in a forest, and an encounter in a field. The link between them is that the foes in the forest encounter were on their way to steal from the field encounter. With these two nodes, and only 1 link, we know that between the two there is an edge to the forest, that the field encounter has good loot and the forest encounter likely doesn't. That if the field encounter happens first, the forest encounter will stumble onto the result and may ambush the Players. That the foes in the field node aren't aware or at least aren't concerned with the foes in the forest.

If the players do something unexpected, like find out about the attack and then go inform the field foes, they can turn them to allies and as a gm you already know what will happen next. The forest foes will attack, and the PCs and Field friends will likely win and drive them off.

And as I said, this painting of the scenario using nodes works with even the most basic of interconnection. I usually have around 18 so connections between a 5 node wide adventure, and it allows me to easily know what's going on when the PCs do something unexpected. It also gives them lots of room to think outside the box, because the nodes are a map, they are not the journey.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-29, 12:29 PM
I've been thinking a lot recently about the consequences of player actions, and what counts as railroading. Before I get into that, I need to talk a little about Schrodinger's Dungeon.

Basically, the idea is that the DM prepares a few rooms, or encounters, or pieces of treasure, and uses them as the need arises, without deciding beforehand on the order or location. I first heard about the idea from a post about a guy who prepared a 4-dimmensional hypercube dungeon, where each room had a different exit in each direction. The post continued about how the players lved it, because it felt like they had total freedom to explore hundreds of rooms; the catch was that the DM only prepared 6 rooms, and regardless of which direction the party went, they found the next room the DM had prepared.

From what I can tell general opinion on this practice is pretty mixed, some people think it's a great way for a DM to cut down on prep time, others hate it, saying it robs the players of any agency, and others consider it acceptable, so long as the illusion is never broken, and the players never find out.

One other issue that arises from that specific example is that a blind choice isn't a choice. In the hypercube example, the PCs were deciding between arbitrary doors, with no possible way to make an informed decision. The most fundamental property of an rpg that I can think of is that the players make decisions as these fictional characters, rather than themselves. If you reach a fork in the road, in a sense you're faced with the choice between going left and going right, but if you have no way of knowing what you're choosing between, you aren't making a choice. And if you aren't making a choice, you can't make the choice your character would have.

With all that out of the way, I can get to my main point, which is I have no idea how to handle the Schrodinger's Dungeon problem, and the more I think about it, the more the entire genre as a whole starts to fall apart. Most people are pretty comfortable condemning railroading as bad practice, because it takes away the player's ability to influence the game world. Regardless of what the players do, the end result is the same. So then, is Schrodinger's Dungeon just another form of railroading? That kind of makes sense, is you prepare one ogre fight, and regardless of where the players go or what they try to do, they encounter the ogre, then regardless of what they do, the result is the same.

If that's all there is too it though, then a lot of other common practices could comfortable fit under the umbrella of "railroading". A lot of improv-focused DMs will just come to the table with a general idea of where they want the story to end up. Isn't that kind of the same thing though? If you come to the table knowing that there's an informant who can tell the party about the king's shady advisor, you're going to find a way to bring the party to him. So then regardless of what the players do, they end up talking to this one npc.

Even examples that strike me as pretty good DMing, and adaptability could be considered railroading. Let's say the DM wants to start his campaign with the PCs as gladiators, and are freed by the quest giver, under the condition that they fulfill his request. The rogue throws a wrench in this plan, however, when he successfully escapes his chains before the fighting begins. The DM rolls with the punches, and says the quest giver was impressed with his skills, and offers him a high paying job. My gut reaction, is that the hypothetical DM did a good job of thinking on his feet, he doesn't have to rewrite his plot hook, and the player didn't have to participate in the gladiator match, so he feels like his actions affected the story. If you think about it though, the DM did kind of ensure that the result he wanted would come about, regardless of what the players did. Why doesn't that feel like he's railroading? Same thing applies to getting the party together, a good DM usually lets the players go wherever they want, but pull the strings so that they all meet up with eachother in session 1.

Or what about PC death? A lot of DMs don't like killing characters, and a lot of players don't like having their characters killed, so instead, it's fairly common to instead punish characters with setbacks of some kind. Instead of being killed my the minotaur, they get knocked out and wake up after the battle. Instead of falling to their death from the airship, they grab hold of the anchor at the last minute, and failing that, catch a ride on a passing roc. Instead of being executed for their crimes, they're locked in a prison that they'll inevitably escape from. These examples all start to sound like railroading when you really think about it. But that can't be true, can it? Doesn't everyone have more fun when their characters grab hold of a tree branch when they fail their balance check than when they fall to their death?

And that leads into the much bigger issue, that this applies to a lot more consequences than just death. Permanently losing gear is a big feel-bad moment for a lot of players, so a lot of DMs will always give an opportunity to recover it. But then regardless of what happens in the story, they'll end up with that same familiar sword. Where's the player choice? I remember in this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?634080-quot-Losing-a-fight-quot-vs-quot-losing-the-game-quot) it was brought up that consequences that are only temporary set backs are just a waste of time. Doesn't that cover most consequences though? I know there are plenty of DMs who are totally cool with having the party fail and the BBEG win, but a lot aren't, and I'm not going to say that all of them that aren't are just railroading their players.

I honestly don't know what the answer is. Why does Schrodinger's dungeon feel like railroading to me, when none of the other examples do? I don't know. I do have a couple of theories though. Maybe railroading isn't inherently bad, and it's only bad when the metaphorical leash is too tight. If the players are allowed to find the informant by following his tracks, or by talking to his business partners, maybe that's enough for the players to have agency, even if the end result is the same. Maybe the details, not the end result, are what actually matter. They're going to save the world either way, but the point of the campaign is to find out who they befriend, and who they kill on their way there; as long as the players are free to talk to who they like, and kill who they don't, it isn't railroading. Or, maybe Schrodinger's dungeon isn't railroading at all. Maybe preparing one encounter, and using it regardless of where the players go is fine, as long as you let them choose where they go. Or, maybe the difference is when the push happens. Railroading is when you force the end of a story to go how you want it, and being flexible is when you force the beginning of a story.

I'm really curious to hear other peoples' opinions because, as I said before, I don't have a good answer.

Great post, I love this topic.

I don’t think all the examples you mention necessarily fall under the same umbrella. I’ll give my thoughts on each of them. So that you’re clear where I’m coming from: I’m a staunch anti-railroad kind of guy. I *will* play in or even run a railroad campaign, ideally in a system like modern D&D or Pathfinder where the emphasis is on crunchy character building and tactical combat - I think it’s acceptable to have a linear story that is really just a pretext for those things. But to really use the RPG medium to its fullest potential I think you have to entirely reject railroading.

So first and foremost, Schrodinger’s dungeon:
I think this is a totally valid technique for prepping and running a dungeon. It absolutely *can* be used for railroading in the way you described, but it’s not inherently railroading imo. As you said, the problem is when the choices are false and the players’ decisions don’t matter, which amounts to them not having agency. In that case it’s railroading. But it’s entirely possible to prep and run a dungeon without a fixed, definite blueprint and still respect player agency. I might have an ogre prepped and just there in my notes as a free-floating thing. I know there’s an ogre in this dungeon and I know the PCs might encounter it, and that’s all I know. Now when the players come to the fork in the tunnel and they look both ways, maybe I decide on the spur of the moment that as they look down the left path they notice massive footprints in the dust. I tell them that and they say “let’s go right then”. NOW if I spring the ogre on them, that’s railroading. If I don’t, it’s not, because they acted on information and made a choice and I respected that choice and made it meaningful. The fact that I was making it up as I went along doesn’t make it railroading as far as I can tell. How is it really so different from if I had a definite map? It’s an imaginary place anyway, it’s not part of the game until it happens at the table. The important thing isn’t to decide where the ogre is the night before instead of at the table, it’s to ensure the PCs have information and can act on it meaningfully, and that can happen in an improvised way at the table. Are there good reasons to use a definite blueprint? Absolutely. But it doesn’t mean you are or aren’t gonna be railroading.

The rogue who gets out of being a gladiator:
This is an interesting one. I think again it might be railroading, but isn’t inherently. If the GM has predetermined that the PCs are doing this quest for this guy by hook or by crook, then it’s railroading when they end up doing the quest for a reason other than the expected one.

But it’s not railroading if the GM has prepped this: “Bob the fightmaster wants someone to find his lost mcguffin, will free condemned gladiators if they agree to retrieve it - Bob appreciates people who are experts at what they do.” That suggests the same potential sequence of events, but there’s no guarantee here that the PCs will end up doing the quest for Bob. Maybe they escape and run off into the sunset. Maybe they decide to become full time gladiators. It’s not the adapting to the players’ actions that makes your scenario railroading, it’s the presence of a predetermined plot.

Getting the party together:
This is a special case, I think. It’s good to distinguish between the basic premise of a campaign and the actual narrative events. In a great many games, definitely including D&D, getting the party together comes under basic premise. This is something to talk about in session 0 or otherwise in advance of the game. If the game you envision playing is about a group of adventurers going on adventures then it should be part of the basic premise that they get together and/or stick together. Is that railroading? Only if “you can’t be a 1940s private detective from New York in our D&D game” is railroading. Non-railroading doesn’t necessarily mean the players have total freedom to do whatever they want in the game, since most games have a built-in basic premise, and even in the case of generic games (GURPS, Risus) they expect you and your group to establish your own premise. Once again, railroading is just when the GM has a predetermined sequence of events that are “supposed” to happen.

Character death:
This is related to the last one. I think your attitude to pc death is an element of the basic premise and something to discuss in advance. In some game systems it’s built right in: they have very clear rules about when you die or no death rules at all. Eg in the former case, many OSR games are merciless about pc death, and that fits with their overall design, because it’s more about the challenge to you, the player, and your character is assumed to be a “pawn” and somewhat expendable. And in the latter case, I *think* I’m right in saying that Tales from the Loop has no death mechanics because it’s seeking to emulate a certain kind of fiction (ET, Stranger Things) where the protagonists are children and generally don’t die. Many games, like D&D 5E, give you some pretty lenient death rules and encourage house rules so you can decide for yourself how to handle it. In any case, it’s part of the basic premise of your game. As long as the whole group is on the same page about it, you’re not necessarily railroading when you say “they decide to imprison you instead of killing you”. It’s part of the campaign premise, not the narrative sequence.

Sorry that was a long ramble. As I said, I really like this topic. I guess the tldr is: railroading is when the GM had a predetermined sequence of actual narrative events, and actively tries to make sure those events happen. As long as the GM isn’t doing that, lots of things that look like railroading and are often used as techniques for railroading, aren’t necessarily railroading.

icefractal
2021-09-29, 02:11 PM
As far as road selection and quantum ogres, I'm in the camp that it only matters if avoiding ogres was one of the criteria the party based their choice on.

If the roads go to different places, then that is the relevant choice, and the players are no more expecting to "choose" their encounters that way than they'd expect to choose the weather.

If they had no information on the threats the different roads contain, then it was a blind choice, aka a non-choice, and having different encounters on the different roads may as well be a random encounter table with a coin-flip between those.

Much like a dungeon, the point where it becomes a real choices is when they have information before choosing - either from prior knowledge or taking the roads more than once.


A result of this is that a campaign can effectively be linear while appearing to have many choices, if those choices are all blind. And while being able to say "but there were other outcomes if they'd chosen differently" might make the GM feel more justified, it doesn't actually change the player experience. "You will fight 1d10+5 random encounters before reaching the castle" is the same as "You will fight these specific 10 encounters before reaching the castle" from a player perspective.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-29, 02:39 PM
It's "quantum" from an in-game perspective.

Nope. The word "quantum" does not correctly describe any in-game perspective. Neither does "superposition". Do look what these words actually mean in the relevant field of science. The "quantum" in "quantum ogre" is just misappropriated terminology used to describe a thing which from the players' and their characters' perspective is simply unknown and from the game master's perspective is inevitable.


I think it's fine to describe random encounters as "quantum" too.

It's completely pointless. The exact description for randomly generated encounter is "randomly generated encounter". Calling them "quantum" has no utility, it does not add any useful information, more likely it has disutility due to potential confusion.


The distinction is that pretty much everyone who signs up to play a ttrpg is cool with dice deciding indeterminate events. That's like one of the core premises. The DM deciding the results of indeterminate events is more contentious, thus the thread.

The basic premise of roleplaying games is that you assume the viewpoint of a character and decide what to do, how and why in a staged situation. Dice are optional and, even more importantly, things decided by dice are not decided by a player. In actuality, in virtually all games with a game master, the game master decides more indeterminate events than the dice do, and that is the primary function of a human game master to begin with. Players are not "cool" with either type of decision making as any form of general rule, both dice-made and GM-made decisions get predictable shares of flak whenever they stop some player from getting away with what they want.


The chess analogy seems pretty different to me, as it's about future moves, not unknowns.

That's because the part you ought to be focusing on is not what players know, it's determinism. As I already pointed out, even in a game of Chess, a player might just fail to notice they're about to be checkmated, so what the players know is irrelevant. The ogre does not actually exist any more than a Chess move that hasn't been made yet. The "fictional world" is exactly that, fictional, and not even in an useful way - it tells nothing of how much choice the players have or what their GM is actually doing.

EDIT: to make it more apparent how and why the "quantum ogre" fiction is useless, consider replacing it with a simpler fiction: "the travelling ogre". The travelling ogre is an ogre that has the power to travel from its cave to any place the players go next. This communicates the exact same game-relevant information as the "quantum ogre", but without the fictitious superposition: instead of simultaneously existing and not existing on every possible road, the ogre simply exists in its cave in between travels.

Easy e
2021-09-29, 05:00 PM
Except that's not true. First, the players choose the adventure based on information they learned during a previous adventure where they had multiple options, including coming up with their own goals that I didn't present. This is why I ask for the goal of the next session at the end of the current session. The hook does not force buy in, in fact, the players have complete freedom to set their own goals. I'm just presenting a few options. To quote the doctor: “So… all of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will – where do you want to start?”

Second, the information gathering stage is made with the explicit expectation it might be skipped. If you find someone in town who has information on the tower, he will also be linked back to by the tower in case the PCs decide to do something else such as scry and teleport directly to the wizard as he is sleeping. The trick is, that now instead of the wizard being the big final encounter, it happens as the first (maybe second if you count the scry) part of the session. But now exploring the tower becomes part 2, and finding a guys family and returning them to him, brings us back to the hook as the emotional climax.

There is also nothing stopping the PCs from wandering away. I've timed myself and stating up enough nodes for 2 sessions takes me only half an hour. If the PCs kill the wizard and ignore all the links to the rest of the adventure, then I can easily tell them that I don't have anything else prepped yet, or call a short break and throw together another adventure. Write up a few more nodes, grab a few monsters from the manual, and bam, I'm done.

3rdly, nodes are useful because they inform what is around them. Imagine a node with an encounter in a forest, and an encounter in a field. The link between them is that the foes in the forest encounter were on their way to steal from the field encounter. With these two nodes, and only 1 link, we know that between the two there is an edge to the forest, that the field encounter has good loot and the forest encounter likely doesn't. That if the field encounter happens first, the forest encounter will stumble onto the result and may ambush the Players. That the foes in the field node aren't aware or at least aren't concerned with the foes in the forest.

If the players do something unexpected, like find out about the attack and then go inform the field foes, they can turn them to allies and as a gm you already know what will happen next. The forest foes will attack, and the PCs and Field friends will likely win and drive them off.

And as I said, this painting of the scenario using nodes works with even the most basic of interconnection. I usually have around 18 so connections between a 5 node wide adventure, and it allows me to easily know what's going on when the PCs do something unexpected. It also gives them lots of room to think outside the box, because the nodes are a map, they are not the journey.

If you say so.

I think you have only fooled yourself with the illusion of choice you are presenting. Every action still follows to one of the pre-made nodes, and if they leave the pre-made nodes they are "off the rails" and you have to go back and plan.

Its real nice that you gave them choices to do for their next session, but who created those choices? You did. Is that player agency? Instead of a single track railroad, there is a rail network. Instead of going from Wabasha station to Grand Central Station across the city, you have given them a subway map and let them choose whatever way they want to travel across the city. However, they are still traveling across the city.

They can choose to leave the map at any time, but that is essentially choosing not to play the game; and therefore not go across the city. The only "real" choice is not to play. Is that really player agency, or did you just create an illusion of choice for your players?



The only real choice players have is, if they want to sit down and play the game in the first place. If the answer is yes, the rest is illusion created by the GM. Whether you use Nodes, Three acts, Sand box, Schrodinger's Dungeon, travelling Ogres, etc. You are essentially just creating the illusion of choice within the parameters arbitrarily set by the game world; which is created by the GM.

Therefore, the only bad railroading is bad railroading, where the illusion is broken for you, the player; that you actually have choice.

Easy e
2021-09-29, 05:04 PM
As far as road selection and quantum ogres, I'm in the camp that it only matters if avoiding ogres was one of the criteria the party based their choice on.

If the roads go to different places, then that is the relevant choice, and the players are no more expecting to "choose" their encounters that way than they'd expect to choose the weather.



Then, the question in my mind is, "Who gave them these choices to begin with?" By being given a choice to make, does that mean it was your decision on what to do?

You can either reply to this post, or not?

Is that a choice driven by your own "Poster agency" or did I just limit your choices and therefore "rail road" you?

BRC
2021-09-29, 05:15 PM
The only real choice players have is, if they want to sit down and play the game in the first place. If the answer is yes, the rest is illusion created by the GM. Whether you use Nodes, Three acts, Sand box, Schrodinger's Dungeon, travelling Ogres, etc. You are essentially just creating the illusion of choice within the parameters arbitrarily set by the game world; which is created by the GM.

Therefore, the only bad railroading is bad railroading, where the illusion is broken for you, the player; that you actually have choice.

I think you're focusing on a weird binary.

Railroading means the Players don't get to shape the story with their choices.

Not Railroading means the players DO get to shape the story.

The final Story is, in a non-railroaded game, a collaboration between the GM and the Players.


If the Players decide to try to convince the Wizard's apprentice to help them steal his staff, then that is a real decision. There's no Illusion to that choice. The players make a decision, dice are rolled, and the Story Changes.


They may still be within the bounds of the scenario set by the GM, but they have made a real decision that has had real impact on the shape of the story, and real consequences within the game world.


The Wizard doesn't have his staff, he's less able to hold off the Heroes, the Fighter grapples him and holds him fast, he's unable to escape, and is killed. The story ends that way because of decisions the players made.


Then, the question in my mind is, "Who gave them these choices to begin with?" By being given a choice to make, does that mean it was your decision on what to do?


Yes. I'm not sure where you're going with this.


Alice says "Hey, I'm going to go to the taco place to get lunch, do you want anything", Bob replies "A steak burrito". Alice gets Bob a Steak Burrito.

Are you claiming that, because Alice offered to pick up lunch, that Bob only had the "Illusion of Choice" in that scenario? That he didn't actually decide to get a Steak Burrito? That he only thought he decided?


Alice bought Bob a steak burrito because that's what he asked for. Christine at the Taco Place made that steak burrito because Alice gave her money for it. Christine's Boss chose to put steak burritos on the menu.

All these things enabled Bob's steak burrito lunch, sure, but that doesn't mean that Bob didn't make a real decision.

Stonehead
2021-09-29, 05:35 PM
I think you are assuming a binary and that is the blocker you are facing when wrapping your head around my post.

Let's say there is a long costal road between city A and city B. There is a short well paved and patrolled forest road between city A and city C. The PCs can make an informed meaningful choice about destination, and travel time. Can they make an informed meaningful choice about the dangers they might face?

In campaign X the dangers on road AB are the same as on road AC. There will be 1 ogre (named John Doe) fight between start and finish.

In campaign Y the dangers on road AB are different from on road AC. The costal road is not patrolled since attacks are less frequent. It being a costal road means there is an increased chance of amphibious or flying enemies. The forest road is patrolled since attacks are more frequent. It had a greater chance of wolves or bandits attacking. The PCs know the coastal road will have more time between attacks and the attacks might be more dangerous than the attacks on the forest road. <Split the timeline> In one timeline the PCs go down the forest path and encounter an ogre bandit with a few orc bandits that ambush the party a few times that day. In the other timeline the PCs go down the costal path and encounter a flight of harpies on the first afternoon and a kraken while they camp on the 3rd day.

Campaign Y has more player agency than campaign X and all I did was 1) remove the quantum ogre and 2) allow the PCs to make an informed choice about what replaced the quantum ogre.

The amount of agency is a spectrum. Using a quantum ogre instead of an informed meaningful choice is a way to decrease player agency with respect to the encounters on that trip.

In part due to the amount of player agency is a spectrum, player preference will vary. This is why a quantum ogre is not inherently a bad thing, but it can be if it conflicts with the playgroup preferences. The same is true for the inverse, high player agency is not inherently a bad thing, but it can be if it conflicts with the playgroup preferences.



Please read about campaign X and Y immediately above, they are examples of the informed impactful choice vs the blind counteracted choice (which might or might not appear informed to the players).

Counteracting the impact of a blind choice does not lower player agency. Counteracting the impact of an informed choice does lower player agency. Likewise removing the informed part of an informed choice lowers player agency. The quantum ogre describes just the counteracting step. A GM could use a quantum ogre OR an informed impactful choice. The former is lower player agency than the later.

Surely there should be some surprises somewhere in these campaigns though, right? I don't think a game with perfect information would be very fun for very long. Especially as the examples move away from simple combat encounters. Think of all the things players can run into on the road, plenty of them don't make sense to have any information about before you find them. An injured traveler, wandering merchants, the classic goblin orphans, are any of them enhanced in any way if the player knows about them beforehand? You don't even need to limit it to the road. If you have a helpful npc, or a hook for a sidequest or even just a cool magic item in the shop, a lot of this doesn't make any sense for the players to know about before arriving in the city, and even if they could, they aren't made better by that knowledge. Obviously, there exist examples where things should be foreshadowed, but I think just as obviously, there are examples where they shouldn't.

Exploration is one of the big draws of rpg systems, and it's virtually impossible if the PCs have perfect information of the environment, so they can always make perfectly informed choices.

Obviously, in general, giving out information is good, but it doesn't make sense to me that nothing should be a surprise to the party, and as long as there's something they don't know about, we're left with this question about moving them offscreen.


The basic premise of roleplaying games is that you assume the viewpoint of a character and decide what to do, how and why in a staged situation. Dice are optional and, even more importantly, things decided by dice are not decided by a player. In actuality, in virtually all games with a game master, the game master decides more indeterminate events than the dice do, and that is the primary function of a human game master to begin with. Players are not "cool" with either type of decision making as any form of general rule, both dice-made and GM-made decisions get predictable shares of flak whenever they stop some player from getting away with what they want.

Fair point, let's use "DnD" then, instead of "RPG". I think my original point stands, that if someone shows up to play a game of DnD (or a game of 99% of systems), they're going to accept when the dice determine the outcome of an event, especially events like random encounters, like the original example.


That's because the part you ought to be focusing on is not what players know, it's determinism. As I already pointed out, even in a game of Chess, a player might just fail to notice they're about to be checkmated, so what the players know is irrelevant. The ogre does not actually exist any more than a Chess move that hasn't been made yet. The "fictional world" is exactly that, fictional, and not even in an useful way - it tells nothing of how much choice the players have or what their GM is actually doing.

EDIT: to make it more apparent how and why the "quantum ogre" fiction is useless, consider replacing it with a simpler fiction: "the travelling ogre". The travelling ogre is an ogre that has the power to travel from its cave to any place the players go next. This communicates the exact same game-relevant information as the "quantum ogre", but without the fictitious superposition: instead of simultaneously existing and not existing on every possible road, the ogre simply exists in its cave in between travels.

Ok, I think we've found the distinction, to a lot of people, the Ogre does exist, in a way that a future choice does not. I hope we can agree that an action you've already done exists more than one you haven't. Even if you have this strategy in your head, until you actually make the move, you could always change your mind, for whatever reason, and make a different move. The same is not true for past actions. So, from what I can tell, the difference in our stances here (I'm going to put words in your mouth, correct me if this isn't your real stance), is that most of us in this thread seem to think that the DM has done an action during his prep, while you seem to be of the opinion that he has not until it has shown up on screen. My view sees the fictional world as something with continuity beyond what's shown up "on screen" at the table, as opposed to only existing as far as has actually been played out. To me, the Ogre "exists" in a way before actually being described to the players, because the DM has it in his notes (or at least his head) that he exists.

If I'm wrong, and your point is that the entire universe is perfectly deterministic, and so future actions are just as concrete as past ones, that's a reasonable-enough metaphysical position, but I don't think it's particularly relevant to a thread about planning out Dungeons and Dragons encounters.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-29, 05:40 PM
If you say so.

I think you have only fooled yourself with the illusion of choice you are presenting. Every action still follows to one of the pre-made nodes, and if they leave the pre-made nodes they are "off the rails" and you have to go back and plan.

Its real nice that you gave them choices to do for their next session, but who created those choices? You did. Is that player agency? Instead of a single track railroad, there is a rail network. Instead of going from Wabasha station to Grand Central Station across the city, you have given them a subway map and let them choose whatever way they want to travel across the city. However, they are still traveling across the city.

They can choose to leave the map at any time, but that is essentially choosing not to play the game; and therefore not go across the city. The only "real" choice is not to play. Is that really player agency, or did you just create an illusion of choice for your players?



The only real choice players have is, if they want to sit down and play the game in the first place. If the answer is yes, the rest is illusion created by the GM. Whether you use Nodes, Three acts, Sand box, Schrodinger's Dungeon, travelling Ogres, etc. You are essentially just creating the illusion of choice within the parameters arbitrarily set by the game world; which is created by the GM.

Therefore, the only bad railroading is bad railroading, where the illusion is broken for you, the player; that you actually have choice.

I’m not convinced. We’re essentially talking about campaign structures, aren’t we? To me, a railroad is a structure consisting of a predetermined sequence of events that are supposed to happen. The node-based structure that Jackinbandw describes is categorically not that. True it doesn’t offer total freedom of action to the players. I’m not sure that any game ever could. After all, you need to settle on a setting and premise for the game to even be comprehensible. That can be extremely broad (wandering adventurers in a medieval fantasy world) or very specific (a gang of daring scoundrels pulling off heists in the haunted industrial city of Duskwall), and this limits players’ choices to a greater or lesser degree.

But in both cases it’s equally possible to run either a campaign that consists of a sequence of predetermined events, or a campaign where the players’ choices (plus the dice rolls and mechanics) organically create the narrative. In the latter type, the game world, the game stuff, the content, is still organised (eg in nodes like Jackinbandw describes), but the narrative of the campaign will be different depending on the players’ choices. When the choices really do shape the narrative, even within defined limits, I don’t see how they can be called illusory.

Every campaign structure inevitably has boundaries and limits of some kind, that’s what makes it a structure. But that doesn’t mean that every structure is a railroad.

Quertus
2021-09-29, 06:27 PM
Based on the idea that the more you know what's going to happen, the more you can prepare for it and provide narrative detail and support. If the PC's decide "Let's go assassinate the King", the following sequence will be more fun if the DM has the palace map and guard routes planned out so they can make a fun and engaging scenario.

Most popular games offer real choices because real choices invest players in the game and make it more satisfying and fun. The general consensus (Which I agree with) is that this investment is worth more than the more focused prep work you get to put in if you railroad your players.


Theoretically, if you could have the best of both worlds: Heavy player engagement due to the story being driven by their choices, AND the ability to focus your prep work due to knowing exactly what was going to happen, you could run the best game ever.


But the two concepts are mutually exclusive. The only way to know exactly what is going to happen is to force it to happen (Railroading), and that means your players won't feel they have agency, and won't have the engagement that comes with making meaningful choices.

Just ask the players, "what are we doing next session?". If they say, "assassinate the king", then print out the palace map and guard routes. If they say, "open a taco stand", dig out your entrepreneur rules.

Player choice driven, focused prep work based on knowing what's going to happen. Not mutually exclusive.


Of course there are a lot of other models, my whole point was that it is a spectrum, or rather multiple spectrums.

What I meant about a sandbox vs. a linear game is that a sandbox gives you more choices, but a linear game makes sure that the choices you make matter. Typically by ensuring that you are always in the right place at the right time to see the most interesting stuff unfolding and usually with a chance to interact with it or alter its course.

Deciding whether or not to go hunt kobolds in the hills or lizardmen in the marsh (or a dozen similar adventures) isn't terribly interesting, and if some epic kingdom shaking plot is unfolding in the background, you probably won't notice it, let alone be able to interact with it, unless you just so happen to stumble upon it.

But, if, say, the DM makes sure that on your way back from hunting kobolds, you stumble upon the king out hunting just as the assassins hired by the traitors go to assassinate him, you can save the entire kingdom! And, if he then rewards you by giving you a title, you can now play at kingdom level politics directly in a way that would have taken you years of working your way up normally without such a golden opportunity being dropped in your lap.

You've got it backwards: the GM only presents low-agency choices, like kill the kiddos or Dave the king, when I'm trying to kill the gods and reformat the campaign world. (Color blue to taste)

Point is, contrary to your supposition, how big the players aim in a sandbox, and how big the GM aims, have no preset relationship.

Now, yes, linear or sandbox, the GM really should put in cool stuff, not just "kill the crippled kids with rusty knives for sport".

However, pulling out too many "just so happened" coincidences, like"just so happened to run into the king on your way back from the dungeon… and just so happened to do so just as the assassination attempt began" is that thing I call "contrivance", that can totally ruin games.

However, if I intentionally investigated such (say, after session 1, when the party murdered the quest-giver who asked us to kill the good and rightful king), and *chose* to show up just as the assassins attacked the king? Now that would make a cool story!


If you say so.

I think you have only fooled yourself with the illusion of choice you are presenting. Every action still follows to one of the pre-made nodes, and if they leave the pre-made nodes they are "off the rails" and you have to go back and plan.

Its real nice that you gave them choices to do for their next session, but who created those choices? You did. Is that player agency? Instead of a single track railroad, there is a rail network. Instead of going from Wabasha station to Grand Central Station across the city, you have given them a subway map and let them choose whatever way they want to travel across the city. However, they are still traveling across the city.

They can choose to leave the map at any time, but that is essentially choosing not to play the game; and therefore not go across the city. The only "real" choice is not to play. Is that really player agency, or did you just create an illusion of choice for your players?



The only real choice players have is, if they want to sit down and play the game in the first place. If the answer is yes, the rest is illusion created by the GM. Whether you use Nodes, Three acts, Sand box, Schrodinger's Dungeon, travelling Ogres, etc. You are essentially just creating the illusion of choice within the parameters arbitrarily set by the game world; which is created by the GM.

Therefore, the only bad railroading is bad railroading, where the illusion is broken for you, the player; that you actually have choice.

You're typing in English. You only have a choice of 26 characters, plus spacing and punctuation. Do you really have any agency in what you write, or is the only choice to remain silent?

Talakeal
2021-09-29, 06:54 PM
You've got it backwards: the GM only presents low-agency choices, like kill the kiddos or Dave the king, when I'm trying to kill the gods and reformat the campaign world. (Color blue to taste)

Point is, contrary to your supposition, how big the players aim in a sandbox, and how big the GM aims, have no preset relationship.

Now, yes, linear or sandbox, the GM really should put in cool stuff, not just "kill the crippled kids with rusty knives for sport".

However, pulling out too many "just so happened" coincidences, like"just so happened to run into the king on your way back from the dungeon… and just so happened to do so just as the assassination attempt began" is that thing I call "contrivance", that can totally ruin games.

However, if I intentionally investigated such (say, after session 1, when the party murdered the quest-giver who asked us to kill the good and rightful king), and *chose* to show up just as the assassins attacked the king? Now that would make a cool story!

All fiction is built on "contrivances" and I would postulate that IRL the people who managed to change the world all had more than their share of "contrivances" occur to help them along.

In a linear game if you told me you wanted to kill the gods and reformat the world I would make sure there is a path to do that. In a sanbox, I shrug, tell you that on the off change the game is still happening in ten years and you haven't already been killed (or had someone else beat you to the punch) then maybe you can do that when you are level 40; but until then it just ain't going to happen without a "contrivance".

Tanarii
2021-09-29, 09:47 PM
Easy e I highly recommend at least the first few paragraphs of the Alexandrian article on Railroading. It requires a conscious decision to negate player agency to continue the designed activity.
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36900/roleplaying-games/the-railroading-manifesto

OldTrees1
2021-09-29, 10:04 PM
Surely there should be some surprises somewhere in these campaigns though, right? I don't think a game with perfect information would be very fun for very long.

I keep talking about spectrums and continuums. I keep talking about player preferences vary and are not all clumped at 100% agency. This response sounds like a non sequitur. I am not claiming there is a binary between 0% and 100%.


Obviously, in general, giving out information is good, but it doesn't make sense to me that nothing should be a surprise to the party

Thankfully you are replying to my post instead of that strawman, and my post did make sense to you. Please take 5 steps back from that binary strawman and address the continuum.


Most players don't like 0% nor 100% player agency. They don't want to listen to an audiobook nor do they want perfect knowledge with omnipotent characters. Find out what your play group wants and aim for that. However knowing players generally don't want the extremes doesn't stop you from understanding what can move your campaign in either direction. Find out your play group's preferences, get player buy in, and be aware of which GM choices impact how well the game matches the playgroup's preferences.



Now on the topic of exploration, I have found that I personally don't like quantum ogres even when I am making a blind choice. I prefer the benefits verisimilitude has on exploration of blind choices. This ties back to what I said about player preferences can be nuanced.

So personally, for my playgroup's preferences, I focus on a sandbox with no "superpositions" and allow the PC power and PC information gathered to let the players calibrate how much player agency they want that campaign. Depending on the group I also give more or less guidance on suggested optional group goals. I can make more obvious goal opportunities if the group wants less agency, or I can ask the PCs about their goals when the group wants more agency. However your playgroup might (probably) has different preferences. So the ideal playstyle for your group might (probably) differ.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-30, 01:53 AM
All fiction is built on "contrivances" and I would postulate that IRL the people who managed to change the world all had more than their share of "contrivances" occur to help them along.

In a linear game if you told me you wanted to kill the gods and reformat the world I would make sure there is a path to do that. In a sanbox, I shrug, tell you that on the off change the game is still happening in ten years and you haven't already been killed (or had someone else beat you to the punch) then maybe you can do that when you are level 40; but until then it just ain't going to happen without a "contrivance".

I broadly agree.

A piece of fiction in any medium is literally one big contrivance. In an RPG it means you make choices about how to present information, organise your prep, keep things interesting without SEEMING too contrived, and all sorts of other things. And players make choices about their characters and their actions.

Even if it’s a good metaphor for one’s GMing style, no one ACTUALLY creates a fully functional fictional world and watches events in it unfold as if it were real. That would be impossible. We make creative choices all the time, just like in any medium.

One approach to making these choices is just to plan a linear sequence of events and try to make sure they happen. That’s railroading. Having the players just happen to meet the king on the road right when the assassination attempt takes place is a specific choice. It might be too obviously contrived, but it’s not railroading unless you force it to turn out a certain way.

I see a lot of people talking about railroading as if it means “any choice or structuring of game material that isn’t ENTIRELY based on the internal logic of the game world”, or sometimes even “any structure whatsoever”. I think it’s completely off base.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-30, 04:43 AM
Fair point, let's use "DnD" then, instead of "RPG". I think my original point stands, that if someone shows up to play a game of DnD (or a game of 99% of systems), they're going to accept when the dice determine the outcome of an event, especially events like random encounters, like the original example.

Oh how I wish that was the case. Next you'll tell le nobody ever ragequits Chess.

Like, consider: entire trends of game design have come and gone based on some player disliking what the dice or their game master decided. For a while in boardgame and wargame circles, the dominant opinion was that any use of dice, at all, is bad, because games should depend on skill, not random chance. For a while in the roleplaying game circles, the dominant opinion was that D&D is a bad game, in fact all games with a game master are bad, because decisions should be made by everyone at the table, all authority is illegitimate, so on and so forth.

Losing gracefully, accepting defeat, accepting some decisions are made by others and not you, these are personality-dependent and to a degree, skills. I'm not kidding here. Games are used as teaching tools in schools to literally teach these things to children. Every once in a while, somebody slips through, fails to learn the lesson or forgets it, just as surely as some people fail to learn or forget general solution to quadratic equations. It's not given a person sitting down to play has accepted or even understood what the game rules are telling them.


Ok, I think we've found the distinction, to a lot of people, the Ogre does exist, in a way that a future choice does not.

Said people are fooling themselves.


I hope we can agree that an action you've already done exists more than one you haven't.

As a matter of fact, we can't. You haven't even told me if you're a presentist or eternalist. Though I'll argue for both cases that there's no difference between an ogre that hasn't been placed yet and a chess move that hasn't been made yet.


Even if you have this strategy in your head, until you actually make the move, you could always change your mind, for whatever reason, and make a different move. The same is not true for past actions. So, from what I can tell, the difference in our stances here (I'm going to put words in your mouth, correct me if this isn't your real stance), is that most of us in this thread seem to think that the DM has done an action during his prep, while you seem to be of the opinion that he has not until it has shown up on screen. My view sees the fictional world as something with continuity beyond what's shown up "on screen" at the table, as opposed to only existing as far as has actually been played out. To me, the Ogre "exists" in a way before actually being described to the players, because the DM has it in his notes (or at least his head) that he exists.

You seem to be forgetting that the exact location of the ogre isn't determined until the moment the game master puts it in the game. The prepwork the GM has done is not the same action as actually placing the ogre. For comparison a Chess player could actually play and write down sequence of multiple Chess games before facing an opponent. Then, when their opponent makes a move they have predicted and put down in their notes, they can just follow the response put down in their notes. As far as rules of Chess are concerned, the move in the pregame is the same as the move in the actual game, but obviously the move in the actual game isn't done until it's done.


If I'm wrong, and your point is that the entire universe is perfectly deterministic, and so future actions are just as concrete as past ones, that's a reasonable-enough metaphysical position, but I don't think it's particularly relevant to a thread about planning out Dungeons and Dragons encounters.

Or, I could argue only the present exists, and past actions are just as non-existent as future actions: they only exist as extrapolations in someone's mind.

But the actual argument I'm making is that the "quantum ogre" is useless fiction, the ogre is never in superposition, and you can replace that fiction with various other fictions. The "travelling ogre" in my last post was one, but you could just as well go with older "The game master is God and everything in the game exists by God's will". That isn't exactly correct either, but it does describe some things of the situation better: the existence of the ogre does depend on the game master exercising their will, that is, positive mental effort to have it appear in the game, and if they don't will it, it doesn't.

Morgaln
2021-09-30, 05:16 AM
I think you are assuming a binary and that is the blocker you are facing when wrapping your head around my post.

Let's say there is a long costal road between city A and city B. There is a short well paved and patrolled forest road between city A and city C. The PCs can make an informed meaningful choice about destination, and travel time. Can they make an informed meaningful choice about the dangers they might face?

In campaign X the dangers on road AB are the same as on road AC. There will be 1 ogre (named John Doe) fight between start and finish.

In campaign Y the dangers on road AB are different from on road AC. The costal road is not patrolled since attacks are less frequent. It being a costal road means there is an increased chance of amphibious or flying enemies. The forest road is patrolled since attacks are more frequent. It had a greater chance of wolves or bandits attacking. The PCs know the coastal road will have more time between attacks and the attacks might be more dangerous than the attacks on the forest road. <Split the timeline> In one timeline the PCs go down the forest path and encounter an ogre bandit with a few orc bandits that ambush the party a few times that day. In the other timeline the PCs go down the costal path and encounter a flight of harpies on the first afternoon and a kraken while they camp on the 3rd day.

Campaign Y has more player agency than campaign X and all I did was 1) remove the quantum ogre and 2) allow the PCs to make an informed choice about what replaced the quantum ogre.

The amount of agency is a spectrum. Using a quantum ogre instead of an informed meaningful choice is a way to decrease player agency with respect to the encounters on that trip.

In part due to the amount of player agency is a spectrum, player preference will vary. This is why a quantum ogre is not inherently a bad thing, but it can be if it conflicts with the playgroup preferences. The same is true for the inverse, high player agency is not inherently a bad thing, but it can be if it conflicts with the playgroup preferences.



You are comparing completely different things. One is a short travel with exactly one encounter. In the other one you added additional encounters and events instead of having just one. That is more than just removing the quantum ogre. Please reread what I wrote above. I specially noted that the roads would be different in some way, just that both would have an encounter with an ogre. That's explicitly different from your example x. I can easily take your example y and insert an ogre into each road, either in addition to or replacing the existing encounters. That doesn't take away any player agency.

Obviously example y will provide more player agency. But not because of the existence or absence of an ogre. But because example y contains actual information for the players to base their choice on beyond "will you go left or right?" Meaning the players are informed enough to make an informed choice. Which is actually something you earlier specifically denied is relevant to the question, whereas now you use it as the reason for player agency. So you are contradicting yourself

Here's the quote I'm referring to:


The point of a quantum ogre is "Here is something that the GM prevented PC choice from having impact". It is separate from the question of "Were the PCs informed enough to make an informed choice". So if you have PCs choosing between roads, and you add a guaranteed random encounter that exists but will be placed in front of the PCs regardless of their choice, then the PCs can't have agency over that random encounter and there is no in fiction reason for the lack of impact.

If the GMs notes say "Ogres frequent both roads," then that is a valid piece of world-building and the GM is entirely justified to have the players encounter an ogre regardless of which way they choose. The fact that he'll use the same stats and encounter details either way does not change that. If the players can get that information ("there are ogres on both roads"), it still doesn't remove their agency. It just means that the existence of ogres is not a criterium they can base their choice on.
If you want to drive from your house to the store and there are two roads with the exact same length you could take, that doesn't take your agency in choosing which way to go from you. It just means that "miles driven" is not a useful criterium, but that you should base your choice on different reasons, like the quality of the streets, the expected traffic, the number of traffic lights, anything like that.

Tanarii
2021-09-30, 08:49 AM
p
Like, I define "Railroading" as "Denying the PC's any meaningful choices" because that's the definition I find most useful, but it's frustratingly vague and hard to apply. Thats why I prefer the Alexandrian's "the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome". Because it requires a player choice first, then a DM action to negate it after, with a purpose in mind. Or to quote from the first paragraph of his article: "The players must try to get off the train and the GM has to lock the doors."

kyoryu
2021-09-30, 09:45 AM
Thats why I prefer the Alexandrian's "the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome". Because it requires a player choice first, then a DM action to negate it after, with a purpose in mind. Or to quote from the first paragraph of his article: "The players must try to get off the train and the GM has to lock the doors."

Agreed.

A completely random dungeon isn't railroading. It may not offer much agency, but it's not railroading.

My totally informal heuristic is "does the GM know what's going to happen?" If so, you're probably railroading. If not, you're probably not. The further away that you know, the more likely it is that it's railroading. (Knowing what NPCs are going to do providing nothing interrupts that isn't really part of this).

I find the arguments about railroading interesting because they quickly get so extreme - like "if the PCs don't have complete knowledge about everything, it's railroading" or "if there's anything that would stop a PC's plan from working, that's railroading". That just doesn't make sense to me. I think they're too micro-focused on the actions, without looking at the context behind them. Sometimes I feel like it is (and I've seen this) a bad faith argument in the "broad->narrow" category - basically, "by this incredibly broad definition, almost every game has railroading, therefore railroading in the more narrow definition is okay".

FilthyLucre
2021-09-30, 09:51 AM
This problem is pretty solvable, I feel like, if you design scenarios/situations rather than plot things out. Example:

Last session of my game pirates had kidnapped a merfolk and a clutch of eggs and the PCs decided to rescue them. I designed the small island stronghold that the pirates were stationed at, figured out how many pirates would be lurking about, where the eggs were, and where the merfolk was. I did not plan or even consider how they would actually rescue the merfolk. They ended up giving her a shrinking potion that I'd given them months ago and yeeted her out a window back into the sea.

Easy e
2021-09-30, 10:00 AM
First of all, I am 100% sure I am over thinking it! However, it does lead to more interesting discussion of a topic that is usually just "Railroading is bad M'kay!"

The idea that railroading is actively shutting down a player AFTER they made a choice is closer to the mark, but also not entirely accurate as the GM has to shut down choices that do not make sense in the context of the game all the time. If player A said, "I build a tactical nuke, and then use it on the Dragon" the GM should negate that choice. I think we all agree that is not railroading.

If we nudge players along to various encounters. That is not railroading. They are choosing which encounters or locations to move towards.

If we build a dungeon lay-out and the players follow it. That is not railroading. They are choosing to move left or right.

However, if a player says they want to climb the wall of the tower as opposed to the front door; and the DM contrives a reason they can not climb the wall. That is railroading?



I find the arguments about railroading interesting because they quickly get so extreme - like "if the PCs don't have complete knowledge about everything, it's railroading" or "if there's anything that would stop a PC's plan from working, that's railroading". That just doesn't make sense to me. I think they're too micro-focused on the actions, without looking at the context behind them. Sometimes I feel like it is (and I've seen this) a bad faith argument in the "broad->narrow" category - basically, "by this incredibly broad definition, almost every game has railroading, therefore railroading in the more narrow definition is okay".

Yes, this gets to the heart of it. I think we can all agree that some GM agency to guide the session is OK, as long as it does not break the player's sense that they are making decisions and guiding the story themselves? Is that the difference between railroading bad. or "not railroading"?

Wintermoot
2021-09-30, 10:02 AM
This problem is pretty solvable, I feel like, if you design scenarios/situations rather than plot things out. Example:

Last session of my game pirates had kidnapped a merfolk and a clutch of eggs and the PCs decided to rescue them. I designed the small island stronghold that the pirates were stationed at, figured out how many pirates would be lurking about, where the eggs were, and where the merfolk was. I did not plan or even consider how they would actually rescue the merfolk. They ended up giving her a shrinking potion that I'd given them months ago and yeeted her out a window back into the sea.

This may work for you, but it doesn't work for every GM. Because it can lead to a very static bland experience depending on how fast the GM thinks on their feet.

What I mean is this. If you haven't put any thought into how the scenario may change or grow depending on how the players respond, then if they come up with a solution that bypasses everything then it turns out to be a very boring game.

So you detailed the merfolk village. You may have put some additional loot in or areas of interest for them to find. You have have inserted a hook for a future session or story. But if they bypass all of that with the shrink potion and through the window, the entire session takes 30 minutes to do and ends up very non-fun for both players and GM.

Granted, this isn't ALWAYS true, but is SOMETIMES true. Some GMS run a better game by being over pre-prepared so they don't have to do so much thinking on their feet. Some Players enjoy a game where it evolves as they go to give a satisfying rich experience.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Telok
2021-09-30, 10:16 AM
My totally informal heuristic is "does the GM know what's going to happen?" If so, you're probably railroading. If not, you're probably not. The further away that you know, the more likely it is that it's railroading. (Knowing what NPCs are going to do providing nothing interrupts that isn't really part of this.

When I DM the players are sometimes absolutely predictable, and sometimes insanely unpredictable. Usually due to how they have specific habits and reactions to certain situation or NPC personalities.

Due to the unpredictability and my own preferences I tend towards a bounded sandbox setting/scenario style of game. However, when I can predict some/most of what the players will do, I try to manipulate them into situations where they have to choose what & how much the thing they want is going to cost. Generally only statting things out about a session and a half ahead, although I often have semi-detailed setting outlines and a stock NPC backup cast.

I have been accused of railroading when I successfully predict their actions and they get faced with choices or consequences. Although I think its interesting that I get more accusations of railroading when they get consequences of their actions that arise from the insane random crap they sometimes pull. Maybe I make a weird mirror reversal of railroading somehow. They seem to feel that physics/NPCs reactions to their lol-random detours are railroading, while if I plot 2 paths with 4 encounters each that lead to the same end scene it isn't a railroad.

kyoryu
2021-09-30, 10:23 AM
Yes, this gets to the heart of it. I think we can all agree that some GM agency to guide the session is OK, as long as it does not break the player's sense that they are making decisions and guiding the story themselves? Is that the difference between railroading bad. or "not railroading"?

Ultimately, I look at a (I consider it the primary and the first) fundamental interaction of RPGs to be:

GM: "This is the situation." (A)
Player: "This is what I do."
GM: "This is the new situation."

It's a useful tool, and contains more information than it looks like at first.

The GM has the absolute right to define the situation, within limits of the fictional world (and since the GM defines those, that's more about consistency than anything). This is their input into the situation. (A)

The player has the right to respond within the limits of the fictional world and what their character can do (B).

The GM has the obligation to respond to that (C). The resulting situation should be a combination of the initial situation, the player action, and any other new information the GM wants to introduce.

Where you get into railroading is where C is not dependent on the player action. That's the quantum ogre, right?

GM: "You're at a fork in the road, left or right?" (presumably more info is given, left brief for example purposes)
Player: "I go left"/"I go right"
GM: "You fight an ogre."

Note that it's possible for the result to be the same for multiple actions and it not be railroading. However, for that to be true, at least part of the result needs to be due to randomization (I attack with my dagger/I attack with my sword can both result in 1 damage) -or- there needs to be other potential player actions that would result in a different result ("I head back to town" in the case of the QO).

It's when the GM already knows what step C is, and will enforce it that you're really railroading.

I ran into a not-as-subtle-as-he-thought version of this with a friend. There was a local "primitive" type person guarding a tomb thing. We had teh option of attacking or not. This person was willing to let us go even though we had killed half her family so long as we agreed to not open the tomb thing.

Every question that we asked where the answer could have led to a reasonable answer of "don't open it" was met with "I don't understand you." Every question that was asked that could have led to "yes, you should totally open it" was understood. Even though it was clearly a Sealed Evil In A Can scenario, we were prevented from getting info that would have led to it.

We ended up opening it and releasing the Sealed Evil, of coruse. And the GM was all "you could have made any choice you wanted!" Maybe..... and maybe he believed he wasn't railroading, but the information was clearly controlled to get us to make the decision he wanted. It's still railroading, but just more subtle. That doesn't make it better.

OldTrees1
2021-09-30, 10:25 AM
You are comparing completely different things. One is a short travel with exactly one encounter. In the other one you added additional encounters and events instead of having just one. That is more than just removing the quantum ogre. Please reread what I wrote above. I specially noted that the roads would be different in some way, just that both would have an encounter with an ogre. That's explicitly different from your example x. I can easily take your example y and insert an ogre into each road, either in addition to or replacing the existing encounters. That doesn't take away any player agency.

Campaign X has two roads that are different in some way, just that both would have an encounter with an ogre, and the ogre was the same quantum ogre named John Doe. This addresses the quantum ogre case but not the "copy paste there are now 2 ogres" case. Those cases are different with respect to verisimilitude, I don't think they are difference with respect to the potential to have agency over the encounter.

Double checking: When you say the roads are different in some way, I assumed they are different in some other meaningful informed impactful choice way. That is why I set up road AB and AC to be a meaningful informed impactful choice. Campaign X and campaign Y differ about whether the encounter (or encounters in campaign Y's case) are part of the meaningful informed impactful choice OR if there is a quantum ogre.


Obviously example y will provide more player agency. But not because of the existence or absence of an ogre. But because example y contains actual information for the players to base their choice on beyond "will you go left or right?" Meaning the players are informed enough to make an informed choice. Which is actually something you earlier specifically denied is relevant to the question, whereas now you use it as the reason for player agency. So you are contradicting yourself

Campaign Y provides more player agency because I removed the quantum ogre (counter action against a choice) and made its replacement a possible informed choice (the players have the potential to be informed enough to make an informed choice). Yes, as part of this replacement, I did have the new encounter(s) tied to information the PCs had about road length length and in fiction frequency of attacks.

counteraction negates agency
lacking information negates agency
A quantum ogre technically only affects the former but frequently the latter is assumed by the example. Campaign Y replaced the counter action choice (which was also a blind choice in campaign X) with an informed impactful choice.

I never denied information was a prerequisite for a meaningful informed impactful choice. I affirmed information was a requirement but counter action also negates agency and the quantum ogre mechanic specifically deals with the counter action.




Here's the quote I'm referring to:

If the GMs notes say "Ogres frequent both roads," then that is a valid piece of world-building and the GM is entirely justified to have the players encounter an ogre regardless of which way they choose. The fact that he'll use the same stats and encounter details either way does not change that. If the players can get that information ("there are ogres on both roads"), it still doesn't remove their agency. It just means that the existence of ogres is not a criterium they can base their choice on.
If you want to drive from your house to the store and there are two roads with the exact same length you could take, that doesn't take your agency in choosing which way to go from you. It just means that "miles driven" is not a useful criterium, but that you should base your choice on different reasons, like the quality of the streets, the expected traffic, the number of traffic lights, anything like that.

Yes, if the GM notes "Ogres frequent both roads" that would be a valid piece of world-building.

Yes, the GM is entirely justified (subject to information about playgroup's preferences) to have the platers encounter an ogre regardless of which way they choose. That is true regardless of the GM's notes. More/less agency is not inherently bad, check the playgroup's preferences.

Correct, having less agency does not mean you have no agency.

However having less agency (agency over destination & travel time vs agency over destination, travel time, & expected dangers) is having less agency. If the roads from house to store are the same with respect to a variable, then I do not have agency over that variable. I still have agency over the other variables that do differ between the roads provided I am aware of the difference. Agency is not a binary. Agency is a continuum.


Summary:
1) An informed meaningful impactful choice requires the choice be informed (lack of information, aka blind choices, prevents agency over that aspect) meaningful (to the players care about it) and impactful (does the GM negate the choice or leave it stand?).
2) Choice that includes more informed meaningful impactful choices has more agency than one that has fewer.
3) The right amount of agency is decided by the playgroup preferences. Something having more/less agency does not make it inherently better. Insert boilerplate about playgroup preferences.

Unless you think agency is a binary, I don't see where we disagree.

BRC
2021-09-30, 10:31 AM
Thats why I prefer the Alexandrian's "the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome". Because it requires a player choice first, then a DM action to negate it after, with a purpose in mind. Or to quote from the first paragraph of his article: "The players must try to get off the train and the GM has to lock the doors."

The reason I dislike that is because you can get the same effect without intervening beyond establishing the scenario.

You can drop your players into a linear dungeon full of enemies who will attack on sight, with magically indestructible doors that won't open until you've defeated every enemy in the room, locking your players into a series of pre-established encounters, and never needing to lift a finger to keep them "On-Rails". In my mind, denying the players any chance to make decisions is on-par with negating them, even if it's a bit easier to hide in the background noise of scenario building.

From a perspective of "what advice to give to a GM", I try to stay away from anything that could be interpreted as "If you do enough prep work and cover all your bases, you won't need to Railroad and everything will be fine", or "If the story you're trying to tell is good enough, your players won't try to get off the rails", because I feel like those are solving the wrong part of the problem.

Every Railroader thinks they've done enough prep work/ thinks that their story is so good the players won't try to go off the rails. The Alexandrian's definition is what happens when they're Wrong.

kyoryu
2021-09-30, 10:35 AM
You can drop your players into a linear dungeon full of enemies who will attack on sight, with magically indestructible doors that won't open until you've defeated every enemy in the room, locking your players into a series of pre-established encounters, and never needing to lift a finger to keep them "On-Rails". In my mind, denying the players any chance to make decisions is on-par with negating them, even if it's a bit easier to hide in the background noise of scenario building.

I agree with this entirely.


From a perspective of "what advice to give to a GM", I try to stay away from anything that could be interpreted as "If you do enough prep work and cover all your bases, you won't need to Railroad and everything will be fine", or "If the story you're trying to tell is good enough, your players won't try to get off the rails", because I feel like those are solving the wrong part of the problem.

Sure. I think the viable options are "don't make a game that's a linear path" and "make a game that's a linear path, and get everyone's buy-in".

Anything else is sketchy.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-30, 10:38 AM
Agreed.

A completely random dungeon isn't railroading. It may not offer much agency, but it's not railroading.

My totally informal heuristic is "does the GM know what's going to happen?" If so, you're probably railroading. If not, you're probably not. The further away that you know, the more likely it is that it's railroading. (Knowing what NPCs are going to do providing nothing interrupts that isn't really part of this).

I find the arguments about railroading interesting because they quickly get so extreme - like "if the PCs don't have complete knowledge about everything, it's railroading" or "if there's anything that would stop a PC's plan from working, that's railroading". That just doesn't make sense to me. I think they're too micro-focused on the actions, without looking at the context behind them. Sometimes I feel like it is (and I've seen this) a bad faith argument in the "broad->narrow" category - basically, "by this incredibly broad definition, almost every game has railroading, therefore railroading in the more narrow definition is okay".

Totally agree, except I’m actually comfortable treating your informal heuristic as pretty much a strong definition. I think railroading isn’t just about player agency and meaningful choices, it’s about the narrative sequence of events. If the GM has that sequence planned out and actively resists deviating from it, that’s a railroad.

I suppose with my definition there’s a VERY limited sense in which it’s true that all games have railroads, because the GM merely presenting something - anything - as part of the game world is technically a “pre-planned event”. But to conflate “at some point the PCs meet a sad goblin” with “the PCs meet a sad goblin and agree to help him find his lost necklace, and they find it and it’s a powerful artefact, and the goblin uses it to destroy the city, etc etc” is… well I don’t know if it’s bad faith but it’s obviously wrong.

Wintermoot
2021-09-30, 10:40 AM
Ultimately, I look at a (I consider it the primary and the first) fundamental interaction of RPGs to be:

GM: "You're at a fork in the road, left or right?" (presumably more info is given, left brief for example purposes)
Player: "I go left"/"I go right"
GM: "You fight an ogre."


In my opinion, the failure here is asking the players to make a choice that has no purpose in the first place. Why are you asking them to choose a path when that choice makes no difference?

If the players have decided, we are going to go to the temple of aahz, and you know they are going to have three "random" encounters on the journey just get to it. Skip over the parts where the interaction isn't meaningful.

"Okay, you set out for the Temple of Aahz along the old Yorick highway. Your map shows to travel four days, then turn off the road at an old lumber station. It notes the station is often besot by Ogres. On the third day as you are travelling there is a thundering crack from the trees to the right of the road and several boulders come flinging out at you followed by the war whoops of a pack of Ogres. Roll Initiative"

to me: as a player: this is preferable to...

"Okay you decided to set out for the temple of Aahz. What are you going to do?"

"Uh okay, do we have a map"

"You do."

"How does the map say to get there?"

"It shows the best path to be to follow the old Yorick highway for four days, then turn off the road at an old lumber station. There is a mark for danger at the lumber station."

"What kind of danger?"

"According to the notes in the margin, ogres often infest the station and attack travelers."

"Oh well we don't want that. Are there any other paths."

"Uh, well, you can go through the wilderness but it will take a few extra weeks and you risk running into other monsters."

"Hmmm... well we are in no hurry, let's do that."

"Okay... so you start slogging your way through the woods. After a week of travel you come across signs of recent passage by large humanoids"

"uh oh. Well let's try to veer away from the trail they are taking."

"Okay. *rolls a different random encounter* That night as you are camping you hear rustling in the woods... ten gnolls start throwing javelins at you. roll init."


While the second looks like the players have more agency, so what. you are trading one encounter for another at that point and spending a lot of time and energy on boring stuff to get there.

There is a happy medium here, but it mostly comes from the players recognizing they are playing a game that the GM has to pre-prepare for and the GM to realize that players can get frustrated by being asked to make meaningless choices.

kyoryu
2021-09-30, 10:49 AM
While the second looks like the players have more agency, so what. you are trading one encounter for another at that point and spending a lot of time and energy on boring stuff to get there.

There is a happy medium here, but it mostly comes from the players recognizing they are playing a game that the GM has to pre-prepare for and the GM to realize that players can get frustrated by being asked to make meaningless choices.

For some people that isn't the boring stuff.

And, really, that shouldn't take more than a few extra minutes.

Really, though, the QO is a minimal example of a scenario and is often taken too literally. Is "gnolls vs ogres" really that important? Not really. But there's a lot of daylight between "you will take out the Duke, here's the path you will go on, and any deviation from this path will not be tolerated and I will use every technique at my disposal to get you on track" and "yeah, there's an issue with the Duke, what do you want to do about it?" where the answer can be anything from "ignore it" to "convince him" to "get political power to oust him" to "raise an army against him" to "join him, Go Team Evil" to probably a dozen other things I haven't thought of.

Wintermoot
2021-09-30, 10:56 AM
For some people that isn't the boring stuff.

And, really, that shouldn't take more than a few extra minutes.

Really, though, the QO is a minimal example of a scenario and is often taken too literally. Is "gnolls vs ogres" really that important? Not really. But there's a lot of daylight between "you will take out the Duke, here's the path you will go on, and any deviation from this path will not be tolerated and I will use every technique at my disposal to get you on track" and "yeah, there's an issue with the Duke, what do you want to do about it?" where the answer can be anything from "ignore it" to "convince him" to "get political power to oust him" to "raise an army against him" to "join him, Go Team Evil" to probably a dozen other things I haven't thought of.

Yes. there is a world of difference. And if that's what you thought I was advocating then you have badly misunderstood me.

kyoryu
2021-09-30, 10:59 AM
Yes. there is a world of difference. And if that's what you thought I was advocating then you have badly misunderstood me.

I mean, I'd agree with not offering a false choice for sure.

I'm not sure that means that your example of choosing which path you wanted to take has no value. Especially from a player perspective, and especially if there's a cost to the extra time for taking the longer path.

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-30, 11:03 AM
In my opinion, the failure here is asking the players to make a choice that has no purpose in the first place. Why are you asking them to choose a path when that choice makes no difference?



While the second looks like the players have more agency, so what. you are trading one encounter for another at that point and spending a lot of time and energy on boring stuff to get there.

There is a happy medium here, but it mostly comes from the players recognizing they are playing a game that the GM has to pre-prepare for and the GM to realize that players can get frustrated by being asked to make meaningless choices.

I agree with you but I do think you’re taking for granted which choices will be meaningful. As GMs we are constantly making choices about choices: which ones to skip over, dwell on, make explicit, make implicit, go meta and discuss with the players, and so on. This is just a fundamental part of RPGs, at least RPGs that have a GM. Really the best we can do is decide what we think will probably be a meaningful choice, present that choice and then respect the players’ response and allow it to shape the narrative.

Stonehead
2021-09-30, 11:58 AM
I keep talking about spectrums and continuums. I keep talking about player preferences vary and are not all clumped at 100% agency. This response sounds like a non sequitur. I am not claiming there is a binary between 0% and 100%.



Thankfully you are replying to my post instead of that strawman, and my post did make sense to you. Please take 5 steps back from that binary strawman and address the continuum.


Most players don't like 0% nor 100% player agency. They don't want to listen to an audiobook nor do they want perfect knowledge with omnipotent characters. Find out what your play group wants and aim for that. However knowing players generally don't want the extremes doesn't stop you from understanding what can move your campaign in either direction. Find out your play group's preferences, get player buy in, and be aware of which GM choices impact how well the game matches the playgroup's preferences.



Now on the topic of exploration, I have found that I personally don't like quantum ogres even when I am making a blind choice. I prefer the benefits verisimilitude has on exploration of blind choices. This ties back to what I said about player preferences can be nuanced.

So personally, for my playgroup's preferences, I focus on a sandbox with no "superpositions" and allow the PC power and PC information gathered to let the players calibrate how much player agency they want that campaign. Depending on the group I also give more or less guidance on suggested optional group goals. I can make more obvious goal opportunities if the group wants less agency, or I can ask the PCs about their goals when the group wants more agency. However your playgroup might (probably) has different preferences. So the ideal playstyle for your group might (probably) differ.

Continuums are all well and good, but I'm not super interested in a semantic argument about terms. Like I said before, I'm much more interested in talking about when, and more importantly why it becomes a problem. I originally thought "Railroading" carried the connotation of being a problem that people dislike. If the quantum ogres are a problem inherently, it would have to be for a reason that isn't subverting player agency. Based on your point that no one likes 100% agency, there have to be unknowns, and if there are unknowns, there have to be some degree of blind choices because you aren't forced to go find that thing you don't know exists yet, and if there are acceptable blind choices, is there an issue with shuffling around the consequences of them behind the scenes?

I'm not telling you the answer to that question because I don't know it. We've established that there's going to be some amount of blind choices in an enjoyable game, inherently, because of the nature of free choices combined with unknowns. So putting a "Quantum Ogre" behind those necessary blind choices doesn't subvert player choice at all. I'm not necessarily saying that there's no problem with doing that, but if there is a problem, I want to know why, because to me, it really looks like the problem can't be subverting player choice.


Oh how I wish that was the case. Next you'll tell le nobody ever ragequits Chess.

Like, consider: entire trends of game design have come and gone based on some player disliking what the dice or their game master decided. For a while in boardgame and wargame circles, the dominant opinion was that any use of dice, at all, is bad, because games should depend on skill, not random chance. For a while in the roleplaying game circles, the dominant opinion was that D&D is a bad game, in fact all games with a game master are bad, because decisions should be made by everyone at the table, all authority is illegitimate, so on and so forth.

Losing gracefully, accepting defeat, accepting some decisions are made by others and not you, these are personality-dependent and to a degree, skills. I'm not kidding here. Games are used as teaching tools in schools to literally teach these things to children. Every once in a while, somebody slips through, fails to learn the lesson or forgets it, just as surely as some people fail to learn or forget general solution to quadratic equations. It's not given a person sitting down to play has accepted or even understood what the game rules are telling them.

Maybe I've just been super lucky to only ever play with cool people who I'm friends with, but I'm having a hard time relating to this at all. Like, we're so far off into theory-land that it has no relation to any game I've ever been a part of. Maybe my experiences aren't universal, but every single person I've ever sat down at a table with would be totally fine with the DM saying "You find some wolves in the forest because that's what I rolled on my encounter table".

It's crazy to me that "People playing Dnd are ok with rolling dice" is such a controversial statement.



As a matter of fact, we can't. You haven't even told me if you're a presentist or eternalist. Though I'll argue for both cases that there's no difference between an ogre that hasn't been placed yet and a chess move that hasn't been made yet.

Right, because I'm not super interested in a metaphysical discussion right now. The time and place for that is in a philosophy 1001 class. I'm sure we both have self-consistent views about the nature of future objects, but their only relation to this thread is about where a pretend Ogre is standing.


You seem to be forgetting that the exact location of the ogre isn't determined until the moment the game master puts it in the game. The prepwork the GM has done is not the same action as actually placing the ogre. For comparison a Chess player could actually play and write down sequence of multiple Chess games before facing an opponent. Then, when their opponent makes a move they have predicted and put down in their notes, they can just follow the response put down in their notes. As far as rules of Chess are concerned, the move in the pregame is the same as the move in the actual game, but obviously the move in the actual game isn't done until it's done.

I didn't forget, that's kind of the whole point. The location of this Ogre hasn't been determined, but it's size, and it's hit points, and the silly voice the DM uses when it taunts the party have been determined. So some part of the ogre exists, at least more so than some other thing he has to improvise. And the dragon hoarding gold in his cave has all these things _and_ his position predetermined. The reason "superposition" is being used here, is because this one object seems to exist and have a location, while this other object seems to exist, but it's location hasn't been determined.

It really does just come down to whether you're viewing DnD as a game, or as a fictional world. A chess move you haven't made yet doesn't seem to exist in the way one you already have made does. But in a movie, a character doesn't "cease to exist" when they step off screen. In the canon of the story, characters "exist" before they appear on screen.

If you don't think Luke Skywalker "existed" in the Star Wars universe before the droids left in the escape pod, that's a reasonable, self-consistent stance to take, but so is the stance that he did exist, in the fiction of the story. I'm not telling you to look at DnD the way I look at a movie, but you can't make anyone else look at DnD the way you look at chess. And even if we were all "fooling ourselves", this isn't the kind of view that gets changed based on forum posts on the internet.

kyoryu
2021-09-30, 12:28 PM
The point is that "Do we fight the wizard" is not the most interesting question here. It's not that "The PC's fight the wizard" is evil railroading, and "The PC's don't fight the wizard" is Player Agency.


The story doesn't end when the PC's show up at the top of that tower to fight the wizard. The PC's choices shaped how that fight goes.

In the "Railroad" metaphor, the PC's are not passengers, they are The Train (I guess they could be passengers stuck on the train?), constrained by the tracks, following a pre-determined path to their destination.

Yes, a Wizard Fight will always happen, but, depending on the PC's choices, It won't be the same wizard fight.

The PC's who sneak up the side of the tower are not the same PC's who fought their way through the interior. The Wizard who is at the cusp of completing his dark ritual is not the same wizard who lost his staff when the PC's convinced his apprentice to betray him.

The burning Tower is not the same Tower as one that isn't on fire.

Also, if the players agreed to play a game about hunting down the Wizard, then giving that to them doesn't impact agency at all. If the game is pitched as "be people in fantasy land" and the GM decides ".... and you will hunt the wizard, regardless of your desire to do so" then there's a railroading claim.


Imagine you are at a restaurant, you sit down, you are handed the menu.

Railroading is when the menu just says "Spaghetti", only Spaghetti. Your only choices are to leave, or eat the Spaghetti.

If the Menu says more than Spaghetti, that's not a railroad (Or, less railroady). Yes, you'll have a meal, but the nature of that meal will change.

Even worse is if you order lasagna, but get spaghetti. Or you go to the restaurant next door for sushi, but still get spaghetti.

OldTrees1
2021-09-30, 01:18 PM
Continuums are all well and good, but I'm not super interested in a semantic argument about terms. Like I said before, I'm much more interested in talking about when, and more importantly why it becomes a problem. I originally thought "Railroading" carried the connotation of being a problem that people dislike. If the quantum ogres are a problem inherently, it would have to be for a reason that isn't subverting player agency. Based on your point that no one likes 100% agency, there have to be unknowns, and if there are unknowns, there have to be some degree of blind choices because you aren't forced to go find that thing you don't know exists yet, and if there are acceptable blind choices, is there an issue with shuffling around the consequences of them behind the scenes?

I'm not telling you the answer to that question because I don't know it. We've established that there's going to be some amount of blind choices in an enjoyable game, inherently, because of the nature of free choices combined with unknowns. So putting a "Quantum Ogre" behind those necessary blind choices doesn't subvert player choice at all. I'm not necessarily saying that there's no problem with doing that, but if there is a problem, I want to know why, because to me, it really looks like the problem can't be subverting player choice.

Clarification noted. Here is a clarification on my end too.
Railroading sometimes does and sometimes does not carry the connotation of necessarily being bad. This depends on if they are describing what is mechanically happening or if they are labeling what they dislike and then trying to explain when the events cross that threshold. I am use Railroading in the neutral tone because I find it easier to focus on the mechanics rather than redefine the word each time a player has a slightly different preference.

I do not think quantum ogres are inherently a problem. I do inherently dislike them and I can/will elaborate why, but there are players that appreciate quantum ogres. There are even players that appreciate quantum ogres for basically the direct inverse reason of why I dislike them.



The most common objection players raise (based on listening to different players on this forum) is comparing a quantum ogre to an informed impactful choice even though there are two changes between those cases (information & impact). If you have a blind impactful choice you could convert it into an informed impactful choice (granting player agency), leave it as a blind impactful choice (no agency over that aspect), or double down and make it a blind non choice. So often players object to quantum ogres because you could have offered an informed impactful choice instead. This objection is more common / louder if the choice was about something the players cared more about. A quantum ogre with nothing special is going to be criticized less than a quantum ogre carrying the next part of the plot device.

Also most players appear to be okay with some shuffled blind choices but not others. I think this scales with how much the player cares about the consequence being shuffled. The more the player cares about the consequence, the more they tend to prefer a blind impactful choice over a blind quantum non choice. Of course the more the player cares about the consequence, the more they prefer the choice be informed instead of blind.


Personally I have an additional (non agency) criticism of quantum ogres. I like verisimilitude and quantum ogres (assuming no in fiction explanation) feel like a metagame glitch imposed on the world rather than a natural consequence of the actions of various characters existing in that world. This kind of verisimilitude critique of quantum ogres is more common from players that have preferences towards the sandbox end of the continuum because the more reliable the verisimilitude of the campaign world, the easier it is to have informed choices. So I don't want the blind choices to be shuffled and thus turned into blind non choices. I prefer they remain blind choices (with the balance of informed vs blind choices depending on my playgroup's preferences).



Finally there is a 3rd consideration. The dishonest GM and historic associations. The phrase "Quantum Ogre", despite Vahnavoi's critique of its scientific accuracy, was coined in response to a GM that wanted to railroad their players more than the players claimed they wanted to be railroaded. So they bragged about how they could use perfect illusions to trick the players into playing the game that had less agency than the game players wanted to play. They did this as part of their thesis that player preferences don't matter because the GM understands what players enjoy more than the players do. So like "Railroad" there are potentially negative connotations attached to the term. This might make a player dislike a quantum ogre more than disliking separate ogres on each road.


Those are the 3 main critiques. The first is about a lost potential for an informed meaningful impactful choice. The second is about the decreased verisimilitude and its impacts on the potential for other informed choices. The third is about the historic associations with illusionism to abuse player trust. :smalleek: Which means quantum ogres are perfectly fine as long as the playgroup is okay with them. :smallbiggrin:

kyoryu
2021-09-30, 01:26 PM
Which means quantum ogres are perfectly fine as long as the playgroup is okay with them. :smallbiggrin:

As with all things.

As I've said many times, having a linear game is great - just tell the players that's what they're getting. Once everyone is on that page, do what you need to do (within whatever limits people agreed to)

Talakeal
2021-09-30, 01:28 PM
I use the same logic to explain quantum ogres and other "contrivances" as I do with HP and rerolls; we don't tell the stories about people who led ordinary lives; therefore PCs are always getting into unlikely but interesting situations as a sort of narrative survivor bias.

Quertus
2021-09-30, 01:45 PM
All fiction is built on "contrivances" and I would postulate that IRL the people who managed to change the world all had more than their share of "contrivances" occur to help them along.

In a linear game if you told me you wanted to kill the gods and reformat the world I would make sure there is a path to do that. In a sanbox, I shrug, tell you that on the off change the game is still happening in ten years and you haven't already been killed (or had someone else beat you to the punch) then maybe you can do that when you are level 40; but until then it just ain't going to happen without a "contrivance".

And this is why you start the party at level 50, so that they have the agency to pursue their goals during the campaign. (Color blue to taste)

More realistically, if there's a "McGuffin of god slaying" that you would have worked into the hands of the linear party, nothing prevents the sandbox party from getting it… either/too (I'm pretty sure one of those words can finish that sentence). More generally, whatever method the linear party could use, could be used by the sandbox party. Now, despite my "creativity", I might never come up with and successfully implement a valid "god-slaying" strategy, especially under a GM whom I lack sufficient ranks in Knowledge: GM, or who lacks creativity themselves, and can only think in terms of "the only way to…".

So… if your world has the McGuffin of god slaying, that you would have made sure fell into the laps of the low-level linear party, then the sandbox party could investigate rumors, peer through space, time, and narrative causality, or otherwise track down said relic, and use it to slay gods themselves. A little later than the linear party, perhaps, but a well-deserved victory, free of contrivance of the McGuffin just so happening to fall into their hands.

That said… I'm perfectly happy with "T=0" contrivances, like, "grandpa *made* the god-slaying McGuffin, and bequeathed it to me in his will". I'm choosing to play *that* particular farm boy / 7th son of a noble / whatever generic background turned adventurer rather than *some other* random character turned adventurer.

That said, regarding "people who managed to change the world all had more than their share of "contrivances" occur to help them along"? I'm told (I hope I've got this right - any Playgrounder know what I'm talking about, and care to be awesome and provide a reference?) that… after the Holocaust, it was found that one town did an amazing job evacuating people. So researchers went to investigate, to find out *why* this town did so well, what their secret ingredient was. And what they found was… nothing. That, as far as they could tell, anyone could have done the same thing, they just… didn't. That the existence of this town wasn't a road map for success so much as it was condemnation to everyone who had failed.

So I don't think everything happens through contrivance. For example, what contrivance (beyond "being smart") allowed my dad and myself to be among the first in the world to report solving our respective mental challenges?

Huh. Apparently, I am a figurative "7th son of a 7th son", as I believe we were each the 7th person to report our respective findings. Other than "rules lawyer cred", what abilities in what worlds might that grant me?


Thats why I prefer the Alexandrian's "the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome". Because it requires a player choice first, then a DM action to negate it after, with a purpose in mind. Or to quote from the first paragraph of his article: "The players must try to get off the train and the GM has to lock the doors."

I like definition for its simplicity, but mine is both a little more broad and a little more narrow: "('Railroading' is when)… the GM changes established facts or negates game physics… to force or prevent a particular outcome.".

On that note,


The reason I dislike that is…

Every Railroader thinks they've done enough prep work/ thinks that their story is so good the players won't try to go off the rails. The Alexandrian's definition is what happens when they're Wrong.

How do y'all feel about my definition? (@BRC, I'm hoping that your answer will let me understand your post / what you disliked about Alexandrian's definition. Reading comprehension continues to be… not my strong suit.)


This problem is pretty solvable, I feel like, if you design scenarios/situations rather than plot things out. Example:

Last session of my game pirates had kidnapped a merfolk and a clutch of eggs and the PCs decided to rescue them. I designed the small island stronghold that the pirates were stationed at, figured out how many pirates would be lurking about, where the eggs were, and where the merfolk was. I did not plan or even consider how they would actually rescue the merfolk. They ended up giving her a shrinking potion that I'd given them months ago and yeeted her out a window back into the sea.

Awesome! That's what I like to see. Moments like that are what I GM for.


This may work for you, but it doesn't work for every GM. Because it can lead to a very static bland experience depending on how fast the GM thinks on their feet.

What I mean is this. If you haven't put any thought into how the scenario may change or grow depending on how the players respond, then if they come up with a solution that bypasses everything then it turns out to be a very boring game.

So you detailed the merfolk village. You may have put some additional loot in or areas of interest for them to find. You have have inserted a hook for a future session or story. But if they bypass all of that with the shrink potion and through the window, the entire session takes 30 minutes to do and ends up very non-fun for both players and GM.

Granted, this isn't ALWAYS true, but is SOMETIMES true. Some GMS run a better game by being over pre-prepared so they don't have to do so much thinking on their feet. Some Players enjoy a game where it evolves as they go to give a satisfying rich experience.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Uh… that *scene* might only last 30 minutes (and possibly be the best 30 minutes of the campaign), but the *session* can continue beyond that scene, and, coming off the high that scene, the session is IME *more* likely to be fun for everyone.

BRC
2021-09-30, 01:55 PM
I like definition for its simplicity, but mine is both a little more broad and a little more narrow: "('Railroading' is when)… the GM changes established facts or negates game physics… to force or prevent a particular outcome.".

On that note,



How do y'all feel about my definition? (@BRC, I'm hoping that your answer will let me understand your post / what you disliked about Alexandrian's definition. Reading comprehension continues to be… not my strong suit.)


Your Definition is pretty close to the Alexandrian's definition, so I dislike it for the same reason, it puts "Railroading" (Generally considered to be a bad thing) at the moment the GM has to change things in-session.

If A new GM comes up to you and says "How do I be a good GM and not railroad" and you say "Never change established facts or negate game physics to force or prevent a particular outcome", that leaves them room to take away the bad lesson that how one is a "Good" GM is to exclusively create watertight scenarios, where their desired outcome happens without them needing to change any established facts or negate any game physics. That's where you get the PC's being babysat by superpowered NPC's who exist to win all the fights that need winning and clap the PC's on the ear if they ever deviate from the intended path.

We go on and on about railroading being bad because giving players agency is good. If your definition of railroading focuses on the moment you force the players back onto the tracks, that doesn't actually contain the lesson of "Give players agency".

Your definition is a good one, and could be considered part of a wider piece of advice, E.g:

1: Give your players the ability to make meaningful choices.
2: Don't Railroad (change established facts ect ect).

But the distinction between "The GM intervened to force an outcome" and "The GM created a scenario with only one possible outcome" is pretty academic in my mind? If we're going to be defining "Railroading" as the thing to not do, I'd like to include both.


Edit: Note my definition is "Give the Players Agency" not neccessarily "Give the PC's agency". If the Players buy into the scenario in which their characters are forced to do something, that's fine.

Easy e
2021-09-30, 02:02 PM
I keep coming around to this simple question:

What is a meaningful choice?

I have a definition I have shared in this thread. What is everyone else's definition?

JNAProductions
2021-09-30, 02:12 PM
I keep coming around to this simple question:

What is a meaningful choice?

I have a definition I have shared in this thread. What is everyone else's definition?

Mind sharing it again? I missed it, or have forgotten it.

Vahnavoi
2021-09-30, 02:29 PM
A meaningful choice is one that changes the game state and cause the game tree to begin, diverge, converge or end.

A meaningless choice is one that doesn't influence anything outside itself.

In a complex game with incomplete rules, distinquishing between meaningful and meaningless choices can be non-trivial. However, a good rule of thumb is that in a human run game, in order for a choice to be meaningful, people have to pay attention, because their minds are the medium for the game.

For games where a game master has final say on the state of the game, the fiction of "Game master is God, everything exist by God's will" can provide one useful heuristic. A choice is meaningful when God permits it and allows it to change the world.

jayem
2021-09-30, 03:02 PM
Some 'real life' situations are naturally railroady, some are naturally Schrodingery, some are naturally open and similar. And it obviously makes sense to try and play to their strengths.
It's probably better to say they are a combination of layers.

E.G my Grandad's school day was proscribed (limiting)
Well he could bunk off (freedom)
But the teachers would try to catch him (limiting)
but he could plan and avoid that (freedom)
And whatever he did, that school was getting bombed on X/X/1941 (limiting).

And if it were a game, the players would pretty much pick up if that was the game being the game, or railroads/etc...

__

On the dungeon, this would also apply.

Yes there are totally some aspects that are just naturally begging for Schrodinger to help to lighten the burden, and it would be totally wasteful to duplicate things. (The original Gollum would be an ideal thing to put in whatever tunnel you run down, rather than going "in this tunnel is Gollum, and in this tunnel is Phlegm and he's survived using his heavy scale armour, and in this tunnel are some vines that...")
Yes there are some aspects where it would totally over-rule player choice and it would be damaging.
In between you have some that are hard to call, and it depends on what the game is. (Having the One Ring just happen to be in that tunnel, for instance)

Similarly with the other types of rails, there are some areas that they fit nicely (Caradhras/Moria for instance) and some where they really don't.

__
Regarding Meaningful choices
I think the key thing is that it is worth the players time to make the choice (and the GM's time for the player to).

1) The players must have at least 2 options (a choice)
2) The outcome of the picking different options should be different (it's not meaningful if you have Hobson's choice)
2b) .. and sufficiently valuable and long term to be of interest
3) The outcomes can not be ranked by some single 'best' metric (it's not meaningful if the choice is cake or death)
4) The player should have some idea what the expected outcomes are (it's not meaningful if the player may as well roll a die)

I would say that not all choices have to be fully meaningful, it's a starting point.

Stonehead
2021-09-30, 03:09 PM
Clarification noted. Here is a clarification on my end too.
Railroading sometimes does and sometimes does not carry the connotation of necessarily being bad. This depends on if they are describing what is mechanically happening or if they are labeling what they dislike and then trying to explain when the events cross that threshold. I am use Railroading in the neutral tone because I find it easier to focus on the mechanics rather than redefine the word each time a player has a slightly different preference.

I do not think quantum ogres are inherently a problem. I do inherently dislike them and I can/will elaborate why, but there are players that appreciate quantum ogres. There are even players that appreciate quantum ogres for basically the direct inverse reason of why I dislike them.



The most common objection players raise (based on listening to different players on this forum) is comparing a quantum ogre to an informed impactful choice even though there are two changes between those cases (information & impact). If you have a blind impactful choice you could convert it into an informed impactful choice (granting player agency), leave it as a blind impactful choice (no agency over that aspect), or double down and make it a blind non choice. So often players object to quantum ogres because you could have offered an informed impactful choice instead. This objection is more common / louder if the choice was about something the players cared more about. A quantum ogre with nothing special is going to be criticized less than a quantum ogre carrying the next part of the plot device.

Also most players appear to be okay with some shuffled blind choices but not others. I think this scales with how much the player cares about the consequence being shuffled. The more the player cares about the consequence, the more they tend to prefer a blind impactful choice over a blind quantum non choice. Of course the more the player cares about the consequence, the more they prefer the choice be informed instead of blind.


Personally I have an additional (non agency) criticism of quantum ogres. I like verisimilitude and quantum ogres (assuming no in fiction explanation) feel like a metagame glitch imposed on the world rather than a natural consequence of the actions of various characters existing in that world. This kind of verisimilitude critique of quantum ogres is more common from players that have preferences towards the sandbox end of the continuum because the more reliable the verisimilitude of the campaign world, the easier it is to have informed choices. So I don't want the blind choices to be shuffled and thus turned into blind non choices. I prefer they remain blind choices (with the balance of informed vs blind choices depending on my playgroup's preferences).



Finally there is a 3rd consideration. The dishonest GM and historic associations. The phrase "Quantum Ogre", despite Vahnavoi's critique of its scientific accuracy, was coined in response to a GM that wanted to railroad their players more than the players claimed they wanted to be railroaded. So they bragged about how they could use perfect illusions to trick the players into playing the game that had less agency than the game players wanted to play. They did this as part of their thesis that player preferences don't matter because the GM understands what players enjoy more than the players do. So like "Railroad" there are potentially negative connotations attached to the term. This might make a player dislike a quantum ogre more than disliking separate ogres on each road.


Those are the 3 main critiques. The first is about a lost potential for an informed meaningful impactful choice. The second is about the decreased verisimilitude and its impacts on the potential for other informed choices. The third is about the historic associations with illusionism to abuse player trust. :smalleek: Which means quantum ogres are perfectly fine as long as the playgroup is okay with them. :smallbiggrin:

As a general rule, people who brag about being good lairs tend to be bad lairs, I feel like that probably extends to DMs bragging about being able to trick their players. I was actually introduced to the phrase "Quantum Ogre" in this thread (which is why it says "Schrodinger's Dungeon" in the title), so I missed a lot of the history there.

The second criticism makes a lot of sense. With random encounters, it's probably not super noticeable, but if it happens too often with more important things, you start to think "Wow, sure is convenient that everything we need just happens to be in front of us." I'm sure for some groups "too often" is reached at 1.


I keep coming around to this simple question:

What is a meaningful choice?

I have a definition I have shared in this thread. What is everyone else's definition?

I tend to go with the game theory, where it's a decision between multiple mutually exclusive options, with meaningfully different, knowable outcome. And I would consider a probability distribution to be one outcome, so you know the outcome of your character jumping that chasm, even if he might fall depending on the roll of the dice. So a choice that will have a somewhat predictable effect on the game world.

That's really only moving the question to what's meaningful, but I think that does depend on what each individual group cares about. For example, the choice of which npc to get a ride with is meaningful only if the group actually cares about their characters' relationships with npcs. Otherwise it's only meaningful if they have different costs and safety ratings and stuff.

Tanarii
2021-09-30, 03:18 PM
The reason I dislike that is because you can get the same effect without intervening beyond establishing the scenario.

You can drop your players into a linear dungeon full of enemies who will attack on sight, with magically indestructible doors that won't open until you've defeated every enemy in the room, locking your players into a series of pre-established encounters, and never needing to lift a finger to keep them "On-Rails". In my mind, denying the players any chance to make decisions is on-par with negating them, even if it's a bit easier to hide in the background noise of scenario building.
Nothing in the statement says the DMs choice has to be retroactive. If they preemptively design to negate player choice to enforce a desired outcome, it still counts.

Pointing at your scenario prep when the player makes a choice and you've intentionally considered it in advance and negated doesn't stop it from being "the players must try to get off the train and the DM must lock the doors".

BRC
2021-09-30, 03:25 PM
Nothing in the statement says the DMs choice has to be retroactive. If they preemptively design to negate player choice to enforce a desired outcome, it still counts.

Pointing at your scenario prep when the player makes a choice and you've intentionally considered it in advance and negated doesn't stop it from being "the players must try to get off the train and the DM must lock the doors".


if I may quote you:


Thats why I prefer the Alexandrian's "the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome". Because it requires a player choice first, then a DM action to negate it after, with a purpose in mind. Or to quote from the first paragraph of his article: "The players must try to get off the train and the GM has to lock the doors."

The word "Negate" implies retroactivity. If the player is never given a chance to make a choice, the GM never needs to negate it.

If railroading first requires the players to get off the train, the solution is to build walls around your tracks (or send them through a tunnel? I dunno, metaphors are hard) such that they won't even try.

If you define Railroading as DOING something (Negating player choice), you're building an incomplete picture.

Railroading is the failure to make your players co-authors of the story.

Tanarii
2021-09-30, 03:25 PM
if I may quote you:

The word "Negate" implies retroactivity. If the player is never given a chance to make a choice, the GM never needs to negate it.

If railroading first requires the players to get off the train, the solution is to build walls around your tracks (or send them through a tunnel? I dunno, metaphors are hard).
Yeah I misquoted him by saying player first. I went back and looked at it again after your objection

BRC
2021-09-30, 03:47 PM
Yeah I misquoted him by saying player first. I went back and looked at it again after your objection

More generally, the use of the word "Negate" (And referring to 'A player's choice') implies reaction, either reacting to something the players try to do, or pre-emptively blocking the possibility the players might do something. It implies that you must set out to specifically block player agency from influencing your story. It conjures the mind of the malicious, power-tripping GM who just wants to play with their action figures and is trying to stop those pesky players from screwing up their story.

It paints Railroading as a series of specific reactions to specific player actions, either improvised or prepared ahead of time, which is different from just never giving the players any chance to make any meaningful decisions in the first place.

Schrodinger's Dungeon, from the first post of this thread, is an example of a scenario that denies any player agency, but doesn't fit that definition of "Railroading". You're not reacting to "a player choice", you're just failing to give any room for player choices to impact things.

The Alexandrian's definition (I have not read their full post) implies that you have a list of decision trees "If the players try X, I will respond with Y, saying that they cannot", and that if you don't have that, you're not railroading.

"I'll lock my low-level party in a linear dungeon full of monsters that will try to kill them on sight. I can't think of any way for them to do anything but fight their way through my monsters until they reach the exit, but if they think of some way around things, I won't stop them, because I'm Not Railroading"

kyoryu
2021-09-30, 03:49 PM
A meaningful choice is one that changes the game state and cause the game tree to begin, diverge, converge or end.

I think this is a useful definition.

There's also a set of choices that I'd call "paint". You can change the paint in the car (some minor cosmetic things), but everything else stays the same. A lot of "choose this NPC or that NPC" choices fall in this category.

It's fairly easy to tell if your choices are having real impact. If they consistently add new information, and that information stays relevant, you're probably good. If almost no information is carried forward, there probably isn't any real agency anyway.

Talakeal
2021-09-30, 04:08 PM
And this is why you start the party at level 50, so that they have the agency to pursue their goals during the campaign. (Color blue to taste)

More realistically, if there's a "McGuffin of god slaying" that you would have worked into the hands of the linear party, nothing prevents the sandbox party from getting it… either/too (I'm pretty sure one of those words can finish that sentence). More generally, whatever method the linear party could use, could be used by the sandbox party. Now, despite my "creativity", I might never come up with and successfully implement a valid "god-slaying" strategy, especially under a GM whom I lack sufficient ranks in Knowledge: GM, or who lacks creativity themselves, and can only think in terms of "the only way to…".

So… if your world has the McGuffin of god slaying, that you would have made sure fell into the laps of the low-level linear party, then the sandbox party could investigate rumors, peer through space, time, and narrative causality, or otherwise track down said relic, and use it to slay gods themselves. A little later than the linear party, perhaps, but a well-deserved victory, free of contrivance of the McGuffin just so happening to fall into their hands.

That said… I'm perfectly happy with "T=0" contrivances, like, "grandpa *made* the god-slaying McGuffin, and bequeathed it to me in his will". I'm choosing to play *that* particular farm boy / 7th son of a noble / whatever generic background turned adventurer rather than *some other* random character turned adventurer.

That said, regarding "people who managed to change the world all had more than their share of "contrivances" occur to help them along"? I'm told (I hope I've got this right - any Playgrounder know what I'm talking about, and care to be awesome and provide a reference?) that… after the Holocaust, it was found that one town did an amazing job evacuating people. So researchers went to investigate, to find out *why* this town did so well, what their secret ingredient was. And what they found was… nothing. That, as far as they could tell, anyone could have done the same thing, they just… didn't. That the existence of this town wasn't a road map for success so much as it was condemnation to everyone who had failed.

So I don't think everything happens through contrivance. For example, what contrivance (beyond "being smart") allowed my dad and myself to be among the first in the world to report solving our respective mental challenges?

Huh. Apparently, I am a figurative "7th son of a 7th son", as I believe we were each the 7th person to report our respective findings. Other than "rules lawyer cred", what abilities in what worlds might that grant me?

I would argue that most of that is no less contrived, merely most of the contrivance is shifted off camera.

Like; the hypothetical 50th level party would mean that the most powerful people in history just happened to be born around the same time, become trusted friends (or at least colleagues), survive to be in that position of power, have similar goals, etc.

OldTrees1
2021-09-30, 05:34 PM
As a general rule, people who brag about being good lairs tend to be bad lairs, I feel like that probably extends to DMs bragging about being able to trick their players. I was actually introduced to the phrase "Quantum Ogre" in this thread (which is why it says "Schrodinger's Dungeon" in the title), so I missed a lot of the history there.

Yup, that describes the origin pretty well.

I like the imagery "Schrodinger's Dungeon" evokes but that is a tangent that derails from your intended meaning*


The second criticism makes a lot of sense. With random encounters, it's probably not super noticeable, but if it happens too often with more important things, you start to think "Wow, sure is convenient that everything we need just happens to be in front of us." I'm sure for some groups "too often" is reached at 1.

That is a good summary. The more often it happens the more the players will doubt the "facts" the PCs learn and thus the less the players will trust the informed choices too.

What about a dungeon where all unobserved rooms can shuffle in predetermined sets? Room A can swap with C, D and G but not F. This would allow the PCs to explore the dungeon. Once they realize what is going on they will be confused for awhile. Eventually they will understand the mechanic and use it to progress through the dungeon. Oddly enough this takes the idea of a shuffling dungeon and intentionally gives some agency to the PCs in order to create a puzzle mechanic. (Hence why I call this a derail, because it is no long on topic)

HidesHisEyes
2021-09-30, 06:35 PM
I keep coming around to this simple question:

What is a meaningful choice?

I have a definition I have shared in this thread. What is everyone else's definition?

My definition is that it’s a choice that shapes the game’s narrative in some way. But I should point out that I think there’s a lot more to the topic of railroading than “it’s when the players don’t have meaningful choices”.

Tanarii
2021-09-30, 07:17 PM
"I'll lock my low-level party in a linear dungeon full of monsters that will try to kill them on sight. I can't think of any way for them to do anything but fight their way through my monsters until they reach the exit, but if they think of some way around things, I won't stop them, because I'm Not Railroading"
That sounds exactly like they're trying to get off the train and you've locked the doors to me.

Edit: I read the sections after their definitions and they definitely appear to be thinking of it as an active thing. What you're talking about, planning and design, are referred to as chokers. The difference being that if they DO think of a way around it, you don't negate that. And assuming you don't intentionally design them to shut down all but one option and it's one of vital importance.

As to your linear dungeon, they have one in the link below. Their take on it: "A mechanical gate like this is only a problem, of course, if Area C is of vital importance." So clearly they do think that your example would be a problem.

It starts here and goes into details and variations (and how to use effectively) in the next article.
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36964/roleplaying-games/the-railroading-manifesto-part-4-chokers

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-01, 07:50 AM
"I'll lock my low-level party in a linear dungeon full of monsters that will try to kill them on sight. I can't think of any way for them to do anything but fight their way through my monsters until they reach the exit, but if they think of some way around things, I won't stop them, because I'm Not Railroading"

Frankly, this but unironically. I think you can run a scenario set entirely in one room with three NPCs and as long as you don’t have a predetermined sequence of events that you try to make happen, you’re not railroading.

That said, maybe there’s a point at which there are simply so few meaningful choices inherent in the scenario, so little to play with and combine, that the players effectively have no agency. Similar to the distinction between positive and negative liberty in political debates.

Stonehead
2021-10-01, 11:28 AM
Frankly, this but unironically. I think you can run a scenario set entirely in one room with three NPCs and as long as you don’t have a predetermined sequence of events that you try to make happen, you’re not railroading.

That said, maybe there’s a point at which there are simply so few meaningful choices inherent in the scenario, so little to play with and combine, that the players effectively have no agency. Similar to the distinction between positive and negative liberty in political debates.

I'm not 100% on board with this. I mean, say you make a campaign with ten rooms in a line, with no other doors or windows or realistic other means of escape. If the dm says "No, don't worry, you can do anything, it's not railroading", but the only interesting option is to open the door right in front of you, it sure feels like railroading. The DM not having a scene in mind for room 7 doesn't give the players any more agency in room 6.

Or, maybe to keep with the original example, say it's one really long room, instead of 10 discrete rooms. Setting up the world in a way that gives players no meaningful choice seems just as bad to me as setting up the world in a way that counters choices you anticipate the players will make. Maybe semantically you could say it isn't technically "railroading", but I'd argue it should be avoided just as hard.

kyoryu
2021-10-01, 12:04 PM
I'm not 100% on board with this. I mean, say you make a campaign with ten rooms in a line, with no other doors or windows or realistic other means of escape. If the dm says "No, don't worry, you can do anything, it's not railroading", but the only interesting option is to open the door right in front of you, it sure feels like railroading. The DM not having a scene in mind for room 7 doesn't give the players any more agency in room 6.

Or, maybe to keep with the original example, say it's one really long room, instead of 10 discrete rooms. Setting up the world in a way that gives players no meaningful choice seems just as bad to me as setting up the world in a way that counters choices you anticipate the players will make. Maybe semantically you could say it isn't technically "railroading", but I'd argue it should be avoided just as hard.

But that's not what he said.

What he said is "three NPCs in a room" might not be railroading - if there are meaningful interactions that can be had and differing ways that the situation plays out. It's the RPG equivalent of a bottle episode.


as long as you don’t have a predetermined sequence of events that you try to make happen, you’re not railroading.

The choices at that point aren't "where you go", but they're there. If the only option is "poke pointy sticks at them" then yeah, railroad.

Tanarii
2021-10-01, 01:01 PM
Makes me think of those lockroom escape scenarios. They're just frustrating if there is only one solution, or it feels like there is only one. And you're programmed to be looking for the given solution, because you know that it's a lockroom escape scenario designed by someone with a solution in mind. Instead of just thinking in terms of: here's a problem, what are my options?

BRC
2021-10-01, 01:03 PM
That sounds exactly like they're trying to get off the train and you've locked the doors to me.


Nah, it's more like you tell somebody they shouldn't lock the doors, so they build a traincar with no doors at all, or they chain the PC's to their seats, and then feel good because the doors are unlocked.


Frankly, this but unironically. I think you can run a scenario set entirely in one room with three NPCs and as long as you don’t have a predetermined sequence of events that you try to make happen, you’re not railroading.

That said, maybe there’s a point at which there are simply so few meaningful choices inherent in the scenario, so little to play with and combine, that the players effectively have no agency. Similar to the distinction between positive and negative liberty in political debates.

The latter is my point.

Discussions about railroading tend to focus on GM's awkwardly trying to steer things back onto the tracks. As a result, the word "Railroading" has become the centerpiece of the discussion, with debates about exact definitions and "Is Scenario X or Y railroading". Is it Railroading if the Players don't realize it? Is it Railroading if I'm theoretically open to them doing something else, but I've designed the scenario with only one solution?

We understand that Railroading is bad, so we've become rules-lawyers around the "Don't Railroad" rule. Endlessly debating and defining this one term without discussing why it is a bad thing. Poking and prodding as if we'll figure out a way to get the rewards without Technically committing the crime.

For these rules to be useful, precisely defining "Railroading" such that somebody can say "I'm doing X, is that railroading?" isn't helpful, because if you have to ask "Is this technically railroading and therefore bad", you're starting from the point that you're trying to force an outcome, you just don't want to do The Bad Thing. The result is GMs who never think about if there game is actually good, just if they're breaking the rules.


The question should always be "Does this Scenario give my players enough Agency" and "Does this scenario have enough depth to handle a variety of approaches".

The fact is, there's basically no "Railroading" technique that doesn't have some possible use in a good game.

There's nothing wrong with Linear Dungeons so long as the player agency is being expressed in some way besides "Which room do we go into". There's nothing wrong with the Quantum Ogre if the players were not trying to avoid Ogres. There's nothing wrong with putting a dragon on a mountain and expecting your players to go slay it.

So long as your players are engaged and getting to direct the story, so long as they're playing their characters and not just walking through a script, you're doing fine. Don't write stories, build scenarios.

MR_Anderson
2021-10-01, 03:10 PM
The best DM style is to realize the players are items drifting down a river.

They may get caught on some side canal, in a whirlpool stuck spinning around, they might even wash on to the riverbank, but the river is always flowing down to the same final destination.

They may choose to pass down a waterfall, or the fish ladder, maybe the rapids in the other fork through another valley in a different branch of the river before it comes back together. Do they all pass under the same bridge, or is the bridge only from the one riverbank to an island?

No matter what the players do, the river is taking them to the final destination, the question is, what path did they take to get there? A single item is not going to change the end point of a river, but they might change the flow at some point, especially if they combine with other items.

This is DM’ing.


Let me explain:

I create content, and have a story which I hope the players will interact with. I provide a means for them to get back into the flow should they find themselves stuck, but if they don’t want to get unstuck story wise that’s fine and ultimately they may miss an event in the story, at a certain point if characters want to improve or increase their power they need to enter the flow again.

Players are given multiple choices and options in where to adventure or who to interact with, and all have a part somewhere in the flow, but the decisions always leads somewhere predictable down the river. Items don’t flow upstream, nor do they get out of the river. They have freedom to flow within the river, and if the wait long enough sometimes the story comes to them in form of a flood that they have no control over.

This isn’t railroading, this is life. Some content I have created never gets used, but it just goes into the idea bin and might get used in another campaign or adventure. The events of a major world happening impact much of the world, and left unchallenged both evil or good would grow to the point where it would reach into the players local environment.

Strangely the times I’ve been accused of railroading is when I created IF-THAN clauses in encounters even if there are multiple IF-THAN possible outcomes, or when I have an exact tactic for an enemy, especially if it involves retreat or fleeing after x rounds of conflict.

I could literally tell the party where to go and what to do for multiple sessions, but the moment an enemy escapes that they might have defeated with one more round, and I’m accused of making it so he got away, as that was what I wanted to happen no mater what.

This is DMing.

OldTrees1
2021-10-01, 03:39 PM
The best DM style is to realize the players are items drifting down a river.

They may get caught on some side canal, in a whirlpool stuck spinning around, they might even wash on to the riverbank, but the river is always flowing down to the same final destination.

They may choose to pass down a waterfall, or the fish ladder, maybe the rapids in the other fork through another valley in a different branch of the river before it comes back together. Do they all pass under the same bridge, or is the bridge only from the one riverbank to an island?

No matter what the players do, the river is taking them to the final destination, the question is, what path did they take to get there? A single item is not going to change the end point of a river, but they might change the flow at some point, especially if they combine with other items.

This is DM’ing.

I disagree, I don't like that river model so it is not the best DM style for me. Although it might be ideal for you?

I am much more interested in finding out where the players will take the story rather than ensuring they will eventually meander to the same final destination.

If the players go tubing on a river, they will go downstream. If the players get out and try to climb a cliff, they may or may not reach the top. Maybe they decide to hike upstream. Maybe they take a flight to a lake. At this point the metaphor is being strained but it still holds.

No matter where the players go, there they are. I don't need to have them go to a "single final destination". They can blaze their own trail and we will discover where the final destination of this trail will be.

kyoryu
2021-10-01, 04:34 PM
This is DMing.

This is DMing. FOR YOU.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-10-01, 07:39 PM
I disagree, I don't like that river model so it is not the best DM style for me. Although it might be ideal for you?

I am much more interested in finding out where the players will take the story rather than ensuring they will eventually meander to the same final destination.

If the players go tubing on a river, they will go downstream. If the players get out and try to climb a cliff, they may or may not reach the top. Maybe they decide to hike upstream. Maybe they take a flight to a lake. At this point the metaphor is being strained but it still holds.

No matter where the players go, there they are. I don't need to have them go to a "single final destination". They can blaze their own trail and we will discover where the final destination of this trail will be.

I agree. I never know where the party will go more than a few sessions ahead, and that only because they've told me. They're considerate enough to stick to something once they've started, so I know what the "final destination" looks like...for this 2-3 session arc. I usually don't even know what the central conflict/BBEG will be until multiple levels into the campaign. And they've taken me on many twists and turns and unexpected detours. And I've thrown them for a few as the world reacts to them.

Honestly, I don't want to know the end from the beginning. Because most of the fun is seeing what happens next and being surprised. Do the players have perfect agency? No. They're constrained by the choices they've made and the state of the world. But do they have enough agency? I hope so. And locking them down robs me of the joy of getting blindsided by something, and of the joy of having a brainstorm during the middle of a session and finding my mouth throwing in a completely unplanned curve-ball. Both of which are among my favorite things.

Kymme
2021-10-01, 09:58 PM
The best DM style is to realize the players are items drifting down a river.

They may get caught on some side canal, in a whirlpool stuck spinning around, they might even wash on to the riverbank, but the river is always flowing down to the same final destination.

They may choose to pass down a waterfall, or the fish ladder, maybe the rapids in the other fork through another valley in a different branch of the river before it comes back together. Do they all pass under the same bridge, or is the bridge only from the one riverbank to an island?

No matter what the players do, the river is taking them to the final destination, the question is, what path did they take to get there? A single item is not going to change the end point of a river, but they might change the flow at some point, especially if they combine with other items.

Frankly, I think you're out-and-out wrong about GMing. Reading your post feels like someone who has only ever directed stage plays telling me that my film needs to consist only of a fixed camera pointed at a stage. To say I disagree with you completely would be an understatement.

I think that looking at games through this lens leads to really terrible outcomes. Like, the entire notion that the GM is all-powerful, that the story they want to tell is a river that cannot be defied, that can only be surrendered to, is the kind of thing that can lead players to becoming completely passive actors in games. Is it any wonder why players might mentally check out during a session if they know that the GM thinks of them as little more than flotsam floating in a river? The story does not move on their terms - the destination is inevitable and cannot be changed. Like, what??? I would never want to participate in a game where I'm an actor reading from lines somebody else wrote, and I'd consider it a total failure on my part if my players felt that way. I play tabletop roleplaying games, I run tabletop roleplaying games, with the player characters at the center. Their actions and agency shapes the plot. The story is about them, and I'm learning where their actions lead at the same time they are. I play to find out what happens.

Tanarii
2021-10-01, 10:00 PM
Nah, it's more like you tell somebody they shouldn't lock the doors, so they build a traincar with no doors at all, or they chain the PC's to their seats, and then feel good because the doors are unlocked.
Okay. Fair enough. I really don't think either I or the Blogger at the Alexandrian strictly disagree with that.

In fact ...

The question should always be "Does this Scenario give my players enough Agency" and "Does this scenario have enough depth to handle a variety of approaches"

The fact is, there's basically no "Railroading" technique that doesn't have some possible use in a good game.
... the link I provided earlier on choke points distinguishes between planned limitations of player options (choke points) and railroading. But also adds comments on where to watch out for trying to flat out trying to deny player agency in the process.

That's probably why they defined railroading so 'strictly'. As a specific kind of active denial of player agency. Because there are plenty of useful tools in a non-story DM's game-prep toolbox that aren't flat out preemptively denying agency. But yes, still ones you need to be careful with.

Unfortunately Quantum Ogres and Illusionism are both tools that cross the line.

Kymme
2021-10-01, 10:20 PM
1. There is no such thing as total freedom because their are always constraints. There are cultural, societal, physical, mechanical, and world-based constraints to the characters. No one ever has total freedom. Instead, we are all choosing from a constrained list of options based on these constraints.

I feel like this is kind of a no-brainer. Like, of course fictional positioning dictates the kind of actions you can take. I completely agree. But like, that's not something imposed by the GM whatsoever - it's imposed by the fiction of the game.


2. Complete free form, no plan games are inefficient uses of precious hobby time. I have run complete sandbox games with no prep many times. They end up needlessly circling around as many players simply get lost in the paradox of choice. There are so many options of things to do, that they just end up frittering away their two to three hour block of time doing nothing. As a fellow player (the DM) this is boring.

As a fellow player (the DM) the players wasted MY time. As a player, I want to have fun too and free-wheeling around was not it.

I genuinely want to know what you mean by this. Endlessly circling around... what? The paradox of choice? What actual choices are they being presented here? Surely if the players are portraying their characters with goals and intentions and stuff they want to do, in a game where they aren't constrained, they wouldn't get stuck. They'd just do the things they want to do. Could you give me an example of this happening in one of your games, so we can be on the same page?

I've definitely encountered passive players (and been a passive player) who, when presented freedom, doesn't really know what to do with themselves. When you're used to just reacting it can be hard to switch to a proactive mindset. I think I get what you mean there.


3. The real world is full of complex choices. Decision fatigue and paradox of choice is a real thing. In a hobby game, creating the atmosphere of fun is critical. To avoid burn-out and confusion from your players, give them some set choices and then letting them decide avoids decision fatigue/analysis-paralysis. This allows them to still control the flow of the game and accomplish their goals, but not drown under it all.

That's fair as well. You can present circumstances to light a fire under the players and get them to start making proactive choices, keep the game moving, etc. In Masks, for instance, one of the points where you as the GM are supposed to make a GM move is when action at the table is beginning to slow down, or when the table is looking to you for what happens next. In situations like that, it's often appropriate to spring a new challenge or crisis on the heroes, to keep their lives interesting and dramatic.


4. It allows the GM to set up better set-pieces and build tension/drama. There is a reason the three act play/or set nodes are a thing. Most of us can not improve that well without a ton of practice. Having Nodes and some set-pieces allow the GM to prepare something a little more than a random encounter.

This is also a fair point. I play games where preparation is very easy/completely obviated by the system, so I don't encounter this problem as much, but it's still helpful if I've got a big set-piece prepared to guide my players to that set-piece.


5. As a GM who knows all these tricks; I still find good application of the tricks to be fun when I play. For example, the three-act structure is older than Christ; yet it is still an effective form of story-telling. People have not stopped going to plays, reading novels, or seeing movies because the three-act story-telling is so old-hat. Instead they continue to go because it is effective at building tensions, drama, and suspense that leads to a satisfying conclusion.

Frankly, I don't think you, or any GM need to take this burden on alone. Like, surely your players also want to have fun, are also familiar with the three-act structure, want to have cool and engaging set pieces as much as you do? Working together with your players and the system, you can create buy-in for scenarios and develop stories without having to brute-force them with things like, well, what this thread is all about. I dislike railroading because it's inherently non-collaborative. It creates a toxic and destructive power dynamic between the GM and players; a situation where the GM is like a beleaguered and fussy mother hen, trying to get all their children (ie, players) to behave because they don't actually know what they want or what's good for them. You see people talking about this all the time. Horror stories about killer GMs or authorial GMs, about players whose characters are totally passive or act out randomly, attack NPCs, get up to all sorts of stupid shenanigans as a means of trying to make some mark on the doorless hallway they're being guided down.

One of the most troubling things I've noticed in this thread is the concept of GMs who use these methods of railroading or controlling the narrative while keeping their players none the wiser, or trying to create the illusion of choice. I think this is incredibly disagreeable in part because the solution feels so obvious to me: just be honest with your players about what's going on, what your expectations are, what you've got prepared for the session, what you'd like to see happen, and have an actual conversation with your table rather than keeping them in the dark or trying to manipulate them. Some of the key tenets of GMing that I've taken from Apocalypse World are 'Say what honesty demands' and 'Say what your prep demands.'

Composer99
2021-10-02, 01:30 AM
I feel like this is kind of a no-brainer. Like, of course fictional positioning dictates the kind of actions you can take. I completely agree. But like, that's not something imposed by the GM whatsoever - it's imposed by the fiction of the game.


I should quibble here and note that the GM is, in many games (most if not all versions of D&D not least), the final arbiter of the fiction of the game outside of the player characters themselves, meaning the GM often is the person who determines the "fictional positioning that dictates the kind of actions [a player character] can take". (And, indeed, is not railroading as a GM misbehaviour a way of interpreting the in-game fiction in a maximally-restrictive way with respect to player agency?)

Say rather, perhaps, that the fictional positioning that constrains player action is, ideally, imposed by the consensually-established fiction of the game?

Kymme
2021-10-02, 03:05 AM
I should quibble here and note that the GM is, in many games (most if not all versions of D&D not least), the final arbiter of the fiction of the game outside of the player characters themselves, meaning the GM often is the person who determines the "fictional positioning that dictates the kind of actions [a player character] can take". (And, indeed, is not railroading as a GM misbehaviour a way of interpreting the in-game fiction in a maximally-restrictive way with respect to player agency?)

Say rather, perhaps, that the fictional positioning that constrains player action is, ideally, imposed by the consensually-established fiction of the game?

That's a very fair read. I was a bit vague with my wording, but you've got the right of it. Especially in regards to the problematic behavior of interpreting the in-game fiction in ways that restrict the players actions unfairly. Ideally, the shared fiction of the game is something everyone is on the same page about. The GM isn't going to suddenly spring things like 'oh actually there are 15 additional orcs all standing between you and the stone idol' or 'actually the villain could always fly and I never specified if this room had a ceiling or not.' Similarly, it'd be bad form for players to suddenly dictate completely new fictional circumstances for their player characters whenever they need an advantage or are caught in a bind. Things like 'oh actually I'm immune to fire so being dropped into lava doesn't hurt me' or 'I'm not standing next to the fighter, I'm actually behind the enemy caster!' Both of these are poor behaviors, and neither is conducive to enjoyment at the table.

That said, choice few traditional games possess any effective means of actually getting everybody at the table on the same page about the fiction of the game. There are some new games that really nail it, and I've found that abilities that build off of the example set in Apocalypse World (actions that let the player ask the GM questions and receive truthful answers) go a long way to helping with that.

Quertus
2021-10-02, 04:03 AM
Huh. I seem to have missed a lot of quotes.

@BRC: I both agree, and disagree completely.

1) yes, theft is bad, but that doesn't mean that the word "murder" needs to be updated to include "theft" as part of its definition. Similarly, "railroad" doesn't need to include various forms of bad scenario design. It's perfectly fine to have a word for just one subset of all bad things.

2) you said that railroading tools had valid uses… then described nothing involving railroading. This is really bad. Because, since nothing you said involved changing facts or physics to negate player agency, the logical conclusion is to apply to your larger superset, which you explicitly want to be "all bad things", no?

Yes, I would love if… well, not if we focused less on Railroading, because it's still a leading cause of death, but if we focused more on creating good games vs your larger net of bad than we do.

Perhaps we should create a new word, that is the superset you believe should be the focus, and work to mainstream that new word. I'll happily try to help push it into Playground parlance, like "sandboxy", or "balance to the table".

Or look at it positively, as you suggest:



The question should always be "Does this Scenario give my players enough Agency" and "Does this scenario have enough depth to handle a variety of approaches".


I tend to go with the game theory, where it's a decision between multiple mutually exclusive options, with meaningfully different, knowable outcome. And I would consider a probability distribution to be one outcome, so you know the outcome of your character jumping that chasm, even if he might fall depending on the roll of the dice. So a choice that will have a somewhat predictable effect on the game world.

That's really only moving the question to what's meaningful, but I think that does depend on what each individual group cares about. For example, the choice of which npc to get a ride with is meaningful only if the group actually cares about their characters' relationships with npcs. Otherwise it's only meaningful if they have different costs and safety ratings and stuff.

This seems pretty good, but… I dunno… feels backwards, maybe? Like "buttons have shirts, and shirts have owners"?

In fact, "what is a meaningful choice" is where it all goes wrong. Because, say, choosing to murder this person, or set that house on fire, or steal that priceless relic can be merciful choices, but if I'm trying to choose something legal, and none of those options qualify, then those aren't meaningful choices for me. Similarly, if I care about food allergies, "what I have to eat" is a meaningful choice in that context; if I'm trying to get to Death Valley to fight the Death Knight, not so much.


I would argue that most of that is no less contrived, merely most of the contrivance is shifted off camera.

Like; the hypothetical 50th level party would mean that the most powerful people in history just happened to be born around the same time, become trusted friends (or at least colleagues), survive to be in that position of power, have similar goals, etc.

Just keep playing the same party instead of switching parties every campaign, and you'll get to the same place. The fact that you haven't let those characters continue is what makes this feel contrived, and is itself a strange contrivance, that the characters only exist while on camera.

Granted, the "survive" might be in doubt… but if you gave your players the agency to rest after every fight and never face any challenge like they want to, rather than focusing on an appropriate amount of TPK death challenge, they'd probably pull it off. If not in the first attempt, then in a subsequent one.

So, pretend they've already done that.

If, y'know, you're willing to give them the agency to make meaningful changes to the world on their own terms.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-02, 04:52 AM
I'm not 100% on board with this. I mean, say you make a campaign with ten rooms in a line, with no other doors or windows or realistic other means of escape. If the dm says "No, don't worry, you can do anything, it's not railroading", but the only interesting option is to open the door right in front of you, it sure feels like railroading. The DM not having a scene in mind for room 7 doesn't give the players any more agency in room 6.

Or, maybe to keep with the original example, say it's one really long room, instead of 10 discrete rooms. Setting up the world in a way that gives players no meaningful choice seems just as bad to me as setting up the world in a way that counters choices you anticipate the players will make. Maybe semantically you could say it isn't technically "railroading", but I'd argue it should be avoided just as hard.

Well that’s what I was getting at in my second paragraph. You’re right that if I put the the PCs in an empty room with no exits and tell them to do whatever they like, that’s not technically railroading by my definition but it’s probably still ****. (“Probably” because hey, maybe a really creative group turns that into an improv play like something by Samuel Beckett, which might be cool but it’s arguably not an RPG at that point.)

But I think it’s a bit of a reductio ad absurdum. It is SO unlikely that anyone would actually do that that I don’t think it’s really something worth worrying about. The point is that the most minimal, bounded scenario (that people would actually play) probably still has enough elements that the players can have agency and the whole group can find out what happens together organically - as long as the GM doesn’t have a predetermined narrative or ending in mind.



The latter is my point.



So long as your players are engaged and getting to direct the story, so long as they're playing their characters and not just walking through a script, you're doing fine. Don't write stories, build scenarios.

And it’s a good point, but see my response to Stonehead.

As for GMs trying to get away with railroading on a technicality, I agree that’s a problem and the conversation around railroading is a big mess most of the time. But to me that’s why my “predetermined narrative” definition is useful: it’s holistic, it refers to the entire campaign, not individual choices. I completely agree that quantum ogres and many other things can be used in a way that’s not railroading, because the real question is always “are you doing this because you want the narrative to go a certain way?” I think even focusing on player agency can be a distraction here. There will be moments in a campaign when the players lose their agency. It might seem flippant but this is a core part of most RPGs: when you fail a dice roll the GM is going to tell you what happens and you can’t do anything about it. Again the question is: when the GM decides what happens on that failed roll, are they basing the decision on a predetermined narrative or on something else? (And there are many other options).

Oh and your last sentence - “don’t write stories, build scenarios” - should be printed at the top of every page of every GM’s notebook.


The best DM style is to realize the players are items drifting down a river.



This is DMing.

If that metaphor works for you then more power to you. I would describe that as a very light railroad. I’ve heard it described as a “corridor” - overall you’re heading to a predestined place but you can move around freely on the way - but to me it’s essentially a railroad. That’s because, for me, the real magic of RPGs as a medium is precisely that I don’t know what’s going to happen along the way OR where it’s going to end up. You emphasise big, world-changing events that will affect the PCs on a local level as they progress down the river, and that’s cool, but I find a small scenario with a limited scope but complete uncertainty about how it will turn out more compelling. It’s the uncertainty that does it for me, not the scope. That’s why I’ve been talking about games set in one room in this thread.

But! We have different perspectives on the whole thing and that’s totally fine.

OldTrees1
2021-10-02, 10:10 AM
For these rules to be useful, precisely defining "Railroading" such that somebody can say "I'm doing X, is that railroading?" isn't helpful, because if you have to ask "Is this technically railroading and therefore bad", you're starting from the point that you're trying to force an outcome, you just don't want to do The Bad Thing. The result is GMs who never think about if there game is actually good, just if they're breaking the rules.


The question should always be "Does this Scenario give my players enough Agency" and "Does this scenario have enough depth to handle a variety of approaches".

The fact is, there's basically no "Railroading" technique that doesn't have some possible use in a good game.

There's nothing wrong with Linear Dungeons so long as the player agency is being expressed in some way besides "Which room do we go into". There's nothing wrong with the Quantum Ogre if the players were not trying to avoid Ogres. There's nothing wrong with putting a dragon on a mountain and expecting your players to go slay it.

So long as your players are engaged and getting to direct the story, so long as they're playing their characters and not just walking through a script, you're doing fine. Don't write stories, build scenarios.


@BRC: I both agree, and disagree completely.
2) you said that railroading tools had valid uses… then described nothing involving railroading. This is really bad. Because, since nothing you said involved changing facts or physics to negate player agency, the logical conclusion is to apply to your larger superset, which you explicitly want to be "all bad things", no?

Yes, I would love if… well, not if we focused less on Railroading, because it's still a leading cause of death, but if we focused more on creating good games vs your larger net of bad than we do.

Perhaps we should create a new word, that is the superset you believe should be the focus, and work to mainstream that new word. I'll happily try to help push it into Playground parlance, like "sandboxy", or "balance to the table".

I recommend taking the neutral approach with the mechanisms and a positive/negative approach with respecting/disrespecting the playgroup's preferences.

In our (I am including you two) various discussions about railroading on this forum we have encountered players that prefer a more guided experience and players that prefer a more unbounded world. If those players were trying to define railroading as "this bad thing is defined by XYZ mechanisms" they would struggle and disagree because some of those mechanisms are ones that benefit the guided experience but destroy the unbounded world.

BRC is probably right or nearly right about every Railroading "technique" having a possible use in a good game. It is harder for me to imagine those examples because my preferences are strongly towards the sandbox end of the continuum, but I can give a try.

Think about MR_Anderson's River (I will describe my understanding of it as it relates). That campaign promises the Players that their PCs will eventually reach a predetermined finale. No matter how lost the PCs get there will be mechanics that guide them back to the river and towards downstream. It is strategic hard and soft denial or counteraction of player agency. When MR_Anderson is forthright about that campaign premise to their playgroup, I presume their playgroup liked the idea that their player agency would be denied/counteracted if they made a game breaking mistake. Sort of like how a sandbox GM might ask "are you sure?" except the GM and playgroup already decided they want to answer "no" to gamebreaking mistakes. So if the PCs get lost or are about to break the game, then MR_Anderson strategically negates that player agency as a means of satisfyingly the play preferences of MR_Anderson and the rest of their playgroup.

I think we would still call that a railroading mechanic despite the entire playgroup wanting the mechanic to be used. It is a mechanic that negates / denies player agency, and in this unusual situation that was something the playgroup valued positively.

That is why I have taken to using railroading as a neutral connotation describing the mechanisms that deny/decrease player agency that some (many) players might have preferences that object to some or all of those mechanism in some or all situations.

JNAProductions
2021-10-02, 11:07 AM
I would rather refer to those as LINEAR, rather than railroading.

Linear is more neutral, to me, while railroading has at least the implication of being forced or coerced.

Quixotic1
2021-10-02, 12:58 PM
No one ever has 100% agency at all times at any point.

Limiting agency is fine as long as you keep it in mind. In fact, limiting agency allows for more advanced preparation, and a campaign/adventure/session/encounter that was planned in advance will always be better than one that was not.

I think game structure is important when considering agency. In an open structure (a "sandbox", if you must), there's plenty of agency to go around, so you can limit it more where you want to.
In a linear structure (like a chase scene or an abandoned wizard's tower), agency is much more important, because the structure already limits it quite a bit.

Encountering an ogre no matter which path they take isn't automatically "railroading". Take these three different ogre-based encounters:

"As you come around the bend, you see an ogre standing in the road. It bellows a challenge, raises it's club and charges!"

"As you come around the bend, you see the flare of a campfire through the trees. Some ways off the road, an ogre sits at the fire, a barrel of pickles in its lap, eating noisily."

"As you come around the bend, you see an ogre walking slowly down the road. It is covered in deep, purpling bruises and seems to be limping. It sees you and freezes, gripping it's club and watching you closely."

--the first one doesn't offer much in the way of agency. Ogre, roll initiative.
The second allows the players to set up an ambush. Or just keep walking. Or ask the ogre if they can have a pickle.
The third gives the players a lot of choices as well--slay the wounded ogre, pass on by, talk to it, help it, etc.

And if the consequences from the player's decisions follow them into the next scene, then their choices mattered. Having less hp or spell slots is a consequence that will follow them, but it's pretty basic. An ogre that sees their tracks and decides to follow them and ambush them is more significant, as is one that they befriended and will help them in the future, and so on.

Quertus
2021-10-02, 04:42 PM
Well that’s what I was getting at in my second paragraph. You’re right that if I put the the PCs in an empty room with no exits and tell them to do whatever they like, that’s not technically railroading by my definition but it’s probably still ****. (“Probably” because hey, maybe a really creative group turns that into an improv play like something by Samuel Beckett, which might be cool but it’s arguably not an RPG at that point.)

But I think it’s a bit of a reductio ad absurdum. It is SO unlikely that anyone would actually do that that I don’t think it’s really something worth worrying about. The point is that the most minimal, bounded scenario (that people would actually play) probably still has enough elements that the players can have agency and the whole group can find out what happens together organically - as long as the GM doesn’t have a predetermined narrative or ending in mind.

Just for the record, there are games that are just that - where the PCs are all at a location, each role-playing their character, attempting to meet certain (often conflicting) objectives.

And I wouldn't mind playing a game not unlike that. Heck, I've spent a session (in the middle of a blizzard, where most of the players were too smart to show up) just sitting around a campfire, chatting in character.

So… definitely agency in the games defined that way, not sure about the "chatting around a campfire" (although copying spells, discussing tactics, and passing along clues and monster lore, and how much that is free vs barter, certainly makes it feel meaningful to me).


I recommend taking the neutral approach with the mechanisms and a positive/negative approach with respecting/disrespecting the playgroup's preferences.

In our (I am including you two) various discussions about railroading on this forum we have encountered players that prefer a more guided experience and players that prefer a more unbounded world. If those players were trying to define railroading as "this bad thing is defined by XYZ mechanisms" they would struggle and disagree because some of those mechanisms are ones that benefit the guided experience but destroy the unbounded world.

BRC is probably right or nearly right about every Railroading "technique" having a possible use in a good game. It is harder for me to imagine those examples because my preferences are strongly towards the sandbox end of the continuum, but I can give a try.

Think about MR_Anderson's River (I will describe my understanding of it as it relates). That campaign promises the Players that their PCs will eventually reach a predetermined finale. No matter how lost the PCs get there will be mechanics that guide them back to the river and towards downstream. It is strategic hard and soft denial or counteraction of player agency. When MR_Anderson is forthright about that campaign premise to their playgroup, I presume their playgroup liked the idea that their player agency would be denied/counteracted if they made a game breaking mistake. Sort of like how a sandbox GM might ask "are you sure?" except the GM and playgroup already decided they want to answer "no" to gamebreaking mistakes. So if the PCs get lost or are about to break the game, then MR_Anderson strategically negates that player agency as a means of satisfyingly the play preferences of MR_Anderson and the rest of their playgroup.

I think we would still call that a railroading mechanic despite the entire playgroup wanting the mechanic to be used. It is a mechanic that negates / denies player agency, and in this unusual situation that was something the playgroup valued positively.

That is why I have taken to using railroading as a neutral connotation describing the mechanisms that deny/decrease player agency that some (many) players might have preferences that object to some or all of those mechanism in some or all situations.


I would rather refer to those as LINEAR, rather than railroading.

Linear is more neutral, to me, while railroading has at least the implication of being forced or coerced.

Well, that's the paradox - as I understand it, the River isn't exactly linear.

Linear / "guided" games aren't inherently bad. Bad for me, almost always, yes. Require buy-in, definitely, yes. And… it's arguable that I personally don't get enough explicit buy-in when running a published module (I tend to assume that most players grok that most modules are rather linear in design; if a problem comes up (a player takes an action that the module cannot handle), I address it OOC, and ask the players how we should handle it)


So… to me… Railroading is the act of using the tools to negate player Agency. So I can understand (I think) the concept of the tools being neutral. Although "changing game physics or established facts" being put to good use sounds like a mythic rare occurrence, that requires "the River" level of explicit buy-in in session 0.

Actually… I'm not completely certain what tools "the River" uses.

Railroading is bad, because it is by definition bad. Illusionism is bad, because it is by definition bad. But the tool of "changing established facts" can, theoretically, have consequences that aren't horrific for all groups in all circumstances.

Make sense? Baby steps? Or totally offtrack?


a campaign/adventure/session/encounter that was planned in advance will always be better than one that was not.

Citation needed… no, skip that. I've played in "planned" foo that were so terrible, it's be hard for anyone to create something unplanned and worse, let alone all the "not planned" foo that I've played (and run) that were better.

So, hard no.

OldTrees1
2021-10-02, 05:06 PM
Well, that's the paradox - as I understand it, the River isn't exactly linear.

Linear / "guided" games aren't inherently bad. Bad for me, almost always, yes. Require buy-in, definitely, yes. And… it's arguable that I personally don't get enough explicit buy-in when running a published module (I tend to assume that most players grok that most modules are rather linear in design; if a problem comes up (a player takes an action that the module cannot handle), I address it OOC, and ask the players how we should handle it)


So… to me… Railroading is the act of using the tools to negate player Agency. So I can understand (I think) the concept of the tools being neutral. Although "changing game physics or established facts" being put to good use sounds like a mythic rare occurrence, that requires "the River" level of explicit buy-in in session 0.

Actually… I'm not completely certain what tools "the River" uses.

Railroading is bad, because it is by definition bad. Illusionism is bad, because it is by definition bad. But the tool of "changing established facts" can, theoretically, have consequences that aren't horrific for all groups in all circumstances.

Make sense? Baby steps? Or totally offtrack?

Sounds like baby steps.

To me Railroading is the act of using the tools to negate player agency (include preemptive negation). However the River (based on my assumptions about its structure and about its player buy in) uses the negation of player agency to satisfy player preferences. If this holds true for moderate tools (the story catches up to the PCs like a flood to move them downstream again) then mild tools will probably have beneficial agency negations too.

So I have started to reconsider "XYZ is bad because it is defined as bad" rather than "because it is defined as ABC and ABC is bad in context". If someone uses Illusionism to mean "I received player buy in for some railroading and I use illusions to disguise it so it does not disrupt the game" then that sounds reasonable. In contrast if someone uses Illusionism to mean "I lied to the players about the type of game we would play because it is against their preferences" then it does not sound reasonable. I can even imagine a GM lying about a bait and switch because the know the players well enough to predict they would enjoy both games and enjoy the revealed bait and switch.

So as time goes on my response on the topic has changed to be more of "These mechanics have these effects. Players might care about these mechanics (with examples). Are you getting player buy in and respecting the playgroup as fellow players?" This informs the new GM, chastises the tyrant jerk, and respects the healthy playgroups.

Quixotic1
2021-10-02, 11:58 PM
Citation needed… no, skip that. I've played in "planned" foo that were so terrible, it's be hard for anyone to create something unplanned and worse, let alone all the "not planned" foo that I've played (and run) that were better.

So, hard no.Planned games that were bad would be worse if they were not. Unplanned games that were good would be better if they had been.
No one ever claimed that planned games are automatically better than unplanned ones here. That would be...just a crazy argument to put forth.

And to be clear, "planned" does not mean "meticulously planned to the smallest detail with no room for improv left"; that would be pretty bad planning on the part of a GM, as running a game will always include varying levels of improv.
Sometimes, all you need is a napkin drawing of a map and a few post-its to plan for a session. A few reminders of the stuff that you as a GM still can't comfortably hold in your head--the fail condition of the current adventure, the dramatic question posed by various encounters, a few names of prominent NPC's and the best/worst ways the PC's could approach them to get what they want. Or whatever.

A ttrpg session is waaay to complicated. Anyone who thinks they can walk in with ZERO ideas and create a better experience than if they'd put in ANY kind of effort at all beforehand is either wrong, misunderstanding how I'm using certain terms, or is so focused on the emotional baggage that these sorts of conversations have that they're blind to the fact that we're on the same side.

So, hard yes.

Tanarii
2021-10-03, 02:24 AM
Does using procedural generation of a dungeon that someone else put together count as planned?

I'm having a hard time envisioning what unplanned really means in an RPG. I mean, the GM must have some kind of idea for a starting location and things there for the PCs to interact with. An empty white space with PCs popping into existence in it, and stuff popping into existence around them as the GM thinks of it would be kinda weird.

Maybe unplanned means the the only things that initially exist are those detailed in a PC backstory? Then the GM goes from there.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-03, 03:50 AM
I'm 100% sure the "planned" versus "unplanned" distinction is failing you because you are failing to acknowledge that there are different ways to plan.

A plan means an outline or instructions for a process, procedural generation by definition always qualifies, despite the fact that both the inputs to the process and outputs of the process can be unpredictable to you.

So maybe stop arguing what counts as planned or not and just skip to answering the question of "how do I want things planned?"

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-03, 03:51 AM
Does using procedural generation of a dungeon that someone else put together count as planned?

I'm having a hard time envisioning what unplanned really means in an RPG. I mean, the GM must have some kind of idea for a starting location and things there for the PCs to interact with. An empty white space with PCs popping into existence in it, and stuff popping into existence around them as the GM thinks of it would be kinda weird.

Maybe unplanned means the the only things that initially exist are those detailed in a PC backstory? Then the GM goes from there.

The white space with things popping into existence around the PCs isn’t that far from what I described in my “in defence of illusionism” thread, and it’s a pretty common way to play RPGs. Usually the GM will have *some* idea of what those things will be, they just won’t necessarily know exactly where, how or when they’ll pop up.

And starting with only the PCs and their backstories and improvising from there is exactly how Dungeon World works, at least with a one-shot or the first session of a campaign. The players make their characters, the GM asks questions about them to generate a setting and premise, then the GM throws together a scenario and runs it in an improvised fashion.

I do think it would be hard to keep up a completely unplanned, zero prep style for any length of time, but it’s certainly a real thing.

Quixotic1
2021-10-03, 08:33 AM
Does using procedural generation of a dungeon that someone else put together count as planned?

I'm having a hard time envisioning what unplanned really means in an RPG. I mean, the GM must have some kind of idea for a starting location and things there for the PCs to interact with.Fair enough.
I think the best way to go about it is to determine how and how much one plans, rather than what does and doesn't count as planning.
I think we've all experienced or at least heard of the GM who seemingly pulls things out of thin air. And sometimes they're pretty good at it. But a lack of motivation, issues with pacing, etc. are all going to be things to look out for.


I'm 100% sure the "planned" versus "unplanned" distinction is failing you because you are failing to acknowledge that there are different ways to plan...So maybe stop arguing what counts as planned or not and just skip to answering the question of "how do I want things planned?"Fair enough. I don't feel like that tone is necessary, though.

As I just said above, I think the key is to determine what sort of planning benefits you and how much. It'll vary from person to person, obviously.

But to bring all of this back to the OP, I brought up planning versus improv because that seems to be the reason behind quantum ogres, Schrödinger'd Dungeon and all that. The less agency players have, the more you can plan. And planning things out is very helpful, so limiting agency is helpful. You just need to consider how you're going to limit it so you can make sure you offer more in some other area.

The wizard's tower-style dungeon is a good example. It's a linear adventure; the players have no choice how they engage with it. Ground level, second story, third and so on.
But obviously exploring an abandoned tower isn't automatically a terrible adventure idea. Linear structures just require extra care in regards to agency.

So you just make sure that each level, each scene has meaningful choices and so on. There's not much agency at the adventure level, so focus on the scene/encounter and turn levels.

Though I think it's also worth mentioning that linear adventures struggle with the fail state, so be mindful of that as well. Knowing when you've reached the end of a scene or adventure is absolutely vital, and failure is usually going to be one of the ways it can end.
If the goal of the wizard's tower adventure was to recover an ancient tome from the uppermost chamber and the characters burn the tower to the ground. Well. The end.
But if the second room in the tower has a puzzle or a trap that needs to be bypassed in order to get to lvl3 and the players can't figure it out...are you okay with that? If not, it's time to rework some stuff.

Tanarii
2021-10-03, 10:23 AM
The white space with things popping into existence around the PCs isn’t that far from what I described in my “in defence of illusionism” thread, and it’s a pretty common way to play RPGs. Usually the GM will have *some* idea of what those things will be, they just won’t necessarily know exactly where, how or when they’ll pop up.Thats not precisely what I was thinking of by that. At that part of typing up my post, I was thinking of how you might be able to have no ideas in mind (let alone written down), no location and no hooks or plot or scenario, and spin it out of nothing but the PCs. Which is where I ended up by the end of typing it up. (My posts are often a thinking it through process as I type.)

Also, there is no defense for illusionism. :smallyuk:


And starting with only the PCs and their backstories and improvising from there is exactly how Dungeon World works, at least with a one-shot or the first session of a campaign. The players make their characters, the GM asks questions about them to generate a setting and premise, then the GM throws together a scenario and runs it in an improvised fashion.Ah. AW does the same I believe? Yes, that does seem like a pretty good example of that method.

Also after having spent a very long time digesting it and rereading the rules, DW seems like a terrible game. The rules in specifically and the entire style of PtbA play in general are just a terrible fit for the intended goal, dungeon crawling.


I do think it would be hard to keep up a completely unplanned, zero prep style for any length of time, but it’s certainly a real thing.I mean, if you discount taking notes of what's already happened and the "planning" meaning reviewing them so there are no continuity errors, an AW-like start might work. OTOH fairly sure if I did that kind of review I'd find ideas for next time popping in to head in advance. :smallamused:

Also IIRC AW includes quite a lot of planning in session prep, after the first session. Fronts, creating clocks, etc.

OldTrees1
2021-10-03, 11:22 AM
Also, there is no defense for illusionism. :smallyuk:

That thread's title is using the wrong word. You might enjoy that thread too.

Quertus
2021-10-03, 11:54 AM
Sounds like baby steps.

To me Railroading is the act of using the tools to negate player agency (include preemptive negation). However the River (based on my assumptions about its structure and about its player buy in) uses the negation of player agency to satisfy player preferences. If this holds true for moderate tools (the story catches up to the PCs like a flood to move them downstream again) then mild tools will probably have beneficial agency negations too.

So I have started to reconsider "XYZ is bad because it is defined as bad" rather than "because it is defined as ABC and ABC is bad in context". If someone uses Illusionism to mean "I received player buy in for some railroading and I use illusions to disguise it so it does not disrupt the game" then that sounds reasonable. In contrast if someone uses Illusionism to mean "I lied to the players about the type of game we would play because it is against their preferences" then it does not sound reasonable. I can even imagine a GM lying about a bait and switch because the know the players well enough to predict they would enjoy both games and enjoy the revealed bait and switch.

So as time goes on my response on the topic has changed to be more of "These mechanics have these effects. Players might care about these mechanics (with examples). Are you getting player buy in and respecting the playgroup as fellow players?" This informs the new GM, chastises the tyrant jerk, and respects the healthy playgroups.

So… I'm struggling to find a way to say/ask/approach this. I think I'll just trust you to make a meaningful reply, and hope that no-one else gets distracted with my words.

It… feels like… you are advocating… noncentralization / nonstandardization of vocabulary… and a policy of… slow, methodic communication… to include explicit "definition of terms" phase(s).

In a way that might parallel my "running one-shots to calibrate expectations and vocabulary".

As opposed to my attempts to standardize Playground vocabulary usage.

Have I got that correct?

If so, then… I hypothesize that… the purpose is… a) to prevent miscommunication… by forcing a definition of terms phase; b) to focus attention on the "important parts"… like "did you get buy-in?"… rather than the less important parts… like "was your Ogre quantum"?

How about now?

-----

Attempt #2 - the meningioma distinction is between "negate agency" and "satisfy player preferences". The tools used to do so do not matter.

-----

Attempt #3 - the meaningful distinctions are "negate agency" "I lied to the players" vs "satisfy player preferences" "I received player buy in".


Planned games that were bad would be worse if they were not. Unplanned games that were good would be better if they had been.
No one ever claimed that planned games are automatically better than unplanned ones here. That would be...just a crazy argument to put forth.

So, hard yes.

Ah. That makes much more sense.

There's still a few GMs who are so bad, that their *quality* doesn't improve with planning (and possibly gets worse), only their *quantity* increases. Where it's definitely not the case that "more is better". And I can certainly imagine similar GMs who, if unplanned, actually take direction from their players, and thereby produce something better than they would have planned.

But, yes, as the general rule, for almost every GM, planning is good.

OldTrees1
2021-10-03, 12:57 PM
So… I'm struggling to find a way to say/ask/approach this. I think I'll just trust you to make a meaningful reply, and hope that no-one else gets distracted with my words.

It… feels like… you are advocating… noncentralization / nonstandardization of vocabulary… and a policy of… slow, methodic communication… to include explicit "definition of terms" phase(s).

In a way that might parallel my "running one-shots to calibrate expectations and vocabulary".

As opposed to my attempts to standardize Playground vocabulary usage.

Have I got that correct?

No. I am advocating for a standardization of vocabulary that recognizes "XYZ is defined as bad" is stealth nonstandardization of vocabulary. By including "is defined as bad" in the definition you are injecting the subjective preferences of the speaker into the definition they use BUT injecting the subjective preferences of the listener into the definition they use.

As a result if I say "Quantum Ogres are Railroading" then some will agree because they dislike Quantum Ogres and others will disagree because they like Quantum Ogres. You will even have people like me that dislike Quantum Ogres but are unwilling to call them inherently bad.

The purpose of the neutral definitions (especially the neutral definitions of mechanics) is to highlight how they can affect agency and to point out that players might (or might not) care about the usage of those mechanics. That gives GMs the understanding of the tools AND their impact on the game & players. They can then have informed conversations with their play group if a conflict arises.

Consider the "Trolley" or "Railway network" campaign styles. We have neutral definitions for those campaign styles and that let's us discuss our preferences for / against those campaign styles without needing to demonize or (I don't know an antonym of demonize that is as extreme).

Edit:
This also helps communication during interventions. If someone is using a mechanic they playgroup dislikes but they like, they might not be aware their players preferences differ. They might think "This is how the game is supposed to be. Of course the GM should force the PCs back on track.". However if we called that Railroading (negative connotation) then they would interpret it as a non sequitur. What they are doing is not inherently bad, so we must be mistaken when we call it Railroading. On the other hand if we call it Railroading (neutral connotation) and describe how the mechanism works and how it impacts player agency, then the GM might recognize we are talking about what they have been doing. Then by pointing out that some players dislike that mechanic, the GM might realize their playgroup's recent complaints in a new light.

Edit 3:
This is also useful when helping GMs that grant excessive player agency help address player desires for less agency.


Edit 2:
That said, a lot of the mechanics could be described by the abstract general terms "negate agency" although sometimes it is useful to describe how (because player preferences about one negation can differ on another negation).

As for the play group dynamic, these abstract concepts generally work well to establish if the tools are being used in a positive / negative manner.
"I lied to the players"*
"satisfy player preferences"
"I received player buy in"

*We have found this phrasing to be imperfect when talking to certain GMs. They conflate lying to a fellow human to trick them into playing something they would not want to play vs the PCs being tricked. You might remember that thread.

jayem
2021-10-03, 02:20 PM
No. I am advocating for a standardization of vocabulary that recognizes "XYZ is defined as bad" is stealth nonstandardization of vocabulary. By including "is defined as bad" in the definition you are injecting the subjective preferences of the speaker into the definition they use BUT injecting the subjective preferences of the listener into the definition they use.

It's also potentially doing two steps at once as though it's a single step (in this case the basic mechanical definition and the value judgment).

The abstract concept "Event that occurs, apparently as a consequence of a previous choice, but in practice independent"* is one that is complicated enough. If you sneak in "and is bad" you end up with a recipe for a 'newspeak' situation.

A 'good quantum ogre' is obviously then just contradiction in terms and straight up incomprehensible.
But even trying to work round it that, it leaves a big unstable valley, you try and say 'something like a quantum ogre but not bad', they'll instantly drop the all the mechanical-definition side (without realising they are doing it). If you build up, as soon as it hits the mechanical-definition, the value judgement will be picked up (again, without realising).

Even if there isn't actually a situation where a "Event...independent" is good, it's handy to at least have the linguistic possibility.

*I'm not holding this as being the definition of a QO

Tanarii
2021-10-03, 02:50 PM
Discussions about Quantum Ogres could probably do with a reread of the original articles:
http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.com/2011/09/shell-game-in-sandbox.html
http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/search/label/series%20%28Quantum%20Ogre%29

The key here is player agency should be involved because the resolution of the state of the quantum ogre do they/don't they exist in a specific location should be happening long before the encounter actually occurs. Player investigations and telegraphing should result in that.

Similar to my original comment on how different doors should provide different information in Schrodinger's Dungeon. Denying that information and making it a meaningless choice in the first place is removing player agency.

NichG
2021-10-03, 04:18 PM
There's also this thing where if you have a discussion about some particular question or situation, and at some point it becomes a discussion about definitions, you tend to completely lose the possibility of novel insight about the original situation and get snagged in a mire. Sharing definitions is good for smooth communication, but if you find that definitions weren't shared then I think the thing to do is to find out what the speaker meant, not argue about what the speaker technically said.

Frogreaver
2021-10-03, 05:12 PM
My take.

Let's start with Schrodinger's Dungeon. The choice of which door the players choose is completely arbitrary. Because of this, the consequence for that choice is also completely arbitrary. All their 'choice' in this instance serves to do is move the game forward to the next scene. Contrast this with actual railroading where non-arbitrary player choices ultimately lead to the same gamestate.

All I'm saying is that actual railroading as I described takes away player agency, but Schrodinger's Dungeon's do not. Players may still dislike Schrodinger's Dungeons but it's not because it's taking away agency. Arbitrary choices don't produce any agency and so none can be taken away.

Tanarii
2021-10-03, 05:14 PM
Yes it does. Chokers remove some amount agency. Schroeder's Dungeon with no information attainable about the different doors removes agency until there is none available.

Just like a Quantum Ogre.

Frogreaver
2021-10-03, 07:03 PM
Yes it does. Chokers remove some amount agency. Schroeder's Dungeon with no information attainable about the different doors removes agency until there is none available.

Just like a Quantum Ogre.

If there's no information available about the doors then there's no agency to be removed. There wasn't any agency there in the first place. Agency implies there was a choice but a choice does not imply there was agency.

OldTrees1
2021-10-03, 10:14 PM
Schroeder's Dungeon with no information attainable about the different doors removes agency until there is none available.


If there's no information available about the doors then there's no agency to be removed.

So you agree. There is no agency there because the GM is using a Schroeder's Dungeon with no information attainable.

It does not really matter if you say the GM reduced it from 100% down past X% to finally be at 0% or if you say they did not increase it from 0% to X%. The agency is set by the GM. In either case you are saying the GM choose 0% agency for that choice.

Tanarii
2021-10-03, 10:47 PM
If there is no information available then the DM has made a conscious decision to remove normally occurring information that the players could potentially ask for, as a choker to limit things. That's not to say that a DM (normally) needs to think of all possible information and what the players might ask in advance. But if they've made a conscious decision to have the doors be identical and indistinguishable in all ways, they've intentionally short circuited any possible information gathering that may have been possible under normal circumstances. They've introduced a choker that reduces player agency (possible decisions).

That's not to say that all chokers / reduction in agency is automatically bad. It's just that in this case, and in the case of the Quantum Ogre, it's been done to make all possible decisions lead to one specific outcome. The desired encounter order. That's why Quantum Ogres are generally lambasted, and why IMO Schroeder's Dungeon should be as well.

If it was possible to make the decision to either go through a random identical door or turn around and go to a different more normal dungeon, there might be enough agency to satisfy some folks. It wouldn't satisfy me, I'd still consider the original prep poor form, but at least they wouldn't be trapped in a hypercube dungeon.

NichG
2021-10-03, 11:50 PM
If there's no information available about the doors then there's no agency to be removed. There wasn't any agency there in the first place. Agency implies there was a choice but a choice does not imply there was agency.


So you agree. There is no agency there because the GM is using a Schroeder's Dungeon with no information attainable.

It does not really matter if you say the GM reduced it from 100% down past X% to finally be at 0% or if you say they did not increase it from 0% to X%. The agency is set by the GM. In either case you are saying the GM choose 0% agency for that choice.


If there is no information available then the DM has made a conscious decision to remove normally occurring information that the players could potentially ask for, as a choker to limit things. That's not to say that a DM (normally) needs to think of all possible information and what the players might ask in advance. But if they've made a conscious decision to have the doors be identical and indistinguishable in all ways, they've intentionally short circuited any possible information gathering that may have been possible under normal circumstances. They've introduced a choker that reduces player agency (possible decisions).

That's not to say that all chokers / reduction in agency is automatically bad. It's just that in this case, and in the case of the Quantum Ogre, it's been done to make all possible decisions lead to one specific outcome. The desired encounter order. That's why Quantum Ogres are generally lambasted, and why IMO Schroeder's Dungeon should be as well.

If it was possible to make the decision to either go through a random identical door or turn around and go to a different more normal dungeon, there might be enough agency to satisfy some folks. It wouldn't satisfy me, I'd still consider the original prep poor form, but at least they wouldn't be trapped in a hypercube dungeon.

The scenario is posited isn't detailed enough to really say anything. The real test is what happens if the players say 'we want to listen at the door' or 'we want to ask around town from people who have been there before about the layout of the dungeon' or 'we want to use a divination to figure out what is behind each door'.

In the posited scenario, the DM hasn't given any information to make an informed choice, but neither have the players taken any action to try to request information to make an informed choice. Without knowing whether or not the DM would thwart such attempts, talking about who is responsible for providing agency or taking it away is premature. If these hypothetical players don't care enough to bother to try to become informed before making a decision, why get offended on their behalf that they didn't get given any information? If the players cared enough to ask, and were told 'you absolutely cannot get any information' or were lied to or any number of other things, then it becomes meaningful.

I mean, there are players who insist on an 'always go left' policy and would even refuse to try to make an informed choice. And there are players who want to cast 20 divinations before getting out of bed in the morning. The nice thing about real games rather than hypothetical scenarios is that as a GM, you do get to be informed about those preferences before choosing what to do.

Tanarii
2021-10-04, 12:46 AM
Yes, and that's what I pointed out originally.

But in the case where there is no available information about the doors, that means the party is trapped in the dungeon with no way out except to make non-meaningful choices. Unless they've got a Teleport handy, agency has been removed with a goal of making the encounters happen in a specific order to save the DM prep time.

Even within the OP, that was the stated goal. Not sure how the OP would handle the party opening each door, looking inside, then spiking it shut. The party would give up surprise, but that'd burn through prepped roomed really fast. And spikes.

Mutazoia
2021-10-04, 01:39 AM
Your main argument against Schrodinger's Dungeon seems to be the illusion that the DM has taken away player agency by running them through the same 6 rooms over and over, but did you ever stop to ask if the players even noticed they were running the same six rooms? Did you ever stop to consider that they were apparently enjoying the game the entire time, which is in fact the entire point of playing the game?

DMing a game is a lot like performing stage magic. The audience is entertained by the magicians' tricks. But once you know how the tricks are done, the show isn't as entertaining as it was. And this is the problem you are having with "Railroading" and "Schrodinger's Dungeon". You've been made privy to the magician's trick and now that you know that the rabbit was in the hat the whole time, you don't enjoy it as much. Every DM you've ever play with unless they have been running/reading directly from pre-published modules has been using those tricks on you for years. You are just now becoming aware of them. And with the relatively recent cries of "Railroading is evil", you are now becoming disillusioned with what is essentially the SOP for DMing.

The only way to avoid "Railroading" and "Schrodinger's Dungeon" is to not have a "story" or "plot" to your game at all. Your players just run around doing whatever they want with no real goals to accomplish beyond "kill things, loot the bodies." The players are in total control and the DM is just there as an organic random encounter generator. The players get to have an effect on anything they want. They can kill the King and sell the Queen into slavery for lulz if they want to. But that kind of totally freeform game gets old real fast.

If you want to have any kind of central plot to your campaign, you are going to have to guide the players along from start to finish...there HAS to be a chain of events that move the story along, which means that the DM is going to HAVE to either guide the players to the story elements, or bring the story elements to the players. There's no other way around it.

Tanarii
2021-10-04, 03:23 AM
No, my problem is when the players don't get to make meaningful decisions. Because making meaningful decisions for your characters is roleplaying. Without it you've just got a combat board game or a book.

Those can both be enjoyable. But I doubt it's what the players signed up for. I know mine don't sign up for a board game, and definitely not to play through my story.

And I haven't played in campaigns with DMs that try to run their campaign as a story in years. Because they were always terrible.

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 03:28 AM
So you agree. There is no agency there because the GM is using a Schroeder's Dungeon with no information attainable.

Not quite. I agree that there is no agency there, but it has nothing to do with Schrodinger's Dungeon. It has to do with the lack of available information. The lack of available information in a fully mapped out dungeon has the same exact impact on agency.


It does not really matter if you say the GM reduced it from 100% down past X% to finally be at 0% or if you say they did not increase it from 0% to X%. The agency is set by the GM. In either case you are saying the GM choose 0% agency for that choice.

It does when it comes to understanding why there isn't agency present. In this case you are assigning the lack of agency to the wrong culprit.


If there is no information available then the DM has made a conscious decision to remove normally occurring information that the players could potentially ask for, as a choker to limit things.

The DM can do this in any fully mapped out environment as well. That's not a unique phenomenon to Schrodinger's Dungeons.


That's not to say that a DM (normally) needs to think of all possible information and what the players might ask in advance. But if they've made a conscious decision to have the doors be identical and indistinguishable in all ways, they've intentionally short circuited any possible information gathering that may have been possible under normal circumstances. They've introduced a choker that reduces player agency (possible decisions).

Which again goes back to the Schrodinger's part not being the issue. The issue is the lack of information.

However, the choice of which door to go through isn't the only choice in this circumstance. The player can presumably do something to attempt to gain information. Listening at the door, divination spells, making a loud noise and seeing what comes to them, etc. That doesn't mean they will succeed, but rather that the whole Schrodinger's Dungeon scenario isn't really agencyless as these other choices exist - even if the particular choice of door without information doesn't require any agency.


That's not to say that all chokers / reduction in agency is automatically bad. It's just that in this case, and in the case of the Quantum Ogre, it's been done to make all possible decisions lead to one specific outcome. The desired encounter order. That's why Quantum Ogres are generally lambasted, and why IMO Schroeder's Dungeon should be as well.

IMO. The community as a whole doesn't have a clue what actual agency is. They continue to conflate informationless choices with informed choice. From the player's perspective - having to make an informationless choice is always going to lead to the same outcome - entering a random room - and so from this perspective there's no difference of outcome in Schrodinger's Dungeon compared with a carefully mapped out one.


If it was possible to make the decision to either go through a random identical door or turn around and go to a different more normal dungeon, there might be enough agency to satisfy some folks. It wouldn't satisfy me, I'd still consider the original prep poor form, but at least they wouldn't be trapped in a hypercube dungeon.

Being satisfied or not has nothing to do with agency. IMO, many players also equate their satisfaction of something with agency.


The scenario is posited isn't detailed enough to really say anything. The real test is what happens if the players say 'we want to listen at the door' or 'we want to ask around town from people who have been there before about the layout of the dungeon' or 'we want to use a divination to figure out what is behind each door'.

Sometimes you are truly faced with an informationless choice. That's a legitimate state. But even in such a state where your presented with an informationless choices there's almost always a more meta state in which your choice is 'pick a random door and continue on with your life' or 'don't pick any door and stay in this room as you slowly die (either of lack of nutrition or of old age)'.

So with respect to which door to choose, you have no agency, but the scenario is still full of agency - the choice to stay or pick a door. You are still making a meaningful choice - albeit a no brainer one - but a meaningful choice nonetheless.


In the posited scenario, the DM hasn't given any information to make an informed choice, but neither have the players taken any action to try to request information to make an informed choice. Without knowing whether or not the DM would thwart such attempts, talking about who is responsible for providing agency or taking it away is premature. If these hypothetical players don't care enough to bother to try to become informed before making a decision, why get offended on their behalf that they didn't get given any information? If the players cared enough to ask, and were told 'you absolutely cannot get any information' or were lied to or any number of other things, then it becomes meaningful.

Agreed, and IMO this is a very important point.


I mean, there are players who insist on an 'always go left' policy and would even refuse to try to make an informed choice. And there are players who want to cast 20 divinations before getting out of bed in the morning. The nice thing about real games rather than hypothetical scenarios is that as a GM, you do get to be informed about those preferences before choosing what to do.

Agreed!


No, my problem is when the players don't get to make meaningful decisions. Because making meaningful decisions for your characters is roleplaying. Without it you've just got a combat board game or a book.

Those can both be enjoyable. But I doubt it's what the players signed up for. I know mine don't sign up for a board game, and definitely not to play through my story.

And I haven't played in campaigns with DMs that try to run their campaign as a story in years. Because they were always terrible.

Always having the information you want to base a choice on is not the same as not being able to make any meaningful decision. IME, usually the difference is in how a person wishes to frame the situation.

NichG
2021-10-04, 05:58 AM
Sometimes you are truly faced with an informationless choice. That's a legitimate state. But even in such a state where your presented with an informationless choices there's almost always a more meta state in which your choice is 'pick a random door and continue on with your life' or 'don't pick any door and stay in this room as you slowly die (either of lack of nutrition or of old age)'.

So with respect to which door to choose, you have no agency, but the scenario is still full of agency - the choice to stay or pick a door. You are still making a meaningful choice - albeit a no brainer one - but a meaningful choice nonetheless.


Ultimately, it comes down to whether the GM and players are on the same page about what sorts of decisions they want to be making. You can have a scenario with tons of abstractly meaningful choices but not the particular kind of choices that the player is interested in exploring and it can feel more restrictive than something where there's only two options to choose from but both of which get at the heart of what the player wants to be exploring. Concepts like agency are means and not ends.

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 08:43 AM
Ultimately, it comes down to whether the GM and players are on the same page about what sorts of decisions they want to be making. You can have a scenario with tons of abstractly meaningful choices but not the particular kind of choices that the player is interested in exploring and it can feel more restrictive than something where there's only two options to choose from but both of which get at the heart of what the player wants to be exploring. Concepts like agency are means and not ends.

Yes but that’s also part of the rub. Agency is not about getting the kinds of choices you want. But it’s often conflated with that.

Tanarii
2021-10-04, 09:17 AM
However, the choice of which door to go through isn't the only choice in this circumstance. The player can presumably do something to attempt to gain information. Listening at the door, divination spells, making a loud noise and seeing what comes to them, etc. That doesn't mean they will succeed, but rather that the whole Schrodinger's Dungeon scenario isn't really agencyless as these other choices exist - even if the particular choice of door without information doesn't require any agency.You were the one that specified there is no way to tell them apart:

If there's no information available about the doors then there's no agency to be removed.
My entire point is predicated on the particular scenario you specified.


Always having the information you want to base a choice on is not the same as not being able to make any meaningful decision. IME, usually the difference is in how a person wishes to frame the situation.Again, you were the one that specified a situation that removes all meaningful chalice in this situation. And no, "the choice to stay or pick a door" is not a meaningful choice. A "no brainer" choice isn't a meaningful one. That's why they're meaningful chalices, not just choices or no brained choices. If you give the players a choice between do nothing, characters remain trapped and die vs choose a random door without any information, you have presented the illusion of choice, a meaningless choice.

This is precisely why the Quantum Ogre and Schroeder's Dungeon and Illusionism are bad. Regardless of if the goal is saving prep time, or intentionally railroading for some nebulous goal of "story" or "plot".

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 09:34 AM
You were the one that specified there is no way to tell them apart:

My entire point is predicated on the particular scenario you specified.

I think you missed the part where I stated their attempts at gathering additional info can fail.


Again, you were the one that specified a situation that removes all meaningful chalice in this situation. And no, "the choice to stay or pick a door" is not a meaningful choice. A "no brainer" choice isn't a meaningful one. That's why they're meaningful chalices, not just choices or no brained choices. If you give the players a choice between do nothing, characters remain trapped and die vs choose a random door without any information, you have presented the illusion of choice, a meaningless choice.

You are presented with a choice that prevents death and a choice that doesn’t. That is a meaningful choice, no matter how easy of a choice it is to make. You are conflating meaningful choices with hard choices.


This is precisely why the Quantum Ogre and Schroeder's Dungeon and Illusionism are bad. Regardless of if the goal is saving prep time, or intentionally railroading for some nebulous goal of "story" or "plot".

You keep saying it’s bad but your not really providing reasoning as to why.

Quertus
2021-10-04, 09:39 AM
Obviously I wasn't clear enough. Let me try again. Maximum clarity. Engage.

My current stance

Murder is bad, by definition. Rape is bad, by definition. Theft is bad, by definition. Railroading is bad, by definition. Illusionism is bad, by definition.

The definition does not include the explicit phrase, "is bad". The definition includes (a sadly implicit, even in my and the Alexandrian's definitions) that you are acting against the will of, and without permission of, the subject(s) of the action.

That said,

There are tools in murder, rape, theft, railroading, and Illusionism that could be put to good use.

And

Even calling these things "bad" is culture-dependent.

I can picture a benevolent fantasy faux-Viking culture, that knows that you're too weak to survive, comes in, kills your men, impregnates your women, and steals your stuff, for your own good. Because now your population will be heartier; bereft of tools, the weakest will be thinned out of the herd. Now your society will survive, thanks to the benevolence of the murdering, raping, thieving fantasy faux-Vikings.

So

Are we discussing "murder is bad, but there are components of it that are good", or "murder can be good or bad"?

Personally

I'm a fan of sticking with "murder is bad", and creating a new word, like "killing", for the neutral version.

But

If we're going to walk the path of "neutralizing" the term "railroading" then I strongly suggest

A) creating a term for the not-so-neutral form of railroading, the "murder" to its "killing";

B) emphasizing, in the definition of this term, its tie-in to a larger concept of "without permission"

EDIT

And, if we're keeping to "railroading is bad", but want a neutral term for clarity, I'll nominate "rivering".

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 09:58 AM
Here's my take:

1) A linear game is a game where the players go through a series of pre-prepared scenes/encounters, and will only go through those scenes/encounters. At the extreme, a linear game will be highly prepared until the final encounter with the campaign end/BBEG. Note that some variation can be allowed - subquests, optional scenes, things done in an arbitrary order, etc. This does not make the game less linear. In video game terms, every BioWare game is basically a linear game.

2) Railroading is what happens when you run a linear game, but the players are not aware of this, did not agree to it, but you plan to "keep them on track" regardless of their attempts to go off of it.

2a) There are many techniques that can be used to railroad. However most of them can be used in other scenarios. The fact that a technique can be used to railroad does not make it inherently bad. The railroad is the primary issue, not the technique. If the technique is used for a bad reason outside of a railroad, then that is a separate issue.

3) A linear game where the players know it's a linear game and are bought into it is fine. Call that a linear game if you want, use the Forge term "participationism", whatever.

-----------

Separate area for discussion:

I like this definition because it focuses on the problem, which gets rid of a lot of the questions "well, is it okay if I do X..." which try to find a way to railroad without "officially" railroading, or pointing out that the techniques are useful elsewhere. The problem usually isn't the technique - it's where, why, and how pervasively they're used. A storm making a river impassable could be railroading - or it could just be weather.

I think the Quantum Ogre is more likely to be just generically bad overall - since its purpose is literally to enforce a specific set of scenes, there's not a lot of uses for it other than enforcing that order of scenes.

Morgaln
2021-10-04, 10:23 AM
I don't necessarily consider the quantum ogre bad in every case. The deciding factor is, what happens if the players have the option to observe the ogre without encountering it, through scouting, divination or other means.

I see several ways this could play out:

1. The ogre cannot be found through scouting but will still be encountered whichever way the players go: this is bad and counts as railroading by my definition.

2. The ogre can be scouted, but it will change place after scouting to be encountered anyway whichever way the players go. This is even worse than point 1, since it actively removes a success the players had.

3. The ogre can be scouted and once it is scouted, will only be encountered on the road it has been scouted on. Not railroading, as it allows for meaningful choice once the information is available. I do consider this the best possible way to use a quantum ogre.

4. The ogre duplicates so there is an ogre on every possible road. Worse than 3, as it means the players don't have a way of avoiding the ogre. There's no meaningful choice involving the ogre(s), but at least it is consistent.

I consider 3 a good use of a quantum ogre; 4 is awkward but can work. 1 and 2 are both bad and should not be done.

Easy e
2021-10-04, 10:26 AM
I genuinely want to know what you mean by this. Endlessly circling around... what? The paradox of choice? What actual choices are they being presented here? Surely if the players are portraying their characters with goals and intentions and stuff they want to do, in a game where they aren't constrained, they wouldn't get stuck. They'd just do the things they want to do. Could you give me an example of this happening in one of your games, so we can be on the same page?

I've definitely encountered passive players (and been a passive player) who, when presented freedom, doesn't really know what to do with themselves. When you're used to just reacting it can be hard to switch to a proactive mindset. I think I get what you mean there.


The situation I encounter is I present the question; "What are you going to do?" and no one knows what they are going to do. After a few minutes of groping around and asking questions, they are unsure of the direction and end up noodling around on shopping trips, trying to get free booze, getting laid, etc. Not much adventuring and a whole lot of trying to figure out what their character WOULD do.

I find it is much easier to give them a hook, and then ask them "What do you want to do, X, Y or Z?" This gives them a scope of purpose and avoids all the "inefficient" noodling around trying to get a grasp on things.

However, I also fully realize that the situations I have been GMing for are vastly different than most folks on this board, and that has led me to a very different style. Most of my players are not RPG hobbyists. They call all RPG activity "Dungeons and Dragons". They just want to play a game of make-believe and kill some time for a few hours for a couple nights a week. They are the very definition of "casual" RPG gamers and that has led me to a style that is more "Movie of the Week" and episodic in nature. There is no "campaign" and all story arcs are self-contained in a session or three at max.

There is no session 0, as deciding to play is literally; "Hey Easy E, let's play D&D*?" Character creation is about 30 minutes long, and a quick decision about genre. Then we are off. I only have about 2 to 2.5 hours left in the night, and if I do a good job; we will get together one or two more times to finish the "game". Then, we might not play again for 3-6 months or longer.

This considerations have greatly influenced my GM style, and it is one ill-suited for some of the dedicated folks on this board.


*D&D- is actually a version of D6 WEG Star Wars 2nd Edition, since we typically only have a few common d6 around to play. No one wants to dig into and learn how to play "actual" D&D and I am okay with that.

JNAProductions
2021-10-04, 10:30 AM
The situation I encounter is I present the question; "What are you going to do?" and no one knows what they are going to do. After a few minutes of groping around and asking questions, they are unsure of the direction and end up noodling around on shopping trips, trying to get free booze, getting laid, etc. Not much adventuring and a whole lot of trying to figure out what their character WOULD do.

I find it is much easier to give them a hook, and then ask them "What do you want to do, X, Y or Z?" This gives them a scope of purpose and avoids all the "inefficient" noodling around trying to get a grasp on things.

However, I also fully realize that the situations I have been GMing for are vastly different than most folks on this board, and that has led me to a very different style. Most of my players are not RPG hobbyists. They call all RPG activity "Dungeons and Dragons". They just want to play a game of make-believe and kill some time for a few hours for a couple nights a week. They are the very definition of "casual" RPG gamers and that has led me to a style that is more "Movie of the Week" and episodic in nature. There is no "campaign" and all story arcs are self-contained in a session or three at max.

There is no session 0, as deciding to play is literally; "Hey Easy E, let's play D&D*?" Character creation is about 30 minutes long, and a quick decision about genre. Then we are off. I only have about 2 to 2.5 hours left in the night, and if I do a good job; we will get together one or two more times to finish the "game". Then, we might not play again for 3-6 months or longer.

This considerations have greatly influenced my GM style, and it is one ill-suited for some of the dedicated folks on this board.


*D&D- is actually a version of D6 WEG Star Wars 2nd Edition, since we typically only have a few common d6 around to play. No one wants to dig into and learn how to play "actual" D&D and I am okay with that.

Yeah, that makes sense. But, two things to note:

1) A lot of us, here on the Playground, would NOT like that style of game. Much preferred would be something where we can exert more influence on the world, and have less direction from the GM.

2) You're not deceiving or otherwise misleading the players. When you GM, they expect it to be more like a videogame, with more direction and clear paths to take. And, since they have a fun time playing and you have a good time GMing, that's excellent! The point of the hobby is to have fun-even if your games wouldn't be good for a lot of Playgrounders, we're not in your games, so that's irrelevant.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 10:41 AM
The situation I encounter is I present the question; "What are you going to do?" and no one knows what they are going to do. After a few minutes of groping around and asking questions, they are unsure of the direction and end up noodling around on shopping trips, trying to get free booze, getting laid, etc. Not much adventuring and a whole lot of trying to figure out what their character WOULD do.

In general I've found that that's because of bad setup on the GM's part (I'm pointing the finger mostly at myself here).

Like, that kind of waffling usually happens because the players have no incentive to act, no pressure to act, and insufficient information to figure out a course of action. Like, if the situation is "you're on a platform. Spikes are coming down and will crush you in ten seconds! To the north, you can escape by climbing a cliff, and you see goblins at the top of the cliff. Or you can wade through the swamp to the south, and there appears to be something lurking in the water. You've got ten seconds! What do you do?"

Here I'm providing a clear problem to solve (you're about to get crushed), an incentive to do something (if you don't you'll be crushed in ten seconds), and theoretically sufficient information to make a decision about which way to go (which problems do you want to deal with?). Most situations I've seen with that kind of "uh, what do we do?" misses at least one of those points.


I find it is much easier to give them a hook, and then ask them "What do you want to do, X, Y or Z?" This gives them a scope of purpose and avoids all the "inefficient" noodling around trying to get a grasp on things.

There is nothing wrong with that, especially if you also are willing to let them say "uh, hey, what if we do A instead?"


However, I also fully realize that the situations I have been GMing for are vastly different than most folks on this board, and that has led me to a very different style. Most of my players are not RPG hobbyists. They call all RPG activity "Dungeons and Dragons". They just want to play a game of make-believe and kill some time for a few hours for a couple nights a week. They are the very definition of "casual" RPG gamers and that has led me to a style that is more "Movie of the Week" and episodic in nature. There is no "campaign" and all story arcs are self-contained in a session or three at max.

I actually think that's a fantastic way to kick off a campaign. Get into the game quickly, and do an arc. And if people then want to continue, great! If not, no big!

Honestly, this should like be the standard way of starting things off.


There is no session 0, as deciding to play is literally; "Hey Easy E, let's play D&D*?" Character creation is about 30 minutes long, and a quick decision about genre. Then we are off. I only have about 2 to 2.5 hours left in the night, and if I do a good job; we will get together one or two more times to finish the "game". Then, we might not play again for 3-6 months or longer.

Minus the "3-6 month hiatus", I think that's the best way to kick off a campaign. And if people wanna stop, let 'em.



2) You're not deceiving or otherwise misleading the players. When you GM, they expect it to be more like a videogame, with more direction and clear paths to take. And, since they have a fun time playing and you have a good time GMing, that's excellent! The point of the hobby is to have fun-even if your games wouldn't be good for a lot of Playgrounders, we're not in your games, so that's irrelevant.

I mean, all of this. Even by giving multiple paths, it sounds like he's not even railroading, even if he's giving a few ideas as to how to proceed. But even if it was SUPER DUPER LINEAR, as long as the players are aware of this and aren't being told it's something else? More power to them! The linearity isn't the problem with railroads. It's the deception.

JNAProductions
2021-10-04, 10:47 AM
I mean, all of this. Even by giving multiple paths, it sounds like he's not even railroading, even if he's giving a few ideas as to how to proceed. But even if it was SUPER DUPER LINEAR, as long as the players are aware of this and aren't being told it's something else? More power to them! The linearity isn't the problem with railroads. It's the deception.

Yup. I'm not a big fan of linear games-but they're not bad. They're just not to my taste. Other people enjoy them, because the GM can plan encounters with much greater detail and precision, as well as other benefits.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-10-04, 10:53 AM
I actually think that's a fantastic way to kick off a campaign. Get into the game quickly, and do an arc. And if people then want to continue, great! If not, no big!

Honestly, this should like be the standard way of starting things off.


I've started doing something similar with a lot of my groups--I'll provide a (relatively linear) quest seed. Or really, provide 2-3 and they can pick which one is more interesting at session 0 (completely OOC). That lasts somewhere between 3 and 5 sessions (level 3-ish), at which point the campaign opens up and we figure out where (if) we're going from there in a much more open-world fashion, although I can provide linearity where it is wanted. It's basically a tutorial. There's still agency, but the strategic-scale choice was made OOC at session 0 (ie which of these issues do we want to tackle) and they've committed to engaging with that problem.

OldTrees1
2021-10-04, 10:59 AM
Obviously I wasn't clear enough. Let me try again. Maximum clarity. Engage.

As you described:
A neutral term can have a standardized definition.
A negative term can have and communicate a value judgement but at the cost of having a subjective definition. (your implicit clause and the Alexandrian's implicit clause are likely subtly different)
The discussion benefits from both and thus it would be good to have multiple words.

Personally I would prefer to use Railroad as the negative word. However I have to consider my audience. The part of my audience that is least flexible seems to have adopted the word Railroad as a neutral (or positive :smallannoyed:) word. So I adapted and thus use Railroading (yes the switch from noun to verb is intentional) as the neutral word but constantly tie it to the concept "but player preferences might and commonly do object to this mechanic for various reasons. Get player buy in and don't do the <definition of negative term for lack of a word the audience accepts>".

Summary:
Agreed. At this point I have Railroading(neutral verb) for GM choices/behaviors that could lead to an objection and Railroad(negative noun) for when the objection's boundary has been breached. This is not ideal but communication between many audiences is an exercise in adaptation.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 11:04 AM
As you described:
A neutral term can have a standardized definition.
A negative term can have and communicate a value judgement but at the cost of having a subjective definition. (your implicit clause and the Alexandrian's implicit clause are likely subtly different)
The discussion benefits from both and thus it would be good to have multiple words.

Personally I would prefer to use Railroad as the negative word. However I have to consider my audience. The part of my audience that is least flexible seems to have adopted the word Railroad as a neutral (or positive :smallannoyed:) word. So I adapted and thus use Railroading (yes the switch from noun to verb is intentional) as the neutral word but constantly tie it to the concept "but player preferences might and commonly do object to this mechanic for various reasons. Get player buy in and don't do the <definition of negative term for lack of a word the audience accepts>".

Summary:
Agreed.

I've often used Railroad here as the neutral term, and it doesn't go well.

The Forge (for all of its sins) used:

Railroad: equivalent to linear game (which is a widely accepted term here)
Illusionism: Railroad, but the players don't know (often referred to as railroading)
Participationism: Railroad, but the players know and bought into it

I've basically proposed:

Linear game - the overall structure of preplanned scenes, presuming player knowledge
Railroad - a linear game where the players believe it isn't

IOW I collapsed participationism into "linear game".

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 11:25 AM
I don't necessarily consider the quantum ogre bad in every case. The deciding factor is, what happens if the players have the option to observe the ogre without encountering it, through scouting, divination or other means.

I see several ways this could play out:

1. The ogre cannot be found through scouting but will still be encountered whichever way the players go: this is bad and counts as railroading by my definition.

2. The ogre can be scouted, but it will change place after scouting to be encountered anyway whichever way the players go. This is even worse than point 1, since it actively removes a success the players had.

3. The ogre can be scouted and once it is scouted, will only be encountered on the road it has been scouted on. Not railroading, as it allows for meaningful choice once the information is available. I do consider this the best possible way to use a quantum ogre.

4. The ogre duplicates so there is an ogre on every possible road. Worse than 3, as it means the players don't have a way of avoiding the ogre. There's no meaningful choice involving the ogre(s), but at least it is consistent.

I consider 3 a good use of a quantum ogre; 4 is awkward but can work. 1 and 2 are both bad and should not be done.

Fully agree. Another good example of quantum ogres are wandering monster checks.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 11:28 AM
Fully agree. Another good example of quantum ogres are wandering monster checks.

Not really.

The point of a quantum ogre is that the GM has decided what encounter will happen next. It's not really about "fight the ogre". It's about "this is what's going to happen next, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen."

Random encounters are the opposite of that - the GM doesn't know what encounter will happen or, if rolling to see if there is an encounter, whether or not one will even occur.

It is an example of "having a prepared encounter that can be pulled out". But that technique has a lot of uses outside of railroading. Note that by my definition, it kind of fails since the GM doesn't know what's going to happen.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-10-04, 11:32 AM
The point of a quantum ogre is that the GM has decided what encounter will happen next. It's not really about "fight the ogre". It's about "this is what's going to happen next, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen."


Which of course makes it not very quantum. I still say that a better name would be the Inevitable Ogre. Because quantum superpositions aren't allowed to have a probability of 1, everywhere (due to normalization among other things).

OldTrees1
2021-10-04, 11:37 AM
Not really.

The point of a quantum ogre is that the GM has decided what encounter will happen next. It's not really about "fight the ogre". It's about "this is what's going to happen next, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen."

Random encounters are the opposite of that - the GM doesn't know what encounter will happen or, if rolling to see if there is an encounter, whether or not one will even occur.

It is an example of "having a prepared encounter that can be pulled out". But that technique has a lot of uses outside of railroading. Note that by my definition, it kind of fails since the GM doesn't know what's going to happen.

I disagree, the randomization part of the random encounter is not a quantum ogre, but the GM did decide "The party will encounter Mr Rand En Counter next, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen".

Of course random encounters are an example of a quantum ogre that is much more accepted than other quantum ogres. This highlights that while players might object to the inevitability, how much they care can vary.


Which of course makes it not very quantum. I still say that a better name would be the Inevitable Ogre. Because quantum superpositions aren't allowed to have a probability of 1, everywhere (due to normalization among other things).

The quantum superposition of the inevitable ogre is not 1 everywhere. It has a probability distribution that exactly matches and is entangled with the PCs' choice of where to go.

I understand Inevitable Ogre makes more sense to some people so I understand your criticism. I try to use the term that fits my audience.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 11:44 AM
I disagree, the randomization part of the random encounter is not a qunatum ogre, but the GM did decide "The party will encounter Mr Rand En Counter next, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen".

Not necessarily?

In old school D&D it's baked into the dungeon rules. Every n minutes, there's a chance of a random encounter. There might be one, there might not be.

Even in a lot of cases now, it's more like "there's a chance of a random encounter every x hours in this terrain". So the players have a lot of choices regarding where they go, what risks they expose themselves to, etc.

If it's a situation where the GM decides "you will have a random encounter, no matter what" then sure, but that's not necessarily a factor of the encounter being random, any more than a bespoke encounter is necessarily railroading or not.

IOW, the GM can railroad a random encounter, I suppose? But that has nothing to do with it being random. If it was a tailored encounter, it would be just as railroady, if not more.

OldTrees1
2021-10-04, 11:46 AM
Not necessarily?

In old school D&D it's baked into the dungeon rules. Every n minutes, there's a chance of a random encounter. There might be one, there might not be.

Even in a lot of cases now, it's more like "there's a chance of a random encounter every x hours in this terrain". So the players have a lot of choices regarding where they go, what risks they expose themselves to, etc.

If it's a situation where the GM decides "you will have a random encounter, no matter what" then sure, but that's not necessarily a factor of the encounter being random, any more than a bespoke encounter is necessarily railroading or not.

Agreed. I should have elaborated on the alternatives to the "you will have an encounter".

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 11:51 AM
Agreed. I should have elaborated on the alternatives to the "you will have an encounter".

And two people talked to each other, and came to an understanding.

We can shut down the internet now, people.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-10-04, 11:59 AM
The quantum superposition of the inevitable ogre is not 1 everywhere. It has a probability distribution that exactly matches and is entangled with the PCs' choice of where to go.

I understand Inevitable Ogre makes more sense to some people so I understand your criticism. I try to use the term that fits my audience.

That's not what a probability distribution is. A superposition ogre would be more like

1. If the party takes path P, there is a p(P), where 0 <= p(P) < 1 chance that the ogre is there.
2. The total of p(P) over all paths is equal to 1 (there is one ogre, somewhere, we just don't know where).

This reduces to a standard set of random encounter tables with (in this hypothetical) path-dependent probabilities. But there's a chance that you won't encounter the ogre on a given path--p(P) != 1.

In the inevitable ogre case, all p(P) = 1. No matter where you go, Ogre. That fails condition 2 (normalization). In that case, there are N ogres, all identical. Which rather breaks normal math.

OldTrees1
2021-10-04, 12:32 PM
That's not what a probability distribution is. A superposition ogre would be more like

1. If the party takes path P, there is a p(P), where 0 <= p(P) < 1 chance that the ogre is there.
2. The total of p(P) over all paths is equal to 1 (there is one ogre, somewhere, we just don't know where).

This reduces to a standard set of random encounter tables with (in this hypothetical) path-dependent probabilities. But there's a chance that you won't encounter the ogre on a given path--p(P) != 1.

In the inevitable ogre case, all p(P) = 1. No matter where you go, Ogre. That fails condition 2 (normalization). In that case, there are N ogres, all identical. Which rather breaks normal math.

The probability of the ogre being on road N is p(ON).
The probability of the party being on road M is p(PM).
The probability of the ogre being on road N given the party is on road M p(ON|PM) is 1 if N=M or 0 if N=/=M.
This can be rewritten as p(ON|PN) = 1 and p(ON|!PN) = 0
If we sum the probability of p(ON|PM) x p(PM) for all N and M then the total is 1.
Solve for p(ON). You will find p(ON) = p(PN).
Is it fair to describe p(PN) as a probability distribution until the party makes their choice?
Is it fair to say p(ON) = p(PN) means p(ON) is entangled with p(PN)?

That is why calling it "quantum" or "superposition" makes sense to some people. They are not saying the probability of meeting the ogre is a superposition. That probability is 1 (hence Inevitable Ogre). However they are describing the type of inevitability by describing the probability distribution p(ON|PM) x p(PM) and how p(ON) is entangled with p(PN) (usually with the addendum that there is no in fiction mechanism).

Tanarii
2021-10-04, 01:52 PM
3. The ogre can be scouted and once it is scouted, will only be encountered on the road it has been scouted on. Not railroading, as it allows for meaningful choice once the information is available. I do consider this the best possible way to use a quantum ogre.
I consider 3 a good use of a quantum ogre; 4 is awkward but can work. 1 and 2 are both bad and should not be done.

Fully agree. Another good example of quantum ogres are wandering monster checks.

Not really.

The point of a quantum ogre is that the GM has decided what encounter will happen next. It's not really about "fight the ogre". It's about "this is what's going to happen next, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen."
Exactly. #3 and wandering monster checks are not quantum ogress. The term was quite specific as to what it is. They are a specific encounter that the DM is inserting regardless of player decision making about where to go, effectively negating attempts to assert player agency to save on DM prep time.

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 01:55 PM
Not really.

The point of a quantum ogre is that the GM has decided what encounter will happen next. It's not really about "fight the ogre". It's about "this is what's going to happen next, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen."

Random encounters are the opposite of that - the GM doesn't know what encounter will happen or, if rolling to see if there is an encounter, whether or not one will even occur.

It is an example of "having a prepared encounter that can be pulled out". But that technique has a lot of uses outside of railroading. Note that by my definition, it kind of fails since the GM doesn't know what's going to happen.

After a GM has made a wandering monster roll and interpreted the results to mean that the players will encounter a monster - at that point an encounter is inevitable.

Does it actually matter when the GM decided the encounter was inevitable in order for it to be a quantum ogre? Would the GM’s roll not have came up the same whichever way the players went?

JNAProductions
2021-10-04, 02:11 PM
After a GM has made a wandering monster roll and interpreted the results to mean that the players will encounter a monster - at that point an encounter is inevitable.

Does it actually matter when the GM decided the encounter was inevitable in order for it to be a quantum ogre? Would the GM’s roll not have came up the same whichever way the players went?

If the tables are set up right?

Yeah, it would change. The random encounters for Death Mountain aren’t the same as Idyllic Valley.

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 02:22 PM
If the tables are set up right?

Yeah, it would change. The random encounters for Death Mountain aren’t the same as Idyllic Valley.

Is idyllic valley more further away then you can go before the next random encounter check (a common occurrence)? If so then it doesn’t matter which way you go, the next random monster check is unchanged and inevitable.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 02:24 PM
After a GM has made a wandering monster roll and interpreted the results to mean that the players will encounter a monster - at that point an encounter is inevitable.

Does it actually matter when the GM decided the encounter was inevitable in order for it to be a quantum ogre? Would the GM’s roll not have came up the same whichever way the players went?

It's really hard to take this as a good faith argument.

First, by my definition, "railroading" is what happens when the GM has a set of scenes that are planned, and the players will go through those, and the GM will enforce that in various ways. This scenario fails that on multiple fronts.

Secondly, different places should have different wandering monster charts, frequency of checks, etc. So even if the randomizer was predetermined, when and how it was used shouldn't be.

Thirdly, dice-rolling is an actual physical activity, so it is highly unlikely that "the next roll" would be the same for any sets of circumstances.

Fourth, even if you accept that the rolls are going to happen (which I don't) then unless every possible decision from where you are would use the same table, then it's still not inevitable, much less railroading.

Fifth, if you're not railroading overall, then you being in that position is a result of choices previously made, and a hypothetical different party wouldn't be in that position, and the next encounter is likely not "inevitable".

Sixth, this really gets into the whole determinism thing, and if we take full determinism, then there's no point to any of those as everything is "railroaded" and the discussion is meaningless.

What's your point here? Because if rolling randomly is somehow railroading, then how could determining the encounter be any less so? Or is that your point, that everything is railroading, and therefore railroading is okay? Because it seems that's where you're going.

BRC
2021-10-04, 02:29 PM
What's your point here? Because if rolling randomly is somehow railroading, then how could determining the encounter be any less so? Or is that your point, that everything is railroading, and therefore railroading is okay? Because it seems that's where you're going.

This gets back to the "Technically Railroading" lesson.

The problem with Railroading isn't that the GM has total control, it's that the Players have no control.

A game built entirely on random encounters deprives the players of just as much agency as being forced into an encounter by the GM, even if it's not "Railroading" or "Quantum Ogre" specifically.


Rolling Randomly to determine what happens next means you're NOT giving the players agency in what happens next (Either letting them choose, or building the next scenario off consequences from their earlier actions), which means you're denying them agency.


If all your GM notes are is "Roll on random encounter table 3 times, Resolve" then even if you don't have the specifics of the scenario planned out, there still isn't room for the players to steer the story at all.

oxybe
2021-10-04, 02:34 PM
After a GM has made a wandering monster roll and interpreted the results to mean that the players will encounter a monster - at that point an encounter is inevitable.

Does it actually matter when the GM decided the encounter was inevitable in order for it to be a quantum ogre? Would the GM’s roll not have came up the same whichever way the players went?

regarding the roll being the same regardless of direction... not necessarily. different directions may use different random encounter charts.

Let's say I'm in city A and I want to go to City B.

The quickest way is going downriver, but as it's the rainy season, the river is VERY rough and it's extremely dangerous. No random encounters but if you fail at boating, you're in for a bad time... which may include washing up on the forest riverbank. note the "may". other failure states include drowning either by getting pulled under via current or getting concussed on objects, or just because you're a dwarf in full plate on a boat.

The second quickest way, but also most prone to encounters, is a direct line through the forest. in here lies various wild animals, predators or even, gasp... OGRES!

The slowest way, and safest, is taking the long road around the forest. low encounter rate and what hostiles you will encounter are likely bandits or the sort you can converse with.

If a group, deciding for whatever reason that taking the river is safer then the forest and suddenly bump into the Ogre they were trying to avoid, who is currently kayaking the rapids, I wouldn't hold it against them to call BS.

However rolling on the forest encounter chart and the road encounter chart can definitely have different outcomes, in the forest you may bump into the Ogre, or a mother bear and her cubs, a hungry wolf or a just a couple of deer being deer. On the road encounter you may meet up with bandits, a merchant caravan taking a rest, a noble's carriage waiting for lift due to a broken wheel, a family of immigrants walking to (or from) your destination.

How the players react to these random encounters is up to them and fighting an angry Ogre because you up and walked into his swamp VS some bandits out for a quick buck, is a very different scenario. The Ogre may be too dumb or cocksure to give up, but the bandits are likely just desperate and in need of a quick buck so you may be able to posture and bravado your way out of the fight before it even begins.

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 02:53 PM
regarding the roll being the same regardless of direction... not necessarily. different directions may use different random encounter charts.

Let's say I'm in city A and I want to go to City B.

The quickest way is going downriver, but as it's the rainy season, the river is VERY rough and it's extremely dangerous. No random encounters but if you fail at boating, you're in for a bad time... which may include washing up on the forest riverbank. note the "may". other failure states include drowning either by getting pulled under via current or getting concussed on objects, or just because you're a dwarf in full plate on a boat.

The second quickest way, but also most prone to encounters, is a direct line through the forest. in here lies various wild animals, predators or even, gasp... OGRES!

The slowest way, and safest, is taking the long road around the forest. low encounter rate and what hostiles you will encounter are likely bandits or the sort you can converse with.

If a group, deciding for whatever reason that taking the river is safer then the forest and suddenly bump into the Ogre they were trying to avoid, who is currently kayaking the rapids, I wouldn't hold it against them to call BS.

However rolling on the forest encounter chart and the road encounter chart can definitely have different outcomes, in the forest you may bump into the Ogre, or a mother bear and her cubs, a hungry wolf or a just a couple of deer being deer. On the road encounter you may meet up with bandits, a merchant caravan taking a rest, a noble's carriage waiting for lift due to a broken wheel, a family of immigrants walking to (or from) your destination.

How the players react to these random encounters is up to them and fighting an angry Ogre because you up and walked into his swamp VS some bandits out for a quick buck, is a very different scenario. The Ogre may be too dumb or cocksure to give up, but the bandits are likely just desperate and in need of a quick buck so you may be able to posture and bravado your way out of the fight before it even begins.

Sure, but you are assuming the players location and starting point to be most favorable to your position. Assume for the moment the players have already ventured a day into the forest. Suddenly I’m right and all the random encounters no matter which way they go will be the same.

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 02:59 PM
This gets back to the "Technically Railroading" lesson.

The problem with Railroading isn't that the GM has total control, it's that the Players have no control.

A game built entirely on random encounters deprives the players of just as much agency as being forced into an encounter by the GM, even if it's not "Railroading" or "Quantum Ogre" specifically.


Rolling Randomly to determine what happens next means you're NOT giving the players agency in what happens next (Either letting them choose, or building the next scenario off consequences from their earlier actions), which means you're denying them agency.


If all your GM notes are is "Roll on random encounter table 3 times, Resolve" then even if you don't have the specifics of the scenario planned out, there still isn't room for the players to steer the story at all.

Exactly. I’d just add that what I find underlying most players complaints when it comes to agency isn’t their lack of it - but rather that the dm used fiat to add some element to the fiction.

This is why random rolls get a pass - because randomness precludes DM fiat in their eyes.

JNAProductions
2021-10-04, 03:14 PM
Sure, but you are assuming the players location and starting point to be most favorable to your position. Assume for the moment the players have already ventured a day into the forest. Suddenly I’m right and all the random encounters no matter which way they go will be the same.

Okay. They chose to go into the forest, and therefore will deal with the forest encounter table.

That's okay. That's not a problem. That's what the players chose-in the same way if, upon encountering an ogre, they attack them, the ogre will attack back. If they chose instead to sneak around the ogre, it might never know they were there. If they choose to hail the ogre from a distance, they might find it friendly, or at least non-hostile, or perhaps they could intimidate it into letting them pass without trouble.

I'm having trouble figuring out what you're trying to say, Frogreaver. Like... What's the problem you're trying to resolve?

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 03:51 PM
This gets back to the "Technically Railroading" lesson.

I'd avoid using words like "lesson". It's very condescending, mkay?


The problem with Railroading isn't that the GM has total control, it's that the Players have no control.

A game built entirely on random encounters deprives the players of just as much agency as being forced into an encounter by the GM, even if it's not "Railroading" or "Quantum Ogre" specifically.

Generally, yes. There's some cases where that's not true, like when randomization is determining the initial state, but players have freedom to engage in various ways.

IOW, a dungeon isn't necessarily a railroad (but it can be). A random dungeon isn't necessarily a railroad either.

A dungeon where you're dropped in Room A, and have to go linearly through rooms C-Z, fight what's in each one, and the door locks behind you? Zero agency. But giving the GM control doesn't add agency, either.

The problem isn't the randomization. The problem is the scenario is designed to prohibit player agency.


Rolling Randomly to determine what happens next means you're NOT giving the players agency in what happens next (Either letting them choose, or building the next scenario off consequences from their earlier actions), which means you're denying them agency.

Well, that depends on why they're rolling, doesn't it? If they've made the decision to go into the Ogre Mountains, then the chance of encountering ogres is on them, ain't it? If they had gone to the Kobold Plains, then they wouldn't encounter Ogres (or at least would be far less likely to).

That sounds like agency to me.

The alternative to random rolls is basically "GM decides". And that doesn't increase agency in any inherent way.

Now, I'll grant that making things random doesn't necessarily increase agency - that's up to the scenario. But randomization can be used in ways that do not decrease agency. This thread is full of examples.


If all your GM notes are is "Roll on random encounter table 3 times, Resolve" then even if you don't have the specifics of the scenario planned out, there still isn't room for the players to steer the story at all.

Well, yes. Good thing nobody is arguing that!


Sure, but you are assuming the players location and starting point to be most favorable to your position. Assume for the moment the players have already ventured a day into the forest. Suddenly I’m right and all the random encounters no matter which way they go will be the same.

And you're assuming the least favorable. Which implies.... maybe it's not the random nature that's the actual issue?

Why are the players in the forest in the first place? If it's becuase of their choices, then agency is preserved. If not, it's not. Even if they're a day in, and the next encounters are in the forest (because they're, you know, in the forest), then that should move them somewhere else, and they'll be closer to a different set of things happening - ideally, again, based on where they go. Heading towards the mountains? Eventually you'll get mountain encounters. Heading towards the plains? You'll get plains encounters (and of course

Randomization doesn't magically create agency, but neither does it remove agency. The setup of the scenario is what does that.

It's like "does it remove agency to have the PCs in jail?" Well, why are they there? Is it because of their actions? Or is it because the GM decided they should be and contrived the situation? Even if their choices are limited by being in jail as a result of other choices they've made, it's likely not a violation.

BRC
2021-10-04, 03:53 PM
Part of the problem with any forum discussion of railroading is that example scenarios can be read different ways.


"The PC's WILL encounter The Ogre" Railroading

"Last session the PC's chose to travel through Ogre Pass. They WILL encounter The Ogre" Not railroading

"Last Session the PC's were told that to complete their quest they much travel to Castle Generica. The only available route takes them through Ogre Pass" Railroading

"There used to be other roads, but the PC's started a war when they killed Prince Horace, and now warring armies block the remaining roads" Not Railroading

"The PC's killed Prince Horace because he started trying to kill them, and refused to be reasoned with" Back to railroading

"He was trying to kill them because the PC's killed his wife while trying to rob their manor house" Not railroading anymore.


Depending on where you start your scenario, something may be railroading, or an inevitability due to prior choices the PC's made.

NichG
2021-10-04, 03:57 PM
Obviously I wasn't clear enough. Let me try again. Maximum clarity. Engage.

My current stance

Murder is bad, by definition. Rape is bad, by definition. Theft is bad, by definition. Railroading is bad, by definition. Illusionism is bad, by definition.

The definition does not include the explicit phrase, "is bad". The definition includes (a sadly implicit, even in my and the Alexandrian's definitions) that you are acting against the will of, and without permission of, the subject(s) of the action.

That said,

There are tools in murder, rape, theft, railroading, and Illusionism that could be put to good use.

And

Even calling these things "bad" is culture-dependent.

I can picture a benevolent fantasy faux-Viking culture, that knows that you're too weak to survive, comes in, kills your men, impregnates your women, and steals your stuff, for your own good. Because now your population will be heartier; bereft of tools, the weakest will be thinned out of the herd. Now your society will survive, thanks to the benevolence of the murdering, raping, thieving fantasy faux-Vikings.

So

Are we discussing "murder is bad, but there are components of it that are good", or "murder can be good or bad"?

Personally

I'm a fan of sticking with "murder is bad", and creating a new word, like "killing", for the neutral version.

But

If we're going to walk the path of "neutralizing" the term "railroading" then I strongly suggest

A) creating a term for the not-so-neutral form of railroading, the "murder" to its "killing";

B) emphasizing, in the definition of this term, its tie-in to a larger concept of "without permission"

EDIT

And, if we're keeping to "railroading is bad", but want a neutral term for clarity, I'll nominate "rivering".

The problem with creating definitions that explicitly include value judgments is that if you're doing it in good faith (e.g. not just trying to trick people into accepting your moral framework implicitly), then you have to accept arguments like "This particular killing isn't murder because I'm deciding to approve of it" as valid and in fact a proper way to discuss the topic. Meaning that now everyone has to add a bit of boilerplate whenever they use the word, e.g. "The players murdered (in my view) this NPC, and as a result...", "(To me) that's murder", etc.

Even if you use 'without permission' as the explicit definition, as long as you're intending the word to serve a role as having an implicit value judgment you're going to have this problem. As soon as someone decides that killing without permission isn't always bad (for whatever reason), you're going to have an irreducible argument if you try to lean on the value judgment part of the term to do any lifting.

BRC
2021-10-04, 04:13 PM
The problem isn't the randomization. The problem is the scenario is designed to prohibit player agency.


Precisely.

Whether the GM writes the scenario themselves, determines it randomly ahead of time, or determines it randomly mid session (say, by rolling on a table every time the PC's step through a door), the problem is that the scenario doesn't leave any room for player agency.


Well, that depends on why they're rolling, doesn't it? If they've made the decision to go into the Ogre Mountains, then the chance of encountering ogres is on them, ain't it? If they had gone to the Kobold Plains, then they wouldn't encounter Ogres (or at least would be far less likely to).

That sounds like agency to me.

The alternative to random rolls is basically "GM decides". And that doesn't increase agency in any inherent way.

Now, I'll grant that making things random doesn't necessarily increase agency - that's up to the scenario. But randomization can be used in ways that do not decrease agency. This thread is full of examples.


I'd argue that "The PC's Decided to go to Ogre Mountains, so they encounter an Ogre" and "The PC's decide to go to Ogre Mountains, so the GM rolls on a table that has a much higher chance of them running into an Ogre" both represent roughly identical amount of player agency. They made an informed decision, and resolve reasonable consequences from that decision.


The difference between Random Rolls and "GM Decides" is that, if the GM decides, they have more opportunity to provide, or reflect, player agency. I wouldn't say that GM decision is INHERIENTLY better for player agency, but a GM deciding what to happen can introduce more chances for player agency to be exercised or respected.


The PC's go to Ogre Mountain, the GM rolls on a table, they fight 3 ogres. This is fine.

The PC's go to Ogre Mountain, the GM wants them to fight Gnolls. It turns out, all the Ogres are gone, it's Gnoll Mountain now. This is bad.

The PC's Go to Ogre Mountain, there is a war going on between the Ogres and the Gnolls. The PC's could just fight their way through, sneak past, or pick a side to help. This is really Good, especially if the Gnolls are extra aggressive because of something the PC's did earlier. The Random Encounter table simply can't provide that level of integration with the overall campaign outside of a very, very in-depth table integrated into the campaign.


The other argument against Randomness is, depending on how the table is set up, edge cases can invalidate the PC's choices, even if it wasn't the GM's decision to do so, or at least it can feel that way.

"We're going to Ogre Mountain because we want to deal with Ogres for some reason". "Well I rolled on the table, it was a 1% chance, but you're fighting a Dragon now" isn't especially respective of PC choices. Technically, 1% chance of Dragon was one of the potential outcomes, and so it didn't invalidate their choice, but from the Player perspective, it doesn't feel like you chose very much.


You could have a custom Ogre Mountain table full of different Ogre encounters, but then we get into the question of where your Tables are coming from.



Edit: A lot of GM's will use a hybrid model, using some sort of Randomness to generate the shape of the encounter (3 Ogre Bandits), and then generate specifics to fit the campaign/make things more interesting (3 Ogres Bandits who are specifically on the lookout for Gnolls, but will try to rob anybody they happen to run into)

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 04:23 PM
I'd argue that "The PC's Decided to go to Ogre Mountains, so they encounter an Ogre" and "The PC's decide to go to Ogre Mountains, so the GM rolls on a table that has a much higher chance of them running into an Ogre" both represent roughly identical amount of player agency. They made an informed decision, and resolve reasonable consequences from that decision.

Sure. I'd agree with that.


The difference between Random Rolls and "GM Decides" is that, if the GM decides, they have more opportunity to provide, or reflect, player agency. I wouldn't say that GM decision is INHERIENTLY better for player agency, but a GM deciding what to happen can introduce more chances for player agency to be exercised or respected.

Not necessarily, I don't think. In the "PCs need to go to Townsville, they can go through the PLeasant Plains or Ogre Mountain" scenario, I think having the GM be more neutral is better. Otherwise it's not really the PCs weighing risks - it's the PCs having to second guess the GM.


The PC's go to Ogre Mountain, the GM rolls on a table, they fight 3 ogres. This is fine.

The PC's go to Ogre Mountain, the GM wants them to fight Gnolls. It turns out, all the Ogres are gone, it's Gnoll Mountain now. This is bad.

The PC's Go to Ogre Mountain, there is a war going on between the Ogres and the Gnolls. The PC's could just fight their way through, sneak past, or pick a side to help. This is really Good, especially if the Gnolls are extra aggressive because of something the PC's did earlier. The Random Encounter table simply can't provide that level of integration with the overall campaign outside of a very, very in-depth table integrated into the campaign.

Why not? It takes like four minutes to put a table together. Encountering the gnolls should indicate that, well, there's an encounter. How aggressive they are is up to how that plays out.


"We're going to Ogre Mountain because we want to deal with Ogres for some reason". "Well I rolled on the table, it was a 1% chance, but you're fighting a Dragon now" isn't especially respective of PC choices. Technically, 1% chance of Dragon was one of the potential outcomes, and so it didn't invalidate their choice, but from the Player perspective, it doesn't feel like you chose very much.

Sure, but if they hang out in the Ogre Mountains they'll still find lots of Ogres, presumably. That's not a guarantee that that's all they find.

The idea that the PCs get to decide exactly what they will and won't encounter is a bit odd to me. They have input, by going places where certain things are more or less likely to be. But that's not a guarantee.


You could have a custom Ogre Mountain table full of different Ogre encounters, but then we get into the question of where your Tables are coming from.

Presumably you're making them as the GM?


Edit: A lot of GM's will use a hybrid model, using some sort of Randomness to generate the shape of the encounter (3 Ogre Bandits), and then generate specifics to fit the campaign/make things more interesting (3 Ogres Bandits who are specifically on the lookout for Gnolls, but will try to rob anybody they happen to run into)

... that's what I would assume would be the default. "You encounter X, roll initiative!" isn't very good GMing in my book.

BRC
2021-10-04, 04:41 PM
Presumably you're making them as the GM?


Is there a relevant difference between "The GM Decides" and "The GM rolls on a table of their own design?" from a player agency perspective?

Random Encounter Tables in books exist to provide guidance/ easy tools to GMs. I guess there are scenarios where a GM might decide the PC's are wandering a particular place long enough to justify a whole table, but in general, what's the motivation for a GM to create a random encounter table just so they can roll on it, vs constructing a single encounter that makes sense with the story.



... that's what I would assume would be the default.

The thing is, if we're discussing GM Decision vs Randomness, I'd say that the hybrid approach falls way more under GM decision.

The PC's Are being chased by the agents of the Dark Lord!

The Railroading GM says "They encounter Knights of the Dark Lord"

The Random GM says "The table says Ogres. I say these ogres work for the Dark Lord".

Either way, it's minions of the Dark Lord.




Not necessarily, I don't think. In the "PCs need to go to Townsville, they can go through the PLeasant Plains or Ogre Mountain" scenario, I think having the GM be more neutral is better. Otherwise it's not really the PCs weighing risks - it's the PCs having to second guess the GM.


Okay, so you actually raise a very interesting point here as regards player agency. The idea that decisions are most accurately about Risk.

"Path A has a 60% chance of Ogres. Path B is longer, but has an only 20% chance of Ogres" is a very different decision than "Ogres have been harassing travelers along Path A, while Gnolls have been seen on Path B".

The first is about weighing risk vs reward, the benefit of a shorter journey vs the risk of Ogres.

The second is accepting some sort of road encounter as a narrative inevitability, and is about asking the Players to choose which foes they'd rather face.

The use of tables makes the decision less precise (You don't get to precisely pick what is going to happen), but more...true to form I want to say?

If you pick Route A in the "Table" scenario, you know exactly what you are choosing. You don't know what the outcome is going to be, but you are choosing the route with a higher chance of ogres, and that's exactly what you're getting. You are choosing which table to roll on. You have perfect knowledge of the choice you are making, "A higher chance of encountering Ogres".


If you pick Route A in the "DM's Choice" Scenario, you are signaling to the GM your preference of ogres vs gnolls, but it doesn't map directly. It's still up to the GM what happens on that road, you've just indicated a preference of sorts.

Tanarii
2021-10-04, 05:00 PM
That's not how random encounter work, and it's not how quantum ogres work.

Quantum Ogre is no matter which path the players choose between woods A, B and C, they will always encounter an Ogre in the first one and the McGuffin in the next one.

Random encounters are a % chance that after X amount of time, something bad will happen. They're a method of promoting player agency, by making spending or not spending time a meaningful decision.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 05:33 PM
That's not how random encounter work, and it's not how quantum ogres work.

Quantum Ogre is no matter which path the players choose between woods A, B and C, they will always encounter an Ogre in the first one and the McGuffin in the next one.

Random encounters are a % chance that after X amount of time, something bad will happen. They're a method of promoting player agency, by making spending or not spending time a meaningful decision.

Exactly.


Is there a relevant difference between "The GM Decides" and "The GM rolls on a table of their own design?" from a player agency perspective?

Because as you pointed out, it's the scenario setup that matters. Do the players have agency? You can have scenarios of both GM-decided and random tables where there is agency, and where there's not.


Random Encounter Tables in books exist to provide guidance/ easy tools to GMs. I guess there are scenarios where a GM might decide the PC's are wandering a particular place long enough to justify a whole table, but in general, what's the motivation for a GM to create a random encounter table just so they can roll on it, vs constructing a single encounter that makes sense with the story.

To add non-determinism? Like, isn't that why we roll for anything?

If you have a single encounter that you will always encounter, then there's no agency whatsoever. If you get an encounter that differs based on your action, there is.

Honestly, this is feeling less and less like a good faith discussion. What exactly is your point here? What is the position you're taking?


The thing is, if we're discussing GM Decision vs Randomness, I'd say that the hybrid approach falls way more under GM decision.

The PC's Are being chased by the agents of the Dark Lord!

The Railroading GM says "They encounter Knights of the Dark Lord"

The Random GM says "The table says Ogres. I say these ogres work for the Dark Lord".

Either way, it's minions of the Dark Lord.

What. This doesn't make sense. In one case, the GM is deciding "this is exactly what will happen." In the other the GM may decide (and that'd be kind of a jerk move as described) to shoehorn the encounter into the scenario.


Okay, so you actually raise a very interesting point here as regards player agency. The idea that decisions are most accurately about Risk.

Uh, not most accurately. That is one scenario where it's useful, yes.


"Path A has a 60% chance of Ogres. Path B is longer, but has an only 20% chance of Ogres" is a very different decision than "Ogres have been harassing travelers along Path A, while Gnolls have been seen on Path B".

The first is about weighing risk vs reward, the benefit of a shorter journey vs the risk of Ogres.

Yes, exactly.


The second is accepting some sort of road encounter as a narrative inevitability, and is about asking the Players to choose which foes they'd rather face.

I can see that. But that's also not a Quantum Ogre, so.... at that point we're talking about tools and preferences. Use the right tool for the job? Like, GM-designed encounters clearly aren't bad?


The use of tables makes the decision less precise (You don't get to precisely pick what is going to happen), but more...true to form I want to say?

Verisimillitude? The feeling of being in a living breathing world where not everything is aimed specifically at your characters?

Again, I'm not saying that random encounters are the right tool for all games and all occasions. I haven't used them in quite a while.

I am saying that they're a useful tool, and one that does not inherently invalidate player agency. They can be used in ways that invalidate player agency, for sure. Just about any tool can be.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 05:46 PM
Or, to put it simply, we can look at it like a function.

NewState = OldState * (PlayerInput + GMInput + RandomInput)

PlayerInput + GMInput + RandomInput add to some constant - so that as one increases, the other decreases. What matters if you have agency is that PlayerInput is not zero, and preferably significant. Whether the rest of it is GMInput or RandomInput is pretty much irrelevant in terms of agency (though it can result in different feels). If PlayerInput is zero or close to zero, then there is a feeling of no agency. You don't increase agency by shifting GMInput to RandomInput, or vice versa. You increase it by shifting it to PlayerInput.

(Also, maximizing PlayerInput isn't necessarily the goal)

RandomPeasant
2021-10-04, 05:54 PM
Rolling off a random table has a clear psychological difference from the DM picking an encounter, at least if the DM didn't make the table himself. If you encounter an Ogre because the DM put an Ogre there, and Ogre happens to be an encounter that screws your party over, that feels like the DM screwing your party over. If you encounter an Ogre because the DM rolled "Ogre" on the "Mountains, Low Level" random encounter table, and Ogre happens to be an encounter that screws your party over, that feels like bad luck. That distinction is important.


Random encounters are a % chance that after X amount of time, something bad will happen. They're a method of promoting player agency, by making spending or not spending time a meaningful decision.

I don't think that's what most people would consider to be the core definition of a random encounter. In general, "random encounter" is more about "what's in the encounter is random" than "encounter itself is random". In that respect, a "random encounter" is more agency than "periodically the DM picks a monster for you to throw down with", but less than "there are Ogres in the Ogre Hills and if you go there you will fight Ogres".

Tanarii
2021-10-04, 06:43 PM
I don't think that's what most people would consider to be the core definition of a random encounter. In general, "random encounter" is more about "what's in the encounter is random" than "encounter itself is random".
Yes, lots of folks misunderstand the purpose of random encounters. That's been the case since the original D&D rules.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 06:46 PM
Also, "random encounter" like "planned encounter" is kind of meaningless without the greater context. Neither speaks to player agency, since neither term, by itself, has anything to do with a player decision.

How, and why, they're pulled out is where there's an opportunity for agency. If you pinhole down to "oh, you roll the dice and that's what they encounter", then of course there's no agency (just like "oh, the GM decides what they encounter" doesn't have agency). The agency comes from the rest of the context - is the random roll in response to a player action? Is it something that would happen anyway? Do the players have any input into when or which table is rolled, or how often?

It's kind of like arguing whether ice cream or cake has more cherries. Either can, and neither can.

RandomPeasant
2021-10-04, 07:36 PM
"Planned encounter" speaks to greater agency on the part of the DM. That's true regardless of the context, and it's far from meaningless.


Yes, lots of folks misunderstand the purpose of random encounters. That's been the case since the original D&D rules.

You know, usually when there's a debate that's be happening for decades, it's not because your side is definitely right and everyone who disagrees with you just doesn't understand things. But I'm sure this time is different.

Frogreaver
2021-10-04, 10:16 PM
So part of the problem is that what are deemed requirements for player agency are so overly broad that they conflict with alot of other things that the DM is supposed to do - like introduce new fiction.

Consider after a few sessions the DM introduces Barbarian Tribes from distant lands raiding villages on the outskirts of the kingdom. This event wasn't in response to any player actions (think living world style game where things often occur without player input). Did introducing those Barbarian Tribes raiding those villages take away player agency?

Now compare this to the example of introducing an ogre encounter to the players. This event also wasn't in response to any player actions (or at least trivial ones - such as leaving the city). Does this take away player agency?

Now consider whether introducing that Ogre encounter is any different of a process than introducing those raiding Barbarians?

IMO. Most of you will find no issues with the Barbarian Tribes but will still find issues with the Ogre. What's the actual difference there?

Tanarii
2021-10-04, 11:10 PM
You know, usually when there's a debate that's be happening for decades, it's not because your side is definitely right and everyone who disagrees with you just doesn't understand things. But I'm sure this time is different.
It's different when the game designer told us the purpose, and people just ignore it / don't read it and make up their own interpretation.

I'm not saying the word "random" doesn't mean rolled off a table of options. But the reason for them, to make time spent in the dungeon or dangerous wilderness a meaningful purpose, was in place when they were "wandering monsters", before the phrase "random encounters" became the norm.

OldTrees1
2021-10-04, 11:37 PM
So part of the problem is that what are deemed requirements for player agency are so overly broad that they conflict with alot of other things that the DM is supposed to do - like introduce new fiction.

Consider after a few sessions the DM introduces Barbarian Tribes from distant lands raiding villages on the outskirts of the kingdom. This event wasn't in response to any player actions (think living world style game where things often occur without player input). Did introducing those Barbarian Tribes raiding those villages take away player agency?

Now compare this to the example of introducing an ogre encounter to the players. This event also wasn't in response to any player actions (or at least trivial ones - such as leaving the city). Does this take away player agency?

Now consider whether introducing that Ogre encounter is any different of a process than introducing those raiding Barbarians?

IMO. Most of you will find no issues with the Barbarian Tribes but will still find issues with the Ogre. What's the actual difference there?

Player agency is comprised of informed meaningful impactful choices. There needs to be a choice, that the players know enough to make an informed decision about (in RPGs this often means the PCs need to know too), that the players care about, and whose outcome depends on the choice rather than being an illusion of choice (both doors leading to the same destination is not a choice).

Player agency can be reduced by several means. Obviously we are talking about reduced in the abstract sense, we don't literally mean it had to exist in state A first. We are comparing the amount of agency in state A vs state B.
1) Having fewer choices
2) Reducing the scope of the choices
3) Remove information to reduce the informed choice
4) Changing the value of the choices (aka make it not something the players care about)
5) Removing the choice from a choice (aka make it a non choice)

The Quantum Ogre sees method 3 (depending on how informed the PCs were) and method 5. Sometimes this reduction is from 0 to 02 by reducing another axis to 0 rather than a net reduction.

Adding "Barbarian Tribes from distant lands" has reduced player agency in comparison to a campaign where the players have world building choices. If the players had choices about where other tribes could be, then they would have more player agency than a campaign where they did not have those choices. However generally playgroups are not playing games with that high of player agency. I run a sandbox campaign and I don't offer anything near that level of agency beyond session 0 (I take feedback in session 0 before I finish creating the sandbox. This could include backstory elements the players want).

So would most people say "Barbarian Tribes from distant lands" has reduced player agency? No. Their baseline assumptions for player agency are not including the kinds of player choices that would be reduced in agency by the GM adding "Barbarian Tribes from distant lands".


IMO. Most of you will find no issues with the Barbarian Tribes but will still find issues with the Ogre. What's the actual difference there?
Different players have different preferences about how much agency they want in different areas/topics/aspects of the game. Just because someone dislikes the typical Quantum Ogre, does not mean they dislike having less than 100% player agency. It is possible for someone to dislike one type of reduced player agency and not dislike another.

My answer above about why the two are different does not give a specific answer why a specific player might have preferences about one and not the other. I expect you will understand this omission.

Batcathat
2021-10-05, 01:16 AM
Rolling off a random table has a clear psychological difference from the DM picking an encounter, at least if the DM didn't make the table himself. If you encounter an Ogre because the DM put an Ogre there, and Ogre happens to be an encounter that screws your party over, that feels like the DM screwing your party over. If you encounter an Ogre because the DM rolled "Ogre" on the "Mountains, Low Level" random encounter table, and Ogre happens to be an encounter that screws your party over, that feels like bad luck. That distinction is important.

While I'm sure this can be true for some groups, I doubt it's true for all. As I mentioned in the random encounter thread, I've never really used random encounters as a GM nor (that I can remember) been subjected to them as a player and while there's certainly been times when planned encounters have screwed the party over, I don't think there's ever been any sentiment that it's the GM doing it.

That said, I could see a point of using random encounters if there was a lack of trust between the GM and the players. "See, I'm leaving it up to chance."

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-05, 01:44 AM
Thats not precisely what I was thinking of by that. At that part of typing up my post, I was thinking of how you might be able to have no ideas in mind (let alone written down), no location and no hooks or plot or scenario, and spin it out of nothing but the PCs. Which is where I ended up by the end of typing it up. (My posts are often a thinking it through process as I type.)

Also, there is no defense for illusionism. :smallyuk:

Ah. AW does the same I believe? Yes, that does seem like a pretty good example of that method.

Also after having spent a very long time digesting it and rereading the rules, DW seems like a terrible game. The rules in specifically and the entire style of PtbA play in general are just a terrible fit for the intended goal, dungeon crawling.

I mean, if you discount taking notes of what's already happened and the "planning" meaning reviewing them so there are no continuity errors, an AW-like start might work. OTOH fairly sure if I did that kind of review I'd find ideas for next time popping in to head in advance. :smallamused:

Also IIRC AW includes quite a lot of planning in session prep, after the first session. Fronts, creating clocks, etc.

Oh that is how DW works. Fronts as such come from DW originally. Absolutely you review your notes and that gives you ideas for the next session. Again my point is just that those ideas need not be sacrosanct - anything can be altered or thrown out at the table. There is a principle in both games about “following from the fiction”, so continuity is valued. You just don’t have this deep-seated idea that I find a lot of RPGers have about the game world being fixed and defined before the game starts.

And I’m curious about why you think the PbtA style isn’t right for dungeon crawling? I love it so much that I can’t envision going back to running 5E except for a game that was explicitly about fighting monsters and where I probably WOULD be railroading the players from one set-piece battle to the next (with their buy-in of course).


That thread's title is using the wrong word. You might enjoy that thread too.

Yes…


There's also this thing where if you have a discussion about some particular question or situation, and at some point it becomes a discussion about definitions, you tend to completely lose the possibility of novel insight about the original situation and get snagged in a mire. Sharing definitions is good for smooth communication, but if you find that definitions weren't shared then I think the thing to do is to find out what the speaker meant, not argue about what the speaker technically said.

And also yes. I’m happy to bow to consensus about how to use the term illusionism, but I still think a lot of people overvalue the idea of the game world existing independently of the game itself as a check against railroading. I should have just said that.

Rather than start rambling about semiotics and poststructuralism I will just quote Thor in my favourite line in the MCU movies: “all words are made up.”

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-05, 02:22 AM
The only way to avoid "Railroading" and "Schrodinger's Dungeon" is to not have a "story" or "plot" to your game at all. Your players just run around doing whatever they want with no real goals to accomplish beyond "kill things, loot the bodies." The players are in total control and the DM is just there as an organic random encounter generator. The players get to have an effect on anything they want. They can kill the King and sell the Queen into slavery for lulz if they want to. But that kind of totally freeform game gets old real fast.

If you want to have any kind of central plot to your campaign, you are going to have to guide the players along from start to finish...there HAS to be a chain of events that move the story along, which means that the DM is going to HAVE to either guide the players to the story elements, or bring the story elements to the players. There's no other way around it.

This point of view is the original reason why I got involved in this thread: I can’t overstate how strongly I disagree.

Why would not having a plot and letting the players drive the events mean they will have no goal? They choose their own goal and then go after it.

Why would any goal they do choose necessarily end up being to kill people and loot the bodies? (Ok, I know this one, it’s because we play games where that’s what the game system encourages, but no system I can think of makes killing and looting *for their own sake* the only option).

Why would the GM be reduced to an organic random encounter generator with no agency of their own? The GM still has more authority over more things than the players do even if not running a predetermined narrative. Every time the players look at the the GM to see what happens next, the GM gets to tell them. Yea you’re limited by the established fiction (and the established expectations about what kind of game the group is playing), but that doesn’t mean you need a predetermined narrative with only the illusion of the players’ influence.

So the players decide to kill the king and sell the Queen into slavery. What’s the problem, assuming the group has agreed in session 0 or whatever that they’ll be playing a part of violent, self-serving scoundrels? Once the king is dead and the PCs are enjoying their riches, it’s the GM’s job to think about the repercussions of their actions and bring them to bear, and then the group finds out together what happens next. Why does that inevitably get old fast? Sounds like fun to me.

And yes there does have to be a chain of events, but… there will be. However you go about it. The GM can bring story elements to the players, absolutely - and the players can bring story elements to the GM. You combine them live at the table, along with the input of the dice rolls and mechanics, and the chain of events emerges from that. That’s what an RPG is, as far as I’m concerned.

Sorry to go in your post. Obviously do what works for you, if your group is having fun then it’s all good. I just happen to have the exact polar opposite perspective on it.

Quertus
2021-10-05, 05:25 AM
After a GM has made a wandering monster roll and interpreted the results to mean that the players will encounter a monster - at that point an encounter is inevitable.

Does it actually matter when the GM decided the encounter was inevitable in order for it to be a quantum ogre? Would the GM’s roll not have came up the same whichever way the players went?


If the tables are set up right?

Yeah, it would change. The random encounters for Death Mountain aren’t the same as Idyllic Valley.

So… once upon a time, I rolled a random encounter for the party, and it was Ogres.

Me: "as you travel to X, you spot a pack of Ogres in the distance."

Party: "but we were headed to Y…"

Me: <realizes that there are Ogres on that random encounter table, too, and too lazy to switch books / switch focus and roll again> "as you travel to Y, you spot a pack of Ogres in the distance."

Curious where the Playground thinks this example lies.

But, yeah, in general, different areas have different tables, and, as the characters learn what the area is like, that gives the players Agency to make meaningful decisions.


The problem with creating definitions that explicitly include value judgments is that if you're doing it in good faith (e.g. not just trying to trick people into accepting your moral framework implicitly), then you have to accept arguments like "This particular killing isn't murder because I'm deciding to approve of it" as valid and in fact a proper way to discuss the topic. Meaning that now everyone has to add a bit of boilerplate whenever they use the word, e.g. "The players murdered (in my view) this NPC, and as a result...", "(To me) that's murder", etc.

Even if you use 'without permission' as the explicit definition, as long as you're intending the word to serve a role as having an implicit value judgment you're going to have this problem. As soon as someone decides that killing without permission isn't always bad (for whatever reason), you're going to have an irreducible argument if you try to lean on the value judgment part of the term to do any lifting.

Agreed. "Murder is bad, by definition" fails when you meet the Ender's Game trilogy, or MCU Drax. Implicit in my statement of "Murder is bad, by definition" is a requirement of a sufficiently shared ethos as to be able to agree that murder is, in fact, bad. Which does still lead to confusion if, even after the term is defined, someone is like, "what's the deal, it's just murder", let alone "so, I get that we're talking about the Exalted Good act of murder, but what are you trying to vilify?".

However, murder does still have a solid definition, that isn't subjective. "Murder is defined" is fact; it's the "is bad by definition" statement that carries the value judgement that might not be universal.

That is, Railroading is defined (or, well, we're working in that :smalltongue:). That it's bad by definition is the value judgement.

And, personally, I'd much rather someone say, "but why is murder bad?", and have the tricky case be, "this person does not share my value judgement", than have confusion regarding the definition of Railroading.

JNAProductions
2021-10-05, 05:44 AM
So… once upon a time, I rolled a random encounter for the party, and it was Ogres.

Me: "as you travel to X, you spot a pack of Ogres in the distance."

Party: "but we were headed to Y…"

Me: <realizes that there are Ogres on that random encounter table, too, and too lazy to switch books / switch focus and roll again> "as you travel to Y, you spot a pack of Ogres in the distance."

Curious where the Playground thinks this example lies.

But, yeah, in general, different areas have different tables, and, as the characters learn what the area is like, that gives the players Agency to make meaningful decisions.

In an ideal world, you would've used the same roll but looked up what that was on the other table.

But in terms of actual, in-game and out-of-game impact, seems really minor. If I were a player at your table then, I would assume you just misspoke and think nothing much of it.

As with a lot of stuff, intent matters-you were not actively trying to reduce player agency or make the game any worse, you just made a minor goof and rolled with it.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-05, 07:49 AM
In an ideal world, you would've used the same roll but looked up what that was on the other table.

But in terms of actual, in-game and out-of-game impact, seems really minor. If I were a player at your table then, I would assume you just misspoke and think nothing much of it.

As with a lot of stuff, intent matters-you were not actively trying to reduce player agency or make the game any worse, you just made a minor goof and rolled with it.

Completely agree. If you weren’t making GMing decisions to force a particular sequence of events then you weren’t railroading imo. Arguably you were quantum ogreing but that’s just a technique that is sometimes used for railroading.

Mutazoia
2021-10-05, 09:30 AM
This point of view is the original reason why I got involved in this thread: I can’t overstate how strongly I disagree.

Why would not having a plot and letting the players drive the events mean they will have no goal? They choose their own goal and then go after it.

Why would any goal they do choose necessarily end up being to kill people and loot the bodies? (Ok, I know this one, it’s because we play games where that’s what the game system encourages, but no system I can think of makes killing and looting *for their own sake* the only option).

I think you answered your first question with your second. But for the record, how are the majority of XP gained in most games? (hint, killing, and looting).


Why would the GM be reduced to an organic random encounter generator with no agency of their own? The GM still has more authority over more things than the players do even if not running a predetermined narrative. Every time the players look at the the GM to see what happens next, the GM gets to tell them. Yea you’re limited by the established fiction (and the established expectations about what kind of game the group is playing), but that doesn’t mean you need a predetermined narrative with only the illusion of the players’ influence.

If the players decide the goals and direction of the game, the GMs role becomes purely reactionary. To take the example to the N-th level, any attempt to add an element to the story that the players themselves did not directly initiate could be seen as "railroading" ("What do you mean the city we are in is being attacked by Orcs?? You're trying to get us to introduce a plot arc!")


So the players decide to kill the king and sell the Queen into slavery. What’s the problem, assuming the group has agreed in session 0 or whatever that they’ll be playing a part of violent, self-serving scoundrels? Once the king is dead and the PCs are enjoying their riches, it’s the GM’s job to think about the repercussions of their actions and bring them to bear, and then the group finds out together what happens next. Why does that inevitably get old fast? Sounds like fun to me.

Oh, it is fun. For a little while. More so for the players. But trust me, getting everything you want, when you want it gets old and usually devolves into nothing more than an extended power trip.


And yes there does have to be a chain of events, but… there will be. However, you go about it. The GM can bring story elements to the players, absolutely - and the players can bring story elements to the GM. You combine them live at the table, along with the input of the dice rolls and mechanics, and the chain of events emerges from that. That’s what an RPG is, as far as I’m concerned.

The general consensus seems to be that if the GM works to come up with a story element, and the players simply choose to ignore it, the GM is supposed to scrap all of that work. If they try to use the work elsewhere, they are now "railroading" players. Meanwhile, what a lot of anti-railroading posts seem to advocate is still railroading...it's just the players railroading the GM. Let the players decide their own goals equates to let the players railroad the GM into having to constantly come up with content on the fly while the PCs roll around the game world like a giant ball of chaos.

kyoryu
2021-10-05, 10:33 AM
Consider after a few sessions the DM introduces Barbarian Tribes from distant lands raiding villages on the outskirts of the kingdom. This event wasn't in response to any player actions (think living world style game where things often occur without player input). Did introducing those Barbarian Tribes raiding those villages take away player agency?

Now compare this to the example of introducing an ogre encounter to the players. This event also wasn't in response to any player actions (or at least trivial ones - such as leaving the city). Does this take away player agency?

Now consider whether introducing that Ogre encounter is any different of a process than introducing those raiding Barbarians?

IMO. Most of you will find no issues with the Barbarian Tribes but will still find issues with the Ogre. What's the actual difference there?

Because you're over-reducing and mis-understanding the issue. The issue is not "the GM introduces elements". Of course the GM does that.

The issue is not even really the Ogre. The issue is leading players down a pre-defined path while pretending that they have the ability to choose what they do. The "Quantum Ogre" is an example of a technique used to that end - specifically, offering players a choice that superficially appears to matter but doesn't actually. That is of course one technique that is used, but not the only technique.

Is introducing invading barbarians railroading? Maybe. That depends entirely on how much freedom the PCs are given. It's entirely possible that the barbarians will lead off a completely linear set of encounters - and also entirely possible that the barbarians are a situation that the players can respond to in any of a number of ways, with no planned sequence.


This point of view is the original reason why I got involved in this thread: I can’t overstate how strongly I disagree.

That's the frustrating thing. People constantly stating something is impossible that I do all the time. I'd love to have a conversation about how to accomplish it.


If the players decide the goals and direction of the game, the GMs role becomes purely reactionary. To take the example to the N-th level, any attempt to add an element to the story that the players themselves did not directly initiate could be seen as "railroading" ("What do you mean the city we are in is being attacked by Orcs?? You're trying to get us to introduce a plot arc!")

No? The fact that the players get to set a direction doesn't mean that they set everything. The ideas of the players and GM mix up. And usually that level of "direction setting" is done up front.


Oh, it is fun. For a little while. More so for the players. But trust me, getting everything you want, when you want it gets old and usually devolves into nothing more than an extended power trip.

Who said anything about "getting everything you want"? Nobody did. That's a strawman.


The general consensus seems to be that if the GM works to come up with a story element, and the players simply choose to ignore it, the GM is supposed to scrap all of that work. If they try to use the work elsewhere, they are now "railroading" players.

A better way to deal with this is to get broad buy-in from the players in advance as to what type of game it is, and then prepare in such a way that can handle players not sticking completely to your planned set of encounters. Or, if you really want to do that planned set of encounters, getting players to agree that's what the game is in advance.


Meanwhile, what a lot of anti-railroading posts seem to advocate is still railroading...it's just the players railroading the GM. Let the players decide their own goals equates to let the players railroad the GM into having to constantly come up with content on the fly while the PCs roll around the game world like a giant ball of chaos.

No, we're advocating players and the GM both having input into what happens. The GM sets the world, its NPCs, and their choices, and the players get to decide what choices the PCs make. Together, those create "the story".

Frogreaver
2021-10-05, 11:40 AM
Because you're over-reducing and mis-understanding the issue. The issue is not "the GM introduces elements". Of course the GM does that.

So the point was that there aren't any significant differences between what the GM is doing in either case. Saying that I am misunderstanding or that's okay for the GM to do that doesn't actually address my point.


The issue is not even really the Ogre. The issue is leading players down a pre-defined path while pretending that they have the ability to choose what they do. The "Quantum Ogre" is an example of a technique used to that end - specifically, offering players a choice that superficially appears to matter but doesn't actually. That is of course one technique that is used, but not the only technique.

Is introducing invading barbarians railroading? Maybe. That depends entirely on how much freedom the PCs are given. It's entirely possible that the barbarians will lead off a completely linear set of encounters - and also entirely possible that the barbarians are a situation that the players can respond to in any of a number of ways, with no planned sequence.

One thing I've noticed is that predefined paths get defined however one wishes them to. For example with quantum ogre's no one asks for the context about the PC's choice of path or whether their path after the quantum ogre's takes them to the same place. But talk about distant raiding barbarians and suddenly all those things matter. My supposition is that it also matters in the case of quantum ogre's as well. Thus, just like not all raiding barbarians are railroads, neither are all quantum ogre's.


No? The fact that the players get to set a direction doesn't mean that they set everything. The ideas of the players and GM mix up. And usually that level of "direction setting" is done up front.

Again though, you didn't actually address his main point - that the DM can introduce fiction that is independent of players choices and that such fiction fits many definitions of railroading that have been provided in this thread.


No, we're advocating players and the GM both having input into what happens. The GM sets the world, its NPCs, and their choices, and the players get to decide what choices the PCs make. Together, those create "the story".

No doubt, but you aren't addressing the hard questions of how such things impact agency.

Batcathat
2021-10-05, 11:51 AM
Again though, you didn't actually address his main point - that the DM can introduce fiction that is independent of players choices and that such fiction fits many definitions of railroading that have been provided in this thread.

I might have missed an example or two, but I think the difference between a GM introducing a plot element without input from the players and a GM invalidating the players' choices is quite significant.

To use Mutazoia's example... a GM having the city attacked by orcs isn't railroading by any definition of the word I've ever heard. What would be railroading is if the GM had decided that the party was supposed to face the orcs on the battle field and forced that to happen. "You try to flee? You're spotted. You try to lure them into a trap? They don't fall for it. You want to negotiate? They won't listen" and so on.

Frogreaver
2021-10-05, 11:55 AM
Player agency is comprised of informed meaningful impactful choices. There needs to be a choice, that the players know enough to make an informed decision about (in RPGs this often means the PCs need to know too), that the players care about, and whose outcome depends on the choice rather than being an illusion of choice (both doors leading to the same destination is not a choice).

Player agency can be reduced by several means. Obviously we are talking about reduced in the abstract sense, we don't literally mean it had to exist in state A first. We are comparing the amount of agency in state A vs state B.
1) Having fewer choices
2) Reducing the scope of the choices
3) Remove information to reduce the informed choice
4) Changing the value of the choices (aka make it not something the players care about)
5) Removing the choice from a choice (aka make it a non choice)

The Quantum Ogre sees method 3 (depending on how informed the PCs were) and method 5. Sometimes this reduction is from 0 to 02 by reducing another axis to 0 rather than a net reduction.

Adding "Barbarian Tribes from distant lands" has reduced player agency in comparison to a campaign where the players have world building choices. If the players had choices about where other tribes could be, then they would have more player agency than a campaign where they did not have those choices. However generally playgroups are not playing games with that high of player agency. I run a sandbox campaign and I don't offer anything near that level of agency beyond session 0 (I take feedback in session 0 before I finish creating the sandbox. This could include backstory elements the players want).

So would most people say "Barbarian Tribes from distant lands" has reduced player agency? No. Their baseline assumptions for player agency are not including the kinds of player choices that would be reduced in agency by the GM adding "Barbarian Tribes from distant lands".


Different players have different preferences about how much agency they want in different areas/topics/aspects of the game. Just because someone dislikes the typical Quantum Ogre, does not mean they dislike having less than 100% player agency. It is possible for someone to dislike one type of reduced player agency and not dislike another.

My answer above about why the two are different does not give a specific answer why a specific player might have preferences about one and not the other. I expect you will understand this omission.

As a thought experiment let's say the players are in a safe town. They have two quests that interest them. They choose one and head that direction. They encounter an ogre along the way, defeat him and continue on to their destination. Unbenowst to them, if they had chose the other destination they also would have encountered an ogre, defeated him and continued on to the other destination.

Obviously the players choice had no bearing on the encounter with the ogre, but it did have bearing on where they ended up and what quest they were going to attempt to complete. The meaningful choice in this example was the destination/quest and the ogre encounter in the middle was just transitioning. In practice, even Quantum Ogre's don't typically invalidate player choice, they are simply a fictional element the DM is introducing to make the journey more interesting.

Frogreaver
2021-10-05, 12:10 PM
I might have missed an example or two, but I think the difference between a GM introducing a plot element without input from the players and a GM invalidating the players' choices is quite significant.

To use Mutazoia's example... a GM having the city attacked by orcs isn't railroading by any definition of the word I've ever heard. What would be railroading is if the GM had decided that the party was supposed to face the orcs on the battle field and forced that to happen. "You try to flee? You're spotted. You try to lure them into a trap? They don't fall for it. You want to negotiate? They won't listen" and so on.

I think it depends on which definition of railroad you go with…. But really your at the crux - what does invalidating player choice actually look like? Can one invalidate an informationless choice? Are any DMs ever actually saying - no matter the situation X happens or is what’s going on behind the scenes more nuanced - ‘I know the plausible moves the players can make and introducing fictional element X in any of them makes sense’?

OldTrees1
2021-10-05, 12:31 PM
As a thought experiment let's say the players are in a safe town. They have two quests that interest them. They choose one and head that direction. They encounter an ogre along the way, defeat him and continue on to their destination. Unbenowst to them, if they had chose the other destination they also would have encountered an ogre, defeated him and continued on to the other destination.

Obviously the players choice had no bearing on the encounter with the ogre, but it did have bearing on where they ended up and what quest they were going to attempt to complete. The meaningful choice in this example was the destination/quest and the ogre encounter in the middle was just transitioning. In practice, even Quantum Ogre's don't typically invalidate player choice, they are simply a fictional element the DM is introducing to make the journey more interesting.

Would the players have had more or less agency if their choice did have bearing on the encounter with the ogre and they had the information to make an informed choice on that aspect?
Yes. In practice having a Quantum Ogre instead of an informed meaningful impactful choice is less agency than the alternative.

Do some players care about that specific decrease in agency?
Yes. You can see examples in this thread.

Do some players care about the quantum ogre because they dislike the superposition as a separate issue compared to there being multiple ogres flanking the town?
Yes. I am an example and there are a few others here too.

Did reduced agency (even reduced to 0) in one aspect of a choice render all other aspects likewise reduced to 0 agency?
No. Agency is not a binary. A choice can have more or less agency than other.

Is the answer to the 4th question preventing you from hearing the answers to the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd questions or vice versa?
No.

In practice using a Quantum Ogre instead of an informed meaningful impactful choice is a decrease in player agency that your players might care about. I suggest recognizing people can care about that and learning if your playgroup wants to avoid none/some/all quantum ogres. Maybe they have different preferences about Quantum BBEGs vs Quantum weather.

Frogreaver
2021-10-05, 01:07 PM
Would the players have had more or less agency if their choice did have bearing on the encounter with the ogre and they had the information to make an informed choice on that aspect?
Yes. In practice having a Quantum Ogre instead of an informed meaningful impactful choice is less agency than the alternative.


That’s a big place of disagreement. IMO, Agency is not a more or less affair. Either you have agency or you don’t. Either you had a meaningful choice or you didn’t. Either your meaningful choice was invalidated or it wasn’t.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-10-05, 01:15 PM
That’s a big place of disagreement. IMO, Agency is not a more or less affair. Either you have agency or you don’t. Either you had a meaningful choice or you didn’t. Either your meaningful choice was invalidated or it wasn’t.

Agency in what? In an individual choice, maybe, depending on the definition. But in a campaign? No. Because, fundamentally, you can't have full agency all the time (the rules have play, the DM has play, etc), which means that (by the binary definition) you don't have any agency at all, ever.

And even "having a meaningful choice" is a sliding scale. There are choices that are more or less meaningful than other choices. Going from "your choice influenced which of three pre-determined buttons show up to trigger pre-defined endings" to "your choice determines the parameters and influences the scenes shown in the endings" is going from a marginally-meaningful choice--you can make a choice, you have (by assertion) information that enables you to distinguish between the outcomes, and your choice changes the possible spectrum of outcomes--to a more meaningful choice, in which that last factor changes things from a choice of predetermined, pre-scripted outcomes to a more fluid, reactive set. I think by any reasonable definition you have more agency in the latter than in the former, but you have non-zero agency in the former.

kyoryu
2021-10-05, 01:25 PM
Agency in what? In an individual choice, maybe, depending on the definition. But in a campaign? No. Because, fundamentally, you can't have full agency all the time (the rules have play, the DM has play, etc), which means that (by the binary definition) you don't have any agency at all, ever.

I'm 90% sure that's the point. And if you never have agency, railroading is hunky dorey because everyone's doing it anyway!

kyoryu
2021-10-05, 01:30 PM
As a thought experiment let's say the players are in a safe town. They have two quests that interest them. They choose one and head that direction. They encounter an ogre along the way, defeat him and continue on to their destination. Unbenowst to them, if they had chose the other destination they also would have encountered an ogre, defeated him and continued on to the other destination.

Obviously the players choice had no bearing on the encounter with the ogre, but it did have bearing on where they ended up and what quest they were going to attempt to complete. The meaningful choice in this example was the destination/quest and the ogre encounter in the middle was just transitioning. In practice, even Quantum Ogre's don't typically invalidate player choice, they are simply a fictional element the DM is introducing to make the journey more interesting.

Again, you're getting too literal. While having the predetermined ogre in that case might be slightly suspect, it's not really railroading, provided that the two quests actually are different and the players actually can choose between them.

Quantum Ogres are a technique (the Magician's Choice) that is often used to subvert agency in a railroad.

In your example, it's not really a railroad. You might argue there's minor railroading going on at that point, but the overall structure does not appear to be a railroad.

It really seems like you're deliberately missing the point here.

What is your position, actually? All you've done is criticize positions, without ever making one of your own. What is the point you're trying to make, here?

-----

Here's my definition of agency:

Given a state of the game world, S1, where the players have to make a decision, the decisions available to players can result in various new states of the game world.

The difference in possible states of the world , and the number of possible resultant states, is a good measurement of agency. If all choices lead to the same next state, there's no agency. if you have a choice between two possible states that are the same except for small differences, you have very little agency.

Agency can be looked at at multiple levels, and in varying degrees. It is possible to have agency at a small level (like, during a combat) without having it at a larger level (you will still go through the same encounters)

In the "QO on the way to the quest" there's no agency at the "next encounter" level, but appears to be agency at the larger level. It's not uncommon for agency to decrease in some cases - for instance, if you do something to put yourself in jail (a result of agency), your choices will likely be highly limited for a bit. But since that's the result of your choices, overally agency is largely preserved.

BRC
2021-10-05, 01:50 PM
The more specific an example, the more vivid it is, but also the easier it is for the specifics of the scenario to derail it's point.

"The Quantum Ogre" example uses a random encounter on the road because that's an easy scenario to comprehend with minimal other context.

That exact scenario, A random ogre on a road, is a fairly harmless use of the technique. Nobody builds an entire campaign where the most significant outcome is running into an ogre on the road. It's just the GM being a bit lazy with planning an encounter, which is perfectly fine. GM's are people too, doing a lot of unpaid work for their friends. The occasional bit of slight of hand harms nobody's experience and is fine.


The Point behind the Quantum Ogre is that it's still railroading, still denying player agency, even if the Players don't realize what's happening, even if you don't contradict anything, even if the final result is still perfectly in line with everything that happened before.


The classic image of the Railroader is the power-tripping GM who, when their players try to go off the rails, throws up desperate walls and twists the narrative into knots to keep their pre-determined outcome in place. It's a rather pathetic figure. But it's easy to take the wrong lesson from that. If you're a GM prone to railroading, and you hear a story about some railroader having a breakdown when their players didn't stick to the script, it's easy to say "Oh, the problem is that the GM in that story was Bad At Railroading".

When we say "The quantum Ogre is bad", that's because Quantum Ogre is a shorthand for a railroading technique, and railroading is a shorthand for denying player agency, and denying player agency is bad.

The example of the Quantum Ogre itself, a random encounter on the road that gives people a chance to throw some dice, is fine.

kyoryu
2021-10-05, 01:55 PM
When we say "The quantum Ogre is bad", that's because Quantum Ogre is a shorthand for a railroading technique, and railroading is a shorthand for denying player agency, and denying player agency is bad.

The example of the Quantum Ogre itself, a random encounter on the road that gives people a chance to throw some dice, is fine.

I actually love this post, but I'm going to sliiiightly disagree with you.

QOs aren't necessarily bad - if the players are aware of the fact that it's a linear game, and have bought into that. Levels of agency is a preference - some people want more, some people are okay with or even prefer less. What matters is that everyone is on board with it. The issue with QOs and the like is when the GMs claim that the players do have agency, while doing everything possible to subvert it.

Is taking something of yours bad? Not if you tell me it's okay. Otherwise, yes.

I go back to the point I made with random encounters: It's usually not productive to talk about a technique being "bad". It's usually more productive to talk about when the technique is useful. Very, very few techniques are always bad. The closest I'd come is DMPCs, and they're not necessarily bad (they work sometimes!) but the risk of them blowing things up is high enough I always suggest avoiding them.

Batcathat
2021-10-05, 02:08 PM
I think it depends on which definition of railroad you go with…. But really your at the crux - what does invalidating player choice actually look like? Can one invalidate an informationless choice?

Personally, I would say that getting to pick between A and B without any information and having it result in different outcomes is more freedom than picking between A and B and having it result in the same outcome is better, yes, but admittedly the difference is rather philosophical at that point.


Are any DMs ever actually saying - no matter the situation X happens or is what’s going on behind the scenes more nuanced - ‘I know the plausible moves the players can make and introducing fictional element X in any of them makes sense’?

Sure, it doesn't have to be railroading if X shows up whether the party chooses A or B. It's likely they encounter ogres whether they go to the Ogre Mountains or the Ogre Swamps and hopefully the choice matters in other ways. But I don't think that's what people are complaining about when they're talking about Quantum Ogres or railroading but rather GMs that, yes, more or less say that no matter what, X happens.

BRC
2021-10-05, 02:13 PM
I actually love this post, but I'm going to sliiiightly disagree with you.

QOs aren't necessarily bad - if the players are aware of the fact that it's a linear game, and have bought into that. Levels of agency is a preference - some people want more, some people are okay with or even prefer less. What matters is that everyone is on board with it. The issue with QOs and the like is when the GMs claim that the players do have agency, while doing everything possible to subvert it.

Is taking something of yours bad? Not if you tell me it's okay. Otherwise, yes.

I'll agree with the greater point about Railroading, but I feel like the QO actually has little place in such a game, specifically.

Unlike most railroading techniques, the QO is a slight of hand at it's core. The players are presented with choices, but the outcome is predetermined.

If your players are okay with/aware of the fact that they're in a linear game, why bother with the sleight of hand at all?

I guess with the specific example of the random encounter on the road, it's easier than finding reasons to remove roads from contention, but I think the Quantum Ogre as random encounter is a harmless bit of shortcutting even in non-linear games.

For a linear game to use the quantum ogre (In any significant sense), the GM would need to present the players (Who are fine with being railroaded) what seems to be a significant choice, and then negate it.


I'm starting to dislike the phrase Quantum Ogre, since, as I've mentioned, the ogre on the road isn't really a significant choice, and it's hard to separate the term from the example. Here's a better one.


The PC's storm the dark lord's Fortress. The Dark Lord flips a switch and boasts "My tame wyvern is waiting for me on the roof! The Priestess you came here to rescue is chained to the bottom of a pit in my dungeon belowground, and the switch I just hit opened a pipe to fill that pit with water!". He then Vanishes, with what the PC's recognize is a short-range teleport spell.

The PC's are presented with a choice: Save the Priestess, or stop the Dark Lord from escaping.
(The GM wants them to Save the Priestess, doing so will have great ramifications for the rest of the campaign).

If the PC's go down to save the priestess, the Dark Lord escapes on his wyvern.
If the PC's go up, to intercept the Dark Lord...it turns out he was lying, he actually teleported down to a secret tunnel, and the Priestess's cell is on the top floor.


If the Players are onboard with railroading, what's the function of giving them the choice at all. Just have the Dark Lord vanish and the PC's rescue the priestess.

kyoryu
2021-10-05, 02:23 PM
I'll agree with the greater point about Railroading, but I feel like the QO actually has little place in such a game, specifically.

Unlike most railroading techniques, the QO is a slight of hand at it's core. The players are presented with choices, but the outcome is predetermined.

If your players are okay with/aware of the fact that they're in a linear game, why bother with the sleight of hand at all?

I generally do agree with this. But if the players are aware of the game structure, then while I might not find it necessary or useful, I don't see it as harmful any more.



I'm starting to dislike the phrase Quantum Ogre, since, as I've mentioned, the ogre on the road isn't really a significant choice, and it's hard to separate the term from the example. Here's a better one.


Outside of the RPG space, it's often called the Magician's Choice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forcing_(magic)
https://secrets-explained.com/basic-techniques/magician-s-choice

Frogreaver
2021-10-05, 02:39 PM
Sure, it doesn't have to be railroading if X shows up whether the party chooses A or B. It's likely they encounter ogres whether they go to the Ogre Mountains or the Ogre Swamps and hopefully the choice matters in other ways. But I don't think that's what people are complaining about when they're talking about Quantum Ogres or railroading but rather GMs that, yes, more or less say that no matter what, X happens.

I’d suggest that here in the forums many people see railroading around every corner. But in actuality when they dig into the topic they almost always backpedal to the point that railroading narrows down to being a very rare thing in actual practice.

See where the discussion has turned about quantum ogres for example. Now we have people going - yea quantum ogres aren’t railroading or quantum ogres aren’t really quantum ogres. In either case it illustrates the point.

MR_Anderson
2021-10-05, 02:46 PM
...

I am much more interested in finding out where the players will take the story rather than ensuring they will eventually meander to the same final destination.

If the players go tubing on a river, they will go downstream. If the players get out and try to climb a cliff, they may or may not reach the top. Maybe they decide to hike upstream. Maybe they take a flight to a lake. At this point the metaphor is being strained but it still holds.

No matter where the players go, there they are. I don't need to have them go to a "single final destination". They can blaze their own trail and we will discover where the final destination of this trail will be.

You are adding additional characteristic to the items in the river, which breaks the parable/metaphor I was using. The climbing a cliff, is the equivalent of an item diverting into a canal or taking some other path in the river. Hiking up stream is the equivalent of time travel.

For instance, you in your life are on a river and your story will end at some point, will it end at the end of the river or before? Most likely people and thusly characters die before the end of the entire river empties into the sea.

The question becomes what parts of the river do they see!


This is DMing. FOR YOU.

This is DMing. For you. AND SOME OTHERS.


I agree. I never know where the party will go more than a few sessions ahead, and that only because they've told me. They're considerate enough to stick to something once they've started, so I know what the "final destination" looks like...for this 2-3 session arc. I usually don't even know what the central conflict/BBEG will be until multiple levels into the campaign. And they've taken me on many twists and turns and unexpected detours. And I've thrown them for a few as the world reacts to them.

So you are using the river methodology. You are just viewing it from above the point of the players. You can see from the decisions that they made which places are coming like rapids, waterfalls, or flowing through a calm lake, but not developing start to finish.


Frankly, I think you're out-and-out wrong about GMing. Reading your post feels like someone who has only ever directed stage plays telling me that my film needs to consist only of a fixed camera pointed at a stage. To say I disagree with you completely would be an understatement.

...

I think you are “out-and-out wrong” about your assumptions of my methodology, but that is probably my fault for not giving explanation.

There is no script, the choices the players make impact the outcome of events at a level they can change.

Think of it like an improv show, not a play. There is an ultimate control by an entity (or multiple entities), but the majority of the show is the participants reacting to what the control(s) places before them. Ultimately there is a beginning and an end to the improv show, it is no different than that flow of the river, and great fun is had.

Players absolutely can impact their paths, but there often comes a point when their will is at conflict with power greater than them. Even if the players rise to become gods, is there not higher gods? If they rise yet again, there are yet even more. D&D Lore has a hierarchy of power, and the flow of that river will always fall with in that power scheme.


Think about MR_Anderson's River (I will describe my understanding of it as it relates). That campaign promises the Players that their PCs will eventually reach a predetermined finale. No matter how lost the PCs get there will be mechanics that guide them back to the river and towards downstream. It is strategic hard and soft denial or counteraction of player agency. When MR_Anderson is forthright about that campaign premise to their playgroup, I presume their playgroup liked the idea that their player agency would be denied/counteracted if they made a game breaking mistake. Sort of like how a sandbox GM might ask "are you sure?" except the GM and playgroup already decided they want to answer "no" to gamebreaking mistakes. So if the PCs get lost or are about to break the game, then MR_Anderson strategically negates that player agency as a means of satisfyingly the play preferences of MR_Anderson and the rest of their playgroup.

I think we would still call that a railroading mechanic despite the entire playgroup wanting the mechanic to be used. It is a mechanic that negates / denies player agency, and in this unusual situation that was something the playgroup valued positively.

That is why I have taken to using railroading as a neutral connotation describing the mechanisms that deny/decrease player agency that some (many) players might have preferences that object to some or all of those mechanism in some or all situations.

Your understanding is fairly close. I have sat down with the players together and individually, we’ve got a feel for where they want to go for the next 10-20 levels and what everyone wants out of the game. They may not achieve it based upon their decisions, or they may overachieve, again based upon their decisions.

Very few players ever know what the game is ultimately going to throw at them, but in certain instances I work some of it out with a player(s) ahead of time so they don’t think I’m screwing them over and/or their character’s progression isn’t worthless at some point. Thus future outcomes are DM and Player controlled, but there is an element of in the moment with dice and other players that might change everything planned.

I have a player who wanted to play a vampire, but I said absolutely not as it would not fit into the story, as some sense of a story must be maintained. This is one of our agreed upon rules. However, the same player has been tossed into a situation that he now knows more about vampires and has a possibility of becoming one. Prior to playing he didn’t know I changed Vampires in my world from regular D&D Vampires to Vampires that operate like those in Vampire the Masquerade.

I had no intention of allowing a player to become a vampire, but through a series of events the players have placed themselves in such a position to make it happen and make sense within the story. The players are confined within the path of the river, but that doesn’t mean they can’t find a path within the river itself that will achieve what they want.

It is the Job of a DM to ensure the players are enjoying the game, but the players are also buying into how the DM runs it, this is regardless of methodology. It is a mutual agreement on both sides.

I’ve been on both sides of completely player driven outcomes and player decided content. Ultimately, a certain player or a few players drive the entire group, and the DM is pulled in too many directions, it is fun for a few, but usually not all.


I would rather refer to those as LINEAR, rather than railroading.

Linear is more neutral, to me, while railroading has at least the implication of being forced or coerced.
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Well, that's the paradox - as I understand it, the River isn't exactly linear.

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So… to me… Railroading is the act of using the tools to negate player Agency. So I can understand (I think) the concept of the tools being neutral. Although "changing game physics or established facts" being put to good use sounds like a mythic rare occurrence, that requires "the River" level of explicit buy-in in session 0.

Actually… I'm not completely certain what tools "the River" uses.

Railroading is bad, because it is by definition bad. Illusionism is bad, because it is by definition bad. But the tool of "changing established facts" can, theoretically, have consequences that aren't horrific for all groups in all circumstances.

You are correct, fudging numbers or game physics to maintain the course of the story is railroading, and it is very bad. It does more harm than good to try and control the flow as the DM, an example is rather than just let a big bad guy be defeated earlier than what you planned, you force an escape from the situation instead of going with the flow. There is always another bad guy.

I look at the River methodology as follows:

It is just understanding the flow of a story. It could be undefined, semi-defined, or completely defined all the way through, but it must have sensible form.

Water doesn’t flow up hill unless something specifically is done to make that happen. Human nature is the same way, and players are human regardless of the character they play, thus stories are going to go in predictable directions for the most part, and illogical paths are blocked unless you are playing a Monty Python adventure.

The River metaphor helps to remind you that just like the passing water, that time for everything else doesn’t stop just because the players decided to do what they wanted to do. If they take time away from what is going on, the bad guy is still going to proceed with his/her plan.

Items in the same river can take different paths, but all paths lead down stream. Players do not have the ability to control everything about their world, but they can control things near them, and controlling enough things could change the entire flow. But, flowing water has to go somewhere, and they aren’t controlling the flow of that water forever, even diverting a river will still result in reaching the Sea almost every time, even by a different path.

Sometimes regardless of what people try to do, the river will always flow through a certain point that is inevitable; this is like the lowest pass in a mountain, no matter what is done above or below that point, a river will always find that point and flow through it.

Also, no matter where you are on a river, there is flow of the water before that point and after that point, and you should understand what those paths are, because you will be asked questions and it will contribute to players immersing themselves into the game.

This allows the Freewill of the DM to provide a flow, the Freewill of Players to be applied to the flow, and the product of those Freewills applied over a Controlled Randomness within a Logical Consistent Story.

I’ve been DM’ing for well over 20 years, and in my opinion it is the perfect system. Most of what the Players want is achieved, most of what the DM wants is also achieved. A little is given by both parties and sometimes both sides are surprised by the final product and a new or redefined flow of the River.

I do have buy-in from the players on certain things like not being so serious about every little check needed all the time, or making simple mistakes. We’ve implemented a “red light” system that we turn to red in certain encounters or situations so they know when absolute full attention to checks, movements, and choices is needed and that mistakes could result in character death or worse. This allows for a fun time to hang with the guys, as well as maintaining meaningful impact of decisions by the players as needed in certain key events.

This allows general fun and not stressing details about every rule every moment of each session. It’s an agreement that I as the DM, won’t screw them over for playing sloppy or distracted while at the same time they don’t complain about the decisions I make just to move the game forward at times.

Our group has played since the 80’s, so we have plenty of experience in D&D and have learned that we like characters and adventures that come together forming a story, something memorable. We’ve also learned the hard way what inter-party fighting does, so it is something that the DM can impose his will to try and prevent.

I know that not everyone will agree with these controls and this methodology, but that is okay. I just wanted to make sure people didn’t see it as absolutely Railroading or Linear style. The River methodology as I use it is basically Player Freewill tossed into the River the DM created of his/her Freewill. The players can do anything they want, so long as it makes sense storytelling-wise, and somethings are inevitable.

For instance the players in my game just found out that they live on one planet, and that there is at least one other near by that was/is inhabited. There are ships that sail among the stars called Aetherships, and there is an event coming that will basically destroy all life on their planet.

Did I railroad a Spelljammer adventure, some would say yes, but the cataclysm is the result of actions by other NPCs prior to the life of all the PCs, so they must deal with that event, as it had been set into motion already.

Do I want to run a Spelljammer Campaign, yes, but the players might decide to resettle elsewhere. I am willing to bet that after basically 40 years of playing together, knowing the players, and that they never have played Spelljammer (most of them not even knowing what Spelljammer is), they will want to explore what it has to offer.

BRC
2021-10-05, 03:03 PM
I generally do agree with this. But if the players are aware of the game structure, then while I might not find it necessary or useful, I don't see it as harmful any more.

I feel like the pointlessness is why it's harmful. In the standard scenario, the technique serves a function. Here it's just kind of random.


I’d suggest that here in the forums many people see railroading around every corner. But in actuality when they dig into the topic they almost always backpedal to the point that railroading narrows down to being a very rare thing in actual practice.

See where the discussion has turned about quantum ogres for example. Now we have people going - yea quantum ogres aren’t railroading or quantum ogres aren’t really quantum ogres. In either case it illustrates the point.

A quantum ogre is railroading. It's also a quantum ogre. But it's not always bad.


Think about it like Spicy Food.

Some people like spicy food, others do not. People who enjoy spicy food can probably enjoy mild food, people with low spice tolerance will hate spicy things.

For the sake of this argument, spicy food is generally considered a Bad Thing (This is where the metaphor falls apart a bit).

Put a drop of hot sauce directly on your tounge and it will burn. Put a drop of hot sauce in a bigger dish and the dish won't become spicy (A bit of Railroading can overwhelm a single scene, but railroading a single scene doesn't mean you've railroaded the whole campaign).


The Archetypical Quantum Ogre, a random encounter on the road to bigger and more important things, is that drop of hot sauce into the pot. Yes, it is Hot Sauce, and Yes, Hot Sauce is spicy, but it's inclusion does not necessarily produce a Spicy Dish.

If I ask you "Did you put anything spicy into this" and "is this dish spicy", those questions can have separate answers.

Frogreaver
2021-10-05, 03:13 PM
I feel like the pointlessness is why it's harmful. In the standard scenario, the technique serves a function. Here it's just kind of random.



A quantum ogre is railroading. It's also a quantum ogre. But it's not always bad.


Think about it like Spicy Food.

Some people like spicy food, others do not. People who enjoy spicy food can probably enjoy mild food, people with low spice tolerance will hate spicy things.

For the sake of this argument, spicy food is generally considered a Bad Thing (This is where the metaphor falls apart a bit).

Put a drop of hot sauce directly on your tounge and it will burn. Put a drop of hot sauce in a bigger dish and the dish won't become spicy (A bit of Railroading can overwhelm a single scene, but railroading a single scene doesn't mean you've railroaded the whole campaign).


The Archetypical Quantum Ogre, a random encounter on the road to bigger and more important things, is that drop of hot sauce into the pot. Yes, it is Hot Sauce, and Yes, Hot Sauce is spicy, but it's inclusion does not necessarily produce a Spicy Dish.

If I ask you "Did you put anything spicy into this" and "is this dish spicy", those questions can have separate answers.

Most quantum Ogres are just the DM introducing fiction to the game. If that’s railroading then everyone railroads.

Batcathat
2021-10-05, 03:17 PM
I’d suggest that here in the forums many people see railroading around every corner. But in actuality when they dig into the topic they almost always backpedal to the point that railroading narrows down to being a very rare thing in actual practice.

I think it's less about railroading being rare and more about it coming in many different degrees and people having varying tolerances to it. Railroading is rarely as obvious as "No, you can't do X, do Y instead" and usually more along the lines of letting players try lots of different things but not succeeding until they do it "right" (which, like the Quantum Ogre, isn't necessarily railroading but often is).

But by all means, if you have some indisputable examples of many people claiming railroading and almost always backpedaling, feel free to share.

BRC
2021-10-05, 03:33 PM
Most quantum Ogres are just the DM introducing fiction to the game. If that’s railroading then everyone railroads.

"Most uses of spices are just the chef introducing some flavor to the food. If that's cooking spicy food than everything is spicy"
And yet you can recognize the difference between bell peppers and jalapenos.