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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Troll in the Playground
     
    Kobold

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    Default Would you consider this too much railroading?

    A DM announces - before the very first session - that he already has a final boss planned and statted. The campaign is supposed to take place from levels 2 to about 18.

    Is it railroading to assume that your players won't have enough of an impact on the world in through these 17 levels that the final boss might chance?

    I'm not against some railroading, but this seems excessive. So what is it: Normal? Red flag? Time to jump ship?
    Last edited by heavyfuel; 2020-01-17 at 11:22 AM.

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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Well 2-18 is in most editions a long time period so that is setting up very far in advance.
    However it really depends heavily on play-style, to much railroading is highly subjective.
    Its so subjective that their is a lot of argument on what the definition of railroading even is.

    My players like a lot of "railroading" and while we simply would not have the time to run a 2-18 game, i do often know who the final boss is even if i dont tend to bother stating up that far ahead.

    Lots of people like pathfinders adventure paths and those are one big railroad so how much is to much railroad is a question only your group can answer.

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    As long as they are totally free to NOT fight the final Boss if at the time, they dont want or need to, there is nothing wrong with statting up and designing a Big Big Bad early on.

    And if the party is very Good and the Bad Guy very Evil, yet for some reasons not reachable (ideally in world, logical and System Reasons, mind!), then this can work out pretty well.

    As an Example, though not at the start of a game per se, but at the start of its second half, my palyers knew exactly who the big bad was. ANd msotly even WHERE.
    But they also knew he was protected by a field that killed everything alive around him, ahead of them in Power AND that while they had a way to teleport there, they ad no way tog et BACK, and so they decided against facing him "early".

    So in and on itself , it seems a bit too much effort too early on (after all, you never know the party will even last that long), but no Red Flag, or even Railroading at all (mind, having a Clear plot and a clear enemy is not Railroading!).

    YMMV though, as alweays.
    Last edited by GrayDeath; 2020-01-17 at 11:52 AM.
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    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Having a design for a final boss and assuming he will be around for the endgame has nothing at all to do with railroading.

    If he is willing to change rules and circumstances on the fly to ensure that nothing you do harms the final boss before the final battle, that would be railroading, but this does not follow from the situation you described. An assumption is an assumption, railroading is an action (or a lack of reaction).

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    This doesn't really relate to railroading. I doubt I'd be interested in a game that was this heavily plotted in advance though.

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    It's odd that the DM would announce it like that, but it's hardly a red flag.

    The DM could have pre-statted the boss because it's some kind of ancient being that ahs already achieved its peak before the start of the campaign, so the stats he made are the ones that are applicable, even if you decide to fight him at level 1 for some reason. Maybe the campaign is mostly about the PC's gathering enough power to beat the boss, and as long as you're fairly free to go about gathering power as you see fit, there's nothing railroady about it. For that kind of campaign, pre-statting the boss might even be be a good to avoid the temptation to build the boss to counter the PC's.
    Last edited by DeTess; 2020-01-17 at 01:48 PM.
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    OrcBarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    I'd say it's a sign that your GM might be a bit of an overpreparer, which could lead to railroading if they're too inflexible to roll with things if the players go out of the bounds of the grand plan.

    The only to find out how much railroading you're in for is through playing with that GM.

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    Ettin in the Playground
     
    OldWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Yes, it's railroading. 100%.

    Just like every Adventure Path or equivalent ever published. So it's a fairly common game style, and there's nothing wrong with it if you're into it.

    So our opinion doesn't matter. The question is if you can enjoy a game like that. Some can. Some can't. Personally, it's not my preference, but I can deal with it if I know it going into it.
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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    There's been a lot of good points raised in this thread - too many for me to agree with all of them.

    Yes, this is a warning sign that your GM's style may be inflexible, and they may sink to railroading if your styles are incompatible. If that is a concern for you, you should raise that concern.

    Now, me, I had figured out who was going to be the BBEG, gave the party the opportunity to help him rise to power (they took it), everything was going according to plan… and then they ended up joining him.

    Well, I rolled with it, threw out my plans, and ran the "ally of the BBEG" game.

    So, one can place an element in the game, and even give it an intended purpose, without railroading. It's when GMs grow too attached to their story rather than the party's story that you have to worry about railroading.

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Potentially: it's 0% railroading. I could easily envision a full sandbox campaign where once the players reach a certain level a doomsday end boss will attack them.

    This could also be a highly pseudo theater where the players have predefined roles and already scripted lines without their knowledge.

    If I were you I'd ask which it is. And if it's the latter I'd ask the DM to just give me the lines so I could evaluate if it's worth sticking around for. The rails might be so good they're worth it, but then I'd need to know in advance thank you.
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    Planetar

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    1) Railroading is on the way to handle the session, not on the preparation before. Sure, if your preparation is very focussed, you will be tempted to railroad your players, but it doesn't need to.

    2) There is a difference between "meta railroading" (the DM is in control of the scenario) and "in-universe railroading" (a NPC of group of NPCs has significant control over the scenario). I'd say having the final boss ready is a red flag for the second one. But as long as your DM doesn't want to railroad himself and just build the universe like that because he had fun building it like that (and DMs are allowed to have fun when preparing), you probably have a lot of ways to change the course of the campaign to whatever your group want.

    3) I'd personally react differently depending on the expected speed of the campaign. If your group use milestone levels with one level per session, I'd be far less wary than if you said me you expect this to be a 3 years campaign.

    4) "The campaign is supposed to take place from levels 2 to about 18". This sentence already assume some level of railroading (how do you even know level 18 will be a sweet spot to stop the campaign?). And a lot of optimism from the DM.

    In fact, more than railroading, this is more for a red flag for excessive optimism (on the capacity to maintain a campaign interesting up to level 18, on fact that preparing materials for high level fights as soon as now will actually be useful, ...).

  12. - Top - End - #12
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    WolfInSheepsClothing

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by Berenger View Post
    Having a design for a final boss and assuming he will be around for the endgame has nothing at all to do with railroading.

    If he is willing to change rules and circumstances on the fly to ensure that nothing you do harms the final boss before the final battle, that would be railroading, but this does not follow from the situation you described.
    yes, exactly. your dm may be an overpreparer, or maybe he simply found himself idly wondering "let's see how powerful this dude is" and statted the guy. i've done that myself.
    as for knowing that he'll be the big bad, it may imply railroading, but if he's sufficiently bad and sufficiently powerful, then it's pretty much guaranteed that he'll be the big bad. simply because there is no one else bigger and badder to take the spot.
    but i don't see how that can really be railroading. there is a guy who had a centuries old masterplan to do really bad thingsTM. the party, being generally good-aligned1, will have every reason to try and stop this guy. and that's it.

    1 technically, the party is free to be bad guys and join up the villain. however, you generally know this before the campaign starts. Me, I'd not be comfortable dming or even playing an evil campaign, so I ask as a premise that the party is decently heroic


    EDIT
    Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
    Potentially: it's 0% railroading. I could easily envision a full sandbox campaign where once the players reach a certain level a doomsday end boss will attack them.
    this actually sums up my point very nicely
    Last edited by King of Nowhere; 2020-01-17 at 03:21 PM.
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    BarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    I'd consider this the overpreparation that leads to railroading.

    Players are strange, they are prone to do things their own way, they bypass adventures with cleverness, they defeat the boss with politics and manipulation rather than hitting it until it runs out of hit points.

    This kind of preparation means that the GM has a plan for how they want things to go down and may well railroad the players down that path rather than allowing them to choose what they do and how they do it.

    As long as the GM is willing to abandon all of the prep they've done when the players do something that isn't in the script then they should be fine, the times when the gm is not willing to abandon prep is when railroading happens.

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    I'm running a Castlevania dungeoncrawl that goes from level 3 to level 12. The party just hit level 9. I've had Dracula statted for a couple of months, although I am still considering some tweaks. Same for many of the other bosses.

    It's a dungeoncrawl. The win condition is "Kill Dracula." It's not railroading to know that they're probably going to fight him.

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by Altheus View Post
    I'd consider this the overpreparation that leads to railroading.
    I would tend to agree with this assessment. What OP has described isn't railroading yet. It might (and I would argue is likely to) turn into railroading, when the DM's expectations collide with the reality of players coming to the table with different ideas. But the DM might also realize that they should work with what players are bringing to the table, and adapt their plans.

  16. - Top - End - #16
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    SwashbucklerGuy

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    I tend to prep my "bosses" in advance, in the same way that I often prep character builds. It usually gives me an idea of their powers and their skills and how they would be applying them to their various evil plans throughout the campaign. Bad guys aren't necessarily leveling alongside the characters as the game progresses. Typically they're already powerful (hence why they're making waves in the world) and looking to gain more power, and the players intersect them at crucial powers to prevent this increased power gain, effectively keeping the bad guy at the same level, while the characters gain levels and bring them closer to fully defeating the bad guy.

    Or the DM may simply be giving you fair warning that "yes the bad guy has stats, and if you encounter him early he may kick your butt".
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    It's about as railroady as saying "Strahd will be the final boss in the Barovia campaign" or "Acererak is the final boss in the Chult adventure", which is to say it isn't really. They've only set up the big bad looming in the distance.

    Now if they're saying they've also set up the where, when, and how of that encounter and direct the players towards it no matter what the party is trying to do, then it is railroading.

    As long as where, when and how are variables the players have an impact on, you are in a railroad free environment.

  18. - Top - End - #18

    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Published adventures like Ravenloft or whatever are pretty railroady, actually. It's just that there's an implicit assumption that if you're running an adventure path, people are pretty much on board with the big bad being decided day one.

  19. - Top - End - #19
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by heavyfuel View Post
    A DM announces - before the very first session - that he already has a final boss planned and statted. The campaign is supposed to take place from levels 2 to about 18.

    Is it railroading to assume that your players won't have enough of an impact on the world in through these 17 levels that the final boss might chance?

    I'm not against some railroading, but this seems excessive. So what is it: Normal? Red flag? Time to jump ship?
    It's a lot railroad, but it surely will make a better story.

    However, there is a chance that the boss is so strong / important that you PC won't change the world enough not to have to deal him directly. Let's make an example and say that your setting is the Middle Earth and that the boss is Sauron. Only that this time there is no ring, you have to deal with old Sauron personally. Surely there isn't a way you could change the world without dealing with him, and you need to be high level before doing this. Obviously before you will deal with random orcs, trolls, then Nazgul, only in the end Sauron. Every point between the beginning and the end can't change if you think about it (and your DM won't say it loud, you know).
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    WolfInSheepsClothing

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by Synesthesy View Post
    However, there is a chance that the boss is so strong / important that you PC won't change the world enough not to have to deal him directly. Let's make an example and say that your setting is the Middle Earth and that the boss is Sauron. Only that this time there is no ring, you have to deal with old Sauron personally. Surely there isn't a way you could change the world without dealing with him, and you need to be high level before doing this. Obviously before you will deal with random orcs, trolls, then Nazgul, only in the end Sauron. Every point between the beginning and the end can't change if you think about it (and your DM won't say it loud, you know).
    no. you still have a lot of options.
    you can try to rally the nations of middle earth to invade mordor.
    you can sneak into mordor and try to sabotage stuff.
    you can try to research a ritual that will purify the orcs from the taint of sauron

    even if you follow the general route of attacking first sauron's allies or twarthing his (gradually stronger) minions, you have so many options and possibilities.
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    no. you still have a lot of options.
    you can try to rally the nations of middle earth to invade mordor.
    you can sneak into mordor and try to sabotage stuff.
    you can try to research a ritual that will purify the orcs from the taint of sauron

    even if you follow the general route of attacking first sauron's allies or twarthing his (gradually stronger) minions, you have so many options and possibilities.
    Sure you are right, but still Sauron would need to be dealt with, still Sauron would have stats ready since the beginning, still you would need to level up before trying to fight against him, still the campaign would be shaped around him from the beginning to the end.
    You are demonstrating my point: having a boss that shape the world and that you need to be high level to defeat isn't enough to say that the campaign is railroad, because the important is not the goal, but the journey.
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    DrowGuy

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    honestly, i've got my final boss encounter ready for my campaign. the players are at session 3, if they do things correctly and following the current pace, the endgame will be at around session 17. what the players do has no bearing (so far) on how buff the bad guy will be. his stats are high-level, his stuff is high-level, and his number of mooks and ressources are equivalent to a realistically large terrorist organization.

    this is of course subject to change. how so? let's imagine my players "waste" a session being thorough or following a lead to destroy a mutant-manufacturing lab. they gain xp while weakening the boss' ressources. the resulting end-game boss fight will be comparatively easier.

    they bungle something and thus seem like the bad guys. unaligned mooks will fight them before the big battle against the bad guy, making the fight harder.

    they actually talk down the bad guy by putting him in a logistical (or other) checkmate. well, at least i statted my boss' social skills beforehand, rendering useless violence in the conflict.

    as far as i'm concerned, statting the bbeg before the campaign starts is just being prepared. no matter what happens, his physical stats will not change. what if they try to speed run? what if they grind like it's an mmorpg? i don't know, but at least i know the boss stats.

    call it railroading if you must, but my way of dm'ing is: you know how the beginning and the end of the adventure. the meat of the adventure is up to the players. your players will start at point A. your players must reach point B to finish the adventure. no telling what happens between the two points, or how they resolve the conflict at point B.
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Seems to be absolutely alright, most settings do have the Big bad spoiled far in advance. Think of voldemort, Strad, Sauron.

    In the end it seems like this BBEG is supposed to be a big deal for the setting, so much as to define it.
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    WolfInSheepsClothing

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by Synesthesy View Post
    Sure you are right, but still Sauron would need to be dealt with, still Sauron would have stats ready since the beginning, still you would need to level up before trying to fight against him, still the campaign would be shaped around him from the beginning to the end.
    You are demonstrating my point: having a boss that shape the world and that you need to be high level to defeat isn't enough to say that the campaign is railroad, because the important is not the goal, but the journey.
    in my campaign the players managed to defeat the villain without a climatic battle. by treating others with honor, they were able to gather an alliance so large that the villains had no hope. it went something like
    and now that you've done this, you gained so much respect from the dragons that they are willing to help you in your fight against the army of vecna.
    the army of vecna has never managed to win a large battle thanks to your good efforts, and now that you also bring a lot of elder dragons on your side, vecna's allies are suing for peace.
    the lich army alone stands no chance against what basically amounts to most of the remaining high level people in the world, plus dragons.
    I'd say you win here, there's no point going further
    on the other hand, they could not have impressed people as they did without being high level. and they did fight the high priest of vecna several times; phylactery on one side and easy resurrection on the other made none of those engagements conclusive.

    but the point is, even when you have a villain shaping the world, you don't need to follow the traditional scheme to defeat them.
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley View Post
    Published adventures like Ravenloft or whatever are pretty railroady, actually. It's just that there's an implicit assumption that if you're running an adventure path, people are pretty much on board with the big bad being decided day one.
    I'll assume this was directed at my post given the context.
    Possible misunderstanding based on my examples, but I'm not referencing running a printed module or adventure path (hence avoiding naming Ravenloft, Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annohilation, or Tomb of Horrors, opting for just a setting location and named opponent). Just naming the major antagonist and letting the party know that is the individual that needs to be taken down to complete the adventure is pretty much plot-hook-101, be it for a single quest, story arc, or whole campaign.

    If naming an opponent, or letting the party know ahead of time that some individual will need to be confronted constitutes as railroading, then all adventures with an antagonist/BBEG would be a railroad, with the only difference being the level of the threat compared to the level of the party when they find out.

    Now a prewritten module will have a defined where, when and how, and I agree that they are pretty railroady, but the who, what and why are not the deciding factor of if something is or is not a railroad.

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    in my campaign the players managed to defeat the villain without a climatic battle. by treating others with honor, they were able to gather an alliance so large that the villains had no hope. it went something like

    on the other hand, they could not have impressed people as they did without being high level. and they did fight the high priest of vecna several times; phylactery on one side and easy resurrection on the other made none of those engagements conclusive.

    but the point is, even when you have a villain shaping the world, you don't need to follow the traditional scheme to defeat them.
    I totally agree with you. But, if there isn't an anticlimactic weak point to exploit (like if the Mount Doom was near Rivendell instead than in the middle of Mordor), you still need your time and your hard work to defeat the villain even if you outsmart him.
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Don't critique the game until you play it.

    If you read the threads here, or in any other D&D forum, you will quickly learn that there is no agreement on what railroading is, or how much is too much, or what makes a game fun, or anything else.

    People are different, and they enjoy different things. And that's fine.

    The only valid standard is this one: do you, personally, enjoy the game? Nothing else matters.

    Go into the game expecting to have fun, and then, if you don't, drop out.

    But go into it expecting to have fun. If you can't do that, then you won't enjoy it in any event. If that's the situation, yes, there is a red flag, but it didn't come from the DM.

    Really -- don't critique the game until you play it. And then only critique the part you've played.

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    For now, it's just a DM designing a boss fight. It's not railroading until you get there.
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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    Don't critique the game until you play it.
    This is how people end up playing bad games. A TTRPG campaign is a big time commitment (both in that it will take a large number of hours, and in that it will last over several months). You can and should try to get an idea of how one is going to play out, and if you will enjoy that, before diving in. Otherwise you'll end up having sunk half a year of your life into something you kinda hate. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have an open mind, but it does mean you should be willing to say "that doesn't seem fun" when something doesn't seem fun.

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    Default Re: Would you consider this too much railroading?

    Quote Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley View Post
    This is how people end up playing bad games. A TTRPG campaign is a big time commitment (both in that it will take a large number of hours, and in that it will last over several months). You can and should try to get an idea of how one is going to play out, and if you will enjoy that, before diving in. Otherwise you'll end up having sunk half a year of your life into something you kinda hate. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have an open mind, but it does mean you should be willing to say "that doesn't seem fun" when something doesn't seem fun.
    you're just swinging to the other end of the pendulum right there. sure, don't play cthulu if you don't like survival horror, but you can't judge a game based solely on a dm statting the end boss, there's a million reasons to do it aside from "railroading". every rpg has railroad elements to it, be it "cutscenes", or even simple things like clues and a main quest.

    i'd go with "until you have more info, go for it. you can't judge solely on the premise that it's not for you because the dm plans ahead." if that was the case, i'd've probably played a handful of games over the past 14 years.
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