To railroad or not to railroad?

I was about to ask this on Discord, but decided that the forum would be more appropriate.

I'd really like to read your opinions on the matter.
Is railroading good or bad? A necessary evil in some cases? A buzzkill for the players?

Which is and when for you? What's your reaction to railroading as a player? When do you railroad (if you do) as a GM?

Let's get forums to their original use. :)

I think word railroad is pretty ill-defined and means different things to different people.

I really like Matt Colville's definitions and his take on the subject. It is better worded than anything I could say, so I'll just link it here: https://youtu.be/KqIZytzzFKU

Agreed. The term 'Railroad' has no real meaning. If people are objecting or feeling too constrained, that is bad, this has nothing to do with 'railroads'. If people are enjoying the game that is good. If they signed up to play a module/adventure/story they expect to follow that story wherever it leads.
Rollacoasters are railroaded, people seem to enjoy them.

I agree with Len (without having clicked that link to see what Matt Colville says 😄)

The question is, what do you mean by railroading?
If you mean "Having a goal in mind and gently guiding your group towards it", no that's not bad.
If you mean "Forcing your players down one path no matter what they do", then yes, that's not great.

These kinds of discussions are tough because different people have different things in mind for terms like "railroading". It's a spectrum

Ok, here's what I was trying to get a pulse for; when making an adventure yourself for introducing players to a system and/or PbP, how much do you narrow things down to keep things short and simple?
I have it in mind like a video game tutorial level really, but I'd like your take on this, especially as GMs.
As for the term "railroading", it may have occurred in discussions and is the reason I wanted a broader conversation really.

PS - I love the idea of revitalizing forums for these kind of conversations :)

I think the main thing is to let your players know what to expect. If you advertise a sandbox, your players will expect to be able to do whatever they want. If you advertise a more or less linear adventure, your players will be okay with more limited choices.

Hard agree. The forums should be used for all kinds of discussions and questions. Of course we're all here to play games but I love this community so any excuse to interact with them is welcome :)

It's literally the one thing I miss in GP - standard forum usage.

As a new player I haven't encountered much ''railroading'' per se...but I think if it's used to teach or used to a limited extent and in a good way I guess it's fine...I feel it won't be good when for example a player decides to pull in the reigns themselves and steer the story to the detriment of the GM's plans...The reason that attracted me to D&D anyway is the myriad of options and stories you can experience other than be it turning into a static experience like some kinds of videogame...

Railroading, if as a narrowing of scope to a predetermined path for the PCs to follow, in a tutorial is to be expected, I would think.

The hundred foot view might be: focus on what you're trying to teach. If it is a specific ruleset, sandbox or collaborative world building will only get in the way of that. If you are trying to teach world building, then you need to give them the space to make meaningful contributions so a railroad would hinder that. If you are trying to teach them to roleplay, then you need to encourage and reward interactions rather than a specific goal.

While wholly unrelated to the topic of the thread, I just followed your link to watch this gentleman's video (someone whom I have never heard of) and really enjoyed both his concept and views on these games as well as his means of communication. Thanks for shining a light on an interesting and relevant source of information and perspective!


(Rest of the Thread: carry on... )

Glad to hear it! Just keep right on watching his Running the Game series, you won't be disappointed.

I do not like to have it so that my players have no choice of how to address a given challenge. I do not like to have story lines that do not or cannot change depending on how the players address a given problem.

I do like to run games where the players create characters specifically for a given premise, and I do like to get buy in from players into a given premise, I do like to have a social contract where the signatories/group agree that the point of the game is not that the characters can go anywhere and do anything at any time, but rather to make the story that is "on the table" into the best story possible, as a group.

The first, IMO, is railroading.

The second, IMO, is not. Unless it starts doing things from the first.

Yeah I also really liked the way Matt cleared up those definitions. Discussions often get bogged down by participants operating under differing definitions of terms.

I generally like Colville's takes on this kind of thing, and while I didn't watch the whole bit this seems to be no exception. Bowl, you said you didn't click the link, but basically he's saying railroading is...
...that. And I've actually seen a lot of setups for that over the years in written modules. Obviously not great, and if you're not an experienced GM, you might not know that working with the players and their ideas is actually a good thing, vs. strictly following the written word. The best OSR modules have great takes on this where problems are defined, not solutions. Situations are outlined, rather than encounters detailed.

To stir a bit more discussion, two items:

1. I'm not so sure that Colville's statement that "linear" adventures aren't railroads really holds up, and

2. CoC and Delta Green adventures are, I think, the gold standard for how published modules really don't have to be railroads. There's a thing that's happened, there's a mystery, there are locations, there are factions / opposition -- but the players are 100% in control of where they go, when they go, and what they do when they get there. It's up them them to put it all together, in their own way. Now of course as I'm writing this I'm remembering some terribly designed CoC mysteries where "progress" can stop dead in its tracks unless the PCs find or do the specific thing. It's poor adventure design, which eventually resulted in mystery games like Gumshoe and Trail of Cthulhu figuring out better ways to handle those critical clue-finding moments.

Back to #1, a question for the D&D and PF players out there. How railroady are the big adventure paths or hardcover campaigns for those games? Are they sandboxy and open or linear? Can the adventure 'progression' be halted by the PCs missing something, or not visiting the right place or doing the right thing? I've often wondered about games that use battle maps, too -- it kind of implicitly indicates that the GM has prepared a specific thing and bent the narrative that way. What happens when you take the player input on-board and potentially end up with a fight or encounter breaking out in some location you're not prepped for in terms of the battle map, tokens, etc.?

Last point: railroads aren't always bad. Some players actually prefer them. They want to be on that rollercoaster that vagueGM mentioned, they want to have content brought to them. Not how I like to play (or run), but it's definitely a thing. Hard framing can also be a very useful tool when there's a limited amount of time to play -- say, at a con or other short-form game.

I think this is important to note. If a game is going to have a great story with a beginning, middle, and end, it needs to be a railroad in at least some sense. Even if players choose where to go and when to go there, it's the DM moving the story in front of where they end up so it progresses properly.

It should also be mentioned that one-shots are almost always railroads, and necessarily so. If I'm running A Wild Sheep Chase (a great beginner's one-shot), and one of my players says "Nah, forget all that, I'm going to go find a big city and meet the King-or-whatever", as a DM I'd probably gently shut the idea down. That's not what the one-shot is there to do, and past the dotted line at the edge of the map, it's just a giant blank space with nothing there.

Oneshots can be completely player-led as well. They don't have to be railroads or linear. The GM needs to improv and think on their feet, and the 'story' may not be as sophisticated as a pre-planned one, and the players can not be told what they are signing up for beforehand, but the most most of my oneshots have is a starting point, the rest comes based on the the players' choices.
It helps to get the players to say --as soon as possible-- what they want to achieve. Then if one later says 'nah, forget it... go meet the king' that can be shut down... unless everyone agrees.
The GM can be open about things, maybe saying "I don't have anything interesting at the king's place. No point going there, let's skip it." to keep things moving.

I find room for all these styles in my play -- we've been doing a lot of short-form stuff lately live. I've run a tightly scripted Fate one-shot where I planned out the three specific scenes (Egypt, New York City, on an airship headed into the Himalayas), and I've also been part of a The Sprawl one-shot where -all- the caper-type content was developed at the table in real-time, based on the questions the (PbtA) game has the players and GM answer at the start of the session. Also ran Mork Borg in classic (rail-roady) fashion for a one-shot, and White Lies (an OSR-powered spy game) in a much more open-ended fashion where I set up an overall villainous plot and then just let the agents loose on trying to figure out different ways to stop it.

Many ways to play!

This is a place where system can matter tremendously, as a lot of more modern indie and small press games have specific rules and systems in place for the GM and the whole table to operate in a more seat-of-the-pants fashion. I really like games like Blades in the Dark, where the players dictate the adventure directly, but there are limited options on the table and a whole 'playset' of existing neighborhoods, gangs, personalities and the like at the GM's fingertips to help with the emergent gameplay.

I can only speak about WotC 5e adventures.

It depends on the book, but most of them now are like Rime of the Frostmaiden which starts as an open world (if the world is defined as the west region north of the Spine of the World), but sooner or later the characters might want to deal with the root of the problem. So it's very "here are a bunch of things in this region - you choose" e.g. Frostmaiden, Strahd, both Phandalin starters. Even Saltmarsh (which is a collection of adventures) has other stuff in the region to be explored.

If the players REALLY wanted to go totally open-world, and they're playing in the Forgotten Realms, and in the years 1479DR - 1495DR, then the DM has a whole bunch of resources and adventures that are happening in the world (here the world is defined as a narrow strip of Sword Coast).



There's also a bunch of supporting AL stuff. FR's Sword Coast has a ridiculous number of adventures.

If they're not on the Sword Coast, well... here be dragons (actually, here might be dragons, or not, dunno - that's the DM's problem). There are some books for other regions, but most DMs would just repurpose other stuff. So if they want to explore the underdark, then just take some bits from Out of the Abyss or OotA AL.

But I've rarely seen players totally abandon the book they're playing to investigate problems in a whole different adventure - but if it happens then the DM has resources. But most heroes seem to want to deal with the problem in front of them.
Not really, although if it happened then most DMs would design around it. The main problem is characters tackling problems that they don't have the levels for. The better adventures give guidance on changing the threats based on the character level (or how to avoid a TPK if the level 3s decide to face Strahd).
It happens all the time. PBP - You either download or create a map - with tools like Dungeon Draft, it's pretty quickly done. IRL - you break out the whiteboard pens and a grid.

I was particularly impressed with the way Yesterday's Tomorrow handles setting up a oneshot mission. They players choose their playbook and then the players say why their the mission needed a character that fits who they are. This way you don't end up with missions that don't cater to the players, or a player being left out.
Each player adds an obstacle that they are uniquely suited to overcome (the reason they were hired on in the first place) and defines --roughly-- how much of a challenge it is (and therefor how much of a reward they hope to get).
If we have a driver-type character, their player says why a driver was specifically needed.
I have tried to adopt this mechanism into all my games. "Why do they need a necromancer?" "Really? Why did they hire on a sewage process worker for this job?"

Nice -- I've been meaning to pick up Yesterday's Tomorrow. Gregor Hutton, is that right? Sounds a lot like the setup in The Sprawl when I played that, thought maybe a little more direct about the roles that characters are to play in the adventure.

And thanks, @adam for shedding some light on the 5e side of things. And yeah, my "what now?" question about battle maps was more for live play than PbP, now that I think about it. And I know there are loads of sources for maps as well, so grabbing something appropriate probably isn't that hard when you have a little time.

The few times I've gotten into that sort of situation, I'll either run it as theater of the mind (I can usually see important battles coming and have a plan for them) or I bring out my foldable dry erase. While I prep combat, I hand a marker to whoever is nearby and say "Draw a map of how the scene looks in your head" and use a circle with a letter for each character.

It ain't much, but it's honest work ;)

My formerly-IRL group is like this. They prefer to be taken for a ride. Our games really bog down when whoever's turn it is to GM just leaves things wide open and lets them do anything they want. Granted, this happened very rarely. But now I'm GMing the group, and on PbP, no less, and the times I've tossed them in the sandbox for even a limited time I could almost picture this deer in the headlights look on their faces.

As you like to say (and I definitely agree), many ways to play! As long as the group's having fun, right?

Not that one. I refer instead to the one by Stras Acimovic of Scum and Villainy/Band of Blades fame. https://offguardgames.com/more-games/
The Sprawl requires the GM to make the mission make sense around the player characters. I have seen this fail when the player had a different idea of what they character meant/did but did not speak up.
Yesterday's Tomorrow assumes oneshots, or single/few missions with a character. The character advancement rules are optional. This transience is rather common in Cyberpunk, YT puts is front and center.
It does work with longer games, but needs a bit of effort. That is part and parcel for all World of Dungeons games: they are meant to be quick.

Sandboxes are 'boxes', they have clear boundaries. Set the boundaries for the players so they know where they stand. It is less scary that way. Give them something to shoot for... if they want to.

Yeah I tried that, too. I've seen it work with some groups but not this particular group. I've played with these guys for 34 years and I think they've gotten to a point in their lives where, at the end of the day, after slogging through work and finally getting time away from the kids, they really just want to throw math rocks and wreck stuff, you know?

Many ways to play.

Ah yes -- I was thinking of Remember Tomorrow, and forgot that I not only had Yesterday's Tomorrow, but had intentions to run it! Love virtually every WoDu hack I've run across. My favorite kind of PbtA. Will re-read...

Yup -- I've seen plenty of examples of these types of players. Keeps the GM on their toes if they have a mix of them and much more proactive types who want to drive the story and even the setting. Managing that can be an interesting challenge, not unlike having a mix of player types at a live table -- those who want to immerse and only speak in character, those who never do that, and everything in-between.

Even a normally proactive group can sometimes feel like being spoonfed for a session. It can be tricky when they don't let the GM know beforehand (maybe they all arrived and discovered they felt that way?) and a pantser suddenly needs to plot, live, with everyone watching them.
It can be useful to have a few model railroads in one's back pocket for such occasions. Maybe integrate a one-shot adventure into a regular group.

The players in my party have very rarely ever gone off the always-present rails (not that I force them there, but I have places I'd like the story to go and they follow along). They generally just like to experience a story, kill some monsters, and get loot.

I think that's how most people want to play it. I think what gets most DMs in trouble isn't players staying on a story, but when they solve a puzzle in a way you never would've expected, or befriend the lieutenant of your Big Bad, or blow up the whole city or some nonsense. Then you have to figure out where to go from there.

And honestly, I get the feeling that's part of the fun of being a DM. It's a lot less stressful with PbP, though.

Big agree -- and I think 'playsets' can really help as well. Barebones but evocative settings that come with named NPCs, a few locations, factions and how they feel about one another, current events, etc. Present a number of different angles to the players -- even before the start of the session or game -- then let them pick from the limited menu, and even create all-new dishes.