Enjoying a railroad and/or SR5

[momothefiddler]

I have a gaming group that I enjoy playing with; most of the people are fun to interact with, some I'd even call my friends.

...which is good, because the games are consistently pretty terrible. The standard MC (ST, really, because we nearly always play WoD) really loves writing a story and then railroading us through it - rarely do the characters' builds or backstories have any effect on it, much less their actions or die rolls.

Which means I enjoy Saturday nights, because I'm hanging out with people I like, but I don't much enjoy the games themselves.

Here's the thing, though: he wants to run a game of SR5, and I just finished playing Shadowrun Returns, and it occurred to me that I'm okay with railroading in (some) video games. Shadowrun Returns was fun, DE:HR was fun, XCOM and VtM Bloodlines and Borderlands and Torchlight were fun. And I think it has something to do with my expectations - if I played DE:HR expecting it to be Oblivion, I'd have been annoyed and frustrated like I am on Saturday nights. But I didn't.

So: do any of you enjoy railroads in ttrpgs? What sorts of approaches do you take for that? How should I calibrate my expectations, and is there a way to do that without setting off "problem player only interested in combat" alarms just because I realized there's no point in buying social skills?

---

Also, looks like I'm going into a game of SR5, and I wanna make the most of it. I've been looking through the core book and... hm.
First off, it looks like Force is only relevant for drain calculations and as the Limit of the spell, and yet is used as a general classification of spell power. Is there any reason I can't buy+bind a Force 1 Sustaining Focus and cast my Increase Reflexes spell at Force 1 and use Edge to roll my full pool+Edge and keep all my hits (and reroll 6s) and only take 2 Drain and then sustain it indefinitely? Because I don't see any reason not to do that.

Any other tips for makin' it in SR5? I'd prefer things with concrete effects or numbers, since any vague attempts at agency are just gonna be punished anyway.

[Longes]

Also, looks like I'm going into a game of SR5, and I wanna make the most of it. I've been looking through the core book and... hm.
First off, it looks like Force is only relevant for drain calculations and as the Limit of the spell, and yet is used as a general classification of spell power. Is there any reason I can't buy+bind a Force 1 Sustaining Focus and cast my Increase Reflexes spell at Force 1 and use Edge to roll my full pool+Edge and keep all my hits (and reroll 6s) and only take 2 Drain and then sustain it indefinitely? Because I don't see any reason not to do that.

Any other tips for makin' it in SR5? I'd prefer things with concrete effects or numbers, since any vague attempts at agency are just gonna be punished anyway.

For the first question - no, there is no reason you can't do that. Lol limits, amirite?

For the second question.

1. Don't be a technomancer. Don't let your friends be a technomancer. Technomancers fell down the cock tree and sucked every branch. They can function only as buff batteries for real hackers.

2. Mystic Adepts are great. You pay most of your starting karma for having 6 PP and full magic. You don't have astral perception, but if you take Possession tradition or Channeling metamagic, you can get astral perception through Dual Natured.

3. Pornomancers aren't a thing anymore, because Kinesics now only plays with limits. To pornomance you take MysAd, Increase Charisma, and spend 1 point of Essence on Tailored Pheromones.

4. If you want to play the hacking tea party you need to correctly guess the campaign's length. For a long campaign you must buy the most expensive cyberdeck at chargen. That's about 400.000 nuyen. For a short campaign buy the second most expensive. Cyberdecks are ridiculously expensive and you are never buying a new one.

5. Trolls and Dwarfs have increased living and augmentation costs as part of their metatypes. Run Faster metatypes and critters like Pixie or Naga don't. So don't be a Troll.

TL;DR: be an elf magician or a mysAd and win at life.

[Schleiermacher]

My only real experiences with railroading have either been unbearably, leave-the-game-and-never-come-back bad, or they've been with inexperienced GMs, in which case I tend to play along with the premise of their game while attempting to "sequence-break" and challenge their railroading whenever I can, as a way to help them improve. (In addition to talking about the issue with them OOC, of course.)

But while that might not be the most helpful background for offering advice in this thread, if you want to play in a railroad game and enjoy the ride without trying to jump the rails, I'd suggest setting up your character to "enjoy the scenery" as much as possible. Social skills might not be useful, but knowledge and investigation skills might be -your GM probably wants to tell you about the story background, the setting and NPCs' histories -if you care about them at all, make sure he has as many opportunities to do so as you can get. That will get you more of the story, which usually makes it more enjoyable and might help you make connections and predict what will happen, and it will probably win the GM's goodwill. Try to play a character with very general and flexible motivations, or, if you can, ones that tie into what your GM had planned anyway -that will help you justify any "but thou must" situations that crop up without violating your suspension of disbelief or shitting all over your own character concept.

Don't sweat mechanical competence -if the characters' actions can't impact the story for good or ill anyway, the only thing that distinguishes one character from another is intraparty interaction. So feel free to make a character concept you might not otherwise care to play, as long as it's someone who will play off the other PCs in entertaining ways. Make sure to have strong opinions, preferably about things that won't be important in the game anyway -that helps create memorable characterization. Be a pacifist or a conspiracy theorist or a fanatical nationalist -whatever lets you make your own fun when the GM's plot isn't particularly holding your interest, without being disruptive to the other players' fun. (I say this in the expectation that intraparty conflict is welcome as long as it's good-natured and usually stops short of PvP combat, since that's what I'm used to -but you know your own group best, so take my advice with that in mind.)

[silva]

If its a railroad anyway, why care for mechanical competence ? Just pick a character concept you find cool/fun to play and go with it.

I just advice to avoid specialist matrix or vehicle dealing characters unless the GM has a good grasp of it, and the group is tolerant of a little downtime for them while you resolve your mini-game. And if in the end its inevitable to go with the matrix specialist, then I advice to stick to wireless/AR hacking as much as possible and avoid going full VR, as AR hacking is much faster than the latter option. In fact, its the faster hacking method ever of any Shadowrun edition.

EDIT:

Forgot to say, we house-ruled that Edge don't break the Limits, so your spell trick wouldn't work for us. I advice for using this or something similar if Edge bothers you like it bothers us.

[Dogbert]

Ugh, geek social fallacies ahoy...

Friends don't have to do everything together. If you have a good time with these people, then you can also have a good time with them doing about anything else.

Now, if you have plans of sticking around, you might as well start acting like an actual friend and, you know, talk to the GM, face to face, using the truth (I know, what a concept, right?). Tell him how terribad his games are, and then run a game or two yourself to show him how it's done. If he's still hopeless after the demonstration, kill him and take his stuff, then train someone less obtuse in that group to be the next GM, then take bi-weekly turns at GMing perhaps.

It took me 5 wasted years of my life with one of the worst gaming tables in the history of ever, as well as growing a pair and some self-esteem, but nowadays you won't catch me dead in a crappy game. My time in particular may not the most valuable, but it's mine, and I value it enough to know when it would be better spent elsewhere.

[Schleiermacher]

Dogbert is also right. I just focused on the question as stated, but I wish I'd said what he said instead.

[momothefiddler]

Longes:
1,4: Like I said, we mostly play WoD. Heavy on Mage. I'm a bit burned out on playing something with secret morphic undefined rules, so, no matrix shit for me afaict.

2: Yeah, I'm thinking I'll go with that. Not sure how much I care about Astral Perception (see above) but maybe.

3: idk what that even is so whatever

5: I'm feeling inspired by Mr Kluwe from Shadowrun Returns, and between the railroady thing and the benefits of MysAdept-dom, I'll probably still go with troll. In a higher-op game, though, the point is appreciated.

---

if you want to play in a railroad game and enjoy the ride without trying to jump the rails, I'd suggest setting up your character to "enjoy the scenery" as much as possible. Social skills might not be useful, but knowledge and investigation skills might be -your GM probably wants to tell you about the story background, the setting and NPCs' histories -if you care about them at all, make sure he has as many opportunities to do so as you can get. That will get you more of the story, which usually makes it more enjoyable and might help you make connections and predict what will happen, and it will probably win the GM's goodwill. Try to play a character with very general and flexible motivations, or, if you can, ones that tie into what your GM had planned anyway -that will help you justify any "but thou must" situations that crop up without violating your suspension of disbelief or shitting all over your own character concept.

This is... really good advice, given my MC. I'll throw in a bunch of languages, too, I think. Good stuff.

Don't sweat mechanical competence -if the characters' actions can't impact the story for good or ill anyway, the only thing that distinguishes one character from another is intraparty interaction. So feel free to make a character concept you might not otherwise care to play, as long as it's someone who will play off the other PCs in entertaining ways. Make sure to have strong opinions, preferably about things that won't be important in the game anyway -that helps create memorable characterization. Be a pacifist or a conspiracy theorist or a fanatical nationalist -whatever lets you make your own fun when the GM's plot isn't particularly holding your interest, without being disruptive to the other players' fun. (I say this in the expectation that intraparty conflict is welcome as long as it's good-natured and usually stops short of PvP combat, since that's what I'm used to -but you know your own group best, so take my advice with that in mind.)

Also a very good point. And intraparty conflict is great, except for the GM's gf, who will take it ooc personally and use her influence to fuck you over ic for the rest of the game. Fun stuff. Of course now that I know she's off limits, it's all fine.

---

Forgot to say, we house-ruled that Edge don't break the Limits, so your spell trick wouldn't work for us. I advice for using this or something similar if Edge bothers you like it bothers us.

I'm not really in a position to start demanding houserules, especially given he hasn't run it at all before, and if I was I sure as hell wouldn't pick one to make what I see as a problem worse. Enforcing mediocrity by chopping off the right side of the curve is really bleh to me, and being able to spend what is essentially a hero point to bypass it is not the part that needs fixing.

---

Ugh, geek social fallacies ahoy...

Friends don't have to do everything together. If you have a good time with these people, then you can also have a good time with them doing about anything else.

Now, if you have plans of sticking around, you might as well start acting like an actual friend and, you know, talk to the GM, face to face, using the truth (I know, what a concept, right?). Tell him how terribad his games are, and then run a game or two yourself to show him how it's done. If he's still hopeless after the demonstration, kill him and take his stuff, then train someone less obtuse in that group to be the next GM, then take bi-weekly turns at GMing perhaps.

It took me 5 wasted years of my life with one of the worst gaming tables in the history of ever, as well as growing a pair and some self-esteem, but nowadays you won't catch me dead in a crappy game. My time in particular may not the most valuable, but it's mine, and I value it enough to know when it would be better spent elsewhere.

We have a few different issues here. One is that several of the people involved don't have the spare time in their lives to hang out with me separately and do other things, so the only way to hang out with them on a biweekly basis is to break up this game, and even then only some of them would be interested in other things. So, scheduling is a thing. In addition, I'm definitely not the social head of the group, so I'd just straight up lose any outright competition for a time slot. Plus, as I pointed out, I'm looking at it this way because I do enjoy railroads... sometimes. I'm trying to figure out when and why and apply that here so I can just enjoy the activity as well as the interaction.

Now, "act like an actual friend" snark aside, I have discussed with him my issues of agency and my frustration when my stats or actions don't matter (for instance I pointed out that my App 1 character was treated pretty much exactly the same as another player's Cha 6 character) and he consistently claims to understand, gives me a bit of slack, gets scolded by his gf for going easy on us, and loops right back into his normal patterns. It's an out of game social issue where she's sadistic and he's subservient, and for various reasons I'm not gonna fight that, so I'm trying to enjoy what I've got. That said, we are currently trading off bi-weekly and he seems to be enjoying himself in my game, which is open world and has various encounters and plot hooks but has no overarching plot and is focused on letting the pcs build up (what will be) their empire.

tl;dr Yes, you're right, but because Reasons I'm not trying to change everyone else and am focusing on enjoying what I have at hand.

[OgreBattle]

So: do any of you enjoy railroads in ttrpgs? What sorts of approaches do you take for that? How should I calibrate my expectations, and is there a way to do that without setting off "problem player only interested in combat" alarms just because I realized there's no point in buying social skills?

I just played through the railroad stage of Lost Planet 2, it's among my favorites.

I like goal oriented games like "go into a dungeon and get the thing", so as long as the game has interesting challenges that use my character's abilities (such as having things to kill in tactically different ways) then I'm fine.

Then again I've had more enjoyable play by post games than face-to-face (hard to schedule time around too), and those games tend to favor a strong goal already set so everyone is posting towards it instead of going off on their own thing and potentially wasting weeks of real time.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

In a railroad you know the bear is always behind door #2 and never #1 or #3. Well, you don't ALWAYS know, but if you can find out, the the bear can't suddenly change places (unless its one of those Blink Bears I keep hearing about that evolved after the bombs fell).

I play mostly sandboxes, and what I miss the most is the feeling that there's some sort of destination, that there is some degree of entropy that results from every action. I gather from Den discussions of WoD that this was a strength it had in its original incarnation; the world was ending and even if you weren't going down a linear path, you're still on the clock.

[momothefiddler]

In a railroad you know the bear is always behind door #2 and never #1 or #3. Well, you don't ALWAYS know, but if you can find out, the the bear can't suddenly change places

Maybe we're using a different definition of railroad, because I'm using the term to refer to the phenomenon where the bear is always behind the door you opened, whichever that was.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

In a railroad you know the bear is always behind door #2 and never #1 or #3. Well, you don't ALWAYS know, but if you can find out, the the bear can't suddenly change places

Maybe we're using a different definition of railroad, because I'm using the term to refer to the phenomenon where the bear is always behind the door you opened, whichever that was.

I see. In those scenarios I always found it best to load up on anti-ambush abilities. Since everyone tends to do that already with Initiative bonuses, Perception, etc, the next best thing is to be able to go Han on every Greedo you meet. Murdering every Greedo you meet doesn't necessarily ruin the Jabba subplot, but it DOES allow your character build to matter.

[Longes]

5: I'm feeling inspired by Mr Kluwe from Shadowrun Returns, and between the railroady thing and the benefits of MysAdept-dom, I'll probably still go with troll. In a higher-op game, though, the point is appreciated.

Well, it's your choice, but trolls and dwarfs are a trap. They have insane entrance costs (you need to put your highest priority into being a troll) and give almost nothing in return.

[vagrant]

Also, IIRC,

First off, it looks like Force is only relevant for drain calculations and as the Limit of the spell, and yet is used as a general classification of spell power. Is there any reason I can't buy+bind a Force 1 Sustaining Focus and cast my Increase Reflexes spell at Force 1 and use Edge to roll my full pool+Edge and keep all my hits (and reroll 6s) and only take 2 Drain and then sustain it indefinitely? Because I don't see any reason not to do that.

, is totally a thing you can do and in fact, it's what everyone fucking does.

[pragma]

Seconding the idea that building a troll is a pretty bad idea, especially since mystic adepts are priority hungry: they need magic 6 (since that shows up in all magic skill rolls), generally want high attributes to be an adept that gets into combat, and have higher than usual demand for skills because of magic, combat, and leveraging their drain attribute.

Trying to achieve those competing goals with a troll is pretty impossible. A troll mystic adept will have magic in A (for magic 6), race in B (for troll) and that means either skills or attributes has to fall in the point-starved D slot. Contrast this with a human who can put magic in C and race in D to get magic 6, and then put skills and attributes in A and B. The human is going to come out so far ahead in terms of utility and overall power that the troll choice isn't even worth considering in my book.

[momothefiddler]

Re: anti-troll
I've been building the character and... yeah. Especially because of the way limits work -> my desire for high Edge. At the moment I have race A and magic B for Edge 6 and Magic 4. I'm mostly ok with not having capped Magic, because a bit of Edge-assisted alchemy or conjuring before the run is gonna be way useful and then for combat it looks like I'm better off shooting things than trying to use combat spells anyway (especially with troll's mental stats), but I gotta have some stats, so that's at C, which leaves skills at D and basically nothing is sufficient and I'm settling for mediocre in every area.

That said, Schleiermacher had a good point about a railroad being a good excuse to play something you couldn't otherwise, so maybe I'll go with it anyway. But it's all really constraining; even if I did want to buy a bunch of knowledge and investigation and language skills, I'm not sure I could at this point. Blargh.

EDIT: I'm building a human version as well, so I can see how they line up and compare that to my unquantifiable fuzzies about being a bear.

[deaddmwalking]

Since the railroad will unfold no matter what actions you take, you want a character that is fun to portray in character and that works well with the party. Basically you're going to chew the scenery. This can be someone with lots of skills so you can get extra exposition, but it can also be a 'dumb' character that everyone finds humorous. I've played in a PbP game with a congenial orc named Thunk - the player enjoyed responding to things as a simpleton and it was fun for everyone else.

[vagrant]

I have a game with the stereotypical idiot Viking barbarian (the player is also literally from Norway) and while he is often amusing, I often hurt his feelings by going 'What's your Int? 7? Yeah, you're not allowed to make tactical choices.'

I play an Enchanter, obviously.

[silva]

What Dogbert said.

[Dogbert]

Ok, so if your intentions lie not in changing things for the better but in learning masochism, here are my two cents:

1) Learn what the GM's preferences are regarding his preferred railroad audience: Weaabos? Hack&slashers? Basket weavers?
2) Roll the GM's dream character. As long as you play his Arty Stu, you'll be invincible and immortal (as far as my personal experience tells me at least).
3) Since he is all for "old skool", just dump all points in combat resources.
4) Profit.

[silva]

In other words: suck the GM's dick.

[momothefiddler]

Ok, so if your intentions lie not in changing things for the better but in learning masochism

Hey, man, I got plenty of skill in masochism! I'm just trying to figure out how to apply it here!

(But seriously, playing to type is something that should have been obvious but bears explicit mention, so thanks.)

Curious what I said that prompted the "old skool" claim - do you just mean the idea that agency should be punished? Because I'd figure that term also implied high mortality (I have never once seen him kill a character, even when the player (me) explicitly requested it ooc) and "puzzles" that depend on players' metagame knowledge and ability to divine the GM's One True Solution (...yeah. ok. but I didn't say it yet.)

In other words: suck the GM's dick.

Fuck you I'm not putting anything in my mouth that's been in hers.

[silva]

Well if the GM is female, that makes things easier.

But really man, Im feeling bad for you. Youre going to play a game you dont like in a playstyle you dont like with a egoisthical GM who only cares about her own fun. I confess I did a similar thing in the past just cause Ive found the group really cool and all, but eventually it turned into suffering on my part and I finally walked away. And I swear this was the best thing I did. We still kept our friendship, and even play other games (cardgames more specifically) or meet in bars to drink and chat. But abandoning that table was a 100% right choice for me. So I suggest you consider it too. Go there, play a couple games and if things continue like that, just walk away.

As Ive read somewhere in the net: "No gaming is better than Bad gaming". or something like that.

[Dogbert]

Curious what I said that prompted the "old skool" claim - do you just mean the idea that agency should be punished?

Not really, I meant the willful repudiation of mental and social traits even when the game mechanics state they exist and are supposed to mean something.

In such games, any non-combat trait is either a dump stat or a de-facto trap option, so all that is left is min/maxing your character as if you were speccing it for a bro game. Anything not related to combat you just "roleplay it out" by "roleplaying" yourself.

P.D: For "punishing player agency" and otherwise Institutionalized Railroading refer to Storygaming, something that OSR advocates hate as much as we do.

[momothefiddler]

Ah.

Yes, fair.

[PhoneLobster]

Well if the GM is female, that makes things easier.

Why is everything about that so, so, SO wrong. I mean starting with Silva apparently having no fucking idea what or who is being talked about, but ending with a number of other wrongs which just seem flat out creepy.