The Other Railroading Thread

[RandomCasualty]

1143429724[/unixtime]]
The characters should always win at (or more accurately DO) what their players invest heavily in doing.

Well that isn't the kind of game I play. How I see it, PCs have to take the information about the world that you give them and use it.

Now they damn well should have had time to figure out there are too many orcs for them to beat army wise, and pretty much if they've been listening, they'd probably figure out they can't kill Sauron. I'm not sure what they'd do against a giant disembodied eye anyway. They should gather intel and figure out a plan that's going to work given the situation.

And that's ok that certain things are beyond their means. There are good plans and there are bad plans, and while it'd be perfectly ok for the PCs to win with a strategy that the DM hadn't thought of assuming it'd work, the DM shouldnt just roll over and play dead because the PCs made faulty plans either.

Part of a good game is knowing that you can fail if you choose wrong. It makes you feel like your decisions matter. If you try to kill the fire elemental with fireballs then you should be left there looking like an idiot.

[PhoneLobster]

Part of a good game is knowing that you can fail if you choose wrong. It makes you feel like your decisions matter. If you try to kill the fire elemental with fireballs then you should be left there looking like an idiot.

But we aren't talking about a minor choice here.

This isn't a five second consideration like choosing between white or red camouflage gear for the next outing to the snowy mountain of icey terror.

This is the players up and telling you... Right, you have made your contribution to the story, you built the world you filled it with stuff you set a challenge.

Now here is how we intend to make our contribution to the story, over the whole campaign. This isn't a single choice its the story to which all our choices and all the combined contributions of the group will be set towards or against.

And you saying to them, fvck off if you don't sit here for the whole campaign and tell your part of the story to the exact plot I want you too I will make you LOSE.

That is not COLLABORATIVE. That is one man telling his story and making everyone else shut up and listen or else he kills their favourite characters.

And its railroading because the GM has set a destiny to get the players from A to B over the course of the campaign and they, apparently according to you gladly, know that they will fail if they do not comply with the destiny you have chosen for them.

At that point I WOULD start running around in my underwear harrassing female orcs. Its exactly the sort of behaviour you get from rebellious players not so subtly expressing their hate for railroading and for your contempt for their commitment and contribution to the game.

[Crissa]

*snicker*

I like how I introduce the concept of collaboration and buying credible actions to the thread...

...And I instead get a rant about how evil the guy I help is, and how I should, ya know, do my job - selling, pricing, and tracking sales - of games for someone for free. Maybe if I was employed at a job that wasn't doing that... Your life won't end or even be inconvenienced if I decide not to show you where industry figures are tracked.

And it's irrelevent to the thread. Either you take my word - which is pretty good by the way - or you don't. Geez.

Ask any of the old-timers on this thread - Does or did Crissa work in game stores? Roleplaying games stores? Pen and paper?

Anyhow... the point is that Players have to play a role and DMs are not omnipotent and can only take so much 'screwing around' in a game. At some point, certain decisions don't make sense, and the DM cannot be expected to plan for them.

And lastly, D&D does have a problem because there aren't rules for the DM to be certain the class or powers he added to his game is vaguely balanced. (And this problem has never, ever hurt sales of any game, more's the pity)

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1143434965[/unixtime]]
Now here is how we intend to make our contribution to the story, over the whole campaign. This isn't a single choice its the story to which all our choices and all the combined contributions of the group will be set towards or against.

And you saying to them, fvck off if you don't sit here for the whole campaign and tell your part of the story to the exact plot I want you too I will make you LOSE.

No your'e not. You're not telling them to fuck off. You're letting them pursue their own plan and hopefully have fun doing it. Nowhere do I ever propose telling them "no, you can't do that. Instead you're going to have to try to sneak into Mordor."

I never tell them what to do, I let them choose their own path and accept the consequences of said choice.

Consider the following:

1. There's a room wtih 3 switches. Pulling the middle one opens the door, the other two cause the door to lock and become unopenable and also release a monster for the PCs to fight.

2. There's a room with 3 switches. Pulling any of them opens the door.

You call example #1 railroading, but in fact #2 is the one that railroads. There is only a single outcome in example #2, compared to the possibility of success or failure in #1. In example #2, the PCs success is already predetermined. In example #1, it's uncertain. Their decision making process is what ultimatley decides if they succeed or fail.

And its railroading because the GM has set a destiny to get the players from A to B over the course of the campaign and they, apparently according to you gladly, know that they will fail if they do not comply with the destiny you have chosen for them.

I haven't chosen any destiny for them. I dunno if they're going to succeed or fail when I start playing the game. Your games on the other hand already make the assumption that the PCs win. My game is basically a situation where the PCs have to figure out the best way to solve the problem and use that solution to win. Your game is that they can use any solution and win. My game has multiple outcomes, yours does not. Therefore your game is much more railroad heavy. It doens't matter if you go north, south, east or west, Sauron still dies, your actions really don't matter because you're just playing along with the DMs story which calls for Sauron to lose and the PCs to win.



That my friend is railroading.

At that point I WOULD start running around in my underwear harrassing female orcs. Its exactly the sort of behaviour you get from rebellious players not so subtly expressing their hate for railroading and for your contempt for their commitment and contribution to the game.

Yes, maybe if said players where under the age of 15 they might do something like that. A PC complaining here isn't complaining about railroading at all. He's upset because I present ways for him to actually fail at his quest. He wants to be able to essentially win regardless of what he does. If he wants to unzip, whip out his dick and beat Sauron to death with it, he expects you as the DM to let him.

This player is ASKING to be railroaded. He's upset because you provided an adventure in which his choices determine different outcomes. In the game he wants, the DM simply decides he's going to beat Sauron and well, it doesn't matter what he does, Sauron is going to die because the plot calls for it.

[fbmf]

1143441826[/unixtime]]*snicker*

I like how I introduce the concept of collaboration and buying credible actions to the thread...<SNIP>

And it's irrelevent to the thread.

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Good point. Stop talking about it.
[/TGFBS]

[Crissa]

Railroading is not when the climax is predetermined, but that of the path: All three switches create the same sequence of events.

A chance to have a different sequence of events is not railroading.

If the premise is that you went to Grace and Trip's apartment to help them with their marriage (drama)... Showing up pretending to be shot (action) is not a valid choice, and the GM will be unprepared for it - well, that's the player's fault, not the GM's. That's not being railroaded into having a drama scene - that's screwing around instead of playing the damn game you agreed to.

The outcome (success, failure) may be predetermined - marching up to the dragon as a level 1 character is doomed to fail. But as long as the player is immersed and informed to the world and the decisions they are making, that's fine.

Railroading is having immutable walls, not walls which are just implausible to destroy.

-Crissa

[PhoneLobster]

The three switches are a thoroughly misleading example.

Remember in this situation, and debate, the three switches are three options for how the whole damn campaign will run, not some inconsiquential door opening event.

three options which it was argued one is best off NOT having Codified rules of any kind to arbitrate.

One switch is marked "From here on out take doohicky to voodoo mountain"

One is marked "Find a way to kill big bad"

One is marked "Get a more powerful campaign winning doohicky".

RCs argument is that it is OK for two of those to always lead to failure and that NONE of them should have codified rules because its better that if the PCs go down the kill big bad path they just die when they face him because he is so uber he can't be statted out.

It takes you five to ten gaming sessions to pull these switches and see the DM whim generated results.

But even if they were three switches and a door opening event, don't you get pissed off with the kind of DM who sets that event up with three fixed responses none of which are actually codified in any rules in the system?

One response is a monster so fricking powerful it has no stats, another is a total failure to achieve a particular action because there are no rules on how to do it and the other is a victory based on several items all made up with no basis in the rules of the game either?

When the whole campaign is a single great three switch room with a 1 in 3 chance of fiat granted victory vs fiat enforced defeat that is undeniable railroading and crap DMing in the extreme.

If you ARE going to have a big bad so mighty it can't fit in the rules, an enemy army so numerous it can't be beaten by the rules, items so powerful they can't be reproduced by the rules and a victory that can only be achieved by exploiting items that do not follow the rules then the DM who is doing all this "ask the DMing" of the whole damn course of the entire everything had damn well better be prepared to sit down and account for the players emotional and physical investment in the game so when he sits there making shit up with no recourse to rules arbitration he doesn't just ignore them and do what he likes, which is EXACTLY how RC was suggesting the DM arbitrate an exceedingly dumb LOTR campaign.

[Crissa]

I won't argue, PL, because obviously I think the GM and Players should agree upon the setting and be given enough information to relate to whether they will succeed, fail, or truly if it's up to the dice.

Which isn't a matter of railroading, but communication.

I always ditch campaigns when I feel like I'm scrounging around in the dark towards some unknown but GM predetermined result.

But, as I said before, it's the path that is or isn't a railroad, not the destination.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1143509215[/unixtime]]
RCs argument is that it is OK for two of those to always lead to failure and that NONE of them should have codified rules because its better that if the PCs go down the kill big bad path they just die when they face him because he is so uber he can't be statted out.

Well, keep in mind that the actions of doing all three have codified rules, it's just that you have a few plot device events, like destroying the one ring. But mechanically that's just a throw item action into Mt.Doom, where it then wins the game. So instead of an objective of "kill the bad guy" your objective is "get to mount doom and perform a throw item action on the one ring", and that's mechanically simple enough.

As for Sauron not having stats, that's because I'm not even certain he's a corporeal entity in LotR. The movies portray him as a giant freaking eye, and from what I've read of the books, they make no mention of Sauron in corporeal form. Now if we're talking about Sauron with the one ring where he's the big armored badass, then sure, give him some stats, astronomically large stats, but still stats nonetheless. Though as LotR was set, it didn't seem like Sauron was more than a giant flaming eye. And well, I don't figure that eye has any stats. It can't really do anything either though, so it doesn't matter.

For creating a new ring, as stated before, item creation mechanics and fun quest ideas just don't work. Codified item creation is some guy sitting in a lab for 3 weeks and spending a bunch of resources. And that isn't a quest, that's something you do during downtime. So you're asking the impossible, that solution *can't* have codified rules because that makes it a crappy adventure by default. Item creation that is actually supposed to be a quest (gathering components and such) is pretty much totally up to DM fiat. Mechanically it consists of lots of gather item objectives followed by a magic item reward. The rest is just backstory. And generally in fantasy, backstory exists outside the rules.

If you ARE going to have a big bad so mighty it can't fit in the rules, an enemy army so numerous it can't be beaten by the rules, items so powerful they can't be reproduced by the rules and a victory that can only be achieved by exploiting items that do not follow the rules then the DM who is doing all this "ask the DMing" of the whole damn course of the entire everything had damn well better be prepared to sit down and account for the players emotional and physical investment in the game so when he sits there making shit up with no recourse to rules arbitration he doesn't just ignore them and do what he likes, which is EXACTLY how RC was suggesting the DM arbitrate an exceedingly dumb LOTR campaign.

Well, this isn't exactly true. The army fits in the rules, sorta, it's just really big. There are sufficiently enough orcs that you won't kill them all, not unless you get ridiculously lucky. But lets keep in mind that mass combat systems tend to be left out of most RPGs anyway, because they don't focus on the heroes so generally army battles are left up to the DM to decide. Their resolution is more a plot device than an actual mechanic, since they outscale the story you're supposed to be telling, which is about the PCs.

As for Sauron, he's pretty much a non-corporeal entity, so yeah, don't really need rules for him until he actually can step on a battlefield. Right now he's just a portable security camera with cool flame effects... so no need to stat him out beyond his detection abilities.

As for items so powerful they can't be reproduced, welcome to fantasy.

Seriously, I pretty much challenge you to read almost any fantasy story and not find some plot device item that can't be reproduced.

The one ring, Stormbringer, excalibur, Aladdin's lamp, Mjolnir, Black Thirteen, The sword of Shannara, any of the magic items in Buffy or Angel, etc.

Having reproducable items tends to be the exception, and not the rule, in fantasy. So you can stop complaining about that. If you don't like the idea of items you can't readily create, then you probably shouldn't be playing fantasy games at all and should do something scifi or modern. But you picked a fantasy genre so you now have to work in it.

Complaining about unique irreplaceable magic items in fantasy is about the same as a guy complaining about a lack of realism in comic books.

[PhoneLobster]

There is a difference between a unique irreplacable item...

...and a unique irreplacable indestructible item that will destroy the world unless you make it your quest to take it to the one and only voodoo volcanoe in the entire setting.

See now a unique irreplacable item. As much as its an annoying and potentially unballancing dohicky, it doesn't perforce railroad you.

Excalibur didn't ever force the king to go anywhere or do anything and face ultimate defeat if he didn't, it just made him stronger (and if it was an unstatted uncreatable item in his system if may have done so unfairly, but still it didn't reduce his choices).

The one ring? Its the number 4 train straight to mount doom.

(edit: and there is no excuse for not giving the big bad SOME sort of stats for interacting with in the frame work of the rules when you meet him. Not doing so is VERY bad form.)

[RandomCasualty]

1143587313[/unixtime]]
The one ring? Its the number 4 train straight to mount doom.

Well, at some point there has to be railroading, because the DM can't prepare for every contingency. So yeah, I mean whether the objective is "kill the lizard king" or "deliver the ring to mount doom" you're looking at potential railroading.

Now the PCs can say, "I don't want to do that quest", but that's generally pretty bad ettiquette as the DM has spent a long time working on this quest, and it's pretty much good gaming to not rub it in the DM's face and not attempt it. Hopefully the DM has made up a quest which logically should involve your character so the story makes sense.

I mean lets not kid ourselves, the DM doesn't have infinite resources, and given 3rd edition's structure, winging it does not work very well. You must prepare your encounters in advance.

At some point, the PCs have to enter an implied contract where they try to fulfill the objective the DM has set. Somewhere along the line the PCs should get some input too, but there's no way the DM is going to have every little detail prepared.

And you really can't expect him to.

(edit: and there is no excuse for not giving the big bad SOME sort of stats for interacting with in the frame work of the rules when you meet him. Not doing so is VERY bad form.)

Sure, when you meet him. Thing with Sauron is that you don't meet him. he's a floating eye. He doesn't actually do anything.

[PhoneLobster]

The DM has enough resources to offer you know, more than ONE option for such major choices as "what to do with the ring so good it has no rules".

I sure as hell do (even in 3.5, even with no preparation) and I expect others to do the same.

Its not that hard and with major campaign direction choices the most you ever have to wing it is the rest of one game.

And being utterly unable to meet the big bad is pretty much the same player thwarting attitude to being utterly unable to defeat the DM's compensatory issue's bastard child.

[RandomCasualty]

1143589288[/unixtime]]The DM has enough resources to offer you know, more than ONE option for such major choices as "what to do with the ring so good it has no rules".

Well the choices arise with how you intend to get to Mount Doom. Do you want to try to lead a big army through the front gates, do you want to try Shelob's cave. Maybe you want to try scaling the mountains around Mordor. Perhaps you want to try to use giant eagles and fly in.

That's where your options come in.

And of course you may try something that doesn't involve destroying the One Ring at all, though pretty muhc if you're following LotR, destroying the One Ring is your best option and your own information will tell you that. Remember that it can very well be made to seem like destroying the ring was the PC's choice by simply providing clues that tell them how to destroy the ring. Unless you get one of those PC groups determined to screw up your plot line and deliberately try to do the opposite of anything you tell them to do, it shouldn't be muhc of a problem to convince them to try to destroy the one ring.

And being utterly unable to meet the big bad is pretty much the same player thwarting attitude to being utterly unable to defeat the DM's compensatory issue's bastard child.

No it's not. There are plenty of big bads that you will pretty much never meet. Pretty much every single evil god in every campaign setting made qualifies. Sure, they did stat them, but wtf is the point? They can use the life or death power to instantly kill you anywhere and will pretty much take you down real easy.

There is generally always some big bad that you can't kill, because once you kill the top of the food chain, the game ends and you've eliminated all evil in the world.

No, I don't really see the point of statting things that are so far above the party that stats don't even matter. It's a waste of the DMs time, just like Dieties and demigods is a waste of paper. It's ok to know that Thor will pwn the PCs, I seriously don't care how many times over he can kill them with a single strike.

There are way better things for the DM to do than waste his time statting Sauron in case the PCs decide to go on a suicide mission to try to take him out. In a perfect world where the DM had infinite preparation time, sure, go ahead and stat everything. But the DM just doesn't have that kinda time, and it's perfectly ok to save time by not bothering to stat monsters that will outright devastate the party.

[Crissa]

Actually, if the characters are playing hobbits and need to destroy the one ring...

...Didn't the players, if not the characters, choose this quest ahead of time?

Or do your players not choose their campaign at all?

-Crissa

[PhoneLobster]

So it goes from, can't kill big bad because he has no stats.

To can't kill him because you can't meet him.

To can't kill him because that would be the climax of the campaign (the dumb food chain statement).

To can't kill him because if he did have stats you'd make damn sure he killed you with them.

Thats exactly the same sort of shifting rationale of pure player frustration used by the very worst of teenage DMs who give up the hobby because they keep making people hate them with it.

And I'm damned if I know if the players chose the LOTR campaign, as far as I'm aware we're talking in terms of it because RC brought it up yet again.

See the example was how its all good and stuff to have the unstatted unreproducable one ring and unstatted undefeatable Sauron. Because the "story calls for it", when faced with the way that restricts potential player interaction with those story elements... the response is he won't let them interact with those story elements, or the story for that matter, because like all the made up on the spot rules of the game the DM is now in charge of the story too.

I like how his totally non railroading campaign example is boiling down in his last post to "OK guys, you now fight your way to mount voodoo to throw the doohicky in... Would you like to fight your way there by land, land, land thats under some other land, or by air...?"

"Air, it gets us to the preset finale faster and we can't wait to end this campaign and start plotting revenge against you full time outside of the game."

[RandomCasualty]

1143633873[/unixtime]]
And I'm damned if I know if the players chose the LOTR campaign, as far as I'm aware we're talking in terms of it because RC brought it up yet again.

Well, we can assume that the PCs chose:
-To be heroes
-Have characters with the necessary abilities to sneak into Mt.Doom.
-Don't have the militiary might to crush Sauron's orc army by themselves.

As for whether they chose the campaign, probably not. They chose to play it for sure, but most DMs aren't going to go elaborate the entire story to their PCs beforehand. Lets remember that in the context of this example, it isn't the DM saying "lets play LotR". I'm just using LotR as a sample quest which could get thrown at you. You can just as easily change Sauron to Bane, Mount doom to some suitable location in Mulmaster and the One Ring to a Banite artifact. So you're sneaking into an evil stronghold to destroy an evil artifact and thwart the plans of some evil dark lord who you can't kill in combat, but won't be showing up personally to kill you. That's how it'd look in a normal setting. The storyline is the same as LotR pretty much only you substitute different names for things.

And that looks about pretty normal for a D&D quest.

And really I don't even consider LotR to be a full campaign, it's just a quest. At least delivering the One Ring is. Now if evil wins and you're now fighting a resistance movement trying to thwart it, that very well could be a campaign. But simply bringing the One Ring to Mt.Doom is just a one shot quest.

And well, sometimes you're going to get quests you as a PC don't necessarily like. There have always been those times when the quest doesn't particularly interest you and you're just going along because the party paladin really wants to, or whatever. And yeah, you gotta go through them.

I like how his totally non railroading campaign example is boiling down in his last post to "OK guys, you now fight your way to mount voodoo to throw the doohicky in... Would you like to fight your way there by land, land, land thats under some other land, or by air...?"

Look, that's more or less what non-railroading constitutes in this game sometimes. There aren't infinite quests, and you can't go cycling through a list of quests for you to do because you didnt' like the last one. The DM just can't be expected to do that much prep work.

DM: "Yeah, I've got this great quest planned where you have to slay a dragon. I spent six hours making it up last night."
PC: "Nah we don't want to do it."
DM: "OK, how about this Forge of Fury module I have?"
PC: "Nah, that's boring too."
DM: "Well wtf do you guys want to do?"
PC: "Lets go... um... " (points to random spot on map) "here."
DM: "That's the middle of the grey waste? Why the hell do you want to go there? I don't have anything prepared for that..."
PC: "Well if you don't let us go there you'd be railroading us."
DM: "You don't even have an incharacter reason for going there! Sorry but no..."
PC: "Railroading whore!"

And lets face it. Sneaking into Mt.Doom is the best D&D quest among those.

You've got three options:
1. Sneak the one ring into Mt. Doom: works great for D&D.

2. Fight Sauron Army for army: Well considering we have no mass combat system and this doesn't really focus much on the heroes but rather on two armies, this isn't a particularly great storyline. most of the time the heroes are going to be sitting back while the NPCs do all the work. And if the armies of good happen to be that powerful, who needs the heroes anyway? This storyline ends up with the DM stealing all the thunder as the victory of the campaign is pretty much backstory. Like it or not, we don't have a great mass combat system in D&D and handling 20,000 orcs versus 10,000 humans just isn't feasable.

3. Try to kill sauron directly: Wouldn't be a bad adventure if the PCs were that powerful, but they're not. You can't always kill everybody in a D&D game, and in this case Sauron happens to be beyond your means. It's rare in D&D when killing the enemy's god directly is a viable choice. It only happens in deep epic games and is generally the end of a campaign anyway.

4. Craft your own ring: This one could be set up, but it would end up being outside the rules anyway, because to make it fun it would have to involve 2nd edition style component gathering as opposed to Gandalf sitting in a lab, which is exactly the kind of thing codified rules produce. The downside of course is that some PC is going to have an uber artifact by the end of this and pretty much be more powerful than all the other PCs. Might be kinda cool for a solo game, but in the context of a group game, you don't want that big of a power shift. So this one doesn't work particularly well.

[fbmf]

4. Craft your own ring: This one could be set up, but it would end up being outside the rules anyway, because to make it fun it would have to involve 2nd edition style component gathering as opposed to Gandalf sitting in a lab, which is exactly the kind of thing codified rules produce. The downside of course is that some PC is going to have an uber artifact by the end of this and pretty much be more powerful than all the other PCs. Might be kinda cool for a solo game, but in the context of a group game, you don't want that big of a power shift. So this one doesn't work particularly well.

It can, but you have to think outside of LotR.

If Gandalf can make you a better Ring than the One Ring, then the One Ring is not an artifact as artifacts can't be created using the item creation rules. Since we assume the One Ring is an artifact, then naturally the DM just hand waves the necessary components and the PCs go one quests for requisite Eye of Newt of what the hell ever.

After the One Ring is defeated by the 1.1 Ring, you could:

A) The 1.1 Ring was a one shot item of sorts. It will grant you phenomenal cosmic power and an enormous living space unless it is used against the One Ring, on which both are destroyed. So it sets up some good role playing as the PCs hold phenomenal cosmic power in their hands but have to give it up because they are incurably good people seeking to stop the forces of evil.

B) The One Ring grants all of these various and sundry powers of whoop-ass, but the 1.1 Ring's sole reason for existing is to destroy the One Ring. That's all it can do.

If I were running this game, I'd set it up where the PCs had to collect the components, then had to strategically delay the advance of/hold off/distract the orc army for X amount of time for Gandalf to Craft the Ring, and then use one of the options above.

I've actually run and/or played in games similar to this, and they can be fun if you have the right group.

Game On,
fbmf

[RandomCasualty]

1143653539[/unixtime]]
If Gandalf can make you a better Ring than the One Ring, then the One Ring is not an artifact as artifacts can't be created using the item creation rules. Since we assume the One Ring is an artifact, then naturally the DM just hand waves the necessary components and the PCs go one quests for requisite Eye of Newt of what the hell ever.

Well right, and you can do that, just not with codified item creation rules. My biggest argument on the "create a better ring" plotline is PL's instance that the game somehow needs to handle forging artifacts in a codified fashion.

I have no real problem with creating a one shot "anti-one ring", but in the end this amounts to pretty much just another One Ring destruction method. Instead of melting it in Mt.Doom, you're creating a twin ring to take it out or nullify it. And that's ok from a story standpoint, you just can't do it with codified item creation rules. The creation of the second ring is just as arbitrary as throwing the One Ring into Mt.Doom, it's just a different process.

But keep in mind that the quest to forge the new ring could be construed as just as much railroading as going to Mt.Doom, since once again you've got an objective that can only be completed one way.

And since they're both entirely separate quests, it's doubtful the DM is going to design both the quest to Mt.Doom and the quest to find the 1.1 Ring components. He's going to do either or, and basically at that point you're pretty much stuck on the rails of that specific quest.

I don't think you can avoid railroading entirely in D&D. The DM is creating an illusion of a complete world but in truth, only those specific areas that he's worked out beforehand truly exist. The idea isn't so much to eliminate railroading, but to make the goal of the quest something the PCs actually want to do, so they don't feel like they're being railroaded. I think what PL is asking for is unrealistic because he wants several quests already written out, and that's just not doable, not unless your DM happens to be superman.

Most DMs just don't want to write out a quest if it isn't going to be used.

[PhoneLobster]

So its clear then.

The players don't get to choose their story with you.

You turn up one week and just say "OK Guys, Your characters need to destroy a terrible threat to the world."

"Fortunately I've decided exactly how you can go about doing that..."

"I haven't accounted for any other strategies you might use or actions you might take because that would be too much work, sure it would all just be hand waving because I refuse to use a system that has rules covering those eventualities, but its still too much work."

"Anyway I HAVE already just spent a week and planned your next 5 gaming sessions in advance after all..."

There is only one thing I can say.

Dude...

[RandomCasualty]

1143675640[/unixtime]]So its clear then.

The players don't get to choose their story with you.

You turn up one week and just say "OK Guys, Your characters need to destroy a terrible threat to the world."

Yeah, pretty much.

Isn't that how most D&D games go? The DM comes in and says "I just prepared (bought) this adventure for you guys." and then the PCs play through it? That's pretty much how every D&D game I've ever played in has gone.

I mean that's what heroes do... destroy terrible threats to the world.

I guess if you like you can call that railroading, but if that's the case, then I don't know how you'd run a non-railroaded D&D game, due to the preparation involved. You just can't go freeform in D&D, there's too many numbers to crunch.

About all you can do is the old prepared "random" encounter. The road forks left and right, and regardless of which the players choose, it happens to be the same fork that the chimera you wanted them to fight happens to be. This I consider a worse form of railroading because it actually removes the impact of the choices you give them.

Railroading to me is preventing the PCs choices from making a difference in the game. It's saying "This is my novel and you're going to play along to the plot. Things are going to happen as I planned."

Well, I certainly don't do that. My players surprise me all the time with stuff I didn't expect. Sometimes the bad guy who I expected to get away doesn't. And the campaign adapts. And I give PCs some pretty major campaign decisions. Cities and nations will get affected by PC choices and not in a plot dependent way. I also readily allow my PCs to fail and thus suffer the consequences of failure, whcih leads to some interesting games.

Considering that my plots generally take lots of unexpected twists and turns, I can hardly take claims of being a railroader seriously. Most of the time my PCs feel like they've got too many options and have trouble deciding which one to go wtih.

[Maj]

You turn up one week and just say "OK Guys, Your characters need to destroy a terrible threat to the world."

"Fortunately I've decided exactly how you can go about doing that..."

I have seen two major types of DMing:

• In the first method, the DM plots out a story. The players can deviate from it a little, but for the most part, everything is laid out beforehand - much like a module.
  
• In the second method, the DM creates a group of people performing an action/goal (they're usually the bad guys). The players are free to gather information as they choose, identify the problem as they choose, and solve it as they choose. With this method, the DM decides what is going to happen after the players decide what they want to do.

Personally, my experiences with the first type of DMing have not been good. The games are stale, uncreative, and my characters have been smacked down for performing too well or thinking outside the box. My experiences with the second type of game have been absolutely fabulous, but they do require a DM who is not afraid to consult with the players about new situations and rules. It is not uncommon for characters who decide to travel to an unmapped and unwritten section of the world to create the world as they go, and it's cool to see players want to participate more, knowing that what they do will not only have an impact on the current game, but will create rules and locations and characters that may recur in the next.

[Username17]

Personally I like to take it a bit farther and set up multiple ongoing problems so that the players can choose what to go deal with. In Shadowrun I do this by literally having the contacts of different characters attempt to get them to take different jobs, and in D&D I do this by setting up various rumors and job postings so that characters have multiple choices of where to go and what to do.

I don't think that the players should have to deal with an infestation of aboleth if they don't want to.

-Username17

[dbb]

In general, my experiences have tended to be similar to Maj's. My only quibble, and not even really a quibble so much as a further remark, is that the lines do tend to blur. If the Type 2 DM puts so much effort into creating his bad guys and his world that the story starts to be about the bad guys and the world, not about the PCs ... that's crap.

--d.

[Maj]

Personally I like to take it a bit farther and set up multiple ongoing problems so that the players can choose what to go deal with.

I love DMs like this... Sometimes, you wanna roleplay, but you just don't wanna roleplay that.

[erik]

I used to be a plotting DM and it was frustratingly difficult to get the PCs to go where I expected them to.

I've recently taken up the reins again, and am now basically always offering multiple choices to the players and letting them decide what their main goal is, rather than laying down the tracks. It's working a lot better.

I've gotten fairly good at winging encounters, such that the players think I've actually planned all this schtuff and their responses. If I were still a plotter/railroader, I'd never even have time to play since it takes so much effort to write up stuff that is a crap shoot at even interesting the players.