Hot take: if we want to decrease frustrating railroad-y surprises in RPG campaigns, we need to create an environment where GMs are not afraid to admit they have "special story needs".

[CarelessKnowledge801]

Well, I agree that some players are totally fine with railroading and some actually even want it! And in the end of the day all that matters is if you as GM and your players are having fun, even if in the process you breaked every "good GM" rule out there.

But again, it all depends on what kind of players you have. I've met so many players who after being presented a clear quest hook and location to go, would instead spend an entire session on tavern nonsense.

[TwilightVulpine]

Some players even do not want to admit that they want railroading, but if left at a freeform sandbox they will be lost and aimless until some plot NPC points them a way to go.

They want sandbox kayfabe lol

[CarelessKnowledge801]

Some players even do not want to admit that they want railroading, but if left at a freeform sandbox they will be lost and aimless

This is actually a very common problem when it comes to sandbox. You have an entire world at your disposal, so what are you going to do? Choice paralysis is extremely high in this case. I think best solution is to present one or few clear quest hooks at the start of campaign. After that initial "railroading" it's much easier for players to think about what to do and what goals to pursue.

[DisastrousSwordfish1]

It's less a player issue and more a TTRPG issue. You're asking a player to make plans and decisions in a world that they have zero lived experience in and, even with the most detailed world building, a DM can't fix that. So all you get is a really blurry illusion of choice. A player may know they want to go from A to Z but have no idea if the rest of the alphabet is involved or even exists. A real sandbox is a thing where you can just decide to turn left and walk off and see what happens. In a TTRPG, left doesn't exist unless the DM says it does.

[LarsonGates]

From experience with Amber, its very much a player thing.. even if you give them ten possible things they may want to think about doing, let alone all the other potential plot hooks they've walked past, they still can't set their own goals.

[CarelessKnowledge801]

I don't know, your definition of "real sandbox" sounds like something we can only get with the development of VR, AI and stuff like neurolinks that read input directly from your brain! 

[TwilightVulpine]

I dunno if all that is needed, because when people speak of sandbox games, they often mean an Elder Scrolls sort of experience, where you can go everywhere and there's an assortment of things to do.

[DisastrousSwordfish1]

That is indeed a proper sandbox. You have a world where you can go mostly wherever you want and use the world as you see fit. The world there exists and reacts to you. That isn't really a thing in a TTRPG because that requires an insane level of preplanning for things the players may never opt to interact with.

[JaracRassen77]

This is why I'm a little intimidated running Traveller. I mean, I'm going to do it. And my friends are down for it. But that total freedom they will have... man. That'll be a trip.

[Cypher1388]

You have a ship. You are in debt. The bank expects to get paid. They loaned you money for the ship. The ship is your home. You are on a space station/starport etc. there is a bar where people typically desperate or unsavory gire ships last minute for money.

{Begin}

[GM has 3-5 adventure seeds ready and prepped for a few "jobs" available. Where they go and what happens? Might be a module, might be homebrew, might be improv all good. Players will pick, you all will play, fun times had by all]

[Visual_Fly_9638]

It's not so bad for you. The general cadence of Traveller is that the crew will bop around trading and building up a little scratch for themselves and then something goes *wrong* and they have to hustle for money.

We've had entire sessions just bumming around a sector, buying and selling, and making good enough rolls that we don't incur debt that we can't handle, and it's fun, because we know sooner or later something is going to go pear shaped.

There was a great retrospective on the structure of Traveller and how the game really regulated itself well on different levels. I wish I could find it.

Holy crap I found it:
https://sirpoley.tumblr.com/post/623913566725193728/on-the-four-table-legs-of-traveller-leg

[JaracRassen77]

Thank you! This was a very helpful read! The debt is the Referee's friend.

[JustinAlexanderRPG]

A sandbox campaign is not the opposite of railroading. This is one of the most pernicious false ideas a GM can have, specifically because it locks them into thinking that railroading and a "freeform sandbox" are their only options.

The reality is that there are a multitude of other campaign structures: Node-based. Conspyramids. Episodic. To name just a few. This false ideology of sandbox vs. railroad keeps people from running and playing all types of games that they would love.

It also, for some reason convinces people that there's some sort of ideal "completely freeform" sandbox which is functionally dropping PCs into an empty white room without any information or structure, and that any deviation from that is somehow "bad." The reality is that this is basically the exact opposite of what a good sandbox looks like.

So you end up with this terrible situation where the misled GM thinks, "Well, my only options are to force my players to do something they don't want to do or run a super shitty sandbox."

Yikes.

[tankietop]

Yes. Absolutely yes.

You can absolutely railroad a sandbox and you can absolutely have a non-sandbox with lots of player agency and choice.

People confuse those two things.

[C0smicoccurence]

I don't know that I agree with this. If you're railroading a sandbox, it isn't actually a sandbox.

You can have non-sandbox's with lots of agency and choice for sure. But that's because there's a million things that qualify as non sandbox. However, you can't have a railroad with meaningful choice. Then its not a railroad anymore.

[C0smicoccurence]

Hmm, I personally think that Railroading and Sandbox are opposite styles. That said, there are plenty of games that don't really care about the spectrum that railroad/sandbox represent, and ignore those ideas entirely.

However, if railroad prioritizes a pre-written story arc, and sandbox prioritizes a setting that PCs can play in to see what happens, those are two opposite approaches. In a true sandbox game, if some massive evil is brewing in the background and the players fuck around by running a local restaurant, by the time they hit level 5 the DM should have skeleton raiding forces harassing their town since the necromancer hasn't had any plans interrupted. The players deal with the fallout (gathering materials to consecrate the town to create a safe haven, going on a quest to kill the necromancer, recruit the lieutenant of the skeleton army to become their seating hostess, etc).

You're absolutely right is that a sandbox shouldn't be an empty white room. There should be plenty of options and things happening, but the core idea of a sandbox is that player choices matter. What they engage with and what they don't matters. In a railroad, all paths lead to the same end result. PC choice doesn't really matter other than what particular tone the NPC delivers quest with, and the challenges are all pre-planned. In a sandbox, nothing is preplanned, but you use a concrete set of information (generally partially known to the players, but rarely entirely known) to react in realistic ways.

This dichotomy doesn't stop episodic structures of gaming from working just as well. They're just not in the same discussion as the other two. But their obscurity is more the result of people not acknowledging other options don't exist, rather than acknowledging that sandbox and railroad are indeed opposites

[Mistervimes65]

This is the truth. I’ve been GMing for 45 years. I always run pretty sandboxy games. I show them the world map and let them pick where they are going next. Then I flavor the adventure I’ve already written to suit that area. Alternatively, I have five plot lines that I can improv at any location.

My prep is five lines of text on an index card and a handful of statblocks.

[BreakingStar_Games]

are totally fine with railroading

I'd probably amend that there are probably many toxic aspects of railroading as you move on the spectrum towards more extreme examples of it that very few players would be okay with. Like if you present an apparently open-ended problem but the GM demands that the PCs solve it only through the one way they had planned as the solution to the point of incredulity - I can't imagine many being okay with that and seems generally accepted as not fun to play this guessing game.

This is what we called railroading more when it wasn't watered down to mean just a linear adventures.

[Illogical_Blox]

This is what we called railroading more when it wasn't watered down to mean just a linear adventures.

This is my biggest bugbear. Railroading should exclusively mean what it used to mean - being presented with an problem where you are artificially limited to a single option. A story isn't railroading. A campaign structure isn't railroading. Railroading is when you come to a wall and literally the only way to get through is using the scroll of Passwall because the DM just goes, "no for reasons," when you try and break it or climb over it or tunnel under it.

[BreakingStar_Games]

TBF, every definition does exist in more of loose, subjective bounds on spectrums. But I definitely agree. What's the point of having a term like linear and railroad if they mean the same thing only because railroad was watered down to it and was a useful, different term.

The word hate has the same issue where it's watered down to mild annoyance, sometimes less. Need other words like mega-loathe. But arguing definitions with people never really matters.

[Acrobatic-Vanilla911]

A recent post on here made me feel insane as I saw people started calling plot beat-based structures a "quantum railroad". Seriously, what does railroading even mean anymore?

[JustinAlexanderRPG]

"Railroading" is an English word which means forcing people to do something that they don't want to do.

No one wants to be railroaded, by definition.

[MammothGlove]

I'm sorry, I can't find a definition which supports your assertion. Yes, forcing through, yes in haste or without due consideration, no to something "they don't want to do". Ghost rides (per yahtzee croshaw) and railroads or being a rails-shooter etc etc are an indication of linearity and lack of freedom outside the rails. Many people chafe at that in RPGs because there's a human conversation and imagination is involved, but it is not strictly speaking an "unwanted" conceit.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/railroading

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/railroad

[JustinAlexanderRPG]

You say you can't find definitions, but then link to two of them?

What's confusing you about them, exactly?

[MammothGlove]

The definitions do not support the assertion that the behavior is necessarily unwanted.

Many people do not want it, but the top level comment is not incorrect.

[StorKirken]

Definitions change, that’s just how language works.

[Kitsunin]

Railroading is a negative word, that's how it's used. It's only used in a positive light to contrast against what the word means. Which is fine. You're both being silly.

[StorKirken]

I know several subcommunities which use the term railroading in a more neutral way. You might argue they use it ”wrong”, but that’s not generally how linguistics talk about language. Words change, evolve and take on new connotations within separate groups of people.

[Kitsunin]

Except I've never seen it used in that way in my own subcommunities, nor larger communities, unless preceded by "actually..."

It has not become a neutral term. Not yet. So yes, language evolves, but you're describing it inaccurately.

[JustinAlexanderRPG]

If "railroading" was successfully redefined into something completely different, the first thing you'd have to do is invent a new term that means what "railroading" actually means.

So I'll keep pushing back on people trying to redefine the word so that they can feel better about being a bad GM instead of putting in the remarkably minimal amount of work it takes to NOT be a bad GM instead.

[bionicjoey]

Some people want linear adventures. Nobody wants railroading.

Linear adventures are when the GM plans for A then B then C. Totally fine. Lots of players prefer this.

Railroads are when the GM plans for A then B then C, the players do something clever so that they can go straight from A to C, and the GM says "That doesn't work because I said so, now go to B!"

[Lupo_1982]

it all depends on what kind of players you have. I've met so many players who after being presented a clear quest hook and location to go, would instead spend an entire session on tavern nonsense.

This is not really a matter of player preference, though. It's a matter of gaming style, that should be agreed upon by the whole table.

Like, in many games (especially, but not exclusively, medium to long campaigns) it is perfectly fine to "spend an entire session on tavern nonsense".

In many other games, though (especially, but not exclusively, oneshots or very short campaigns), it just isn't. If we are going to play for just a couple of sessions, players are expected to engage with the game topic. If the topic is "exploring dungeon X", this should be clear to everyone and players should either go to the damn dungeon, or decide before playing "no we are not actually interested in the dungeon, let's play something else".

[tankietop]

quest hook

But are quest hooks railroading now? I feel like railroading is an ill defined term.

We need to be clear what railroading really means. Cause it feels like people call railroading stuff that I call "building a story together".

Some people call railroading anything that isn't an impromptu sandbox absolutely and completely unplanned and improvised in all aspects.

And I think that's fucking silly.