When people refer to the act of "railroading" as it applies to DMing, they are referring to the DM shutting down courses of action that the players could reasonably have their characters take in order to push the players towards having their characters take the course of actions that the DM desires them to take.
The most basic example of which I can come up with at the moment is this: The DM establishes that the PCs are in a bustling hub city that has all the expected goings on for a city of that size. The players have the PCs go looking for some manner of paying work (such as adventure). The DM provides a lead on one avenue for getting paid. The players don't like the sound of that lead and have their characters continue looking for other options (or decide upon their own adventure, such as exploring some nearby area or attempting to travel to a new city/hub of some sort to find adventure in). If at that point what the DM does is intended upon guiding the players and their characters back to the provided avenue mentioned earlier, then it is railroading.
Basically, the term comes from the analogy of comparing your meaningful choices within the campaign as a player to how much influence a person upon a train has over where the train can travel to - which is anywhere that someone else has laid out the track to get to.
When you enter the mist, do you know you’re going into spooky spooky vampire town?
Lets take White Plume Mountain for example. “You see the mountain in the distance standing out of the swamp with its namesake white feather of steam or smoke issuing from the top.”
”Wait, did you say swamp? Hell no, Im not going into any swamp, Turn this bus around, we’re going someplace else.”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Yes, it is a bit, but so is every prepared adventure. A group sitting down to "do" a prepared adventure, whether it it's published or not, is agreeing to the framework of that adventure and the inherent railroading that is necessary for that adventure to work. If the basic framework and boundaries of the adventure are ignored then the real life money and/or large amount of time to prepare/purchase this detailed adventure are wasted.
If a group sat down to play through Lost Mines of Phandelver and the party decided to go to Waterdeep and become pirates for several years, then the adventure is wasted. Game over. Congratulations everyone. Instead of that happening, the DM will generally employ some gentle nudging to get the party back inside the boundary of the chosen story. Is this railroading? Hell yes. And it is completely justified, and best for the fun and enjoyment of all concerned. Only a complete sandbox universe game will contain zero railroading. No published adventures fit that description.
Railroading is a term that has loosened it's definition over time. Despite what your DM says about his homebrew world (unless everything is being randomly generated or improvised on the spot), EVERY game involves some amount of railroading. This is where social compact comes to play. It's not a decision of "should I do a railroaded campaign or a sandbox campaign?", it's "where on the spectrum between these two does my campaign fit?"
Typically, a DM is gonna ask or suggest a published campaign to his players rather than just spring it on them. And even in a homebrew world, players are likely asked what kind of adventure they want to take on session 0. Unless your DM somehow tricked you into playing Curse of Strahd when you expected to be slaying dragons, you're probably not being railroaded.
By the campaign's design, your trapped in Spookville until you kill Strahd. It's not railroading if it's a central part of the theme and plot for your narrative, even though it limits a handful of your infinite options. CoS is a brand of railroady campaigns refered to as a "weekend in hell" adventure. The whole po I'll not is finding yourself trapped in a terrible place and trying to escape. If your players agree to play and start griping when the mist kills the third character they sent in trying to find an exit, it's their fault. Players know what they're getting into messing with Barovia.
CoS is a brand of railroady campaigns refered to as a "weekend in hell" adventure. The whole po I'll not is finding yourself trapped in a terrible place and trying to escape. If your players agree to play and start griping when the mist kills the third character they sent in trying to find an exit, it's their fault. Players know what they're getting into messing with Barovia.
I'm not arguing either way, I was merely asking if anybody considered it railroading. CoS is much much longer than a weekend. Doesn't it take characters from 1 to 10? That's a long ass time. And some players really do NOT know what they are getting into with Barovia.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
I cannot consider being stuck in a specific setting to be railroading. That's a function of how the Domains of Dread demiplanes work, and has for a long time. And this is a pretty extreme situation, as we're talking about an adventure outside the Prime Material plane here.
This is about on the same level as asking if having a game set in the Forgotten Realms is railroading, because you can't just instantly show up in Sigil (Planescape), or some Dark Suns or Eberron locations.
Travel in Barovia is actually kind of short. It's only a few miles between every major landmark. The game suggests it will take characters from levels 1 to 10, because it suggests milestone level-ups, so if you have very proactive players, they could indeed do most of the adventure in a few days.
Now if you mean in IRL time played - yes, it can take quite a while to play through.
I told my players the premise of the game and explained it was a "once you are in, you can't leave, and everything is trying to kill you." With that, we were off. They are having a lot of fun now, though the first 2-3 sessions were a bit of a doozy.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM: Adventures in Phandalin [Khessa], The Dread of Strahd[Darya], Dragons of Stormwreck Isle [Rook], Baldur's Gate Mysteries [4-Player] Player: Oona in MO's Icewind Dale Ru's Current Status
CoS is a brand of railroady campaigns refered to as a "weekend in hell" adventure. The whole po I'll not is finding yourself trapped in a terrible place and trying to escape. If your players agree to play and start griping when the mist kills the third character they sent in trying to find an exit, it's their fault. Players know what they're getting into messing with Barovia.
I'm not arguing either way, I was merely asking if anybody considered it railroading. CoS is much much longer than a weekend. Doesn't it take characters from 1 to 10? That's a long ass time. And some players really do NOT know what they are getting into with Barovia.
I feel yah. "Weekend in hell" got coined (to my knowledge at least) with the original module, but it's more to indicate the fact that it's a place the party is trying to leave quickly as opposed to how long they're there.
I'll rephrase my latermost statement: Players SHOULD know what they're getting into messing with Barovia. And if they don't, the DM should've told them well before session 1 what was going on (the reason most people abandon this campaign is DM's just trying to run straight from the book rather than reading through it first to get the full picture and theme). Even without forewarning, I've seen that most people that pick up CoS do so for the sake of the athstetic and genre. If you're picking up the book randomly to play, you can probably guess that your headed for a Translyvanian romp with the Universal Monsters. You don't just select a book like that and complain that you're fighting a vampire instead of sailing the high seas or slaying giants. I understand trying the gothic horror shtick and deciding halfway through that it's not for your group, but to say it's railroading unfairly because your character can't leave the very niche setting you and your group decided to play would be a bit asinine.
So yeah, while a player may not know EXACTLY what they're getting into with Barovia, it's hard to say they wouldn't know enough by looking at the cover whether it's something they want to stick with for a full 10ish levels or not.
In the end, the campaign is far from linear. Despite having Barovia's boarders misted out, the problem my friends and I have had is that it's almost a bit too open ended. As a player, you can feel a bit directionless with the whole of the valley to explore and only a handful of vague clues to guide you to important things. I suppose it's just how you look at it.
Once the party enters Barovia they can’t leave. Would you consider this to be railroading?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
No, but some people might see it that way. Yes, they're trapped in Barovia, but they have free reign of the place. If they want to go straight to
Bonegrinder to be made into pies
they can! Same thing for
feeding the lust for immortality of an aspiring lich if they go straight to the Amber Temple.
There's all sorts of stuff to do and they can do it all in any order. All except leave Barovia until the exit requirements are met.
Railroading them would be directing their travels along a specific path through Barovia.
EDIT: I just realized this is the DM's thread so I didn't really need the spoilers, but I'm leaving them because I think it's funny.
WillBudge is correct.
When people refer to the act of "railroading" as it applies to DMing, they are referring to the DM shutting down courses of action that the players could reasonably have their characters take in order to push the players towards having their characters take the course of actions that the DM desires them to take.
The most basic example of which I can come up with at the moment is this: The DM establishes that the PCs are in a bustling hub city that has all the expected goings on for a city of that size. The players have the PCs go looking for some manner of paying work (such as adventure). The DM provides a lead on one avenue for getting paid. The players don't like the sound of that lead and have their characters continue looking for other options (or decide upon their own adventure, such as exploring some nearby area or attempting to travel to a new city/hub of some sort to find adventure in). If at that point what the DM does is intended upon guiding the players and their characters back to the provided avenue mentioned earlier, then it is railroading.
Basically, the term comes from the analogy of comparing your meaningful choices within the campaign as a player to how much influence a person upon a train has over where the train can travel to - which is anywhere that someone else has laid out the track to get to.
When you enter the mist, do you know you’re going into spooky spooky vampire town?
Lets take White Plume Mountain for example. “You see the mountain in the distance standing out of the swamp with its namesake white feather of steam or smoke issuing from the top.”
”Wait, did you say swamp? Hell no, Im not going into any swamp, Turn this bus around, we’re going someplace else.”
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Yes, it is a bit, but so is every prepared adventure. A group sitting down to "do" a prepared adventure, whether it it's published or not, is agreeing to the framework of that adventure and the inherent railroading that is necessary for that adventure to work. If the basic framework and boundaries of the adventure are ignored then the real life money and/or large amount of time to prepare/purchase this detailed adventure are wasted.
If a group sat down to play through Lost Mines of Phandelver and the party decided to go to Waterdeep and become pirates for several years, then the adventure is wasted. Game over. Congratulations everyone. Instead of that happening, the DM will generally employ some gentle nudging to get the party back inside the boundary of the chosen story. Is this railroading? Hell yes. And it is completely justified, and best for the fun and enjoyment of all concerned. Only a complete sandbox universe game will contain zero railroading. No published adventures fit that description.
Railroading is a term that has loosened it's definition over time. Despite what your DM says about his homebrew world (unless everything is being randomly generated or improvised on the spot), EVERY game involves some amount of railroading. This is where social compact comes to play. It's not a decision of "should I do a railroaded campaign or a sandbox campaign?", it's "where on the spectrum between these two does my campaign fit?"
Typically, a DM is gonna ask or suggest a published campaign to his players rather than just spring it on them. And even in a homebrew world, players are likely asked what kind of adventure they want to take on session 0. Unless your DM somehow tricked you into playing Curse of Strahd when you expected to be slaying dragons, you're probably not being railroaded.
By the campaign's design, your trapped in Spookville until you kill Strahd. It's not railroading if it's a central part of the theme and plot for your narrative, even though it limits a handful of your infinite options. CoS is a brand of railroady campaigns refered to as a "weekend in hell" adventure. The whole po I'll not is finding yourself trapped in a terrible place and trying to escape. If your players agree to play and start griping when the mist kills the third character they sent in trying to find an exit, it's their fault. Players know what they're getting into messing with Barovia.
#OpenDnD. #DnDBegone
I'm not arguing either way, I was merely asking if anybody considered it railroading. CoS is much much longer than a weekend. Doesn't it take characters from 1 to 10? That's a long ass time. And some players really do NOT know what they are getting into with Barovia.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I cannot consider being stuck in a specific setting to be railroading. That's a function of how the Domains of Dread demiplanes work, and has for a long time. And this is a pretty extreme situation, as we're talking about an adventure outside the Prime Material plane here.
This is about on the same level as asking if having a game set in the Forgotten Realms is railroading, because you can't just instantly show up in Sigil (Planescape), or some Dark Suns or Eberron locations.
Travel in Barovia is actually kind of short. It's only a few miles between every major landmark. The game suggests it will take characters from levels 1 to 10, because it suggests milestone level-ups, so if you have very proactive players, they could indeed do most of the adventure in a few days.
Now if you mean in IRL time played - yes, it can take quite a while to play through.
I told my players the premise of the game and explained it was a "once you are in, you can't leave, and everything is trying to kill you." With that, we were off. They are having a lot of fun now, though the first 2-3 sessions were a bit of a doozy.
DM: Adventures in Phandalin [Khessa], The Dread of Strahd [Darya], Dragons of Stormwreck Isle [Rook], Baldur's Gate Mysteries [4-Player]
Player: Oona in MO's Icewind Dale
Ru's Current Status
I feel yah. "Weekend in hell" got coined (to my knowledge at least) with the original module, but it's more to indicate the fact that it's a place the party is trying to leave quickly as opposed to how long they're there.
I'll rephrase my latermost statement: Players SHOULD know what they're getting into messing with Barovia. And if they don't, the DM should've told them well before session 1 what was going on (the reason most people abandon this campaign is DM's just trying to run straight from the book rather than reading through it first to get the full picture and theme). Even without forewarning, I've seen that most people that pick up CoS do so for the sake of the athstetic and genre. If you're picking up the book randomly to play, you can probably guess that your headed for a Translyvanian romp with the Universal Monsters. You don't just select a book like that and complain that you're fighting a vampire instead of sailing the high seas or slaying giants. I understand trying the gothic horror shtick and deciding halfway through that it's not for your group, but to say it's railroading unfairly because your character can't leave the very niche setting you and your group decided to play would be a bit asinine.
So yeah, while a player may not know EXACTLY what they're getting into with Barovia, it's hard to say they wouldn't know enough by looking at the cover whether it's something they want to stick with for a full 10ish levels or not.
In the end, the campaign is far from linear. Despite having Barovia's boarders misted out, the problem my friends and I have had is that it's almost a bit too open ended. As a player, you can feel a bit directionless with the whole of the valley to explore and only a handful of vague clues to guide you to important things. I suppose it's just how you look at it.
#OpenDnD. #DnDBegone