RPGMemes @ttrpg.network Ahdok @ttrpg.network 1y ago

Don't you just hate railroading? ugh.

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Funnily enough railroading doesn't really bug me if it's done in more broad strokes

Basically the players talk about their goals with the campaign in session zero and the railroad is basically the road trip getting the stuff the players want to do done

The broad strokes are things defined beforehand but the finer details are purely up to the players

So basically a wandering road trip rather than a railroad
- "Railroading" is often used overbroadly to the point of meaninglessness. My title here is supposed to be poking fun at that a little.
  
  As a negative term "railroading" is supposed to refer to when you actively prevent the players from exploring or doing something they want to do, and that should work, because it doesn't follow a set path you've planned out:
  
  Example: you plan for a villain to taunt the characters, fight them briefly, and then escape. The players do better in the combat than you expected, and would have removed all his HP, so you bump the HP up, then on his turn have him cast dimension door to escape. When a character counterspells the dimension door, you give him counterspell to counter that counterspell. When a second counterspell happens, you have one of his mooks pull out a scroll of counterspell and use it... Because you need him to escape for your plot, so you force it.
  
  That's negative railroading. It's much better to let them succeed, then alter your plans for future sessions accordingly. Maybe there's more to the evil scheme than just this one guy, maybe they won the day and stopped the threat and the next arc is something else (and maybe you can re-use that dungeon you already planned out)
  
  It's perfectly okay, and in fact often a good idea, to plan out the broad strokes of your story in advance, you need to plan something and you can't plan for everything - so having a good idea of what's coming is usually the right move - it's only bad if you refuse to let the story go to other places.
  
  My friend you put that exceptionally
  
  Yesterday, I had a bad session, and I wish to have a second opinion.
  
  There is railroading, a concept that you talked a lot about, and I wish to present to your wisdom this new concept that I will call : gagging.
  
  Gagging is when a DM... talks to much. Maybe it's describing every single action and consequence, maybe it's overdescripting areas and people, maybe it's not letting the players talk enough when it's their time, it's something in between these 3 and more.
  
  Every player know not to interrupt the DM. So that also means that as the DM, you might want to consider if what you are saying matters enough, interests the players, is required or not, and if your players are receptive to it to some degree.
  
  I think it's a bigger problem whenever a DM is following a module... badly. By badly, I mean they want to convey everything the module tells them to convey, but they also try to put their spin on it, making them talk more hesitantly, slower, with more pauses. If they would just read the descriptions aloud, it would be smoother and faster. If it were their creation, they probably could give details and descriptions easier since it's theirs. But when DMs try to go in between and don't prepare enough, it makes every description a crawl that you stop listening to midpoint because you know it won't really matter enough to force yourself to listen to it.
  
  The main point of gagging as a concept to me is not so much to force players down a specific path without their input, as railroading is more or less that but with nuances, but more a way to keep the players from talking and inputing their choices, dialog or interactions into the game.
  
  Since DMs have the mike when they talk, and since interrupting them is taboo (which I fully agree with), it then becomes very important to weight what they say and how they say it in a way that don't turn players off.
  
  And yes, yesterday I had what I would call a gagging DM. It wasn't the first session with them, but probably the last, as I lost complete interest in the campaign. Not only because of the gagging of course. But it fucking sucks for me to leave a campaign in which I had some amount of fun, but not enough to stick around.
  
  Generally speaking, if the style of a table just isn't right for you, and you're not having fun, it's better to drop than it is to just carry on attending and feel miserable about it.
  
  However, you may not want to drop in some instances - maybe the DM is a close friend and you want to support them, maybe you don't have any other options for campaigns to join, maybe you've got sunk costs and you're near the end and you just want to see it out, etc..
  
  In that case you could try talking to the DM about it to help them improve... Not in a "hey you suck" kind of way, but in a "Can we talk? I've got some suggestions that might help make the game better" kind of way.
  
  If it's a close group of friends you could try running a side campaign or a mini-campaign yourself, and, provide the group examples where the game runs a little better (not in a "you're doing it wrong let me show you" kind of way, just in a "hey I have a mini-campaign I'd like to run" kind of way.)
  
  Remember that no DM is perfect, and everyone is learning and improving all the time, and that the primary purpose of playing together is to have fun.
  
  I thank you for your advice. I dropped out, as I'm not particularly close to the DM or the group.
  
  Funny enough, except for 1 player everyone has been a player at my table before for several months. It felt kinda weird to be amongst ex-players at the table. So it's not like I wanted to stay at all costs. Plus I had a few... unspoken differents with the DM. Not big and bad things, but some things that we never talked about before I became a player at his table.
  
  What do you think of my concept ? About gagging ?
  
  Another good example that made me had my jaw dropped for real was the time that we had a new player (nice!) intro into a tavern (classic) but then the DM bulldozered over the introduction and sent us straight to our objective before we had time to say anything more than Hi. I felt gagged as never before that time.
  
  Plus for me as a DM, players talking to each other in character is GOLD. It's precious. It's fun. It explores their characters and bond them together tightly more than quests or NPCs ever could. Plus it saves your preps for next session as time goes by. So for me, going over that and taking it away is like watching a DMPC doing all of the saving. It's a no-no squared.
  
  I haven't heard "gagging" used as a specific term of art, in tabletop, but I have heard it used in improv circles.
  
  It's normally pretty bad to shut players down at the table. As a DM, you should normally be happy that your players are roleplaying, it means they're having fun and you get a little break where you can just sit and listen, or think about what you're going to do next.
  
  There are a number of cases where you do want to stop players talking too much. (This is not exhaustive, just some examples.)
  
  If one player monopolizes the roleplay/spotlight, as a DM you might want to close them down to let the other players have a go... It's generally best to interrupt with something that brings a quiet or shy player to the forefront.
  
  Sometimes you genuinely want to interrupt a conversation for narrative impact - maybe in a light-hearted game, a character is about to reveal their deep dark secret, and you want to interrupt the discussion with a fight to make a comedic cliffhanger. Maybe your scenario has things happening in real-time and you're tracking how much time the PCs "waste" talking their plans over.
  
  Sometimes, players can get bogged down planning what they're going to do next in excruciating detail - like they think there's a big threat in the next room, so they spend an hour discussing plans for which spells to put up, what items they're going to use, who's going to focus on what tactics etc etc. This can often be an activity that takes whole sessions, and isn't that interesting - so you might want to put a stop to that. The best way to do this is if you have an NPC voice in the party who can get fed up and suggest they wrap it up. It can be a very good thing to move the characters on if you know for sure the planning is meaningless (e.g. If you know the next room is empty and all the enemies are gone)
  
  If you're running a game to a tight time schedule, it can be important to keep the pace of the game up. The most common situation for this is a one-shot, where you want to get to the conclusion within a set time limit. If you have a limited number of hours for a scenario, you need to get through your content. In my experience for one-shots It's generally good to plan one or two encounters that you don't "need" and aim to run them, but if your players get into the RP, just quietly drop the random battle on the road. This gives you the flexibility to let them RP if they're into it, but the content to fill the session if they're not.
  
  As always use your judgement and try to read the table, pay attention to who's engaged and having fun, or who's looking at their phone, and base your decisions on what you think will be most fun for the players.
  
  I haven't heard "gagging" used as a specific term of art, in tabletop, but I have heard it used in improv circles.
  
  It's normally pretty bad to shut players down at the table. As a DM, you should normally be happy that your players are roleplaying, it means they're having fun and you get a little break where you can just sit and listen, or think about what you're going to do next.
  
  There are a number of cases where you do want to stop players talking too much.
  
  If one player monopolizes the roleplay/spotlight, as a DM you might want to close them down to let the other players have a go... It's generally best to interrupt with something that brings a quiet or shy player to the forefront.
  
  Sometimes you genuinely want to interrupt a conversation for narrative impact - maybe in a light-hearted game, a character is about to reveal their deep dark secret, and you want to interrupt the discussion with a fight to make a comedic cliffhanger. Maybe your scenario has things happening in real-time and you're tracking how much time the PCs "waste" talking their plans over.
  
  Sometimes, players can get bogged down planning what they're going to do next in excruciating detail - like they think there's a big threat in the next room, so they spend an hour discussing plans for which spells to put up, what items they're going to use, who's going to focus on what tactics etc etc. This can often be an activity that takes whole sessions, and isn't that interesting - so you might want to put a stop to that. The best way to do this is if you have an NPC voice in the party who can get fed up and suggest they wrap it up. It can be a very good thing to move the characters on if you know for sure the planning is meaningless (e.g. If you know the next room is empty and all the enemies are gone)
  
  If you're running a game to a tight time schedule, it can be important to keep the pace of the game up. The most common situation for this is a one-shot, where you want to get to the conclusion within a set time limit. If you have a limited number of hours for a scenario, you need to get through your content.
  
  In my experience for one-shots It's generally good to plan one or two encounters that you don't "need" and aim to run them, but if your players get into the RP, just quietly drop the random battle on the road. This gives you the flexibility to let them RP if they're into it, but the content to fill the session if they're not.
  
  As always use your judgement and try to read the table, pay attention to who's engaged and having fun, or who's looking at their phone, and base your decisions on what you think will be most fun for the players.

55 comments