The Nature of Railroading

[Pippa the Pixie]

There are rules for calculating the DC to recognize a spell. Determining whether Boccob recognizes a spell or not followes game physics by following those rules.

If the GM decides that they want recognizing this particular spell to be a tense game moment, and replaces those rules with a coin flip, then they have ignored game physics.

So by ''game physics" your talking only about "game rules".

Like what if the DM gets the ''tense game moment" by simply having Boccob NOT seeing or hearing the spell’s verbal or somatic components?

I really need to come up with better words to explain this idea. "Where do babies come from? When a Mommy and a Daddy love each other very much..."

Where does railroading come from? It comes from the existence of rails. Where do rails come from? They come from the GM wanting something.

Where does photosynthesis come from? It comes from plants processing sunlight.

Ok....but all your examples are only 100% true in our reality. Once you enter the realm of fiction: anything goes.

So photosynthesis is sunlight? So photosynthesis is the sun? No. But understanding the sun's role in the process is part of understanding photosynthesis. Understanding the role of the GM wanting something (and not getting explicit buy-in) is part of understanding the nature of railroading.

So are you altering your defination of railroading to ''if the DM wants anything: it's railroading". It sounds a bit like you are.

I guess your ideal DM would be a passive done servant that just did whatever the players demanded.

Wrong. Photosynthesis occurs whether anyone notices or not, a murder is still a murder whether or not anyone complains, whether or not the murderer gets away with it. Railroading is equally defined by what it is, not by perception.

Yea.....but not really.

The players have a fun game. During the game, none of the hostile players notice the DM ''wanting anything" and at no time do they cry ''railroading".

The players are all happy as clams, deluding themselves into thinking they just did collaborative player emergent game(with that DM servant firmly in check).

So...unknown to the players, the DM did railroad them All the Live Long Day.

The players are busy high fiving themselves at how awesome the game THEY...only the players...made up out of thin air, without that dumb DM ''wanting stuff".

So....if the DM just sits back and smiles....and never tells them the truth. Was there really ever any railroading in the game?

Like sure if there was an NSA spy van outside spying on the game...and all the agents were RPG folks...then sure they...might...see the railroading and know it was done. But still the players will never, ever know.

So...if the players never know....then it really does not matter ''if" something was done or not....as the players will never know anyway.