Is railroading always bad?

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Inspired by the discussion of the Great Pendragon Campaign elsewhere.

Railroading is frequently talked about as if it's always bad GMing but is it?

A few random thoughts to spark this off.

The GPC is considered a classic despite (or because of?) the railroading in some parts. There's other games this is true of; Paranoia for one.

Is there any practical difference between "linear" and "railroad" because I'm not sure I see one. And I see quite a lot of linear games being run.

Not all players want an actual sandbox. I've run sandboxes. And some players adore them. And others look like a deer in headlights when they realise you aren't going to give them any guidance on what they do.

On top of that, a lot of supposed "sandboxes" seem to just mean "you can do the pre planned encounters in a different order". That isn't a sandbox, it's a disguised linear campaign.

How is the standard dungeon crawl not essentially a railroad? Preplanned encounters in generally a linear order.
 
I think you need direction. I run a lot of GURPS. The other day we did a Bugs Bunny / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover. Was it rail roading that I told the bunny he'd escaped from a lab and was being chased by mutant dogs? Or that his tunnel happened to break out right above the head of Raphael as he was brooding.
 
It's not always bad. You need to let people know when they buy the ticket so everyone yells "all aboard!" but it's probably the most financially successful form of adventure publishing. The Adventure Path is pretty much a railroad with multiple side branches all leading to the same destination. It's done very well for Paizo and WotC.

The details are what differentiate it from being good or bad. An AP with little wiggle room, necessary but hard or "only one way to get" mcguffins, or just lack of scenery make for a bad ride.
 
For reference in the GPC as one of several examples in the year 491 the players can be knights accompanying Madoc on his siege of Terrabil castle owned by Gorlois. For any who don't know Madoc is Arthur's older brother and Gorlois is the first husband of Arthur's mother Igraine.

The knights can be part of Madoc's personal guard and the fight is run using the basic Pendragon mass battle rules rather than the ones in the Book of Battle 2E.

On the 4th round Gorlois and Madoc both die in a scripted manner that no intervention can prevent. This is a major setting event that in a "true" sandbox not only could you prevent in theory, but under the rules you in fact could reasonably easily do so.

This is only one example of a battle with a detailed round by round script and only one of several fixed events.
 
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Not for me it isn't... Some of my most enjoyable games were railroady. As long as the one or two (how many options can you have at a point in a game considered to be on rails?) options we had were logical, and they were, I didn't care. The plots were always entertaining, the set pieces fun, and the characterisation was brilliant. Have really fond memories of them to be honest.
 
I don't think it's necessarily bad GM'ing as much as it's bad scenario writing. It seems to be a feature of scenarios where there's a story that the writer wants to tell rather than providing a canvass upon which a story can be told. Here's an example of awful railroading I read last week in The Black Madonna for Kult: After a scene concludes the text reads - "the characters are disarmed and brought before x." That's a railroad right there because the ongoing story requires that the pcs do that one thing in order for things to proceed as the author wishes. They could equally have designed a scene where the capture is attempted and the pcs can choose whether to resist or not and if they choose to resist and are successful then there needs to be another route where the scenario can continue to the next scene. And, to be frank, it's not that hard to do so it comes across as lazy writing more than anything else. A good GM could work this around with no sweat but someone inexperienced might struggle which is why I don't see it as a GM problem. (Yes, some GMs revel in crapping on players but surely they are dead by now?) To be fair to The Black Madonna it's otherwise a very good campaign.

For me railroading is more than merely being linear in design, it's an attempt to force a specific outcome. In the BM example above it could well be that the scene following the "capture" is necessarily next in line and so could be called linear design if there are different ways to get there, but a railroad if there's only one. This plays a lot with definitions, however, and is only my own interpretation.
 
Not for me it isn't... Some of my most enjoyable games were railroady. As long as the one or two (how many options can you have at a point in a game considered to be on rails?) options we had were logical, and they were, I didn't care. The plots were always entertaining, the set pieces fun, and the characterisation was brilliant. Have really fond memories of them to be honest.

Ultimately, if everyone has fun, that’s what matters.
 
Railroading is frequently talked about as if it's always bad GMing but is it?
I will answer with a question. Are orders and missions in a roleplaying campaign bad?

My opinion that even in a sandbox campaign, some circumstances led to a situation where you either follow a chain of events or do something completely different. Missions are a classic example. Especially when the circumstances are such that the characters are under orders by a higher authority, agents, soldiers, retainers, etc.

So it pays to learn how to run a railroad well. Learn how to make a chain of events interesting to be utilized alongside making interesting locales, or situations. Because it is going to come up.

Railroaded adventures are neither good or bad. The problem is that the odds are that whatever chain of events you think is cool it really not thus becomes an exercise in frustration. It took many years of allowing players to trash my setting before I learned enough about what players like to take a stab at presenting an adventure where their choices are constrained. The key to a successful railroad that the players want to continue along the rails. That either it so fun that they are willing to stay on for the ride. Or is fun enough and the next step is the only reasonable choice.

Some Background
It used to be back circa 1990, I had utter disdain for anything that smelled of railroading. Then I got into running boffer style LARP events for ten years. While the Live Action is great in a lot of ways, it has a major downside, logistics. You simply can't move from one end of a camp to another and setup as fast as you can for tabletop roleplaying. Plus your volunteers for event staff has to east, sleep, and rest. All of this means that for most adventures, like a dungeon, you are constrained by logistics. Plus since we are dealing with physical props and what there on site, we don't have the flexibility in the locale we can depict as we do in a pen & paper campaign.

This means that the adventure portion* of most events are compromised of series railroads run in parallel. So you learn to write good railroads, adventures where the next step is so obvious that the players accept it, or so fun that they want to continue to stay on the ride.

*The other half of LARP is the roleplaying. There LARP excels because you have multiple players interacting with multiple NPCs and themselves without the need for a event director i.e. to be there in the way you have to do in a pen & paper campaign. It is a bit maddening to have one hand almost a pure sandbox (roleplaying), and something that is highly railroaded because of logistics (the adventures).
 
I think by phrasing the question "Is it always bad" the answer will inevitably be "no", of course not".

Player agency, making meaningful choices, is one of the most fundamental aspects of the roleplaying experience. However different players are interested in different things. Some players want the complete holo-deck experience and manage every single decision for there character, even the most mundane. Others might be happier to allow the GM some editorial control to cut to the chase and cut out the dull bits in bewteen especially when travelling. If you have a set of players who mostly enjoy combat, they might be happy just going from set piece to set piece, their meaningful choices happen in the fights and as they level up.
 
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Railroading limits the potential of a campaign. It's not that it's *bad*. Its just a technique that is really heavy-handed that works for getting new GM's into the saddle, and teaching conventions to new players. It certainly has its place.

For instance, if I were to take a bunch of complete gaming noobs and toss them into one of my normal sandbox campaigns it would likely be overwhelming. This doesn't mean I don't have techniques to give them some direction etc. Railroads provide a heavy-handed approach to "give direction".

So it depends on your goal. Some people don't mind seeing the rail. Some do. It's my contention that the goal for the highest gameplay where people feel real risk, is removing the rail. But if you're gonna have them - it's a good GMing exercise to learn techniques to disguise or hide the rail.

But a corollary of that is, almost inevitably, you'll realize you don't need it.

The dangers of over-reliance on Railroading as a tool for GM's is the penchant to be "Storytelling" a game to a bunch of players. It can cause problems with players that wanna do their own thing.
 
I'm actually going through this right now - one of my players, a *complete* GMing noob is now running our group. He practically gave himself a nervous breakdown trying to run a sandbox right out of the box (against my suggestion). He started strong then the realities of maintaining it showed how much he didn't know...

I told him to run a module and just roll with it. So we're playing 5e and he's running it - and it's railroady as hell, but he's learning all the basics. The experience is showing him the gulf that exists in play, simply because no module can make allowances for every PC permutation/desire to pursue that only sandboxes can. But it's not a binary thing. It's a GMing skillset that has to be learned through experience to pull off well.

Railroady modules is where it all starts.
 
People have some weird ideas about what constitutes a railroad. I would say railroading is always bad within the scope of what I personally consider a railroad.
If the players are running characters that answer to X authority figure and that X gives them a task that falls within that authority, that's not a railroad, that's just how the world works. If I pitch to my players that I want to run a particular dungeon and then kick the game off outside that dungeon, still not a railroad, just running the game we agreed to. People often claim Call of Cthulhu adventures are railroads because of the limited scope, but again, that's just an agreed upon scenario.
The railroad, to me, isn't in the premise, it's in the execution. Limiting the players options for how to resolve a situation so that the DM can achieve the outcome he wanted to see. Quantum ogres. Fudging rolls is a pretty big indicator of a railroad to me. In my experience, a railroad becomes quite evident very quickly and I immediately want to get off it, but it's never been because the scope of the campaign is limited to the premise that was pitched. I pitched my current OSE game as a dungeon I'm working on that I have 3 levels finished for and want to start running. The world around the dungeon is developed in extremely broad strokes right now, so there's not much to do besides go to the dungeon. On the other hand, session 1 the players decided to bypass the main entrance and found an alternative route into level 2. Railroading would've been to insist they go through that front door cause I want to use level 1. But no one is complaining about being in the dungeon that I pitched in the first place.
 
Railroading ? - some say I'm the Fat Controller !

'Howay, can we do a heist like ?'

My group's love of focussed adventuring stems back to Jorune and Gargenthir where missions were baked into what the characters did. I've found the more exotic the setting the more a little structure or seeding helps. In comparison, we played Heroes as a sandbox because of the relatively familiar Dark Ages setting and the game itself having a goal - thrive to survive, become Doge if possible. That was enough.

Now I'm not Dragonlance level but I'm a residual offender if you don't believe there's a sweet spot.

I've met DMS who think rumour tables and random events tables are railroading, who think the first level of every megadungeon should be jacquayed to hell so beginners learn hard.

Where I draw the line is high-level modules because they always railroad player agency so wizards can't just win straight off - nerfing teleporting timestopping etc. At that level I'm all about the campaign.
 
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Depends on:
1) Your players. Some players chafe more a predefined adventure structure than others.
2) How strictly you define railroading. Having a predefined adventure structure can still have enough meaningful decisions to engage most reasonable players.
3) How harshly the railroading restricts player choice.
 
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This sort of ties into session planning, which I split in to two parts. Busy work and brainstorming. One being the writing down of NPC stats and the like, the other actually coming up with something to do that week.

There's to core concepts to me, the Flight Plan and Forgetting the Flight Plan. And it's all because of the Dream Park RPG. Which has this in it:

Mr Pondsmith Told Me said:
THERE ARE THREE RULES FOR SETTING UP A BEAT CHART
1. The story always begins with a Hook. The Hook is a short piece of action or suspense that is used to involve the reader, viewer, or player in the story.
2. The story always ends on a Climax, followed by a Resolution. The Climax is the big finale of the story; the battle where Good defeats Evil (maybe), or where the murderer is revealed. The Resolution is the tag line; it’s the part at the end that tells what happens as a result of the Climax. It’s the part in the show or movie where we see the supposedly dead villain flying away in his escape craft, Rick and Inspector Renault walking into the Casablanca night, or the hero and heroine living happily ever after.
3. Developments are basically non-action Beats that move the storyline along; they involve clues, revelations, conversations, and character Developments. Cliffhangers are always action scenes; chases, dogfights, battles, and so on.

Developments and Cliffhangers always appear in alternating order; you will never have two Cliffhangers or two Developments in a row. As a general rule, if your Hook has a lot of action and battle, you’ll start the rest of the story with a Development; if the Hook was more cerebral and inactive, you’ll want to start with a Cliffhanger to liven things up. You will also want to make sure that you’ll end on a Development if your Climax is on active one, and a Cliffhanger if your Climax is more mental.

This gives me a flight plan. A couple of pages of things that are likely to happen. This can get railroady, sure. But the concept of ditching the flight plan also means that if the players go off piste, I'll adapt and improvise. Coming back next time with something that builds on what happened last session.

It's like an extended game of Who's Line Is It Anyway.
 
I don't think it's inherently bad. It becomes bad when it limits player agency, i.e. when they see the rails. This is especially bad when they haven't 'bought a ticket' to steal a phrase from above.
 
Railroading limits the potential of a campaign.
How do missions play into this? For example a Star Trek campaign where the character are the crew of a Federation Starship.
Sure can be agency during the missions and between characters on the crew, however as far the direction of the campaign goes, it is steered by the referee roleplaying Starfleet Command.
 
Just for disclosure I actually game with people that I've played with for years and that where we've played lots of things. On a few occasions we've talke about this kind of thing before. To summarise they prefer, shall we say, tightly defined narratives where the GM is the main contributor to that and usually with minimal player/character input (usually wishlists for their PC's development, adding the occasional NPC, etc). The players I game with (5 of us) probably have over 100 years of collective gaming experience but prefer this kind of game over sandbox. We don't class it as railroaded but its certainly mission, quest, etc driven. I know at least two of my players like it this way because it takes the pressure off themselves to drive things all the time (or at least that's how they feel) and they can just make decisions within the context of the current mission, plot (or whatever). They feel more at home in this space and I think when we've tried sandbox before we've suffered from things like decision paralysis, etc.

We all like 'our way' of playing because of the strong themes and narratives that the GM in question effectively auteurs with added spice and accents from the players. I'm not saying you can or can't get the same out of a sandbox game but this is just the rhythm we've fallen into as a long-term group and one we have the most fun with, which like 'Tommy Brownell' said upthread is really the most important thing unless you're exploring gaming theory or trying out a new approach or what-have-you.

I suppose we could get into a discussion about what truly constitutes a railroad game (for me that's where players can't effect the outcome), a game with tightly driven narrative(s) but player agency within that (which is what I think my group plays), and then a true sandbox where you - for example - know you're playing Traveller but beyond that you get to decide what you want to do and where you want to go (which is what my players struggled with - ie, "too much choice/pressure!"). So, first one is bad, second is my preferred style of play, third one I'd like to try more of but never quite pull it off! And so I think I've hardly ever played that first option - even when talking about playing railroady games in my earlier post.
 
It's not bad if you enjoy it.
I don't;). But if you tell me it's what you're doing and the group doesn't mind it, I'm fine with getting on board and not spoiling everyone's fun. At least for a while:wink:.

I'm actually going through this right now - one of my players, a *complete* GMing noob is now running our group. He practically gave himself a nervous breakdown trying to run a sandbox right out of the box (against my suggestion). He started strong then the realities of maintaining it showed how much he didn't know...

I told him to run a module and just roll with it. So we're playing 5e and he's running it - and it's railroady as hell, but he's learning all the basics. The experience is showing him the gulf that exists in play, simply because no module can make allowances for every PC permutation/desire to pursue that only sandboxes can. But it's not a binary thing. It's a GMing skillset that has to be learned through experience to pull off well.

Railroady modules is where it all starts.
...that's not my experience.
Only read further if you're in the mood for a personal experience.
The first time I tried to run, I had some scripted adventure, because I thought that's how it should be.
The players merrily shot all my plans to hell and back as all players do naturally...

Next attempt was after a pause. I tried to run what was basically a sandbox with events. Didn't know it's called that, and I probably made lots of mistakes. It just seemed to be logical to do it that way.
The players loved it. Than I talked with some other GMs and they told me I'm doing it wrong...
So I found some GMing advice, written for WoD players, and consequently tried railroading and illusionism and shit. Most players still liked it, though they kept referencing that first session for some time. Being young and stupid, I didn't see the hint and kept doing it in the illusionist way. I was pretty good at it, even if I say so myself (and of course I mean "pretty good for a newbie":thumbsup:). But it kept working on my nerves because I didn't really have fun doing that. The thrill was lacking...

Fast forward a few years. I was almost on the verge of giving up GMing and roleplaying altogether, and probably ranting some stupid shit how it gets less fun when you grow up.
Then my then girlfriend expressed interest in roleplaying. And since I wanted to spend more time with her, I decided to bite the bullet and give it another shot. But this time, I decided, I'm going to make it in a way that's fun for me, too, because I knew if she likes it, I'd be in for the long haul:devil:!
So I ran a sandbox.
And then proudly proclaimed on TBP that I've discovered a new and easier way to run RPGs:grin:! Much to my dismay, people told me it's not new to them, it's actually the most ancient way of running games...
I think my reply was a genuinely shocked "why did they decide to downgrade, then", which went about as well as you can expect it to. But at least I got a name for this and could look for GMing advice that made sense. And participate in discussions with people who have been doing this for decades longer than me - I learned a lot from these guys.

T:'DR: Railroading and illusionism were what almost gave me a nervous breakdown and almost got me to leave RPGs behind. Sandbox was what prevented that.
Riddle me this.
 
I think it really depends on what you mean by a railroad.

I don't like most very linear scenarios where you can only go from one place to the next in order. That isn't to say that every such scenario is a railroad.

But to me, what really counts as a railroad is when the player decisions don't matter. If event X will happen no matter what you do and that isn't a genuinely unavoidable event, then that's a railroad. The sun will rise tomorrow at 8:00 AM isn't a railroad. You will encounter the Red Witch no matter which road you take out of Dodge is a railroad. Even, you will encounter orcs no matter which road you take is a railroad unless the setting genuinely has you surrounded by orcs. The boss encounter will escape no matter what you do is another railroad (unless it's part of the genre, like a comic book genre, where the boss encounter always gets away from the first encounter and the players are buying into that genre).

Which is a good point. Bits that you have to buy into as part of the campaign or scenario setup don't count as a railroad. It's totally fair to restrict types of characters, to indicate that the adventure will start off by exploring this dungeon, or whatever. On the other hand, I appreciate settings where the players have the ability to set their own goals within the constraints of the setting of play. The GM sets some boundaries that are wide enough to allow the players multiple choices of direction. That kind of setting of play is what sandbox means to me.

Frank
 
I feel that the "railroad is bad" philosophy comes from viewing it as a binary - a game is either railroads or it isn't - rather than a constantly sliding scale. There are times when the GM needs the story to move, at least vaguely, in a certain direction; and there are times when the universe can simply go with the PC flow - and these can happen in the same campaign (heck, even the same session). Railroading is NOT bad. Some railroading may even be necessary. Constant railroading, at the expense of the players having fun, is bad.
 
I think there are two types of railroading. The 1st is where the adventure does it and the GM runs it as written, though I can't recall the last time I saw an adventure I would call a total railroad. Most adventures are salvageable. The 2nd, and probably the worst, is where the GM does it because they can and require some sort of absolute control over the game. Its this blatant railroading that I can't stand, were even the most reasonable agency is crushed.

Railroading has its uses. In one of my adventures the player characters could be considered railroaded. They have taken on a delivery job, and they have to get through the mountain pass before the onset of bad weather. There is no alternative route, and of course, bad weather sets in. I see this as the equivalent of phone service being unavailable, or the radio not working in a horror movie. It basically tells the player characters that they are on their own. The tracks stop at the end of the pass. From that point on there are a series of possible encounters and a mystery, how much the player characters engage with the encounters and the mystery is up to them.
 
I think there are two types of railroading. The 1st is where the adventure does it and the GM runs it as written, though I can't recall the last time I saw an adventure I would call a total railroad. Most adventures are salvageable.
For some values of "salvageable", sure.
But I dare you to read the adventures for the Kuro RPG:grin:!

(My solution? "Use them as cut-scenes and put the game in-between them":shade:).
 
Depends on:
1) Your players. Some players chafe more a predefined adventure structure than others.
2) How strictly you define railroading. Having a predefined adventure structure can still have enough meaningful decisions to engage most reasonable players.
3) How harshly the railroading restricts player choice.

Pretty much this.
 
The Great Pendragon Campaign, masterpiece that it is, makes demands on the referee and players like no other campaign I have ever seen. It is possible to try and upend the established events, galivant across the continent, pull the swords from the anvil, deny Arthur his throne and throw your lot in with Mordred.

But... Why? This is Le Morte D'arthur. This is Excalibur. Surely anyone who wants to invest time into playing almost a century-long campaign is doing so to experience the sweeping tale, not to screw it all up.

As for almost any other campaign, railroading is fine if it is interesting.

The Rise of Tiamat campaign is bad, because it spends forever meandering around the Sword Coast, introduces dozens of NPCs that don't matter, and tries to maintain the mystery of the dragon cults for far longer than is reasonable. It has a few good site-based scenarios, but is a poorly constructed railroad.

Princes of the Apocalypse (my current campaign) is a reasonable sandbox, but atrociously laid out. It front-ends a lot of NPCs and plot hints, but the players are free to investigate these, ignore them or wander at will. Everything is close enough together that they will stumble onto interesting sites or events often enough, and the referee is given a lot of leeway with how NPCs and factions respond over the course of the campaign.
 
Depends on how railroading is defined.

I've always thought that it prefers to a particular player feeling or experience so in that case yes. It's pretty much bad by definition.

If it refers to particular way of playing or designing an adventure that is deemed likely to result in the feeling of being railroaded...well that depends if, in practice, it results in the feeling of being railroaded.
 
The Great Pendragon Campaign, masterpiece that it is, makes demands on the referee and players like no other campaign I have ever seen. It is possible to try and upend the established events, galivant across the continent, pull the swords from the anvil, deny Arthur his throne and throw your lot in with Mordred.

But... Why? This is Le Morte D'arthur. This is Excalibur. Surely anyone who wants to invest time into playing almost a century-long campaign is doing so to experience the sweeping tale, not to screw it all up.

As for almost any other campaign, railroading is fine if it is interesting.

The Rise of Tiamat campaign is bad, because it spends forever meandering around the Sword Coast, introduces dozens of NPCs that don't matter, and tries to maintain the mystery of the dragon cults for far longer than is reasonable. It has a few good site-based scenarios, but is a poorly constructed railroad.

Princes of the Apocalypse (my current campaign) is a reasonable sandbox, but atrociously laid out. It front-ends a lot of NPCs and plot hints, but the players are free to investigate these, ignore them or wander at will. Everything is close enough together that they will stumble onto interesting sites or events often enough, and the referee is given a lot of leeway with how NPCs and factions respond over the course of the campaign.

I ran POTA for a group of relative noobs, and they had a great time. None of them felt like they were being tasked with anything outside finding the missing ambassadors, and they naturally found their way through that. It did get a bit tiresome when they found their way into the Dwarven Ruins and just WOULD NOT LEAVE at all. I finally resorted to conducting a ration count, and they staggered back into the light...
 
I ran POTA for a group of relative noobs, and they had a great time. None of them felt like they were being tasked with anything outside finding the missing ambassadors, and they naturally found their way through that. It did get a bit tiresome when they found their way into the Dwarven Ruins and just WOULD NOT LEAVE at all. I finally resorted to conducting a ration count, and they staggered back into the light...

I didn't care for the missing delegates hook, so used some of the others that connected the PCs to events and will pay off earlier.

They have found some of the adventure sites only to leave them for now. The biggest surprise was them getting exiled from Red Larch early on. That changed things dramatically for them.

These differences highlight why I vastly prefer Princes of the Apocalypse to Rise of Tiamat. There are many ways events can change the flow of the campaign. Right now, it seems the PCs are going to remain allies of one elemental cult while fighting the others. It will be fascinating to see how the campaign ends.

I intentionally steered the campaign as little as possible, though I did control the flow of information and cut off a few dungeon areas from each other.
 
Railroading is frequently talked about as if it's always bad GMing but is it?
If I'm at the table as a player, then yes, yes it is. It's serving me a shit sandwich and telling me it's an Impossible burger. It's my antithesis of fun.

So yes, it is always bad refereeing to railroad me.

The GPC is considered a classic . . .
The what, now? is that supposed to be 'GMPC'?

Is there any practical difference between "linear" and "railroad" because I'm not sure I see one.
Yes, there is a distinct difference. A linear adventure may proceed as a series of events, from A to G. If I can skip B and go directly to C, stop D from happening at all, cleverly reduce E to irrelevance, and trick the NPC at F to help me arrive at G a full two days ahead of schedule, then it's not a railroad.

Missions are classic linear adventures. and missions co-exist in harmony with sandboxes, provided the referee accepts that linearity may only exist until the players and their characters interact with it. The adventurers in our Flashing Blades campaign were tasked with attempting to ransom a Savoyard noble held at a Spanish fort in Lombardy; they were introduced to a French diplomat who was to escort them to Milan to obtain the necessary passport to speak to the Spaniard commanding the fort, then offer the ransom in exchange for the prisoner to the gaoler.

That was the set-up, the expected series of linear events in ransoming a prisoner. There were all sorts of potential complications that would make the mission anything but routine: a plot to coerce the noble's wife to spy for the Spanish at the court of Louis XIII lay behind the Savoyard's imprisonment, giving the Spaniard no incentive to accept the ransom; the possibility of a Roman soldier at the fort, a young officer in the army of the Papal States named Mazzarino, who could be convinced to intercede with the Archbishop of Milan to seek the prisoner's release; Lombard partisans resentful of the Spanish presence who could perhaps be recruited - or bribed - to help break the prisoner out of the fort; the prisoner slipping them a coded message to protect his family in Paris; &c.

The adventurers considered skipping the trip to Milan, making a dash for the fort and bullshitting their way in, which in the analogy above, would be going directly from A to, say, E or F, giving them an element of surprise but taking other options off the table, like the future Cardinal Mazarin's presence at the fort, and making encounters with random Spanish or Lombard patrols much hairier.

Linear adventures do not in any way need to be railroads, but referees may turn a linear adventure into a railroad.

I've run sandboxes. And some players [are] . . . like a deer in headlights when they realise you aren't going to give them any guidance on what they do.
In my experience, one of the ways to deal with this is to load up the setting with genre clichés so the players have some familiarity, some grounding, right from the giddyup about their characters' place in the setting and how to set and pursue goals.

How is the standard dungeon crawl not essentially a railroad? Preplanned encounters in generally a linear order.
Encounters presented in linear order is terrible dungeon design; this is why good sandbox dungeons - and other encounter sites, and social networks - offer many branching paths and change in response to the adventurers' actions.
 
A linear adventure may proceed as a series of events, from A to G. If I can skip B and go directly to C, stop D from happening at all, cleverly reduce E to irrelevance, and trick the NPC at F to help me arrive at G a full two days ahead of schedule, then it's not a railroad.
Why would you want to?

To to play devil's advocate here, chopping things up and twisting things like that is also one of the classic hallmarks of the disruptive player.

Be stopping D from happening, you might reduce F to irrelevance. By stopping D, you possibly just made G into an afterthought. And by skipping B, you may have missed the setup for the entire thing.

So by screwing the GM over, you may have just made the very shit sandwich you dislike so much.

Or worse, pit the GM off ever doing it again.
 
Why would you want to?

To to play devil's advocate here, chopping things up and twisting things like that is also one of the classic hallmarks of the disruptive player.

Be stopping D from happening, you might reduce F to irrelevance. By stopping D, you possibly just made G into an afterthought. And by skipping B, you may have missed the setup for the entire thing.

So by screwing the GM over, you may have just made the very shit sandwich you dislike so much.

Or worse, pit the GM off ever doing it again.
If you get any of those disruptive players, would you send them my way? The best players I could ask for are the ones who look at the situation I've laid out and find creative ways to completely upend it all and achieve their goals effectively. As Gygax said, if you believe the game is worth playing, you will find it doubly so if you play well. In my case, I don't populate the dungeon with 127 orcs because I can't wait to slog through combat with 127 orcs. They're there so the players can come up with some means of bypass or dealing with them.
 
Railroading is bad because it removes even the illusion of choice from the players.
 
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