http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/dungeon/savageTide/railroadingInPiazoProducts

Especially watch out for the comments on old-school modules and the comments by the author himself.

Wow, they are actually pulling out the roll vs. role playing argument...the mind boggles.

The issue:

Quote from: HaldefastHi there! I am an avid player of the Age of Worms AP.

But the recent Savage Tide AP has really turned our group down. The "adventures" in which we travelled to the so-called Isle of Dread, and the travels on that Isle wer insulting to us as players.

Three adventures full of a totally strict railroad. Now, we do not mind being railroaded between the dungeon entrances. That is cool with us, as it was in the AoWAP. As long as there is a large, intrigueing, diverse dungeon full of options and decisions.

But the last three "adventures" consisted of strings of single encounters, which were totally scripted, unavoidable and thusly un-fun and insulting to our planning efforts and intellect.
Especially the One-Room-"Dungeons" rose our ire. Even more ridiculous was the "timely" arrival at Farshore right at the moment of being under attack. That totally blew any suspension of disbelief that might have existed.

Okay, we are not allowed to decide which route we follow. But then, we are spoon-fed a single room "dungeon"?
Hello?

Which decisions is Mr. Jacobs and his Union-Pacific cronies willing to let me make, pretty please?
Could you explain me, what my character and moreso I as a player was able to actually do and influence? Oh, yes: I was allowed to barely beat the opposition in a set-piece encounter. I was allowed to prove that the balancing works, that the encounter that was designed to be beaten got beaten. You know, there are people who actually like to do, like, INFLUENCE stuff? Like, making decisions that matter?

The response from the author:

Quote from: James JacobFirst of all... remember that it's not cool to engage in personal attacks on threads here, so please keep the posts civil.

An adventure has to present a storyline. If it doesn't, it's not an adventrue, in my opinion; it's a sourcebook. By this reasoning, the original Isle of Dread is a sourcebook. If your group prefers to set their own course and build their own plot, and rankles at the idea of following a pre-determined storyline, then you should probably avoid running adventures. You should run games using sourcebooks. You can, of course, use adventures AS source books; taking the four adventures set on the Isle of Dread as an overall presentation of the region, you can use it as the background for any number of adventures there. You don't HAVE to follow the script implied by the adventures. Tides of Dread, by the way, is probably the LAST adventure in Savage Tide that I'd call a railroad. Variety is important, and that's why some adventures in an Adventure Path have strict rails (like Sea Wyvern) and others are more like sandboxes (like Tides, Scuttlecove, or Enemies of my Enemy).

But it sounds like the OP's mind is pretty made up, so I guess I don't have much more to say apart from repeating my advice that you probably shouldn't play an adventure if you're not having fun playing it.

Carry on, and again, be kind to each other!

and

Quote from: James JacobPersonally... I think "railroading" is good for the game. I don't call it railroading, though... I call it, "The GM is organized and has a plotline for the PCs to follow." I've been in groups where the GM basically lets the PCs decide what to do, where to go, and how to do it. Those campaings aren't very fun for me, since that basically results in 4 to 6 players each wanting to do something different, lots of arguments about what to do, and lots of false starts and unfinished leads. It all basically comes down to style of play, really.

If your style of play is one where a "railroad" is a detriment to having fun, you should absolutely not run pre-written adventures. ALTERNATIVELY: You should have an extensive library of adventures to draw on at a moment's notice, so that when you find out what the PCs are up to and where they want to go, you can go to your adventure library and find one that fits. In fact, this is the better option, since it means you're buying more adventures. :-)

"we do not mind being railroaded between the dungeon entrances"

This is an excellent distinction, I fully agree with.

Thanks for understanding.

BUT:
J.Jacobs is the editor, the author is some Steven Greer (sp?) guy.

He is downright insulting to me and my group. Pretty professional, I must say.

And after he was insulting me, Fanboiz felt free to do so too.

Quote from: SettembriniWow, they are actually pulling out the roll vs. role playing argument...the mind boggles.

This false dichotomy has been the worst thing for RPGs over the years.  A good game has so much more to it than just combat (roll / game) and character acting (role / narrative).

Their reasoning goes like this:

"To have good story, RR is unavoidable. If you complain about RR, you are a hack & slasher, and thusly not a good person and must be mocked succinctly!"


Sound familiar?

the last few adventures in savage tide were a big meh IMO.

Sadly, my misgivings about the partnership of Necromancer Games and Paizo were well-founded. NG hasn't exactly been cranking out the old-school adventures lately, but other than the chaffe churned out by Goodman, they were the only D&D publisher that did occassionaly publish a genuine old-school module.

That ship - commercial D&D - which has been diverging from my vessel of preferences for many years now, just disappeared over the horizon.

This article from Gamasutra is about player choices in games:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040310/fullerton_01.shtml

It includes this breakdown of types of choices in games:
    * Hollow decision: no real consequences
    * Obvious decision: no real decision
    * Uninformed decision: an arbitrary choice
    * Informed decision: where the player has ample information
    * Dramatic decision: taps into a player's emotional state
    * Weighted decision: a balanced decision with consequences on both sides
    * Immediate decision: has an immediate impact
    * Long-term decision: whose impact will be felt down the road

If a game only offers Hollow decisions, or Obvious decisions, or even NO decisions -- it's not really a game at all.  

Now, a a game could transfer the decisions to be about effective character acting or combat tactics -- and that's what a lot of story games and modern D&D style games try and do.  

However, if the quality of your acting has no bearing on the game then it's a Hollow decision.  If the combat encounters are so watered down and balanced, and the tactics to be used so self-evident to players that failure isn't an option then it's an Obvious decision.

These are not good decisions and do not make a good GAME.

(have not read the adventures in question, only read the above editor comments.)

Wow, it's disconcerting that Jacobs really doesn's understand plot as it applies to an rpg as opposed to a book or movie.  A forced plotline doesn't work for rpgs.  If you know how an adventure is going to end, then the characters are observers, not actors.  

Ideally, an adventure plot sets up a a complex situation where the players make a series of meaningful decisions that have the potential to dramatically alter the game.  To me me a plot driven adventure is set up like this:

1. NPC/Monsters, some of which are fleshed out with personalities and goals.  The plot is derived by overlapping and inconsistent goals of the NPCs and PCs.

2. Interesting locations where much of the NPC action occurs so are likely (but not guaranteed) to come up in play.  

3.  A timeline of default actions to advance the plot.  e.g. if the characters don't look for and find NPC Q, Q will kill X on day 4.

4.  A rough tree structure to give the GM advice.  e.g.  If the players to to location G, NPC Q follows them.  If the player goes to location H, NPC Q searches the stable.

As a GM, I love having no idea how things will end up.  But the above is a plot driven structure, not just a series of static locations.

This does indeed suck.

But I'm not sure if "railroading" is the same as "the Forge". Aren't a lot of those games meant to give players *more* options than a traditional RPG?

Quote from: Age of FableBut I'm not sure if "railroading" is the same as "the Forge". Aren't a lot of those games meant to give players *more* options than a traditional RPG?

Actually, Jacob's attitude reminds me of the worst of the AD&D 2E adventures, written by wannabe writers more than by game designers.

One of the problems lies in the type of product they are putting out, they are putting out a series of adventures that had to account for a number of playstyles, and fit in the amount of space alloted in the magazine. It was mentioned that the adventure in particular that the player had a problem with was a different style then others in the series, and from the comments of others who had read the adventure (the poster was a player who hadn't read it) I got the idea that there was more options to at least parts of the adventure then the DM had used/the players had found.  

I don't have as much of a problem with RR sections to adventures as some people, particularly where boats are concerned.  Unless my players have enough money to charter the entire ship or own/crew one themselves, then they aren't going to be the ones calling the shots on where the ship goes or when it gets there, that's what the captain of the ship is for.

Quote from: NicephorusWow, it's disconcerting that Jacobs really doesn's understand plot as it applies to an rpg as opposed to a book or movie.  A forced plotline doesn't work for rpgs.  If you know how an adventure is going to end, then the characters are observers, not actors.  

Given the success of the adventure path products, I'd say Jacobs knows exactly what works for today's market. He knows that most players prefer a meticulously crafted sequence of tactical challenges to sandbox play, and he knows that most DMs aren't capable of running the latter anyway. WotC seems to understand this as well; just look at the Delve format. They see D&D as a series of tactical challenges strung together by a prescribed plot.

Now, that wasn't always the case. A lot of players used to enjoy thinking outside the box and driving their own storylines. And a lot of DMs were capable of the kind of flexibility and improvisation required to run such a game. But with 3.x D&D's increased complexity and importance of tactical maneuver and mini-maxing , it has become rare to find players and DMs who enjoy both mechanical/tactial mastery, and story flexibility.

The really sad thing about Jacob's comment is that he obviously believes the first real adventure published for D&D was the Dragonlance series. I don't know what he thinks the rest of us were doing all those years playing the Village of Hommlet, Caverns of Thracia, and the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.