The Railroad Spectrum (Part 1)

 

In 2024, railroading is a dirty word. For TTRPGs communities like Dungeons and Dragons, railroading is most often used to describe something going wrong: when the players feel forced by the game structure to do what the GM wants them to do. I don’t know if you’ve picked up on this, but players hate doing what they’re supposed to do.

 

Wise people on the internet have come to the tenuous agreement that railroading can be used to describe a very specific situation where a GM limits a player's problem solving methods. Most GMs are able to avoid this definition, and thus their games are safe. However, relating to railroading this way creates an environment where GMs don’t want to be accused of railroading. In their haste to avoid the railroader label, GMs define railroading relative to their own game. The point is best illustrated with the following meme.

 

Railroading has become a bogeyman: the masses are scared of it, but no one knows what it is, so they can’t avoid it. Luckily, this problem is easily fixable by considering railroading in another way, as a tool that GMs can choose to use if they have awareness of it. Railroading is actually present in every game. The real shame is that while GMs are turning somersaults explaining railroading out of their game, they’re ignoring its potential, and by deluding themselves as to the nature of their game, they’re setting their players up for a worse game experience. Also, they’re still railroading.

 

In order to provide some semantic consistency to the railroading discussion in a way people can actually use, we present the railroading spectrum.

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The opposite of the railroad is the sandbox, the more you swing towards one, the less you have of the other. The goal is not to locate one’s game on the spectrum. Instead, recognize that your GM style should fluctuate along the spectrum during your games and can even be modulated within one session. You can start a session on the sandbox side and move to the railroading side as it progresses, or vice versa.

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In the next section, we will discuss varying locations on the Railroad Spectrum, starting with the two extreme ends.

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The Pure Sandbox

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Ah the legendary open-ended emergent immersive holy grail, the sandbox. Like communism, the sandbox is well supported in theory, but hard to apply effectively. The sandbox