Preventing a Railroad

I've written some on this topic before, and recent posts have made me write more. Here's my view of how to prevent a railroad.

The first step, is to have players who aren't disagreeable, for the sake of being disagreeable. That's kind of like saying get players who will put up with a railroad to avoid having a railroad, but hear me out. There is a type of player, who believes the game world should have no consequences for any PC action. It's almost like everything holds still, while the PC plunders it. The moment the GM has an NPC approach the party with a request to do a mission, he fights it. The moment the GM has a consequence happen for something the PC did, he complains about it. This type of player isn't about railroading. They are the kind of player who will call anything that isn't "their way" a railroad. You can't have a simulationist or narrativist game with those type of player, because either style involves elements they will fight.

Now that you've got the problem players fixed. You owe your players a good game where you don't railroad them. The real trick to not rail-roading is to simply adapt to what the players do. The foundation for that, is realizing that from the start of the game, the GM has visualized what the adventure story will look like. It's human nature, and it's how planning works.

The reality for most GMs is, whether they write it down before the game, or make it up on the fly, once they say, "the party hears a rumor about killings on the docks" it's been planned out. They have an idea of a clue to drop for the party to find. They have an idea of who the bad guy is, even if it's only in their head. At that point, a path has been drawn from party in the bar to party confronting the bad guy. A good GM keeps adjusting that path as the party advances through the story, based on what they do, and how they want to approach the problem. In any even, the goal is to always end at the party confronting the bad guy, though the image of what that scene looks like may keep changing.

In the "Murder on the Docks" mystery, no GM in his right mind creates a murder scene with no idea of the clues left there. And if you don't know who the murderer is, you don't know what kind of clue to leave. So already, a path is figured out. The trick is, that path is not obvious to the players, so you are at risk of running a railroad when the game starts.

When running the game, the GM's job is to adjust that path, per the players actions.

As I've written before, in any given encounter, you can simplify what the players will do to about 6 choices:
-fight their way out
-trick their way out (some spell or item, or sneakiness)
-talk their way out (diplomacy, etc)
-investigate their way out (sneak, find evidence and use it)
-run away (stop trying anything else)
-wait for the other side to act first (react in kind usually)

You can usually set the scene such that some choices are more likely. Confronting the party with a group of armed orcs with weapons drawn will most likely get the fight response. Orcs with weapons sheathed, at medium distance, with one orc calling out to the party opens up the talk option. Orcs seen nearby, but not seeing the party opens up the trick option. And in all cases run away and wait are still viable.

A lot of GMs get sloppy, and don't plan on all possibilities before the game. The most common one is expecting combat from any monster encounter. And for the most part, they're right. Even if you only plan on the most obvious action for an encounter, once in game, being aware of the other types of choice helps you adapt when the players try them.

GM's make a railroading mistake when they have planned solution to the encouter (fight the orc), and the party doesn't do it, and they try desperately to make everything fail but fighting the orc.

The moment the GM hears the party wants to do something unexpected, he needs to pause and consider what's really going on.

When a player doesn't do the expected thing, it comes in 3 flavors:
1) they're trying to quit the mission
2) they're trying to solve the mission, in an unanticipated way
3) they're trying to solve the mission, but going the wrong direction, and don't know it

#1 is easy, let them start quitting, and start showing them consequences as the bad guy moves forward un-impeded. They'll either get back to the mission, or accept the consequences, which continue to roll forward while they "do something else" which you can run for them. This might be occuring because they're the obstinate player I told you to dump in the beginning. Or it might be that the player doesn't think they can win. Or it might be that the mission doesn't make sense for the PC to do, which means your hook wasn't relevant to the PC, which is directly the GM's fault.

#2 is also easy. Pause the game, adjust the "script" to react to the new change, which will probably replace a few encounters and reveal information early, and move them to a different point in the story arc, which is the whole point of finishing any encounter. It's very important to consider what the player's are trying to do and assign a fair and rational difficulty level to it. Don't make it hard, just because you didn't anticipate it. Let it be easy, if it really would be easy to do.

#3 is the trickiest. It can easily happen in a mystery game, but has been known to happen in dungeon crawls, too. The players think some minor element you brought up is important, and pursue it. In a dungeon crawl, this is the KoDT story about the party trying to dig through a dead-end, certain that it is hiding the treasure, when it was really an artifact of the random map generator. In a mystery, it can mean mistaking the red herring as truth, or even worse, following an innocuous element as a lead, which as the GM is trying to make up new material, looks inconsistent, which only confirms the player's suspicions. The sad part is, the players are trying their best, they've simply going the wrong way.

The solution to this scenario takes a lot more work.
Corrective action: establish a house rule that you will tell the party when they've gone too off track, you will tell them. Statements like "Further investigation reveals that this really is a dead end.", "Deeper investigation shows that this person may have some secrets, but they have nothing to do with the case". Etc.
Prevention: Use deception sparingly. While it's obvious that bad guys are going to lie, use misleading information sparingly to increase its effectiveness, and avoid hyper-paranoia.

The Truth should be obvious with any investigation attempt. Let's say there's 3 clues on the ground at the crime scene. If the PCs investigate the red herring first, they learn in a few scenes that it was planted there.

The Truth should lead to the Truth. When a PC investigates a red herring, it should reveal it was a red herring, and further investigation should reveal a clue to who planted it. The reason is the same as to what a clue really is, it's a accidental remnant from the criminal. You can't do a murder with out leaving a trace. For the same reason, you can't plant a red herring without leaving a trace. What you're doing with these techniques is making sure that if a PC investigates it, it leads somewhere. Don't waste their time on things that don't matter, and can lead them too far astray. This is why, red herrings also lead back to where the party needs to go. And it is realistic with crime scenes.


Secrets works best with not expecting them. Don't use the same trick over and over again. Always making the butler the murderer, the NPC who hires the party is always going to betray them, the mission is always evil disguised as good, etc. These are cliche. Cliche's work, but only when used sparingly. Plus if you over-use deceptive practices, the party will hyper-focus on every element, which causes them to go the wrong direction, instead of the obvious and expected "right" direction. If you over-use false clues, hidden elements, betrayals, the party will expect them all the time. This will actually slow down game play (searching every 5' for traps), make for unrealistic role-play (the party distrusts every NPC), and logically a party on alert SHOULD detect these things.


Remember, it's not a rail-road to have consequences for the PCs actions or inaction. "I don't want to find the kidnapped mayor" means the bad guy moves forward. The world is not static. A rail-road is where the party can't choose to be inactive, or a specific action. They're not allowed to. A choice with a bad consequence (that a rational person would never make) is not the same as a lack of choice enforced by the GM who nullifies every action but the acceptable one.

If you can master these tips, by understanding "probable" player action/reaction, and adapt to "actual" player action/reaction, you can run a believable and enjoyable adventure.