Is this railroading?

iserith said:

The right move was to climb out and head back to the inn, then spend the next couple hours posturing while talking in funny voices as you order food and ale.

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But then I would've missed out on seeing the awesomeness that is a tempest cleric channeling the might of Thor Kord through a fully charged wand of lightning bolts. 14d6, maximized!

It's not railroading, at least not yet. I'm not sure how much or what kind of preparation you've put into the pursuit, but there are clearly going to be several steps between discovering the item is missing and catching the culprit. It's not a railroad if the players have to go from point A to B to C. It's a railroad if the only way to get there is on your train.

For example, one of the first things they'll need to determine is where the thief went. If there's only one source in the entire world that has this information, and there's only one method of extracting the information from said source, you're probably building a railroad.

Advice I commonly see shared on this topic is some "rule of 3" thing. Create three viable ways to move the plot forward at each plot point. So maybe a local fence knows where the thief went, maybe a witness saw his face, and maybe there's a way to track the item or the thief through magic. I don't always follow this principle myself. Usually I'll come up with one, maybe two methods, but I also try to keep an open mind about the viability of player ideas I never considered, even if they aren't as sensible or straightforward as the solutions I imagined they would readily arrive at.

edit: most importantly, if the players come up with a solution that blows my well laid plans to smithereens, but is perfectly clever and reasonable, I need to be prepared to throw all my preparation out the door. Refusal to do so is the biggest and baddest manifestation of railroading IMO.

If they simply don't follow the thief, maybe have the thief steal from them again, or have someone approach them with a reward for catching a thief. In case the thief somehow evades them, have it be that he's paid by an old enemy to deliberately lead them into a trap. That gives him a reason to go after them later wherever they go.

iserith said:

spend the next couple hours posturing while talking in funny voices as you order food and ale.

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Isn't that pretty much any gaming night?

shadowoflameth said:

If they simply don't follow the thief, maybe have the thief steal from them again, or have someone approach them with a reward for catching a thief. In case the thief somehow evades them, have it be that he's paid by an old enemy to deliberately lead them into a trap. That gives him a reason to go after them later wherever they go.

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THAT is railroading. THAT is "hey, you're not making the choice I want to you make, so I will bend the game world, as hard as necessary, until you have made that choice."

If the players stop in a village, and decide to spend a week helping some villager with something, and you spend a session playing out their side quest, then you're not railroading, or not much. They can resume chase, the following session; the trail will be one week colder, and on another hand, something else may have set off any traps which the theif set.

If they figure out where the thief is going, and they decide to go directly to that place, and they have a reasonable way to get tho their place, then here is a test question.

(1) Awesome. You get there first, on the X day of Y year. He hasn't arrived yet. What do you do?

(2) No. You may not do that. You have to follow him, on his trail, and you have to encounter the stuff he left behind for you. If you don't do that, then there is no game.

(1) is not railroading.

(2) is railroadling.

Your example would be a railroad if any attempt to NOT track down the thief was met with a series of events that ends up on the same path anyway. ie - the players say "screw it, let her have the artifact" and then decided to walk back to town... but get lost and end up walking the same way as the thief anyway. Or they go back to town and every single activity they attempt there is shut down by the townsfolk telling them to go follow the thief. Or worse still, the DM just says "so, you start following the thief's tracks" despite them saying "no, we don't".

A lesser railroad might be if they start following the thief's tracks and cannot make any decision that will allow them to avoid the danger zone, instead being fated to encounter all of the devious traps one after the other. If, for example, the party do things like cast 'phantom steed' or 'fly', yet nothing they do can allow them to catch the thief prior to the danger zone (and you, as the DM have pre-ordained that this is so), that's a bit railroady. As an example - there's no real reason why your tracker can't take you around the outskirts of the danger zone and pick up the tracks on the far side. That should be a choice (and a risk) that the PCs can take.

I personally think the perennial "just in the nick of time" trope is a railroad. Typically the PCs can't do anything except arrive in the nick of time. They can't miss the event, they can't get there early and take care of it better.

Nevvur said:

edit: most importantly, if the players come up with a solution that blows my well laid plans to smithereens, but is perfectly clever and reasonable, I need to be prepared to throw all my preparation out the door. Refusal to do so is the biggest and baddest manifestation of railroading IMO.

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YES! This has happened to me more than one and... well if the players stump be, bravo, good for them! I had a PC interrupt a huge battle with *cure disease*... and after giving it some thought, I realized that yup, that would totally do it, fight over!

I know this isn't very important, but I used the word "thief" as in "someone who stole something", not as in "an NPC with the rogue class". I think I should clarify since it's coloring some people's answers/thinking.

The "thief" is Mother Rust in her cloak of iron, a powerful "witch" (ie warlock). She flees out of the city into a very dangerous jungle, feeling that no one will dare follow her (if the PCs don't, no one will). Her patron is the spirit of said jungle.

The MacGuffin? A (very very weak) God, stuck in a small altar.

Now you might say... why on earth did the PCs not protect that thing better? That's a very valid question.

You see... the God is the Beetle of Mislaid Memories. And either out of sublime roleplaying or deep irony, the PCs/players keep forgetting about it.

The players have essentially railroaded ME into stealing it