How Much of a Railroader Are You?

[pizzaboy_15]

I feel that the players should do what they feel they want to. If need be you can find ways of enticing them but really there is no game without them. You just need to think on how you can tailor it to thier needs/wants. Play on their character alignments and how you know they play.

However saying that if they don't want to do something don't force I don't force them I just run the world they live it.

 

[Crust]

I disagree with the term railroading, because it implies that a DM who insists that his players follow the module he prepared is doing something wrong.

I chose "sometimes" because I don't have to insist that they follow the module. They understand that they should be following the module (or the quest) I've prepared. Frankly, it would be disrespectful for them to up and turn their backs on a quest that I've spent valuable time preparing.

I'm running the Age of Worms campaign set in FR's Sword Coast, and though they have options (Diamond Lake, Daggerford, Ardeep Forest, Waterdeep, the Lizardmarsh, Blackwall Keep, etc.), they know that heading off to Calimshan or Thay or Cormyr is out of the question. Not only would it end the quest that they're on (a quest that folks like Allustan, Hiska, and a number of other NPCs expect them to adhere to and complete), but it would lead to me having to wing it, which wastes time and leads to a lack-luster gaming experience, as I don't have anything prepared outside the bubble of the campaign.

They also know that if they just stick to the modules I prepare, they will receive XP, magical items, and be able to slay foes with abandon, which is what they enjoy. The role-playing is something I have to push on them at times, but they know that if they follow my path, they'll be able to do whatever they want within that bubble.

Further, they also understand that I have a career, and that I don't have time to prepare for all of their adventuring whims. A completely free-form campaign is just not possible for me, an adult with responsibilities outside the game.

 

[Rawwedge]

You can please some of the players some of the time

Every DM has to struggle with the style of play that suits them best and the style of play that the players like best.
Personally, I favor epic fantasy campaigns over sword & sorcery campaigns. When I start the first session, I already know a great deal about how it's all going to end. I may not have all the details but I do know most of the broad strokes; I'm screwed if my party does not buy into my epic fantasy storyline lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. That's problem number one.

Problem number two. I have one player who loves blood and guts sword & sorcery and will go anywhere I lead him, no questions asked. (I'm wasting any plot building on this guy). I have another player who claims to be a great fan of epic fantasy and intricately woven, grand campaigns. At the table, it is plain to anyone who is really paying attention, that he actually just loves getting together with the 'gang', rolling some dice, and a bit of whatever the DM throws his way. (more wasted effort for me) Then I have another player who craves all the best elements of epic fantasy in his gaming. He wants his character to evolve and grow and ultimately become one of the greatest heroes that ever lived. He remembers all of the loving detail that a DM puts into the threads and plotlines. He'll remember an NPC's name from many months ago quicker than I will. Now here's the rub; this lone epic fantasy fan wants all this neatly tied up in compact, self-contained, sword & sorcery 'modules' if you will.

I'm not suggesting that any of this is bad; to each his own. The game has room for any of these flavors and more. The problem is that we all have to game together and I need to try and please most of the party most of the time. Futhermore, I have to please myself, otherwise my campaign is going to be weak. If I'm not having much fun, neither will they.

As a result, I lay as many of my cards on the table as I can, without spoiling any secrets, at the beginning of the campaign. This is done before play begins. The DM carries the heaviest load, and DM's are few and far between. Therefore, I take the attitude that I'm inviting them into a campaign and as guests in this campaign they should meet me more than halfway. I also commit to making the campaign as fun and interesting as possible within the scope of the compromises that have to be made.

From the practical nuts and bolts of session to session gaming, I try to offer a short list of options woven into the fabric of my story but ultimately, all roads lead to Rome. I can always use the material from paths not taken and weave them in at some future crossroads.

Sorry if this is a bit long. I don't often contribute but this is quite an interesting topic. Most any DM can relate to the underlying problems this thread touches upon.

 

[MonkeyDragon]

How I define railroading:

When there is only one story, one possible course of action, one option. The road is ahead of you. You must go down the road to the X and do the Y. Any actions that conflict fail, for whatever reason. There are no choices. I'm not talking about "The DM prepared this adventure so it is only polite to play the adventure the DM prepared." I'm talking about "Hey, if we circle around, we can attack from the rear and be completely unexpected!" "You can't do that." "Why not?" "You just can't."

The characters have no impact on the world around them. The DM has a story to tell, and damned if s/he's going to let the PCs get in the way. NPCs react the same way no matter how the PCs act towards them. NPCs are so powerful (one and all) that there are no means of resisting them. It takes five days to travel to the dungeon. "Oh, we'll get everybody horses so we arrive faster and have more time to stave off impending world badness." It still takes five days to get there. We're only supposed to have three days to save the world, so three days we shall have. We get to within a hair's breadth of killing one of the BBEGs early, and the DM out and out says "I don't care, I'm making a plot decision, he gets away."



I have no problem, however, with DMs who nudge, who point out that "hey...the plot is over there..." or who present a choice between a good option and several bad options, or even just several bad options. Sometimes you have to choose between the rock and the hard place. At least you get to choose. I don't have a problem with a flexible plot that makes sure the party is at the right place at the right time no matter which road they take. If I have a choice between the left and right fork, and don't know what's at the end of either, I will never know or care that the DM was just going to put the dungeon at the end of the road. However, if I know the dungeon is at the right fork, I've done research indicating the right fork, and I choose the left fork because I want to avoid the dungeon, sticking the dungeon there anyway doesn't set well with me.

Personally, I should probably nudge more often. My players gladly pick up hooks...but they tend to shilly shally around a bit. Once they're on the road, they're good. I started the current season of my campaign at the beginning of December. They've just now embarked on the adventure I thought they'd go on two months ago. There's a lot of sitting around, roleplaying minor interactions with NPCs, listening for rumors in the tavern. I do need to find ways to guide them better towards the real excitement.

In the end, though, I rarely to never disallow what they want to do. The world will react and change based on what they do and what time they allow to pass. If they're rude to the NPC, the NPC will not want to help them. If they steal something, the law will be after them. If they act as heroes, they will be hailed as heroes (at least until some shady person with shady motives comes along).

I understand the frustration of DMs who just want to get the story underway, but I think that allowing the players free reign to come up with their own ideas their own way is generally more important than keeping the plot on the move, as long as everyone's having a good time.

 

[Cyronax]

A la Fiendish Codex 2 or Sauron's One Ring, I've long tempted my players towards breaking their alignments and falling from grace.

Case in point IMC, a 'dark brooding' rogue fighter (TN) helped a pleasure devil kidnap the party's tank and give it the two of three keys to unlocking an evil Epic lich lord (the party was APL 10 at the time). I don't allow evil characters in my campaigns (only free will to do evil and then be turned into an NPC), and the entire group knew this, so it should have come to no one's surprise that the character in question was soon betrayed by the pleasure devil (who had initially promised the rogue fighter and end to 'her pain'/painful childhood memories).

The pleasure devil caused the rogue fighter to eventually be outed, and then she was killed by the newly freed lich. Her soul made a nice squishy sound as it fell into the Nine Hells. The rogue fighter didn't even get a chance to be turned into an Evil NPC .... poor thing.

All that took an entire session, and it was played out in front of the group. Great roleplaying, but the player of the fallen thief was for some reason surprised that all that happened despite clear warnings about the results of her actions.

Anyway, thanks to player decisions, an Epic lich is now free in the campaign world and the now APL 11 party has to somehow deal with it.

----

So in terms of railroading and plottin adventures, I just create NPCs with agendas of their own and place them into the world. The NPCs may or may not interact with the party, but when they do conflict of some kind seems to usually ensue.

C.I.D.

 

[Rawwedge]

How I define railroading:

The characters have no impact on the world around them. The DM has a story to tell, and damned if s/he's going to let the PCs get in the way. NPCs react the same way no matter how the PCs act towards them. NPCs are so powerful (one and all) that there are no means of resisting them. It takes five days to travel to the dungeon. "Oh, we'll get everybody horses so we arrive faster and have more time to stave off impending world badness." It still takes five days to get there. We're only supposed to have three days to save the world, so three days we shall have. We get to within a hair's breadth of killing one of the BBEGs early, and the DM out and out says "I don't care, I'm making a plot decision, he gets away."

Personally, I should probably nudge more often. My players gladly pick up hooks...but they tend to shilly shally around a bit. Once they're on the road, they're good. I started the current season of my campaign at the beginning of December. They've just now embarked on the adventure I thought they'd go on two months ago. There's a lot of sitting around, roleplaying minor interactions with NPCs, listening for rumors in the tavern. I do need to find ways to guide them better towards the real excitement.

In the end, though, I rarely to never disallow what they want to do. The world will react and change based on what they do and what time they allow to pass. If they're rude to the NPC, the NPC will not want to help them. If they steal something, the law will be after them. If they act as heroes, they will be hailed as heroes (at least until some shady person with shady motives comes along).

This passage above is an excellent example of what DM's must avoid at all costs. (well put) I'm in a campaign right now where the DM set a hard and fast date for universal armageddon if the arch-villain was not thwarted in time. Problem is, he really didn't know how he was getting from here to there and had no plan to 'prod', 'nudge', or even 'railroad' the party to that crucial moment. The result was a schizophrenic swing from 'beat the clock' to 'hanging around and waiting for crap to happen'; not fun.

As much as I'm a planner I'm aware that my plans have to be flexible enough so that there's room for the campaign to adapt to the players actions instead of 'making' it happen the other way around.

By the same token, the players are spoiling their own fun if they go out of their way to evade the DM's plans. Everyone should have a certain level of awareness and common sense around the table while out of character.

Woe be the dungeon master who carves too many things in stone.

 

[Bardsandsages]

I don't railroad. I make it a point not to. If the players are off doing something they aren't suppose to be doing, they need to live with the consequences. Nor do I pull Deus Ex Machina style antics to protect my story if the players find a shortcut or advantage. I kind of see that as the same thing as railroading.

In my never humble opinion, the goal is not to protect the integrity of any storyline the GM has, for good or bad. The goal is to present a world to the players in which they can become heroes (or villians, if you are running an evil campaign). If the players get themselves killed, then roll new characters and a new band of heroes have to pick up when the now dead party left off. Or go in a completely new direction. If the main bad guy gets knocked off too early, have a contingency bad guy ready to step in and fill the void. The great thing about fantasy worlds is that they are full of villians with plots of global domination. Pick a new one and move on.

Just recently, the players allowed an important NPC to die because they dragged their feet getting to where they needed to be. They spent a couple of days in a major city and decided to pay someone to enchant their weapons for them, since I was being "mean" and not adding a lot of magical weapons to the treasure hordes. I could have just said they couldn't find an enchanter, but that would have been untrue, as it had already been established earlier in the campaign there were several in the city. They knew they were under a timeline, just not sure how tight of one. And to answer the question, yes, they were already equipped well enough to have handled the encounters. They didn't need additional enchantments to do so.

 

[kolikeos]

sadly, if i don't send my players to do something, they'll do nothing at all...

 

[DonTadow]

I'd rather bring the adventure to the player. What do I mean?

I usually have several plots that rarely have anything to do with one another. These plots change, divide and multiply overtime. These plots are introduced over the course of the first few adventures to the players. The players either investigate these plots or through role play suggest things they want to do. I look at what they want to do, and see how any of the three plots could effect this. At this point, the other plots are going on. If a necromancer is gaining powerful undead artifacts to destroy a country, he'll do this.

Take my current game. There were about four major plots the pcs could have taken part in. They stumbled upon defeating a god. While they were pursing this the plane of mechanis was brought into their plane and the god's son was revived in another part of the world. Both of these were other plots that were hinted at, but were ignored. Of course, with these plots successful it creates more plots.

There's no need for railroading if you feed off the players and continuously tailor the grand adventures you have in store for them.

Ofcourse you don't want to have too many plots open at the end of your campaign (though leaving one or two open is always good for afuture or epic level game). Try merging some of your forgotten or disregarded plots once the pcs reach high high levels.

 

[DonTadow]

Just recently, the players allowed an important NPC to die because they dragged their feet getting to where they needed to be. They spent a couple of days in a major city and decided to pay someone to enchant their weapons for them, since I was being "mean" and not adding a lot of magical weapons to the treasure hordes. I could have just said they couldn't find an enchanter, but that would have been untrue, as it had already been established earlier in the campaign there were several in the city. They knew they were under a timeline, just not sure how tight of one. And to answer the question, yes, they were already equipped well enough to have handled the encounters. They didn't need additional enchantments to do so.

The god defeating storyline was a simliar thing with my party. I had wrote that arch with the intention of the god being undefeatable. I used the CR28 stat block for the creature provided by Wotc (it was the Psionic gem god Sardior's advisor Blith). The PCs weren't suppose to defeat it. However, one of the crystal weapons, designed a long time ago, was an anti dragon weapon. I could have changed the weapon, made it something else. But that wouldn't be fareto the player whom retrieved it. So I allowed it.

Add that to the fact that I had neglected that an anti magic spell would defeat any magical protections on Blith's portal pour source, and the PCs actually managed to defeat my undefeatable god after 15 rounds. The tactics I wrote for him said that Blith would retreat after being taken down to 400 HP, and I could have railroaded and had Blith retreat in one round, but it wouldn't have been fair, even if one of the major stories for my next campaign involved Blith surviving to hunt the pcs down.

DMs should not be afraid to let the plot be completely screwed up by the players. That means you got good creative players who aren't settling. If you havea plot line and the pcs are following it to the Tee, somethings wrong.