Hungry Game, New Customers, Inexperienced Chef

[jbear]

I think what you are doing is different from what most people, or at least myself, would term railroading. To me, it seems you are giving your campaign a very concrete start, which sets the tone, allows the characters identify with each others cause, as it's one they all share, and introduces them to the world their characters live in right from the get go.

They must already get the notion that their goal is to get rid of that blasted collar around their neck.

I began playing 4e with a group of people almost entirely new to RPGs. I only had one adventure available to me at that stage and not enough time to make my own. So that was where the campaign began out of sheer necesity. I think the players may have felt like they had lots of options and seemed quite miffed that I seemed to always know what they were going to do. I chuckled when one of them made a comment about that. I guess a lot of the initial choices were merely minor divergences from a fairly straight road.

When the game got under way I began to create side tracks that would shoot off from that road. And as new players they chased the hook down each one of those sidetracks.

When they reached a certain point in the adventure I told them they had reached a cross road. I had only prepared so far because I didn't have a clue what they would decide to do from there. The cross road lead in 5 or 6 different directions. When the group chose the direction I prepared the next path, with side roads a plenty of course (which they continued to merrily explore).

But that is how I run my game at least. Few options that lead to a moment where options expand. Players choose one of those options narrowing the road again until they reach the next point where the adventure expands in different directions and players choose a new direction.

I don't have time to prepare everything beforehand. I only have time enough to prepare the stuff where I know the PCs are going. So my campaign world expands and grows as my PCs explore it.

When I got this new group into D&D I actually just jumped in with both feet. I prepared 12 different characters before the first session and as we sat at the table on the first game night I gave a quick flavour description of about a paragraph for each one. Based on what each player liked the sound of they chose their character accordingly. So 10 minutes later we were playing.

I think I began with something like: 'This is a 20 sided dice. When your character attempts something you have to roll it to see what the outcome of the action is. Depending on the task and the situation the number you need to be successful will be higher or lower. Lets not worry too much about the rules. We'll learn them as we go along. For now just imagine the situation I describe and how your character reacts to that situation. When you let me know what your character wants to do I'll tell you how we are going to resolve that. Right so you're sitting in a smokey, run down, dirty tavern in the town slums...'

The interaction before the first combat was when I introduced them to their skills.
The first combat went slow as I introduced them to their powers and game mechanics like hps, defenses, attack and damage rolls etc turn by turn.

They story ... paper thin. But I guess the advantage of having pretty clear options from the start kickstarts the game, gets straight into the action and the dice rolling.

New players are great. Everything is new, shiney and exciting to them. And you can teach them good habits. I never allowed anyone to get away with: 'I intimidate him' from day 1. They have to tell me what they say or do and then I tell them what they need to roll or not.

As for skill challenges, I have a few tactics I regularly use to keep everyone involved. For example in a social interaction where the Sorceror is by far the most able negotiator, I have my astute NPCs observe the rest of the party to see if their body language backs up the story. So everyone has to Bluff if the sorceror is telling a lie. If they don't make a medium DC then the main check gets a +2 added to the Sorceror's Bluff check, due to all that nervous fidgeting and lip biting that the NPC picked up on. Only the sorceror's check counts towards teh challenge, but the others are all actively involved.

Anyway, your campaign sounds like it's going to be really cool. I wouldn't worry too much about over challenging new players. They might surprise you how well they meet your challenges. I gave mine hell from the word go and they did just fine!

 

[chaochou]

I'm just going to write a few things about the railroading aspect, mainly because its a subject I've always been interested in as a GM.

It might seem sage advice to a DM not to 'railroad', but then you have to ask yourself - what exactly is a published module? What does it mean to write a scenario? It's actually very superficial and unhelpful advice.

Within the game railroading means presenting the illusion of choice when there is none. For example, you've prepared a village of undead. You say to the players "You reach a fork in the road - do you go left or right?" and whichever way they go you say "Okay you reach this ruined village..."

The choice of going left or right wasn't a choice at all. Players resent this kind of phoney choice and, in my experience, if they start to suspect it they say "Okay, we go back to the fork and go the other way..." Oops. That only has to happen once or twice (and we've all been there) before you cut the crap and just say: "You reach this creepy, silent village just as the sun is setting..."

But at a meta-game level, railroading is often implicitly expected - the players are looking to the GM for cues about plot, where to go and what to do. Damsels in distress, villages under threat from ancient evils, cultists summoning unspeakable horrors, final confrontations.

Many classic games (from D&D to Call of Cthulhu) have a premise that the PCs want to explore the GM's plot. That the players do not ignore your carefully scripted kidnapping in favour of sending their PCs off for a day's fishing. Railroading at that level is in-built into a lot of RPGs and players are willing to forgive quite a lot of it if the resulting story is interesting.

Not railroading at any level requires a certain approach to a game. It needs starting PCs with goals and motivations of their own, NPCs with goals, motivations and resources, relationship maps between the characters, and players open to the idea that the outcome of any given conflict is not going to result in ultimate failure (or success) - just a new, more complex situation.

If you're interested in that style, you should probably try and find a copy of Sorceror by Adept Press. It pretty much wrote the book on in-game, player-driven plot.

Anyway, looks to me like you have a good group of players and a strong setting, so I'd say go for it. What you've written is not railroading them in any bad sense. And if you give them meaningful choices (do we escape the games or help run more?) you won't be railroading them at all.