Railroading is bad?

[Miln]

1. Do the Players feel like they have a choice in what happens to their Characters in the game?
2. Are you and they having fun?
3. Are there at least some consequences to their actions or inactions?

If the answer to these 3, or even only number 2, are Yes then you don't even need to define railroading.

well put

 

[The_Universe]

To me, railroading is when the GM makes things happen to the PCs or forces the PCs to do something against their will and/or with no choice.

Of course, by this definition, every random encounter in which the characters do not win initiative is railroading. Every time a PC takes damage that he or she considers "against their will," it's railroading. With a definition this broad, what's the point of even having a DM, GM, or referee?

 

[Janx]

Adding to the last post, I agree that it is better to have one good encounter, and have it happen, but this does not negate the _feeling_ that one can give the PC's, eitehr up front, or after the fact that the other way was better/worse.

For example, they could meet op with ppl in the next village and overhear in a tavern that on the other fork in the road a caravan got attacked by a big red dragon. The PC's will feel that they made the right choice, and the DM did not have to prepare any second encounter....

Building on this further, it's OK that the PCs WILL encounter caravan under attack regardless of which path they initially take. That's your plot hook, and it make sense to ensure the most paths to stumble on it. From there, the # of real choices must expand. For instance:
PCs see caravan, but aren't seen they could:
attack and rescue, which follows the main plan
retreat and take the other path, which leads to somewhere else an no raid

Assuming they attack, they MAY defeat the goblins, or they may get captured or retreat

Assuming they beat the goblins, they have to learn of the captured girl (surviving raider or victim)

The party MAY decide to rescue the girl, or they may take all the loot and kill everyone

For every thing you WANT the PCs to do, at least consider the "if they don't" branch. The opposing choices don't have to end in bad consequences for the party itself. Some of the results will be:
something bad happens to somebody else, since you weren't there
you get more info on a situation, that might entice you to re-enter the encounter (albeit a changed encounter)
you never know about what might have been
cowardly acts might lead to tarnished reputation (assuming witnesses)

So the basic low-cost ways to avoid railroading are:

write your sequence flow for what you WANT to happen (make sure you use 1 line per "action" recognize where choices COULD be)
for each action, guess what other things the PCS MIGHT do instead
come up with a response/encounter for each of those that seems plausible

You could write this up as a flow-chart (post-its on a whiteboard are the easiest)

It's OK to use a "Magician's Choice" where if the PCs have no info (both choices are equal), that the first choice they choose always leads to the spot you want. But in theory, once they see what's behind door #1, they can always go back and choose #2 instead, which should be different than what #1 revealed. Basically, make your "get in the game" hook applicable to most any reasonable location.

Assuming the PCs don't bite the hook right away, seed some NPCs/events that reference the main hook/story, to see if you can get the PCs interested through another path.

Throw in some random encounters/events with folks that have nothing to do with your story. Use them when the PCs ignore your plot.

That's about the cheapest way to to plan your adventure AND try to cover contingencies.

Janx

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

And I think people on these boards have very different ideas of "railroading" from all the threads I have seen. Ask yourself:

1. Do the Players feel like they have a choice in what happens to their Characters in the game?
2. Are you and they having fun?
3. Are there at least some consequences to their actions or inactions?

If the answer to these 3, or even only number 2, are Yes then you don't even need to define railroading.

Another point that Stormborn has made to me is that it may be possible for sections of a campaign to be more railroad-y (um, or linear) without the entire campaign being that way. He was specifically talking about our newly-resumed Leviathan campaign. It has been, throughout most of its life, a very open-ended and player-driven campaign. At this point, though, there are certain important plot-points that we need to explore as we get toward wrapping it up. Instead of playing out pretty much every day of existence, we've now skipped ahead 6 months, had an adventure, found out some more stuff, skipped ahead a couple of weeks (not playing out the ocean voyage), had another adventure, found out some more (very alarming) stuff. Some might see this as railroading, but as players, we're heavily invested now in defeating these bad guys, so we're willing for the campaign to become more linear.

 

[Jupp]

I just thought I'd ask about something that's been touched on in this thread. Are the players to a certain extent responsible for going along with the plot? I mean, not all DMs create a campaign world where the PCs can just do whatever they want. Certainly, one would imagine that as a player you have to 'suspend the disbelief' and invent motivation for your character to follow the DMs plot? Basically I'm asking if players can also be responsible for railroading?

Pinotage

IMO there is only one responsiblitity: As some have already said: Everyone has to have fun with the game

Given that, I actually do not think that the players are responsible to go along with a plot they do not like, or if they feel steered around.

Also, to me

.....player you have to 'suspend the disbelief' and invent motivation for your character....

doesnt sound overly fascinating. It sounds more like I have to look around for the motivation to play the game. Seriously, if I would have to "invent motivation" to go along a plot then there is a problem in the game.


I think if the players decide that they do not want to follow a plot anymore it means they do not have fun with it, or at least they are not really interested in it. If that happens it is, IMO, a big, blinking sign that the DM should either rework that plot or let it drop entirely (at least to the players. the result of them letting it drop should be played out by the DM, whatever the consequences are) and build something new according to the interest of the players. Perhaps they just want to take a little break from it and pick up the plot later on. In such situations the DM has to have a sharp ear to get a feeling what the players are up to and should then act accordingly.

 

[Jupp]

.....Some might see this as railroading, but as players, we're heavily invested now in defeating these bad guys, so we're willing for the campaign to become more linear.

I think it's becoming a railroading game as soon as the players WANT to go off the trail but the CANT. As long as everyone plays along, and has fun, its just linear gameplay

 

[ARandomGod]

THe difference can be a very thin line sometimes, but there is a difference. Railroading is forcing the players to stick to the plotline developed, being a flexible GM is adapting the plotline (and encounters, etc..) to the actions of the PCs.

At least that is the way that I see it...

I think that's a fairly accurate description.

As for flexible GMing, sometimes I take it a step farther than just simply putting my planned adventure wherever the players actually go. Last gaming session there were a LOT of pit traps in this one dungeon. They were easily 'found', as they were illusionary floors over unspiked pits. Just a little flavor in the dungeon. I had one player who insisted on going down into every trap and searching each one very, very thouroughly. And again. I made an on the spot decision that the PC was firmly convinced that he would find something, and so he did. A "significant" rock.
Player: "Why's it significant?"
Me:" It's pretty. It's unusual. You just feel it's special somehow." (Plus you kept searching till you found SOMETHING. )

I started making special descriptions for various stones inside every pit trap in that dungeon. He wrote them down on his sheet, carefully noting the differences of each.

Later in the dungeon, for no reason whatsoever, I adlibbed a part where some of those stones opened a special door (and adlibbed it as a puzzled that when done wrong set of a trap damaging the guy who was playing with the stones, notably the character who was obsessed with them in the first place.) The traps made me feel better, made him feel good about his discovery, and made the eventual "way through the secret door" from a simple roll to find it into a twenty minute process that, strangely, everyone enjoyed. And, as a GM, I enjoyed because it helped me to pull their resources down a little in healing, because they needed a little extra drain to make the dungeon appropriately exciting and challenging to have "made it through".

 

[I'm A Banana]

and yet as a DM I believe keeping on the plot is a neccesary thing for both my and player enjoyment.

This is railroading, but railroading isn't always a problem. Not railroading would have events happening around the PC's that they can choose to go for or not. It would involve tempting the characters to action without mandating that they take action, and being able to weave a story out of whatever actions they decide to take. There isn't just one plot that the characters follow, there's a rich tapestry of stories that occur around the PC's.

But a lot of players (myself included) get more satisfaction out of a well-crafted story than that player choice. This does involve railroading -- characters get a sense of what they're "supposed to do" and this forces their hand to play along with the DM's plot, which removes some autonomy from the PC's and can stretch verisimilitude.

In some groups, railroading is the norm, and it's not any worse of a game for it. Heck, some groups don't know what to do without railroading. And if you allow them choice and can flexibly adapt to their own strategies, they may not object to simply going with the flow of the overall story.

It really depends on the group. My most recent group is going to get some kind of heavy-handed railroading at some points (like the beginning), but if they trust me as a DM, it'll be worth their effort to play along.

 

[Pinotage]

It sounds more like I have to look around for the motivation to play the game. Seriously, if I would have to "invent motivation" to go along a plot then there is a problem in the game.

Or there's something wrong with the player's character concept? I'm not talking from personal experience, but let's take an adventure like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Big dungeon crawl, high likelyhood of being killed. City of the Spider Queen is even worse. Not many characters would want to delve into an adventure that may entail certain death. Surely then, characters have to invent motivation for themselves to do on such a long and ardous dungeon crawl? I can think of scores of player concepts that wouldn't care at all for that type of adventuring, but that doesn't mean the game is poor or you need to look around.

Hence the question I asked. Can a player's character concept deliberately railroad a campaing or adventure? Is it partly the player's responsibility to generate a character that will play along in the adventures listed above? And, should one character in a party find that his player concept doesn't fit this type of adventuring, shouldn't he 'suspend disbelief'?

Pinotage

 

[Stormborn]

Hence the question I asked. Can a player's character concept deliberately railroad a campaing or adventure? Is it partly the player's responsibility to generate a character that will play along in the adventures listed above? And, should one character in a party find that his player concept doesn't fit this type of adventuring, shouldn't he 'suspend disbelief'?

Pinotage

In order: An emphatic yes; basically yes, and yes.

The first can be good or bad, depending on the way things were set up before hand. If, for example, the agreement was to play a game set on the High Seas and focused around ship based combat, island exploration, and port based intrigues then a PC who wanted to be a pirate captain isn't a problem, rather the opposite actually. As long as the other PCs have no problem being various members of the crew, or semi-equals but deffering to a captain about the ship related decisions, then you are great. On the other hand if you are playing a fairly standard DnD fantasy game and someone insits on being a pirate captain, you can have a problem. Or builds a wilderness character for an Urban game. Or builds a straight fighter in a political game.


Grand destinies are also OK, if they are built into the campaign. In one campaign I play one of the last of a line of paladins sworn to kill the dragon who destroyed his homeland. My character concept was done first, and all the other players knew that was going to be the focus of the campaign. So even the player who developed an elven druid did so with the idea that the dragon had corrupted the land and that she wanted her people to take a more active role in combating it. On first glance a human paladin with a destiny wouldn't have a lot in common with the True Neutral Elven Druid...but we made it work.


Loner characters, or characters that have no reason to adventure, shouldn't be allowed. This means that the DM has some responcibilty up front to say "This is the kind of places you will go and the kind of things you will be doing and why." So that players can. Once that is established then the players should make characters that fit.

Part of this is playing the chracter appropriately, not just mechanics but roleplay. A character who is always wanting to pursue romantic entanglements and court intrigue isn't going to work out when the adventure is to clean out the sewers.

Its a shared event, shared experiance, shared world, and really everyone needs to contribute to making it an enjoyable experiance.

I have only skimmed it so far, but the DMG II has some good advice for dealing with different types of players and roles.