The Opposite of Railroading...

[JustinA]

I'm having a bit of a problem with the term railroading being thrown around in a negative connotation here. So instead of defining railroading which obviously means
different things to different people, define how the opposite of railroading works in your game. This means that if youre a DM who doesnt like railroads you must be running a railroad free game. For me that usually means youre running a plot free game that allows the PC's to do anything that they want to, but I could be wrong about that which is why I'm asking for examples.

I set up situations. Characters X, Y, and Z are planning to do A, B, and C. When the players interact with the situation they will change it, which will lead to new situations and scenarios.

As I get to know my players and their characters I get better at anticipating what they are likely to do. This allows me to focus my prep around these expectations, but if they decide to go off in an unanticipated direction (which happens more often than not), I just have to fall back on the fundamental elements of the situation: Who's trying to do what? How will they try to accomplish that?

Take the movie DIE HARD, for example. If you were to design that as a railroaded scenario you would look at the movie and design a series of encounters around the major scenes, and then force your player into those scenes.

If you were to design that as a non-railroaded scenario you would map out the building, stat up the terrorists, and know what the ultimate goal of the terrorists was. You'd also know what the terrorist's initial plan of action would be. With that information you know everything you need to know in order to run the scenario.

Honestly, there are only two joys I get from DMing:

(1) Revealing the world I have created to my players.

(2) Seeing what happens when my players are turned loose.

And the latter is what really makes it worthwhile for me to put in the incredibly long hours necessary to DM the game. There are so many wonderful moments which have been "found" around the game table that I would never anticipate in a million years of preplotting a scenario. Those are the moments that make me love the game.

 

[Gez]

Quoted for truth. A railroad only has one beginning and one end, with predetermined stops/events along the way, regardless of what the PCs do. The plot that actually lets PC actions influence its structure is, to me, the opposite of a railroad.

Not necessarily. Actual railroads have switchers/shunters.

But you stay on one set of tracks, even if they have branchs. Railroading is DMing like a computer or a gamebook, even if you have multiple path there is no room left for the players to do things that haven't been thought of in advance.

 

[Silver Moon]

To me, it means you're running a game with multiple plot options subject to change based upon the actions of the PCs.

Bingo - that's my gaming style. The only difference is that I do have the different plotlines being inter-connected, although often the connections don't become obvious to the players until the final month of the module at which point I do exert some more influence on the events.

 

[Chiaroscuro23]

This confuses me a bit. I'm not entirely certain I understand what your trying to say and I apologize for missing it. Can you explain it in more detail?

My players tend to generate their own motives for their own characters. Player characters are in a constant state of exploring the physical and social environment of their campaign universe at all times (or at least the two are heavily intergrated :\ ). Maybe it's because D&D isn't my main game but the tendencey in my campaigns is for the players to be more concerned with their motivations and the plot at hand. If Baron Von Puffenstuff killed one of their brothers and has it coming, they'll work toward the goal od taking him out no matter how powerful he is. We don't really address what level of power or skill the enemies or challenges are, just that they have reason enough to face them.

I'll try to explain: the conflict web is a set up where the DM establishes multiple factions that oppose each other and want the PCs to do something about it. It isn't a plot as such, because the GM doesn't know what'll happen. He just starts the ball rolling and improvises in response to the PC actions based on what the NPCs would do in that situation.

I'm calling that "exploring a social situation" as opposed to exploring a physical situation, because there's a lot of the latter in the D&D tradition. A lot of early modules, for example, were of the "sandbox" variety, where they just laid out a bunch of monsters living in an area and let the players go to town. The game was about exploring the physical location and interacting with the residents in a physical way (mostly killing them). It wasn't a railroad because the players could interact with the location any way they wanted.

But it mostly wasn't a social interaction, and there mostly weren't sides of a conflict already in play before the players joined in.

A third option is a plotted game, which we had a fair amount of in 2e and now in 3e (most of playing the game is here). In these the GM expects the PCs to do specific things--go here, save the princess, get the mcguffin, go there, fight the dragon--in that order.

One thing about D&D as a system is that PCs increase in power quickly, so to the extent that you need to prep the antagonists ahead of time, you need to guess the appropriate CR. This is easy to do in a plotted game. The PCs start out meeting minions, dragon hatchlings and the like, and don't get around to fighting Momma until later in the game. It can be more problematic in a physical exploration game: if the players fight the ogres before the kobolds, they might not be able to win. And if they go back and fight the kobolds later, they'll wipe the floor with them.

And if you as DM know they'll probably fight Baron von Puffenstuff sooner or later because he's a baddie in their environment, you have the option of just giving him a power level (he's aristocrat 5/fighter 6/blackgaurd 5, or something) and letting it ride, or trying to make him the right CR to be a "fair challenge" to the PCs. But this is hard because if they wait a few sessions to fight him, his stats need to be re-done.

The conflict web is about making interacting with the Baron and his court mostly about who's on which side, and how the PCs upset the balance of power (for a simple set up: the PCs are sent by the king to investigate the Baron's loyalty. He is loyal, but doesn't want to kowtow to them, and wants to destroy them within the law. Another noble family wants him removed so they can take his seat of power. The church doesn't care who's in charge of the barony so long as they have the ear of that person. All sides are willing to play the PCs so that they get who they want in charge of the barony.) Flag framing is about making sure that stuff the players are interested in shows up in that conflict web.

The conflict web I laid out above doesn't say anything about physical fighting. If the PCs fight the rival noble family's assassins (cat's paws made to look hired by the Baron, of course), it says nothing about what level those assassins are. Since the GM is improvising as they go, and following the famous maxim "when stuck, just have two men with guns come through the door" it's hard to have assassin stats ahead of time. What I do is just use the NPC chart in the 3.0 DMG.

Any clearer?