Avoiding Railroading - Forked Thread: Do you play more for the story or the combat?

[Ahzad]

I use "opt in" gaming. To the extent that there will be railroading, it is disclosed before the game begins. If you don't like the plot line planned, don't play.

So essentially I railroad like a demon, but changing player expectations it stops railroading from being a problem.

This is pretty similar to what I do. I let them know up front that there will be railroading and if they don't like they are welcome to play elsewhere. I never really used to do this, but I've found as we've gotten older and other responsibilities have come up gaming gets harder and harder for us to do with the frequency we had years ago. Take my current group we shoot for 2 regular monthly games, more if we can manage, but at least 2 per month and sometimes depending on schedules we can't hit that target at times. In those sessions we get about 4-6 hours of playing time, so there's not a ton of time to wander around exploring stray threads in the story that may or may not lead anywhere. The group has come to expect that if they put some story threads in their background that I'll pick up on some of those and weave those in, but I'm usually pretty good about letting them know where the important bits of the main story are so we can keep things moving along, without coming across as heavy-handed railroading. The only grousing comes at the end of the game from me and one or two other players who miss the days of 8-12 hour gaming sessions once or twice a week of our youth when we had the time to really get out and explore the world we were creating. Damn you grown up real life!!!

 

[Papa-DRB]

QFT !!!

WIth my current gaming group of 6 players plus me as DM, 4 of us work jobs that entail 50 hours a week. For me, add 10 hours a week in volunteer work, a wife, two kids and (god help me!) a 14 year old grandson, I don't have time to create the world exploring threads like I used to in my younger days.

Right now, we meet 1st & 3rd Sundays of the month for 5-6 hours, and I run campaign type modules, ie. Shackled City, Age of Worms, Rise of the Runelords and others. Whilst I do throw in "mini side treks" based on character background, my guys know that the main plot is the campaign plot which I do let them know, in general terms, as they are creating characters what it is and we all agree that this suits our needs.

That is not to say that their actions don't have consequences because they do. They have had to find ingenious ways of getting a needed piece of information, or finding a different tack because they gone off the beaten path more than once and I usually find a way to get them back on, without too much trouble, but it has happened, usually once a campaign, where I have to flat tell them "guys, you need to go here and look into this" because we are so far off the path that there is no way, or at least I can't thing of a way, back to the main adventure.

Any who, works for us....

-- david
Papa.DRB

This is pretty similar to what I do. I let them know up front that there will be railroading and if they don't like they are welcome to play elsewhere. I never really used to do this, but I've found as we've gotten older and other responsibilities have come up gaming gets harder and harder for us to do with the frequency we had years ago. Take my current group we shoot for 2 regular monthly games, more if we can manage, but at least 2 per month and sometimes depending on schedules we can't hit that target at times. In those sessions we get about 4-6 hours of playing time, so there's not a ton of time to wander around exploring stray threads in the story that may or may not lead anywhere. The group has come to expect that if they put some story threads in their background that I'll pick up on some of those and weave those in, but I'm usually pretty good about letting them know where the important bits of the main story are so we can keep things moving along, without coming across as heavy-handed railroading. The only grousing comes at the end of the game from me and one or two other players who miss the days of 8-12 hour gaming sessions once or twice a week of our youth when we had the time to really get out and explore the world we were creating. Damn you grown up real life!!!

 

[Ydars]

I think that railroading happens when the PCs have to tackle a situation a certain way and when the outcome is even vaguely scripted.

It is not railroading to present the Pcs with a situation, and then force them to deal with at least some aspect of it; as long as the forcing part arises naturally from the nature of the situation, e.g. PCs must find the killer because an important person, perhaps one of the PCs is accused.

The DM must only be conscious of giving the PCs meaningful choices, that actually determine the course of events (not just shall we go left or right; search for herbs; batter monsters) then I think the DM is doing his job.

This isn't a railroad, but it isn't a sandbox either. But then sandboxes are disasters with certain types of players. My current group would be utterly clueless in a sandbox. They can't even decide what to buy when we go back to Waterdeep half the time and the session devolves into a morass.

I would LOVE to DM a sandbox and will be trying it when this campaign ends but you need a certain kind of DM to pull it off when the players are not that focussed.

 

[Cadfan]

Examples? I don't know if we even have a disagreement here or not?

Fair enough, I think.

Basically, the PCs don't always know the full consequences of their actions. Sometimes its ok if every course of action they're likely to choose will lead to the same outcome, because they don't know that, and because getting to the outcome in a different way is a different experience, and makes the decisions that caused the differences "significant."

A simple example might be: the evil necromancer is trying to raise an army of zombies to attack the town. He's already raised some zombies, he wants to raise a lot more. If the PCs don't stop him from raising more zombies, he takes his army and attacks the town. If the PCs DO stop him from raising more zombies, he takes his remaining zombie hordes and attacks the town. Either way he attacks the town. Either way he brings the same number of zombies, because you as DM want to make sure the climactic fight scene is a tough one.

The difference is that one way the "plot" is one of the PCs making a last ditch stand after failing to thwart the necromancer's plans, and the other way the "plot" is one of the PCs heroically wiping out the last of the necromancer's threat.

The roleplaying is different. The experience is different. The only way anyone could possibly know that the outcome was going to be the same either way is if you told them, which you really shouldn't do.

I wouldn't count this as railroading. I might count it as railroading if the players figured out that no matter what they did they would have to engage in the same fight, but that's not the case if you DM well.

 

[pemerton]

Ydars and Tigerbunny, good posts.

 

[Ydars]

Thanks Pemerton.

By the way, what was your campaign that forced the players into a moral choice? I am always interested in how other people handle this sort of thing.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Fair enough, I think.

Basically, the PCs don't always know the full consequences of their actions. Sometimes its ok if every course of action they're likely to choose will lead to the same outcome, because they don't know that, and because getting to the outcome in a different way is a different experience, and makes the decisions that caused the differences "significant."

A simple example might be: the evil necromancer is trying to raise an army of zombies to attack the town. He's already raised some zombies, he wants to raise a lot more. If the PCs don't stop him from raising more zombies, he takes his army and attacks the town. If the PCs DO stop him from raising more zombies, he takes his remaining zombie hordes and attacks the town. Either way he attacks the town. Either way he brings the same number of zombies, because you as DM want to make sure the climactic fight scene is a tough one.

The difference is that one way the "plot" is one of the PCs making a last ditch stand after failing to thwart the necromancer's plans, and the other way the "plot" is one of the PCs heroically wiping out the last of the necromancer's threat.

The roleplaying is different. The experience is different. The only way anyone could possibly know that the outcome was going to be the same either way is if you told them, which you really shouldn't do.

I wouldn't count this as railroading. I might count it as railroading if the players figured out that no matter what they did they would have to engage in the same fight, but that's not the case if you DM well.

The situation you describe essentially not only makes PC choice irrelevant but also makes success or failure of thier efforts meaningless.

If the PC's stop the raising of more zombies then the necromancer's forces should be smaller and easier to handle.

If the PC's failed to stop the necromancer then the horde of zombies should be larger and more difficult to handle.

As a player I hope that the actions of my character can effect the events of the campaign. If the story plays out the same no matter what the PC's do then how are they really contributing to it in any way at all?

Thanks for the clarification and example. I think we disagree.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I avoid railroading in two simple ways:

1) Present the players situations that they can affect in many different ways.
2) Never plan very far ahead. Have an idea of the overall storyline, but don't get married to it, and don't actually roll up stats until you know which way the players are going to go.

 

[pemerton]

Thanks Pemerton.

By the way, what was your campaign that forced the players into a moral choice? I am always interested in how other people handle this sort of thing.

See post 10 upthread. Basically, the PCs allied with one group of gods, plus a dead god and a banished god, to free the dead god from voidal banishment (using power drawn from the banished god) contrary to the wishes of the lords of karma. I didn't anticpate the campaign going in this way initially, especially given the PCs included two Buddhist monks and a one-time trainee monk.

 

[S'mon]

I definitely agree that you can have non-sandbox games which are not railroads. You can have eg a mystery plot where the NPCs over time take various actions, and the PCs are eg investigators, but as long as the PCs' choose their own path to investigate the mystery, and the NPCs react to the PCs' actions, it's not a railroad. These kind of adventures work best with a matrix structure and several different viable approaches, with different outcomes determined by player choices.

Railroads are the negation of PC choice: if PCs go off the rails, they're forced back on. The NPCs do the same things whatever the PCs try to do. Everything is pre-determined.