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

[apoptosis]

Am I the only one wondering whether people who constantly decry any form of railroading and 'illusionism' actually [a] DM a game, have ever practiced what they preached and [c] have happy players?

I've played D&D under about tons of different DM's over the years, and next-to-none of them have achieved this zen-like campaign state where absolutely everything we did had an impact, and where the ultimate journey of the campaign was completely dictated by player action. On the contrary, all but a few of them ran us through stock off-the-shelf adventures, and of those that were left, only one managed a campaign that was anything except random and uninspired. Almost *all* of them, however, were great. None of them felt more, or less, 'right' than the next. There was always fun there to be had.

Railroad vs. sandbox vs. illusionism vs. whatever always seems to me to be an academic totem which reflects very little of my own experience as a roleplayer. Anecdotal but there you go.

I DM

I try to practice what i talk about

My players seem happy and state that they are happier playing now than many years ago before I thought about these issues.

They say the games are more fulfilling now than they were then.

Of course that is hard to judge.

Like many things it could be just that they are different so feel differently.

It could be also that like many things you might have fun with X if you didnt know about Y, but now that you had done Y, X seems like less fun. (ignorance is bliss type of idea).

It is all hard to say. I will say that the games have been relatively significantly (well no stats were done ) better since I dived into the theories of gaming and playing a lot of indy games. It has improved more traditional gaming as a result.

We had fun in most all the games we ran (different groups too) but there were things that did bother us to some degree in the past (and are things that bug us now).

I am sure some things only bothered me in retrospect (I didnt really think about X, but now that i think about X i am 'sure' it bugged me...a kind of revisionary thinking that could be a simple illusion).

 

[LostSoul]

Am I the only one wondering whether people who constantly decry any form of railroading and 'illusionism' actually [a] DM a game, have ever practiced what they preached and [c] have happy players?

See the Burning Empires link in my sig for an example of a game that was based around player choices without railroading or illusionism.

I have played in many games that have had interesting stories that had no railroading or illusionism. It's not hard to do.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Am I the only one wondering whether people who constantly decry any form of railroading and 'illusionism' actually [a] DM a game, have ever practiced what they preached and [c] have happy players?

Yes indeed. I have run my share of off the shelf adventures and have been guilty of blatant railroading in the past. One of the reasons I avoid it now is because I have experienced it firsthand from both sides of the screen. I wouldn't say that these games were badwrongunfun and that I didn't have a good time while playing but I can say that the actual quality of the play experience was not as high.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

Am I the only one wondering whether people who constantly decry any form of railroading and 'illusionism' actually [a] DM a game, have ever practiced what they preached and [c] have happy players?

I make it all up as I go, and my players love it. No railroading, no illusionism (beyond re-skinning NPC stats). Player actions matter, fun times are had.

Railroading is a crutch for those who can't pull off my zen-like state of lazy creativity.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

This stuff is mostly about campaign plotting, but it all generally applies to individual adventures as well. These are the ideas I can come up with off the top of my head. Frankly, after 30 years of gaming, I'm still learning. Hope they help!

Charles, thank you for the advice. As a newish DM struggling with plotting, I greatly appreciate it!

 

[Evilhalfling]

I am currently running H2: thunderspire labyrinth - it Is the first published work that I have run in six years. The players have been complaining about railroading, and WoW like quest givers, as everyone in the Hall seems to want them for something.

Its odd because what attracted me to the adventure was the open order of events and quests. I also strengthened some of the plot hooks, like having an ex-PC disappear, leaving a few dead Gnolls behind. Currently they are following rumors of the Gnolls, putting the chase for known slavers on hold.

They accidently solved one of the side quests, following a red herring by their choice, and are trying to figure out how to get paid for it. I think they settled on Blackmail.

I think part of the problem is that are too aware that there are set encounters, and feel like they are moving in a set path from one to another, even though from my point of view they are lurching around the adventure like drunken pirates.

One player even wants to visit the “Hall of the Broken Dragon”, The only in game reason seems to be It sounds interesting, lets go see whats there. This is fine by me – I wrote it up several encounters from its 1 paragraph description, but the other players want to stay with missions based on the story. ie stopping slavers or finding lost friends.

There was a bit of illusionism getting them to the Hall. I admitted I wanted to run the modual and created several pre-adventure plot hooks led to it. (2 vanished allies, increase in demand for slaves from underground, and a obscure letter addressed to 7PH)
But since they got there each new action was dictated by them. I even considered some reactions if the PCs chose a unexpected course - like becoming slavers themselves or not taking care of a major threat.

 

[S'mon]

I run off-the-shelf adventures, but I won't run any that involve railroading the PCs - I use site-based adventures*, and PC actions determine the outcome. Some are written so that success requires particular actions, but that is neither railroading nor illusionism.

I have players fighting to get in my game, and have to turn them away. Mostly because the club is very busy, but still, I have 7 enthusiastic regular players currently.

*Usually old adventures like B7 Rahasia, B5 Horror on the Hill. I avoid Adventure Paths.

 

[pemerton]

Apoptosis, thanks for the reply (and the other replies!).

If the DM could manage to show that them tracking me was difficult and that is expressed in game..then that is good.

It is why i like games that give out such gems like bonus dice. This allows these a good way (though not the only way) to reward (or penalty dice to penalize) choices to make them more meaningful. This way i could get bonus dice during the assassins conflict to denote the difficulty they had in tracking me.

I think D&D has not traditionally been good at this.

In 4e you could handle it this way: covering one's trail against the assassins is a skill challenge, completion of which contributes towards a milestone, which in turn gives an action point that can be used to wail on the assassins. But this isn't perfect (for one thing, it's not clear whether "completing an encounter" in the milestone rules means "successfully completing" or merely "undertaking"; for another, only every second encounter grants the action point).

You could also set it up so that succeeding at the skill challenge gives some sort of tactical benefit against the assassins (eg surprise, or terrain advantage). This is a benefit that doesn't negate the challenge of the combat, because the player still has to work out how best to exploit the benefit. Unfortunately, the DMG doesn't give very much advice on how to use skill challenges in this sort of way.

I can only say for me (about my enjoyment can NOT expand to others), the thematic choice, on first perusal, seems more like a facade of a meaningful choice than a substantially meaningful one. This would be similar to the choice of killing the bad guy by slashing him versus impaling him. It is a choice and there could be some symbolic thematic differences between the two choices (a slashing wound vs a impaling wound, say he had killed others by impaling them etc.) but it tends to in general be a rather cosmetic choice in most cases.

Now i say that this is somewhat specific to this particular example (i apologize to Cadfan, i dont mean to seem like i am attacking your example so consistently). I do value thematic choices, but i would want the actual event to follow mechanically (in world i guess) with differences in last-ditch vs triumphal conquest.

Some of this is this is colored by the fact that...i don't mind the 'final BBEG' conflict that ends in one round if the players made such a choice that engineered a one-round win over the BBEG (honestly the theory of the final BBEG conflict as an ideal, i tend to not favor ,in general. I think it tends to set up expectations that i find very manufactured and takes away from player control....unless of course THEY set it up so that there is a BBEG conflict at the end)

I agree with most of this. Merely cosmetic theme/flavour probably isn't meaningful for many players. But to make it meaningful I don't think requires giving it mechanical expression in the narrow sense. It can be enough that the gameworld - and hence the parameters of future choices open to the PCs - changes in response to it.

As to BBEG fights, I also think they can be very railroady - hence my dislike of most WoTC modules, because the players don't get to choose their moral/political orientation.

But if the players have chosen who to oppose, then I don't object to a climactic battle, and I do like it to be tactically challenging for the players. (And my players like to be tactically challenged.)

 

[Melba Toast]

It took me years to figure this out... And here's the simple solution.

GMs SHOULD FOCUS ON CHARACTERS NOT STORIES.

By populating your world with interesting characters for whom the PCs can interact with at will, the game is freed from the confines of story structure. Every time your PCs enter a crowded bar, they will have options. Who do they want to talk to? And if the characters in that bar are well-conceived in advance, at least one of them will lead to something.

If the environment and the characters the PCs interact with are full fleshed out, the players can operate according to their own whims and desires.

This required the GM to give up some of his precious control though, and too many GMs want to be Stanley Kubrick...

 

[CharlesRyan]

This required the GM to give up some of his precious control though, and too many GMs want to be Stanley Kubrick...

I don't agree with you. As I mentioned in my post, I run story-heavy campaigns not just because that's what I like to run as GM, but also because that's what I like to play as a player.

It's not an issue of egotism, it's an issue of preferred style. Darrin's original post wasn't about how to avoid story--it's about how to make story work well without railroading. Avoiding story may help avoid railroading (though it by no means eliminates it!), but it doesn't answer the OP's question.