The Opposite of Rail-roading

[el-remmen]

The recent spate of thread on railroading coincides with a crisis in my own DMing and campaign style that has me seriously reconsidering how I do things because it doesn't seem to be working as well anymore.

I run a very "simulationist" game - in sense that the world is a sand-box and theoretically the PCs can go anywhere and do anything - it is just that some things are more connected to their backgrounds, motivations, loyalties, origins, etc. . . and some things are just beyond their ability to deal with at a particular level (or without the other non-level dependent resources that may be required) - but regardless, if they want to do it, they can try and find a way.

When constructing a campaign, I usually collect a few adventures I'd like to run, knowing that I will have to craft the "glue" of plot that brings them together from the actions of PCs and that sometimes this means just having to drop an adventure altogether because I simply won't be able to make it work, or it involves some aspect of the campaign that the players have shown no interest in.

I also create the motivations and goals for various NPCs and organizations for the PCs to interact with - either as allies or rivals, or sometimes in more complicated morally gray ways. As readers of my story hours and people who have played in my games know, I prefer tough choices in my games.

Also in my games the PCs are only a small part of a much larger world. That is, while they can gain fame and make world-shattering decisions, they have to earn that. There is no "player character entitlement" in my games. Your characters are "just like anyone else" (except in ways they aren't, of course - I just mean there is no immunity to the consequences of their actions just because they are a player character - I have had a PC arrested and just rot in jail when escape on his own was impossible and the rest of the party decided not to bother trying to save him).

I am fine with all that.

However, this openness has led to a kind of inertia in my current game that I have been trying to overcome and feel like I am failing. Basically, the players (both in and out of character) debate and argue about almost every single decision they have to make. I am not talking a little disagreement. I mean like hours of gaming time full of speculation, recrimination, obstinacy and paranoia.

Since every decision can potentially make a huge difference in the direction of the game or the likelihood of survival or success, every decision is examined and discussed ad nauseum - even when it doesn't need to be, or they don't have all the info they need to make an informed decision.

Now, I have nothing against character conflict - in fact, in the past I have encouraged it because I think it really helps develop the characters and leads to dramatic scenes and again, the tough choices I love - in the past these conflicts may have sometimes kept things a little frayed, but they never threatened to paralyze the game itself.

Anyone else ever have this problem? There have been points where the arguing has seriously threatened my continuing fun in running the game (again, I am not against a session every once in a while that becomes one long debate about where to travel to and what to do once they get there and series of speculations about foes, etc. . . but in this case they are coming every other session or so). I have brought it up to the players out of game and we have tried a few solutions that so far have had little effect.

One of them was to take these discussion to messageboards/email between sessions whenever possible. The problem with this was that not everyone has equal time (or desire) to access the boards between sessions and whatever was discussed ended up rehashed at the table anyway.

Another solution I offered was to find out-of-character solutions to the disagreements and then find a way to make those decisions remain consistent with the characters themselves. This would work, except that a couple of players find that this conflicts with their playstyle - they want all their decisions made from their character's POV first (which normally is my preferred way as well, but it just doesn't always work). Also, one player in particular always seems to backslide into his own obstinacy making everything into an argument and always having to have the last word (there is a lot of slippage between how much of this is the player and how much is the obnoxious character he is playing).

Related to the above solution is to have their characters change in-game - by this I mean, use the excuse of traveling and fighting for their lives together to construct a camaraderie that seems absent in the adventuring group. Again, this is kind of meta, but allows for the future in-character decisions to make sense for the players.

Lastly, I am going to try to take a firmer hand in guiding the direction of the campaign. Limiting choices and using the character loyalties and duties to push them in particular directions more forcefully. I am also going to be less "stingy" with information in hopes of their making better and quicker decisions based on it.

So what do you all think? Suggestions? Commiseration? Questions?

EDIT: By the way, I am well aware, that a lot of the advice I will likely get is to make stuff happen to them and give them timelines to complete things, etc. . . I do this already. One character has been repeatedly attacked by assassins, they've been challenged to duels, had to save the town they were staying in before everyone went insane, etc. . . The thing is deadlines are typically tied to a particular adventure and set of events, I think it is cheesy to repeatedly use that device.

 

[Wootz]

I think you give them too much open-ness. You should give them a sense of direction. Let's use real life as an example. Yes, in real life you can go around doing anything you damn well please, but if something appeals to you more than something else, it's probably what's going to be on your mind, right? Try making adventures that they would want to go on, then kinda push them a little until they scurry into it. If they decide they don't want to, try something else (since railroading is basically devoiding the characters of choice) but don't be too harsh. Just let them know the obvious, and it should help.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Indecisive players are worse than ones that always make unwise choices. At least bad decisions lead to actual play. I would announce to the group that a time limit on such decisions will be enforced.

What about XP/ rate of advancement? Does thier lack of doing things have any consequences here?

 

[Skallgrim]

See if you can get one (just one) player to be an instigator. Whether this involves creating a new PC for him,or just getting him to change up his character a bit, see if you can convince one player to be reckless, impulsive, or overconfident.

Suddenly, every instance of debating either becomes:

Mongo is bored. I charge!

or

Mongo is looking bored. Stop him from charging!

I had one player in my old group who served this function admirably (which is one of the reasons why he's in my new group). I usually didn't have to "send a guy in with a sword", as he was always on the lookout for trouble. This is also much more doable than getting a whole group to change their ways.

 

[vagabundo]

Carrot and the stick. You've spoiled your players with too many options, it is time to lay down the law, in real life most of us are restricted through social or financial circumstances.

You need to get the balance back in the game and some plot railroading and 'focus' by the player characters is needed.

Dont forget: Your suppose to be having fun too.

I DM exclusively and I forgot that for a couple of years during late 3.5 era. I'm much happier now and my games are banging!!

 

[el-remmen]

What about XP/ rate of advancement? Does thier lack of doing things have any consequences here?

Well, I run a slow advancement game, anyway - but yeah the party has been taking a lot longer to get places I'd imagine they'd be by now.

End of January will be 2 years of play - the party just reached 5th level (after starting at 2nd with 0 xp).

 

[el-remmen]

See if you can get one (just one) player to be an instigator. Whether this involves creating a new PC for him,or just getting him to change up his character a bit, see if you can convince one player to be reckless, impulsive, or overconfident.

Suddenly, every instance of debating either becomes:

Mongo is bored. I charge!

or

Mongo is looking bored. Stop him from charging!

I had one player in my old group who served this function admirably (which is one of the reasons why he's in my new group). I usually didn't have to "send a guy in with a sword", as he was always on the lookout for trouble. This is also much more doable than getting a whole group to change their ways.

Well, they are usually not foolish enough to do the debating in the middle of a dungeon or dangerous situation - usually it is during the "downtime" - unless Mongo runs down to the common room of the inn during the argument and starts killing the patrons, there is not much that kind of solution can do.

 

[The_Warlock]

Oh yes. I'm familiar.

And to be fair, my last big campaign was a lot less sandboxy, there was a definitive foe with a massive train of clues and prophecies for them to follow.

I'm partially to blame for training them to second guess, however, since I made sure that when they made abysmally poor choices, they suffered the consequences. Keep in mind, they didn't make catastrophic choices all the time, nor did they have many true failures, nonetheless, from their perspective the painful successes seemed like failures.

Rather than examine some of the root causes of their failures, they simply started second guessing any possible action and trying desperately to garner foreknowledge before doing anything.

And then attempting to overplan for so many contingencies that they often lost sight of the actual goal.

I used both in game and out of game to slowly rectify this.

1) A henchwoman, bored out of her mind, basically looked at them during one particularly useless session and said, "Are we going to DO anything? Because if we don't, they still are. Let's just do it the Demon Way. You can't possibly know everything that the enemy can bring to bear, so pick your target, get as much relevant info on it, and do whatever it is that needs to be done. The worst that's going to happen is you are going to die. Rather than have a contingency for every thing you don't know they can do, have a contingency for DEATH, and let's get on with it."

2) This was followed up sometime later by a firm DM directed discussion as a group (as well as individually with the players who seemed most paralyzed by the juxtaposition of risk vs reward) that they were adventurers and heroes.

Their meat and drink was taking risks that ordinary people wouldn't. In addition, there would almost never be a time where some action of consequence didn't involve serious risk. But there was a difference between taking heroic risks for some worthy goal, and being downright stupid.

Attacking the fortified enemy stronghold while playing to their skills and powers - still risky. Charging up to the front gate with your sword out, an insult on your lips, and no idea of what to do beyond that - an invitation for rocks to fall from the sky, you die, no save.

They then started to actually look for ways to do things actively, rather than react to the movements of the enemy. They also generally played to their own strengths and did their best to have escape plans, rather than trying to second guess every action or divine every possible way their enemies might counter them.

They occasionally backslid, but never as badly, and became unholy terrors, even when they were caught off guard and unprepared.

This is a group who, after their "We are Heroes!" revelation, faced a mixed clockwork/normal undead lich, and watching it trap the party rogue inside a Prismatic Sphere with it to kill him at it's leisure, were able to, on the fly, without any foreknowledge, bring all the appropriate spells to bear, IN ORDER, to drop the sphere before the Lich got it's next turn.

The same party who some years prior got their butts handed to them by a half-marilith demon, and began an unorganized retreat, and nearly had 4 characters die because they were arguing about who would be the last one through the hole that the demon couldn't fit through - while the demon hacked at them.

And then spent nearly two session arguing about how stupid it was, demanding that a "retreat order" be developed depending on the type of foe kicking their butt, and then scattering like frightened rats in the next two encounters rather than follow their carefully laid out "escape procedures."

So, my suggestion, make sure the players are clear on the whole point of adventure. And if necessary, provide an in game NPC who watches one of these conversational debacles and basically calls them all on it.

It worked for me, though your mileage may vary.

 

[Ydars]

I like to run sandboxes, and have sometimes had the same problem.

There are a number of solutions that I am sure you are aware of but here they are anyway to remind you;

1) Some of the arguments could be because the players don't have enough info to make an informed choice or have too much info that doesn't point in any direction. Adjust your description of certain game elements to make one course of action more attractive to several players because of the motifs you include in description. This is a subtle DM tool and this is the perfect situation to use it.
Also, avoid unnecessary "window-dressing" description, which just confuses a certain type of player.

2) Make sure you enforce the idea that if lots of thinking and arguing takes place, it happens in character and takes up REAL game time; this can lead to truncation of some arguments immediately. For example, if they are underground and arguing about which way to go, I would make the characters make will saves to keep the noise down otherwise they start speaking loudly without realising it. Roll for Wandering monsters...........

3) Because of 2) make NPCs overhear and comment on how argumentative and indecisive the PCs are in overheard conversations. This could become an in-game NPC joke and could earn the PCs an annoying nickname. This warns the players that extensive discussions can be overheard and if they don't mind this then create a consequence; something they were recently talking about is overheard and they suffer because of it.

3) Because of 2) and 3) if they argue in game then suddenly something happens that elicts a response; it can be a very small thing, like glimpsing someone climbing on the roof of the building opposite or else someone empties a chamber pot on the PCs or else they get pickpocketed whilst arguing about something.

I mean this is realistic as the PCs are supposed to exist a living breathing world and just by standing around the PCs are influencing that world.

One of the DMs major jobs is to keep things from bogging down. A sandbox is great and one of a series of wonderful ways to play D&D but you still need to use active techniques sometimes to move things along.

 

[LostSoul]

Do you have an example of this from a game?

I'd like to hear what the fictional situation was as well as how the players were acting at the table.