DM Dilemma - I Need Help, ENWorld! - *UPDATED* - Putting YOUR ideas to work!

[Rel]

If there was only one type of player then there would be one best way to structure adventures. But that would totally suck so we're blessed with this chaos.

I start my campaigns off with a few NPC power groups, their motivations and their resources. That gives me an idea of what might happen if nobody else did anything. Then I throw the PC's in the middle of that. Typically whatever happens first is kind of railroady, but hopefully tied in strongly enough to the PC backgrounds that the players are cool with it. That gets the ball rolling.

After that the foremost thing on my mind when planning every session is "How can I take what I've got and make it be as fun as possible for the players?" (Note that I said players. What's fun for the players isn't always, or even frequently, fun for the characters.)

Great games are not great because of how the adventure is structured. Great games are great because everybody had a lot of fun. Knowing your players and knowing how they have fun is the key to great games.

Now, that said, you need SOME kind of structure to enable that fun. For me what works best is that I typically end every session by clarifying what it is that the group plans to do the next session. "So you guys are going to explore the Spider Pits in the hopes of finding the Eight Faceted Eye of Grimdol, right?" If that's what they agree to then that's what I prepare. If the next session they say, "Hey, let's go back to town and root out the Assassin's Guild instead!" then I say, "Hey, let's play Rock Band tonight instead of gaming!" But usually they don't do that. They stick with what they said they were going to do because they know that doing otherwise kind of makes them dicks. And they aren't dicks.

Designing then becomes all about catering to their playstyles in both a generalized and a specific way. I'm sometimes more and sometimes less formal about writing this down (I've played with the same basic group for a long time). But when I'm formal about it, it looks something like this:

Buttkicker - He'll love the combats at the start and especially the big battle at the end of the session. Make sure not to lose him during the heavy story part in the middle of the session by emphasizing the epic battles that Grimdol engaged in.

Super Coolness Guy - There's no way they can get past the magically locked door into Grimdol's Tomb without him. Emphasize that. Also make a point to mention the magic runes inscribed on the Sarcophagus and point up that the College of Wizardry will be THRILLED to have a copy of those, increasing his standing there.

Storyteller - She might tend to get a little bored in the early battle when it feels just like a dungeon crawl. Have the bad guys go after her character so that she stays engaged. She'll LOVE the part in the middle when they get to read the Chronicle of Grimdol and that'll add lots of interest to the final battle when they have to face Grimdol's Spider that they read about earlier.

Casual Gamer - He's mostly along for the ride but make sure and pass him a note about how part of the Chronicle references the Lost Gem of the Shire as being one of the artifacts that Grimdol stole during his reign of terror. That will point to one of his adventuring goals without forcing him into the spotlight.



Obviously I'm referencing some other events: An introductory "fight their way into the dungeon" fight, the revelation of a bunch of story information, and an epic final battle against a BBEG. But organizing combat information or maps or whatever is handled however works best for you as a GM. The important part is where to focus my attention on making sure each player has fun during the session. I'm noting pitfalls where they might tend to lose interest and how to mitigate that. And I'm also noting what are likely to be the highlights and how to enhance those as much as possible.

 

[Gloomshroud]

One sec, before I get to you Gloomy.

KM - That was awesome. Just well done. I'd posrep ya, but... well... you know the drill. But you should be getting lots of loving for that post.

Ok, back to Gloomy -

I totally feel your pain. What I did for the past year is what we called "Campaign vignettes". Not complete campaigns, just short stories. Each one would last about 10 sessions tops. Bounced through three or four systems and a bunch of different stuff. It really helped to clean the pipes out.

I think KM's approach is excellent. It's broken down into nice, bite sized chunks that aren't overwhelming. If you spend that much time building the framework that he's developed, the details will slot themselves in much easier. "What comes next" becomes more and more obvious as you proceed through the web.

I'm a big, big believer in systematic approaches to problems. Have a system in place that lets you break things down and the fill in the gaps as needed.

Thank you. I agree!

Unfortunately, your desire to have a specific outcome means that this is well outside the realm of situation and well into the realm of railroad. That is fine, but a situation would have a list of antagonists/protagonists, their goals, their resources, and that is about it. When you have any A->B->C->Win!, then it is a railroad. Situations do not have predetermined outcomes. At all.

So if you do want a railroad, then starting with what amounts to a plot map would be a good start. Kamikaze Midget does a really good job of outlining and then filling in a plot map for your campaign. You could very easily just rip that off and go with it. You are done.

It does sound like you are trying to come up with a system for doing the same thing youself in the future. Railroads are fun to ride, as long as they are fun to ride. A proven plot map that you could use is The Heros Journey. It has been successfully used in multiple fantasy serieses, and will resonate with many players. It has 3 phases that can match up really well with the 4e heroic/paragon/epic tiers, and actually matches your stated phases really well. Go figure, it is the classic Heros Journey. By filling it in with some more Heros Journey tropes you may add some additional interest to the story in the form of things that the players may relate to from their previous experiences of The Heros Journey.

If I were in your place with your goals, I would basically do exactly what Kamikaze Midget did, only starting out with the Heros Journey as the template, and filling in the details from there. I like the idea of mapping tiers to the phases, matching levels to each of the steps, matching encounters to the levels, and generally planning out the railroad if you want the whole thing to turn out the way you want. But for theme, I would use the stages of the Heros Journey, reflavored with Dark Sun tropes. In play, you will have to be really aggressive about pushing the characters the way that you want.

And the last thing that I would say is to get some player buy in before you go ripping their characters into Dark Sun. That is a level of railroad that can decrease the interest of the players, and can ruin all the planning you have done. They may just walk the instant that you tell them "This game you thought that you were playing, it is now a completely different game." Asking them if it is OK from the get go, as well as stating up front that you have a really fun plot worked out, and asking them to stick to the rails will ensure that you aren't just writing things down for yourself.

This is much appreciated! The thoughts generated will assist me in keeping a macroscopic goal in place!

If there was only one type of player then there would be one best way to structure adventures. But that would totally suck so we're blessed with this chaos.

I start my campaigns off with a few NPC power groups, their motivations and their resources. That gives me an idea of what might happen if nobody else did anything. Then I throw the PC's in the middle of that. Typically whatever happens first is kind of railroady, but hopefully tied in strongly enough to the PC backgrounds that the players are cool with it. That gets the ball rolling.

After that the foremost thing on my mind when planning every session is "How can I take what I've got and make it be as fun as possible for the players?" (Note that I said players. What's fun for the players isn't always, or even frequently, fun for the characters.)

Great games are not great because of how the adventure is structured. Great games are great because everybody had a lot of fun. Knowing your players and knowing how they have fun is the key to great games.

Now, that said, you need SOME kind of structure to enable that fun. For me what works best is that I typically end every session by clarifying what it is that the group plans to do the next session. "So you guys are going to explore the Spider Pits in the hopes of finding the Eight Faceted Eye of Grimdol, right?" If that's what they agree to then that's what I prepare. If the next session they say, "Hey, let's go back to town and root out the Assassin's Guild instead!" then I say, "Hey, let's play Rock Band tonight instead of gaming!" But usually they don't do that. They stick with what they said they were going to do because they know that doing otherwise kind of makes them dicks. And they aren't dicks.

Designing then becomes all about catering to their playstyles in both a generalized and a specific way. I'm sometimes more and sometimes less formal about writing this down (I've played with the same basic group for a long time). But when I'm formal about it, it looks something like this:

Buttkicker - He'll love the combats at the start and especially the big battle at the end of the session. Make sure not to lose him during the heavy story part in the middle of the session by emphasizing the epic battles that Grimdol engaged in.

Super Coolness Guy - There's no way they can get past the magically locked door into Grimdol's Tomb without him. Emphasize that. Also make a point to mention the magic runes inscribed on the Sarcophagus and point up that the College of Wizardry will be THRILLED to have a copy of those, increasing his standing there.

Storyteller - She might tend to get a little bored in the early battle when it feels just like a dungeon crawl. Have the bad guys go after her character so that she stays engaged. She'll LOVE the part in the middle when they get to read the Chronicle of Grimdol and that'll add lots of interest to the final battle when they have to face Grimdol's Spider that they read about earlier.

Casual Gamer - He's mostly along for the ride but make sure and pass him a note about how part of the Chronicle references the Lost Gem of the Shire as being one of the artifacts that Grimdol stole during his reign of terror. That will point to one of his adventuring goals without forcing him into the spotlight.



Obviously I'm referencing some other events: An introductory "fight their way into the dungeon" fight, the revelation of a bunch of story information, and an epic final battle against a BBEG. But organizing combat information or maps or whatever is handled however works best for you as a GM. The important part is where to focus my attention on making sure each player has fun during the session. I'm noting pitfalls where they might tend to lose interest and how to mitigate that. And I'm also noting what are likely to be the highlights and how to enhance those as much as possible.

I appreciate this because it will allow me to take everything I've learned, and "plug" it into the characters and their backgrounds. Lots of useful tidbits brought to light here about exactly HOW to use a character's info to provide grist for the idea mill! Thanks a million. Also, loved your posts in your signature. Didn't know Mr. Gygax had a profile here. Did you know his last activity here was Feb 28th, 2008? That's just about two weeks before he passed. He was a gamer and community supporter to the end.

 

[WizarDru]

Thank you. You have so eloquently put my very thoughts into words. My whole dilemma, then, has not been HOW, but WHAT my DMing style is. EVeryone is all "no no! Railroad = bad." I guess I feel stricken because I enjoy the crap outta that kinda game. Dunno.

Pish-Tosh, I say! Railroad != "bad" automatically. It most certainly CAN be not fun for some, but it's all in the execution. There have been threads where we've debated this topic, but it should be noted that there is railroading...and then there is RAILROADING.

Case in point: in the classic AD&D modules, Scourge of the Slave Lords, the players are RAILROADED. In this case, at the end of module A3, the players are (regardless of preparedness or specific action) taken prisoner by the Slave Lords. They thus begin A4, the final module, as prisoners without any equipment. While the DM can alter the modules to avoid this, the core plot is that they are captured and nothing they do will prevent this result, no matter how far-fetched it may or may not be. The players are on the rails and are going the module takes them. For most gamers, this is mildly to very unsatisfying, depending on your preference.

But with some decent skill, railroading can be presented as an enjoyable option, often without the players really knowing that they've been railroaded. If you have a party of paladins, for example, and their deity appears to them and says "You must go forth to Kalimdor and slay the Red Dragon, so that the people need no longer fear", then that's a railroad of sorts (especially if you know that the paladins would never refuse this request). Anything short of a sandbox is probably a railroad to some degree. And that's OK.

The trick is to give players some degree of agency, even when driving them to a point. My characters in my current game are members of an elite guard...and thus are sent on assignments. Their ability to choose their path is fairly limited and they are literally given their adventure as orders. But they don't feel constrained or railroaded. Why? Several reasons.

1) They are given lots of leeway to accomplish their assignments.
2) Once they are 'off-base', so to speak, they are expected to improvise and handle whatever is thrown at them, using their respective skills to do so.
3) Their orders are often vague enough or broad enough that they can make specific decisions 'in the field' and then deal with the consequences of those decisions.

Remember: most players want or even EXPECT a degree of railroading. The DM normally needs to put an adventure in front of the party in whatever capacity they function. Unless you are playing a true 'sandbox' campaign, where the players have total freedom, it's most likely that you've dropped things in front of them to grab. Choosing from one of three plot threads is still railroading, in a fashion.

For a different game I had that was set in Feudal Japan, I maintained a lengthy list of POSSIBLE adventures and then would drop 'gateways' in front of the players. It was up to them to grab the shiny hook or to swim on by. IF the players chose to sleep in the haunted in, they would have an adventure. If they avoided it, they might encounter the old Tea Master in the forest.

Railroading is not a sin and if that's your individual DM style, then embrace it. Use it to your advantage. You can be a railroading DM and still give your players freedom and choice.

 

[Gloomshroud]

Pish-Tosh, I say! Railroad != "bad" automatically. It most certainly CAN be not fun for some, but it's all in the execution. There have been threads where we've debated this topic, but it should be noted that there is railroading...and then there is RAILROADING.

Case in point: in the classic AD&D modules, Scourge of the Slave Lords, the players are RAILROADED. In this case, at the end of module A3, the players are (regardless of preparedness or specific action) taken prisoner by the Slave Lords. They thus begin A4, the final module, as prisoners without any equipment. While the DM can alter the modules to avoid this, the core plot is that they are captured and nothing they do will prevent this result, no matter how far-fetched it may or may not be. The players are on the rails and are going the module takes them. For most gamers, this is mildly to very unsatisfying, depending on your preference.

But with some decent skill, railroading can be presented as an enjoyable option, often without the players really knowing that they've been railroaded. If you have a party of paladins, for example, and their deity appears to them and says "You must go forth to Kalimdor and slay the Red Dragon, so that the people need no longer fear", then that's a railroad of sorts (especially if you know that the paladins would never refuse this request). Anything short of a sandbox is probably a railroad to some degree. And that's OK.

The trick is to give players some degree of agency, even when driving them to a point. My characters in my current game are members of an elite guard...and thus are sent on assignments. Their ability to choose their path is fairly limited and they are literally given their adventure as orders. But they don't feel constrained or railroaded. Why? Several reasons.

1) They are given lots of leeway to accomplish their assignments.
2) Once they are 'off-base', so to speak, they are expected to improvise and handle whatever is thrown at them, using their respective skills to do so.
3) Their orders are often vague enough or broad enough that they can make specific decisions 'in the field' and then deal with the consequences of those decisions.

Remember: most players want or even EXPECT a degree of railroading. The DM normally needs to put an adventure in front of the party in whatever capacity they function. Unless you are playing a true 'sandbox' campaign, where the players have total freedom, it's most likely that you've dropped things in front of them to grab. Choosing from one of three plot threads is still railroading, in a fashion.

For a different game I had that was set in Feudal Japan, I maintained a lengthy list of POSSIBLE adventures and then would drop 'gateways' in front of the players. It was up to them to grab the shiny hook or to swim on by. IF the players chose to sleep in the haunted in, they would have an adventure. If they avoided it, they might encounter the old Tea Master in the forest.

Railroading is not a sin and if that's your individual DM style, then embrace it. Use it to your advantage. You can be a railroading DM and still give your players freedom and choice.

Thank you, sir. That is heartening. So, I'm just sticking with what I know, then! I've never had complaints in the past, and what I'm doing now amounts to an attempt to forcefully shove a square peg into ye olde round hole. I feel much much better after reading that.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Railroading is a hotly debated topic on ENWorld and the term has multiple meanings.

One is non-pejorative and just means 'the opposite of a sandbox'. The idea is of a continuum with the perfect railroad at one end and the perfect sandbox at the other. All real games fall somewhere in between but can be sandbox-wards or railroad-wards.

Another definition is pejorative and refers to the GM denying options to the players to which they feel entitled. There is a strongly subjective element to this definition of railroading.

I think there's a big difference between freedom at the start of an adventure and freedom at other points. Lack of freedom at the start, railroading, such as the paladins and red dragon example above, is widely accepted. Mostly players will bite adventure hooks. However I think loss of freedom at later points is widely regarded as less acceptable, the bad kind of railroading. An example of this would be the auto-capture at the end of A3 or the BBEG vampire escaping by carriage in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade.

This is mostly how I do it. I don't prepare that many adventures for each session, so I expect the players to bite hooks. Once they do, they have a lot of freedom. That said, my current game seems to have so many avenues for adventure now, that I may be reluctantly forced to call it a sandbox. I prepared a four level dungeon for last session (it had a map! and wandering monster tables!), the previous one having ended with the PCs on the first level near the entrance, and then they promptly left as fast as they could, never returning. I had to make up some crap about ogres!

 

[Gloomshroud]

Railroading is a hotly debated topic on ENWorld and the term has multiple meanings.

One is non-pejorative and just means 'the opposite of a sandbox'. The idea is of a continuum with the perfect railroad at one end and the perfect sandbox at the other. All real games fall somewhere in between but can be sandbox-wards or railroad-wards.

Another definition is pejorative and refers to the GM denying options to the players to which they feel entitled. There is a strongly subjective element to this definition of railroading.

I think there's a big difference between freedom at the start of an adventure and freedom at other points. Lack of freedom at the start, railroading, such as the paladins and red dragon example above, is widely accepted. Mostly players will bite adventure hooks. However I think loss of freedom at later points is widely regarded as less acceptable, the bad kind of railroading. An example of this would be the auto-capture at the end of A3 or the BBEG vampire escaping by carriage in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade.

This is mostly how I do it. I don't prepare that many adventures for each session, so I expect the players to bite hooks. Once they do, they have a lot of freedom. That said, my current game seems to have so many avenues for adventure now, that I may be reluctantly forced to call it a sandbox. I prepared a four level dungeon for last session, the previous having ended with the PCs on the first level near the entrance, and then they promptly left as fast as they could, never returning. I had to make up some crap about ogres!

Typical. Stupid players laying waste to our carefully laid plans! Argh! Ha!

Yea, I totally understand what you mean. I try for a middle-of-the-road approach, and it USUALLY works. Sometimes I just suck though. Last game I ran, I needed the players to be somewhere. Fatal design flaw though it was, I simply didn't care. I got tired of it. They pulled off this really awesome combo of ritual/skill challenge/combat...and I totally made it worthless to them. Hahahahahaha! They were NOT happy. They not only got railroaded. I hit them with the damn TRAIN. And enjoyed every second of it. Sometimes, and this may be megalomania talking here, my players forget their places. I have to show them who's boss every once and again. It's spartan to say the least, and I may be a heavy-handed despot, but we have fun.

It went something like:

DM: Your ritual of blessing and your machinations with the arcane device work flawlessly. But then something goes wrong. The divine wrath of Vecna perverts your efforts, causing the sword to plunge into the goodly dragon's heart. Instead of rescuing her, you are all instead teleported to <insert far away location> as your divine punishment.

Players: WTF? Did that really just happen?

DM: Yes. Yes it did. Now roll initiative, you pricks.

 

[I'm A Banana]

EVeryone is all "no no! Railroad = bad." I guess I feel stricken because I enjoy the crap outta that kinda game. Dunno.

"Railroad" is a loaded term. I like "narrative" myself, because it implies that there's a story -- a beginning, a middle, and an end. The sandbox isn't so loaded, so it seems more likely to accept being the sandbox. The story is what's told after!

I always compare it to videogames. What's a JRPG vs. an MMO? Narrative vs. Free-Form. Too much narrative leads to "press A to continue the story!" too much free-form leads to "I don't know what I should do."

But I'm personally a big fan of the narrative style. It's not always what I might want, but I think "railroad" does it a disservice. Like, the example I gave, there's clearly a lot of space that the players make their own decisions and those decisions actually matter (though Part One has less of that then the other parts), even if there's narrative tidbits scattered in to give it a clear storyline. More of a parking lot than a railroad. You can drive through it or do doughnuts or stop your car and have a tailgate party, but you probably shouldn't drive on the grass.

 

[Barastrondo]

They pulled off this really awesome combo of ritual/skill challenge/combat...and I totally made it worthless to them. Hahahahahaha! They were NOT happy.

I can't help but offer one bit of advice: If you teach your players that it doesn't matter what they do, they will learn that it doesn't matter what they do. And then if you want them to believe that their choices matter and whether they succeed or fail is up to them rather than your whim, it may be hard to get them to unlearn the previous lesson.

I personally wouldn't plan a game that was meant to last for 30 levels and expect my players to have total buy-in all the way through if I felt there was any chance that they would say "yeah, whatever, it doesn't matter what we do, if we're supposed to kill the sorcerer-kings we will, and if we're not, we won't." Your group dynamic may vary, of course.

 

[Gloomshroud]

I can't help but offer one bit of advice: If you teach your players that it doesn't matter what they do, they will learn that it doesn't matter what they do. And then if you want them to believe that their choices matter and whether they succeed or fail is up to them rather than your whim, it may be hard to get them to unlearn the previous lesson.

I personally wouldn't plan a game that was meant to last for 30 levels and expect my players to have total buy-in all the way through if I felt there was any chance that they would say "yeah, whatever, it doesn't matter what we do, if we're supposed to kill the sorcerer-kings we will, and if we're not, we won't." Your group dynamic may vary, of course.

Please understand, this was all in good fun, and my players knew that. They laughed it up and all was well. I eventually just retconned it into existence anyways. Another faux pas on my part, but hey, it was STILL fun. This is NOT my normal behavior, and they know that.

I am REALLY enjoying the feedback in this thread, it is a gold mine of useful bits and pieces! Keep 'em coming!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, all too often the starting point is a trip to a fast food restaurant.

Sometime during the meal I will have an idea, so I take the tray liner and turn it upside down. Then I pull out a pencil and either jot down the first notes, or a quick map.

I still have a stupidly large number of those tray liners.

If the placemat still makes sense a few hours later then I do a flowchart, or I pull out the Campaign Planners from Ronin Arts. If you have difficulty organizing things then this series might make a good starting point. Campaign Planner I, Campaign Planner II, Campaign Planner III. There is also a Campaign Planner Deluxe, but the individual sets are better - they have fillable forms, and can be filled out on a computer and printed out.

I am not exactly unbiased in my opinion of these sheets - my name is hidden somewhere in the credits and acknowledgments on two of them. They help a great deal in taming the pile of scraps and tray liners that I would otherwise produce. Phil Reed did a very nice job with these. There are a few similar sets by other companies, including one specific to Pathfinder.

You may want to dig around and see if you can find the very, very nice Storyteller's Notebook that used to be available free on RPGSheets.com It includes some sheets that are designed for creating flowcharts for adventures and campaigns. Unfortunately, a few years back RPG Sheets started, umm, sucking. They got rid of a whole bunch of sheets, some of which were better than much of what they kept. The Storyteller's Notebook was among them.

Another sheet that is useful for quick and simple flowcharts is the Chase sheet from the very, very old Dungeon Master's Design Kit from TSR. I want to say that it dates back to 1988 or so. The Chase sheet is also amazingly useful for designing, umm, chases. Essentially a series of circles with lines for labels and boxes around each circle that can be used for containing drawn arrows connecting the circles. Twenty years later I still use that sheet. (And another reason to be annoyed with the lack of legal TSR PDFs. I am so glad that I bought mine when you could still get them from Drivethru.)

The Auld Grump