DM Issues: Railroading

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae
Getting the players to do exactly what you want, without them feeling they've been railroaded, is good GMing.


Heh, what I want the players to do is surprise me!

Railroading would actually get in the way of that.

The Auld Grump

While I can see the entertainment value to be had by playing with yourself while others watch, most of the time, when I game, I want to get it on.

 

[pawsplay]

Heh, what I want the players to do is surprise me!

Railroading would actually get in the way of that.

The Auld Grump

Whether the line is blurry or not depends on the folks running and playing the game - the world doesn't end if the Keep on the Borderlands becomes a bastion of Chaos. The players can flee the area, or retreat, regroup, and return - failing now does not mean being unable to turn things back around later, so, yeah scale is important. Pretty safe to assume that failing to prevent a Chaos incursion in a CR 1-3 area won't end with the world ending, though.

How does Smoking Sulfurous Fumarole on the Borderlands sound?

Considering how many situations begin with something already having gone bad, I've never really seen the problem with "the world ending," unless the entire usable world literally ends. At the beginning of Star Wars, the Empire has already "won;" we now know that it was because a previous group of PCs pretty much mucked the whole thing up.

 

[Jhaelen]

High-power sandbox works fine if you're prepared to let PCs change your world. It's only a problem if you're afraid to let them 'mess up' your precious campaign setting.

In my experience it's not me, the DM, who has the problem of being afraid to 'mess up' _our_ (it certainly isn't just mine!) 'precious' campaign. It's the players who are afraid, or rather, who aren't interested in continuing to play if the campaign becomes too different from the initial setup that was agreed upon.

In the particular case of my campaign I would have been fine with continuing play in a world overrun and ruled by mind flayers, it's my players who (probably) wouldn't have enjoyed it.
I was wrecking the setting pretty thoroughly, as it was.

Actually, I think, I'm going to ask my players to see if they would have been interested in such a scenario. Maybe I'll be surprised

 

[S'mon]

In my experience it's not me, the DM, who has the problem of being afraid to 'mess up' _our_ (it certainly isn't just mine!) 'precious' campaign. It's the players who are afraid, or rather, who aren't interested in continuing to play if the campaign becomes too different from the initial setup that was agreed upon.

In the particular case of my campaign I would have been fine with continuing play in a world overrun and ruled by mind flayers, it's my players who (probably) wouldn't have enjoyed it.
I was wrecking the setting pretty thoroughly, as it was.

Actually, I think, I'm going to ask my players to see if they would have been interested in such a scenario. Maybe I'll be surprised

In my main campaign world kingdoms expand, contract, merge, are destroyed and so on, frequently as a result of player action. A major empire was recently conquered/destroyed by extradimensional invaders. PC 'starting areas' tend to be more stable initially while the PCs are low level, by the time major threats/events arrive they may be high enough level to influence them.
I tend not to do a lot of "You must do X or the world ends" plots; though a few of these have occurred over many years of play, Buffy-style "weekly end of the world" approach strains my credulity and interest.

Edit: I tend to use human & near-human threats, rather than alien aberrations like mindflayers - I think it's a lot easier to keep playing in Nazi-occupied France than in Cthulutown.

 

[Starfox]

In my experience it's not me, the DM, who has the problem of being afraid to 'mess up' _our_ (it certainly isn't just mine!) 'precious' campaign. It's the players who are afraid, or rather, who aren't interested in continuing to play if the campaign becomes too different from the initial setup that was agreed upon.
[...]
Actually, I think, I'm going to ask my players to see if they would have been interested in such a scenario. Maybe I'll be surprised

At the end of my Greyhawk-based Savage Tide game, I was seriously considering a points-of-light post-savage-tide Greyhawk. Might have been fun. "Unfortunately" the PCs succeeded in saving the world.

 

[Starfox]

There is another thing to be considered here, and that is campaign premise. When recruiting players to a game, whether to give them directions on what characters to play and what kind of gameplay to expect is important.

Suppose the GM has a two-year plot to end the world in the works. But the introduction to the game doesn't mention this, it encourages the players to make characters deeply rooted in the detailed game world. Well, they do - making a gardener, a dancer, and a stargazer. These three become friends and seek out problems based around gardening, social dancing (and the intrigues thereof) and finding high mountains with clear views of the stars. The GM introduces hints about the end of the world, which the players decline to handle as being out-of-character to them. Instead they develop their interests, becoming deeply entangled in the world and involved in their characters. After two years, all hell breaks loose, and the players are justifiably angry at the DM for arbitarily destroying what they built. And they are right - the game did not live up to its premise.

What I am trying to say is that in a sandbox, the GM must be prepared to take on responsibility for his own plots. If the world destruction plot turns out not to engage the players, there should be some NPC to handle it while the players muck around in the sand. This NPC could be a character the PCs deal with to convey some of the drama of the story, and the players might be tangentially involved in the plot - the gardener might make a herbal remedy, the dancer may facilitate an alliance, and the stargazer might make a map or provide crucial navigation aid. But if the GM is not satisfied with the level of player involvement in the plot, it is his own fault for not setting the premise clearly enough from the beginning.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Considering how many situations begin with something already having gone bad, I've never really seen the problem with "the world ending," unless the entire usable world literally ends. At the beginning of Star Wars, the Empire has already "won;" we now know that it was because a previous group of PCs pretty much mucked the whole thing up.

I always like to leave the possibility of failure and consequences on the table. As a player, one of my pet peeves is when the GM fudges to save characters or preserve the plot/setting. But I feel these are missed opportunities for interesting play. That doesn't mean you should have world changing invasions or cataclysms on a regular basis, just that the GM should contemplate, what happens if the PCs don't succeed? What interesting events can follow failure?

 

[Nagol]

There is another thing to be considered here, and that is campaign premise. When recruiting players to a game, whether to give them directions on what characters to play and what kind of gameplay to expect is important.

Suppose the GM has a two-year plot to end the world in the works. But the introduction to the game doesn't mention this, it encourages the players to make characters deeply rooted in the detailed game world. Well, they do - making a gardener, a dancer, and a stargazer. These three become friends and seek out problems based around gardening, social dancing (and the intrigues thereof) and finding high mountains with clear views of the stars. The GM introduces hints about the end of the world, which the players decline to handle as being out-of-character to them. Instead they develop their interests, becoming deeply entangled in the world and involved in their characters. After two years, all hell breaks loose, and the players are justifiably angry at the DM for arbitarily destroying what they built. And they are right - the game did not live up to its premise.

What I am trying to say is that in a sandbox, the GM must be prepared to take on responsibility for his own plots. If the world destruction plot turns out not to engage the players, there should be some NPC to handle it while the players muck around in the sand. This NPC could be a character the PCs deal with to convey some of the drama of the story, and the players might be tangentially involved in the plot - the gardener might make a herbal remedy, the dancer may facilitate an alliance, and the stargazer might make a map or provide crucial navigation aid. But if the GM is not satisfied with the level of player involvement in the plot, it is his own fault for not setting the premise clearly enough from the beginning.

I disagree. The players now get to play how their deeply rooted characters deal with hell breaking loose on the world thay care for. If the DM sets up a situation (I hate to call it a plot since that suggests a defined set of actions and known end state which my sandbox does not have) and the PCs ignore or decline to engage then that situation evolves over time to its natural end. That doesn't mean it'll always end horrifically; sometimes NPCs will turn it around (which can also happen if the PCs do get involved though it tends to be more rare since PCs tend to make quick work of things that raise their ire) or the master villain will make a fatal mistake. After all, the game is about the PCs and how they act and react to changes. This is just a larger change than is common.

Now, that doesn't mean properly advertising campaign structure and premise isn't important; I find it absolutely is. I despise bait-and-switch character creation where the premise provided for constructing the characters is invalidated in the first adventure (e.g. "I have an idea for a light social intrigue; surprise! Zombies are rising!" or "Build some good adventurers for a vanilla D&D campaign -- surprise! The mists you just walked through led to the Demiplane of Dread"). But if the dire situation introduced is within scope of the premise, so be it.

 

[S'mon]

I agree with Nagol. I dislike bait & switch too; if the end of the world threat is going to be a major part of your campaign you need to tell the players that and get buy-in up front. If they create gardeners, dancers & stargazers (and the threat isn't a Plant Demon Star Dancer) who refuse to engage, then well that's their choice.

In my sandboxy main campaign world I do quite often have NPC heroes deal with threats, often resulting in the demise of those heroes. Most of those threats were not statted out as things I expected PCs to deal with though; just part of life's rich pageant. If there was a PC-area threat they ignored I might well roll randomly to determine the resolution.

 

[Vespucci]

By putting into the game world, from the outset, that a potentially world-destroying event is in the post, the ref is engaged in telling his story, not running the game. I think what seems so wrong about the gardener, dancer, and stargazer case (GDS-case) is that the ref has determined their role behind the backs of the players. The characters aren't just an trio of arty hippie types, they're also the heroes on whom the fate of the world depends no matter what the players think.

"Railroad" versus "sandbox" isn't a very good way of capturing the distinctions involved in this case. On the other hand, if I had my way with the hobby's terminology we'd only use "Dungeon Master" to refer to guys like Gary Gygax...