How Do You Get Your Players To Stay On An Adventure Path?

[Zak S]

Say the players decide to go east in the forest and they encounter dungeon 1 without having known that dungeon 1 is there.
If they had decided to turn west and the DM puts dungeon 1 there (the players still do not know about the existence of dungeon 1) then this is lame, bland and unimaginative DMing, I agree. He/she should have prepared (or rolled up or whatever) something else, but not dungeon 1. But no matter what, the players did not make a choice about dungeon 1. Dungeon 1 does not exist unless there is in-play information about it (unless the players know about it in play, it does not exist). No choice regarding dungeon 1 was negated. Therefore it is not railroading.

I wasn't talking about whether it was railroading specifically, I was talking about whether it was a waste of time ("a pointless choice").

If there's a choice and the choice leads to no different outcome in any way it's DEFINITELY a waste of time*.

Whether it's railroading depends on some details of how it is handled. Never offering genuine choices to begin with can sometimes railroad people as hard as negating them after the fact.


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*Exception in the case of like if it's a spooky and tension-filled choice, but we weren't talking about that kind of situation.

 

[S'mon]

Say the players decide to go east in the forest and they encounter dungeon 1 without having known that dungeon 1 is there.
If they had decided to turn west and the DM puts dungeon 1 there (the players still do not know about the existence of dungeon 1) then this is lame, bland and unimaginative DMing, I agree. He/she should have prepared (or rolled up or whatever) something else, but not dungeon 1

Now I feel sad.
IMC the PCs didn't chase some bandits, which would have led to Dungeon 1. So I decided
to use Dungeon 1 in a different locale instead, and the bandit cave would then be a
different dungeon.
I dunno what's so bad about giving the PCs a chance to explore Dungeon 1 by having it be one of the ones the PCs become aware of. I only have so many detailed dungeons, after all. I don't *force* them to explore Dungeon 1 (and in fact tonight they decided to explore Dungeon 2 instead), I just used it as a possible choice.

 

[Imaculata]

Now I feel sad.
IMC the PCs didn't chase some bandits, which would have led to Dungeon 1. So I decided
to use Dungeon 1 in a different locale instead, and the bandit cave would then be a
different dungeon.
I dunno what's so bad about giving the PCs a chance to explore Dungeon 1 by having it be one of the ones the PCs become aware of. I only have so many detailed dungeons, after all. I don't *force* them to explore Dungeon 1 (and in fact tonight they decided to explore Dungeon 2 instead), I just used it as a possible choice.

This is how I feel as well. Is the choice of the players negated just because you decided to use an unused dungeon elsewhere? I think not. The dungeon wasn't defined up till that point.

And to go back to the wizards tower example. Is it meaningless to give the players a choice to go left or right, and then place the wizards tower at what ever direction they picked? Of course that's not meaningless. Yes, the DM could have placed the tower anywhere he wanted. But isn't that true of EVERYTHING in the campaign? Npc's, items, monsters. If I want a villain to show up, he could be staying at the same inn as the players for all I care. Of course that is just an extreme example, but I think you get my point. No, this is not railroading.

Railroading is when you are stuck on a track from A to B, and there are no choices to be made at all. Its when the DM decides not only the story, but also the outcome of the story, and decides the choices of the players for them. That's railroading. When they have no choice what so ever.

Having the players stumble upon a decimated village after entering the forest, is a plot point that is tied to the overall story of the dragon. It confronts the players with a situation, which the players can respond to. That is not railroading the players, that is respecting their choice, and adapting the story according to their choices (the opposite of railroading).

To give an example from my own campaign:

My campaign is all about a region in which privateering is a legit business, because the pirates are basically legitimized by the king of a country, that is at war with another country. As long as the players raid the enemy, its all good. Unfortunately another powerful nation is less happy about their trade routes being disrupted by pirates, and so they have enlisted a warlord to take out the pirates for good.

The players are aware that trouble is brewing. Over the course of the campaign, hints have slowly started appearing that a fleet is being gathered against the pirates. Then ships started disappearing... one by one. Now the players are seeking the help of various pirate cultures, to aid them in this war. Then there's also the rise of a powerful evil entity in the realm of the dead, which is another problem entirely, but still a cause for concern.

That's the basic premise of the campaign, everything else is in their hands. They can sail anywhere they like, and try and recruit allies. They can go on wild adventures, and explore strange and dangerous islands. Or they can go off and hunt other ships, or maybe even hunt sea monsters. Meanwhile they are also building a base (something the players came up with). They can even venture into the realm of the dead.

As a DM I merely have to advance the plot occasionally. I know where the plot is heading eventually, and so do the players (a big battle). But its all about the journey. Any of their expeditions have interactions with a plot. Maybe not the main plot, but there's always some plot. Be it a side quest, or a story regarding one of their crew members, or their own personal plot. But I don't make their decisions for them, and that's the key difference. Yes, I would call this a sandbox. But sandboxes can have a story too. Look at a game like GTA, that's a sandbox, yet it has plenty of story.

 

[Zak S]

And to go back to the wizards tower example. Is it meaningless to give the players a choice to go left or right, and then place the wizards tower at what ever direction they picked? Of course that's not meaningless. Yes, the DM could have placed the tower anywhere he wanted. But isn't that true of EVERYTHING in the campaign? Npc's, items, monsters.

Not at all in any way--

The DM can write:
"It's sandy on the left, if you go left there's a beach, there are footprints leading only one way to the right, the tower is there"
or the DM can write
"It's sandy on the left, if you go left there's the tower, there are footprints leading only one way to the right, there's the tower"

...those are completely different in every way.

The second choice is literally meaningless. The first is meaningful--the DM provided options, the players chose options in accord with their preference. Meaningful structured choices among options provided by someone else are the underlying engine of every game that ever existed.

 

[Imaculata]

or the DM can write
"It's sandy on the left, if you go left there's the tower, there are footprints leading only one way to the right, there's the tower"

That would never happen. It would be more along the lines of:

DM: "It's sandy on the left, and the road slopes up a grassy hill on the right. You smell the sea in the distance, but to the right its nothing but a long stretch of grassland as far as the eye can see."

Players: "We go towards the sea."

DM: "After crossing a few sandy dunes, you eventually see the endless blue of the ocean in the distance. But as your gaze glances to the left, you see the outlines of a lone tower in the distance."


In this example, the tower was placed where the players were going, towards the sea. And obviously if they decided to turn back at this point, the tower wouldn't also be on the right. But it could have been originally. It doesn't matter for the players, they made a choice to head towards the sea, and that is where they found the tower.

 

[Zak S]

That would never happen.... tower.

Then we're right back where we were a few posts ago where I already said:

if the _sole content_ of the choice is the presence of the tower, that is genuinely a waste of time.

If it isn't, that's different.

 

[Bawylie]

There's nothing wrong (at all) with cannibalizing and repurposing stuff. Dungeon 1 in the Forest got skipped and the players went for the desert instead.

But the content of dungeon 1, the layout, the pre-generated combat encounters, traps, treasures, can all be remixed and reused.

Normally, I prep knowing that some stuff will very likely see use in play and some stuff likely not. So I prefer to create the "bones" of the encounters, dungeons, etc., and only flesh it out during play.

So maybe I'll have a 6 room complex that I can use. And maybe it'll end up a warehouse, or a thieves' guild, or jail. Idk.

And what isn't used can be banked, remixed, and reused when needed.

The thing about APs is that the pre-generated stuff is already fleshed out. So if you are going to reuse or remix it, it's a bit more work. This is why I end up taking them apart, cross-referencing pages, and generally treating it more like a toolkit than a structured experience (for regular weekly play - this is all different for 1 shot, or limited session play).

 

[Maxperson]

Its really not. The players weren't actively trying to ignore the plot. They just wanted to go on an adventure, and hoped that they would find a cool plot along the way. I don't like putting signposts everywhere with "Please go here! No not that way! This way!".

If I present a problem to my players, like for example a dragon, then I don't force them to fight that dragon. But if the dragon is part of the plot, then I will make sure that they at least learn about the dragon. And I don't expect them to go looking for something that they do not yet know exists. So to some degree, you've got to bring the plot to them. You can't expect them to already know where your adventure hooks will be. And they're not actively trying to avoid adventure hooks. They are role playing, and doing what they think their characters would do in that situation. It is up to me, as a DM, to make the journey exciting. Be it in the form of quests, plot hooks, npc's or random encounters.

By your example, they were on the plot and decided to leave it and explore somewhere else. By placing the plot inside that new dungeon you took away their agency. You invalidated their choice to leave the plot behind and go do something by forcing them to encounter the plot again in a different spot when that plot point could have remained with the original plot, and you invalidated their ability to choose whether or not to go back to the plot they left behind.

That's railroading. I'm not saying that railroading is always bad, but it is what you were engaging in when you invalidated their choices like that and forced the plot on them.

 

[Maxperson]

I will say "choice is removed" is way too vague a description. Choice is always being limited in a game by the mere fact that, say, Glorantha isn't Greyhawk so you can't do Greyhawk specific things there. It's the OVERuse of techniques that limit choice that makes a railroad.

It's only a vague description if you completely ignore context. We're discussing taking away player/PC choice in what they do. Therefore, when someone says choice is removed, it is specifically only in that context, not some general statement that someone can take as vague. To argue that it is vague and can even remotely mean the same thing as deciding what world the game is going to be played in is disingenuous at best.

 

[pemerton]

My experience of this (in Rise of the Runelords) was that it really sucked, because it broke my immersion. The adventure listed all these goblin tribes, exposition NPC talks about them, I say "Let's investigate Tribe X", GM says "No, only Tribe Y is detailed in the adventure". That sucked.

Would it have been better if the GM had just used the descriptions about Y to handle your investigation of X (taking a punt that you would never bother coming back to the "real" Y, or at least giving the GM time to come up with new details for Y)?

If the players make an uninformed choice, then I see no difference as to whether the DM placed the tower there before the game began, during game play because they thought it was cool, or rolled it randomly on a wildnerness encounter table.

While I'm generally sympathetic to [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] and [MENTION=90370]Zak S[/MENTION] saying that giving illusory choices is a waste of time, I don't think it always is.

I think a lot of these illusory choices are just about creating a bit of colour. By choosing the desert or the forest, the players choose some colour. If the GM is any good, this also means that perhaps the dragon at the bottom of the dungeon gets changed from blue to green, or vice versa. If the PCs choose to go north then the weather at the dungeon is cold (assuming the typical northern hemispheric gameworld); if they choose to go south then the weather is warm.

Contributing to colour in this way isn't the greatest expression of player agency by any means, but I can see why some RPGers wouldn't regard it as a complete was of time. (I think this is at least part of what [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION] is trying to get at in this thread.)

IMC the PCs didn't chase some bandits, which would have led to Dungeon 1. So I decided to use Dungeon 1 in a different locale instead, and the bandit cave would then be a different dungeon.

I dunno what's so bad about giving the PCs a chance to explore Dungeon 1 by having it be one of the ones the PCs become aware of. I only have so many detailed dungeons, after all. I don't *force* them to explore Dungeon 1 (and in fact tonight they decided to explore Dungeon 2 instead), I just used it as a possible choice.

To me, this raises the question: what is the point of prepared backstory?

By "prepared backstory" I don't just mean prepared material (like a map, some monster statblocks, an NPC with a bit of a biography, etc). The reason for prepared material is mostly to save time at the table. But prepared material doesn't mean prepared backstory - Dungeon 1 can serve as a bandit lair, or something else, for instance.

Prepared backstory means authoring the gameworld in advance - Dungeon 1 is here, the bandits lair in it, is has these other inhabitants, this connection to gameworld history, etc. What is the point of that?

In Gygaxian D&D the answer is easy: collecting information (by way of rumours, detection magic, etc) is part of skilled play; but information is only reliable if the backstory is locked in. Furthermore, locking in backstory allows the players to use information to gain tactical advantages. (Eg the GM just can't author in additional reinforcements to negate the PCs' clever ambush following their use of an ESP spell.)

But once we get to more contemporary, "story"-style RPGing it's less clear to me what prepared backstory is for at all. In a sandbox it creates a backdrop against which the players make choices, but in the absence of player information the connection between those choices and the backstory is something that only the GM is aware of. Perhaps players are still expected to gain information, but given that most detection spells in the game are still set up with dungeon-style ranges/AoEs I'm not really sure how that's meant to work. It's also hard to detail a whole world in the level of detail that a Gygaxian dungeon relies upon if it is to interact properly with the mechanics (eg detection spells, rumours) that players use to get the information they need.

In your (S'mon's) case, for instance, it doesn't seem that the players acquired any information about the connection between the bandits and Dungeon 1, or were even expected to. So I don't see that would be any special virtue in sticking to your original plan for Dungeon 1, rather than changing it up for the reason that you only have so much prepared material.

Hinging the plot on something like meeting the wizard is perfectly fine, so long as you don't force the players to enter the wizard's tower. If they see the tower and the plot calls for them to enter and foil the wizard who is trying to create a particularly nasty monster, and they ignore the tower and continue on, so be it. The plot continues on without them and the monster is created and ravishes the countryside, possibly killing people that the PCs know and love or possibly not, depending on where the tower is. If the PCs go far enough, they may not hear about what is happening. If they are close enough, stories of the monster will reach them via rumor.

The key is to never force a plot, ANY plot on the PCs. Do that and you are not railroading. Don't do that and you are.

The key to what?

Given my desires as an RPGer, the key is to force the players to make choices, by framing their PCs into difficult situations. I don't know if you count that as "forcing a plot" or not (I'm not sure what you mean by "plot"). It's not forcing outcomes. But it is forcing situations.

In my most recent 4e session, for instance, when the players escaped Thanatos flying on their chaos skiff to The Barrens, when they arrived at their destination they were confronted by a choice: Oublivae, the demon queen of ruin, wanting to bargain information in exchange for their skiff. Had they not travelled to The Barrens but somewhere else, they would have been confronted by some different situation (appropriate to their destination) but it would still have been something that forced them to make a choice.