All Aboard the Invisible Railroad!

What if I told you it was possible to lock your players on a tight railroad, but make them think every decision they made mattered?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

While this may sound like the evil GM speaking, I have my reasons. Firstly, not every GM has time to craft a massive campaign. There are also plenty of GMs who are daunted at the prospect of having to figure out every eventuality. So, this advice is offered to help people scale down the pressure of being a GM and give them options to reuse and recycle their ideas and channel players through an exciting adventure that just doesn’t have as many options as they thought it did. All I’m suggesting here is a way to make sure every choice the players make takes them to an awesome encounter, which is surly no bad thing.

A Caveat​

I should add that used too often this system can have the opposite effect. The important thing here is not to take away their feeling of agency. If players realise nothing they do changes the story, then the adventure will quickly lose its allure. But as long as they don’t realise what is happening they will think every choice matters and the story is entirely in their hands. However, I should add that some players are used to being led around by the nose, or even prefer it, so as long as no one points out the “emperor has no clothes” everyone will have a great game.

You See Three Doors…​

This is the most basic use of the invisible railroad: you offer a choice and whichever choice they pick it is the same result. Now, this only works if they don’t get to check out the other doors. So this sort of choice needs to only allow one option and no take backs. This might be that the players know certain death is behind the other two doors ("Phew, thank gods we picked the correct one there!"). The other option is for a monotone voice to announce “the choice has been made” and for the other doors to lock or disappear.

If you use this too often the players will start to realise what is going on. To a degree you are limiting their agency by making them unable to backtrack. So only lock out the other options if it looks likely they will check them out. If they never go and check then you don’t need to stop them doing so.

The Ten Room Dungeon​

This variant on the idea above works with any dungeon, although it might also apply to a village or any place with separate encounters. Essentially, you create ten encounters/rooms and whichever door the player character’s open leads to the next one on your list. You can create as complex a dungeon map as you like, and the player characters can try any door in any order. But whatever door they open after room four will always lead to room five.

In this way the players will think there is a whole complex they may have missed, and if they backtrack you always have a new room ready for them, it’s just the next one on the list. The downside is that all the rooms will need to fit to roughly the same dimensions if someone is mapping. But if no one is keeping track you can just go crazy.

Now, this may go against the noble art of dungeon design, but it does offer less wastage. There are also some GMs who create dungeons that force you to try every room, which is basically just visible railroading. This way the players can pick any door and still visit every encounter.

This idea also works for any area the player characters are wandering about randomly. You might populate a whole village with only ten NPCs because unless the characters are looking for someone specific that will just find the next one of your preset NPCs regardless of which door they knock on.

What Path Do You Take in the Wilderness?​

When you take away doors and corridors it might seem more complex, but actually it makes the invisible railroad a lot easier. The player characters can pick any direction (although they may still pick a physical path). However, it is unlikely they will cross into another environmental region even after a day’s walk. So as long as your encounters are not specific to a forest or mountain they should all suit “the next encounter.”

So, whichever direction the players decide to go, however strange and off the beaten path, they will encounter the same monster or ruins as if they went in any other direction. Essentially a wilderness is automatically a ‘ten room dungeon’ just with fewer walls.

As with any encounter you can keep things generic and add an environmentally appropriate skin depending on where you find it. So it might be forest trolls or mountain trolls depending on where they are found, but either way its trolls. When it comes to traps and ruins it’s even easier as pretty much anything can be built anywhere and either become iced up or overgrown depending on the environment.

Before You Leave the Village…​

Sometimes the easiest choice is no choice at all. If the player characters have done all they need to do in “the village” (or whatever area they are in) they will have to move on to the next one. So while they might procrastinate, explore, do some shopping, you know which major plot beat they are going to follow next. Anything they do beforehand will just be a side encounter you can probably improvise or draw from your backstock of generic ones. You need not spend too long on these as even the players know these are not important. The next piece of the “proper adventure” is whenever they leave the village so they won’t expect anything beyond short and sweet. In fact, the less detailed the encounters the more the GM will be assumed to be intimating it is time to move on.

Following the Clues​

Finally we come to the most common invisible railroad that isn’t ever considered railroading (ironically). Investigative adventures usually live and breathe by allowing the player characters to uncover clues that lead to other clues. Such adventures are actually openly railroading as each clue leads to another on a proscribed path. The players aren’t forced to follow the clues, but what else are they going to do? The players are making a point of following the railroad in the knowledge it will take them to the denouement of the adventure. What makes this type of railroading entertaining is that the players feel clever for having found the clues that lead them along the path. So if they start to divert too much the GM can put another clue on their path or let them find the next one a little easier and you are back on track.

The "Good" Kind of Railroading​

Now, all this may all seem a little manipulative, but modifying events in reaction to what the players do is a part of many GM’s tools. Any trick you use is usually okay as long as you do it to serve the story and the player’s enjoyment.

That said, never take away player agency so you can ensure the story plays out the way you want it to. This sort of railroading should only be used just to make the game more manageable and free up the GM to concentrate on running a good game instead of desperately trying to create contingencies. So, remember that you must never restrict the choices and agency of the players, at least knowingly. But it is fine to make sure every road goes where you want it to, as long as that is to somewhere amazing.

Your Turn: How do you use railroading in your games?

 

[overgeeked]

A lot of people in this thread seem to conflate linear adventures with railroading. They're not the same thing.

Matt Colville has a video about it. The definitions at the top. Though he is using sandbox and open world as they are used in video game design.

 

[Stalker0]

I think we can also debate the notion of DMs offering a "false choice" vs players imposing a "choice outside the plot".

The 3 door scenario is an example of the former. The DM is directly implying to the players, "I am giving you a choice" but then is not.

In the latter example, the DM goes "alright you all are heading head back to Balwick city right?" The players nods and the DM gets his encounter ready, when one of the players goes, "hey all, maybe we shouldn't go the direct way back, maybe we should take that longer route Gurney told us about, could be safer" The players debate for 10 minutes, going through teh pros and cons. The DM honestly doesn't care, they didn't have any bandit encounters planned, they just wanted the players to meet NPC X to kick off the next plot. Whichever way the players decide to go, NPC X will show up.

So in the second example, the players have "imposed" a choice on the DM, its just not a choice that will have any impact on the plot. Another example of this is...a PC chat ups a given person in a tavern who is not important to the plot in the slightest. Maybe its a fun encounter, but ultimately the DM isn't going to do anything with it, the plot moves on. This is a form of railroading but I say its not a true evil, its just the DM focusing the story. Whereas the first scenario is a harsher one, as the DM is effectively "promising" the players a choice, but then not delivering.

 

[Stalker0]

The other thing I find about sandboxes, is that most players who want their choices to matter still want "interesting games".

What I mean by that is....if you play a sandbox to its fullest level, there are places in the world that are going to be flat out boring. If you get off the plot trail, the PCs could find themselves in a place that is wonderfully boring. Everyone is safe, no danger, no issues, no treasure, no monsters, just fine.

I find while players playing in sandbox games want to be able to go places and have that matter, they still want there to be interesting things to do when they get there, regardless of where it is. The DM therefore may have to "come up" with some problems on the fly, which technically is a form of railroading, but again its in service of creating an entertaining story.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not sure which forum you've been visiting these past couple of years, but there have been several threads on this just in the last year alone.

Most of them are either pretty evasive about flat-out admitting to illusionism, or clearly don't have the courage of their own convinctions.

People really like hardcore illusionism. Since I don't, I rather notice it when it gets defended.

Like I said, go back and look at how rarely someone is this blunt about it. It does happen (you can usually tell because its some GM who has an excessive degree of faith in his ability to fool his players basically indefinitely), but its not the common case.

 

[overgeeked]

The other thing I find about sandboxes, is that most players who want their choices to matter still want "interesting games".

What I mean by that is....if you play a sandbox to its fullest level, there are places in the world that are going to be flat out boring. If you get off the plot trail, the PCs could find themselves in a place that is wonderfully boring. Everyone is safe, no danger, no issues, no treasure, no monsters, just fine.

I find while players playing in sandbox games want to be able to go places and have that matter, they still want there to be interesting things to do when they get there, regardless of where it is. The DM therefore may have to "come up" with some problems on the fly, which technically is a form of railroading, but again its in service of creating an entertaining story.

Yep. The starting town is the utterly boring safe place with no monsters, treasure, or dangers. Gets the PCs out the door and fast. There's also chunks of the landscape that are simply that, landscape. You'll only have an encounter there if a wandering monster is rolled.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Personally, I would not consider this a form of railroading--because it's something the players have bought into. They understand that they are getting assignments, and that the completion of that assignment is what they're there to do. If they weren' interested in completing those assignments, they would voice their disagreement or (in extremity) depart the game.

Where the line gets muddy is the narrowness or not of the rules of engagement of how they handle the assignment, and the GM's handling of that. There are absolutely people who think any constraints on PC choices by the campaign situation approaches railroading, but this is usually from people who are completely determined that RPGs are only about open-ended sandboxes.

But there are other internal constraints that can flex this question considerably.

If the players have already given informed consent to go to a chosen destination, it isn't railroading. You haven't coerced them into going anywhere. And it sure as heck isn't invisible railroading, because they literally know that there's a destination in mind!

Yup. And in my above case know there's some approaches they're not permitted to take by the conditions of their employment.

Where it can get a little--sticky--is when those are so extremely narrow that the only question is whether they can execute the task given their abilities under those constraints.

 

[iserith]

The other thing I find about sandboxes, is that most players who want their choices to matter still want "interesting games".

What I mean by that is....if you play a sandbox to its fullest level, there are places in the world that are going to be flat out boring. If you get off the plot trail, the PCs could find themselves in a place that is wonderfully boring. Everyone is safe, no danger, no issues, no treasure, no monsters, just fine.

Leaving aside the fact that there's no reason to believe any place in a fantasy setting must be "boring," as you say, what makes you think a party of adventurers is going to hang out there indefinitely? There's no XP. No treasure. It seems to me that they've found a good resting place in your example, but it's not going to help them achieve their goals otherwise. I wouldn't expect them to hang out. (And, again, if the place is boring, that's the DM's fault for putting it there in the first place.)

I find while players playing in sandbox games want to be able to go places and have that matter, they still want there to be interesting things to do when they get there, regardless of where it is. The DM therefore may have to "come up" with some problems on the fly, which technically is a form of railroading, but again its in service of creating an entertaining story.

The DM presenting problems on the fly is not railroading in and of itself.

The "story" is emergent during play. The DM describes the environment. The players describe what they want to do. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions. When you look back on that taken as a whole, that is the "story."

 

[Thomas Shey]

The other thing I find about sandboxes, is that most players who want their choices to matter still want "interesting games".

What I mean by that is....if you play a sandbox to its fullest level, there are places in the world that are going to be flat out boring. If you get off the plot trail, the PCs could find themselves in a place that is wonderfully boring. Everyone is safe, no danger, no issues, no treasure, no monsters, just fine.

I find while players playing in sandbox games want to be able to go places and have that matter, they still want there to be interesting things to do when they get there, regardless of where it is. The DM therefore may have to "come up" with some problems on the fly, which technically is a form of railroading, but again its in service of creating an entertaining story.

This is only a problem if the GM is unwilling to tell the players something to the effect "The area you're in right now appears to be normal farmsteads and you have no reason to believe there's anything much interesting going on there." If the players still insist on it, their boredom is a self-inflicted wound. This ignores, of course, the fact that many traditional sandbox GMs insist on being coy about such things, and many players have been taught not to trust overt GM statements, but there's only so much you can do about gaming pathologies.

 

[iserith]

I think we can also debate the notion of DMs offering a "false choice" vs players imposing a "choice outside the plot".

The 3 door scenario is an example of the former. The DM is directly implying to the players, "I am giving you a choice" but then is not.

Except that it is giving the players a choice. If they have a sense of what lay behind each door, then it's an informed choice. If those choices are meaningfully different such that the players want to see what's behind one door and the DM gives them the content of their choosing regardless of which door they picked, then the DM is railroading. It's not railroading for all three doors to lead to one place, however, unless we're prepared to say that the great hall of the king with its many doors is somehow railroading in and of itself.

In the latter example, the DM goes "alright you all are heading head back to Balwick city right?" The players nods and the DM gets his encounter ready, when one of the players goes, "hey all, maybe we shouldn't go the direct way back, maybe we should take that longer route Gurney told us about, could be safer" The players debate for 10 minutes, going through teh pros and cons. The DM honestly doesn't care, they didn't have any bandit encounters planned, they just wanted the players to meet NPC X to kick off the next plot. Whichever way the players decide to go, NPC X will show up.

So in the second example, the players have "imposed" a choice on the DM, its just not a choice that will have any impact on the plot. Another example of this is...a PC chat ups a given person in a tavern who is not important to the plot in the slightest. Maybe its a fun encounter, but ultimately the DM isn't going to do anything with it, the plot moves on. This is a form of railroading but I say its not a true evil, its just the DM focusing the story. Whereas the first scenario is a harsher one, as the DM is effectively "promising" the players a choice, but then not delivering.

First, what a tedious player that is in the example. The party's already made a decision to go to Balwick and then Captain Waitaminute wants to open the floor for 10 minutes of further debate instead of getting the heck on with it. Yikes.

Second, there is still a choice here. It does not impact anything with regard to what happens next, but it does change the story - the PCs took the scenic route instead of the direct one. A minor detail in context probably, but again, it's not railroading in and of itself. The players want to go to Balwick. They get there with one route taking longer than the other.

Finally, it's not railroading to have NPCs hanging around for color but who otherwise have no connection to the events in play, even if the players taken interest in them. NPC X does and has motivation to seek out adventurers like the PCs who they need for a quest. This presents the players with another choice. Again, not railroading.

All in all, I think this is a great example of why it's not useful in my view to obfuscate what railroading actually is otherwise one will tend to see it everywhere (even when it's not there).

 

[Stalker0]

Second, there is still a choice here. It does not impact anything with regard to what happens next, but it does change the story - the PCs took the scenic route instead of the direct one. A minor detail in context probably, but again, it's not railroading in and of itself. The players want to go to Balwick. They get there with one route taking longer than the other.

So what your saying is, the players are fine with certain choices not mattering (or mattering only as a minor story detail) as long as they get to where they ultimately want to go.

Could you say the same thing about the 3 door scenario? As long as the players ultimately get to the treasure and beat up the monster, do they really care if the monster wasn't behind door number 1 until they chose it?