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?

 

[Stalker0]

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.

If you have never had a group of players get into a long debate about an absolutely pointless decision, than no wonder you don't see the value in a soft railroad

 

[Reynard]

It's very strange how in this thread some folks seem to think the GM doing anything at all is "railroading" -- including, bafflingly, presenting an adventure hook.

 

[Cadence]

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."

I really appreciate this post of yours and the next one in regards to helping me navigate things in the thread. I think for me it comes down to "how emergent on the fly" does the "problem" need to be and what counts as an "NPCs hanging around for color but who otherwise have no connection to the events in play".

Say, there are two roads and a bunch of woods. The party knows the woods are rumored to be full of old monsters and ruins and whatnot, and the DM has a bunch of index cards with things to draw from or a table to roll on if they get off the beaten path. The players know the left road leads to Castle X and the players know the right road leads to Dungeon Y, and they are very different things and allow the party to accomplish different big exciting things and achieve some of their goals. The roads are also safer known to be safer than the woods (and they are!), but there's a group of bandits that has recently moved into the area unknown to the players and denizens of the starting point.

Where does the limited number of things to randomly populate the woods come in. Say one of the things in the stack of cards or table that can only happen once is a witches hovel. Given that the table/deck of cards isn't too big, if they explore the woods long enough they're likely to run into most of the things on the cards. Is it bad that they'll almost surely stumble on the "Witch's Hovel" by random chance if they go pretty much any direction in the woods long enough? Does it change if when the party converses with or interrogates one of the things that pops up they get usually reliable information about the adjacent areas and if that's rolled/drawn to be the hovel, then it's locked in?

How bad is it to have the bandits pretty much show up on whatever road the party goes down (like a random encounter table with 1 entry) if they are just designed to be a reasonable challenge, give some flavor, and maybe drop off a hook that can be picked up whenever?

I'm not really concerned what label those are given, but would the set-up be viewed as giving false choices or stealing player agency? Or would it be viewed as not far from on the fly or color?

 

[overgeeked]

It's very strange how in this thread some folks seem to think the GM doing anything at all is "railroading" -- including, bafflingly, presenting an adventure hook.

It's a rhetorical device. Present anything and everything as "railroading" to get people to agree that railroading is sometimes necessary. We're supposed to ignore that it's fundamentally redefining the word under discussion. It's the same problem with all those jargon threads. Different people are honestly using the word to mean different things while others are intentionally misusing the word to push agreement.

 

[prabe]

@Cadence The extent to which the choices you describe are problems in the sense of being meaningless choices depend on whether the PCs are trying to find (or avoid) something. If the Witch's Hovel or the bandits are ... incidental to the PCs' actual goals and intents, they're probably fine..

 

[iserith]

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?

We'd have to define what "mattering" meant here. It matters to the emergent story certainly. For example, they took the scenic route instead of the the most direct one. Does the additional time spent matter? It might not. Did it matter to the possibilities of encounters? It seems like it didn't and the DM is perfectly free to say which stretch of terrain has a chance of an encounter or not. So it's a choice that doesn't have much impact and that's okay. As a DM, I would have the choice actually have an impact, particularly as it seems like it was information gleaned from an NPC and therefore seemingly relevant in some way. Perhaps the longer route is freer of encounters, but runs the risk of exhaustion due to forced marching, whereas the direct route on the road has no risk of exhaustion, but a greater chance of being waylaid by bandits. But, ultimately, the DM still isn't railroading here if the choice doesn't have as much import.

Certainly it may not matter to the players if they are happy with what they found in the 3 door scenario. The issue has never been, for me and clearly for others, that the group uses these techniques. The problem has been the DM who does this without the players buying into that kind of play. For players that didn't consent to that sort of play and who imagine that their choices matter, may not be too pleased. Honestly, the 3 door scenario just seems kind of stupid to me. It's not clear what purpose it would serve in game play and I can't see why a DM would even want to do that in the first place. It's setting up the possibility for dissatisfaction with absolutely no upside that I can see. Why do it at all?

 

[iserith]

If you have never had a group of players get into a long debate about an absolutely pointless decision, than no wonder you don't see the value in a soft railroad

I've certainly seen it, and it's almost always about a choice that has very little impact. But I have dealt with it at the source - by dealing with the players directly. By helping them understand the value of moving the game forward once consensus has been reached, you just don't get this sort of backtracking and reopening of debate. You even get faster consensus-making. I think that's more effective what whatever techniques you think are involved in a "soft railroad."

For me, this whole thing mostly boils down to prep fundamentally. It's easier to prep a plot than a location-based adventure. DMs only have so much time to devote to prep with everything else in their lives also demanding attention. A plot makes it easy to prep, but now the DM has created for themselves a new challenge: keeping the PCs on the plot because there is no other content prepared. So rather than just say they only have so much content ready (and published modules fall into this category) and get everyone's agreement that anything outside that prep is a no-go, they engage in railroading to keep the PCs on the prepared content.

 

[iserith]

I really appreciate this post of yours and the next one in regards to helping me navigate things in the thread. I think for me it comes down to "how emergent on the fly" does the "problem" need to be and what counts as an "NPCs hanging around for color but who otherwise have no connection to the events in play".

Say, there are two roads and a bunch of woods. The party knows the woods are rumored to be full of old monsters and ruins and whatnot, and the DM has a bunch of index cards with things to draw from or a table to roll on if they get off the beaten path. The players know the left road leads to Castle X and the players know the right road leads to Dungeon Y, and they are very different things and allow the party to accomplish different big exciting things and achieve some of their goals. The roads are also safer known to be safer than the woods (and they are!), but there's a group of bandits that has recently moved into the area unknown to the players and denizens of the starting point.

Where does the limited number of things to randomly populate the woods come in. Say one of the things in the stack of cards or table that can only happen once is a witches hovel. Given that the table/deck of cards isn't too big, if they explore the woods long enough they're likely to run into most of the things on the cards. Is it bad that they'll almost surely stumble on the "Witch's Hovel" by random chance if they go pretty much any direction in the woods long enough? Does it change if when the party converses with or interrogates one of the things that pops up they get usually reliable information about the adjacent areas and if that's rolled/drawn to be the hovel, then it's locked in?

How bad is it to have the bandits pretty much show up on whatever road the party goes down (like a random encounter table with 1 entry) if they are just designed to be a reasonable challenge, give some flavor, and maybe drop off a hook that can be picked up whenever?

I'm not really concerned what label those are given, but would the set-up be viewed as giving false choices or stealing player agency? Or would it be viewed as not far from on the fly or color?

I'm having a hard time following your example, but so far as I can glean from it, I would say that the number of different encounters on a random encounter table has no bearing on whether the DM is railroading or not. That DM could certainly be criticized for missing the point of random encounter tables though!

 

[bloodtide]

But in a magic show, part of the fun is trying to figure out how the magician is doing it. We know it's not real, but the good magicians make it seem like it is.

This isn't the case with gaming. The fun isn't in trying to figure out how or what the DM is doing and that being part of the entertainment. The fun is in interacting with the game, the environment and each other. Usually to create a shared experience at the table.

Like I said, few people can or more so want to figure out how the magic is being done: they just want to be amazed and entertained. And just like magic, the game is not real, so players can have fun, interact or do whatever other words they want to do on the DMs railroad. When they are having fun, they don't look for the rails.

It's when the DM doesn't tell the players the framework and the constraints but imposes them anyway that problems occur.

I'm not sure what framework is, but as long as the DM uses their superior gaming skills to make sure the players don't find out, the game works out.


Like the poster that mentioned adult players not having much time and energy. I agree. But I also say that goes for all ages. After all, I develpoed my game stlye quite young. After just a couple games with players doing the "freedom of choice" to NOT play the game, I knew that way was not for me. So enter the railroad of fun.

Time is also a big factor. I'm not a big fan of the players choosing to socialize, not play the game and waste my time. Just take a default satertudar night game from 6pm to midnight(six hours).

The game won't likely even START at with players (and all too often the DM too) being unfocused chatting, watching Youtube videos, and whatever. When the game finally starts the DM will do the "we left off at the last game" recap, and the game will continue. Very slowly as the players somewhat half remember and try to get into the game mindset. This can take some time, maybe an hour or two. It's much worse when the players have to stop the game constantly to ask questions. Then maybe a combat encounter happens, that takes often an hour or even a simple combat.(9pm)

Then the players will "want a break" and to "get something to eat", and often this can take an hour or more of wasted time.(10 pm)

Then...maybe...everyone might get focused for a couple minutes of game play(10:30pm). But the same players will slow down the game by choosing not to play. The good player might complain here that after five hours the game has gone nowhere, and they wish people could just play the game.(11 pm)

Then...maybe...the good players might drag the group to play. The characters FINALLY make it to the Dark Tower and fight there way inside. (11:30pm) The Big Battle of the Dark Tower is ready to go......BUT....it's almost midnight. So the game must be ended for the night. Most go home a bit unhappy from not having as much fun as they liked....except the players that chose not to play and ruin the game for everyone.


So compare to my Cannonball Express game plan: The characters (and players) will be moved along the plot and story...no matter what they "choose" to do. There will be tons of build up and action and adventure(you hit the floor running in my game....or else). Events and encounters go quick, and combat is even faster. The group will make it to the Dark Tower before 8pm. So the action at the tower, and the Big Battle all happen before 9pm.

THEN everyone takes a food freak after the three hours of fast, intense, and focused gaming.(9:30pm)

Coming back after the break is a lot of afterwards stuff, and tiding up loose ends along with other actions and encounters. By 11 pm or so we have shifted into downtime and wrap ups.

 

[iserith]

Like I said, few people can or more so want to figure out how the magic is being done: they just want to be amazed and entertained. And just like magic, the game is not real, so players can have fun, interact or do whatever other words they want to do on the DMs railroad. When they are having fun, they don't look for the rails.


I'm not sure what framework is, but as long as the DM uses their superior gaming skills to make sure the players don't find out, the game works out.


Like the poster that mentioned adult players not having much time and energy. I agree. But I also say that goes for all ages. After all, I develpoed my game stlye quite young. After just a couple games with players doing the "freedom of choice" to NOT play the game, I knew that way was not for me. So enter the railroad of fun.

Time is also a big factor. I'm not a big fan of the players choosing to socialize, not play the game and waste my time. Just take a default satertudar night game from 6pm to midnight(six hours).

The game won't likely even START at with players (and all too often the DM too) being unfocused chatting, watching Youtube videos, and whatever. When the game finally starts the DM will do the "we left off at the last game" recap, and the game will continue. Very slowly as the players somewhat half remember and try to get into the game mindset. This can take some time, maybe an hour or two. It's much worse when the players have to stop the game constantly to ask questions. Then maybe a combat encounter happens, that takes often an hour or even a simple combat.(9pm)

Then the players will "want a break" and to "get something to eat", and often this can take an hour or more of wasted time.(10 pm)

Then...maybe...everyone might get focused for a couple minutes of game play(10:30pm). But the same players will slow down the game by choosing not to play. The good player might complain here that after five hours the game has gone nowhere, and they wish people could just play the game.(11 pm)

Then...maybe...the good players might drag the group to play. The characters FINALLY make it to the Dark Tower and fight there way inside. (11:30pm) The Big Battle of the Dark Tower is ready to go......BUT....it's almost midnight. So the game must be ended for the night. Most go home a bit unhappy from not having as much fun as they liked....except the players that chose not to play and ruin the game for everyone.


So compare to my Cannonball Express game plan: The characters (and players) will be moved along the plot and story...no matter what they "choose" to do. There will be tons of build up and action and adventure(you hit the floor running in my game....or else). Events and encounters go quick, and combat is even faster. The group will make it to the Dark Tower before 8pm. So the action at the tower, and the Big Battle all happen before 9pm.

THEN everyone takes a food freak after the three hours of fast, intense, and focused gaming.(9:30pm)

Coming back after the break is a lot of afterwards stuff, and tiding up loose ends along with other actions and encounters. By 11 pm or so we have shifted into downtime and wrap ups.

You can absolutely have a focused and fast-paced game without railroading though.