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]

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.

So if we want to go into the business of defining, than we should look back at the OP. The OP has defined by their article that the mechanics they present are "invisible railroading". As this is a thread to debate the article presented, that should become the common definition that we use for the debate.

So railroading at its strictest definition is "using the mechanics defined by the article". So now we can state that these mechanics are "good" or "bad", but than we don't debate anything outside of those specific mechanics.

If we do, than we have to start with a specific definition of Railroading, and since I think that would be a fun exercise, I'm going to make a thread to do just that.

 

[jgsugden]

No, that's engagement. They aren't the same thing.

The definition of immersion is deep mental involvement. Engagement is a deep emotional investment. There is a nuance, but they're highly related and everything I described would be applicable to someone that is highly immersed in a game of D&D.

My best GMing of D&D has generally involved improvising events (though generally not improvising maps or stat blocks).

And you can happen to pull off a good event with entirely improvised moments. Entirely possible. All DMing involves some improvising, afterall. We don't prepare every little feature. However, you can also far more easily %$@! the pooch.

The question here is whether planning to improvise will tend to result in a better, or even equal, game than planning out a session in advance so that it ties together better. And, as is the case pretty much everywhere in life, the actual truthful answer is that more preparation gives you a better product in the end. There is a point of diminishing returns, but we're talking about the basic approach to a game preparation, and you're kidding yourself if you think that wandering into a session and wining it is going to work. That is the same mentality that some C students in school have towards an exam ... "I don't need to study ... I can just figure it out."

Let's say we have three DMs. One (DM 1) totally improvises on the spot. One (DM 2) has a really rough idea for a dungeon delve and just improvises as the PCs go. The last (DM 3) takes the time to figure out how much the PCs can do in the available time, designs a dungeon to fit the available time, uses an environment/map/terrain that was designed intelligently, and has ties between the events in the session that make sense.

DM 1: You can have fun in this type of game. However, it can also blow up in your face far more easily than the other two styles. When I see DMs fail, it is often because they are just pulling it off the cuff and have no overall idea on how to proceed. Their NPCs are often flat because they lack motivation tied to the campaign/adventure. When this approach is attempted for an entire campaign, it often flops and people lose interest after a few levels. Why? Because it is just a bunch of short bursts of gaming with nothing tying it together. The greater picture isn't there.

DM 2: A little preparation is better than no preparation, but it can still be improved upon. There can be a greater picture there with a little preparation, but if it is out of focus it can step on itself. In this scenario, where the DM only worries about the big beats and doesn't sweat the samll stuff, the small stuff can blur the image. The PCs can get confused by dungeons that do not make sense ... confusing a bad design element with a clue that gos nowhere. Further, every time they stop to consider something that feels out of place it takes them out of the game. If you want to keep your players interested and off their phones/computers, taking this a step further can help.

DM 3: When well executed - which takes a lot more than just planning - a well planned game will give your players answers to all of their questions and pull them in deeper into the game. Quality preparation can make sure that every moment at the table matters. It can make sure that you don't end up with pointless side quests where the players end up confused why they're doing them. It can give you a chance to develop storylines that engage players more than the encounters.

I've played for over 40 years. Consistently, when DMs put in the effort, it shows. I have enjoyed games run by DMs that do not prepare much ... but I've seen some of those DMs really improve when they added the pregame effort.

 

[Remathilis]

That's not railroading. It's merely an agreed upon structure and plot. The players are presented with a choice at session 0 and have chosen to abide by this structure and plot. The fact that the rails are visible and agreed upon usually means it's not railroading.

Now let's say the players THOUGHT they were playing an open world game but the DM only had this pirate plot to run. He doesn't tell the players this, he hides the fact that there is nothing else for them to do. Every time they try to take a path different from this pirate adventure, he guides them back to the pirate adventure and only advances that plot. That would be railroading.

So it really comes down to "do the players have the option to refuse the plot hook and if so, does that end the campaign.

I ran a pirate campaign and, at a certain point, had a long series of adventures where a magical storm shipwrecked them on the Isle of Dread*. At a certain point, the storm pops up and a ship gets wrecked. The PCs have zero say in this matter unless they opt to never go on their boat and instead stay in port for the rest of the campaign.

On the one hand, it's a railroad; no matter what the PCs would do, the storm was unavoidable. On the other hand, no player would willingly say "hey, let's go sail into that magic storm and lose our ship and be stuck on a dangerous dinosaur-covered island!" I guess I could say "If the players set sail for X location at Y time, they will run into the magical storm and crash." but then I'm designing an adventure on the off-chance the PCs end up fulfilling the conditions. And if they don't the whole adventure idea is wasted**.

* It wasn't really, but that invokes the feel I was going for and is good enough for this scenario.
** Assuming, of course, the repeatedly reusing the same plot-hook over and over until the PCs opt to go on the adventure isn't a railroad of a sort itself. I mean, if the DM is gonna threaten every boat the PCs ever own from here to eternity, might as well get it over with.

 

[Mort]

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.

So why hide the rails?

It's a whole lot less work to be fully up front and let the players willingly follow along then to constantly have to be thinking about ways and techniques to obfuscate what your doing!

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.

Why waste energy being so needlessly adversarial? If the group likes how you run, why hide how you run? The enjoyment of the game is the point, not the "magic show."

This whole concept of having to be ahead of the players and "superior" to them in gaming is baffling to me. It just seems to add an unnecessary layer and require even more (and different) skills to the already daunting task of running a good game.

I recognize that it's presented as a "short cut." But it seems to require even more effort than the alternative!

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.

This problem seems to be with unfocused players not any need for illusionism. Having a focused linear adventure is not railroading and there are plenty of techniques to help players stay focused.

Any players that refuse to abide by the agreed upon parameters of the adventure need to be addressed and then hopefully the group moves on. Again not a railroading issue, a player issue. One that exists just as much if the DM railroads.

 

[bloodtide]

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

True. But it is like saying a bunch of cooks can just create a great meal with whatever stuff they bring to the kitchen. It COULD happen. Though it would happen every time when the master chief tells the cooks what to bring and has a plan for the meal.

So why hide the rails?

It's a whole lot less work to be fully up front and let the players willingly follow along then to constantly have to be thinking about ways and techniques to obfuscate what your doing!

Same reason magic does it. If the magician turned the table around, so you saw the box with the rabbit in the table, you would not be amazed when the magician set their hat on the table, reached down to the rabbit and held it up. Then the magician is not making a rabbit "appear from nowhere", they are just picking up a rabbit.

Also the same way most people do not look plot synopsis, spoiler reviews or final game scores before they watch a movie or a "big game".

Why waste energy being so needlessly adversarial? If the group likes how you run, why hide how you run? The enjoyment of the game is the point, not the "magic show."

This whole concept of having to be ahead of the players and "superior" to them in gaming is baffling to me. It just seems to add an unnecessary layer and require even more (and different) skills to the already daunting task of running a good game.

I recognize that it's presented as a "short cut." But it seems to require even more effort than the alternative!

It's not hiding, it's trickery and deception and fooling them. Again, many are clueless. But even the ones that know it is happening might not always see it.

I don't say Superior in a bad adversarial way. Many DMs do have Superior skill, story crafting, writing, planning, game mastery, rules mastery and other such things. Really, this is one of the basics of being a DM.

This problem seems to be with unfocused players

The Railroad is a near perfect fix, so why change it?

 

[Reynard]

The definition of immersion is deep mental involvement. Engagement is a deep emotional investment. There is a nuance, but they're highly related and everything I described would be applicable to someone that is highly immersed in a game of D&D.
And you can happen to pull off a good event with entirely improvised moments. Entirely possible. All DMing involves some improvising, afterall. We don't prepare every little feature. However, you can also far more easily %$@! the pooch.

The question here is whether planning to improvise will tend to result in a better, or even equal, game than planning out a session in advance so that it ties together better. And, as is the case pretty much everywhere in life, the actual truthful answer is that more preparation gives you a better product in the end. There is a point of diminishing returns, but we're talking about the basic approach to a game preparation, and you're kidding yourself if you think that wandering into a session and wining it is going to work. That is the same mentality that some C students in school have towards an exam ... "I don't need to study ... I can just figure it out."

Let's say we have three DMs. One (DM 1) totally improvises on the spot. One (DM 2) has a really rough idea for a dungeon delve and just improvises as the PCs go. The last (DM 3) takes the time to figure out how much the PCs can do in the available time, designs a dungeon to fit the available time, uses an environment/map/terrain that was designed intelligently, and has ties between the events in the session that make sense.

DM 1: You can have fun in this type of game. However, it can also blow up in your face far more easily than the other two styles. When I see DMs fail, it is often because they are just pulling it off the cuff and have no overall idea on how to proceed. Their NPCs are often flat because they lack motivation tied to the campaign/adventure. When this approach is attempted for an entire campaign, it often flops and people lose interest after a few levels. Why? Because it is just a bunch of short bursts of gaming with nothing tying it together. The greater picture isn't there.

DM 2: A little preparation is better than no preparation, but it can still be improved upon. There can be a greater picture there with a little preparation, but if it is out of focus it can step on itself. In this scenario, where the DM only worries about the big beats and doesn't sweat the samll stuff, the small stuff can blur the image. The PCs can get confused by dungeons that do not make sense ... confusing a bad design element with a clue that gos nowhere. Further, every time they stop to consider something that feels out of place it takes them out of the game. If you want to keep your players interested and off their phones/computers, taking this a step further can help.

DM 3: When well executed - which takes a lot more than just planning - a well planned game will give your players answers to all of their questions and pull them in deeper into the game. Quality preparation can make sure that every moment at the table matters. It can make sure that you don't end up with pointless side quests where the players end up confused why they're doing them. It can give you a chance to develop storylines that engage players more than the encounters.

I've played for over 40 years. Consistently, when DMs put in the effort, it shows. I have enjoyed games run by DMs that do not prepare much ... but I've seen some of those DMs really improve when they added the pregame effort.

You completely missed, ignored, or aren't familiar with another style in which the GM defines the parameters of the situation, motivations of the NPCs and features of the environment to such a degree that they can improvise both coherently and confidently. You seem to be intimating that "preparation" is somehow limited to defining which monsters are in which rooms, and it's just not so. Moreover, your doubling down on the idea that immersion is somehow a necessary goal shows that you have a particular view of what a successful game looks like. Which is fine -- for you. But it isn't universal or a point from which to determine broadly applicable truths.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

I'm surprised it took that long. "I'm better at gaming than you, so you will sit down, shut up, and enjoy the ride...whether you like it or not."

Frustrated novelist referees are a thing. Maybe you should write a novel. You might get more enjoyment out of it than "running an RPG."

The Railroad is a near perfect fix, so why change it?

Because it's not a fix and it isn't perfect. It's a self-defeating strategy that requires a lot more energy than simply being honest with your players.

 

[Umbran]

Frustrated novelist referees are a thing. Maybe you should write a novel.

Mod Note:
Please stop telling people why they do things.

If you want to make discussions personal, you can do it on reddit or twitter or something. You should stop doing so here.

 

[Remathilis]

Frustrated novelist referees are a thing. Maybe you should write a novel. You might get more enjoyment out of it than "running an RPG."

That's rich considering how many DMs are absolute control freaks about PC backstories.

 

[Reynard]

That's rich considering how many DMs are absolute control freaks about PC backstories.

To be fair, back stories can get a little out of hand. While I don't think the GM should control them, I think it's important to make sure that backstory fits into the game presented.

Or, alternatively, dispense with them entirely.