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?

 

[Cadence]

There's no possible way to avoid that encounter.

If you'd picked the other door I might have thought of something else being there.

Edit: or if you augured or something else I wouldn't have put something contradictory there

 

[Mort]

There's no possible way to avoid that encounter.

I will say, this changes with D&D above a certain level.

The D&D group just tends to have LOTS of scouting options. Druids, familiars, scrying (of a bunch of forms). If they choose to be careful they can EASILY find out what's behind any given door, in any given place - well before they actually encounter it and avoid or otherwise plan for the encounter.

There really are only two ways to deal with this. 1. Nerf the spells/abilities - sadly the choice of WAY too many published modules, which, to me, feels silly and artificial or 2. Roll with it, accept that the PCs are going to be approaching the encounters differently and plan accordingly .

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But again, a pointer toward where things might be interesting is a pretty mild railroad at best. I doubt in many cases there's any need to be coy ("invisible") about it at all.

I mean I think basically all the examples in the OP are just that. Guiding meandering players toward the interesting stuff, whilst creating an illusion of a bigger world.

Like sure, when the players say that they go to the forest the GM could just directly frame them at the witch's cottage. But it probably creates a feeling that the forest is large and full of stuff and they just happen to stumble on one of the many mysterious things in it, if it is done like in the wilderness example.

It seems pretty innocent to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, of course in the "GM decides" method the GM has more control than in randomisation method. But the players have same amount of control in each case!

I'm not convinced. It'd be true if all possible encounters were equally easy to detect and equally significant, but they're not. What's easy to spot in advance, the orc patrol marching cross country or the hidden basilisk in its lair? This is particularly an issue of advanced detection methods are a limited resource (like scrying) or are likely to be used more often in some circumstances (a general outdoor travel situation where sending a scout ahead is less likely to be perilous than doing the same thing in specifically enemy territory). In particular, when the detection isn't deterministic, with the GM its easy to parry success with trivial encounters and save the significant ones for failure.

I feel this is a common hidden, and perhaps unrecognised motive in these discussions. Some people say they want the players to have more control, when what they actually mean is that they want the GM to have less! But system's say is a thing, so it is possible to offload some of the control to the mechanics, so that it is off the hands of both the GM and the players.

Well, in practice, the more control the GM has, the less the players do that isn't, effectively, just granted them by the GM when he feels like it. Its hard to argue that isn't true.

Then again, I think it is also rather cool mode of play when the PCs know what they're facing and get to make decisions about how to prepare.

It is, but it also changes the difficulty of the encounter, often non-trivially, so often GMs want to know one way or another in advance (if you set up the encounter and assume they'll know about it in advance and they don't, it can be a slaughter; have the opposite occur and its a cakewalk. Barring really hardcore let-the-chips-lay-where-they-land GMs and games, these are non-trivial concerns).

 

[Maxperson]

I will say, this changes with D&D above a certain level.

The D&D group just tends to have LOTS of scouting options. Druids, familiars, scrying (of a bunch of forms). If they choose to be careful they can EASILY find out what's behind any given door, in any given place - well before they actually encounter it and avoid or otherwise plan for the encounter.

There really are only two ways to deal with this. 1. Nerf the spells/abilities - sadly the choice of WAY too many published modules, which, to me, feels silly and artificial or 2. Roll with it, accept that the PCs are going to be approaching the encounters differently and plan accordingly .

The premise is "Which door do you open?" The post was, "But I didn't decide Ogre until you picked a door. Still bad? (If so, that feels like it means anything just made up in the spot is bad, doesn't it?)"

The door has been opened and suddenly there's an ogre behind it picked by the DM as the party selected the door. It's too late for those scouting options under that scenario. If the DM selected an ogre to be behind door #1 while the players were discussing which door to open, then those scouting options would have the chance to reveal the encounter and make it avoidable.

 

[Cadence]

The premise is "Which door do you open?" The post was, "But I didn't decide Ogre until you picked a door. Still bad? (If so, that feels like it means anything just made up in the spot is bad, doesn't it?)"

The door has been opened and suddenly there's an ogre behind it picked by the DM as the party selected the door. It's too late for those scouting options under that scenario. If the DM selected an ogre to be behind door #1 while the players were discussing which door to open, then those scouting options would have the chance to reveal the encounter and make it avoidable.

If they were scouting, I would have had to decide during the scouting what was there (Well, I would have personally, anyway).

I was assuming they opened the door without doing anything to reveal what was behind it yet (thick door, no magic scrying used, say).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I will say, this changes with D&D above a certain level.

The D&D group just tends to have LOTS of scouting options. Druids, familiars, scrying (of a bunch of forms). If they choose to be careful they can EASILY find out what's behind any given door, in any given place - well before they actually encounter it and avoid or otherwise plan for the encounter.

There really are only two ways to deal with this. 1. Nerf the spells/abilities - sadly the choice of WAY too many published modules, which, to me, feels silly and artificial or 2. Roll with it, accept that the PCs are going to be approaching the encounters differently and plan accordingly .

Well, I have conflicted feelings here. While I do agree its kind of perverse to play a game that gives you all these tools and then have the GM try and make them useless, I'd argue that often the GM is really just not that comfortable with the ability of information-gathering abilities to make most of the game moot. To be honest, a group with two varied spellcasters and maybe a couple of characters with mundane scouting abilities has more information gathering baked in than you usually see with superhero teams of comparable size, and vastly more than in many fantasy games (which often either have far more limited access to such things, or make accessing them a solid and semi-permanent trade-off over having other useful magical abilities).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean I think basically all the examples in the OP are just that. Guiding meandering players toward the interesting stuff, whilst creating an illusion of a bigger world.

The problem is he doesn't address what to do if the players wander off the path anyway.

Like sure, when the players say that they go to the forest the GM could just directly frame them at the witch's cottage. But it probably creates a feeling that the forest is large and full of stuff and they just happen to stumble on one of the many mysterious things in it, if it is done like in the wilderness example.

It seems pretty innocent to me.

If that's where it ends, it probably is. I just think that's a massive if.

 

[FrozenNorth]

except the part where i describe that out of game I did not have tracks anywhere... in fact I was as supprised as my players on where the game went (and that is often the case with my style)

I recognize that in your game you didn’t use “invisible railroad” techniques. For the sake of argument, a DM could have a game that turned out like yours but did use quantum ogres snd certain other “invisible railroad” techniques.

I’m curious whether each poster, in the hypothetical situation, would consider whether the players had meaningful choices and whether their agency was respected.

 

[Maxperson]

If they were scouting, I would have had to decide during the scouting what was there (Well, I would have personally, anyway).

I don't have a problem with that. I improvise all the time. So long as I improv things in advance of when they get there, I can set up signs of a trap or encounter if appropriate, respond to types of scouting, etc. and the party has agency. The encounter has the potential to be discovered in advance and avoided or not, at the party's choice. If they fail through their actions or rolls and hit the encounter, that's not railroading since their agency was preserved prior to the encounter.