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?

 

[Umbran]

Go back and read again. I am not responsible for your reading comprehension issues.I ... just ... can't ...

Mod Note:

If you can't, then take some time for yourself until you can, rather than be rude about it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm seeing a lot of "lie" going on, but from the player's perspective, what's the effective difference between making a choice blind and making a choice the GM is going to do what they want anyway? There's an argument floating that it's fine to have players choose a path if you then randomly determine what's there (some kind of procedural generation) but I don't follow how this affords any difference in agency or meaning to the choice. The only way that agency is increased is if there is some information about the difference between the paths that holds true. But, even here, there's some issues to be considered.

Let's go with the example from above (paraphrased) where going down path A there's an 80% chance of ogre and 20% chance of bandit and on path B there's 80% chance of bandit and 20% chance of ogre. Let's say that this information is even provided in a less mechanical way of "path A has way more ogres than bandits, and path B has way more bandits than ogres." This is a true statement. The players make a choice based on this, deciding they want less ogre and so pick path B. The dice are rolled and turn up ogre. Was there agency here? I mean, sure, risks and all that, so yes to that hypothetical, but here's the real question -- does it matter that there was agency from the player's perspective? They made a choice and the outcome was what they wanted to avoid anyway. How does that appear? Walk this through various iterations of play from where everything is 100% open and transparent to the players such that they see the %'s and the rolls and know exactly how it happened all they way through the vaguer statement and a roll behind the screen. Let's assume the GM is 100% honest in all efforts here -- no lying. In the 'behind the screen' version, does it matter if the GM is being honest? The appearance from the players is one where they can easily leap to the conclusion the GM Forced the ogre. And if the defense to this is "but you should trust the GM" then we need to go back and talk about occasional moments when the GM isn't honest and does Force the ogre and evaluate if there's actually anything different on the player side of the screen here.

I don't have preferred answers here (I have my preferences, but nothing says those are controlling). I'm not fishing for a gotcha. Legit thinking exercise. Approach with curiosity.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Regardless, it is indeed another tactic that can be used. But doing so without the players’ consent is deceptive and disrespectful. Seriously, what’s so hard about just giving your players a heads-up and saying “I plan to move things around to make sure you don’t miss the cool stuff I prepared. Everyone cool with that?”

I mean sure, you could ask that. But should you also ask "I'm planning to stick to the prep, so you might sometimes miss the interesting stuff, is everyone cool with that" or "I'm going to sometimes improvise, so who knows what's going to happen, is everyone cool with that?"

Like you can break things down like this if people for some reason have vey specific preferences, but in broad sense all this is covered under the GM makings stuff up and presenting it to the players, which in D&D is normally understood to be the GM's role, so if nothing further is specified, I don't think there is much reason to be shocked if any of the methods or their combinations are being used.

 

[Charlaquin]

I mean sure, you could ask that. But should you also ask "I'm planning to stick to the prep, so you might sometimes miss the interesting stuff, is everyone cool with that" or "I'm going to sometimes improvise, so who knows what's going to happen, is everyone cool with that?"

If you’re concerned some of your players
might take issue with those things, sure. But sticking to the prep and improvising do not involve deceiving the players. Again, the entire premise of this thread is about railroading while making it seem like you aren’t railroading. Saying one thing and doing another. Unless you get confirmation ahead of time that the players are ok with you doing so, it is inherently deceptive. That’s not the case with strict adherence to prep or improvisation.

Like you can break things down like this if people for some reason have vey specific preferences, but in broad sense all this is covered under the GM makings stuff up and presenting it to the players, which in D&D is normally understood to be the GM's role, so if nothing further is specified, I don't think there is much reason to be shocked if any of the methods or their combinations are being used.

But this isn’t just a matter of making things up and presenting it to the players. This is a matter of presenting something to the players that is false. It’s literally trying to trick them into thinking they have agency when in fact they do not. This isn’t me reading malicious intent into an innocuous statement, this is precisely the behavior the opening post describes.

 

[Mort]

I'm seeing a lot of "lie" going on, but from the player's perspective, what's the effective difference between making a choice blind and making a choice the GM is going to do what they want anyway? There's an argument floating that it's fine to have players choose a path if you then randomly determine what's there (some kind of procedural generation) but I don't follow how this affords any difference in agency or meaning to the choice. The only way that agency is increased is if there is some information about the difference between the paths that holds true. But, even here, there's some issues to be considered.

For me, a blind choice isn't a meaningful choice. It's just pick a random number. In that sense, I don't care if it's 1 door 2 doors or 3 doors. If the players have no information as to the doors, there's little point in quibbling what's behind them or how it got there.

As more information is revealed, then it begins to matter. If the players are making an informed choice, the choice they make should matter in some meaningful way.

Now, if the Players TRY to make it a meaningful choice (they listen to the doors, they look at tracks leading to the doors, they do an augury, they try to scry on the other sides) and the DM foils them (say nothing works) because he doesn't want it to be an informed choice (which I have seen way too many times!) then that's a real problem.

Let's go with the example from above (paraphrased) where going down path A there's an 80% chance of ogre and 20% chance of bandit and on path B there's 80% chance of bandit and 20% chance of ogre. Let's say that this information is even provided in a less mechanical way of "path A has way more ogres than bandits, and path B has way more bandits than ogres." This is a true statement. The players make a choice based on this, deciding they want less ogre and so pick path B. The dice are rolled and turn up ogre. Was there agency here? I mean, sure, risks and all that, so yes to that hypothetical, but here's the real question -- does it matter that there was agency from the player's perspective? They made a choice and the outcome was what they wanted to avoid anyway. How does that appear? Walk this through various iterations of play from where everything is 100% open and transparent to the players such that they see the %'s and the rolls and know exactly how it happened all they way through the vaguer statement and a roll behind the screen. Let's assume the GM is 100% honest in all efforts here -- no lying. In the 'behind the screen' version, does it matter if the GM is being honest? The appearance from the players is one where they can easily leap to the conclusion the GM Forced the ogre. And if the defense to this is "but you should trust the GM" then we need to go back and talk about occasional moments when the GM isn't honest and does Force the ogre and evaluate if there's actually anything different on the player side of the screen here.

I don't have preferred answers here (I have my preferences, but nothing says those are controlling). I'm not fishing for a gotcha. Legit thinking exercise. Approach with curiosity.

This is an interesting question.

For me, I think I'm fine (If I'm a player, as A DM I'm not a fan of this method, I'd rather just draft a few extra scenarios). The PCs gambled on the 80% and if they lose the gamble, they lose the gamble. The problem though, as you say, is that from their perspective there's no difference between the doors and the 20% chance (especially if the players don't know the DM rolled). But As with just about anything, I think this can be resolved with a bit of discussion in session 0 or whenever. The players that don't care, don't care, and the ones that do get to know what's going on.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Let's go with the example from above (paraphrased) where going down path A there's an 80% chance of ogre and 20% chance of bandit and on path B there's 80% chance of bandit and 20% chance of ogre. Let's say that this information is even provided in a less mechanical way of "path A has way more ogres than bandits, and path B has way more bandits than ogres." This is a true statement. The players make a choice based on this, deciding they want less ogre and so pick path B. The dice are rolled and turn up ogre. Was there agency here? I mean, sure, risks and all that, so yes to that hypothetical, but here's the real question -- does it matter that there was agency from the player's perspective? They made a choice and the outcome was what they wanted to avoid anyway.

If the GM rolls in front of the players version, I don’t see any issues. Part of the game is characters and players make decisions with less than perfect knowledge, so this is an expected outcome.

How does that appear? Walk this through various iterations of play from where everything is 100% open and transparent to the players such that they see the %'s and the rolls and know exactly how it happened all they way through the vaguer statement and a roll behind the screen. Let's assume the GM is 100% honest in all efforts here -- no lying. In the 'behind the screen' version, does it matter if the GM is being honest? The appearance from the players is one where they can easily leap to the conclusion the GM Forced the ogre. And if the defense to this is "but you should trust the GM" then we need to go back and talk about occasional moments when the GM isn't honest and does Force the ogre and evaluate if there's actually anything different on the player side of the screen here.

We are assuming a 100% honest GM here. So to me, to the extent that the players care (not an assumption in the hypothetical), they could simply ask the DM.
Player 1: “What gives? This was supposed to be the safer path and we fight a frigging ogre?”
DM: “Yes, safer path meant that you were less likely to fight an ogre, but the probability was non-zero. You were unlucky.”
Outside the scope of the hypothetical, but if this mattered to the player, the DM could volunteer to roll such dice openly in the future.

 

[FrozenNorth]

conclusion the GM Forced the ogre. And if the defense to this is "but you should trust the GM" then we need to go back and talk about occasional moments when the GM isn't honest and does Force the ogre and evaluate if there's actually anything different on the player side of the screen here.

Side note: I agree with you that “trust the GM” is not an answer. It is a prompt: “What have you done as GM to create trust?”

That can have many answers, but one that I use is that I make most of my rolls openly.

Likewise, answering plainly to questions about GM choices also fosters trust.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If you’re concerned some of your players
might take issue with those things, sure. But sticking to the prep and improvising do not involve deceiving the players. Again, the entire premise of this thread is about railroading while making it seem like you aren’t railroading. Saying one thing and doing another. Unless you get confirmation ahead of times that the players are ok with you doing so, it is inherently deceptive. That’s not the case with strict adherence to prep or improvisation.

But this isn’t just a matter of making things up and presenting it to the players. This is a matter of presenting something to the players that is false. It’s literally trying to trick them into thinking they have agency when in fact they do not. This isn’t me reading malicious intent into an innocuous statement, this is precisely the behavior the opening post describes.

What is the deception? This idea seems to presuppose an acceptable way for the GM to generate the content and deviation from that without announcing it to be a deception. But where does this assumption come from? Cannot I equally as player have and assumption that the GM will fiddle with the things so that I meet interesting stuff and when that doesn't happen because the GM stuck to the prep and I failed to click the right pixels, can I claim I was deceived?

Yes, an illusion is created, but I don't think it is fundamentally different than many other ways of creating an illusion of real world full of stuff. And in a broad sense everyone knows this. Everyone knows that that ogre is behind that door because at some point the GM for some reason decided that it is there. We are basically just quibbling about when and why the GM decided it, and I see no particular reason to assume that there is some obvious default for that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If the GM rolls in front of the players version, I don’t see any issues. Part of the game is characters and players make decisions with less than perfect knowledge, so this is an expected outcome.


We are assuming a 100% honest GM here. So to me, to the extent that the players care (not an assumption in the hypothetical), they could simply ask the DM.
Player 1: “What gives? This was supposed to be the safer path and we fight a frigging ogre?”
DM: “Yes, safer path meant that you were less likely to fight an ogre, but the probability was non-zero. You were unlucky.”
Outside the scope of the hypothetical, but if this mattered to the player, the DM could volunteer to roll such dice openly in the future.

Cool, but you kinda sidestep the last part, here, which acknowledges this and then asks "ok, take that and consider that the GM is lying. What looks different on the player side?" The answer, I think, is nothing. So, then, what does that mean for the discussion at large?

The only thing I can see is some assumed principle that the GM should be 100% truthful at all times and not ever engage in any deception. Otherwise, if we allow that a GM can sometimes be deceptive to any degree, we're really down to haggling about price and not principle. I'm curious how hard a line people are holding here.

My answers to the above are pretty simple -- if I'm playing a game like 5e where so much is put upon the GM's shoulders, then I accept that there's some amount of Force that will be deployed. We can talk about when it's too much, but that's a different discussion in my mind. If I do not want to play where Force will be deployed, then I'm really looking at a different game or a very constrained premise in 5e. As I don't think 5e is well suited to this (due to the, erm, openness of it's design to GM says) the effective result is that I don't expect 5e to be without Force ever. When I play or run it, this is a default acceptance. I'm only concerned about degree -- when I run I aim to minimize to the maximum amount such Force, but I don't believe I can expunge it fully. System just doesn't support that, and I'm not doing that level of work for the game.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Side note: I agree with you that “trust the GM” is not an answer. It is a prompt: “What have you done as GM to create trust?”

That can have many answers, but one that I use is that I make most of my rolls openly.

Likewise, answering plainly to questions about GM choices also fosters trust.

I can lie to you easily and do both of those things in 5e. Stakes are often unclear, so die results don't provide the insight you might think, and me answering questions -- I can say a lot of things. Unless you're looking for receipts, and I'm not sure that survives at the social contract level.