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?

 

[Charlaquin]

This is a great article and I'm surprised how many are commenting that they don't like this idea. I mean, what's next? Will you be upset when you learn your DM just made up everything?

It’s literally premised on doing one thing while making your players think you’re doing another. That’s why it’s called “the invisible railroad.” It’s hidden, and hiding your actions is deceptive. If the players know you’ll be shuffling things around so they don’t miss the cool stuff you had planned and are ok with that, great. Have fun. If you actively hide the fact that you’re doing it though, that’s were there’s a problem.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sure. We are.

Cool.

 

[pemerton]

The dm really holds all the cards, they create the entire world. At a whim they could rip apart the PCs plans and characters, and there is nothing the PCs could do to stop him. But the reason the game works is there is trust the dm won’t do this, that they will craft a story with the PCs and will arbitrate fairly (though not perfectly)

How would the PCs stop the GM? The PCs are imaginary characters in a shared fiction; the GM is an actual person who is one of those who author the shared fiction.

And this point isn't just pedantic: the GM doesn't unilaterally "create the entire world". Like anyone else at the table, the GM makes suggestions about what is or isn't part of the shared fiction, and other participants do or don't accept those suggestions. Illusionist and railroading techniques are all about what informs the GM's suggestions and under what circumstances other participants accept them. Within the scope of D&D play there are many possible approaches to both those things. Railroading and illusionism are not inevitable, and are not avoided only by the GM being "trusted".

 

[Thomas Shey]

I know that you're arguing in good faith and I feel it is unfortunate that we are seeming to fail to communicate here. But I assure you that I am not being intentionally dismissive.

I don't think you're being dismissive, but it kind of comes across that since the other side is hostile to your preference here, you're not working to understand the lines they're drawing

The thing is, that it is the ambiguous stuff that the disagreement almost always is about. Like basically everyone agrees that it is generally a bad practice to present a choice with clear(ish) stakes and then have it not to mater. But when get to discussion of what it actually means in practice, the disagreements emerge. I assure you that I honour the player choices great deal, and bigger the stakes are more important I feel it is to honour them. I have let players to blow up entire worlds. But still in discussions here sometimes I find out that some people get hung up on stuff I'd consider trivial. Things that I would consider to be just part of perfectly normal GM framing powers are seen as deceitful illusionism. And the logic behind such complains often eludes me. There probably is one, and in fact several, as these people don't seem to even agree with each other.

Of course they don't. There are subjective elements in people's preference, so they aren't going to draw lines in exactly the same places and to quite the same degree of bright-line.

But again, since this sort of thing doesn't bother you much, you're not going to see the lines they draw as make sense. One person's trivial issue is extremely bothersome to another.

Also, one other area where disagreement often arises is the level of fundamentalism regarding good practices. And some people are far more black and white about this than me. There are things that I consider to be good practices, (but aside Wheaton's rule type matters) I don't practically ever consider them to be absolutely binding. I'm wary of "a good GM always" or "thou shat never" type of proclamations. For every GMing principle I can think of there will be some rare edge cases when breaking it actually is the right choice.

But again, and I know I'm harping on this but its important, if your own tolerances are loose you're not going to draw many lines hard. But other people's tolerances aren't so loose. Now "always" language is usually problematic, but that's often because people overproject their own needs on others (or alternatively, don't but are sloppy about making it clear that they're only talking about games where they're involved). That doesn't make the latter group isn't legitimate (the first group needs to get their act together a group) but just that they're not always as good at communicating it as they could be--but people who feel strongly about an approach and technique aren't always as motivated to make people who think they're a good idea understand them, because they're used to being blown off anyway. This is all the more common if they're used to being in a minority in the hobby (I'm old enough that I just take it as a given that big parts of the hobby, especially the more you get toward the heavy Trad and specifically D&D (and super-specifically Old School) parts of the hobby are still tainted by the Divine Right of GMs, so the amount I bother to engage with them about is limited and I'm not always motivated to not get snarky there).

One of course can say that, and if the players get stuck for a long time debating something trivial it indeed might be a good call. Then again, it also is calling attention to the artificiality of the game world and addressing the situation at the metal level, which is something I'm not a huge fan of.

I'm aware of that, and I don't necessarily disagree--but again, its not all about us. At the very least its easy for it to get frustrating to people when they spend effort discussing a path and the path seems to not be relevant at all. Sometimes it can matter in terms of descriptive issues, and sometimes that's enough, but it doesn't take too many repeats of that before someone can wonder why they're bothering to take time on something that's forgotten ten minutes later.

Again, I swear I'm not trying to be difficult, but I'm not exactly sure what "letting layers to assume it matters" means. Like I just describe the situation, and the players make their assumptions and choices. It is not necessarily even that GM clearly outlines some choices, they just frame the surroundings and the players decide to make some choices on their own initiative.

The problem is players don't know what's significant or not most of the time. Unless everyone's trained to know when you should give something attention and when its trivial by cues from the GM (and I'd suspect from your reaction above that you kind of avoid that) its very easy to fix a lot of attention on things that seem like they could be important, but really aren't. I doubt you do this kind of gotcha, but there was a reason at one time you'd get people spend really tedious amounts of care searching dungeons, because no one knew what detail they needed to pay attention to, and what not (its one of the reason so many people say to avoid red herrings at all cost, because people often have a tendency to be afraid they're missing something important).

This is kind of the issue with spending much time on choices that are, in the end, meaningless; people don't know the difference after a while and either just go with the first obvious choice, or whatever choice their buddy does. It ends up destroying agency because there's too much noise in your decision making.

Presumably the players had some reason to assume that I would be useful, so yeah, it probably would be, or at least could be. I mean of course they might have been mistaken about something or fail their library research rolls miserably or something, so it is not guaranteed to matter.

Then its not a meaningless decision (or at least it doesn't have to be; research can be another thing that ends up just being one path in All Roads Lead to Rome but its at least not intrinsic to it).

Again, that is meta knowledge. Characters wouldn't know whether it will be relevant later, and the GM necessarily wouldn't know either. A situation may emergently lead to a place where choices that seemed to be pretty trivial turn out to matter.

I don't think its meta-knowledge to know that your spell choices can very well matter. As to the others--I'll tell you the truth, if the GM started asking me a lot of questions about my clothing because it "might" matter latter, I'd start to consider it pretty picayune and a waste of both our times. There really are some things you can just make some assumptions about when the matter comes up.

I've been saying that this is exactly what they should say if they feel that way! The we figure out whether we can align our preferences or not. And for example based on this tread I can see that there are some people with whom I couldn't come to an understanding.

But that's effectively what most of them are doing. Like I said, yeah, there's some hyperbole, and even more people overgeneralizing but the great truth is most of the time when you see "A GM should never do X" there's almost always an unstated "when anyone like me is involved". (Sometimes the person, as I mention, is overgeneralizing and assumes there will always or usually be someone like them around, but, well, if you don't expect people to make assumptions about how common things are that may or may not be warranted, any RPG discussion outside of a very small and specific pool is always gonna be kind of frustrating, man. I mean you've done it yourself "I've never seen this outside forum discussions". So? Maybe that's significant, maybe its selection bias. In this case I suspect the number of people bothered by this sort of thing aren't huge, but that can't be but an assumption. As I referred to earlier, this hobby had horrifically top-down GMing as the default for a number of years, with the assumption "That was how it was done" and I know good and well there were plenty of people who were bothered by that, just not enough to stop playing).

Illusionism is badly defined, but I don't think it as a term is insulting. Even railroading that tends to have rather negative connotations is less of a value judgement than "lie."

I understand that some people don't like these techniques, and communication is good idea. But also absolutely nothing suggested in the OP is something that the GM under the rules of D&D wouldn't be allowed to do, which of course is not the same than this being the only proper way to play. And sometimes gaming presence mismatches happen. What I don't like is turning such into a matter of morals rather than of taste.

I'm going to hit this again because I think you kind of stepped around it. Please don't take that as an insult.
In what way is the initial suggestion in this thread not "deception". You didn't seem to like that term either, and honestly, it seems as close to a neutral term for it as is possible.

(And again, lots of games are, at best, vague about what is "permitted" by GMs, and in some cases suggest things that are a social meltdown looking for a place to happen. If 5e actively suggests deception as a default, that's disappointing, but it just demonstrates that game designers aren't immune to the issues we've talked about in our exchange when it comes to overgeneralizing).

 

[Thomas Shey]

This indeed makes the system gameable, which gives the players agency. Though such knowledge might sometimes be hard to justify from in character perspective. I know you're not that fussed about such things, but many people are. I definitely am.

Are you at all surprised that some of your desires here are incompatible with other people's? As I've noted, my interest in RPGs as a game being part of what I want there (I'm very much a person here for having my chocolate with my peanut butter with this) is pretty anathema to some people. That just means we shouldn't be gaming together.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is a great article and I'm surprised how many are commenting that they don't like this idea. I mean, what's next? Will you be upset when you learn your DM just made up everything?

I suspect they would if he claimed he didn't.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't think you're being dismissive, but it kind of comes across that since the other side is hostile to your preference here, you're not working to understand the lines they're drawing

So its never good to have the "us vs them" argument, but my problem is I feel the "railroading is bad" crowd here is drawing a line in the sand that says, "there is no such thing as acceptable railroading....ever".

Whereas I have said several times that too much railroading, or railroading in certain cases, is absolutely bad, completely agree. But...there are exceptions.

Ultimately I don't know how to move the lines at this point. I've given an inch, and gotten no shift in return. So what do you do from there? heheh probably what we all should have done 10 pages ago and just let this go.... its not like one side is forcing the other to play under their "horrendous" DM style.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see how players making a choice, that choice changing the flow of the game, and weather they succssed or fail (by die roll or just cause something isn't possible (but they then learn why it isn't, and even THAT changes cause they can do things to MAKE it possible) is in any definition railroad...

if tomorrow night (witch I doubt the game is new and I doubt they would think of it yet) they declaired they wanted to find a way to plane shift to the city of brass (just an example it could be spell jame to kryn or what ever) they would have to reserch and quest for the ability to do so... that adventure, that research and quest would look VERY diffrent thenif they instead said "I want to research vampires... are there any to hunt in your game world?" and that too would require reserch that would lead to a quest (and as I sit here typing I don't know the answer cause I don't have any vampires stated as anything important yet) but that again would not be what I expect...

I don't see how the sort of decision-making you are talking about changes the game from railroad to not a railroad.

Here are two reasonably well-known modules which are both railroads: Dead Gods, and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Suppose a GM asks their players to choose which of these modules to play: that doesn't make the ensuing game not a railroad.

Suppose the GM introduces two different hooks, one which leads to Dead Gods and on which leads to Expedition: that doesn't make the ensuing game not a railroad.

In your example, the adventure, research and quest all seem to be things that the GM has decided, or will decide (eg you refer to your, the GM's, lack of having made up anything about vampires). The players are making a contribution about topic, but that seems to be it.

they don't have to use the words "I am going to look for a blacksmith" they might do 100 things that bring up the fire... but there are also 100 things that wont. I know the fire is a plot hook (I always have 3-5 but sometimes I have WAY more) but I also know my game doesn't depend on them finding the plot hook or demand they take it... maybe they just see it as a fun cool story about why there isn't a blacksmith... or maybe they investigate.

Again, everything here seems to be authored by you the GM. As you describe it, the players are "lucky dipping" into your box of stories and seeing which one they pull out. Maybe they can throw aside one they don't like and have another draw. Is that what you mean by meaningful choice?

how would a DM EVER tell a player the results of what they are looking for by your way?

<snip>

PCs often in my games add things to the world.. but it is still the DM that unfolds what happens, I can't understand how else it would work?

WOuld a player say "I go to the blacksmith, spend 7gp and buy a shield and he tells me that the villian is weak to cold iron"? what if the DM already had set up and even hinted (if the PCs got it or not) that the villian was weak to adamantine does that then change it to cold iron?

I've already mentioned other ways of approaching play. There is the approach set out in the 4e rulebooks, where the setting backstory is shared (it's presented in the PHB, mostly under the entries for races and for gods), and players are encouraged to author quests for their PCs, and the system for resolving actions (both combat and non-combat) is transparent and player-facing.

Of the RPGs I know, the one that has the most robust and unrelenting implementation of the 4e approach is Burning Wheel. While 4e is not quite as robust nor as unrelenting, it still works fine.

Another well-known approach is that found in Apocalypse World and well-known spin-offs like Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, etc.

One thing these approaches have in common, which is directly relevant to "railroading", is that the GM is not permitted to rule that a player's declared action fails just because, in the GM's imagination, the fiction makes success impossible. Or to put it another way: these approaches do not treat the GM's unilateral, secret ideas about the shared fiction as authoritative.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So its never good to have the "us vs them" argument, but my problem is I feel the "railroading is bad" crowd here is drawing a line in the sand that says, "there is no such thing as acceptable railroading....ever".

I'd say some of them absolutely are. I mean, getting real, when there's something people respond to in different ways, there's going to be some point on the line where the acceptable amount is "None at all." I won't eat pickles. No, not even a little, not in any form.

Whereas I have said several times that too much railroading, or railroading in certain cases, is absolutely bad, completely agree. But...there are exceptions.

Ultimately I don't know how to move the lines at this point. I've given an inch, and gotten no shift in return. So what do you do from there? heheh probably what we all should have done 10 pages ago and just let this go.... its not like one side is forcing the other to play under their "horrendous" DM style.

Yup. I think honestly the biggest problem in this sort of thread is that people who expect certain techniques or approaches just can't wrap their heads around the fact to some people it really is unacceptable. They end up seeing the other side as just being contrarian rather than being able to accept that they sincerely don't want to deal with it. I see this on a variety of topics when they come up.

At some point you really need to accept that when other people tell you some things are just flat out unacceptable to them, you take them at their word; maybe its useful to find out why they feel that way, but arguing their reasons doesn't lead to their conclusions is going to rarely be useful

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But again, and I know I'm harping on this but its important, if your own tolerances are loose you're not going to draw many lines hard. But other people's tolerances aren't so loose.

And that's fine. Perfectly legitimate. But if they're unable to articulate what those tolerances actually are, I wouldn't even in theory be unable to meet them. And like I have probably made pretty clear, I'm not terribly interested in trying in the first place. Granted, it probably doesn't help my attitude if the preference is expressed in a manner that implies that a failure to meet it to be a moral flaw.

The problem is players don't know what's significant or not most of the time. Unless everyone's trained to know when you should give something attention and when its trivial by cues from the GM (and I'd suspect from your reaction above that you kind of avoid that) its very easy to fix a lot of attention on things that seem like they could be important, but really aren't. I doubt you do this kind of gotcha, but there was a reason at one time you'd get people spend really tedious amounts of care searching dungeons, because no one knew what detail they needed to pay attention to, and what not (its one of the reason so many people say to avoid red herrings at all cost, because people often have a tendency to be afraid they're missing something important).

This is kind of the issue with spending much time on choices that are, in the end, meaningless; people don't know the difference after a while and either just go with the first obvious choice, or whatever choice their buddy does. It ends up destroying agency because there's too much noise in your decision making.

Perhaps this is the pixel hunting problem? The GM has designed 'the correct solution' or the 'the specific interesting thing' but the players keep poking 'wrong things' so nothing interesting happens? As a player I hate this, and I make sure it doesn't happen in my games. I think it is pretty easy to avoid by just having a world full of interesting stuff and no 'correct solutions' but certainly some low-key illusionism can help making sure that the interesting stuff is where and when the PCs are. Like if the players really fixate on something that I hadn't meant to be in anyway relevant, then I probably just make it relevant, at least in a small way. But I'm sure some people would consider that changing the prep, thus deception, or something..

I don't think its meta-knowledge to know that your spell choices can very well matter. As to the others--I'll tell you the truth, if the GM started asking me a lot of questions about my clothing because it "might" matter latter, I'd start to consider it pretty picayune and a waste of both our times. There really are some things you can just make some assumptions about when the matter comes up.

Sure, and GM probably wouldn't ask about clothing unless there was some special occasion for which they might expect the PCs to dress differently than usual. Though that totally could be just for flavour. But like I said, a lot of 'choices' are not actually the GM asking questions, they're choices the players spontaneously make in response to the situation. Like the GM describes how the weather is chilly, and a player in response describes how their PC dresses in a fur cloak. But perhaps the weather was intended just for flavour and GM was not planning for freezing checks... except then later due unforeseen circumstances the character gets trapped in an ice cave for a long time and whether they have warm clothes suddenly becomes relevant.

I'm going to hit this again because I think you kind of stepped around it. Please don't take that as an insult.
In what way is the initial suggestion in this thread not "deception". You didn't seem to like that term either, and honestly, it seems as close to a neutral term for it as is possible.

(And again, lots of games are, at best, vague about what is "permitted" by GMs, and in some cases suggest things that are a social meltdown looking for a place to happen. If 5e actively suggests deception as a default, that's disappointing, but it just demonstrates that game designers aren't immune to the issues we've talked about in our exchange when it comes to overgeneralizing).

Ok. Let's try to unpack this. I wouldn't mind 'deception' if were it used as a technical term, but it really isn't. It comes along with 'lies' and 'dishonesty.' It is not just used to refer artistic technique of misdirection, it is used as a value judgment.

And for the record, I don't think DMG gives advice on illusionism, I don't think it gives much useful GMing advice at all, good or bad. It however gives advice on fudging, as thing GM might do, so I don't think such trickery is in any way considered out of bounds.

But let's look what is actually happening in the examples in the OP. They're GM making up stuff, and then describing that stuff to the players. That's it. And that is what GM is supposed to do. The 'deception' that is happening is having the players to think that the world is independently and objectively existing, and not mutable and altered on the spot. But certainly that would be true if the GM would be just improvising this on the spot too? And certainly in broad sense the players are aware that at least some of the world actually is not predetermined (as everything never can be) and is just decided by the GM when relevant. So I really don't think that there is any significantly more nefarious deception going on here than in the general process of making some haphazard notes and stray thoughts coming across as real and existing world the PCs can interact with.