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?

 

[HammerMan]

This argument is strange but I will say the article is boarderline bad advice. It is one of those things that if you do it right and not that frequently you can make some good games… but the very first time you get caught you lost all credibility with the party.

I am much more into honesty but not . I have lied to players. But I normally warn them. In session 0 in my last 4e campaign I told everyone to think of my pitch as 2 truths and a lie but with more of both.

My pitch was lost. The TV show but since this is D&D the smoke monster will make more sense. I am drawing from old campaign settings and some “other” sources. We will start from a boat going from point a to point b and we can all work togather on fleshing out both but BIG SPOILERS for a 20 year old show… you are not making it to pt B. You will be trapped with a list of NPCs I want you to help me make and have to survive on an island. You will NOT have most common equipment but there will be a skill challange to find things that washed up from the boat.


So they all laughed and said “so ravenloft isle we got it” and we made PCs and NPCs. We played game 1 loading the boat and game 2 at sea and game 3 a storm hit and they got gilligan’s ilanded. We started with a skill challange and then a giant monkey man came and kidnapped some NPCs.

They were in ravenloft that guess was right but the island came from third earth and the domain lord was Mum Ra.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So it does matter if I lie as long as I don’t get caught? Sorry, that’s not something I can agree with.

Rather, it doesn't matter to the player unless you get caught. From the player perspective, they cannot tell if you're operating with integrity or not. In fact, as I've tried to drive at with my example, acting with integrity can look like acting without it to the player, especially if there's an uncommon run of luck on the dice. Too much of the system is hidden behind the GM for the player to be able to tell. So a successful game where the player didn't catch you out on anything could mean that you did railroad and did it well or that you didn't. They can't tell. If the players cannot tell, what is the value of the GM's principled approach to the player?

 

[FrozenNorth]

I want to know this too.

I also want to know how well that DM is thinking through if they ARE planning.

I don't want to waste time thinking through "Oh there are only 17 orc warriors and we killed 14 so only 3 left" if I know the DM is just rolling random and doesn't care about number of orc warriors in a tribe.

I don't want to say "Hey, how is this mind flayer eating if he is 3 levels down" if the DM isn't the kind to think about it

I REALLY don't want to doe either if I know the DM is just pulling everything out of his butt.

True, but I think this is independent from the railroad/non-railroad question.

I played through PF2 Fall of Plaguestone. The villain wanted to destroy the town of Plaguestone, a town so small and miserable that our level 3 party was BMOC.

After defeating an entire orc tribe and various monsters affiliated with them, we learn that the villain’s plan is to poison the town. We rush to prevent that.

Despite the fact that the orc tribe by itself would have been sufficient to level the town (not to mention the affiliated monsters), we almost TPK due to the fact that the villain was still being supported by 6 elementals, a small army of constructs, and the villain and their creation were a match for the now level 4 party.

That case was a linear scenario, but it could have just as easily happened with an improvisational DM.

 

[HammerMan]

Huh? No, unreliable narration is a literary technique. That’s a totally different form of media that audiences engage with in a completely different way than they do with D&D.

That is closer to an NPC lying to the the PC. That isn’t the DM lying.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That is closer to an NPC lying to the the PC. That isn’t the DM lying.

Is it not? Let's say that the GM has the NPC lie, and we pretend it's a different person. The GM is determining if and how the lie is detectable, and on whatever counts for failure to detect the lie, presents the information as truth. The players then make a choice based on this information, which was imagined by, instantiated by, and presented by the GM. Is there something magical about a fictional person that makes this different in some way? How does that work?

 

[FrozenNorth]

Ok. My point is that this 'trust' is entirely based on faith, can be abused easily, and there's often no way to tell -- you cannot tell if it's truth or deception in most of how 5e plays out. So it's an article of faith, then. Do you play with strangers often, or just with a home group? How do you work with this trust when playing with strangers?

Easy, I’m always the DM.

More seriously, it depends. I probably wouldn’t commit to a long term campaign with someone I didn’t know. For a one-shot or two-shot, I give the benefit of the doubt. If wrong, well, I know that I will probably not want to play with them again.

These are things being asked to generate thought, not to prove a point. I'm finding a lot of the hardline stances taken in this thread to be odd, in that they only rely on faith for their operation. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but it would be nice to see it acknowledged.

It’s a social game. Of course you are going to rely on the social contract. I don’t think this is relying on faith more than any other game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again, improvising is planning and executing simultaneously, so whether or not improvising is invisible railroading depends on what you planned, same as with pre-planned content. Invisible railroading involves presenting a choice that is ostensibly meaningful but manipulating things so the results are the same no matter what the players choose. So, if you improvise a decision and plan for the result to be the same either way, that’s invisible railroading. If you improvise a decision and plan for different results (or plan to improvise different results) depending on what the players choose, that is not invisible railroading.

This doesn't make sense to me, I don't understand what this means in practice. Please respond to the actual examples or make your own.

GM describes that there is a room with a red and a green door. Please tell me what according to you are acceptable methods for the GM to decide what is behind the green door when a PC decides to open it.

But, again, invisible railroading is presenting a choice as meaningful that isn’t actually meaningful. That is lying, unless you have explicit consent ahead of time.

It is framing a situation, then deciding what happens once the players declare an action. The only 'lie' here is the pretence that the world is objective and real even though the GM is making it up. But everyone knows this to be true, even though they might not always be sure when and why the GM is making the stuff up.

A general “sure the DM can do whatever they want” is not explicit.

It absolutely covers it. How would it not?

Is according to the rules of D&D the GM allowed to describe that there is a red and green door? Is according to the rules of D&D the GM allowed to decide what is behind the red and green doors? Answer to both is clearly "yes." That's all that is happening here.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Rather, it doesn't matter to the player unless you get caught. From the player perspective, they cannot tell if you're operating with integrity or not. In fact, as I've tried to drive at with my example, acting with integrity can look like acting without it to the player, especially if there's an uncommon run of luck on the dice. Too much of the system is hidden behind the GM for the player to be able to tell. So a successful game where the player didn't catch you out on anything could mean that you did railroad and did it well or that you didn't. They can't tell. If the players cannot tell, what is the value of the GM's principled approach to the player?

They cannot tell on specific instance, but it is likely that over a longer period of time differing principles would lead to a different subjective player experience. Like for example if the GM consistently fudges and illusionises so that the most dramatically appropriate thing happens, then it will in the long run produce a rather different player experience than if the GM sticks to the prep and lets the dice fall where they may, even though occasionally the latter will produce dramatically appropriate thigs too.

But basically if the GM would sparingly do such manipulations, I don't think it would noticeably affect the player experience. I have my of principles regarding such things when I GM, but they're really just for my own enjoyment. Like it is more exiting for me as GM if I don't fudge, so I don't.

 

[Mort]

Rather, it doesn't matter to the player unless you get caught. From the player perspective, they cannot tell if you're operating with integrity or not. In fact, as I've tried to drive at with my example, acting with integrity can look like acting without it to the player, especially if there's an uncommon run of luck on the dice. Too much of the system is hidden behind the GM for the player to be able to tell. So a successful game where the player didn't catch you out on anything could mean that you did railroad and did it well or that you didn't. They can't tell. If the players cannot tell, what is the value of the GM's principled approach to the player?

If the GM adopts a principled approach from the getgo then there is no chance they overuse the technique (or are sloppy, even with small/limited use) and end up harming the players' experience at some point.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If the GM adopts a principled approach from the getgo then there is no chance they overuse the technique (or are sloppy, even with small/limited use) and end up harming the players' experience at some point.

Hmm. So there's no way that 100% honesty can have a negative player experience? I think this is a core divide on the fudging debates, so I'm not inclined to take it on faith, so to speak.