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?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Rather, it doesn't matter to the player unless you get caught.

when you do slip up and get caught how do you think the players will feel?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

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

more side or parralell.. it's about being open and honest. IT's about not telling someone you have a map when you don't (and driving them nuts as they try to map something that is out of an mc escher painting...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

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.

that is intresting... I have a 100% honesty style and I will tell you it does have drawbacks.

the biggest one is some surprises don't work. another one is sometimes I have to admit to things that are embracing.

However I do ALSO try to branch out. Right now I am both playing in and running a curse of strahd and for that adventure I am not as honest as I have been with my own worlds. Although I did out right tell them when they hit the hook to the Amber temple that "Look you need to be this tall to ride that ride... and on your tip toes you aint hitting it yet"

 

[Mort]

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.

I suppose it can, the question becomes does it have LESS drawbacks and does it fit more with what the DM and the players want from the group.

Though, let's be clear, we are talking with honesty in either telling the players up front that railroading will/might happen and/or an attempt at a lack of railroading (which are actually two very different approaches). Not honesty from the DM promising to NEVER deceive the players (and in particular their PCs) within the context of the game itself.

Further, I think the "best" play experience comes from the DM and players being fully on the same page as to the expectations of the game. I think problems arise when the DM expects/provides one kind of play experience and the players expect/play toward something different. So, yes, I do think honesty as to what kind of play experience is being provided will enhance the game much more than any chance it might harm it.

Now in most cases with D&D the DM is MUCH more in control of the play experience and certainly can deceive the players as to what kind of play is actually being done (the DM holds almost all the cards, as it were) but I do think this will, if not immediately then eventually detract more than it helps the play experience.

 

[Charlaquin]

You'll need to make that clarification clear for me. How is a GM presenting information that is false to drive an outcome different from an author presenting false information to drive to an outcome different? Just pointing out that it exists in different media is not sufficient to support your claim. Fundamentally, we're talking about false presentation of information with a different future outcome in mind.

Because in a book or movie or whatever, the media is consumed passively. There is no expectation that the reader or viewer can make decisions that will affect the narrative. If there was such an expectation, like, I don’t know, a choose your own adventure book, but all the “choices” lead to the same outcome, then we would have an accurate analogy. And I think anyone who bought that book would be rightly annoyed, as they really had no ability to choose their own adventure at all. Might as well have just been a regular book at that point.

It’s not the narration being unreliable that’s the problem, it’s creating an expectation of audience agency, but not actually delivering that agency, all the while trying to maintain the facade of that agency.

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

Right, which is exactly why it’s such an egregious violation of trust not to act with integrity.

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?

Being able to make choices that matter… which is the entire point of RPGs. Also like, not being lied to, which is a basic matter of respect.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Being able to make choices that matter… which is the entire point of RPGs. Also like, not being lied to, which is a basic matter of respect.

100% this

if you sleep with my fiancé and I never find out... you still cheated on me


wait flip this around... if as a player I say "crit" when I really rolled a 3 and the DM doesn't catch me that is all good right?!?!?

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

It doesn’t particularly matter what’s behind either door, because that’s not an informed decision. No agency is being violated if there’s an ogre behind both doors. Now, if the players have some information that might influence their decision - for example some door guardian has given them a riddle that indicates one door leads to safety and the other leads to certain death, it is violating their agency if both doors actually lead to safety.

It is framing a situation, then deciding what happens once the players declare an action.

Yes, but if that framing contains information that the players rely on to make a decision, and that decision has no actual impact on the outcome, then they have been deceived. The “lie” there is that their decision matters, that they’ve been given information they can leverage to affect a desired outcome, when in fact, the outcome is the same regardless.

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.

The red and green door example illuminates nothing because the players aren’t really making a decision there; at least not a meaningful one.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It doesn’t particularly matter what’s behind either door, because that’s not an informed decision. No agency is being violated if there’s an ogre behind both doors. Now, if the players have some information that might influence their decision - for example some door guardian has given them a riddle that indicates one door leads to safety and the other leads to certain death, it is violating their agency if both doors actually lead to safety.

Yes, but if that framing contains information that the players rely on to make a decision, and that decision has no actual impact on the outcome, then they have been deceived. The “lie” there is that their decision matters, that they’ve been given information they can leverage to affect a desired outcome, when in fact, the outcome is the same regardless.

The red and green door example illuminates nothing because the players aren’t really making a decision there; at least not a meaningful one.

But the example in the OP are basically like that. They're not about informed choices, they're just about random 'doors' that create an illusion of a larger objectively existing space. (The clue one isn't like that, but it also doesn't actually contain illusionism, so I'm not sure what it is doing on the list.)

I agree with you that messing with informed choices is generally a bad call. But that's not what's happening here. So it seems that we might not actually disagree, at least significantly.

 

[Mort]

100% this

if you sleep with my fiancé and I never find out... you still cheated on me


wait flip this around... if as a player I say "crit" when I really rolled a 3 and the DM doesn't catch me that is all good right?!?!?

Though keep in mind, D&D (all iterations, as far as I'm aware) makes it VERY clear that the DM cannot be guilty of cheating while the players 100% can.