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?

 

[AnotherGuy]

My feelings are motivated by what I enjoy in play as a GM and as a player. I enjoy being creative, and sometimes provocative; I don't want to be a storyteller.

And yet a storyteller can be creative, provocative and still enjoy play.

 

[pemerton]

And yet a storyteller can be creative, provocative and still enjoy play.

Sure. I posted about my reasons, not those of anyone else.

 

[AnotherGuy]

So there are players that actually welcome the "railroad" like those at my table.
The option exists in-game for them to pursue their own agendas fulltime and yet they enjoy the semi-linear storyline provided by a railroad with me as DM having to find creative ways of inserting their diverging character-driven check points along their path and at times be provocative on which check point is more urgent (theirs' or the railroad?)

The only way to truly set their (as well as my) mind truly free, I believe, would be to remove the over-arching railroad storyline completely and see what the players do with that much freedom. i.e. when there is no impending doom/enemy or someone asking them to perform a fetch/find/save quest.
As long as the railroad storyline exists, they, trained as they are, are likely to get on board the train and follow the tracks.

Is the railroad really invisible to them? Do they care? How much agency in the game-world do they want?
These will be interesting questions to have with them one day. But as long as we are having fun in the heavily invested current years-long campaign, and given the RL time constraints we have I do not know when it will be possible to explore a pure player-driven adventure.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So there are players that actually welcome the "railroad" like those at my table.

Being perfectly frank, I don't really understand why you feel you need to say more then.

I and others--at the very least, @Charlaquin and @Maxperson--have said that if you have your players' consent, awesome. You've respected their agency. It wouldn't be my cup of tea, but who the hell cares whether I would enjoy playing in your game? I'm not one of your players!

The problem is with the lack of consent, the invisibility, the hoodwinking, passing off a game (not a fictional world, not a fantasy setting, not a place, the actual, IRL game activity) as being something it isn't.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Being perfectly frank, I don't really understand why you feel you need to say more then.

I and others--at the very least, @Charlaquin and @Maxperson--have said that if you have your players' consent, awesome. You've respected their agency. It wouldn't be my cup of tea, but who the hell cares whether I would enjoy playing in your game? I'm not one of your players!

The problem is with the lack of consent, the invisibility, the hoodwinking, passing off a game (not a fictional world, not a fantasy setting, not a place, the actual, IRL game activity) as being something it isn't.

Fair enough I haven't been closely following the thrust of the thread. I have been caught in a moment of rambling
For me, if the DM is good, railroad or not I'm game. My bar for enjoyment is pretty simple. Good DM = good game.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My stance is that generally everyone participating actually understands and has consented to the idea that the fictional world cannot have perfect objective existence, and required the GM (or at least someone, but in D&D it is mostly the GM) to make decisions of what exist and how it is presented. And that when doing so the GM is authorised to use their own judgement. Furthermore, it is understood that the GM may use that judgement to bring forth elements they think would be cool to include. The GM deciding that the third forest area the PCs explore will contain the witch's cottage, or that the next treasure parcel they find will contain the plot relevant magic ring or that the character's long lost brother will not be found until dramatically appropriately arduous amount of searching has been conducted is not 'deception.' It is just the GM using their framing powers to include interesting elements in appropriate moments. And may this sometimes mean that some choices do not have the weight that they perhaps could be imagined to have if we assumed objectively existing world? Like it actually didn't matter which treasure parcel you looted, you found the Ring of Power anyway, even though logically, in an objective world it would have mattered. Sure, that can happen. But also don't think this is shocking. No one expects that every minor decision will have a huge impact, and everyone is aware that the world actually isn't perfectly objective and the GM is making some decisions to direct things.

Now could people agree that they wanted to explicitly play an old school map and key game where basically everything is predetermined? Yes, of course they could. In such a game the GM wouldn't be doing much of such directing, though perhaps even there they might need to make calls on small thing. But in either case, I don't think there is any basis on assuming that this is the expected playmode of 5e D&D, and that any deviation from it requires an explicit announcement.

 

[Mort]

So there are players that actually welcome the "railroad" like those at my table.
The option exists in-game for them to pursue their own agendas fulltime and yet they enjoy the semi-linear storyline provided by a railroad with me as DM having to find creative ways of inserting their diverging character-driven check points along their path and at times be provocative on which check point is more urgent (theirs' or the railroad?)

The only way to truly set their (as well as my) mind truly free, I believe, would be to remove the over-arching railroad storyline completely and see what the players do with that much freedom. i.e. when there is no impending doom/enemy or someone asking them to perform a fetch/find/save quest.
As long as the railroad storyline exists, they, trained as they are, are likely to get on board the train and follow the tracks.

Is the railroad really invisible to them? Do they care? How much agency in the game-world do they want?
These will be interesting questions to have with them one day. But as long as we are having fun in the heavily invested current years-long campaign, and given the RL time constraints we have I do not know when it will be possible to explore a pure player-driven adventure.

What you're describing isn't a railroad, especially if the players have the option to pursue their own agendas along the path.

It's a linear throughline, something that links many of the threads of the campaign together - and one the players are either fully aware of or become fully aware of.

Now, if the players utterly rejected this throughline, kept trying to pursue something else - but invariably ended up right back on track to do this particular plot - then it's a railroad (But that doesn't sound at all like what is happening.)

 

[bloodtide]

I've literally never seen or heard of this. Ever. You are the first person to ever speak of such a thing to me.

Scroll back in the thread, the "player agency choice" to avoid encounters is talked about a lot.

Okay. Now...what if that one person (because it only takes one!) is expected to be involved in most activities because, say, they're your spouse and you really love to include them in the things you do? You'd be terribly disrespectful to throw those surprise parties knowing you'd be dragging your spouse into a party they would legitimately dislike attending.

Well, sure, in your exterme example. But not so much when your just talking about playing a game for a couple hours.

That does not sound good to me. "I want my players to not think much of anything." That's...what? I want my players to be thinking constantly! I yearn for their critique.

I can take or leave critique, much of it is not really useful, even more so when the player will just toss around jargon word salad.

Then I will consider the point conceded; if you refuse to refute the examples, then your claim that there is no such thing as a well-meaning but still wrong deception has been given two counter-examples.

The problem is your changing things. I give and example of one thing. You ignore it and say oh what about this other thing.

Again, you are thinking of this as "I want to check in on the things my child likes." That is not what I am saying.

I am saying that this parent literally doesn't even allow their child the possibility of meeting someone,

Yea, the problem is your example is a crazy extreme not possible in reality.

So...in contravention of what you said before, you did in fact MAKE them clueless. That was your goal. You specifically intended that. And you do these things, knowing that (a) you did NOT have to, you COULD have done something that wasn't railroading "and worse" (whatever that means), and (b) they WILL be upset should they ever find out.

Again, I don't "make" people anything. They are what they are.

 

[pemerton]

My stance is that generally everyone participating actually understands and has consented to the idea that the fictional world cannot have perfect objective existence, and required the GM (or at least someone, but in D&D it is mostly the GM) to make decisions of what exist and how it is presented. And that when doing so the GM is authorised to use their own judgement. Furthermore, it is understood that the GM may use that judgement to bring forth elements they think would be cool to include. The GM deciding that the third forest area the PCs explore will contain the witch's cottage, or that the next treasure parcel they find will contain the plot relevant magic ring or that the character's long lost brother will not be found until dramatically appropriately arduous amount of searching has been conducted is not 'deception.' It is just the GM using their framing powers to include interesting elements in appropriate moments.

The first clause seems plausible, and the second clause also with the parenthetical qualification.

The second sentence, about the GM's judgment, is more contentious. Likewise the fourth sentence about a "dramatically appropriate" amount of effort. There are a variety of ways to handle these elements of framing and discovery, even within D&D: 4e, for instance, presents different techniques and different principle from 2nd ed AD&D. What you describe seems (to me, at least) much closer to the latter than the former. And 2nd ed AD&D is a version of the game I don't much care for, precisely because it basically advocates all railroad, all of the time.

 

[Maxperson]

Scroll back in the thread, the "player agency choice" to avoid encounters is talked about a lot.

No it isn't. That's your pretty blatant misinterpretation of what was said. Nobody has said that agency is avoiding encounters. Repeating something that you know to be false, because I've corrected you at least 4 times now, isn't going to suddenly make it true.