Avoiding Railroading - Forked Thread: Do you play more for the story or the combat?

[fanboy2000]

I litter the landscape with adventure hooks and say yes more often than I should.

 

[Ydars]

My favorite approach with 3.5E is to read the game's rule until they are completely clear in my head, read through all the monster manuals, pick out monsters I like or think would be fun and then....................do no more prep at all.

Sometimes I have no idea what is going to happen in the session when I sit down to game. I sort of go into a kind of state where the ideas just come, without me thinking. They are coming from my sub-concious and I have to be relaxed and not try too hard. I will focus on something tiny and then it will blossum if the PCs pick up on it. I throw out about a dozen such things and see which the PCs run with. Then I wing it based on what they do. This is the type of game I guess I love best; when it works. It doesn;t always although as I get older it seems to work more consistently.

For instance, one of recent game was a Ptolus based campaign where I had the PCs involved in a plot that was world-spanning. That session, I didn't want to push the main plot because I could see the players were tired and wouldn't be able to focus enough.

So I invented a market scene as the PCs were passing back to St Gustav's church. In the market was a religious group trying to gain entrance to the graveyard and arguing with the guards. The PCs became involved and the religious group were told to come back in the morning. This was problematic as on a massive cart was a dire-bear caged and chained for the ceremony. This was left to one side of the square leading into the graveyard whilst the group tried to gain permission to venerate the burial ground of one of their founding members.

The PCs chatted with the guards and found one who knew an NPC the players were friendly with. He mentioned that there was an order in effect that specifically forbade anyone from taking animals into the graveyard.

Suspicious, the PCs rented a room above the tavern overlooking the square and that evening, someone was seen looking at the bear. Next morning as the PCs were at breakfast and the square was full of revellers. the bear escaped and the PCs had to fight the bear for a few rounds until one of them used charm monster to calm the beast.

Eventually this lead the PCs to a cult who were releasing dangerous animals all over the city so that the city guard or others would to kill them and then they would steal the corpses and raise them to create undead animals to act as spies and battle-mounts.

It worked well and lead to some interesting challenges but was not hard to DM. I think it would not be possible at high level to do this but I tried never to run high level 3.5E games anyway.

 

[Obryn]

I generally plot everything out ahead of time when making my own campaign - with a caveat.

I plan out what would happen, without any intervention from the PCs. Basically, I get a good sense of main characters, motivations, and goals... set the wheels in motion... and let the PCs traipse on through everything, adjusting on the fly. If they ignore that little hook, well, we go to something else.

I ran my Arcana Evolved campaign like this - through the PCs' actions, a major city was relieved of its human ruler; a quixotic young dragon took over instead; a major planar invasion launched; and the seeds for a massive Chorrim invasion of the civilized lands was planted. I didn't expect any of this to occur - it was all reactive - but I did plan ahead after every single session.

Also, I will often ask what my players would like to pursue next at the end of a session - I will prep for that, and if they change their minds, well... I just have to wing it, I suppose. More or less, I let my players railroad themselves

-O

 

[howandwhy99]

The question is how do the really great DMs out there manage to keep intricate campaigns with great story elements without making the players feel like they've been railroaded?

I think the biggest thing is to never require any particular action from a player/character. Players are always in full control of their character. ...unless they lose control, but loss of control is total. There are no "you have to behave this way" rules.

The second most important thing is to have a world they can reason from. If they can't make their own reliable judgments based upon their experiences within that world, then they will start looking to the DM for what's expected of them. I'm not just talking about plausibility when they start wondering why certain things happen in the world the way they do, though that is a lot of it. Credibility is more important. It's all about trust. You have to trust your DM is not just making all of it up and as a DM you have to be honorable enough not to do so. IHMO

 

[I'm A Banana]

The question is how do the really great DMs out there manage to keep intricate campaigns with great story elements without making the players feel like they've been railroaded?

#1: Know your Motives. Make sure the PC's have motives. Ask them "what does your character want? what do they fear?" Dangle one in front of them, the other behind them, and they will run through whatever obstacle course you have.

#2: Have them figure it out. Want the PC's to explore the dungeon? Say: "You're exploring the dungeon. You tell me why." Want them to save the king? "You're going to save the king. Why would your character do that?" They have input, they have control, they have a reason (that they gave themselves) for doing what you have planned.

#3: A few Big Choices. Every adventure should have branching paths that lead in different directions that the PC's can choose from. There doesn't need to be very many -- three meaningful choices per adventure are probably OK. They don't need to be aware of them, really. Choosing to talk to the king before exploring the dungeon could lead them in a totally different direction from talking to the king after they've explored the dungeon. The PC's know they can do both, but that order is actually a Big Choice. There is no "wrong path." It's only a matter of which kind of challenges they face, what kinds of rewards they get...different branch, same tree, and you're still going up...

Generally, when I start a new campaign, I open with a combat.

Then I describe what they just fought, and the context in which it occurred.

I tell them: "That's what just happened. Why did you end up here?"

That gives me a motive that I then use to either chase them or lure them in the future.

FFZ works out this kind of thing before the opening of the game, but the theory is the same: the players tell you what their characters hope and dream for, what they fear and dread, and then you give them the former, threaten them with the latter, and, at the end, let them accomplish the former and defeat the latter.

It's sometimes useful if you define these motives in opposing relationships.

The guy who is just a hired gun is doing it for Profit. Why would he want profit? Only if he feared Poverty.

The woman who is hunting the orcs who killed her parents did it out of Vengeance. What is she scared of? Futility, not being able to accomplish her vengeance.

The priest who did it because he's in love with the woman is doing it out of Relationships. What threatens the relationship? Maybe the priests' Vows.

light vs. darkness.
chaos vs. order.
survival vs. death.
love vs. fear.

Once you have two sides, throwing one at the other becomes easy; not even something you need to inspire most of the time. It flows from itself.

 

[Scribble]

I generally have a plot to start with, and some adventures that will reveal what's happening. Players can opt in or out of doing difefrent things.

My players generally just opt in when offered an "adventure..." But when they don't I change things up.

I might secretly re-use some parts of the adventrue they opted out of, but I'll change things enough.

 

[justanobody]

I railroad players all the time, just never let them know about it.

BBEG was supposed to be in Place X, well they didn't want to go there and wanted to visit a rumor about Place Y, and guess who is already there!

The trick to following the story and allowing the players to choose at the same time is giving the most appearance that the players have a choice when something NEEDS to occur some way to prevent destroying the adventure you have made, and being able to be flexible to alter it a bit to fit what the players went and screwed up with the adventure to get it off track.

Otherwise, I don't really do anything but pose choices for the players, and they wished I would give them more direction at what I wanted them to do. I set up plot hooks and let them gather information on what to do next, but they often want only one thing, so it is hard not to railroad when you are asked for it often because the players don't like too many options for quests and such as they feel there is no continuity if they do not follow a set path to the end, while wanting the freedom to do whatever...It's a pain really.

 

[Afrodyte]

there's a couple of ways that i go about avoiding railroads (or making them less onerous to the players).

The first thing that i do is to ask the players what sorts of things they want to do. If the players are getting the kind of play that they want out of a campaign, they will be more willing to step on those tracks for you. Then you can hit 'em with the train and they'll never complain once.

The second thing that i do is that i try to avoid 'storytelling'. Rather than a grand plot arc that has to progress in a certain way... I come up with npcs and power groups that have their own agendas. Usually, the pcs will end up getting in the way of those power groups. This creates conflict, which is what drives the story.

The third thing that i do is to try to tailor my 'plot hooks' toward both my players and their characters. If my player fred puts some fantastic story elements into his background, you can be dang sure that i'm going to mine that background for things to get that character interested in the adventures to come. Or if i know that bob the player cannot resist rescuing a damsel in distress, regardless of the character type that he's playing, you can bet that i'm going to put some damsels in distress for him to rescue.

And finally, when i just can't avoid doing some railroading to get the characters into a position that i think will make for a cool scene, i use my words to ask the players if they will go along with it. "guys," i'll say, "i know that everyone hates to be captured, but i've got this cool pirate thing that requires you to be... You know... Captured. Can i do that?" and, often times, we'll skip the railroady bit and just go straight to the cool...

qft

 

[Greg K]

I also let the players decisions matter. I tend to work in background elements and throw out threads allowing them to follow or ignore them as they see fit. They make their own rivals and follow their interests. And, often I am running by the seat of my pants. The following is an example of how a nightly session often gets started.

DM (me): Last week you guys decided that you were going to Hightower to speak with Danton, the wizard sage.

Player A: We changed our mind. We discussed it since then and decided that the characters would go warn their respective rulers of what they uncovered.

Player B: We decided to go to Valinor first. It's the kingdom in most immeninent danger.

DM (Me): Is that correct?

Players: Yes!

Me: Okay. Hey, James. Sir Albert has never sent word back to the King or anyone else that he was still alive, correct?

James: Uh, yeah.

Me: Didn't Albert have a fiancee back home?

James: Yep.

Me (smiling) : "And, if I remember, Albert had a rival. "

James (Suddenly, looking worried). Yes.

Me: Ok.

Having notes on the country, culture, and important NPCs, I quickly come up with the adventure for the evening..

Albert, accompanied by the party, arrives home to a cold welcome! It is believed that he was behind the ambush of the patrol that he had been leading (which explained why his corpse was never found).
As a "traitor", he lost his standing and everything that comes with it. Factions are are vying for control of his House. And, if that is not bad enough, his fiancee is set to be married the next evening to a long term rival in one day. They have arrived in the middle of the pre-wedding celebration.

Albert and the party are taken before the King. Albert is about to be imprisoned, but the party having a Paladin of Shitara among them convinces the King to give Albert 24 hours to lear Albert's name and set things right (with their help of course).

 

[pemerton]

A question about the meaning of "railroading": in most of the posts above, it seems that "not railroading" means letting the PCs go where the players want them to go in the gameworld regardless of the GM's preference.

But is this sort of sandbox the only alternative to railroading? As I indicated in my post above I don't think so, but I'm curious about what anyone else thinks.