Burning out on best campaign I ever played in

[Dagger75]

Well, as a DM who plans and occasionally had talks with my players about railroading, consider some of this from his point of view. Since he ain't here, I'll be him:

You guys go home every week and do nothing. --Snip-- --Snip-- A DM who has an evil wizard kidnap your PC's sister and demand that you go destroy some dungeon is not railroading you, unless he also arbitrarily says that you have NO CHANCE of using Scrying, Gather Information, Bribery, or some other method to try and rescue her instead of going into the dungeon.

Kind of long to quote the whole thing but that pretty much nailed it for my last game I ran. Some players do actually like to ride the DM express to adventure most don't.

 

[takyris]

Just to reiterate -- I have no idea what's going on in this particular case. I just wanted to note that we don't know both sides of the story here. There's still a lot of room for the story to shift sides without anyone deliberately lying -- two radically different interpretations could be in play.

And I don't think I explained myself well at the end, there. In my opinion, "Railroading" has to involve DM metagaming, not merely NPC action.

Example:

DM: "Now, you must go and slay the Orc King Givrok!" declares the emperor.

PC: Um, no?

DM: The emperor glares at you. "I have been kind and lenient in the past, but if you no longer have any interest in serving me, your usefulness is at an end."

PC: Fine. I'll do it. I leave town, wave, and then head off in another direction completely.

DM: You walk for a few hours, and then a ghostly image of the emperor appears before you. "I see you have decided to take a circuitous route to slay the Orc King," he says. "It may be to your advantage to hurry, as I introduced a poison into your bloodstream that will strike you dead in three days -- a poison that you will find most difficult to eradicate on your own."

Is that railroading? No.

The PCs could:

1) Guess that the emperor is bluffing and keep walking.
2) Dedicate their efforts to getting the poison out of their bloodstream.
3) Demand that the emperor remove the poision beforehand, in exchange for which they will kill the orc king and then leave the empire.
4) Go meet the orc king and see if his shamans can remove the poison.
5) Head back to town and try to kill the emperor.

Is it easy? No. Is it a situation with a clear and happy solution? No. Should the DM always make the situation this way? No. But it's not railroading -- assuming that the emperor is known to have magical poisons, scrying, and image projection abilities at his disposal.

Other Example:

DM: "Now, you must go and slay the Orc King Givrok!" declares the emperor.

PC: Um, no?

DM: You have to. Your alignment is Lawful, so you have to obey him.

PC: I change alignment.

DM: You can't. It's ingrained.

PC: (sigh) I agree to do it. (to friends: Let's just leave town.) I walk out of the room.

DM: The emperor's guards disarm you and hit you with paralyzation spells, and then you're geased.

THAT's railroading. The DM has completely ignored the rules and simply declared that the guards stop the PCs, despite the PCs probably being higher level and more powerful. The PCs got no saves against the paralyzation spells or the geases.

Also, the guards knew to detain the PCs through some sort of NPC telepathy (like someone else's examples above, where thousands of guards just appeared and moved hundreds of feet per round). That's DM metagaming (unless the PCs were being Detect-Thoughts'd), and that's also railroading.

Dunno if others think that's too fine a distinction, but as the DM, I should be allowed to have NPCs make ultimatums. The PCs should always have a choice, though -- even if it's an unattractive one.

 

[Desdichado]

I agree tak... Railroading is literally taking options away from the PCs. A subtle variation on this, however, is making any PC decisions other than the DM desired one ineffectual by DM fiat only. My bad experiences with railroading weren't so much on what to do; I don't have a problem following the obvious hooks the DM is throwing my way. I do, however, have a problem with there being only one solution that we can try that will ever work, just because the DM only thought of that one. In other words, railroading for me has been a problem with how things were done, not necessarily what was done to begin with.

 

[takyris]

Definitely agree. It's all about what you as a DM want to set up as rewardable behavior. I tend to set up "realistic roleplaying", "heroic boldness", and "creativity" as behaviors that I reward in my games. If someone does something unexpected but completely in character, or if they do something bold and self-sacrificing, or if they do something within their power and within the bounds of reality that I in no way expected, I'm more likely to let it work.

Many DMs unintentionally set up adventures that reward certain other types of behavior. It's a good thing to think about.

 

[tetsujin28]

i have been in a group for years where the dm seems to like having his npc's be the main characters and having his world wide story arc be the main feature of the campaign with ultra powered npc's doing all the "important" fighting while player characters get the joy of sitting and watching.

Hmmm...sounds like the Forgotten Realms