Choices and railroads

[howandwhy99]

I don't think this is raildroading at all. Stuff like this happens all the time in a plotless game.

For instance: Yamzut the Monk finds a small thorp's laws unrealistic. So he ignores them in
favor of his own oaths. The local tough/sheriff gives him 2 choices:
1. Get out of town. He'll even thow in a free sack of food to make it to the next town.
or
2. Get buried on the hill up yonder. *jerks thumb towards graveyard*.

This is perfectly legitimate in a game.

 

[Prest0]

Well, i was thinking about this when i was writing an adventure. If influencing a PC's decision in making choices simply because it would (metagamingly speaking) be a better choice than the other, you could practically draw the PCs into the scenarios and encounters that you wanted them to simply by just making that choice seem more enticing...although i think the players would get sick with this method real quick...

Actually, I think you're on the right track. It's just a matter of expanding your toolkit of enticements*. The trick is to give the characters the appearance of choice, but make sure one scene leads logically to the next. Give the heroes the information needed to decide to follow the path on their own. I'm not talking about bait or a big red dragon, but something more subtle. Like any good book or movie, every scene should build on the one before and be the next logical step in the chain. Give the heroes opportunities to find clues, meet informants, have strange dreams, suffer harrassment, etc.

In most (but not all) cases, prewritten adventures by their very nature are railroads. Good ones make the tracks invisible because they give characters the illusion of choice. Ultimately though, the biggest factor is whether the GM guides the game with a heavy hand or a light touch. A GM can make the coolest adventure suck or a mediocre adventure at least interesting.

*A good trick is to remember the seven deadly sins. Surely one of them will do the job. You're right--dangling a bag of money in front of them may work once, but it's going to get old quickly. So try Lust-- an old (or new) flame needs help; Pride or Envy-- a competing group is trying to one-up the heroes and take credit for their successes; Sloth or Gluttony-- success and laziness leads to its own problems; Greed--duh; Wrath--revenge for a wrongdoing real or perceived.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

In my games (and most games I've played in) loot can be assumed. So there's mechanically no "better" choice. However, some choices are naturally going to be appealing to the players. For instance,

- a hook that offers to progress a PC's personal storyline (old enemy, courting a lady, etc.)
- a hook that offers a particular item a PC wants (quest for a holy avenger)
- a hook that provides the players with particular satisfaction (chance to thwart recurring villain or annoying NPC)
- a hook that appeals to the players'/PCs' inclinations (chance to help the innocent for good characters, etc.)

Any and all of these might appeal to players more than other hooks without these qualities. There's nothing wrong with that. Regardless of the options, the players are going to find some reason to choose one hook over the others, and there's nothing wrong with that.

In short, having a reason to choose one hook over another isn't railroading. Having no way to choose one hook over another, is.

 

[Soel]

Actually, I think you're on the right track. It's just a matter of expanding your toolkit of enticements*. The trick is to give the characters the appearance of choice, but make sure one scene leads logically to the next. Give the heroes the information needed to decide to follow the path on their own. I'm not talking about bait or a big red dragon, but something more subtle. Like any good book or movie, every scene should build on the one before and be the next logical step in the chain. Give the heroes opportunities to find clues, meet informants, have strange dreams, suffer harrassment, etc.

In most (but not all) cases, prewritten adventures by their very nature are railroads. Good ones make the tracks invisible because they give characters the illusion of choice. Ultimately though, the biggest factor is whether the GM guides the game with a heavy hand or a light touch. A GM can make the coolest adventure suck or a mediocre adventure at least interesting.

*A good trick is to remember the seven deadly sins. Surely one of them will do the job. You're right--dangling a bag of money in front of them may work once, but it's going to get old quickly. So try Lust-- an old (or new) flame needs help; Pride or Envy-- a competing group is trying to one-up the heroes and take credit for their successes; Sloth or Gluttony-- success and laziness leads to its own problems; Greed--duh; Wrath--revenge for a wrongdoing real or perceived.

Right on! Railroading is part of the game. The trick has always been selling the pc's the tickets for the ride.

The type of game I think most folks think of when the use the term "railroading" is situations where the dm tells the players what they're doing, and overrides their actions totally with commands like "you can't do that! Your're doing something else," or the classic "king summons you, tells you to do x for him, and if you refuse, you die!"

 

[Janx]

I think some folks haven't learned the difference between Choice and choice.

At this EXACT moment, you have a tone of choices to make. Few of them are Choices, however.

Whether you scratch your nose with your left or right hand is a choice. But it's not significant.

You have a choice to take your keyboard and stuff it into one of your orifices. But it's not a choice you are likely to take.

When you go to work, you have the choice to punch the next person to disagree with you. But once again, it's not a choice you are likely to take.

Life is filled with a plethora of little choices. Things that don't matter, and paths that a rational being won't go down.

Real Choices have real consequences and have real alternatives that require actual consideration.

If you want to argue that the path with gold and danger is a railroad, because the other path just has danger, and it's not realistic, then you haven't lived long enough.

When I woke up today, I had a choice, go to work, or stay home. If I stay home, I won't get paid, and I won't be able to pay my bills, and I'll become homeless. If I go to work, I'll get paid, and keep all my stuff. It's my choice, but in reality, there is only one real Choice, goto work. Technically, I have a choice of finding a new job, but that's really a variant of the "goto work" path. The stay at home path has so many negatives as to eliminate itself as a Choice.

All this is the nature of life and choices. It applies to PCs as well. There are some choices that are effectively chosen by the nature of your PC, rather than actively made.

Real railroading is when the DM ordanes that events will happen, and NOTHING a PC does can avoid that event. We're not talking stuff like "the sun will rise tomorrow, and you can't stop it." We're talking things the PC could change, but the DM keeps twisting things (by adding extra events or resources) to thwart the PC's action.

The most common railroad is when the DM's adventure says "the PCs will be captured and ...." A railroading DM will read that and do everything they can to make it happen. This will include bringing in overwhelming numbers, or extra enemies after the original enemies are defeated. If the adventure had been written to say "the enemy will try to capture the PCs" there's a completely different attitude, and allowance for the PCs choices to make a difference.

 

[Bagpuss]

Not that railroading is necessarily a bad thing all the time. Starting an adventure "In media res" can make an exciting change from say meeting in a tavern, getting recruited by a patron, traveling to the adventure site, etc. But doing that you've removed a whole load of choices, effectively railroading the PC's into the adventure you've planned.

 

[Umbran]

Not that railroading is necessarily a bad thing all the time. Starting an adventure "In media res" can make an exciting change from say meeting in a tavern...

Reminds me of the first game I played at a Boston Gameday (run by Piratecat). The opening scene had the PCs plummetting towards the ground as if skydiving. Need I mention that parachutes were not supplied?

Gravity is a more harsh mistress than any rail, I tell you