Cohesion vs Railroading

[barsoomcore]

It's not railroading but it's disempowerment in the sense that the PCs are reactive rather than active.

Now you're confusing me.

How is not assuming the players will take one course of action or another the same as FORCING THEM TO CHANGE THEIR PERSONALITIES?

Cause I have trouble seeing that one, myself.

Some people are active and some are reactive. What I'm talking about has nothing to do with personality.

What I'm saying is, that since you can't count on your players to automatically do what YOU THINK they should do, you ought to plan for the eventuality that they won't, and have things ready to happen to keep the game interesting even if they don't go off and tackle the bad guy you've set up for them.

Whether or not your players are active or reactive people has nothing to do with it.

Active people can follow your story OR they can just go running off after some idea you never saw coming. What do you do then?

If you're railroading, you try and get them to do what you had planned.

If you're not railroading, you come up with some way of keeping the story fun and thrilling and cool. Which, unless I've been doing this wrong all my life, involves coming up with THINGS TO HAPPEN.

"We're not going to go after the Nameless Tyrant. We're going to go up into the mountains to find the secret lair of the Frost Giant King."

"Okay, you're heading up through the pass when suddenly a huge form rises up in front of you and raises its axe. Roll for initiative."

Hey, look! A bad thing just happened to the party. Is that suddenly going to change their very nature? What is this, hypnotism? "You are getting sleepy... You feel... reactive... lethargic... You have no will of your own..."

Sheesh.

The basic function of a DM is to invent things to happen to the party. If you only invent things that will happen IF the party takes a certain course of action, and then try to force the party to take that action even when they think of something else they'd rather do, you are railroading. If you invent things to happen to them REGARDLESS of what they do, or can come up with stuff on the fly in response to whatever they do, you are NOT railroading.

Not railroading is less risky than railroading because railroading is only fun if your players want to follow the course you're prepared to accept. If they are, then both styles are equally fun, but if they aren't then not railroading is more fun, so not railroading is less risky.

I don't really know how to make this more clear. Let me know what you're having difficulty grasping.

 

[Doug McCrae]

"We're not going to go after the Nameless Tyrant. We're going to go up into the mountains to find the secret lair of the Frost Giant King."

"Okay, you're heading up through the pass when suddenly a huge form rises up in front of you and raises its axe. Roll for initiative."

Well if the huge form with an axe turned out to be an assassin working for the Nameless Tyrant I guess one would have to call that a form of railroading. If OTOH it was a frost giant then no problem.

What I take issue with is when you were talking about things that will happen to the PCs regardless of what they do. That's definitely disempowerment, though probably a certain amount of it happens in every campaign including those I run. On the whole I think it's better if X happens to the PCs because they did Y rather than X just happening regardless.

 

[barsoomcore]

What? Look, obviously you and I have VERY different definitions of "power".

Railroading, let me restate, is a style of DMing in which players are discouraged from following courses of action other than the one the DM wishes them to follow.

Maybe you disagree with that definition. If so, that's fine, but let's talk about that rather than this, in that case.

The identity of the huge form does not signify as far as the question of railroading goes. Okay, so the Nameless Tyrant has forged an alliance with the Frost Giants. Now the players feel smart for having figured that out. Or perhaps the Nameless Tyrant seeks their deaths so badly he's willing to send minions into Frost Giant lands to whack them. Maybe the party, realising this, will decide to get the Frost Giants to join them against the Nameless Tyrant. Whatever. Not railroading.

Maybe you're under the impression that by saying "invent things to happen to them REGARDLESS of what they do" I meant "ignore whatever they do and just force them to have the experiences you want them to have." I did not, and I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. But it's certainly NOT railroading or disempowering to, for example, have the king send them a letter. Whether or not they do what he asks in the letter, read it or even be somewhere where they could reasonably receive it is a different question. But I can have the king send the letter pretty much REGARDLESS of what they do. That's what I'm talking about.

And finally, let's remember that there's nothing wrong with railroading. If everybody's having fun, who cares? My point is only that railroading as a DM choice is a risky one, and you and your players will in most cases be better served by a more flexible approach.

 

[DongShenYin]

Tonguez has the right idea.

Take each element and "twist" it. Assume that the truth is in fact the OPPOSITE of what you started with.

Go deeper. Deeper. Deeeeeeeeeeeper! Yeah, I have to now start to round out the NPC's. I'm not sure about giving EVERYONE an ulterior motive... probably the daughter would be a trustworthy NPC. Or the bandit leader might be a noble person with a twisted agenda. Hmm.

 

[barsoomcore]

I'm not sure about giving EVERYONE an ulterior motive

But everyone ALWAYS has an ulterior motive. It's just that sometimes those motives coincide with yours. You can be trustworthy and have an ulterior motive.

But everybody's got one.

 

[shilsen]

But everyone ALWAYS has an ulterior motive. It's just that sometimes those motives coincide with yours. You can be trustworthy and have an ulterior motive.

But everybody's got one.

I wouldn't go that far, unless you're using a definition of ulterior other than the standard meaning, i.e. something beyond what is stated/expressed. Some people's motives will be the same as what they express, hence there will not always be an ulterior motive.

But I do agree that many, arguably even most, characters will have ulterior motives, and sometimes even they will be mistaken about their motives.

 

[Chimera]

One of the problems I have with the way PCs are brought into such things is the over-reliance on "You are attacked by agents of X, now you should want to take down X" plots.

My first question is: Why the royal blue [expletive] is X so worried about this petty group of first level nobodies who have absolutely NOTHING to do with him or his plot that he has to send assassins to kill them? And why, if they do get involved, doesn't he send the best assassins right away to squash them like the bugs they are???

Yes, it seems to be a D&D "standard", but it's contrived and over-used.

As per others above, my preference is to lay out the "world shattering plot" and move it along regardless of PC involvement. If they chose to become involved, then they can pick up the clues and pieces and take up the cause. If they chose not to, well then the plot rolls along without them. In some cases, I may have various other NPCs take up the cause and/or prosper or make a name for themselves by thwarting elements of the plot. If the players whine about it, I point out that they are not alone in the world and that not only are there others seeking fame and glory, but that they could have taken up the plot themselves, but chose not to.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

Yes, things should happen. This is not railroading, it's good having game with dm. Otherewise it's "nothing happens", which equals no-game in near future.

However, things that should be happening should not always be bad things.
It becomes depressive, it becomes game of big evil npc:s who are always on the head of things with uterior motives. Oh, combine this with pc:s inability to discover those true motives, and make those npc:s killable (one day or with help of another npc/group), but at the same time make pc:s always inable to truly affect them, and you are in darkest land of railroading. Because these plots threat pc:s as victims of fate.
And repeat, next adventure will be just like this. Different evil guy or neutral ***hole, but same story. And pc:s can't avoid getting in the way of somebody's plans, because they are never informed enough, and things just happen.

I had dm like this for years. Really great dm in many ways. Really good storyteller, which of course made darker elements of game even more dark. It was all well and good, 'till the day, you finally get that plots always are about negative stuff happening and they always come to players. Such coincidences aren't truly form realm of coincidence.

Instead of something pc-neutral (but perhaps very important) stuff happened pc:s heard about and decide to get involted. When they are legally involted somehow, they might be assaulted by somebody they didn't know about, of course.

This is also more true if players get famious. It changes dynamics, of what's likely to happen.
But again, it should not still be all about bad things happening, or anything directly happening to them. At times, yes, but not all the time. And it must not always be "important" stuff. Relaxing day in the tavern, can well be just that. Maybe players just get to know some interesting people and talk with them. Or there is a bar fight, or whatever.

And everybody certainly shoudn't have uterior motive. Everybody should have motive, but everyone having hidden motives, come on.

Another thing about stuff happening I don't like, was something my other long-standing dm was quilty of. Stuff happening ALL THE TIME. So, no downtime, whenever players wanted to just relax and plan stuff among themselves, we were jumped by next adventure. It was all about reacting to stuff that happened to us, or near us, and no time to come up with anything of our own. We had our own ways of solving stuff, but it's not the same.

I actually prefer some railroading myself when I play, or perhaps I should call it dm story, but too much is too much.

However, it wasn't all that bad, because I played those dm:s games for years, and it wasn't lack of choice. I just kept hoping they would ease a bit with certain methods they used. They never did, these kind of people tend to think they are great storytellers (they were), and that there is nothing wrong with their dm:ing style (there sure was).

Only one solution, but you got to find it yourself from non-linear world dm:s games I walked out after one session. Those games are just plain boring. And even depressive games win boring ones.

 

[DongShenYin]

However, it wasn't all that bad, because I played those dm:s games for years, and it wasn't lack of choice. I just kept hoping they would ease a bit with certain methods they used. They never did, these kind of people tend to think they are great storytellers (they were), and that there is nothing wrong with their dm:ing style (there sure was).

Only one solution, but you got to find it yourself from non-linear world dm:s games I walked out after one session. Those games are just plain boring. And even depressive games win boring ones.

I would like to say, as a fledgling GM, that if my players were slowly suffocating to death under my style, that I'd want them to speak up. Seriously. Don't go into insult-mode, but do point out what's making you chafe.

--Dora

 

[barsoomcore]

shilsen: I was using "ulterior" to mean "not altruistic". My bad, sorry.

Sure, some people are doing just what they say they're doing. Or at least they think they are...

Why the royal blue [expletive] is X so worried about this petty group of first level nobodies who have absolutely NOTHING to do with him or his plot that he has to send assassins to kill them? And why, if they do get involved, doesn't he send the best assassins right away to squash them like the bugs they are???

Well, that's the job of the DM, isn't it? To come up with situations in which these things are probable. Or at least to ensure that whatever DOES happen (be it assassins or butterflies) are things that make logical sense from the point of view of whoever is instigating them. Why DOESN'T he send his best assassins? Well, maybe he needs them kept alive for some reason. Whatever.

It's certainly one of the primary jobs of the DM -- to keep coming up with "hooks" that involve the players in adventure but don't feel forced or contrived. Every group has its own threshold for how forced is too forced, but every group has to deal with it in some fashion. Part of being a great DM is being able to hook parties easily and effortlessly.


Zelda: I don't think anybody's suggesting (at least I'm not) that ONLY bad things should happen. What I've been trying to say is that great stories come out of heroes triumphing (or not, as the case may be) over adversity. In order to have adversity to triumph over, some bad things have to happen.

That's not to say that an evening in the tavern has to include death and destruction. It can include a fun night of gambling, or a drinking contest, or whatever the DM and players think is fun. It remains the DM's job to come up with stuff to happen, just as it remains the players' jobs to engage with what the DM provides. Out of those two roles comes the fun of the game -- however you play it.