DM Issues: Railroading

[Nagol]

The GM may not be the author of the end of the story, but, his fingerprints are certainly all over the manuscript.

The GM sets up a scenerio on a certain time frame - a completely linear plot line unless the PC's can time travel - but that doesn't make it a railroad.

See, the problem I'm seeing here is people are contrasting the idea of sandbox with railroad. That's a false comparison. The opposite of sandbox is linear, not railroad. You can railroad just as easily in a sandbox as in a linear campaign.

Do X or bad things will happen to your character might not be forcing the players to act in a certain way, but, it's certainly pushing them in that direction. To me, there's no difference between "You can choose not to do X, but if you do, this shopping list of bad things will happen" and "Just do it".

Because, IMO, at the end of the day, the players will do it because it's pretty obvious that's what the GM wants you to do.

To me, saying, "Well, you don't HAVE to do X, but, if you don't, you get punished" is railroading. Find the Disks of Mishakal or the invading dragon armies will simply come in larger and larger waves until you die may be totally justifiable from an in game perspective, but, it's totally a railroad.

My mileage varies.

I've had player groups decide to deal with the known threat head-on, finesse around it, flee, hunker down to survive then pick up the pieces and start putting them back together, help it Quisling style, and pretty much every combination of those tactics put together.

Additionally, who says the threat needs a linear solution? There's often a wide range of ways for the PCs to approach the problem.

Invading orc army? Defeat them in battle! or Kill the leader! or Poison the food supply! or Convince the Elvish King to help! or Flee to the next kingdom with a warning! or Stage a prophetic omen to convince them to retire! or Bulid up a rival in exchange for peace! or pretty much any other tactic the PCs want to try.

 

[Janx]

I'll strongly disagree with that, Janx. That's a big choice. And, it'll be obvious for most people, but not all people in a D&D-like game.

If I don't go to my house, and my family dies, and we continue to play, then it's not railroading. It's still a sandbox. Just because it's a sandbox, it does not mean the world does not spin, the setting does not evolve, and consequences are not applied to actions.

Let me disect this further.

I'm talking about the feeling of being railroaded, and not having any choice, rather than the actuality of not having any other choice.

A Threat is lopsided. If you don't deal with it, YOUR interests will be hurt. If a threat to the kingdom isn't a big deal to the PCs, it isn't a Threat to the PCs.

From a player's perspective, once a Threat is on the board, they have no other choice but to solve it.

This may actually be at the heart of the matter for the OP. They want to go spelunking. The DM brought out a Threat. Now the players don't really feel like they have any choice but to deal with it. In reality, sure, they could ignore Elminster. Just like you could ignore the flat tire on your car and keep driving it.

I differentiate a Threat from an Opportunity. Opportunities are the kind of things where a PC could pursue it, or another, and while there can be consequences, there's no extra pressure on a PC for one choice or another. A Threat pretty much locks in a PC, failure means what the PC cares about is lost.

I see it as totally valid for a DM to use a Threat, hopefully sparingly. But in no way should a DM delude himself into thinking that the PCs have a choice in tackling the Threat. Because the players don't think they do.

the point with the extreme robbery example, is to illustrate that in real life and in game, a Threat can manifest that you MUST resolve or die. And generally sitting there and dying is the only way you lose D&D.

 

[billd91]

When I think of sandbox, I think of something like the West Marches campaign or The Vault of Larin Karr. The bad guys are disunited, localised and largely static. The setting as a whole is also static. There are no impending plots to take over or destroy the world. There is no great pressure on the PCs to choose one adventure location over another. This lack of pressure increases player freedom.

The Dragonlance setting otoh, was intended for adventure path play. It has powerful, unified opposition, and impending threats to the safety of all the PCs hold dear. It's a high pressure setting and, as such, I find it difficult to think of a game with such a setting as a sandbox.

Either of those could be sandboxes depending on how much freedom the PCs have to make their own choices in what they want to do with the situation at hand. In the case of the ones you see as sandboxes, the encounter areas are triggered by PC involvement and pretty much nothing else. Everything is dormant except when it's in the same scene as the PCs.

But I think a setting with ongoing events can also be a sandbox, even if those events are widespread and potentially severe, as long as the PCs can decide how they interact with them and have the freedom to try to do so. Consequences may follow from their choices (including choices to not get involved) and some of them may be negative. Their plans may well fail. But that can still reflect sandbox style play.

 

[billd91]

From a player's perspective, once a Threat is on the board, they have no other choice but to solve it.

<snip>

I differentiate a Threat from an Opportunity. Opportunities are the kind of things where a PC could pursue it, or another, and while there can be consequences, there's no extra pressure on a PC for one choice or another. A Threat pretty much locks in a PC, failure means what the PC cares about is lost.

The trouble with your differentiation is that one PC's threat may be another's opportunity. Whether something is a threat really depends on the particular PC's orientation toward it. It may be that there are some factors in a campaign that certain types of PCs (or players) utterly cannot pass up. But it's also entirely possible that another type of PC (or player) will see the factor in the opposite way.
You mention that, from the other side of the DM's screen, they don't feel they have a choice. But that may vary from player to player. They don't have to have a single viewpoint.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

We've mentioned the punishment stick...how about the rewardstickcarrot?


In my campaign, my players know they are reincarnated heroes. They also know that there are some really valuable magic items tailored to their needs locked away in a bank with magical protections (sort of a dungeon crawl, but only in a loose sense).

They can attempt to get the items any way they like, or they can forget about them (forgetting about them would be a HUGE punishmentstick/lack of rewardstickcarrot...these are awesome items, and will level with them as they level).


So, what do I do as DM to "not railroad"? Do I allow them to try and break in, and if they get caught, get punished by the law? Do I prevent them from getting caught? Do I prevent them from being punished? What if they try to legally claim these items that were placed there long before they were born, and that they believe they own/deserve, claiming their reincarnation/heritage?

All of those questions pale to: Do I, as DM, figure out a way to get them the items eventually regardless of their actions?

If so, is that railroading? If not, is that railroading? Is it railroading to even HAVE such items in the campaign?

To be clear: I'm bringing this up as the flip side to "you do x (or don't do y) and you get bad consequences". What if you just fail to get good rewards?

 

[nedjer]

I ran a fantastic sandbox city a long time ago. But I was younger; I had more time on my hands. These days, in my mid-30s, married, and continually trying to not make my friends feel like I'm neglecting them (and I fail at that, too), I find that sort of campaign much harder to run. It's not just prep-time, but the time you have available to idly think about it - and I just don't have that any more.

I'd hate to think of what it'd be like if I had kids. I imagine that I'd be running WotC adventures only, exactly as-written.

No way; you'll be down on your hands and knees improvising like crazy with Playmobil cities, Lego starships and a bunch of Papo figures. Most of these objects will have patches of gooey, sticky, icky stuff on them, but you won't give a flying . . .

. . . fig leaf is I believe Umbran's preferred translation

 

[nedjer]

The axe is past grinding on this one for me. Needs to be a fast, easy way to put together coherent 'sandboxy' settings and scenarios. Came to the conclusion this might be done with psychological prompting and shared gameplay expectations.

Blog's been splattered with it for weeks and the theory is getting put to the test by posting a 'campaign-build' as it gets playtested over the summer and autumn. Going to use a forum within the site to try 'walls' as a medium and/ or method for campaign building.

Taking some 'mooring posts' from 14th century Scotland; not due to a sudden rush of nationalist fervour north of the border, but because the whole lot of them were 'Lords of Misrule'. Hopefully, we'll end up with a template for fast, open-ended play, and it won't matter whether it's Iceland and/ or Venice that's feeding into the design alongside a GM's imagination.

High hopes

 

[pawsplay]

the point with the extreme robbery example, is to illustrate that in real life and in game, a Threat can manifest that you MUST resolve or die. And generally sitting there and dying is the only way you lose D&D.

Not everyone resolves situations in the same way. A robbery does not lock in or dictate PC behavior. The PCs don't even have to confront the robber.

 

[Mort]

...To me, saying, "Well, you don't HAVE to do X, but, if you don't, you get punished" is railroading. Find the Disks of Mishakal or the invading dragon armies will simply come in larger and larger waves until you die may be totally justifiable from an in game perspective, but, it's totally a railroad.

If I substituted "consequences" for "punished" in the above paragraph it reads exactly the same with the exact same intent - yet are you actually saying there should be no consequences for making a decision? And further that consequences = railroading; because that seems the logical step - and yet I believe that is flat out wrong. The thing about the above paragraph is the choice is designed and presented poorly and in a very one sided way, but it's not railroading unless the PCs actually can't make it (that btw is why the Dragonlance adventures actually are railroads - if the PCs do not make the presented choice the adventure stops dead, there is literally nowhere else to go unless the DM completely adlibs).

Not all (or even many) decision points in an adventure (or even campaign) should be do x or face dire consequences - but they do and should come up. That's not railroading, it's making the players think about their actions and face consequences (good and bad) for the decisions they make.

I think the term railroading is getting vastly overused these days - and too often being applied in a "I don't like x = railroading" manner. Railroading is the elimination of player choice. presenting bad choices, disproportionate choices/rewards for certain actions may be heavy handed and may be "bad DMing" but it's not railroading unless no choice exists.

 

[Locutus Zero]

I tend to practice a hybrid version of railroading. I try to place branch points at the end of sessions, and make sure I know what the party is planning to do next session. Then I write a fairly railroady session. At least, the encounters are all pre-determined. Maybe a choice they make halfway through this session will matter next session, but it won't change things too much today.

Last session, we had about half an hour left, and I had a few plot hooks ready but didn't drop any of them. They had spent two months of in-game time being led from emergency to emergency, and I just left them with nothing to do. There was enough going on in the world that I thought they could come up with something. Maybe go to the Feywild and try to get ahead of the over-arching storyline, maybe go back to Fallcrest and check out their new diggs, a few other things. This gives them a sense that they live in this world and can make their own choices, but doesn't mean I have to design a sandbox. It gives them a chance to be proactive.