Do Plot-Based Adventures Necessarily Involve 'Railroading'?

[Steel_Wind]

Imho, it's tricky but possible to have a heavily plot-driven adventure without railroading. The key is knowing your group and what motivates them.

You have to finesse the pcs into following the plot, rather than beating them over the head with it. It helps to be flexible enough to adapt your stuff to lead the pcs to the end you want while allowing them to choose the path to the end. Better still is knowing the group well enough that you can preplan the path based on predicting which way they'll jump.

This is still railroading.

It's elegantly done. Well done even. But railroading all the same. It is keeping the players on the path.

When you know your group well - you can set it up without them even knowing. The man in the curtain remains hidden.

The railroad is just as substantial as it ever was; it is a difference of elegance and style.

I do not mean this in the pejorative or as a criticism. On the contrary, it is artful DMing.

But don't kid yourself about what you are doing. Or worse, let detractors think that it cannot be done artfully.

 

[Meloncov]

I run my campaighns on the priciple that its only railroading if the players think that its railroading. Theirfore, by magicians choices and the like, you can create a reasonable plot based adventure.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah, railroading isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes a nessecity. Sometimes a good thing. Sometimes better than the freeform.

It's really a style choice, not a better/worse scenario.

Still, it's railroading. Keeping them on the path you prepared rather than preparing the path as they explore it. That's a choice. Some prefer it.

 

[rounser]

I think there's several levels you can railroad at.

Dungeon corridors are railroads where the level of choice can be restricted to left or right, or more accurately, the sequence in which rooms are explored (so left or right is less of a choice than it seems, perhaps). I think the main reason why wilderness and city adventures are by comparison so hard to do seems to be the very lack of these corridors, and the much greater scale (thousands of miles and hundreds of buildings, as opposed to 20 rooms) and lack of granularity (this room is area 21, versus this patch of dirt 5 miles in size is area 21, a problem exacerbated by DMs not using wilderness maps with grids or hexes to delineate finite areas). Decision points such as "who do we talk to next" in a city aren't dungeon corridors, and therefore difficult to control.

You can railroad at the level of the plot hook (which is really the choice of which adventure to do next). Most DMs do this because it only means they need to prepare one adventure at a time. I think this level has the greatest potential for defeating railroading, because by deciding which plot hook to pursue of several presented to them, and having that decision actually affect the course of the campaign, the DM has effectively put the players in control of the course of the campaign story arc. Where the DM doesn't do this and tries to run an epic continent-spanning campaign you end up with the Dragonlance Chronicles problem, where the entire story arc is on railway lines. The model of this type of campaign succeeding is probably Baldur's Gate II, where there are perhaps two campaign points that are set in stone, and the ending is railroaded, but how those campaign points are reached can be through multiple adventures which can be performed at will or skipped. Most DMs don't do this because it's far too much work - clearly that's probably why it's only really seen at the P&P table when the DM prepares nothing and is gaming off the top of their head.

 

[Soel]

The trick is to get the pcs to buy the tickets for the ride...

 

[Steel_Wind]

I think there's several levels you can railroad at.


You can railroad at the level of the plot hook (which is really the choice of which adventure to do next). Most DMs do this because it only means they need to prepare one adventure at a time. I think this level has the greatest potential for defeating railroading, because by deciding which plot hook to pursue of several presented to them, and having that decision actually affect the course of the campaign, the DM has effectively put the players in control of the course of the campaign story arc.

Except of course, where the multiplicity of plot hooks really all lead to the same choice, presented differently and hooked differently: A Magician's Choice.

Which facilitates an epic-contienent spanning campaign - just artfully enough that your players are content.

 

[Sammael]

I don't like to railroad, but my players actually prefer a mild amount of railroading to complete open-endedness. I use flow-charts, set up site-based (and time-dependent) events, and throw a couple of hooks for the players to bite. Once they bite a hook, however, they want me to pull the line and drag them along. I always try to do so within logical confines of the game.

For example, right now, the PCs are in the north part of Cormyr (Forgotten Realms), looking for a powerful wizard's clone who is recruiting an army of creatures to retake his organization with. I created a number of sites that the PCs can visit (trading "town" of Silverpool, Zhentarim camp, four ruined mannors, goblin citadel, kir-lanan rookery in the mountains, abandoned Sword Herald cache, Baron's castle under construction, Underdark entrance, Shade excavation, etc.) and revealed a number of them right away as potentially interesting places; they learned about the others along the way. I provided them with a guide to the first place they decided to visit; after that, the guide suggested that they might as well visit another nearby site. I didn't force them to visit that place; if they had opted to go elsewhere, I would have gone along with their plan rather than forcing their choice. However, it is likely that, without that small amount of railroading, they would have wasted an entire session on deciding where to go (it has happened in the past). Out of six players, three positively hate such sessions, and I am not too fond of them, either.

The key (to me) is making a limited number of choices and providing reasonable hooks for each choice. Too much choice breaks up the game; too little choice, and it's a heavy railroad.

 

[wedgeski]

I believe the a strong plot focussed campaign with an artfully done railroad is the very height of DMing and provides the strongest enjoyment and fondest memories for characters.

I could not agree with Steel_Wind's post more. Like a good film score, the better you become as a DM, the less your players even notice you. Their decisions could have been predestined almost from the word go, and they are none the wiser.

 

[The Shaman]

Except of course, where the multiplicity of plot hooks really all lead to the same choice, presented differently and hooked differently: A Magician's Choice.

It still means the players don't make meaningful choices with respect to their characters, however crafty it may seem to you.

 

[Jupp]

Railroading is when the players experience it as such. You can railroad all the way to the end of a campaign if the players do not have a ping on their railroad-radar. In the end it doesnt matter if people on ENWorld detect railroading in something, it's more important that your players do not.
And, like Steel already said, if the players are so heavily interested in a certain plot hook they will not detect the railroading being done afterwards because they will be so immersed in the storyline that they will automatically follow it. Then you can just lean back and cackle evilly because your dark plans did work their magic on your PCs