Is Railroading ever a good tactic?

[Peskara]

??

Talk to your players beforehand? That could save lots of pain ...

Doesn't always work.

DM: So you all want to go have some desert adventures in Khavayin?
Players: Yeah, that would be cool!
DM: Okay everybody give me a list of cool things your characters might want to do there.
[Everybody, except the bard dutifully comes up with hooks for their characters in Khavayin and emails them to the DM.]

Next Session:
DM: Okay, you see one of the bad guys you'd presumed dead leaving port on a ship. A little investigation tells you the cargo ship on which he's booked passage is heading to Khavayin.
Other Players: Okay, we all need to find a way to fly out to the boat and arrest him before he gets too far away and make the boat return to port.
Me: Uh, guys, don't we want to follow him to Khavayin to find out what he's planning there?
Other Players: No! We can capture him and the Marshals will make him talk.
Me: The Marshals said to be subtle about chasing these guys down. Using huge amounts of magic in public to make a ship return to port with no evidence of wrongdoing isn't exactly subtle. Plus he probably won't talk. He's a fanatic priest of the god of slaughter and bloodshed.
(Chaotic player hijinks ensue as the wizard polymorphs into a giant magical beast that no one around the city has ever seen before to get the Marshals to come out and give him permission to fly out and get the ship to return. The DM was being kind and didn't have the city watch or the local army or navy garrisons shoot him down.)
Me (OOC): Guys, I thought we all wanted to go to Khavayin.
Other Players: We do!

I eventually talked them into going to Khavayin to find out what the bad guy was plotting there by refusing to fly out to the ship, and since I was one of only two characters (out of 5) that had any means of flying, that pretty much killed that idea. My character had good reason to refuse though as any time she's been in a fight that involved boats she's nearly drowned.

This game only gets run once or twice a year since the DM and I live 5 hours away from the other players, so he'd been planning the Khavayin adventures for months after all the players agreed they'd like an excuse to go have some adventures there. He could have probably winged it and run a less than satisfying shipboard combat where we capture or kill the evil priest, but it would have eliminated a whole story arc that the players said they wanted to get into.

Other times the players (different group) just have no clue, in spite of all the options the DM lays out for them for how to track down the next adventure. I think they must be used to real railroading DMs. So occasionally I help put them on the track to get the adventure moving, because our DM doesn't like to railroad the players in any way. Some players just aren't proactive enough to prosper in that kind of game.

 

[MonsterMash]

I try to avoid railroading, but if there is an option I prefer my players to take I'll and drop hints, e.g. gather information checks emphasising opportunities for booty by going down my preferred route. Usually I have a couple (at least) of options prepared for, but if I've got a published addy to use it tends to up my desire that they go that route.

 

[S'mon]

DM: Okay, you see one of the bad guys you'd presumed dead leaving port on a ship. A little investigation tells you the cargo ship on which he's booked passage is heading to Khavayin.
Other Players: Okay, we all need to find a way to fly out to the boat and arrest him before he gets too far away and make the boat return to port.
Me: Uh, guys, don't we want to follow him to Khavayin to find out what he's planning there?
Other Players: No! We can capture him and the Marshals will make him talk.

This sounds like bad/cheesy railroading by the GM. He wouldn't let the PCs act naturally because his plot required them to do X so they'd end up at Y. Just because the players are in principle willing to go to Y, doesn't mean they will happily acquiesce in acting against character to go there.

It would have been much better to agree beforehand (before in-character play started) that the PCs had already arrived in Khavayin on the trail of the fugitive, and you could have started the session at that point. Or he could have begun the session with the PCs embarking on their journey to Khavayin, and run through travel-encounters as desired.

 

[Henry]

My favorite quote from Old Drew Id about Railroading:

I do not railroad my players. (Although I do occasionally lay tracks out in front of them and then chase them with a train.)

I define railroading as making the players follow one plot by any means necessary. I also don't define it as a bad thing. I DO define it as something to be used sparingly. Like any other Plot Twist, it needs to be used sparingly to avoid frustration or boredom. Just like I wouldn't use an evil wizard as the bad guy every game, I wouldn't railroad every game.

However, just like I'll occasionally use the evil wizard, I'll use the railroad.

Another type of DM'ing is what the old 2nd edition campaign guide called "matrix" DM'ing. you create several stories, lay them out, and see which one the players pursue. If they pursue NONE of them, you gradually guide them towards one of them, or rearrange things in such a way that you can insert one of them into their current path.

To me, this is not railroading; otherwise, the DM would have to have every shrub, every blade of grass, every NPC in his world either at his fingertips in a database costing hundreds of hours of work, or he would have to make it all up on the fly, which can produce a less-satisfying experience in the long run.

 

[Desdichado]

Railroading gets a bad name from folks like us, because we're uber-serious about D&D and, frankly, are somewhat elitist.

However, there are tons of "beer & pretzels" gamers that literally demand to be railroaded. You present them with all kinds of subtle clues, hooks and whatnot and they get all confused and finally turn to you out of character and say "just tell me what the adventure is so I can get to it."

So railroading isn't bad by default, it's just a style that is extremely frustrating to a certain subset of gamers. Myself included.

 

[rogueattorney]

To a certain extent, a bit of hand holding on the part of the DM is necessary at the beginning of campaigns, especially with less experienced players. It's up to the DM to set everything up, and then to stand back a bit and see what the players are going to do with it. I think a campaign that's been pretty well set-up from the beginning can run itself before too-long with limited prodding from the DM only when things start to slow down. Ideally, good and motivated players will have goals, dreams, ambitions, etc. that can become the basis of the campaign, without the need for DM's to have everything planned out.

That's what happens in a perfect world...

Things get hairy where there's either a lazy DM or lazy players. The lazy DM, isn't prepared enough to wing it when the players decided to take an unexpected detour. (See the quote above where all roads lead to the Red Dragon...) Lazy players aren't motivated enough go do something in the world presented to them:

DM: "The crazy old Dwarf says there's millions in gp at the bottom of the abandoned mine, the local Bailiff is hiring mercenaries to take out some bandits to the south, the town twenty miles west of here just got sacked by hobgoblins, and the beautiful princess wants to take you to her kingdom far to the east to meet her father, the Sultan."

Player: "<<Yawn>> I'll buy another ale..."

I mean, there's only so much a DM can do before he has to start pushing the players around a bit.

R.A.

 

[herald]

Doesn't always work.

DM: So you all want to go have some desert adventures in Khavayin?
Players: Yeah, that would be cool!
DM: Okay everybody give me a list of cool things your characters might want to do there.
[Everybody, except the bard dutifully comes up with hooks for their characters in Khavayin and emails them to the DM.]

Next Session:
DM: Okay, you see one of the bad guys you'd presumed dead leaving port on a ship. A little investigation tells you the cargo ship on which he's booked passage is heading to Khavayin.
Other Players: Okay, we all need to find a way to fly out to the boat and arrest him before he gets too far away and make the boat return to port.
Me: Uh, guys, don't we want to follow him to Khavayin to find out what he's planning there?
Other Players: No! We can capture him and the Marshals will make him talk.
Me: The Marshals said to be subtle about chasing these guys down. Using huge amounts of magic in public to make a ship return to port with no evidence of wrongdoing isn't exactly subtle. Plus he probably won't talk. He's a fanatic priest of the god of slaughter and bloodshed.
(Chaotic player hijinks ensue as the wizard polymorphs into a giant magical beast that no one around the city has ever seen before to get the Marshals to come out and give him permission to fly out and get the ship to return. The DM was being kind and didn't have the city watch or the local army or navy garrisons shoot him down.)
Me (OOC): Guys, I thought we all wanted to go to Khavayin.
Other Players: We do!

I eventually talked them into going to Khavayin to find out what the bad guy was plotting there by refusing to fly out to the ship, and since I was one of only two characters (out of 5) that had any means of flying, that pretty much killed that idea. My character had good reason to refuse though as any time she's been in a fight that involved boats she's nearly drowned.

This game only gets run once or twice a year since the DM and I live 5 hours away from the other players, so he'd been planning the Khavayin adventures for months after all the players agreed they'd like an excuse to go have some adventures there. He could have probably winged it and run a less than satisfying shipboard combat where we capture or kill the evil priest, but it would have eliminated a whole story arc that the players said they wanted to get into.

Other times the players (different group) just have no clue, in spite of all the options the DM lays out for them for how to track down the next adventure. I think they must be used to real railroading DMs. So occasionally I help put them on the track to get the adventure moving, because our DM doesn't like to railroad the players in any way. Some players just aren't proactive enough to prosper in that kind of game.

But the quick flip to the issue is simple. let the players capture bad guy. Bad guy gives cryptic information about destination and dies. Good guys go to new place.

On the other hand the information might have been delivered differently. The good guys hear that a known villan thought dead left for a new place days ago. Do you want to go to new place and investigate?

 

[Delgar]

If you want to see Railroading, I suggest you play Living Greyhawk.

I don't know how many times I've just jumped on the train and followed it along it's tracks.

Delgar

 

[The_Gneech]

Railroading gets a bad name from folks like us, because we're uber-serious about D&D and, frankly, are somewhat elitist.

However, there are tons of "beer & pretzels" gamers that literally demand to be railroaded. You present them with all kinds of subtle clues, hooks and whatnot and they get all confused and finally turn to you out of character and say "just tell me what the adventure is so I can get to it."

So railroading isn't bad by default, it's just a style that is extremely frustrating to a certain subset of gamers. Myself included.

Interesting contrast:

Me: As DM, I like to create a dynamic setting and let the players run around in it and get into trouble. I figure out roughly what the bad guys want/plan to do, insert the player characters, and stir. As a player, I like a lot of autonomy, I love to interact with NPCs for hours on end, and want to carve out my own destiny. I create characters with an agenda (avenge my father, conquer a kingdom, whatever) and a plan for growth. If the DM's proposed adventures don't include opportunities for my character to pursue their agenda, I quickly get annoyed.

Group's Other DM: As DM, he has in the past planned out the entire campaign before even letting us create characters. Setting is fine in macro but lacking in detail (every town and village is identical, right down to every bartender being the same gruff guy with a rural accent); NPCs exist mostly as plot enablers, and those who are fleshed out, the details are kept secret. At the beginning of the campaign, we hear The Prophecy, which gives us The Task, and anything we try to do extraneous to The Task is glossed over as a waste of time. As a player, he creates characters with a lot of personality but no particular plans beyond "go on the adventure." If not immediately presented with an adventure hook, he sits in the tavern until one presents itself. If presented with multiple options, he says, "Uuuuh, I dunno what I'm supposed to do," and goes back to the tavern until one option is seconded.

In short, he loves the railroad, not only as a DM, but as a player. His unconscious attitude seems to be one of, "It's the DM's job to tell the story, the players are the audience." So when playing, he is content to be the audience, and when DMing, he expects us to do the same.

I, on the other hand, want to go off-roading.

-The Gneech

 

[Desdichado]

In short, he loves the railroad, not only as a DM, but as a player. His unconscious attitude seems to be one of, "It's the DM's job to tell the story, the players are the audience." So when playing, he is content to be the audience, and when DMing, he expects us to do the same.

Interesting, because that's an example of sort of what I was talking about but not really. I was referring more to the types of players that don't care as much about story, and don't put a lot of thought or effort into the game. They play to play around, hang out with friends and kill a few orcs.

You've given yet another example, though, of a situation in which railroading isn't bad, because that's what another type of player actually wants.