Railroading, Yay or Nay?

[timASW]

lots of interesting stuff, campaign failed due to sandbox.

Thats interesting to me because I dont think I've ever had a campaign fail due to that and I almost never have a main plot in the first place.

In my current game for instance the players are part of a mercenary group that post-war of the ring (slightly altered ending) in middle earth decided as a group that they were going to take over a city in the mountains based off of the pirate city of tortuga, except to the 9th degree.

Now if theres a main plot its this extended group defeating the other gangs to control more and more territory until the city is theirs. They havent done much of this.

The groups main enemies at the moment are a gang of orcs who wandered down from Angmar. They've fought them once and it turned into a retreat....

The last 3 or 4 sessions have been spent doing various jobs for the people in their territory because some of them want to be a good gang. So they've been gathering funds to build a hospital and set up an ambulance service, investigating missing patrons in their (biggest bar/brothel which is turning out to be a vampire guild at work) and most recently in the midst of that investigation getting sidetracked after learning of an unsolved murder from a ghost 2 of them decided to punish the murderer since he was in the same tenement. So they made him confess and turned him over to an evil spirit of despair who ate him. Then they spent about an hour figuring out the best way to take over his string of marketplace vegetable stalls and interviewing a manager to run it for them.

Now I didnt see any of this crazyness coming. I put together an adventure involving getting the allegience of the local temple of goodishness but 2 players had to work overtime the day we were gonna play it so I threw together the solve the bar patron murder on the spot to kill a little time and then when they seemed more into what was happening then in talking to priests I just kept the mystery going deeper and deeper while they explored their gangs territory and the city looking for clues.

Its been a great couple of weeks of gaming for all. My campaign plan is absolutely off the plan, not even close at this point actually so maybe by some definitions its "failed". But I think its been one of the more interesting campaigns i've been in for years. And everyone keeps showing up on time and emailing me questions and ideas throughout the week between games so they're engaged and we're all having fun even if we've spent an absurd percentage of time doing things that arent traditionally "adventure" and to me thats a success.

 

[timASW]

London Underground.

That is, there are lots of different railroads going off in several directions, they intersect and influence each other, and if you know where you're going they can take you to all manner of interesting (and some not-so-interesting) places. Plus, if you really want, you can ditch the system entirely and go for a wander topside.

Oh, and just like the London Underground, it's perpetually under construction.

Perfect description of my favored campaign style

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Thats interesting to me because I dont think I've ever had a campaign fail due to that and I almost never have a main plot in the first place.

Know thy players. Your players might be much better at player-driven games than myself or my players.

In my current game for instance the players are part of a mercenary group that post-war of the ring

Already, your players were doing a better job than my group. They were an organized group of friends. I don't know if they started that way, or they RP'ed becoming friends, but this is better than 5 or so people with no real reason to hang out. You've already avoided a barrier my group often runs into, possibly without even realizing it.

(It's not like I don't notice this problem as a player. We played an Exalted game - one where one PC wanted to do nothing but breed yaks. I was playing an assassin. Unfortunately, we'd not collaborated on character generation, so we were ye olde sociopathic strangers. I decided to wait until I saw other PCs before introducing mine on the email list. One player wanted to be a general, so I saw him as the group leader, and my PC would work for him as a spy and assassin, rather than be a "lone ranger" with no ties to the group like the other PCs. I tried to find connections to other PCs but couldn't find anything. Unfortunately, no one else seemed interested in the general's "conquer the world" plot, except after noticing we'd wasted 5 hours of a 6 hour session, at which point all the PCs would get together for a battle royale. Still, now the two of us didn't have to compete with each other for DM time. And then the player moved out of town. The next player I attached myself to also had to move out of town. It was like a curse.)

(slightly altered ending) in middle earth decided as a group that they were going to take over a city in the mountains based off of the pirate city of tortuga, except to the 9th degree.

The PCs decided to do things as a group. That's very helpful. We had a Warhammer FRPG campaign like that, where we managed to decide things as a group, but realistically only because two players (out of six) were actually writing the plot. The rest just went along. Not that I saw "going along" as a bad thing, and my own PC was just "going along". It was better than having six plots. I guess that was player-driver, but not players-driven.

 

[billd91]

As a GM I don't think I'm very good at this style - I'm not that good at injecting rich colour for the players to riff on - and I much prefer something more player-driven.

I have to say that your responses in this and other threads are really starting to confuse me. In the thread that inspired this one, you mention that you prefer 4e's removal of abilities that allow the PCs to frame the scenes in certain ways, yet here you'd prefer something more player-driven? You would turn a random encounter (with urchins, for example) into something significant for their motivations and orientations but that's not injecting color for the players to riff on? Or do you characterize what you're doing with scene framing as more you riffing on the players' preferences and PC motivations?

As I see it, injecting color for the players to riff on does create a player-driven campaign. You set up situations and let them decide how they interact with it and where they go from there. Sure, there may be an overall plot, but give the players enough license and they'll decide how they tackle it (if they do so at all). In that case, Umbran's railroad car is simply time advancing along the timeline with some events pre-calculated to happen at certain times... assuming the PCs don't do something to affect them.

 

[Umbran]

Know thy players. Your players might be much better at player-driven games than myself or my players.

Or, maybe they're fine at doing it, but just prefer the more directed playstyle.

I read this as a metaphorical way of expressing a characterisation I have sometimes given of adventure path-style play: the GM/module author have established, more-or-less, the basic plot of the game (who the principle enemies of the PCs are, roughly what events will happen when and where, etc); and the role of the players is to contribute colour and a bit of local content via their play of their PCs.

That's rather dismissive of what the player's doing and getting out of the game. It isn't necessarily "color" and "a bit of local content" - that makes it seem that nobody is really interested in those bits. It may, in fact, be the part of the game the player's actually interested in.

These discussions usually come down to "meaningful choices" - does the GM remove the player's meaningful choices? What gets missed is that "meaningful" is subjective - player dependent. It is a meaningful choice if the player finds meaning in it? So, how do any of us know what is "meaningful" to *all* players? What if the player does not find the choices of determining "the plot" to be meaningful?

For example: What if your player is less a tactician, and more an improv actor? Improvisational acting is not done really ex tempore. Improv artists work from an outline. The details moment to moment are new each time, but there are set points along the way that everyone in the cast is expected to reach, agreed upon beforehand - rehearsed, even! So, the railroad provides that outline, and now the player can go to town, comfortable that the points of tension and release will be hit, because someone will take them there. The player can then concentrate on representation of the person of their character.

As a GM I don't think I'm very good at this style - I'm not that good at injecting rich colour for the players to riff on - and I much prefer something more player-driven.

And, don't you then have to front-load with tons of rich campaign-world-information for the players to riff on? All we're doing it fitting the amount and type of information fed to the players match what kind of choices the players are interested in making!

 

[TerraDave]

Plot facilitates preparation and makes it easier for the DM to set up exciting or interesting situations for the players that (at least some of the time) build on and link to one another. It makes it easier to reveal the "secrets" of the world that can make a long running game more interesting.

But, it does serve another purpose. Getting the players on the same side, with each other. Unless you are doing a 1 on 1 game, the players will definitely tend to pull in different directions. Up to a point, this is OK. But only up to a point. A big part of moving the game forward is the DM giving the players somewhere they all want to go.

 

[wally]

From my point of view, which I think is similar to others, a railroaded game is one which forces the characters into actions, which they either didn't/wouldn't choose, or were required to choose due to the removal of all other choices.

I have played in games where the DM specifically told me what my character would do, not in any sort of alignment argument, but in just what actions the character would take at any moment. That falls under the, "you have a script/story you want to see, just tell me later and we don't need to waste time on playing," sort of view.

I have also played in a game where the option to continue was laid out before us, but when the characters chose to go in a different direction, there wasn't anything available to us. We tried to leave and go to a different village, nobody was left there. They weren't killed or kidnapped, they just no longer existed until we returned to the pre-determined quest path.

Both of those can be seen as extreme examples of railroading, but that is how I view it. Having an adventure mapped out and populated with monsters isn't railroading if the characters don't need to follow it, or if they can find ways around it.

On the other hand, I have run sandbox, or now I see the idea of rowboat, games and had my players sit around doing nothing for hours because they can't find the motivation for their characters.

I liked what someone else said about how railroading isn't a bad thing if it isn't noticed by the players. To me that isn't really railroading, it is just providing options and having a planned adventure so the DM isn't taking too much game time with the planning while the players sit around waiting.

 

[kitsune9]

I run modules and adventures that are essentially railroads even though the "stations" can have more than one destination, but the point of the adventure is the players must eventually get through most or all the stops before reaching the end. Through the illusion of choice, the players can think they have control of the adventuring because instead of going down Route A, they choose Route B or Route C, but eventually, all routes get to Station X, then go through Route Y and conclude at Stop Z.

I do however, allow players to go "off-map", but the risk is high because it's going to be random encounter driven and let the dice fall where they may.

I think pure Sandboxes can be fun, but my approach would be to do a lot of the work upfront in order to keep the players vested in the experience; otherwise, I risk the campaign going from a Sandbox to a Rowboat (with no paddles).

 

[Greenfield]

It depends on what you mean by "Railroad".

I've had DMs "correct" events so they follow the pre-planned story line, negating unexpected PC victories, or picking us up and carrying us when we failed to follow an expected line of development.

"You stealthed in and rescued the Princess without actually facing the Black Knight? Well, you'll get caught, no matter what precautions you take, because that battle is necessary for the story."

I hate that sort of thing. It's not an RPG, it's the DM playing solitaire, with us as the cards.

For me, one of the big appeals of RPGs is that you get to play someone who can make a difference in the world. In a railroad, you have no impact other than what the DM dictates and allows, which means that you really have no impact at all. You're just along for the ride.

If, on the other hand, "Railroad" means that the DM has a plan that he tries to guide you to, well that's sort of his job. The game needs some structure, but should also include choices.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I railroad from the shadows as a GM. What I mean by that is that I will have encounters put together ahead of time, but not in a SPECIFIC spot in the storyline. The players will encounter who and what I want, when I want. This way I can still drive the story and keep the campaign on the tracks, but at the same time they are free to roam around wherever they want and do what they want. What this accomplishes is that the players will get enough clues, freedom, and excitement to feel like they are in a total sandbox, but they do have goals and missions to accomplish the main objectives in the campaign. The best of both worlds for me as a GM and as a player is to have this kind of thing take place.