Railroading, Yay or Nay?

[timASW]

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

Yeah that helps, but this particular game I had never met half the group. Our last campaign only had 4 people and then this time a couple of them invited friends I hadnt played with before and 1 guy came in from meetup.com .

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.

Yeah I use the mercenary thing fairly often. The first adventure is either your last on the contract with the group or they just got out the last adventure and mustered out at the same time. I wish they had RP'ed it out a little but it was basically "you guys have all fought together through a huge war for the last few years, decide among yourselves how well you know or like each other but at the bare minimum you have all been passing each other in a camp the size of a small highschool for a couple years so you've chatted before and watched each others backs in battles before.

Writing in a background tie like this has helped me a lot since I started using it. I always try to make it very broad though so the players dont have to act like blood brothers or anything. This particular mercenary group had about 300 people left at the end of the war so there was plenty of room for each person to have had their own niche in it and social circles.

(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.)

I've only been in a few exalted games but I dont think your experience is unusual for them, unfortunately.

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.

Kinda. The mercenary captain pulled all the officers together (they were junior officers) and laid out his idea that the company should take this town over and rule it together instead of disbanding and all heading in opposite directions and then asked who was with him. They did ask some questions and one guy gave a speech of his own so they had input for sure and could have walked in another direction and I would have let them but the original campaign story was set by my NPC.

 

[pemerton]

That's rather dismissive of what the player's doing and getting out of the game.

<snip>

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?

I didn't meant to be dismissive, though I'm sure my own preferences were pretty clearly conveyed.

I agree with you that different players find diffrent dimensions of the game meaningful, and that each group (and GM) needs to find its own approach.

And, don't you then have to front-load with tons of rich campaign-world-information for the players to riff on?

Well, I like them to build at least some of it; and then more emerges in play. So the frontloading doesn't have to be that heavy.

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

Player-driven play and GM scene-framing are completely consistent. GM scene-framing means the players don't have to set their own challenges (and hence don't have a conflict of interest that leads to softballing and deflation of the situation in the way [MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] talked about in the other thread). Player driven means that when the GM frames scenes, s/he does so in response to the fallout of previous scenes (plus broader backstory consideratoins) as resolved by the players via their PCs.

Simple example: player builds a paladin of the Raven Queen, the antagonists are Orcus cultists. More complex examples here, here and here.

 

[adamc]

I'm definitely on the "Nay" side of this one, mostly because I think railroading takes the game away from its strength (collaborative story-building) and turns it into a poor-man's video game. If you want to be railroaded, hey, Dragon Age does it well, and they can provide fancy graphics.

OK, that's a _little_ tongue-in-cheek -- there _are_ other benefits to playing a social table-top game -- but I don't see much point in playing out someone else's scripted story.

That is not to say that the occasional scene can't be pre-scripted -- having the DM say "if they do _this_, I'm going to respond with _that_" is fine. But players should not lose their agency, and their choices should help to drive the story.

If your players are just wandering around, they aren't engaged, and you may be telling the wrong story for that audience. A game isn't a platform for the DM to just do his thing; you always have to think about your audience and what will interest them.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm definitely on the "Nay" side of this one, mostly because I think railroading takes the game away from its strength (collaborative story-building) and turns it into a poor-man's video game. If you want to be railroaded, hey, Dragon Age does it well, and they can provide fancy graphics.

OK, that's a _little_ tongue-in-cheek -- there _are_ other benefits to playing a social table-top game -- but I don't see much point in playing out someone else's scripted story.

That is not to say that the occasional scene can't be pre-scripted -- having the DM say "if they do _this_, I'm going to respond with _that_" is fine. But players should not lose their agency, and their choices should help to drive the story.

If your players are just wandering around, they aren't engaged, and you may be telling the wrong story for that audience. A game isn't a platform for the DM to just do his thing; you always have to think about your audience and what will interest them.

I think it's very important to tailor a game to your player's wants and needs. Those can be hard to divine at times though. I've found my best trick is a "soft railroad". Provide a central storyline that covers a number of the typical fantasy adventure tropes, but provide that storyline within the bounds of a larger, living world.

If your players are interested in the more "story" approach, then you've got a nice railway for them to ride. If your players want to wander around and explore and do random stuff, well having a living world provides that too. Of course, their actions in the world are going to generate a story which may end up leading them into a more directed line of adventure.

I think it's unrealistic to have a world where players can do pretty much anything without the greater world reacting to them.

On another note: People love Bioware RPGs for a reason, if lots of people love playing Dragon Age, logically replacing each companion NPC with a real player would create an interesting and creative experience.

 

[adamc]

I'm not sure we disagree all that much. I don't think the "soft railroad" is a railroad; it's an option you have made available.

People love Bioware RPGs because they seem meaningful while you play them (IMO), unless you're the kind of guy who saves and tries all the options (me), at which point you realize that all the choices are false ones and there is little point in playing. Anyhow, my point isn't that no one should like Bioware games, just that they already do that better than most DMs.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think it's very important to tailor a game to your player's wants and needs. Those can be hard to divine at times though.

Players and PCs don't always have the same desires. I've been in a campaign where my PC wanted to be part of a business, but as a player I had no interest. I saw the business as a "target" for bad guys, a way to introduce plot hooks, rather than the purpose of the campaign itself. I guess I acted too well; after a couple of sessions, I told the DM about this.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm not sure we disagree all that much. I don't think the "soft railroad" is a railroad; it's an option you have made available.

People love Bioware RPGs because they seem meaningful while you play them (IMO), unless you're the kind of guy who saves and tries all the options (me), at which point you realize that all the choices are false ones and there is little point in playing. Anyhow, my point isn't that no one should like Bioware games, just that they already do that better than most DMs.

I suppose that's a nice way to look at it. But I do design the "central story" to such a degree that after a certain point you cannot simply get off. By then the wheels are in motion and oh sure you should simply walk away from battling the lich and his dark army, but by now you've made a name for yourselves and the lich will hunt you down for interfering with his plans. The further you get through my story the more of a railroad it becomes, it's sort of like trying to avoid the "final battle" in Mass Effect or KOTOR, you can't really, because the battle is coming to you one way or the other.

Players and PCs don't always have the same desires. I've been in a campaign where my PC wanted to be part of a business, but as a player I had no interest. I saw the business as a "target" for bad guys, a way to introduce plot hooks, rather than the purpose of the campaign itself. I guess I acted too well; after a couple of sessions, I told the DM about this.

I attempt to avoid this sort of PC/Player doublethink.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

As long as the GM is dedicated to the enjoyment of everyone in the group, and so long as the players are will to be flexible, then even the most railroaded game can be a blast. Heck, some of the most fun I've had as a player was a Ghostbusters game where we were expected to act out the beginning of the first movie as if we had a script. But, that had player buy in.

As GM, I've been known to occasionally tell the players, "I think it will be more rewarding in the long run if you do this", or to warn them that I'm not very prepared to handle the direction they're thinking of going. It's still up to them, but we work together to find the best solution.

All that said, I'm a big fan of providing objectives and known rewards upfront, and letting the players figure out how they get there.

 

[adamc]

I suppose that's a nice way to look at it. But I do design the "central story" to such a degree that after a certain point you cannot simply get off. By then the wheels are in motion and oh sure you should simply walk away from battling the lich and his dark army, but by now you've made a name for yourselves and the lich will hunt you down for interfering with his plans. The further you get through my story the more of a railroad it becomes, it's sort of like trying to avoid the "final battle" in Mass Effect or KOTOR, you can't really, because the battle is coming to you one way or the other.

Yeah, that sounds like a railroad, all right, exactly the kind of game I walk away from as a player.

Actions should have consequences, but history isn't destiny.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yeah, that sounds like a railroad, all right, exactly the kind of game I walk away from as a player.

Actions should have consequences, but history isn't destiny.

So you're suggesting that after interfering with the evil overlord's plans a half a dozen times, you should be free to just...walk away? That the day before the climactic battle of good and evil you should be able to say "nah, not feeling it." and get off the hook?

Not all consequences are immediate. And sometimes history does determine your future. Sure, I'll let your party leave the city to burn, but that doesn't mean you won't have powerful wraiths on your tail and that the lich's corrupting evil will just stop. The consequences of your choice may take time to catch up with you, but they will.

I just don't understand the desire to have a game with no long-term consequences.