Railroads (wooh! wooh!)

[Heathen72]

A while ago, I raised the topic of the sacred cows in roleplaying – those things which often generate a (negative) knee jerk response - and one of those is predetermined plot direction, or ‘railroading’. So, in the interests of challenging such truisms: when is it okay to railroad a little? How do you go about it?

While I don’t advocate tying a whole campaign down to an immutable path, I do think that when you want to run a certain type of session, or set up a game in a certain way, it may require a little ‘railroading’ to achieve this. I think this is especially the case when you are running more episodic or ‘vignette’ style games (as opposed to those campaigns which every session flows into the next without any individual session having its own encapsulated story).

Let’s say you want the players to get caught by the fuzz. Perhaps you want to run a ‘prison’ game, or have them brought before a local potentate. There are different ways of going about this – and sure you could create a hook or ‘macguffin’ for your players that gets them to go in voluntarily, but that can take time (as you coax the players around to the idea, or wait while they vacillate and plan) and sometimes you just want them to be genuine prisoners!

Often the response of GM’s is to just present the players with unassailable odds (there are dozens of coppers with powerful wizards at their disposal) but this is unsatisfactory to my mind as 1) It is essentially railroading anyway, and 2) The players can be very upset when they realize they were ‘intended’ to lose the fight all along. This happened to me playing the one of the Freeport modules, and it pissed me off!

I prefer a more honest approach to the situation; The GM lets the players know that he is going to be a little heavy handed and then hands them back some ownership of the situation. It could be fun when both can describe together how, say, one by one the PC’s are picked up by the fuzz – sort of like in The Usual Suspects!

Obviously this all requires the trust of the players – not least of which that you aren’t going to enforce terrible consequences on their character; I don’t think they would appreciate having their characters molested in their cells or being told “Yeah, you got prison rot. Sorry, but you shouldn’t have let yourself get caught!” Nor should they be left in prison if they didn’t manage to escape. It’s important that once they have allowed you to control over the destinies that you treat their character concepts with respect.

Ideally it shouldn’t be something you do every session – players like to have power over their character’s lives, and you don’t want them feeling like they are puppets swung left and right by the forces of fate and destiny (unless they want to feel that way) but once in a while, with their permission, you can put the dice down and set up a fun story for the players.

So, what are your thoughts on predetermined plot direction?

 

[Rel]

I do it all the time and I was just talking to our current GM doing a bit more of it sometimes. If done wrong then it's pure "railroading" and can ruin the game. If done right I think of it more as "story guidance" and I think it can really tie things together and make the game move forward rather than bogging down.

I particularly do this in one-shot games where you just don't have time to shilly-shally around. In that environment I take the stance that you're better off with the group being a little pushed but moving forward instead of paralyzed by endless debate or indecision.

In an ongoing campaign, I use it less but sometimes I think it could still help, especially in certain circumstances. As an example, at the end of our last game session, we had a replacement PC to introduce. My character was talking to this Dwarven Runelord guy whom I knew was the gateway NPC to the new PC. But the GM was waiting for me to mention a certain bit of information about how the remains of a legendary hero we found were part of their clan. Only problem was that this was the session the day after I got back from GenCon and I was fried. I totally failed to make the connection that their clan name was the same. So we had this protracted conversation where he kept waiting for me to say the right thing and I kept hanging around waiting for the replacement PC to be introduced to the party. It induced some frustration.

If the GM had just said, "So you talk to the Dwarven Runelord about encountering Balkrag the Slayer in the depths of Karak Azgal and his eyes widen in recognition of the name. 'Let me get my nephew! He will want to hear about this!'..." Then yes, he'd have railroaded me but the game would have been funner and moved forward more smoothly.

So I think the technique has its place and too often maligned as universally bad.

 

[Agamon]

The illusion of choice is the key. It takes practice, both to be subtle in aiming them in the right direction, and handling the game smoothly when things start heading for left field.

So, you don't tell the players, this is what your going to do, and that's that. Have events that happen around them that sort of sweeps them up and soon, what they want to do is what you wanted them to do. Throw in side quests where the players diverge from the main plot when you need to, but if the main plot is engaging, they'll come back to it without any prompting. I know my players hate leaving any mystery unsolved.

 

[Rel]

The illusion of choice is the key. It takes practice, both to be subtle in aiming them in the right direction, and handling the game smoothly when things start heading for left field.

So, you don't tell the players, this is what your going to do, and that's that. Have events that happen around them that sort of sweeps them up and soon, what they want to do is what you wanted them to do. Throw in side quests where the players diverge from the main plot when you need to, but if the main plot is engaging, they'll come back to it without any prompting. I know my players hate leaving any mystery unsolved.

Well said.

 

[Ciaran]

You could just use aggressive scene framing. "Okay guys, your characters start out this session in prison. How did you get there?"

 

[Heathen72]

You could just use aggressive scene framing. "Okay guys, your characters start out this session in prison. How did you get there?"

Yeah, if the players are into that sort of thing, it could work well.

 

[Slife]

You could just use aggressive scene framing. "Okay guys, your characters start out this session in prison. How did you get there?"

rolled doubles three times


Actually, that sounds like a good technique. I'll have to bring it up. Seems more inclined for an episodic format, like a TV show that has a little teaser of the episode at the beginning

 

[Stone Dog]

Yeah, if the players are into that sort of thing, it could work well.

My players tend to REALLY be into it. Especially since they know they can't die in a flashback.

 

[Matt Black]

The illusion of choice is the key. It takes practice, both to be subtle in aiming them in the right direction, and handling the game smoothly when things start heading for left field.

So, you don't tell the players, this is what your going to do, and that's that. Have events that happen around them that sort of sweeps them up and soon, what they want to do is what you wanted them to do. Throw in side quests where the players diverge from the main plot when you need to, but if the main plot is engaging, they'll come back to it without any prompting. I know my players hate leaving any mystery unsolved.

I don't care how subtle you are, if I've been playing in a campaign - working towards character goals, making what *I* thought were important character choices - only to find out that there was never really any choice all along... I can't think of anything more disappointing in a game.

On the other hand, if the GM wants to run a particular type of game, and that game requires the players to move in a particular direction, I usually have no problem accepting the hint and cooperating. I prefer a lack of subtlety in these case. Don't try to trick your players into making decisions, unless you're truly happy for them to go in an unexpected direction.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

If it's a mega-adventure then tell me ahead of time and I won't care about the railroad. The adventure will, of course, assume I follow along. If I know ahead of time that this is the idea I won't care as much. After all; the mega railroad track is what I signed up for.

For the home made campaign setup, the easiest way is to ask the players at the end of the session when they plan to do for the next session. This gives them the choice and the DM time to prepare for the next session. The players will likely not purposely screw up that night's session. So... yeah... each session in and of itself is a railroad ("we're going into this dungeon/rescuing the princess/commiting suicide against the dragon tonight") but at least the players bought the ticket of their choice. That is fine by me.