Some Observations from My Most Recent Game

[pogre]

I'm coming from the opposite direction in some respects. For years, my groups have preferred a more structured plot with an obvious hook. They enjoyed roleplaying, but figuring out what to do each week was not their idea of fun. I learned to keep the action flying at them and give them a clear goal and all was good.

This last campaign however, I started a new approach. Inspired to try a more open method by this b-board, I prepped several different small adventures. I presented the players with a half dozen possible adventure hooks in the first half hour of playing. They really latched onto it and have formed their own character goals and now e-mail me telling me what direction they would like to go in the next session. I don't always cooperate, but it is neat to see.

The method required a bit more prep for the campaign in the beginning, but now it really is almost running itself. The beautiful thing is there are so many loose threads hanging about I can throw a few more hooks at the party every week without creating more work for me now. The players negotiate with each other on what direction they are going for that week's adventure and there is a sense of player ownership in the campaign.

My group loves combat too - it's a major reason we play D&D. My group really enjoys the tactical aspects of the 3.5 edition. I am heavily into miniatures and modelling so that works well for all of us.

I used to be a minimalist when it came to magic - I favored a gritty low powered campaign. This time around I embraced the magic of D&D. No spell limits, no creation limits, just core rules - I found out most my players Like having cool stuff that blows things up! Struggling on the edge of death every week is not a fun game for them. They want a challenge, but after 2 TPKs in the prior campaigns - they are enjoying being in control of most situations.

 

[Zappo]

I have tried to create a campaign which featured no railroading at all. And I mean it; there was no NPC to call on the characters and assign them a quest, or to tell them how to go about slaying the fiend; no "the only way to do X is through Y and Z"; no overarching plot, no direction. The characters were free to do whatever the hell they wanted; adventure hooks were provided through an in-game newspaper which reported on strange events and interesting stuff worldwide. Every issue had so many hooks that the party would never be able to follow through on all of them even if they tried. Hooks left alone would eventually resolve themselves in some way or another. No end-of-the-world plots, or if there were, someone else could do them if the PCs weren't interested.

It was a half disaster; the party fragmented with everyone doing what he liked best and I was utterly unable to keep up three interesting adventures at the same time, especially considering that I generally had no time to prepare them. Noone was having fun, since everyone spent most of the time sitting at the table and doing nothing while I dealt with another group. Additionally, sometimes they would find themselves in far too easy or far too hard situations, with both cases being no fun.

Since then, I believe that railroading, like everything else, has its uses in moderation. My current adventures have a general goal and several subgoals. I define a way to obtain each subgoal, and subtly nudge the players towards that subgoal, but I never force them that way and I always allow alternative plans to succeed if it is logical that they do so. When I don't want the PCs to do something, I make sure that there is a bloody good reason for which that something is undesirable or impossible.

 

[Henry]

First of all, there are some game elements that are mistakenly called railroading, that would be better termed, "focus."

People in Marketing have known for a long, long time that too many choices are bad. Why else do you often find choices of new products initially coming in threes or at most fours? ("Now, in Cherry, Grape, AND Raspberry!") While some groups can thrive of completely open-ended gaming, others just don't get along well with that little direction.

(I once had a Vampire the Masquerade DM who gathered us together, introduced our characters, and said, "now, roleplay." No plot, no situations, no threads to follow. We mostly spent time going around and vamping individual people and doing silly crap like a bunch of teenagers. )

So the trick is, make some choices along the way, but don't leave a scenario totally unframed, unless your players make it explicitly clear that they will follow their own way.

 

[Thanee]

• I'm learning that my players prefer a little railroading. I lurk on ENworld quite a bit, and I see so many threads about bad DMs railroading their PCs. So I give choices. I give opportunities to role-play and develop characters. Yet, in the middle of the last session, one of my players says, “but I don’t want to decide what to do. What does the king want us to do?”

That's not railroading... railroading is the other way around, if the players want freedom of choice and you deny it to them.

Bye
Thanee

 

[WizarDru]

Railroading is, essentially, denying the players any signifcant choices when they desire them and often being especially blatant about it. Pushing players at an adventure is not railroading, if it's what they want. Limiting a player's options at every turn, because you can't (as one poster on SKR's boards described it) "control the story", is.

If the players don't want to forge ahead without some guidance and expect plot hooks to essentially carry them to the adventure, that's great. Often, good DMs can railroad, to some extent, while presenting the illusion of freedom...which is tricky, but quite possible.

My advice: get a feel for the group, and plot as loosely as you feel comfortable doing. If you proceed to higher levels, plot even more loosely. Worry more about NPC motivations and attitudes, and let that guide the plot as much as the PCs.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

My groups like to be "guided," but they hate to be railroaded. They like it when the next adventure comes to them most of the time, they do not like sitting around in a tavern and I say "well, what are you going to do?" They will inevitably just sit around and drink until I do something to get them to get off their butts and adventure.

On the other hand, they hate it when in the midst of an adventure they think of trying something or exploring something outside the lines of the adventure and getting an answer of "no, sorry, you can't, it is not part of the story" or the infamous "the BBEG gets away despite your perfect plan and execution" - simply because he has to so the story can continue.

Also they hate adventures that are TOO linear, especially when it is really obvious. Need to get A. In order to get A, you must help B get C. To get C you have to do D.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

First of all, I'm really impressed by the level of DMing evidenced in this thread. Not just the solutions that have been presented, but the DMs' willingness to re-evaluate their own styles, and continually modify their games to make them better. It just goes to show that the best DMs are the ones who are constantly thinking about how to make their games more enjoyable for all.

I'd post an anecdote of my own now, but after the paragraph above it would come off as self-praise, so I'll just give a hearty cheer to the DMs who've posted in this thread. I'd be honored to participate in any of your games.

 

[kmdietri]

The most rewarding campiagns I've ever DM'd were completely open. I beleive this only worked because I had fleshed out such a huge area of the campaign to such a high degree that it was extremely easy to roleplay each npc the characters encountered and everywhere the pc's whent. The players in both these games thrived and really broke out of their "tell me where to go and what to kill molds" It was absolutely awesome. The catch was it took me litteraly months of prep time for both campaigns to get everything fleshed out and at my fingertips.

 

[kmdietri]

PS: Reading this thread has given me the itch to start working on DMing again...

 

[Haltherrion]

The most rewarding campiagns I've ever DM'd were completely open. I beleive this only worked because I had fleshed out such a huge area of the campaign to such a high degree that it was extremely easy to roleplay each npc the characters encountered and everywhere the pc's whent. The players in both these games thrived and really broke out of their "tell me where to go and what to kill molds" It was absolutely awesome. The catch was it took me litteraly months of prep time for both campaigns to get everything fleshed out and at my fingertips.

I used to referee completely open games where I'd spend ridiculous amounts of time preparing the world (I still have book-length settings lying around from those days). With the right players who put in significant out of game time thinking about the game and working up things like holdings and so on, it worked well.

Trouble for me was that there came a time when my players for the most part were just there for the game session and our gaming rate fell to less than twice per month. Both effects made for a game group that had trouble sustaining interest and momentum on their own.

There was a period where I still enjoyed the world creation and the open campaign but most of my players were starting to get bored. Once I realized that my players were not getting all the enjoyment they could out of the game, I became much more active in providing story.

That's not to say that player actions do not affect the story or that I send them down a linear path but I do provide a general arc to the campaign. These have been my awesome campaigns where the players remember not just isolated moments (as they do from the open campaigns) but entire story arcs and talk about them like they do a good movie.

Open campaign settings can work and when the factors are right can produce memorable campaigns but they can also produce aimless, forgetable campaigns. IME, the latter is more likely than the former. For refs trying to decide between the two approaches, I wouldn't assume that open is better than "plotted". Open may seem more appealing because it empowers the players but the game group needs to be ready to be that empowered.