D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[bloodtide]

4. DM: You’ve been traveling for a few days when you encounter Lady Sena and her retinue. She invites you weary travelers to join her and share her dinner.

PCs: “We don’t know Lady Sena, but we’re wary of her. We aren’t eating or drinking anything she offers.”

DM: “After the meal, you all fall asleep.”

PCs: “Wait what? How?”

DM: “The food and beverages were drugged.”

PCs: “Wait: we explicitly said we weren’t eating or drinking what she offered!”

DM: “Well, then her people drugged your food and beverages.”

PCs: “What?”

This is Clumsy DM Railroading at it’s worst.

By the Game Rules for most games it is by default hard to capture the PCs, Most games give lots of advantages to the PCs. And most games balanced encounter rules make it far easier to kill the PC then capture them.

Also most DM would like to just Fast Forward past the Capture the PCs part, as doing it via combat can take a great amount of time. And there is a chance the PCs will get away.

Of course, the easy answer is to simply not capture the PCs ever. A lot of DMs pick this option.

Assuming the game your playing has more then one rulebook, you might be able to find something in a book to use. If you do want to capture the PCs, you might consider going Beyond the Rules to do it. The game rules are unlikely to have what you need, so you will have to Add To The Game. Make whatever you need to capture the PCs.

In general, capturing the PCs will take time. You just need to be willing to take that time.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

4. DM: You’ve been traveling for a few days when you encounter Lady Sena and her retinue. She invites you weary travelers to join her and share her dinner.

PCs: “We don’t know Lady Sena, but we’re wary of her. We aren’t eating or drinking anything she offers.”

DM: “After the meal, you all fall asleep.”

PCs: “Wait what? How?”

DM: “The food and beverages were drugged.”

PCs: “Wait: we explicitly said we weren’t eating or drinking what she offered!”

DM: “Well, then her people drugged your food and beverages.”

PCs: “What?”

This is Clumsy DM Railroading at it’s worst.

By the Game Rules for most games it is by default hard to capture the PCs, Most games give lots of advantages to the PCs. And most games balanced encounter rules make it far easier to kill the PC then capture them.

Also most DM would like to just Fast Forward past the Capture the PCs part, as doing it via combat can take a great amount of time. And there is a chance the PCs will get away.

Of course, the easy answer is to simply not capture the PCs ever. A lot of DMs pick this option.

Assuming the game your playing has more then one rulebook, you might be able to find something in a book to use. If you do want to capture the PCs, you might consider going Beyond the Rules to do it. The game rules are unlikely to have what you need, so you will have to Add To The Game. Make whatever you need to capture the PCs.

In general, capturing the PCs will take time. You just need to be willing to take that time.

Isn't "going beyond the rules" the exact same thing as the above, just being more secretive about it?

You're not actually playing fair--you're pretending they're getting a fair shot, when they aren't.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In my experience, the encounter-building rules for 5e are...well. I could voice my full opinion, but it wouldn't be nice. At all.

Yes, at least 2014 ones are terrible, but they are terrible to the direction of things being way too easy...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes, at least 2014 ones are terrible, but they are terrible to the direction of things being way too easy...

Oh, no, that's not my complaint at all!

In the absolute nicest terms I can possibly summon: The 2014 encounter-building rules aren't.

They aren't encounter-building rules at all. They don't build things. They simply spray and pray.

 

[bloodtide]

Isn't "going beyond the rules" the exact same thing as the above, just being more secretive about it?

You're not actually playing fair--you're pretending they're getting a fair shot, when they aren't.

No, not exactly.

A great many DMs fall for the trap of treating an RPG Just Like Any Other Game. Specifically a great many DMs feel that the offical published rules in the book are the only ones that can be used during game play. Like nearly any other game: you have a set of rules that you Must follow and are forbidden from changing them or adding to them. Some RPG, as a sneaky marketing ploy, will even say something along the line of "only use officially published rules". It's a great way to trick gamers into buying your companies content.

As nearly all RPGs simulate some type of world or whole reality, it is impossible for a company to put out a book of rules to cover everything. Even when that company has dozens of rule books.

And this is one of the things that makes RPGs both Great and Unique: The DM can Add Rules and Things to the Game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I wish that that method worked better. It worked extremely well in 4e--not perfect, especially if you used the rules to dynamically scale a monster to a new level--but extremely well in general.


I mean, the long and short of it is that these GMs presumed PCs functionally took almost no damage, no matter what or how many monsters they faced, and (in at least two cases) presumed that PCs did not really need to rest other than Long Rests.


The two I knew personally, I attempted to warn very early, as in after like the first session or so, in part because this was very nearly their time GMing any TTRPG ever. (Their very first was a group they were concurrently running games for, had started a couple weeks before my group.) I don't remember the exact words, but it was something to the effect of:

"Hey, I know you're a new GM and such, so I'd just like to note that low level characters in 5th edition can be very, very fragile. That doesn't mean you should coddle folks, but with so many new players and you yourself being a new GM, please try to be careful. The dice can be extremely swingy, which means death is a big risk. You might consider starting us at a higher level, to avoid this problem."

The first GM brushed it off like it was nothing, blithely threw whatever sounded good at the party, and then couldn't understand how our group had TPK'd when his other group had beaten his expectations. I wasn't exactly happy about his kind of brusque dismissal of my concerns, but figured hey, he's the GM, it's his call. The TPK came three encounters later, and the very next encounter after my warning had nearly killed literally every single party member, as in, everyone was down to low single-digit HP with no Hit Dice remaining and my character had a disease that was guaranteed to kill him because he couldn't make the saving throw to survive it. (GM fiat let us survive that first situation, which the GM also found impossible to believe that this group should struggle where his other group didn't.)

I gave essentially the same warning, just augmented with "Hey, remember <Bob>'s game? Yeah this is exactly what killed that game, so please, please be careful, I trust that you have good intentions but I've already seen it go wrong once with a friend of ours." He was not completely dismissive the way the previous GM was, but he was kinda condescending and basically said something equivalent to "don't worry, I'm good for it." We then had a TPK two sessions later when his planned dungeon caused the party to split into two groups which each got wiped out by separate encounters. We didn't have any choice about the party split, it was literally "the floor gives way and two of you fall in" type stuff.

The third warning was to someone who was a stranger to me. I approached it less casually, since I didn't know the GM like I did the previous two, and tried to keep it as circumspect and limited as possible, basically just, "Hey, I've played in two campaigns already that broke down because of a low-level TPK, so I'm really hoping to avoid seeing that again. Please consider how fragile low-level characters are." I was met with an answer so venomous, it bordered on "Shut the hell up or I'm kicking you out of my game." It was not that explicit, but it was definitely said with a threatening edge, an implication of "if you dare question me again, I will kick you out". So I kept my peace, and lo and behold, the exact thing I had tried to warn about happened.

After that, I stopped bothering with any kind of warning. If it doesn't work with friends, and it invites such hostility from strangers, it's not worth risking my neck. Just keep my head down, hope I get lucky. I never did, of course, but I did at least try.

Sounds frustrating. I will say, all of this is a bit amazing to us old guys! Like, an entire campaign is wrecked by a few PC deaths? I mean, yeah I get how a TPK breaks continuity in play, but if characters are fragile then maybe the continuity needs to be invested in something more durable.

Look at it this way, back when the average goblin stood a 50/50 chance of ganking the fighter EVERY ROUND we just didn't fight goblins! Instead we ambushed them, with a bunch of hired mercs along to buffer against bad luck. And a henchman for each PC (aka a spare character).

So what I see is a big disparity between expectation and practice here. I'm not sure where it arises and to what degree it's coming out of the game's design. To my eye, and play experience, level 1-3 PCs seemed remarkably durable. We had some tough fights, one or two characters died. The game went on

 

[Mort]

No, not exactly.

A great many DMs fall for the trap of treating an RPG Just Like Any Other Game. Specifically a great many DMs feel that the offical published rules in the book are the only ones that can be used during game play. Like nearly any other game: you have a set of rules that you Must follow and are forbidden from changing them or adding to them. Some RPG, as a sneaky marketing ploy, will even say something along the line of "only use officially published rules". It's a great way to trick gamers into buying your companies content.

As nearly all RPGs simulate some type of world or whole reality, it is impossible for a company to put out a book of rules to cover everything. Even when that company has dozens of rule books.

And this is one of the things that makes RPGs both Great and Unique: The DM can Add Rules and Things to the Game.

In my experience, DMs who go the opposite direction - Way, way too many house rules, extra rules and even "hidden rules" are as or more likely.

If I start at a table for 5e, Savage Worlds, whatever and am given a big book of house rules (or worse, not given anything in advance but every session the DM goes "I know the RAW, but here we run it like this...") that's generally a big red flag.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In my experience, DMs who go the opposite direction - Way, way too many house rules, extra rules and even "hidden rules" are as or more likely.

If I start at a table for 5e, Savage Worlds, whatever and am given a big book of house rules (or worse, not given anything in advance but every session the DM goes "I know the RAW, but here we run it like this...") that's generally a big red flag.

I'm a believer in house rules, but I do think if you start developing a massive collection of them, you really ought to see if the game you started with is the one you should have (sometimes it is; sometimes all options would require a lot of houserules to get it where you want it). And I absolutely think just changing things on the fly constantly is far and away the worst of both worlds.

 

[payn]

Gotta agree with @Mort and @Thomas Shey if a GM bends, breaks, and makes up rules at their whim on their players, its not a good look.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There's a big difference between a house rule that's adopted to better fit the needs of the group, or to fill a gap in the rules that the group has found would be better served by having a specific rule, and house rules that are used by the GM to make their railroading more artful.