The Invisible Railroad

[S'mon]

When I play a game, I want to have an impact on the story. But I most definitely do not want to prevent the DM from making us part of the experience he has prepared....

...Not that this is my ideal, but I would much rather play in a linear sort of game where I'm "along for the ride", narratively speaking, than a game where I'm free to go wherever I want and do whatever I want but where the DM has to constantly scramble to try and make the content that follows from those decisions unique and compelling.

I think it's important for players/GMS like me to recognise that some players actually do want the "along for the ride" linear experience. I find it profoundly dis-satisfying as both player and GM, but clearly some GMs and some players do clearly like it. The solution would seem to be honest up-front discussion of what we both want out of a campaign, so that players/GMs like me can play/GM the games we like, players/GMs like Dannager can play/GM the games they like, and we can avoid sitting at the same table.

 

[S'mon]

I think that if that were the typical expectation, companies would not waste their time writing part six of a six-part adventure path.

What's typical and necessary for a 6-part published AP is not necessary and should not be typical for a homebrewed campaign. That's my point.

With the caveat that some players really do demand the linear railroad-track-to-awesomeville, and are disappointed if they don't get it. For those players, APs are ideal. Unless the DM is both (a) incredibly short of funds and (b) extremely talented, I have some difficulty understanding why the DM would bother to homebrew up their own linear storypath, though. And in situation (b) they should probably be looking to get their stuff published, they'll be doing better stuff than a lot of WoTC authors/designers and some Paizo ones, too!

 

[S'mon]

This matches my experience as well. The people I've played with who want meaningful plot choices want strongly story driven games that take them (maybe on a railroad) to a place where they can make decisions that have a major impact on the game world.

This is interesting. What you describe looks like a rail track that leads to a junction with two or more branching forks, each a valid choice, that will have a major impact on the game setting. I think players will indeed follow the rails a long time in anticipation of reaching such a crux point. But it better be a real decision-point when they finally get there!

Playing the 'Heavy Gear' computer game (ca 1996) had a big impact on me. In it you play a named 'Northern' hero, you pilot 12' tall giant robots & fight other giant robots, in battles linked by dramatic movie cut-scenes 'Wing Commander' style.

Eventually it turns out that the hero's girlfriend/commanding officer is a traitor working for the other 'Southern' side. The cut scenes reach a dramatic climax as the girlfriend radios the hero over his suit comlink:

"Join me!" she begs.

In world, there is a dramatic crux point, things could go either way depending on the hero's decision. In-game the cut-scene proceeds, the hero rejects the girlfriend's offer and the game goes to the final battle, where the hero has to duel & kill his girlfriend to win the game.

I found that incredibly annoying. This was the very last battle of the campaign. The designers could very easily have implemented a decision point with 2 alternate endings - (a) hero rejects girlfriend, duels & kills her as written, or (b) hero accepts girlfriend's offer, joins the South and leads the Southern forces to final victory over his erstwhile comrades.

That would have made an otherwise-entirely-linear campaign game oh so much better.

 

[delericho]

Not a horrible article, as presented. The "railroad", not as a chain to attach the players to, but a way for the GM to keep track of events in the game, potentially including multiple hooks into the same event if needed, as it makes sense.

Not a particularly good one, either. There are much better ways to do what he intends.

Rather than a railroad from the start of the adventure to the end, a better approach would be to view it as a car journey from A to B. Generally speaking, there will be one or two optimal, direct routes (the equivalent of the freeway), but there are also a whole bunch of other routes, some taking more time, some less (a short-cut!), some being more scenic than others. And, of course, some just end up getting you lost.

So, rather than a single railroad, it's generally better to have a bunch of 'nodes' along the way, with lots of paths between the nodes. Players can stick to the 'freeway', passing through the nodes in order, or they can move from one node to another in a semi-random order, gradually uncovering their own path from A to B.

You can't plan out every possibility, of course. But planning a few contingency paths makes it that much less likely that the PCs will actually go beyond what you had prepared, and will give you a better grasp on what to do when they move off the 'freeway'. In essence, it's easier to wing it when you're prepared!

OTOH, I'm somewhat offended by the poll question #32B:

<snip>

Ok, fine, I answered the last one of course, but really -- 9 answers, and 8 of them are variations of "I'm a lousy GM and incapable of dealing with player initiative", while the last is adverserial?

I think you're over-reacting. He's talking about the case where a player deliberately derails the campaign - that is, they see what the DM is trying to do, and they deliberately set out to spoil it. It's not so much an issue of dealing with "player initiative" so much as dealing with one who is out to spoil the campaign for everyone.

IMO, that is a sign of a problem player, and it's something that the DM is right to go deal with.

 

[delericho]

If the players know about the evil baron's plots and yet they all head for Sigil (or do something equivalent in a lower-magic campaign: take to the high seas, say), then they are making a strong statement that THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED in the evil baron, and/or they are scared of him and WISH to avoid him. As a general principle IMO it is poor GM practice - it is railroading - to then seek to force them back onto the 'evil baron' path.

Yep. This is where the DM should use another one of his tools: the "rejected ideas" folder. Drop the 'evil Baron' plot into the folder, to be repurposed in another campaign. While you're there, look around for any "Sigil campaign" ideas that you happened to have from last time this happened.

The exception is with a published AP: with an AP the whole group should agree "We are playing this AP", that is the social contract, if the players do not wish to continue to play it they should talk to the DM, not try to sabotage it in-game.

But the social contract necessary for an AP to function is not a good approach for a homebrew campaign.

Yep.

 

[d2OKC]

With the caveat that some players really do demand the linear railroad-track-to-awesomeville, and are disappointed if they don't get it. For those players, APs are ideal. Unless the DM is both (a) incredibly short of funds and (b) extremely talented, I have some difficulty understanding why the DM would bother to homebrew up their own linear storypath, though. And in situation (b) they should probably be looking to get their stuff published, they'll be doing better stuff than a lot of WoTC authors/designers and some Paizo ones, too!

I wanted to say something about this point, because it is interesting to me.

My group is definitely the kind of group that expects me (as the DM) to provide them interesting challenges and encounters one night a week, and they just have to figure out how to get there. A lot of it is that they understand I enjoy designing these encounters and put a lot of effort in to them, and they genuinely enjoy playing them. Our game is very much action oriented with less role play than most games probably have. And I use the combat encounters to further the plots.

In fact, I specifically asked them in an email a few weeks ago if they would prefer I tried something a little less linear to give them more freedom of choice and they all said no. They like the story I'm telling and have no desire to derail it. They even hinted that they'd rather have an NPC come up to them and tell them "there is something dangerous going on over there! Help us heroes!" than have to spend hours roleplaying to get to such an encounter, because we only have a few hours a week to play together and they just want to have fun. I don't care, as a DM, which style of game we play, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to offer them the kind of game they want.

As for homebrewing a linear game, I find it allows me to still interweave character elements from each of the PCs, and they can't get online and find spoilers for the encounters I'm going to run. Plus, I'm more of a fan of the delve format rather than the mega-dungeon, which is what a lot of the published APs have.

Here's kind of an example of how I try to compromise the difference:

Early in the paragon tier, my PCs were fighting a group of trolls that had invaded a nearby town. During the final battle the dragonborn warlord was killed by the huge mountain troll. As a DM I was super excited, because it was my first real kill of the campaign, and I was interested to see how the group would handle losing its leader on the battlefield, and to see what the player wanted to do now that his character was dead. After the battle, however, another player pointed out some damage resistance that the warlord had forgotten about and so, "hey! I wouldn't have died afterall!". I was disappointed as a DM, because I didn't actually get the kill (and, I'm not a particularly malicious DM, so I allowed the retroactive resistance), but I decided then and there that something was going to happend to him because he cheated me from my small victory.

What I did was have the Raven Queen start sending death squads of kenku assassins after the warlord until he convinced the group to travel to a remote temple and restore balance from having "cheated death". In the end, he wound up offering his life in service to the Raven Queen and his character evolved quite a bit because of it, but they were never really taken off the rails, all I did was adjust where the rails took them based off of another event that happened during play.

Which is basically how I choose to give my players their ability to change the story, despite the fact they don't really care if they have it or not. I plot things out ahead of time, and adjust accordingly. Sometimes those changes are big (like above) and sometimes they are much smaller. I do believe that the PCs choices and actions should have an effect on how things unfold around them, so I have to be a bit creative, because they are definitely more reactive than proactive. But, I'll freely admit that my group might be pretty odd for their preference to being lead around...

-Edit to add example-

 

[UnknownAtThisTime]

I need to go back and follow the thread in detail, so I apologize if the comment has been made:

For all the 'criticism' (and I hope the word is not too severe) being launched at Perkins and his defense of the railroad (in any form), I have to wonder if the critics would really be so miserable as a player in his game. Personally, I'd PAY for the chance.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

This matches my experience as well. The people I've played with who want meaningful plot choices want strongly story driven games that take them (maybe on a railroad) to a place where they can make decisions that have a major impact on the game world. The folks I've played with who want full freedom tend to be less interested in "big decisions" and more interested in exploring how "little decisions" affect the game.

Speaking just for myself, I want a game where the most interesting and important part of the game is clearly labeled. I want to creative flexibility in how I interact with it, but I hate the idea of missing important information or opportunities because I didn't happen to make the right uninformed decision early in the game.

-KS

Why do the earlier decision need to be uninformed?

See, that kind of thing comes up every we have this discussion. "I want highly story driven games, and I can't get them if the DM doesn't drive the story. Ergo, that is the only way to get them." And then there is some characterization of why that is so, usually involving some games where the DM doesn't drive the story, and also did some pretty lousy DMing for what was desired.

It doesn't seem to register then, when several of us point out that you can have highy story driven games with lots of informed, little meaningful decisions leading inevitably to bigger informed meaningful decisions. Or if it does register, someone says this is rare or hard or something else like it. No, if the masses want a good story, they'll have to take the one the DM provides, and that's that! Now, I know IQ is problematic, but let's just say that mine is safely away from the boundaries of idiot and genius, and leave it at that. This ain't rocket science I'm doing.

It seems to me that when people say, "I haven't seen X, therefore X doesn't happen," in the face of others talking about how X works, the only useful characterization that arises out of the statement regards their lack of experience with X.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Well, obviously some of you enjoy the 'fly by the seat of your pants' game style, which is fine. But I know as a player, I'd find that to really be lame. To know that anything I do in the game any moment of time will only impact the story right there and then in whatever form the DM is able to improvise around, is really uninspiring. To know that anything I do will not be planned for or taken into account for any session in the future because the DM doesn't want to "railroad" me by actually having a scenario lightly plotted in advance, I'd think would suck.

Great, I have a character background with some dangling plotpoints that will only get addressed in any moment of the game when the DM doesn't have any ideas and says "well... since I got nothing right now and I haven't used X player's disappeared uncle yet... let's have him show up in the game now completely randomly just for the hell of it and see what happens!"

Some of you might enjoy that... but for me, that kind of arbitrary, random, and storyless event with no set up and no planned payoff is completely a waste of time, unless by some chance my DM is an improvisation savant who can craft 'Lost'-like levels of intrigue completely off the top of his head and have it all make logical sense at the end of the campaign. I dunno about you... but I find those DMs in a bit short supply. If you all have those kinds of DMs, then you're very lucky (or else the level of plot and intrigue that you consider 'extensive' is actually quite small compared to what I've experienced playing with some of my awesome DMs who do have plots lined up for us to find or follow as we so choose). I personally WANT a DM that has cohesive and solid ideas of what our characters want, where the story for our characters could go, and signposts along the way that we players will mostly likely want to follow, because I'm more likely to see a cohesive narrative with an emotional payoff when all is said and done. And I in no way consider that guy a 'railroading' or (even worse) a 'bad' DM.

 

[mneme]

Defcon: what you're talking about isn't what AFAICT anyone else on the thread is talking about.

Of -course- the GM should be pushing the game in certain ways. That's the GM's job (except in a "exploratory sandbox" game where there are no ongoing events at all (and in that sort of game, story isn't the point; play is the point and story is a harmless biproduct))! But the GM should be helping make player actions a core part of the story--making them matter, and allowing the resulting story to be more than the GM's ideas, but a true collaboration.

Nor is story solely the GM's job. It's -everyone's- job.