What's Wrong with the Railroad?

[Majoru Oakheart]

Well, that's a sign of a DM who's heavy-handed with the direction; not in itself a bad thing. The test of whether it's a genuine railroad comes in when you try to take Choice B despite it not being the obviously helpful thing to do.

It's just that sometimes there IS a choice that there is no way of recovering from and still have anything left of the adventure at all. For instance, the PCs choose not to go after the villain when he runs away and instead decide to open up a tavern and serve drinks for a living. Then, after multiple attempts to show that the world is doomed without heroes to stop the villain(or whatever) they decide to take a portal to a different world since this one is doomed. Then, when you tell them that the villain wants to conquer ALL the worlds and can teleport his army between worlds, they simply decide to keep hopping worlds, trying to stay one step ahead of the villain.

This happened in a Rifts game I was running. After they made it perfectly clear that they were going to try to run as fast as they could away from the plot, I made it clear that if they did there would be no game, since that's what I had planned. They said I couldn't railroad them into the plot. I ended the game. None of them wanted to run a game because it was too hard. We stopped playing.

I don't run purely sandbox games, because the one I ran before that was no fun for me at all. It was another Rifts game where they kept using the rules to acquire more and more wealth. Nearly infinite(due to using telemechanics psychic powers to imprint digital cash onto cards). Then, they built a bunker with the best weapons and armor they could find and they stayed there, not wanting to go anywhere or do anything. I threw challenge after challenge, plot hook after plot hook at them in order to have ANYTHING happen in the game, they refused to leave and killed everything I sent at them, using any equipment they had to become even more powerful. I finally sent the Mechanoids at them. Yes, I mean ALL of the Mechanoids(for those people who don't know, an entire race of Mechanical/Biological hybrids that want to wipe out all living creatures). The PCs beat them. Something about nearly 200 long ranged nuclear missiles.

This was a while back, I might have tried something more subtle had the same thing happened today. But, each time they beat something I was sure would destroy their compound and force them to be adventurers, I got more and more frustrated. It was no fun for me at all. I had no chance to come up with interesting plots, cool twists and the like. My job was simply to find new enemies from books and run them in combat, since that's the only thing the players wanted to do.

 

[timbannock]

The worst example of published railroad that I ever encountered was one of White Wolf's Year of the Reckoning adventures, where the PCs are dragged along from point to point, in order to witness the death of Baba Yaga. Not participate, mind you, witness. And they are not even allowed to jump off the railroad, being told that 'your character does not want to do that.'

I know that I would have jumped anyway, the game would have gone hang, I'd go read a book.

The thing about a good railroad is that the players never notice it. Once it is noticed then it will result in a train wreck. Railroads have been the number one reason that I have seen campaigns die - players like to feel like they are in control of their characters, not the DM.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* A line went missing there. How?

So true. Players witnessing events is bad news.

I've DM'd for 20+ years and I've run railroads and open-ended stories alike. It wasn't until recently though that I did a session with pre-made characters -- i.e., I made the character's backgrounds and connections, the players just added gender, name and age.

It was supposed to be a little railroady at first, but then totally open-ended.

But the railroad was obvious. I dragged them from scene to scene and they witnessed a lot of cool stuff in my mind...but to them, it was just watching and occasionally reacting, not acting.

The story was well-plotted, had all sorts of stuff going for it. But the pacing and the fact that I started with a railroad killed it. We never got to a second session with it.

So yeah, if there's a railroad, make it transparent, and be prepared to cut it out if it's not working.

 

[Janx]

Dasuul's examples hit it best. The problem wasn't in what the DM planned, it's how the DM reacted to the players going off course.

GMing is a balance. Ultimately, everything the PCs do or don't do has consequences. Thus, when the DM initiates a plot, if the PCs don't do anything, the bad guy wins. That's not a railroad.

The railroad is when the GM refuses to accept any equally plausible alternative and refuses to let the players attempt it. As Dasuul's example demonstrates it.

I don't believe in sandbox games. Oblivion, while a great game, is not realistic to me, because there are no consequences to plots I don't pursue.

I believe everything we do is a story, just that some stories are better than others. Therefore, the GM's job is to create a FLEXIBLE story for the players finish.

When you're dealing with a good party, it can be fairly easy to predict that they will take up the quest to save the princess. So you write material for that, based on the projected path they will probably take (or a couple paths if you're not sure).

The key mistake GMs make, which lead to railroads, happens when the players get a brilliant idea, or notice a hole in the plan, so they want to take a different approach. The GM balks. They freeze and come up with an instant failure to the player's new plan. A good GM pauses, considers, and adjusts the material to fit the new plan. This may mean ENDING the session, so he can reorganize. A lot of GM's don't get that, they think the game must go on. A smart GM sets up a cliff-hanger, and runs, so he can go fix his handiwork.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The key mistake GMs make, which lead to railroads, happens when the players get a brilliant idea, or notice a hole in the plan, so they want to take a different approach. The GM balks. They freeze and come up with an instant failure to the player's new plan. A good GM pauses, considers, and adjusts the material to fit the new plan. This may mean ENDING the session, so he can reorganize. A lot of GM's don't get that, they think the game must go on. A smart GM sets up a cliff-hanger, and runs, so he can go fix his handiwork.

I agree that this might be the best idea. However, I still allow for the possibility that it might not be able to be fixed. Or it might be so much easier to say no than to fix it.

I know that if we gathered together for our weekly game at 6 pm and at 7 someone came up with an idea that totally broke my plot and I said "Whoa, I'm going to have to completely rewrite my adventure because of that one idea. I need hours to fix this.....well, that's the end of the session guys, I know you all reserved your Tuesday to play and spent 30 minutes driving here...but go home" my friends would immediately change their mind about whatever plan they had. They'd rather play what I have planned and accept railroading than have their game day canceled or cut short.

It's easier for me to say "The only way past the mountain is through the cave. You could walk around, but you figure it'd take you so long that the villain will have conquered the world by then. You only have one choice." than it is for me to say, "Well, I guess you COULD walk around the mountain, but the next 4 weeks of encounters I had planned out need to be discarded and I need to come up with something new. Let's cancel the session."

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't believe in sandbox games. Oblivion, while a great game, is not realistic to me, because there are no consequences to plots I don't pursue.

I am sure Raven Crowking would know this better the me, but I would say that not acting on a plot hook should usually not lack consequences in a "real" sandbox. The trick might be to avoid the consequences being too dire if it was one of way too many to pursue.

It's a little unfair to have two apocalypse plots going on at the same time, or one apocalypse plot and one children-fell-into-the-well plot and present them as equally valid.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

This is true. But most of it can be avoided by quick adaption and thinking in advance. One of the first tricks you learn when writing an adventure like this is not to place the PCs in the position to be able to derail everything. Do not let them within sight of a villain you want to survive or you don't have a foolproof method of bringing back to life. Do not rely on easy to foil plans. If you want something to happen make sure it happens "off screen" or you have some REALLY good reason it can't be stopped.

At the point that it is no longer especially vulnerable to being derailed, I generally stop considering it a railroaded plot. There are a few specific criteria that fit what I (and I suspect many others) would call a railroaded plot.

- The players cannot alter the outcome of any plot critical events.
- The players are only permitted to take a single course of action at any point where a decision is called for.

Having a linear plot is not enough. A railroad has a linear plot and tends to make assumptions about the players reactions to events within those plots

On the other hand, the railoading that says, "The evil wizard casts a spell, you are all transformed into kobolds. No save. Then, you are all teleported into the dungeons, no save. You are all fitted with collars which let the villain kill you at will. You are then told to go get an item for him or you all die." You have no choice at all. You are barely playing the game.

This is a pretty bad strawman example. That is not even D&D, that is just a DM telling the players what happened.

A classic example of a railroad plot is any plot that would require the players are attacked by slavers,captured, have all their equipment taken from them, and then be forced to escape. Especially if it is impossible for the players to avoid capture, no matter how clever they are. The adventure calls for the players to spend time captured, so it is assumed it happens, and the adventure outright calls for the DM to give the villains whatever resources are required to bring this event about.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[gizmo33]

I know that if we gathered together for our weekly game at 6 pm and at 7 someone came up with an idea that totally broke my plot and I said "Whoa, I'm going to have to completely rewrite my adventure because of that one idea. I need hours to fix this.....well, that's the end of the session guys, I know you all reserved your Tuesday to play and spent 30 minutes driving here...but go home" my friends would immediately change their mind about whatever plan they had. They'd rather play what I have planned and accept railroading than have their game day canceled or cut short.

Yes, if you refuse to DM unless the PCs do certain things then, yes, I would expect the players to go along with that. However (obviously) I don't consider this ideal. Or necessary.

First of all, it's arguable that anyone has "totally" broken your plot. Or that you'd "competely" have to rewrite the adventure. Given the lack of specifics that we have to work with, it's hard for me to explain without fleshing out your example in a (perhaps overly convenient way).

So let's say that the PCs were supposed to go to the Caves of the Unknown and killed BBEG and they didn't and now you're compelled to have him take over the village. This isn't your "plot" as you conceived it. But you can use the same monsters/villains that you developed for the CoU, now they just live in the village. Grab a map (eg. the building maps in the back of T1: Village of Hommlet).

It's not an all-or-nothing situation. DMs can improvise. There's nothing, literally, that I can think of that you couldn't think of a scenario for. Yes, it's not the ideal and tightly crafted script that you were thinking of, but it acknowledges the players contribution to the game and incorporates their decisions into the result.

 

[The Ghost]

I know that if we gathered together for our weekly game at 6 pm and at 7 someone came up with an idea that totally broke my plot and I said "Whoa, I'm going to have to completely rewrite my adventure because of that one idea. I need hours to fix this.....well, that's the end of the session guys, I know you all reserved your Tuesday to play and spent 30 minutes driving here...but go home" my friends would immediately change their mind about whatever plan they had. They'd rather play what I have planned and accept railroading than have their game day canceled or cut short.

In fifteen years of DMing I have never once had to say "no" to my players going off in their own direction. I am able to do this because, in addition to my prepared adventure, I keep a second notebook with me that contains numerous encounters, locations, and NPCs. If the PCs go in a direction unexpected I just pull out the notebook and keep on gaming.

The best part is that the PCs have no idea that what I am running is not part of the prepared storyline. And often times they find "connections" between my prepared adventure and the unprepared encounters that add to the coolness of later campaign plot points.

 

[Dausuul]

It's just that sometimes there IS a choice that there is no way of recovering from and still have anything left of the adventure at all. For instance, the PCs choose not to go after the villain when he runs away and instead decide to open up a tavern and serve drinks for a living. Then, after multiple attempts to show that the world is doomed without heroes to stop the villain(or whatever) they decide to take a portal to a different world since this one is doomed. Then, when you tell them that the villain wants to conquer ALL the worlds and can teleport his army between worlds, they simply decide to keep hopping worlds, trying to stay one step ahead of the villain.

This happened in a Rifts game I was running. After they made it perfectly clear that they were going to try to run as fast as they could away from the plot, I made it clear that if they did there would be no game, since that's what I had planned. They said I couldn't railroad them into the plot. I ended the game. None of them wanted to run a game because it was too hard. We stopped playing.

Well, yeah, I'd call that a railroad. In this case, it's resulting from players not having a meeting of minds with the GM about what sort of game they want to play. Ending the campaign is probably the best way to go. Certainly, when your players are trying to run away from the plot and you're not willing to let them, something's gotta give - a game can't go on like that.

(A non-railroad, non-ending-the-campaign solution here could involve shifting gears to a campaign about the PCs hopping from world to world trying to stay ahead of the villain. Drop some hints about a world that might be sheltered from his domination, and let them quest for it. If they ever get tired of running and decide to take the bastard out, go back to the original plot.)

I don't run purely sandbox games, because the one I ran before that was no fun for me at all. It was another Rifts game where they kept using the rules to acquire more and more wealth. Nearly infinite(due to using telemechanics psychic powers to imprint digital cash onto cards). Then, they built a bunker with the best weapons and armor they could find and they stayed there, not wanting to go anywhere or do anything. I threw challenge after challenge, plot hook after plot hook at them in order to have ANYTHING happen in the game, they refused to leave and killed everything I sent at them, using any equipment they had to become even more powerful. I finally sent the Mechanoids at them. Yes, I mean ALL of the Mechanoids(for those people who don't know, an entire race of Mechanical/Biological hybrids that want to wipe out all living creatures). The PCs beat them. Something about nearly 200 long ranged nuclear missiles.

Okay, see, your problem here is that you ran a game of RIFTS, using the RIFTS rules. What were you thinking?

 

[Wootz]

Wow. Reading a lot of the examples posted here, it's sad to know that most of them pale in comparison to mine. Especially considering the DM told me that our group will be able to do anything we want after level 1, just doing a few quests to get the people who aren't entirely familiar with the game used to it. Which would be reasonable, IF IT WEREN'T A HUGE LIE. I was told as the group leader (being the elven ranger than I am, of course -_- ) that I would betray the group by being seduced by a hag into doing it.

WHAT.
THE.
-blam!-.
When I made this character, I wanted him to be extremely loyal to those he really cared about, but I guess I can just throw all that junk out the window. I'm not even quite sure how the game is supposed to operate if I'm not a part of the party, but a monster the players are supposed to kill, since he assured me that I won't be killable, so I guess I have to kill them or something. I'm sure my friends will love me after that. Anyways, this whole rant is about a railroad trying to force me into doing something I really don't want to do, and worse, making the group suffer through it. Taking Dausuul's example and bringing it up a notch, we were supposed to go into a cave to retrieve some drug dealer's shipment (yes, we're working for a drug dealer, even though we're against the idea, but if we don't we'll be killed, as always) so we enter the cave (without much choice) and notice it's a volcano. Well, we're unconfortable in here, and his men probably got killed by magma beasts anyways. TTGTFO. As we head to the exit, a rockslide appears in front of the entrance (yes, appears) and we has no excape. Dandy.