Railroading and how to avoid it

So "if you don't do this, you'll make a few enemies" is ok, but "if you don't do this you'll be hunt down and most certainly die" is a no no?

Find it and share please. It sounds like a interesting read.

There is different ways to go about this.

>The no-idea-how-to sandbox
It's just a setting. It is static. Nothing happens unless the PCs show initiative.

>The sandbox of ample opportunity
There are a lot of plot hooks, definitely more than the players can follow up on. What develops out of the ones they do is up to the way the players go about it.

>The autoplay sandbox
NPCs do things. They have plans and realize them over time. The players get to watch from the other side of the room unless they get involved.

>The random box
Random tables or a minigame decide what happens off screen to affect what happens on screen.

>The unanticipated sandbox
There was an adventure planned, maybe even a published module. But the players went so far off track, it's broken now and the GM had to set new challenges out of what the players had done.

Generally sandbox is usually a term GMs use when prep gets too much for them. It is also favored by worldbuilders incapable of delivering a story. But it is just a dichotomy, not a realistic extreme. Sandbox vs Railroad is a sliding scale, and all games end up in the middle.

Without plot hooks players feel completely lost. It kills the world dead and leads to the one player who enjoys just making shit up dominating the entire session. GMs must offer story.

And in a way every story is a rail. But the term railroading is usually reserved for extreme cases of leading players by the nose. Normally the GM just tries to present a compelling situation that offers tension and invites the PCs to position themselves by taking action. This leads to new situations, and so on and so forth.

How written out this is in detail depends on so much, it really only makes sense discussing specific details, like player agency, taking notes, or balancing the group dynamic. With experience comes an individual style, which you can then troubleshoot and develop.

gnomestew.com/game-mastering/gming-advice/island-design-theory/

this was one of the most useful things i learned as a forever GM. having set "islands" that can be moved around and placed wherever the PCs go.

don't tell the players you're doing this otherwise it might be met with cries of "muh agency"

i treat my GM scripts/notes as basically madlibs. if you're anything like me then you also procrastinate a bunch, so it's useful to have premade NPCs, villages, encounters, etc that you make all at once when you're feeling productive.

all this helps keep things fresh and organic while also letting you plan as much as you can. no gameplan survives first contact with the players, so don't beat yourself up while you're learning.

>Find it and share please. It sounds like a interesting read
Pic related

>The important part is the world keeps going while the players are doing their thing.
This is truth.
I find it interesting that originally that was clearly the GM's point, but now it gets overshadowed by what the players chose to focus on rather than how they ignored an obvious threat.

Here you go friends

>Apparently you thought gay marriage was more important than not being killed by zombies and skeletons
Makes me wonder how actual SJWs would respond to that situation.

>But isn't it the same as forcing a quest if the consequences of not taking said quest are too dire?
>So "if you don't do this, you'll make a few enemies" is ok, but "if you don't do this you'll be hunt down and most certainly die" is a no no?
The trick is to go light on the pressure.
Make the pros and cons of any quest clear, so if the PCs ignore it, the cons are seen as natural developments, not punishment.
Ideally, the PCs should want to take the quest, not feel obligated to.

One thing I like to do is set up the area with about 8 proto-BBEGs, and as the PCs defeat them, each other one absorbs more power, influence, and control, getting stronger as the PCs do, whichever direction they choose.

By calling you homophobic.

Listen to these anons.

I figured the chances of this being double posted were about 99%.

Writing an adventure is already railroading.

Play a game where you can't write the story before the actual game, simple as that.

How do we do this? Teach me the ways.

Come up with a setting, some towns, npcs, monsters and shit, point the players in a general direction and let them go wild. Hope you're good at improv

I meant actually having to choose between undead apocalypse and legalising gay marriage.

They'd still call you homophobic.

...

Improv is key. A lot of time my players just want to dick around in town so i have to come up with shit on the fly.

That being said the improvised stuff has always been the most memorable apparently. I could just be a shit DM though

who is "you" in this scenario.

I got the joke, but it was shit and didn't answer the question.

Make a setting, flesh it out a bit. As the players travel, set some plot hooks. If they bite, build from there. Don't dedicate a lot of time to a quest that might not happen.

I don't get railroading, are there really GMs out there that immediately throw their arms up in the air and shout "campaign failed!" if the players don't immediately bite the first hook?

Do people really plan adventures so strictly like that, that if a single thing doesn't go according to a very exact plan then the entire campaign is ruined?

Do people seriously not just come up with a bunch of bulletpoint plot points that can be dumped in anywhere, lead to be any number of possible hooks?

>Writing an adventure is already railroading.
That is an oversimplification.
The GM, or module writer, writes the adventure and then the players come along and scribble all over the written page with their characters.
Saying that writing an adventure is railroading is extreme.
>Okay so this game I'm going to run is an adventure that takes place on an earth-like planet with humans in a desert, now-
>Desert? RAILROADING!
>...Okay so this game is an adventure that takes place on an earth-like planet with humans-
>Humans? RAILROADING!
>...Okay so this game is an adventure that takes place on an earth-like planet-
>Earth? RAILROADING!
>...Okay so this game is an adventure-
>Adventure? RAILROADING!
>...Okay so this game is-
>Deciding anything about the game beforehand is RAILROADING!

Game /= spontaneous improvisation

>who is "you" in this scenario.
The DM

I've met one or two that I think do that, can't confirm. We all live in fear of the players that never bite, because they're twats and chaotic stupids.

Step 1) Accept that you have to play a game other than D&D or Pathfinder

It's perfectly okay to set the parameters of an adventure as long as you're sure it's something the players are interested in (and to ascertain that, you can always just talk to them before hand). I like the idea of explicitly stating the mission statement before you begin an adventure so that everybody's on the same page: "this is a story of how your band of intrepid adventurers explored the ruins of the fallen stronghold of Kijakar."

Doing something like that allows you to focus your preparation on stuff the party is actually likely to encounter, rather than trying to fill out the entire world. And if your players object to or refuse to cooperate with this kind of thing, particularly after you've consulted with them ahead of time ("what do you guys think about a good, old fashioned dungeon crawl through the ruins of a fortress around which hang rumors of lost wealth?"), then you should seriously consider punching them in the dick and/or finding a new group of players who aren't assholes. The players should try to be constructive and helpful, following reasonable hooks, and certainly not refusing a mission they said they were okay with beforehand.

Now, that only covers the most basic parameters of the adventure, and you still have to contend with the littler stuff, but that alone should be helpful.

There is no DM, that was the point.

You just have to take it in stages. The more they dick around, the worse things get. Didn't follow up on a kidnapping? More people go missing. Plagues start as the doomsday cult gets closer to their goal. Random horrors start showing up. Eventually they'll get the hint.

Eventually they're playing CoC.

Someone who goes out of their way that much to avoid any and all plot hooks is someone who you shouldn't be inviting back to your game table.

It's not like that.
Presenting a plot hook is a way of saying "I've planned some cool stuff if you do this, so please do this and not that crazy shit you're thinking right now". And in a way, making that suggestion is railroading. Even if it is only slightly, it does try to lead the players towards a direction.
On the other hand, starting a game with " you just woke up and it's a beautiful day outside, what do you do?" doesn't seem right.

Never had one personally but i always dread it. I've heard enough horror stories, do they want to play or not?

>I don't get railroading, are there really GMs out there that immediately throw their arms up in the air and shout "campaign failed!" if the players don't immediately bite the first hook?
More or less. More often, they simply don't have anything else prepared and become obviously annoyed when the players are "being difficult" and not "doing what they obviously should".
I have very little 1st hand experience, though.

>Do people really plan adventures so strictly like that, that if a single thing doesn't go according to a very exact plan then the entire campaign is ruined?
Yes.
Often, they are unpublished, or self-published "authors".

>Do people seriously not just come up with a bunch of bulletpoint plot points that can be dumped in anywhere, lead to be any number of possible hooks?
Some really don't.
I can't tell you why.

This too, is good.

Railroading is the act of forcing the players to stay on the rails.
One could argue that pointing out the railroad tracks is an extremely passive form of that.
But informing the players that the railway station exists is not remotely forcing them to not go mountain climbing.

>The players should try to be constructive and helpful
Let me underline this bit. The welfare of the adventure is not solely the GM's responsibility. The players have a responsibility to cooperate and give things the benefit of the doubt. That doesn't mean that they have to go along with just anything, no matter how stupid or out of character, but when presented a legitimate hook, they should see if they can find an excuse to bite.* And I have a term for players who think that they have no responsibility to behave in a way conducive to a good, fun adventure, and who think they should be free to act solely on the basis of their own whimsy, disregarding any work the GM has done: fuckwads. Or, you know: people looking for a new GM willing to put up with their shit.

*There have been times when the GM didn't bait what was obviously a pivotal hook in a way that I felt my character would ever bite. Sometimes, I have asked to pause the game and had an out-of-character discussion about what my issue was and how we could go about tweaking things so that I could rationalize my character being interested. You obviously can't expect everybody to do this sort of thing, especially since many players are hopelessly self-involved and oblivious to larger concerns, but actually talking with your group about cooperating to build a successful adventure will hopefully make them at least somewhat inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt (rather than refusing hooks that aren't absolutely perfectly targeted to their individual characters).

Pic related

Play Apocalypse World. Or Don't Rest Your Head. Or My Life With Master. Or Commitee for the Exploration of Mysteries. Or Bliss Stage. Or Ganakagok. Or...

I didnt' talk about improvisation. See above, many examples here require preparation.

That isn't the point at all. It's a joke. The DM gets so hung up on his plot that he imposes it on a perfectly enjoyable game. It's funny because it's unexpected. The fact that people misinterpreted it that terribly has forever ruined this screencap for me.

Is it?
The GM has presented the issue to the players and they have chosen to ignore it. Shouldn't that have organically evolved regardless of whether the players decided to cat upon it or not? Isn't that how the world should work?
I mean, the GM could have just ignored his first plot device for the sake of his player's fun, but isn't allowing it to still exist just as valid? He did present the consequences after the players had reached their goal, after all.

When I run a campaign, I never do a "story-based" campaign. I do more of a "world-based" campaign. I create locations to explore and characters to meet, but it's up to the players to "write" the story. To reiterate, I don't write stories for my campaigns; I create interesting locations (with conflicts and such that the players can get involved in) and characters.

Know the plot of your story beforehand.

Example evil guild of whatevers doing shit in district B?
Players are actively avoiding B?

Then make sure something interesting is happening in district A, then have things happen in B as they would without player intervention and see if players will eventually want to see that

>That isn't the point at all. It's a joke. The DM gets so hung up on his plot that he imposes it on a perfectly enjoyable game. It's funny because it's unexpected. The fact that people misinterpreted it that terribly has forever ruined this screencap for me.
This is either bait or you are doing some misinterpretating yourself.
The players ignored elements of the game world in favor of random whim.
The joke is that he smacked them with the consequences of it after their happy ending, tainting it like a passive aggressive dick.

See this
>He did present the consequences after the players had reached their goal, after all

I just tell the players flat out, "I don't have notes for that location." If they then insist, it's usually because they have something in mind. I hit a random monster table with monsters from the quest and some other monsters, put them through 2 encounters, then let them test what they wanted to.

>I didnt' talk about improvisation. See above, many examples here require preparation.

So you don't prepare the story in any way beforehand?
You just make the story up as you go along?
Almost like you are improvising the story?
Kinda like you are saying the only way to play an rpg is to improvise?
Making up the story as you go is fine, so is writing it down first, as long the players can change it with their characters.

No. This isn't a crappy horror movie where a news story flashes on the TV, then the PCs go on to live their lives, and then suddenly a bad thing happens. The world is there in service of the story; the story is not there in service of the world. The GM is the god of the world; it's not somehow out of his hands if the lich still exists.

He's punishing his players for not playing the way he wanted them to. It's a textbook definition of railroading. It's funny because it's unexpected because it's not what a good DM would do. It WAS funny, anyway.

This is like thinking the moral of Catcher in the Rye was "people are bastards/shoot Reagan".

>He's punishing his players for not playing the way he wanted them to. It's a textbook definition of railroading
He's punishing them for ignoring aspects of the world that posed a danger to them. If the players wanted to play A Slice of Life of them sitting around a lounge, some cooking dinner and others crafting little crafts, and a goblin burst into the room and started attacking them with a sword, if they choose to ignore the goblin because they'd rather talk about their little nuanced lives and their Slice of Life fantasy then the goblin kills their characters because they chose to ignore it.
The story is just a larger version of that. Pretending it's not makes you as silly as someone who shoots Reagan for their Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver waifu.

Whether or not the GM is a dick for putting the goblin there depends on what game they were playing and in the story it's stated that they were already playing a game not about gay marriage.

In short, you're either being a troll or a fool.
Please stop.

If the campaign world were an independently sustained simulation in which the PCs just happened to take part, it would make for an awful game. Why? The party would randomly run into something that would slaughter them. And I'm not talking about: "Shit! Those ogres are too strong for us! We'd better slip away before they see us!" No, I'm talking about the ancient red dragon encounter appropriate for when the party is high level happening when they are 1st level. One breath weapon attack and everybody is dead.

That, or everybody dies of dysentery or peritonitis. Like it or not, even the oldest of old school, fantasy Vietnam-style adventures are calibrated with the party in mind. So any pretense of the setting having so much integrity as to function independently of the party's involvement is folly, and what you're left with is an adventure keyed to them and their capabilities. And not just that, but the inclinations of both the characters and their players.

You don't try to force pirate characters to undertake a noble quest to rid the land of ruthless baron who is strangling the welfare of his subjects by taxing them into destitution. They couldn't care less. (Though you could spin it like: the baron is sitting on a shit-ton of money that could be yours!) Similarly, you don't try to force your players to play a game of political intrigue if they just want a good, old fashion dungeon crawl.

Now, I'm not saying the players went about things in an intelligent or particularly courteous way in that story. They made assumptions they shouldn't have and hijacked the GM's adventure. However, the GM is the voice of authority and should've behaved with more maturity that his players, not less. And when he saw that what he had planned was not what the players were interested in, he should've modified the adventure or at least had a discussion with his group about where to go from there.

continued
And if you want to play the realistic simulation card (which, as I already noted, is compromised from the beginning), how realistic does it seem to you that this one group of random adventurers paying attention to this one particular problem rather than doing something else is the only thing keeping the world from being plunged into eternal darkness?

"Hey! This one adventure I want you to go on is so important that if you do anything else, you'll be slaughtered!" is pretty much the textbook definition of a railroad.

>he party would randomly run into something that would slaughter them. And I'm not talking about: "Shit! Those ogres are too strong for us! We'd better slip away before they see us!" No, I'm talking about the ancient red dragon encounter appropriate for when the party is high level happening when they are 1st level. One breath weapon attack and everybody is dead.
Why would the low level party invariably choose to go into an ancient red dragon's lair at first level? Or do all "realistic" setting have angry red dragons everywhere?

>And when he saw that what he had planned was not what the players were interested in, he should've modified the adventure or at least had a discussion with his group about where to go from there.
To his credit, he completely modified the adventure.
He just didn't forget or ignore what was already established.
Bringing it back to crush them was a dick move, doing it after modifying the campaign the way the players wanted was a decent move, and because the players ignored a threat to focus on an inane issue they injected into the game, it was funny.

>Why would the low level party invariably choose to go into an ancient red dragon's lair at first level?
Red dragons aren't always in their lair. And if it's not a red dragon, it's a group of giants raiding and terrorizing the countryside. Or maybe it's the cultists who completed the ritual to summon a horde of demons because the only ones who could stop them was the party, and the party was 1st level and never heard of them.

>it was funny.
Sure. In a dickish sort of way. And I'm fine with that. It can be funny when disproportionately bad things happen to other people. My issue is with the folks who it up as a model of good DMing, which it certainly was not.

So, your idea of a "realistic" setting is one where everything is trying to deliberately kill the players?

Although that is correct, you're pushing it to the absurd. Of course, the campaign has to be adjusted to the players. But their actions can't go always without consequences. If there isn't a consequence, then there was never a threat or quest to begin with. In a sense, it would make the players useless.
If all the things that they don't what to do don't happen or get sorted out by themselves, then what's the point of the PCs? What difference do they make in the world?
Maybe I'm over thinking this, but I do prefer a game with real threats than a game that I know will always bend to my will (as a player).

Sometimes it's an expectations mismatch. I'm notorious for littering my campaigns with potential endgame content that's available but a bad idea from the get go. It's not a surprise thing, it's usually along the lines of "your night of carousing nets you a handful of rumors and leads, including the location of an ancient red dragon who has set themselves up as Lord and King over an area. Rumor is the locals have secretly sworn an oath that whomever defeats the dragon will not only have the hoard but that the locals will recognize them as king, as well."

I had a player literally quit a game screaming profanity when I wouldn't nerf the dragon to a lvl-1 appropriate encounter so he could fight it immediately because is his mind "it's a game so anything I can see I should get to fight, and any fights I'm in should be fair ones."

The guy was an ass for a couple of reasons, but he wasn't auto-wrong. Both ways are fun and have their fans I just like one and he likes the other.

Ancient red dragons should never be surprises, though. Players should know when they're looking at stuff that's "red" to them. Even the Balrog was foreshadowed.

Maybe not. Maybe they get lucky. But rolling on the wandering monster table for a random level is sure to cause some problems.

Hang on, did Subnormality do a That DM comic or is that from a more general control freak episode?

I don't know. I just got a random somewhat related picture from Google.

Thanks for giving the source, though.

That's not what having a "realistic" world looks like at all though. Not everywhere has an entire orc warband wandering around, and places that do, that shit is big news. Your idea of a setting existing indipendant of the players is fundamentally flawed.

That's not what he's talking about at all though. He is saying that any game that is realistic will invariably have a random event that fucks over the PCs without warning.

What do you do when you want the party to lose but they get stupid lucky and don't

>Not everywhere has an entire orc warband wandering around, and places that do, that shit is big news.
Okay then, let's take the case of the very greentext we're talking about. The necromancer is preparing to plunge the world into eternal darkness, and only the PCs can stop him. Only they're 1st level.

Right, so they go on a quest to start fighting his minions and become stronger in the process so eventually they can overthrow him. At first they're just nobodies, but by the time they start becoming a threat, they are already strong enough to take what he throws at them.

Stop GMing, go home, and think on what kind of game you were trying to narrate.

>What do you do when you want the party to lose but they get stupid lucky and don't
Pretend you wanted them to succeed the whole time.

Yes, if you're altering the reality to accommodate the party's power level. But I'm guessing that the GM in the greentext didn't allot enough time for the party to gain like 7 levels before facing the necromancer.

>But I'm guessing that the GM in the greentext didn't allot enough time for the party to gain like 7 levels before facing the necromancer.
They staged a revolution and overthrew a, presumably large, country. That shit doesn't happen overnight, user.

You're weaseling. You're trying your hardest to think of any excuse so that the party wouldn't be overwhelmed. And if your running a game, that's great. It's what you should be doing. But you're not playing the part of a deist god, who just winds shit up and walks away.

>My issue is with the folks who it up as a model of good DMing, which it certainly was not
On that, we certainly agree.
I think it was amazing DMing until the fiat-you're-ded at the end.
My issue is with the folks that assert that players ignoring a world-ending lich, while being important and relevant enough to usurp a kingdom, is a perfectly consequence-free choice.

Nah. Nobody comes out of that story looking particularly good.

I mean to say that rolling with the gay marriage was amazing, and the world death epilogue was shit DMing, but still funny.
(I woulda laughed as a player)

The lich seems kinda badass.

>You're just making excuses because you're pointing out the flaws in my arguments.

>The Lich gains power from homosexual acts of affection
>The players unintentionally fueled his meteoric rise to power by fighting for gay marriage
>Now they have to kill all the gays to weaken the lich enough to kill him

He says they spent the entire campaign fighting battles and doing intrigue. Presumably they leveled up at least a bit.

Also, how is it 'altering reality' to have the players fight the minions before the necromancer? Presumably, the necromancer is busy on his plots and has secluded himself away. If he didn't need to do that, then he would have just destroyed the kingdom from the word go.

The only flaw is if he just said they lost instead of allowing them to try and play it out and fight off the undead hordes. It's not bad DMing to have something you established at the start come into play later.

>If all the things that they don't want to do don't happen or get sorted out by themselves, then what's the point of the PCs?
This
Threats need to be real or nothing is.

I don't have ignored threats resolved by good npcs,
I have them resolved by evil npcs.
Each disaster they ignore,
just empowers the eventual BBEG more.

What? Trying to move a rather large law, such as the legalization of gay marriage, in a medieval fantasy campaign no less, would probably take a lot of time; the same time that could be spent adventuring and getting strong enough to fight the necromancer/lich/whatever. Y'know the trope where heroes burst through the door right as the final ritual is happening? That's probably what the DM would be gunning for, so every second WOULD in fact count.

Even if it the PCs do have enough time to level up and face the necromancer in the story--something which is debatable at best--that does not mean that the PCs would always have enough time under similar scenarios. So the best you can say is that sometimes they might have enough time. Not very convincing.

This also assumes that the players are the only ones leveling.

If the PCs don't have enough time, then they can't stop the necromancer at all now can they?

Congratulations on coming up with a solution that's a bigger dick move then just Auto Death GM Fiat.

Let's also discuss the fact that it's extremely unlikely that the timing of the lich's takeover in the story, right when they were signing the law, was due to realistic simulation rather than a "fuck you" to the players.

Nope. And they're the only ones who could. But they can't. So nobody can. The end.

I think if the DM had put other warnings in during their adventure, like a small band of skeletons roaming the road or strange undead happenings, to warn them that the Lich was starting to grow in power... it would have been perfect DMing. If it was one thing at the beginning and he never brought it up again, then it was bad DMing.

If they chose to continuously ignore a threat, they deserved it.

Well tbf thats just the easy solution.

The other one is to get everyone to stop acting gay for 24 hours so that it permanently affects the lich's power. Or to get all the straight people to fight with each other, as that's the opposite of homolove.

So your argument is that the premise you laid out was a lie? that's a bold tactic, user.

We'll see if it works out for him, Cotton.

Uhh... ultimately it's up to the DM to give them enough "time" (well, more like encounters but details) to become level with the necromancer. Sure, you could have the necromancer level up with the party as time passes, but a good GM will have it so that the party and the BBEG will stay roughly the same level so that the final fight will come down to moreso the skills of the players and necromancer instead of just "one guy is 10 times stronger than the other and it's just gonna be a slaughter."

>Uhh... ultimately it's up to the DM to give them enough "time"
Yes. By designing/modifying the campaign/setting to accommodate the party's capabilities. But at that point the world is no longer a realistic simulation that functions independent of the party's involvement, which is what we're talking about. My stance is that the using the realistic simulation argument to justify the everybody getting slaughtered in the greentext is rubbish, because no game is actually run like that. They are all, to varying degrees, designed around the players and their characters.

(same user) To add on, them going off and doing the whole overthrow of the government and becoming leaders could have been used better, as the players now have a kingdom at their disposal. Perhaps instead of just outright bringing apocalypse, the GM could have brought some big warning signs that basically say "Uh-oh, times up PC's, you guys better get moving, the necromancer ain't fucking around m8s." And then have a big battle where they send off their new army to distract the minions of the necromancer while they disrupt his ritual.

Another thing to note, is that doing encounters with your party helps solidify some sense of teamwork. You tend to discover strategies and tactics with your party the more you fight battles, and how you solve diplomatic problems. The party, by the time they reach the BBEG, should have a decent bag of tricks that they can use against him, that was all developed naturally through adventuring. Doing just political intrigue stuff for several months would certainly help their roleplaying a lot, and help them sharpen their wit, but it wouldn't be of much use in a fighty type campaign, which was what the GM originally intended (and ultimately still did at the end... sort of).