All GMs Railroad

Either you don't do it because you don't GM, or you're lying.

You must be a terrible DM or have one. After the first session or two I throw all prep work out the window and let the players do what they want. That stack of papers I have behind my DM screen isn't the plot, they're blank and used to keep notes on NPCs, places they visit, and shit they've done.

>Why do you have such a hard time believing people can be different than you?
I believe people can be different than me. But they aren't different than me in that respect. The whole purpose of a GM is to make the game exciting and interesting. This requires forethought.

>I have no preparation and I'm a great DM and you're terrible because you actually put effort into it
Okay.

Yes. Yes it does. But there are different ways to do that other than plotting everything in advance and serving players with only an illusion of choice.

>This requires forethought.
And it requires improvisation. If a player goes off the tracks and your only response is a 'but thou must' or blatant fiat/dicefudging, then you're not a very good DM.

>There are different ways to think of things an advance than to think of them in advance.
gr8 b8 m8 I r8 it 8/8
>blatant
>dice fudging
What, do you think I tell them?

I said plotting them in advance. I of course I think up a lot of things in advance, but exactly how/why/when/if the stuff i think of will interact with eachother and/or the players are determined during the game by player actions. Impro becomes a lot easier and better when you have some solid ideas about the world and other actors in it planned in advance.

For one, you don't want to underestimate a player's ability to sniff out bullshit.

And for two, it's blatant in the sense that you're not just stacking the odds in your favor, but you're actively stopping their choices from having any effect. If a player wants to make a decision you hadn't plotted for then improvise and give them appropriate consequences.

If you're only going to have one route and one route only, then you've basically thrown away one of the biggest advantages tabletop games have over videogames.

Curious, is railroading?

Three 'official' hooks:
>goblin and dragon hook described in link
>another hook about some ogres working with an orc fort that was just established
>another hook about possible trolls and a hag in a swamp near by

Players choose what they want to do. Taking a hook means that the other adventure hooks 'advance', at least as a narrative. Players could of course decide to do something else altogether - such as go mess with (investigate) the drow from the last adventure.

Anyhow, I don't consider this railroading. But it sounds like OP would. How do other see it?

[and why is captcha all about store fronts now...]

>Player complain about railroading
>DM presents a sandbox
>Players don't know what to do and start testing boundaries by stabbing folks, breaking any setting
>All while player the most railroady game there is: DnD is powerlevel encounter combat and nothing else

First, no absolutes. Every actual session being played is a mix.

Then, it isn't about having a story prepared or not, it's about how it is told. What most players perceive as railroading is just GM panic. Don't panic, roll with the punches. Just like the constant tantrum for realism which is just a misunderstood wish for suspension of disbelief, the lament of railroads shows an inability to go with a story in the face of expectations of easy success.

And finally, don't tell your GM what you didn't like. Tell them what you would have liked even better. If a game situation frustrated you as a player, consider how you would have resolved it.

A big part of being a GM is not showing the flimsy scaffold behind a scenario's facade. That's the way it must be, it isn't GM failure. Who could prepare perfectionism like that? No, a game is about making something out of the moment. And experienced GM is just better at faking it.

Doesn't sound like it, since he mentions consequences of not doing one thing and describes something as "currently likely", eg he is prepared that it might not be what happens.

>They also all fudge, to make encounters and so on more exciting.
Way to project, son.

Most games break if you do this. Why would you? What's even the point of rules if you break them? If a roll can stall your scenario then you designed it wrong. Set stakes that matter to the story, then your rolls will also matter. Failure tends to be more interesting than success in an RPG plot.

plot =/= railroading. At least, it seems like you're stating the oposite.

That game will collapse.
>What's even the point of rules if you break them?
They're suggestions. They exist to help the GM resolve situations when any outcome is acceptable.

>They exist to help the GM resolve situations when any outcome is acceptable.

I agree. I also think player failure is an acceptable outcome.

Or I don't just make something up and then re-purpose it for my players later, have them retread their steps, or set up a linear story.

I make games in smaller patches of land that are full of crap, let the world move as the players do, and leave a lot of "white space" to fill things in as we go. Even in a "set storyline" it's a walled sandbox to explore with me giving a few things to do at a time and letting my players loose. Sometimes they miss entire chapters worth of lore, and sometimes they surprise me.

I'll cop to fudging rolls, but that's a super rare event.

>Create the setting
>Place all the pieces on the board
>Imagine how things would play out without any player intervention at all, like the plot of a story
>Introduce players afterward
>If their actions don't contradict anything then have the plan continue with them following along
>If their actions do contradict then figure out how what they did would affect the original story
>Minor contradictions lead to similar or the same results in the long run, major contradictions lead to everything going off the rails
>If the latter happens start over at step 3 and repeat until campaign ends

Easy. An antagonist continuing his plans or adjusting them to compensate for what the players have done is not railroading so long as you do not ignore the impact of the players.

It really depends on what they're trying to do.

I play a lot of games where the rules are the bitter certainty that the characters will eventually be doomed, the players merely manage their way down the spiral. They try to get as much information and advantages for the showdown for as little resource expenditure as possible. Fudging rolls would mean taking that away and turning the game into a play, even if it is done in secret.

Or to put it more bluntly: If characters can't die then surviving is no achievement.

>That game will collapse.
Why? Going pretty well so far. Why would it collapse?

Stop projecting.

Keep laying down those railroad tracks bro, sooner or later you'll get there.

>I'm a shitty GM, so everyone else must be too!

I know I'm probably biting on some obvious bait, but here it goes.

The simple answer is you're blatantly retarded.

The long answer is that from a personal standpoint as a GM, you're wrong and here's why. To give context I use a personal homebrew setting for roleplays I GM. This a world they all know and have played, I have written short stories in and is just in general fleshed out between my own writings and the campaigns at the table.

Now sure some encounters are sort of set, like meeting an interesting NPC along the road but I do my best to always allow my PCs to do what they'd like to do.

So let's say they just killed the goblins of a large underground fort. Everyone's happy, divvying up loot, loving life, etc. When one of them looks around and says, "Hey this place is nice and the lands are bountiful. Fuck (quest-giver) why don't we rule these lands?

Everyone sort of nodded, I paused the game OOC and asked if everyone was ok with the shift in tone for the game and that what their PCs would be doing wouldn't involve as much adventure and a lot more putting out fires metaphorically. Everyone nodded and agreed it sounded like fun.

So I pushed my notebook to the side and the campaign went from a campaign of adventure to a campaign of management, fun, and dealing with people they pissed off. They dealt with border disputes and eventually the campaign finished with a nice boss battle and an epilogue that they shaped with choices to questions I asked them.

So yeah, not everyone railroads.

I'm tired of these threads.

"Railroading" is such a loaded term that comprises a broad spectrum of GM-styles, and nobody can reach a consensus on what it actually constitutes.

Veeky Forums is host a large number of people with minimal experience playing games, let alone running the, who have had it hammered into their heads that railroading is the height of evil, and that any whiff of it is a sign of awful, shitty GMing. The reality is though that techniques comparable to "railroading" are valuable for many GMs and serve to enhance the enjoyment of their group, rather than detract from it. Things like Quantum Ogres are technically railroading, but I think most people other than diehard hexcrawlers would consider them a fairly normal technique.

Nope. Never have done it myself personally, quit games that did it on the spot, fuck you for saying I do otherwise.

>You just don't know because you've never GMed.

Not him, but I GM almost exclusively and I hardly railroad. I'll tell you why - I'm a disorganized shit and I don't make detailed plans, I basically count on my players to set goals because it gives me something to work with.

I used to fudge a lot of rolls, but I rarely do now. And when I did, I usually fudged in the party's favor, not against it.

It's pretty fucking presumptuous to just assume every GM works the way you do / your GM does.

Additionally, in pretty much every campaign I run, the party shapes that part of history somehow. Whether it's choosing who to give the Macguffin to. Who to support politically. Whether or not they release the knowledge of a demonic sorcerer to the public or keep it safely guarded.

Even when the campaign doesn't drastically shift, if the PCs find a clever way to resolve a counter I often try to pursue that line of thought in order to facilitate and encourage more non-linear thinking. Maybe I'm just blessed with a good group but when I present them with options A or B, it often seems like they choose option H and do their best to make me laugh or pull my hair out.

This is all bullshit. Mysteries, dungeon crawls, and hexcrawls can all be extremely open ended. The first two aren't even a little bit hard to prep that way. You're just bad at what you do.

Just for your information, the second I notice that the GM fudged any roll, especially if it's an important roll, I will lose interest in the game 99/100. The rules matter to me, the system matters to me. Otherwise you can just as well just freeform, and from my roleplaying experience, most fa/tg/uys absolutely loathe freeform, so one can assume that for the most part, it's important for people to feel that there's an actual game with rules.

The thing in question is player agency. And it's pretty simple:

The players have to make relevant decisions consciously to shape the story.

A relevant decision is one that forks the path in the way it suggests and leads to the conclusion in different ways.

A conscious decision is one the players are aware of. The outcome can not be randomly assigned to seemingly unrelated behavior on their part. They must know that they are making a decision based on the information they have.

Now this does not mean that the characters can abandon the adventure, it just means taking their contributions and making that be the cause of as much as possible. That way the story becomes the interpretation by the players of the GM's presentation. The GM can just offer flavors, the players have to throw the ball back for any game dynamic to develop.

Understand what your players are looking for and give or show it to them. Then threaten it by the opposition you had prepared. See how they react, then turn their approaches into challenges to roll against.

>That game will collapse.
I was really hoping that guy would explain why my game would collapse. Did I miss something? Is he just a twit? Heh.

He's being a twit, run it.

Camus,go to bed.

>Every OP is a faggot
FTFY

You so not know what every GM does, nor do you know what railroading is.
I suggest you read up on it.

> Implying I'm not making it all up as I go
Well okay then.
> There is no choice, it's all gm fated, something something straw nihilism.
Enjoy your box of salt and bitterness crackers.

ITT: Water is wet

I never railroad. I never even make up solutions to half the scenes. They're supposed to figure out their own solution, and make appropriate plans and tactics.

Nope. Sorry your only experiences are so Shitty that your opinion is equally shitty. I'd invite you to play in my game but to hear you preach on subjects you know little about, you'd just be That Guy, anyway. You're better off sticking with your choo-choo games.

Goes for anyone agreeing with That Guy, too.

Thanks for the guidelines, user. I was wondering how to stop with the railroads.

I do full improve with 0 pre-planning, reacting to the players actions and nothing else. From this plots emerge naturally, and we discover them together.

>Every GM railroads
I can't railroad because I never prepare anything for my sessions except if my players ask me so beforehand. I only have a library of statblocks and various challenge charts to make things up on the fly

stop watering down words, you faggot - you've already fucked up 'magical realm' hard enough
railroading is where it's so rigid that it can't handle deviation - usually 'countered' by outright forcing the players not to do ordinary actions that would break the planned storyline, whether this forcing is a simple 'no, you can't do that' or incredible bullshit like making every plot-important NPC have 20 levels in wizard, druid and cleric each.

also stop trying to justify your shitty practices by projecting them onto everyone else.

i have only really played one game where railroading was a serious problem.
>Guys first time dming at college Veeky Forums club
>It's a superhero campaign where we have to stop the forces of darkseid and thanos
>first hour is us sitting there, listening to him talk
>we are actually playing mind you, we are chained up, but whenever we do anything to escape we just get shocked and loss health
>eventually some one comes and rescues us, but then we get bomb stuck our arms and we have to fight our way through cosmic bullshit
>if we tried to do anything but kill things, the bombs would blow up
>He actually killed my character half way through because I tried to use my empathy/pheromone powers to not fight one of the monsters.
>to make it worse he barely understands the system and has to ask one of the other players about it every few minutes

it's a complete cliche but he is autistic as all hell. He was literally the living embodiment of That Guy, and when ever I walked around campus there was always the chance that he would be there, autisming at me

I don't do this.

I have plans for everything. And, I'll change anything on a dime if there's a better way to reflect the consequences of character action. I am frequently improvising things based on player character input. Sometimes I have to drastically rethink how to do things when the game plays out, but, that turns out to be really fun.

I never make the PCs fail if I give them a chance to roll. And, I basically always give them a chance to roll for things they wanna do, because they're pretty reasonable folks and don't abuse me.

In other words, shut up nerd

>Every GM railroads

I don't. By basic logic, your initial premise is already provably false.

>the main boss

I think you have role-playing games confused with video games. If you had to blow into a cartridge before playing, put away the dice; they're not going to help you.

>Some like to let you think you have choices, by letting you go in any direction and then putting whatever they prepared, there, with minor cosmetic changes.

If the ref is letting the players go in whatever direction they like so that they can encounter all the different locations he's prepared, that's called a "sandbox". It's the default model. It's how RPGs are supposed to work.

If the ref is moving encounters around so that the players are sure to encounter certain specific things, that's illusionism, and it's cheating. And no, not all DMs do it, you projecting, pompous twat. Only the irredeemably shitty ones like you, who are posting this on Veeky Forums to validate your shitty """DMing"""" """style"""".

>They also all fudge, to make encounters and so on more exciting.

Nope, again. Quit projecting.

>You can have a good idea and the DM will intentionally make it fail, because in that case failure is more exciting. And that's alright. Because the game is about fun, not about winning or losing.

This… this is Not Even Wrong™. This is just plain retarded-ass dumbfuckery. The game is about interaction and exploration, which is fun in and of itself, not about the artificial fun-like feeling you may get from a moment of success handed to you by a DM who has failed to impartially apply the rules. Now I'm starting to feel sorry for you and everyone you play with.

>Once you realize this, you'll learn to grab hold of the hook and ride it to adventure, and you'll be a better roleplayer for it.

Now that I've taken your terrible bait, hopefully you've learned not to let a shitty DM bait you onto his railroad.

I don't prep, I improvise, fuck you.

Railroad implies only one direction and path. Not every DM does this, you're just a shit DM trying to justify it.

Despite what your feeble mind believes, there are people who are good at improvisation. Just because you're a shitty GM who can't think up interesting things off the top of your head doesn't mean it's impossible for other people to do it.

When I was younger (and much less experienced) yeah, I used to railroad and fudge results all the time. I grew out of it though. I like to think most GM's grow out of it too as they gain confidence, but there's a big trend of "You have to tell a story!" in gaming now rather than just letting the story be the result of what happens in the game. Planned results for the sake of some cinematic feel defeat the purpose of even playing and make any genuinely great moments get lost in the pile with all the rest. Sure you die to a giant rat once in a while, that's the game though. Sometimes you curbstomp what should have been a tough fight too. Games are much more rewarding when you have no clue where they'll end up or what will happen.

I don't know if this the best thread to ask for advice, but it's kinda related.

I'm DMing my first game, and some of the players told me they would appreciate if I railroaded a bit more. They told me they were a little too lost.

If I make the plot hooks optional they do not get involved, but then they do not do anything to advance the plot either.

If I make it optional but interessting to someone on the party, they end up arguing about it and either not do it or do it unwillingly.

But forcing them into plot hooks just feels so wrong, and I'm sure they don't like that either.

I think my mistake was at character creation, I should have made them add some more ambition or something.

Another GM here. Second to pretty much all this.

>blow into the cartridge
Grognard detected

Make it advantageous for them to get involved and play towards their motives. If their motives vary then make it cater to as many as you can. Some groups can handle going out there and doing their own thing, but I'm guessing your group is either newer to gaming or your character generation session produced a bunch of people who just can't work together all that well. If they crave money and reward provide money and reward. If they like doing the right thing, make their involvement doing the right thing. If they like being able to flaunt their status and power, allow your plot to grant them titles, connections, armies, and/or lands. If their only motivation is survival, run a game where their inaction will lead to their death or the destruction of things they like.

Amen

You are right about the group being new to gaming.
I tried using the motives of some of them and they ended up almost splitting the party. But I really like the idea where their inaction will lead to their death, that might make them a little more proactive.

Thanks for the advice!

This guy gets it. Spend a little less time creating an elaborate background on Eleshtar Starfang, heir to the moon throne, wielder of the silver crescent, beloved by all, drow/woodelf lvl 1 wizard, and your game won't be destroyed if you get eaten up by dire scabs in the second session. You can't make your character essential by loading it up with too much expectations from the beginning. Let the game shape your character instead of your background shaping the game.

Sometimes it happens, but I like giving freedom to the players.

Having keypoints in the story is important however.

Honestly, the best advice anyone can give you is to nip this in the bud before character creation. Make it clear that you want to run a campaign about Doing Thing, and then tell them to create characters who are all already motivated to Do Thing.

>Hey, this is a campaign about looting dungeons full of monsters and treasure. Make characters who do that for a living.

>We're going to play a game about investigating the occult. Roll up curious investigators and occultists.

>This is a game about Big Damn Heroes doing Big Damn Hero Stuff. Make you guy a Big Damn Hero who Does Big Stuff.

See? Easy.

>Grognard detected

Gee, what gave me away? =)

Just remember, kiddos, when you meet a gamer who thinks it's okay to play on the railroad tracks, tell them to go try it out IRL.

Not really. When i gm i do that for narrative games, otherwise it is a much more branched structure. And i like running with player long time goals.

For you i suggest trying to give your players more control of the narrative.

You're wrong and a faggot.

I write my campaign week to week based on what the party does in the previous sessions. I literally invent the story as they go with only the most bare of outlines planned with, based on their choices, those varying as well.

If you still considering that "railroading" then you're a faggot pseudointellectual cocksucker that should just go to Reddit and circle jerk about determinism and inherent meaningless of everything.

Railroading and being railroaded is enjoyable. It's what let's you enjoy this thing called "plot" and allows an overarching story to develop instead of "I dunno what to do, let's open a store and be commoners" or "You find a CR 7 encounter on the way there. Let's roll dice for an hour".

you sound like you prefer videogames to spend more time telling the story than actually playing a game.

If you're so interested in plot, why not read a book?

Here we have two sides
>Railroading is evil and any pretense of having a pre-developed idea of where the characters will step next is literally worse than hitler
And
>Railroading is fine as long as you conceal the train and tracks behind conveniently realistic and annoying obstacles.

Because I'd like to experience and create a story instead of a bunch of idiots puddling around doing inconsequential crap or destiny following GMs that force the story onto you. You can and will experience enjoyable games because of so called "railroading".

And the third side, "railroad sometimes when it is the type of game you are runnng, and dont when it isnt".

Because your dichotomies are all retarded and shit.

So you're a pussy bitch and the players do lolrandum crap every session until the game collapses? Sounds more like a beta cuck than a GM.

>quit games that did it on the spot
So you've quit every single game that's planned out what you should accomplish once you got from A to B? Must be pretty crap being in no games whatsoever.

Beta's been discredited, cuck has been solved.

You are behind on your meme insults, wetnose. Getgud.

With your preferences you don't create a story though, you just do what the GM tells you to do. It's a shame you seem to lack the imagination needed to come up with fun and interesting character motivations and goals. Or maybe you just play with some very boring people.

>Roll a character after twenty minutes.
>First combat rolls around
>Die under no fault of my own
>Have to sit on my ass for the rest of the session while everyone else has fun/gets TPK'd every encounter.
Wow you're a shithead. Not a single one of you dickshits would pass level 2 if your GMs didn't fudge that crit the goblin with a crossbow got on you

But if you railroad to any length whatsoever it's automatically a bad game with no middle ground, at least that's the logic to every single pro-freeform/sandbox poster in this thread.

Good thing it only takes 20 minutes to make a character, I assume your new character will be introduced into the adventure within the hour of your first characters death....?

>The GM doesn't just have a stack of pregens for some reason
>Your party went in without hirelings, guides, or any other friendly NPCs for some reason
>First adventure doesn't have prisoners or hostages in the dungeon for some reason

Also
>No fault of my own
Kek

Nah, thats all you.

As GM I spend 90% of my game making stuff up on the fly. My games might suffer slightly in depth but they make up for it in responsiveness.

Pretty cool. I actually did something like this with my own group, but we didn't quite go in the same direction.

>Party goes to Bandit King's Fort cuz he's a bad dude
>It's actually ancient Dwarven Ruin, haunted and shit, not even the Bandits have the full run of the place
>Party kills all the badguys, explore the place, totally dig it
>Put basically all party resources into cleaning the place up, rebuilding the structure
>Clear out the spirits
>Now have cool base of operations

I didn't think for a moment they would take one of my dungeons and just make it a place to live. But, turned out to be fun to let them do it.

They don't really spend a lot of time managing the place though (a lot is run by NPC helpers). We still run very much as Adventurers, but it comes up now and again as another element in the campaign, and I think everyone appreciates it happened.

I like you guys.

>Spend a little less time creating an elaborate background on Eleshtar Starfang, heir to the moon throne, wielder of the silver crescent, beloved by all, drow/woodelf lvl 1 wizard, and your game won't be destroyed if you get eaten up by dire scabs in the second session.
This is funny, but I'm finding it especially funny at the moment.
Probably my worst trait as a GM is my lack of a poker face and that I would totally laugh in front of that player.

Nice try, Mr. Skewy McLopsider.

The sides are more like:

>Railroading is fine as long as the players never find out and/or assume it's happening and are on board
vs.
>Railroading is not fine because it robs the players of their agency and makes the game meaningless, whether they know it or not

Annoying use of "player agency" as a buzzword aside, I fall into the latter camp because I'm a forever DM, and I want to enjoy the game as much as the players. I want to be surprised by what happens. I want the "story" to be "what happened during the game", not something that already preexists in my head before anyone even starts rolling dice (because that's fucking retarded and go write a book if that's what you want to do, players have better things to do with their time than act out your predetermined puppetmaster fantasies).

I DM using mythic DM thing, so I dont plan things in advance at all, after all this book can be even used by solo players that obviously wont plan their adventures in advance anyway.

>So you're a pussy bitch and the players do lolrandum crap every session until the game collapses? Sounds more like a beta cuck than a GM.
SO are you saying that not everyone railroad?

Basically
>OP: "no human kill other human, this happens because of X and Y reasons"
>user: "I do"
>OP: "so you are a evil killer? You should go to jail"

or
>OP:"no black person will vote for trump"
>user:"I am black and will vote for trump"
>OP: "so you are an uncle tom?"

A good GM engages in some level of Railroading. A player who explicitly goes out of his way to fuck up each and every aspect of the GM's plans deserves to be kicked out of the group for being a disruptive shithead because a good GM spends at least a couple hours ahead of time planning out ways to make the adventure exciting.

this does not mean every single aspect of your adventure is set in stone. I've had serious upsets to my plans before and I role with the punches because half the time the actions my players took were excellent ideas I'd never considered and genuinely interesting solutions to problems that had never occured to me.

The other half of the time they're doing retarded crap because they can and they deserve to face the consequences thereof. (less Rocks Fall Everyone Dies more You Kept the Treasure and the king is pissed but you all agreed you were overthrowing him anyway so we're moving ahead on the 'royal knights try to kill you' plotline a couple sessions earlier)

A good GM makes plans but lets players break them. He takes notes, takes their idiotic decisions and good plays into account. It's give and take. Players will want things in the game. Give them those things within reasons And you want to have fun, your players, assuming they aren't jackasses, will understand that.

I disagree on one major point.

A good DM doesn't make plans at all.

A good DM creates NPCs who make plans and attempt to execute them in the service of their agendas.

>All GMs are the same
nigga i let the dice do everything, it's alot more hilarious to see bardy mchorny pants roll a glitch when attempting to do anything.

Thanks

>I'm a GM
>NPC hired the players to do a job
>I'd let them decide not to do it and just explore the world I've built at their leisure if they wanted to, and made it clear
>They find the story compelling enough to keep going

Feels good. And yes, most DMs railroad, and that's okay as long as it makes things more enjoyable for everyone. Many players like having something to do.

But in this case, I'd have fun letting them run through the world I built, too, without going after the primary objective I built.

>there's also a mounting war
>one of the players had to reroll a character after dying
>now two are from one continent, and she's from the other
>primary mission isn't something they need to rush, the problem's been around for a few hundred years and isn't getting any worse, and they know it

Could be cool, but we'll see what happens.

>Implying I don't improv entire sessions

Look at this fucking noob.

>all GMs fudge
My GM rolls his dice in the open.
>all GMs railroad
Sounds like you don't even know what fucking railroading means and are just trying to apply a heavy diluted false version of it to just about everything, like how "magical realm" has come to refer to anything even vaguely sexual. In this case you're trying to use it to refer to basic planning.

You also sound like a garbage GM.