Advice on Railroading

[McSmack]

So It's been brought to my attention that I tend to railroad a bit. Just a bit. But I'm constantly trying to improve my already impressive DMing skillz. So for the session coming up this weekend I'm attempting to move the game away from railroading and give the PC's a bit more independence in how to solve their problems.

I'm hoping to use the collective badassery of the Playground to give me some pointers on how to go about it. It's an Eberron game. Here's a plot synopsis.

The party's chief patron is the last prince of Cyre. They were hired to explore the jungles of Xendrik and help establish a refugee colony that would eventually become New Cyre. During thier explorations they fought off an army of drow, discovered an ancient elven city dating back to the end of the end of the Age of Giants when the elves fought for independence. These ruins became the capitol of New Cyre with the blessing of the Arenal elves, who use it as a staging point for expeditions to explore their past.

The city has been steadily growing for about a year now, with small farming settlements springing up on the lake shore (the city is on an island in the lake). The PC's are being called on once again to investigate what appears to be giant attacks on some of these villiages. In actuality the attacks are from yuanti that have taken over a massive urban ruin to the west, displacing the local giant and drow populations.

The yaunti are hunting the drow for experimentation, and have decided that the new settlers would make easier targets. They aren't interested in the giants, and are using illusion magic to help them take the blame. They hope to spark a war between the burgeouning kingdom and the displaced giants.

The giants in question are actually good aligned primordial jungle giants (Secrets of Xendrik). So I'd like the PC's to eventually, figure it out and start helping them reclaim the ruins from the yuanti. Any ideas about how I can pull this off without railroading or just having an encounter where they fight yuanti disguised as giants using Enlarge + Alter Self?

Looking for specific advice on the scenario, or just general advice on how one goes about running a more open campaign world.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Flowcharts are king here. You need to be sure what kind of consequences the PCs actions will have on the world and what the responses will be by all parties involved.

Also be very prepared to wing it when the players come up with a completely left-field solution to a problem.

[hydroplatypus]

Generally the way I DM is that I give indications of the direction I want them to go (new players so they don't mind), but if they decide not to I have backup options.

On running an open world, the key is to have backup plans in case the PCs do something unexpected (and they will). Although in my game this unexpected stuff has not been to major, but I have several quests that are usable in case the PCs do not go on the planned quest. I construct these as generally stuff that is unrelated to the plot that I plan for them. Ex. An old nobleman's tomb has been opened, releasing undead: go kill them.

I also recommend really putting a lot of work into the setting. Basically flesh out NPCs that aren’t plot important. This helps if the PCs don’t know what to do, and decide to do something random. For instance I have the owner of a pottery shop fleshed out, just in case the PCs decide to go in there. For these NPCs you don’t need exceptional detail, but should have a basis that you can use to improvise something interesting. The amazing thing about these NPCs is that they end up taking traveling advice from Schrodinger. They never have a fixed location until the PCs meet them. For instance the pottery shop owner could appear in any shop in any city, if I need a quick NPC to be interesting. Keep in mind though that after the PCs meet them they cannot be used as Schrodinger’s NPC, and must have a relatively fixed location.

On the specific situation:

What is party composition?

The battles could get a lot more interesting if the PCs (or an NPC) has access to true sight (or something similar). Possibly dispel magic. Imagine what would happen if the giants suddenly turned into a different monster after being hit with dispel magic.
An interesting way to get the PCs to care is to have one of the villains to steal something from the PCs, which might get them to follow and find the plot. Alternativly they could cause damage, or kidnap someone th PCs care about.
If those sound too much like railroading then you could have the NPC’s get more and more concerned about the giants. If important people are concerned then the PCs are likely to take interest (especially if a reward is mentioned).

[Honest Tiefling]

The plot does sound interesting. But my question is what have the PCs tried to do, and what was their reaction to these 'giants'?

[McSmack]

The plot does sound interesting. But my question is what have the PCs tried to do, and what was their reaction to these 'giants'?

They've done nothing so far. This is the beginning of a new chapter in the adventure.

The tribe of hill giants that had inhabited the area near where the human settlements now exist fought the PC's, lost, surrendered once their leader died, and then betrayed the PC's to the drow. The drow and the giants died when they besieged the hill that the city was located on. The PC's repaired an eldritch device that opened the floodgates of a massive dam upriver from the valley and swept both groups out to sea. that occured about six months ago game time.

This particular group of giants haven't had any contact at all with the PC's, or the settlers for the most part. They've been lying low and using guerrila tactics on the yuanti to the west. I think the PC's expectation of the giants will make things interesting.

Party Composition: Lvl 9
half-giant (+0 LA homebrew variant) ice sorcerer
human Glaivelock
human rogue
half-elf bear riding archery ranger
gnome summoner (wifey's "My Little Pony of DOOM" build) first session
and a DM character - a blue dragon with oracle casting instead of sorcerer. The party thinks she's a cleric with minimal combat skills. In truth she's a young member of the Chamber sent to keep an eye on the PC's and the new kingdom to determine how it relates to the Prophecy. She's basically their healbot, who occasionally buffs them.

She's also the cook. They LOVE her.

Up until now most of the battles have been slugfests. I'm trying to break away from that and use more control/save-or-suck things to shake things up.

[Sillycomic]

First, do you agree with your players about being a railroad GM? I say this because players complain that GM’s railroad sometimes when they get locked up for pick pocketing NPC’s right in front of guards. This is not railroading.

Why don’t you tell us what you would do in this situation? How you would “railroad” your players into figuring out the solution to the problem.

Regarding your situation… I would start with the basics.

First, stat up some giants and some “illusioned” Yuanti.

Secondly, think of where everyone is and what they are doing at the moment. The giants are in the jungle enjoying their simple but good life. Do they wander around much, do they interact with the human settlements before all of this? How are the Yuanti doing their illusioned attacks? They have a small encampment somewhere around, or do they trek all the way from home to make their attacks? Do they kill during their attacks, kidnap, just destroy crops and make grunting sounds.

Information is important here. You want to try to give your players as much as possible, so you’re doing to be doing a bit of “Shroedinger exposition.” This means if the adventurers go and talk to anyone, veterans of this forest area, the settlers or trappers or whoever they will find someone who is willing to chat and give them a lot of information.

So, for example the group decides to go to some of the Aenel elves for more information. These elves will think this is odd, since they never had a problem with the giants. They seem like friendly enough beasts, mostly keep to themselves (or whatever the local reputation is for these giants)

Random farmer number 3 will say how many attacks there have been, what happened during the attacks, where they likely happen next.

NPC’s are a wonderful opportunity to give players all sorts of information. There’s no railroading if an NPC just explains what’s going on. To me, this is the prime example of good open role playing. If you just give them a bunch of information and let them decide, then they feel happy that they are coming up with their own decision and making it happen. No railroad involved.

It’s up to the players to ask questions and get information to make an informed decision about what to do. If they don’t do this, then you might as well railroad them anyway.

Word of advice, make sure the NPC has relevant information. There’s no way for a settler to know about the Yuanti conflict with the giants or drow, but it might be something the elves know. So, while information is good, make sure the right NPC has the right kind of info to throw at the PC’s.

Then you can begin to leave clues. Yuanti can illusion magic or alter self. They leave tracks though, don’t they? I’m not all that familiar with Yuanti, do they even leave tracks? That would be mighty strange if these invading giants leave tracks that eventually just disappear or turn to something else.
Plan at least 2 attacks for the adventurers. 1 will be the Yuanti in their disguises and a second one in the forest with the giants. Both attacks will be unique in that the bad guys won’t want to do any fighting.

The yuanti won’t want to be caught against decent opponents, losing their disguises or something worse, so they will try to run as soon as they think they are outmatched.

The giants won’t understand why the people are attacking them, and will either try to talk to the adventurers or simply defend themselves. They can fight back, but they won’t the the ones to draw first blood. If anything make the giants friendly towards the adventurers. You see a giant just past a clearing in the forest, he notices you and waves.

After that, leave it up to the adventurers. Through the illusions yuanti, the giants or some other means they will eventually understand something is not right here. Unless your players are simply blood thirsty and will just kill all the giants in the area… in which case I supposed you get to start a nice little civil war with the settlers and the giants. How cool is that? Let the Yuanti’s plan actually work and flesh out the war of misunderstanding?

Ahh, so now we’re got a little bit of a Xanatos gambit going on here, how brilliant. You definitely deserve something for this.

Or the group finds out about the Yuanit’s pretend attacks and goes to take them down, either way.

Personally I’m rooting for Xanatos, but I’m just a sucker for a brilliant villainous plan that the heroes fall into.

[Rejakor]

I get accused of not railroading enough.

But generally only when i'm sloppy about not throwing enough hooks/giving the PCs reasons to be interested in the stuff i've prewritten and statted up.

Generally any time you have in your mind the way the PCs are going to defeat an enemy(s), then you're in danger of railroading. That's why I don't use macguffins. I'll even throw parties against things they have no chance against if they go head on, without any idea of how they're going to win/get out of it. So when they collapse the whole mine shaft on top of the BBEG they lured in there (and I make it appropriately hard to do that... it's not just a case of enabling any idea they come up with) it's really cool for me as a GM cause I didn't see that coming.

Sometimes i'll think in my head 'well, if it was me i'd do this', but the key is not to go all videogame and set up 'ways' they could do it and then not be ready for them NOT to use the dam to wash away the giants but instead conduct a guerilla warfare campaign based around traps and summoning, but instead just set up the problem and then adjudicate their attempts to solve it fairly/realistically.

I'm a incredibly poor GM but this approach really seems to work really well, despite my crappiness at basically everything else people get into it and excited about it.

I do generally start in media res, though. So maybe that's kind of cheating.

[Amphetryon]

Flowcharts are king here. You need to be sure what kind of consequences the PCs actions will have on the world and what the responses will be by all parties involved.

Also be very prepared to wing it when the players come up with a completely left-field solution to a problem.

Be aware that a certain type of player will consider it railroading if his actions are already accounted for in your plans. I can't say from context whether any of McSmack's players fall into this category, but I've dealt with - and whined about mentioned - dealing with players who react with "Dude, you stepped in plot! Run away!" before.

[McSmack]

No whiny players here. Just a couple of players who are used to a more open game. They're not unhappy, they'd just like more of a chance to roleplay and develop the plot on their own.

I'm trying to expand my horizons as a DM, and give them a better product as it were.

Okay so I should.
A) Make NPC's, both as information sources and potential encounters.
B) Whip up tidbits to feed them via the NPC's so that they can eventually piece things together.
C) Create a flowchart detailing possible outcomes of the various encounters and actions the characters are likely to make.
D) ?????
E) Profit!

Some more plot exposition if anyone cares and would like to give advice.

Looking through the PF Bestiary II, I noticed the Taiga Giants and Rune Giants, and an idea struck me. I'm going to use a toned down primordial version of these instead of the primordial hill giants I'd been planning to use. Their demonic appearance should aid in the PC's natural distrust. I was also thinking that the giants are isolationists to some degree, and have been avoiding contact with the humans, but they've been leaving helpful goods for the farmers and performing other interesting actions (a little girl will tell how a giant saved her from a monster or somesuch.)

The reason for the change is that I wanted the giants to have a more direct connection with the overarching plot. The Yuanti cult in the ruins are being directed by a demon possessed coautl. In Eberron lore the Couatl sacrificed themselves to seal away a bunch of demonic princes that had ruled the world. This particular couatl had been in stasis guarding the prison of one such demon. During the Age of Giants they siphoned some of the magical energy off of the prison to power some of their arcane devices. The weakened seals allowed a portion of the demon to escape after the giants were destroyed and possess the sleeping guardian. The leaking demonic energy warped the local giant population, but also prevented some of the mental degradation seen in other giant tribes.

The awakened guardian, unable to stray far from his prison, invaded the dreams of some passing yuanti and summoned them,pretending to be a god. The giants will only know that a terrible serpent rose from the depths of the city and drove them out with an army of snakemen.

[Godskook]

If you want to avoid railroading, avoid phrases like "I'd like the PCs to....." and instead use phrases like "this will happen unless the PCs interfere", "if the PCs don't help, the giants die" and "the PCs left him alive, so what is he doing now".

[Amphetryon]

If you want to avoid railroading, avoid phrases like "I'd like the PCs to....." and instead use phrases like "this will happen unless the PCs interfere", "if the PCs don't help, the giants die" and "the PCs left him alive, so what is he doing now".

YMMV on that one. Simply phrasing the DM's plot in terms of outcomes likely to occur does not strike me as a substantial difference from telling the players what the DM wants them to do.

[Amador]

The secret to railroading without letting the players know is to let them know about the big bad's end goal. Have BB's actions planned out in advance. If the characters ignore it, the big bad gets his (insert doom scenario here). Make the characters want to go along the tracks laid out by puuting in-game consquences for ignoring the big shiny hook, covered in the bait of glory, fame, treasure. Unless you're playing CoC, then its a big, rusty hook in your mind.

[big teej]

some general anti-railroading advice I've picked up in my own experience.

1. if you feel the need, communication is key.

when I started a gaming group on campus, I ran a "teaching module". I told my party up front before we started. "this is a teaching campaign/module, this is not representative of my style as a DM, it is meant to help us glue the party together and let you all get a handle on your characters, so please, as a favor to me.... stay on the rails."

and the party did, especially in the final dungeon which took up our whole map, the party was very nice to me and went through each room in order (this only led to a "lets ignore this obvious door and look elsewhere" situation.... twice)


long story short, if you feel you NEED to railroad, be up front with the party that you're going to a bit. they may not like it, but at least they've got a heads up.

2. your plot is not what matters.

if you've spent the last 6 weeks crafting yoru campaign, to the last minute detail, and it all revolves around them taking a single part of the bait.

and they ride away from the plot? let them. don't try to salvage the game, let them go.

you have the amazing capability called "the illusion of choie". if the party has 3 doors to pick from, and they can only open one. and you NEED them to pick the right/wrong one for plot purposes, whatever door they pick is what you require.

to broaden the idea. they come to a fork in the road, you have prepped an adventure for "town A, to the left" but not "city B, to the right" and they go to the city. there is NOTHING stopping you from insta-transposing the prepared quest in the city. you may have to edit it on the fly, but you're a DM, you should be doing that anyways.

now, if no matter what you do, the party can't stand the predetermined plot.
let. them. leave.

3. remember, the players have (nigh) total* dominion over there characters, how they think, feel, act, walk, talk, EVERYTHING. never infringe upon this. you control EVERYTHING else in the game, the players only bastion of choice is their character, infringing upon this is tantamount to saying "hey guys, I want you to come over and watch how awesome a story I wrote for a few hours mk?"

4. remember the proper definition of railroading

railroading is not "there is a wall there"
railroading IS "there is a wall everywhere BUT there"

5. try and stay away from anything that can boil down to "it only works/doesn't work because I want it too/don't want it too"

for example, lets say you have a batman wizard* batman in the sense that he's "ready for anything" and can generally pull the group's collective keester out of the fire if necessary.
as such, mayhap you feel he's "too good" (he is after all, a wizard) so to help tone him down, his plans/schemes/whats-its stop working for "some strange reason"

unless you've designed a NPC that has the capabilities to shut down a player's character in such a manner, You've basically sunk into a "I don't like this plan/idea, so it will not work".

6. don't panic when they surprise you.

7. plan for as many eventualities as possible, then reread #6

8. remember, you CAN NOT predict their actions even close to 100% of the time. reread #6

9.... I forgot what was next. so I think I'm through for now.

hope this helps

oh, one last thing.
even if they ride away from the plot you've spent the last 6 months constructing, don't punish them for it.
*purely for the sake of discussion, humor me.

*obvious exceptions include things such as charm/fear effects.

[Godskook]

YMMV on that one. Simply phrasing the DM's plot in terms of outcomes likely to occur does not strike me as a substantial difference from telling the players what the DM wants them to do.

Please don't apply a lip-service fallacy to my advice. Just cause someone pays lip-service(and then doesn't really follow) some advice doesn't mean that the advice was bad. It means that the person didn't follow the advice.

[Amphetryon]

Please don't apply a lip-service fallacy to my advice. Just cause someone pays lip-service(and then doesn't really follow) some advice doesn't mean that the advice was bad. It means that the person didn't follow the advice.

Please explain the difference between what you said and how you think I've misconstrued your words, then.

[NecroRick]

The problem is that you want a particular political outcome. Despite assertions to the contrary, politics isn't the same as combat, because combat has a much better predefined set of win/lose conditions, whereas with politics the range of end states is much wider than TPK vs monster annihilated. To put it another way... politics is messier.

Then you compound it by setting up the precondition of wanting the players to like certain NPCs (the giants) ... despite setting up a classic bait and switch "ha ha! The Giants were good guys all along!". Okay, so through a series of epic battles the party wipes out half the giant enclave and feels pretty good about themselves. Then you do the reveal... and suddenly you robbed them of all their achievements...? (and the Paladin turns into a crappy fighter) Why will the PCs suddenly start liking the giants if they associate them with bad feelings of being robbed of their moment of glory?

Frankly, you might as well go the whole way - have the players genocide the giants, but then just as they kill the last one, a missionary radiating a palpable aura of goodness pops up and berates them for murdering all of his converts... and now the campaign turns into a massive money hunt as the players must go out and get enough gold to resurrect all the giants...

As for which NPCs the PCs will form an attachment to - I gave up trying to predict this a long time ago. One thing I do know is that if you have an NPC that is either all powerful (Elminster types), or for whom everything always goes right (favoured by DM) the players will resent it. From a story-telling point of view, it displaces the PCs as heroes of their own saga and turns them into bit players in some other opera.

If you want the players to like an NPC try having the NPC have a really bad day, one where everything goes wrong for them... you know, the same kind of crap you fling at the players. Then the players won't feel like you are playing favourites.

But don't have the NPC do a big whinge, nobody likes a whiner.

----

Now, I personally am a big fan of campaigns that look like one thing but that are actually another. Example: a Shadowrun Campaign that is _actually_ Call of Cthulhu 'under the covers'. But your default assumption pretty much has to be that the players are never going to figure it out. And you have to be okay with that.

[McSmack]

Wasn't planning on having the party wipe out half the giants. To be honest, they'd be hard pressed to do much decimating to the giants. This tribe has been fighting a guerrilla war with the yuanti, drow and other giant tribes of the region for the past century or so. These giants have swordsage levels. 'Nuff said.

What follows is the rambling string of consciousness that was my brainstorming session for the evening. I started typing and didn't feel like stopping. For the record I'm hopped up on Pop-Ice right now, after the disaster that was my BoT raid. Read if you want to. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

They're wary of the humans, but also very interested in potential allies.

But they've been fooled before by the small folk, so they've adopted a friendly wait-and-see policy. They quietly help out the settlers by killing off local monsters and doing what they can to keep them hidden from the hostile locals.

I'm thinking at some point they're going to stumble onto a battle between the giants and the imposters - who might even be illusion'd up as humans now (to further escalate violence between the humans and the giants. The giants refuse to kill the PC's, opting instead to deal non-lethal damage and then escape, if the PC's fight them. The PC's will get chances to notice that something is not right with the "humans" they've saved. The yuanti are not inclined to stick around for scrutiny, sticking around long enough to spread some lies about the giants and then leave without arousing suspicion.

Of course the PC's will have conflicting reports about the nature of the giants and might opt not to fight at all. In which case the yuanti attack the party, hoping to kill them before trying to escape.

It's entirely possible that the PC's are able to discover the giant's intentions before hand, in which case they'll probably at some point have to go out into the jungle and seek them out.

The giants live deep in the jungle on the slope of a nearby mountain, the area is full of deep chasms and raging rivers. the giant's have been experimenting for years for a way to pierce the yuanti's illusions. They've discovered a slave that will enhance the vision of those who use it, allowing them to pierce the yaunti's particular brand of magic. The key ingredient of the ointment is Dream Serpent venom (Secrets of Xendrik).

This is convenient in a couple of other ways as well. The yuanti still worship the dream serpents - they believe the demonic couatl to be some sort of dream serpent god. It is considered taboo to approach the corpse of one of their blessed serpents or to linger in an area where dream serpent blood has been spilled. One of the odd bits of information that the party can glean from the settlers are tales of giant headless serpents impaled on stakes outside their farms. (the giants use the heads for the venom and stake the bodies near the settlers to ward off the superstitious snakemen).

I'm also thinking of having the local magistrate be in league with the yuanti, or at least have him be manipulated by them. He'll be pushing for the King to mobilize more forces to wipe out the "giant threat".

As for encounters I'm thinking of having an attack by the illusioned yuanti, or perhaps the attacks are being carried out by giants that have been enslaved and broken by the yuanti (this way the true enemies aren't revealed as soon as the PC's manage to kill a baddie and his illusions disperse.) I've got to think on this bit some more. The Yuanti could burst into flames when killed, to hide the evidence. (the ashes would smell of brimstone and magical analysis would indicate demonic energy at work, perhaps). This could be the demon exercising control over his subjects. Yeah that could work, and the demon energy thing will come into play later when they eventually (hopefully) reach the point where they're storming the couatl's lair in the ruined city.

If the PC's manage to get on speaking terms with the giants, at this point there should be enough puzzle pieces to at least make them want to question the giants before they attempt to eradicate them. They'll be given a mission to kill the queen of the dream serpents, Blackfang, a half black dragon dream serpent that lairs in an underwater cave nearby.

The PC's will want to go after Blackfang for a couple of reasons. A) they want the salve to dispel the illusions B) The leader of the giants has information about an eldritch device hidden underneath the city the humans have claimed and C) the device under the city needs a huge Kyber dragonshard to be activated. Blackfang happens to be lairing on a large cache of them.

[Seatbelt]

This may or may not be useful. I'm running the Dawn of Defiance sw campaign by WOTC which is heavy on the rails and light on PC decisions. They got the Felucia and rather than trying to hike to the prison while the NPC repaired the ship they decided it would be smart to wait and repair it themselves, then use it to crash the prison. This would have bypassed all of the Jungle stuff completely. So I had felucian scouts discover them and if that hadn't been motivation to go exploring, they were going to be discovered by Imperial scout troopers. So my solution to railroading in general is to let the PCs do whatever they want. But provide them with strongly compelling reasons to make "whatever they want" become "what I want them to do."

[Godskook]

So my solution to railroading in general is to let the PCs do whatever they want. But provide them with strongly compelling reasons to make "whatever they want" become "what I want them to do."

You're not railroading, you're rolling a bluff check against your players to make them think you're not railroading.

-------------------------------------

@OP, I think a great example of sandbox play is what happened in my session tonight. I had a massive and powerful city-state(Kintarra) that was hunting down the PCs, and was heretofore doing a bad job of it. However, in the prior session, a LBEG(little bad evil guy) set off a wight-pocalypse in a town my PCs were rather fond of. Now, I came into this session expecting some rather classic zombie-survival(D&D wights are pretty much zombies from anything else), and at first, that's what happened. But then the party traveled south to a nearby goblin tribe's cave, and one of the PCs decided he was going to kill 2 birds with one stone, and try getting the Kintarrans to leave the PCs by playing 'hero-messenger' and letting the Kintarrans know about the wights. Problem was, the consequence of this lead to the PCs being captured.

Now, I had this Kintarran plot sitting around for *MONTHS*, just waiting for when the PCs would finally fail to escape from a fight with them or when something else happened that resulted in the PCs being captured, but I wasn't expecting it to happen any time soon, and in fact, I was quite sure I had a reasonable amount of time before it did come back up as a possibility. Honestly, I was rather surprised this happened this game, and one of the PCs just up and brought it all down on their heads.

[Seatbelt]

You're not railroading, you're rolling a bluff check against your players to make them think you're not railroading.

-------------------------------------


This exactly. Although they know I'm running a module because I'm both busy and lazy. So to some extent they accept the rails for the sake of the game. *shrug* doesn't seem to be a problem so far...

[BlueInc]

The best way to "railroad without railroading" that I've found is to give your players several opportunities to do things they want to do that eventually lead back to the plot.

So, interest them in the giants through avenues that they already enjoy. I haven't seen your game, but several ideas from my past games adapted to yours might be as such:

1. For PC's interested in money: It's said that the jungles around the city contain dream serpents, whose venom can be used for a variety of things: Medicine, recreational drugs, illusion-piercing magic... the list is almost endless.

A contact tells the PCs he'll give them $X for the head of a dream snake. PCs investigate, find the headless dream snakes, find the giants. The giants tell the PCs that Blackfang has an entire NEST of dream snakes; they kill Blackfang, they get a half dozen heads and their buyer is thrilled.

2. For PC's with close NPC friends: NPC friend has a family member go missing, asks them to investigate, etc.

Customize it to the NPCs your group is close to. If you group has ties with assassin organizations, for example, have one of their targets go missing in the forest and the PCs contracted to find him, only to find he's been taken to the temple as a prisoner.

Or, have the oracle/cook tell the party there's a delicious pepper that grows in the jungle that she wants. She really needs more dream snake venom for a ritual ceremony, but it sounds less suspicious that she just wants to make amazing curry.

3. For PC's concerned with specific backstory: If you have a PC with a goal or mystery in their story that they want to flesh out, integrate it into the story of the giants and yuanti. For example, if one of the characters is trying to track down their long-lost brother, who was last known to have been captured by drow, have word get back to the PC's that the drow have been selling strange slaves (captured yuanti whose human illusions haven't run out yet)

&etc.

[Amphetryon]

The best way to "railroad without railroading" that I've found is to give your players several opportunities to do things they want to do that eventually lead back to the plot.

<snip>
This "All roads lead to Rome" approach does get complaints about railroading from some. If the PCs feel that everything they do is advancing the DM's meta-plot, some players do raise the objection that their choices were not actually meaningful.

[Sillycomic]

"Railroading without railroading" is actually worse than railroading.

At least when a GM railroads he purposely tells me, "Hey, I know you guys want to go kill these goblins, but the plot is really about these trolls right now. So can you go deal with that?"

A sneaky railroady GM would rather say, "So you buy some supplies and set off goblin hunting. Three days in you find the goblin camp abandoned, it looks like there are troll tracks everywhere. You better go check that out."

Crap on that. If you wanted me to go check out trolls, just tell me to go check out some freaking trolls.

The best thing to do is get rid of the rails. Don't have any set win or lose conditions. You just have NPC's that you, as the GM, are playing.

The best part about GMing an open story is that you don't need to worry about coming up with a solution to your own problem. You just need to create a clever problem. When you do this, you don't GM so much as you just referee. At some point the players in your game will think of a solution to your problem, and it is up to you (as a referee) to decide if that works or not in your world.

They can (and usually do) come up with some off the wall scheme you never would have thought about in a million years of coming up with this plot (like, maybe the group actually searches out the drow they once defeated to get more information about the giants and these attacks. Who would have even seen that coming? But... does it work? As a referee you can say yes, or no... and then come up with a clever way of how it works into the story)

If you are the kind of GM who says, "All roads lead to Rome" then please just tell me. Just explain that every single road sign I come across says "Rome, 5 miles."

Don't tell me there's a sign to Greece and Athens and Alexandria when you have made my choice far in advance that I am going to Rome. At least then we can move beyond the illusion of choice and get into the real meat of what you, the GM, wants me to do.