Suggestions on How to Improve Story/Accidental Railroading?

[ccfRobotics]

Hi,

So I've been playing with my group for awhile now (about 2 years, on and off, and this is my first campaign DMing), and it has been mentioned a few times that the players feel railroaded a bit. I start out trying to plan multiple paths and having enough world detail for them to wander off, but it seems the way I present things makes them feel like they MUST go a certain way - even though I was prepared to have them go somewhere else if they so desired.

What I am aiming to learn to do (eventually) is at the very least have multiple ways they can get to the same point (in an ideal world, having it not be obvious that these various paths are all curving back to a single event, with differences based on how they got there). And not only that, but to somehow make the players feel more like they are choosing the path I "planned" for them to take from multiple "open" choices, as opposed to them being nice and going along with what they (easily) figured out I was planning on. I want to remove the player's feeling of "having" to take certain actions "because plot".

So, does anyone have any general suggestions/tips/insight for this? Thanks in advance!

[HunterOfJello]

One great way to reduce railroading is stop making plans and paths for them to get to the destination. Have them receive the information about what they need to do and leave it at that. Don't create possible answers or paths to accomplish their solution at all. Leave it open to the point that you know what their enemies will do over time (and have them do it) and ignore the actions of the PCs over time as you are planning things. NPCs and bad guys have lives and plans, PCs don't. If the PCs spend several weeks singing songs and frolicking like idiots with pixies in the forest, have the bad guys continue with their plans for world domination without them. Once the PCs leave the forest and get back to town, they'll view the slaughter and destruction left in the wake of the bad guys who came along earlier.

Sometimes PCs aren't fully motivated to do anything in particular or their players just don't feel like going and doing whatever the campaign was based around. If it's a problem of the players not being interested, that's a separate discussion. If the problem is the PCs, then either talk to one or two of the players in order to establish a decent motivation for the PCs to go off doing something, or find an in-game way to positively motivate them. Don't offer them punishment, offer them revenge for their dead sister (who died while they were frolicking.) Set out gold, prestige, power, and more. Pull out the list of deadly sins and have fun.

[eclipsic]

A tip that improved my campaign greatly is to ask your players, at the end of each session, what they plan on doing next. That gives you until next session to put into play some options. Be prepared, however, for one of them to come up with some entirely new direction that they thought of in the interim. Still and all, it's a good habit and leads your players into believing (rightly) that they are controlling their own destines.

[nedz]

One great way to reduce railroading is stop making plans and paths for them to get to the destination. Have them receive the information about what they need to do and leave it at that. Don't create possible answers or paths to accomplish their solution at all. Leave it open to the point that you know what their enemies will do over time (and have them do it) and ignore the actions of the PCs over time as you are planning things. NPCs and bad guys have lives and plans, PCs don't. If the PCs spend several weeks singing songs and frolicking like idiots with pixies in the forest, have the bad guys continue with their plans for world domination without them. Once the PCs leave the forest and get back to town, they'll view the slaughter and destruction left in the wake of the bad guys who came along earlier.

Sometimes PCs aren't fully motivated to do anything in particular or their players just don't feel like going and doing whatever the campaign was based around. If it's a problem of the players not being interested, that's a separate discussion. If the problem is the PCs, then either talk to one or two of the players in order to establish a decent motivation for the PCs to go off doing something, or find an in-game way to positively motivate them. Don't offer them punishment, offer them revenge for their dead sister (who died while they were frolicking.) Set out gold, prestige, power, and more. Pull out the list of deadly sins and have fun.

this basically.

NPCs have plans, some of which may include trying to get the PCs to do jobs for them (which needn't be all they seem); others are just things the PCs stumble across.

You can have locations which are interesting should the players decide to explore, but they might go the other way. Don't be annoyed if this happens they might com back later. You could try to give them reasons to explore the location, but it sounds like you might want to hold off on that for a while.

You can always through 'random' encounters at them, in fact you should do this if they are travelling or else the world may seem a little deserted.

As a DM you have to like creating stuff because you should expect to not use half of it. Its good to have a pile of stuff lying around this should you need to 'improvise'. Ironically preparation makes for the best improvisation :smallsmile:

Eventualy, after a lot of practice, all of this will become easy.

It is even possible to manipulate players without them realising, as you get to know your players you should also be able to make reasonable guesses as to how they will react to various pieces of information. Is this railroading ? Not really because you are not forcing the plot.

Sandbox games can suffer from players getting bored because nothing happens. It helps to have pro-active players. You may find though that yours are used to being spoon-fed, in fact they may even secretly prefer it. YMMV.