Choo choo! Stories of railroading

[Kurald Galain]

We came across the subject of DM railroading in another thread, and I thought it would be fun to share stories of some bad cases of railroading that you've encountered (or performed yourself) in whatever RPGs you've played. Let's not argue about what exactly the definition of "railroading" should be; I think we all know it when we see it. Here's a fitting inspirational comic (www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=14), too.

So I've got two stories off the top of my head...

We were playing in a standard fantasy world as the standard party of low-level traveling misfits, looking for some bad guys and some good loot, until we came across the job of guarding a caravan going somewhere. From that point on, we were accompanied by four identical DMPC elves that were at least ten levels higher than us, that of course were invulnerable to everything we could try against them, and would play annoying pranks at random with no saving throw. More to the point, whenever we would try to go away from the caravan, an elf would walk or teleport in, harass or enchant us until we were back at the caravan, then go back to doing nothing. Yeah, that was a lot of fun... not!
The weirdest part was that this railroading was apparently not enough for the DM, as one or two sessions later he started with randomly teleporting the party to his series of planned but seemingly-unrelated destinations whenever he felt we were taking too long. The breaking point for the campaign was the end of that session, where we had to ask a powerful NPC for help by explaining to him what was going on. Queue five confused looks from the players as the campaign had been so utterly random so far that none of us had any idea what was going on. This disappointed the DM so much that there was never a next session.

And then there was the case when we were playing an evil campaign, where all characters basically had different goals and motivations; the group consisted of three small alliances of two PCs each. We were tasked by the resident dragon to collect a McGuffin, and would gain lots of power in return. The dragon was, again, at least ten levels above us, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't simply collect the McGuffin itself, but never mind that.
We had successfully collected the thingy and were on our way back to the dragon. Our self-proclaimed leader, a beguiler who thought he had proven he was the most powerful of us, had claimed the McGuffin for himself and was guarding it. At some point during the day, my warlock had killed one of our peasant NPCs for food, because hey, evil. This deed enraged the beguiler's teammate who proceeded to attack me. In the resulting confusion, the third team knocked out the beguiler, grabbed the McGuffin, and ran off. So far, so good for a party like that, yes?
So team beguiler and team warlock joined forces again to kill the other two and recover the McGuffin. However, the beguiler did a pretty shoddy job at convincing us we were actually on the same side, meaning that his teammate and I still wanted to kill each other over the earlier incident. And so, during the travel, I ambushed that teammate, and combat ensued. The beguiler thought he could easily take us since I had let the others do most of the fighting so far. He found out the hard way that I had a few tricks that I hadn't used before, most notably the ability to counter/dispel his spells. And by "the hard way" I mean that me and my teammate killed him.
Again, so far so good. So what happens next? The aforementioned ridiculously powerful dragon flies in, resurrects the beguiler and teammate, intimidates us all into working together or he'll eat us, and flies off again. Yeah, nice job, DM. Apparently he wanted an evil party with conflicting motivations but without any inter-party conflict. Predictably the campaign didn't last long after that.

[Khedrac]

Dragonlance - the original series of modules.

[obryn]

I just posted this in another thread this morning, but... Well, might as well share my humiliation again!


Here's the situation... Dark Sun*. 4e. The party is investigating rumors of an ancient goddess reawakening. The priests in the temple above sent them looking in the catacombs for her "heart" to help her awaken further. Turns out, the priests are a bunch of psurlons who've been tapping into her divine powers via an intricate ritual, and the Heart is an ancient primal artifact they intend to use as a bludgeon to prevent her from waking fully. They don't want to lose the source of their powers.

The party tipped off the psurlons that they knew their nature before venturing into the catacombs and grabbing the Heart. It took about an hour of in-game time to get it, so the "priests" had an hour to prepare. In that hour, they put their contingency plans into place...

(1) They bound a captive Angel of Vengeance to guard the temple
(2) Put 2 psurlons and 2 non-psurlon mind-clouded believers with the angel to guard outside the catacombs and slow down/defeat the party (hopefully ending in the deaths of the 2 non-psurlons who might otherwise ally against the slugs).
(3) Retreated to the seat of their power, the heart of the ritual, where they are at their strongest,
(4) Readied their traps and wards on the tunnels leading in and out of their secret hiding place, and
(5) Began plans to hunt down the party if they escape - involving mobilizing a few giant Psurlon Warworms in the city.

After the party (violently) dealt with the guards, they decided to descend into the depths of the Shrine to finish off the slugs once and for all. There was a brief parley, and the party said, "heck with it, we're outta here."

So that's where the trapped and warded tunnel comes in. The tunnel behind them started collapsing; I'm picturing a rather dangerous escape sequence with later follow-up from vengeful slugs. You know, the classic "run out of a collapsing building and try not to die" scene.

It was a pretty simple skill challenge (I thought); the DC was reasonable for the task at hand. Basically, the party would make Acrobatics or Athletics checks (their choice) to succeed and dodge falling rocks from the collapsing tunnels; Dungeoneering checks could be used to get the party a bonus. If half the party succeeds, they make progress towards getting out. Anyone who fails a check takes a decent amount of damage, but if half succeed, they can pull their companions along. It's a short one - only 4 successes were needed before 3 failures.

The problem is ... 4 out of the 6 PCs are really, really bad at Athletics and Acrobatics. Even the party's Fighter is weighed down by his armor/shield and needed a 12 to succeed on the Athletics check. So what I thought would be a fairly easy - though hopefully kind of tense - escape ... didn't turn out that way. At all. The party failed abysmally twice, took some damage, and turned back to fight the psurlons.

So it basically looks like I'm a huge railroady DM saying, "Go fight these dudes or ... ROCKS FALL, EVERYONE DIES."




* In my version of the campaign setting, there were once gods on Athas, but they were arguably just as bad as sorcerer kings, with less "defile the world" and more "destroy all heretics." Distant ancestors of the beast-headed giants, they drew on divine energies but were fully on this world and mostly spent time warring with one another. Working together with Rajaat, the sorcerer-kings vanquished them (though they had trouble actually killing them) before turning to the Cleansing Wars. The party inadvertently released a god quite a while ago because I have a player who can't resist pushing every metaphorical button he sees. And they also paved the way for Dregoth's Coruscation - his ascendancy into godhood - which I'm saying opened up the gates to divine power, causing the gods to reawaken ... slowly. My players wanted to pursue a "bring the gods back" campaign, and this is where it's led.

[kyoryu]

Dragonlance - the original series of modules.

This. So much this.

[Kurald Galain]

Dragonlance - the original series of modules.

Considering most of us forum readers probably have never read or even heard of these modules - what about them?

[Lord Torath]

The 15 or 16 original modules follow the plot of the Chronicles trilogy (or possibly vice-versa). If you try to do something different, you generally start running into Dragonarmy patrols until you turn around and go back the way you're supposed to be going.

There are other methods of getting you back on the rails, but they are generally similar in tact and subtlety.

[Rhynn]

Dragonlance - the original series of modules.

I've just run the first module, and that, at least, is mostly a location-based adventure with sort of a quantum railroad hook - there's several logical directions to go and several ways to end up at the location, but they all will lead to Xak Tsaroth. The second module looks pretty okay, too.

It does get bad after that, though, with advice to the DM about how to have PCs and NPCs cheat death because they "need to be alive" for later plot points.

I'm looking forward to gleefully demolishing the rest of the series - I had the players all make their own characters, and had one of them (the cleric-to-be) find the Crystal Staff on a dead Plainsman on the way to Solace...


Considering most of us forum readers probably have never read or even heard of these modules - what about them?

Basically, they're the definition of railroading, and the origin-point of the modern style of adventure that developed into the scene-based adventures (in 3E, 3.5, Pathfinder, and 4E).

There's a big, open world, a large, complicated plot, and the PCs have to go to the right place at the right time, following the module. It's the definition of "Oh, uh, you can't go that way. You have to go here or the story won't work." For 14 modules straight (DL15 and DL16 aren't actually adventures in the storyline; they're anthologies that happen separate of the plot; I think a few of the ones in between aren't quite part of the plot either).

[Kudaku]

I'm having an interesting bit of unintentional railroading, I'm not sure if that counts.

Basically we're running an adventure path on Roll20.net (http://roll20.net/), which is both the first time we're trying out a premade adventure path and the first time we're using an online tabletop tool. Because Roll20 has some pretty cool bells and whistles I can extract maps from the AP PDF and insert them on battle mats, create tokens for characters and monsters, and so on - though it takes a while, the game looks very good this way. Normally I'd be using cardboard token stand-ins and drawing layouts on a flipmat.

However, since I am only able to do this with the content the AP gives me, as well as prepping some generic maps besides (campsite, tavern, market etc) and because it usually requires about an hour of setup for each map, I don't really have the chance to have something prepared if the players throw me a big curve ball ("we step through the portal to the abyss" or "I punch the shopkeeper for insulting me with his prices" for instance). That usually means I'll ask for a 20 minute recess while I throw something together on Paint.

And it seems my players are responding to this by trying to be "on track" with the adventure path. Whenever they make a decision that advances the plot and I load up the next "step" they feel rewarded. I guess this might also be related to the social contract in playing adventure paths.

[Tengu_temp]

Me and my brothers were invited to a mutual friend's Warhammer Fantasy group. They agreed and made their characters - a human noble and a dwarven engineer - I decided to hang around for the first session to see how it'll look like.

The session starts at an open slave market in a large Imperial city (nevermind that slavery is illegal in the Imperium), where another party member - a priest - negotiates for the release of an important prisoner. Everyone else is left picking their noses for an hour as the negotiations go nowhere. When this finally becomes apparent to everyone, they decide on a different course of action - ambush the slave caravan that'll transport the prisoner. It's risky but the characters are very strong (much more powerful than starting WFRP characters should be, the DM used some weird rules) and have NPCs to help, so it's worth a try. They set up an ambush, complete with traps created by the engineer (who was really good at crafting stuff), and wait.

Here's where the big railroading starts. When the caravan arrives the traps all fail by DM fiat, and suddenly something like 30 dudes and an ogre jump out of the bushes, surrounding the party in a large circle. The noble sees this won't go well and tries to escape on his horse, specifically going away from the ogre, but the DM declared that the ogre catches his horse and breaks its neck without any rolls. Seeing they're surrounded, the players are getting ready for a last stand, but nope! The DM says that they're beaten and captured, once again without rolling a single die. The session ends there.

Needless to say, nobody returned for the next one.

[obryn]

And it seems my players are responding to this by trying to be "on track" with the adventure path. Whenever they make a decision that advances the plot and I load up the next "step" they feel rewarded. I guess this might also be related to the social contract in playing adventure paths.
Given the constraints of your game - prepared adventure path, lots of prep time involved - that's a reasonably polite thing to expect from them. If your players want to be led, you're not railroading them.

-O

[Slipperychicken]

Paraphrased of one of the worst sessions I've ever played in.

[My Wizard is on a Phantom Steed, flying 240ft/round "around canopy level". The ground is swarming with wolves and bandits]

DM: As you fly through, you crash into a tree...

Me: What? no Dex check?

DM: Reflex save for half

Me: Great, I'm going to keep flying...

DM: The wolves kill your horse- [he does not roll anything. No attack roll, no damage roll. He just said this.]

Me: How? I'm at the treetops, and they're on the ground. And you didn't roll anything.

DM: They jumped.

Me: So how high is this canopy supposed to be again?

DM: About 35 feet up.

Me: They jumped, [I]35 FEET IN THE AIR? The Jump check to do that is in the triple digits! How does that even work?!

DM: Your horses legs were kind of hanging down. It's not really 35 feet.

Me: That still puts the Jump DC at 30ft. It's ****ing insane! There's no ****ing way anything, especially a wolf, could jump that high!

DM: They're magic wolves. They kill your Phantom Steed and you fall to the ground. [he does not roll one d20 in this entire exchange. No, he wasn't using an online die-roller. He didn't even have a computer at the table]

Me: So you're telling me these wolves can jump 35 feet in the air and kill a horse without making so much as an attack roll.

[Argument devolves into shouting and cursing]

I quit the game a few sessions later (at least one of the other players sympathized with me) over similar DM-buggery, and I didn't look back but I think the group imploded.

[Kaveman26]

There was a Knights of the Dinner Table strip that is the very definition of railroading. The DM frustrated beyond belief at players wandering devises a quest where the group must rescue a princess from a tower. The path to the tower is a straight line with miles of dense absolutely unpassable forest on either side. The players try everything possible to bypass the straight road and are thwarted at every turn. They eventually mutiny and flip the table.

[kyoryu]

And, FWIW, railroading isn't *bad*. It's just a type of play, has its strengths and weaknesses, and various people will have opinions on its awesomeness or lack thereof.

[Hyena]

Well, there was this one time...

DM created a plot where PCs were captured as a premise and asked the players if they want to role-play said premise. Two players agreed - one was easily subdued by the villains. The second had an optimized character.
He easily resisted both poison and mook attack, then he proceeded to beat the crap out of monster of CR 4.
After failing to kidnap one PC, DM decided he's not going to step down - he guided (read as "railroaded") the PC to some kind of duchess, which promised the failed-to-be-kidnapping-victim a monetary reward for freeing other PCs and killing the bandits. After deciding that reward wasn't enough, the sole survivor left the manor and headed to search for some another quest.
And then DM dropped Orcus on him.

[Kurald Galain]

And, FWIW, railroading isn't *bad*. It's just a type of play, has its strengths and weaknesses, and various people will have opinions on its awesomeness or lack thereof.

Well, feel free to post a story in the thread about the time you were railroaded as a player and found it totally awesome.

[mjlush]

Dragonlance - the original series of modules.

I will speak up for Dragonlance I really enjoyed them... but we did have a very enlightened GM :smile:

[kyoryu]

Well, feel free to post a story in the thread about the time you were railroaded as a player and found it totally awesome.

I personally hate railroading. But I know a number of people that loved the DL module series, for instance.

[ShadowFireLance]

[Dm Fails to Railroad Players]
And then DM dropped Orcus on him.

Can i sig that? please? That is So, SO FUNNY!! :smallbiggrin:

[Man on Fire]

Well, I sometimes do some small railroadings. Like in one-shot game I ran, where players, being literally inches from going to the source of all strange things happening around decide randomly to drop everything and visit some completely unrelated place at the other end of the town I briefly mentioned. Cue to angry mob wanting to lynch npc they just saved. I honestly had no idea how to move things I already estabilished by clues and hints, they'll find at mansion I made them ran off, to goddam graveyard.

There was a bit of railroad at end of my first pathfinder game, because I wanted to give players reason to continue adventuring together but it came horribly because we had to get out from the room (club we play in was closing andwe had to clean the room and scram), and I wanted to rush things. But at next game I retconned that ending and we started from that moment.

In next game n the same campaing we had to wrap things fast, so I did some railroading to get them off the rails (off the train they were in) and I later apologized to them for it and said it was only because I was in hurry again and had I more time, I would have avoid this and find another way to get them of the train.

Any advice how to avoid such situations?

[Surfnerd]

As a DM I one time snowed my players in. Just trapped them in a blizzard for an entire session. Had them roll to survive and try and find their direction. They just kept getting more lost in the snow. I'm not even sure where I as the DM was going with this. We never returned to that game. Oddly enough both the players in the campaign still remember and talk about that session. Mainly because they want to know what comes next.

I'm deciding to resurrect that campaign all these years later to put it to rest.

I always wondered why there were so many dragonarmy patrols in that stupid adventure. Started it twice as a player and hated it both times. Never read the DL novels or those adventures. Liked the DL campaign world but just didn't get into the novels. I know heresy.

[Rhynn]

And, FWIW, railroading isn't *bad*. It's just a type of play, has its strengths and weaknesses, and various people will have opinions on its awesomeness or lack thereof.

This gets into semantics a bit, but IMO "railroading" gets misused.

It's not railroading if there's a plot, a narrow playing field, and a "right way to proceed." That's pretty much every adventure since AD&D 2E came out.

It's a railroad when the DM unfairly and artificially starts forcing the players to go a certain way (often with a super-powered DMPC). Railroading is, IMO, a word for a kind of bad DMing. The point is that "you cannot get off the rails." If you never try, railroading doesn't come up.


I personally hate railroading. But I know a number of people that loved the DL module series, for instance.

That's the thing, they can be perfectly good modules. Whether they railroad or not is kind of a subtle thing... I guess someone can consider it railroading that if you go in a certain direction, you'll find endless hordes of draconians stopping your progress. I just consider that an aspect of the setting and environment - a world-conquering army is camped out over there!

Now, if Fizban starts showing up and teleporting the PCs back on track, that's going to be railroading.

I detest railroading, but I have enjoyed running the first module (one of the PCs was a druid, so that was a perfectly natural hook to get them to take the Crystal Staff to the Forest Master, who sent them off to Xak Tsaroth), and look forward to running the rest while ignoring all the advice about keeping NPCs alive for "plot points" (if the players had killed the dragon when it strafed them - the "Riverwind dies" scene - I would have applauded them). Any damage they wreak to the next module I can fix while prepping it for running. The first module is a very straightforward "through the wilderness into the dungeon" deal, with some good traditional elements (quirky NPCs to interact in the form of the gully dwarves, etc.).

[obryn]

This gets into semantics a bit, but IMO "railroading" gets misused.
Yup. It's a word that's been stretched rather horribly beyond its original definitions. In some corners of the web (usually but not always OSR strongholds), it's used generically for anything that's not a pure "sandbox."

-O

[Rhynn]

Yup. It's a word that's been stretched rather horribly beyond its original definitions. In some corners of the web (usually but not always OSR strongholds), it's used generically for anything that's not a pure "sandbox."

-O

Yup. It's probably an inevitable evolution for a term like this - it turns into a meme and loses focus and its origins. But it originated as a term for a specific type of bad DMing, and using it much more loosely than that makes it a less useful term.

[zimmerwald1915]

Our party had taken an odd job shunting freight into and out of a siding by a depot. One day, the engineer who would haul it to the nearest town didn't show, and the stationmaster eventually drafted us into operating the locomotive. We were hours behind time, but he said if we drove boldly we could make up the difference before the freight had to arrive. This train had a reputation, you see; it hadn't been late since the tracks were originally laid.

Well, we each took up our roles. The cleric and fighter became engineer and fireman respectively, while the rogue and I (I played a wizard) were brakemen. The engineer and fireman hatched a plan to somehow double the fireman's coal throughput with magic - we'd climb the upcoming grade faster, and instead of coasting down the other side we'd power through and really make up the time. It'd be our job as brakemen to make sure none of the couplings or brakes cracked under the strain.

We came down the grade at ninety miles an hour, when I rolled two natural ones in a row. Some valve somewhere burst and sprayed the locomotive cabin with scalding steam. The engineer and firemen were both dead within a round. The other brakeman tried to get control of the locomotive - evasion, you see - while I tried to apply the brakes to the rear cars, but it wasn't enough. At the next bend, we went hurtling off the tracks. TPK.

And it was all because of inflexible GMing, I tells ya!

[Anxe]

I love you Zimmerwald.

One of the modules I've run, The Tomb of Kruk-Ma-Kali, has a rather railroady part to it. The only way into the tomb is through a door that can only be opened by a DC 30 strength check. The door is magically enchanted to prevent other methods of getting in and the magic can't be dispelled. It would've been extremely railroady except...
The enchantment doesn't apply to the walls around the door. My players tunneled their way around using disintegrates. Worked out fine.

[Vknight]

Pathfinder modules dealing with the various factions. Fail the DC: 15, 20 perception check and you are messed up and it gets worse when it says and no one can help you not even unknowingly

One of my players is like this. He Dm's his own game and tells me about it
He has a group of 20 Lizard men planning to storm a room they are in next session. And will have 1 escape. No chance for the PC's to have the ability to kill all of them. Just the Lizard men get what they want and no matter how many they kill of the finite 20 lizard men always one will get away

By I think the worst thing is his NPC, Kenku. Pirate Captain. He's level 6 and has been bossing the party around forcing them to go where he wants(even when its bad for the story, or when the PC's want to do side-quests he forces them to advance the plot)
Problem. They can't kill him even at level 5 with a party of 8.
All because the guy has a pre-planned death to save the Elves if the party decides to let the elves die.

[AMX]

Uh, Hyena?
I don't quite see how your story qualifies as railroading.

They were doing setup for the actual game, and the player explicitly agreed to that - you don't get to cry "Railroading!" if you board the train voluntarily.

Of course, the Orcus thing at the end was ill-advised - I would have explained to the player that, since he was not interested in meeting the other characters, and I was not interested in running a separate session exclusively for him, he could either build a new character who would start already together with everybody else, or leave.

[Kudaku]

Given the constraints of your game - prepared adventure path, lots of prep time involved - that's a reasonably polite thing to expect from them. If your players want to be led, you're not railroading them.

-O

A fair point. In general I was one of the DMs that tried to embrace the sandbox, allowing my players to go, do, and want anything they wanted. There would be a plotline going on in the background but I'd rarely plan more than two or three sessions ahead because it was impossible to predict where we'd be in three sessisons. However I find that my games have actually improved by including more "direction" - like you said, maybe my players wanted something to nudge them along every once in a while.

I guess my point is that people that people enjoy different things and depending on your definition of "railroading", it's not always a bad thing. Sandboxes aren't always the answer.

[Hyena]

Of course, the Orcus thing at the end was ill-advised - I would have explained to the player that, since he was not interested in meeting the other characters, and I was not interested in running a separate session exclusively for him, he could either build a new character who would start already together with everybody else, or leave.
Well, that wouldn't have worked. The character in question was built specifically to break the rails and fail the kidnappings.


Can i sig that? please? That is So, SO FUNNY!!
Sure. After all, I was dming this one.

[Rhynn]

A fair point. In general I was one of the DMs that tried to embrace the sandbox, allowing my players to go, do, and want anything they wanted. There would be a plotline going on in the background but I'd rarely plan more than two or three sessions ahead because it was impossible to predict where we'd be in three sessisons. However I find that my games have actually improved by including more "direction" - like you said, maybe my players wanted something to nudge them along every once in a while.

Well, really, the whole point of proper sandbox play is to introduce rumors etc. as hooks to draw the PCs into the places you've actually prepared. "Sandbox" doesn't mean "improv"...

And traditional "sandbox" campaigns had a whole lot of focus/direction, usually in the form of a big ole dungeon of endless adventure. Centering your campaign around Undermountain and Waterdeep, for instance, will give you a huge lot of direction, freedom, and story.

[Calmar]

This gets into semantics a bit, but IMO "railroading" gets misused.

It's not railroading if there's a plot, a narrow playing field, and a "right way to proceed." That's pretty much every adventure since AD&D 2E came out.

It's a railroad when the DM unfairly and artificially starts forcing the players to go a certain way (often with a super-powered DMPC). Railroading is, IMO, a word for a kind of bad DMing. The point is that "you cannot get off the rails." If you never try, railroading doesn't come up.

Thank you for this post, Rhynn. This is the way my current group and me do things most of the time and it's very enjoyable. To me, a well thought out and structured plot is much more fun than some of the bland supposedly open world campaigns I have seen where nothing really happens. :smallsmile:


Well, really, the whole point of proper sandbox play is to introduce rumors etc. as hooks to draw the PCs into the places you've actually prepared. "Sandbox" doesn't mean "improv"...

And traditional "sandbox" campaigns had a whole lot of focus/direction, usually in the form of a big ole dungeon of endless adventure. Centering your campaign around Undermountain and Waterdeep, for instance, will give you a huge lot of direction, freedom, and story.

I wish more people would know that. The "sandbox" games I've seen basically revolved around some very vague story idea of the DM and us doing 'investigations' that basically were the DM keeping us somehow occupied with us getting nowhere. :smallconfused:

[Jane_Smith]

My current dm is doing that a bit unintentionally. He likes to pull the "the order gives you this mission" /teleport to next location end scene kinda things. Hes done it twice now already. I just wish hed let us pick our own path or our own jobs, we don't mind the extra wait time for him to come up with stats/etc.

[Rhynn]

I wish more people would know that. The "sandbox" games I've seen basically revolved around some very vague story idea of the DM and us doing 'investigations' that basically were the DM keeping us somehow occupied with us getting nowhere. :smallconfused:

Yeah, that's not really a sandbox so much as it is a bland game.

"Sandbox" doesn't mean less prep for the DM, it means the same amount of prep (i.e. as much as you can bear), but directed differently, with very different results. I prefer it for the freedom and for what, IMO, is a greater efficiency of time spent preparing to play gained.

Basically, when creating a sandbox world (of any size; I've picked "Waterdeep, Undermountain, and the Savage Frontier from the Anauroch west to the sea"), you have to fill it with locations, people, and factions. You should make things happen on certain timelines unless interfered with by the PCs. Some of these can be total surprises that are meant to bring the players' attention to some part of the gameworld (for instance, unless the PCs randomly stumble into Luskan and wreck the Hosttower of the Arcane, on Date X Luskan launches a magical invasion of Ruathym, or whatever).

Sandboxes can also have a lot of focus - building a campaign around the Undermountain means you'll never be going "so what do we do now?" because the answer is always "let's explore this part of the Undermountain we've never been to."

This isn't to say that a structured-plot-based game is worse (or better), but DMs need to know what they're doing and play to it. You can't have a "sandbox" with a storyline the PCs are supposed to somehow find. You also can't have a "sandbox" with nothing to do (an unfortunately common standard, frankly!) except some random crap now and then. A sandbox world needs a hexmap, a lot of hooks, and some well-developed areas to start with (you develop the rest as soon as you know they'll be relevant after another session or three).


My current dm is doing that a bit unintentionally. He likes to pull the "the order gives you this mission" /teleport to next location end scene kinda things. Hes done it twice now already. I just wish hed let us pick our own path or our own jobs, we don't mind the extra wait time for him to come up with stats/etc.

That is classic railroading and it is horrible.

I think every DM/GM running D&D should start with (or run, at least once) the "here's a big dungeon that goes down 6+ levels that I've only mapped the first 1-2 levels of, here's the nearest settlement, have fun" and then expand that (more dungeon levels, wilderness maps, more detail into the settlement, other adventure locations/dungeons/settlements in the vicinity" -style of campaign.


The secret of good sandboxing is that you start shallow but broad. You come up with as many ideas and hooks as you can, pin them to parts of the map (whether city, dungeon, or wilderness map), and then make up more detail as needed. You do a lot of random tables (wilderness encounter tables, dungeon encounter tables, city encounter tables, etc.), stock NPCs, etc. You don't come up with plots, scenes, stories, or anything like that - you come up with characters, factions, motivations, ongoing plots and situations that the PCs run into, interact with, and totally mess up. Then you keep a few steps ahead of them planning what will happen next unless they interfere, what the NPCs will try to do, how they react to what's happened, etc.

I actually ran into all this almost by accident running my first Artesia: Adventures in the Known World campaign several years back, and since then I've done a lot of reading and thinking and writing on sandboxes and cannot adequately express my love for them and my preference for them in most fantasy RPGs. (They absolutely do not work for some kinds of games; I think I might be able to make one work for a cyberpunk game, but only in a very limited and particular way... Stars Without Number proves scifi sandboxes work, but only for a pulpy space opera kind of SF...)

Why bother writing a complicated, detailed plot and series of scenes that the PCs will inevitably demolish, when I can just write up a bunch of ideas and locations and characters and riff off those?

[The Fury]

To be fair this is a really minor example of railroading and the railroady bit doesn't show up until the end, but here goes.
Many years ago our group had a DM that plotted a campaign that he was rather proud of. He explained to me that at some point the party will make a decision and at that point the campaign's story will diverge, "Path A or Path B," he explained
Me, being the petty little jerk that I was insisted on Path C. The DM shot me this look like I just grew antennae and insisted that there was no Path C. Since then I was dedicated to jumping the perceived rails and even got most of the party in on it, every time the party did something unexpected one of us would ask, "Path C?"
The DM would always say no.
Before the "moment of decision" came up I had to drop out of the group for a while but one of my friends did explain to me what happened. "The moment of decision" came when the party had discovered the Artifact of Doom, which all D&D campaigns must include. The moment of decision was regarding which NPC we would give the Artifact to, the party knew that one of the NPCs was evil, both insisted on not revealing their names to the party, it was hard to trust either one. So the party decided to keep the artifact for themselves which turned out to be the Path C I wanted so desperately to find and also the decision that broke the campaign.

[Kudaku]

My current dm is doing that a bit unintentionally. He likes to pull the "the order gives you this mission" /teleport to next location end scene kinda things. Hes done it twice now already. I just wish hed let us pick our own path or our own jobs, we don't mind the extra wait time for him to come up with stats/etc.

Out of curiosity, how long has he been DM'ing? It kind of sounds like he's trying to hurry the game along to keep the focus on the exciting bits. If you feel that way I'd strongly suggest you bring it up with him, in a good way. It's a delicate situation but I think most people would appreciate the feedback if their players are troubled by something in-campaign.


Well, really, the whole point of proper sandbox play is to introduce rumors etc. as hooks to draw the PCs into the places you've actually prepared. "Sandbox" doesn't mean "improv"...

And traditional "sandbox" campaigns had a whole lot of focus/direction, usually in the form of a big ole dungeon of endless adventure. Centering your campaign around Undermountain and Waterdeep, for instance, will give you a huge lot of direction, freedom, and story.

I guess sandbox means different things to different people. To me sandbox translates loosely to "here's the world map, you can do whatever you want. where do you want to start?" and then using a combination of on-the-fly-DMing, preparing 2-3 sessions in advance and writing some fairly generic plot hooks that you'd be able to fit into most areas for when the players throw you a curve ball and they're suddenly in an area or a situation you had absolutely nothing prepared for.


Yeah, that's not really a sandbox so much as it is a bland game.

"Sandbox" doesn't mean less prep for the DM, it means the same amount of prep (i.e. as much as you can bear), but directed differently, with very different results. I prefer it for the freedom and for what, IMO, is a greater efficiency of time spent preparing to play gained.

The secret of good sandboxing is that you start shallow but broad. (...) You don't come up with plots, scenes, stories, or anything like that - you come up with characters, factions, motivations, ongoing plots and situations that the PCs run into, interact with, and totally mess up. Then you keep a few steps ahead of them planning what will happen next unless they interfere, what the NPCs will try to do, how they react to what's happened, etc.

Why bother writing a complicated, detailed plot and series of scenes that the PCs will inevitably demolish, when I can just write up a bunch of ideas and locations and characters and riff off those?

I took the liberty of underlining some parts in your thread - I'm not really sure what the difference is between plots and ongoing plots, or the difference between a scene and a situation... Could you clarify?

As for "shallow, but broad" and "why bother writing a complicated, detailed plot": If you don't know how the plot will develop more than two or three sessions in advance, you can't foreshadow, hint, or leave chekov's guns leading up to anything more three weeks in advance. If the players ask you a question you wouldn't necessarily be able to answer it because you haven't thought that far ahead, so you'd answer it on the fly - and hasty answers tend to be less useful that answers that have been thought through.

Think of it like cooking - if you read through the recipe and make sure you have all the ingredients before you start baking you're less likely to have an awkward moment half-way through when you realize you have no eggs.

As for the storyline I mentioned earlier - Last week my players were revealing plot turns and story elements that answer questions they were asking in October (Rise of the Runelords spoilers): Why did the goblins steal the priest's remains? Why are the murdered citizens marked with the Sihedron rune? Is Foxglove the Skinsaw Man?, when we first started the AP. Questions I can encourage the players to ask (by leaving handouts and handing out quests for instance) because I knew the answers two or three months ahead of time, and that the questions would be relevant. I find that if you start out the campaign with an idea of where the players will end up down the road (1, 2, 6, or even 12 months ahead in time) and at least a loose idea of how they'll get there, it's easier to tell a really great story. That's what I think made this campaign better for me, and for my players.

Now I'm not a proponent of railroading by any means, but I do think that having structure and a red thread in the game from the start isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater when you're discussing different approaches to DM'ing.

[Baalthazaq]

In the interest of fairness, I present 2 cases of railroading.
1 good. 1 bad.

The Bad:
After we arrive in a town that is rebelling, we find that the priest of the town has been killed, gutted, and strung up inside the church, and the leader of the town is quite happily using the church, for the last 4 days, as his base of operations.

We have about 30 or 40 people who see this, the town is furious with the leader, and unanimously elects my character (Paladin) as adjudicator in the trial.

Evil Priest Murdering Psychopath: What evidence do you have against me?
Me: The body has been dead for days, you've been there for days and said nothing. Everyone in the town knows this. We have witnesses. We have your documents. We have your diary. We have your signed confession from your aide. We have magic. We have that you attacked the priests who entered the church. We have a surviving priest who escaped. You attacked us as soon as we walked in.
EPMP: So you say.
DM: The crowd boos you, and asks for your evidence.
Me: What? What about all the stuff I just said?
DM: Well he countered you.
Me: With 'so you say'? He countered body, motive, magic, confession, and 40 witnesses with 'so you say'?
DM: Well... it's his home territory, who are you?
Me: I'm the guy the town chose to take it to trial, I'm a paladin and I'm a knight of the religion of the murdered priest...
DM: Well the crowd isn't convinced.
Me: Can I roll?
DM: No. You lose the case.


The Good:
Not really a story, but our DM tends to make extremely elaborate, fine detailed dungeons. He preps props, handouts, designs unique miniatures, will send out emails detailing certain things throughout the week, etc.

For example he spent weeks putting together a proper set of zepplin schematics (pages and pages), and when we arrive he will often just flat out say "Guys, I've prepped a lot of zepplin stuff I want to give you guys so I'd like you to go and do the zepplin adventure which is in this town".

We're allowed to go somewhere else, and he'll do things on the fly, but he will push in game and out of game, towards doing the thing he prepped all the fine detail for, and it's always worthwhile. He will ask for advice on where the party thinks it is going to go, and prep roughly in that direction.

It rarely feels like railroading, just because... whilst you struggle to get off the rails, he will make every effort to point the rails where you want them to go, and I always love the fine detail of everything he's given us so far.

Railroading can be done ok as long as the players feel like they have choices. For example, I had a puzzle, you pick a door as your answer, both doors lead to the same place.

So Riddle -> Dungeon -> Objective.

If the players get it right, they see the dungeon as the second layer of defences.
If the players get it wrong, they see the dungeon as the punishment for failure.

It's a railroad, but it indistinguishable from freedom.

[Rhynn]

I took the liberty of underlining some parts in your thread - I'm not really sure what the difference is between plots and ongoing plots, or the difference between a scene and a situation... Could you clarify?

I was unclear, yeah. By "plot" I mean "in this campaign, the PCs will go to Cormyr, uncover corruption in the Purple Dragon Knights, save King Azoun from an assassin, track them back to Amn, and have a big fight with the Twisted Rune" ... that's planning what's going to happen, and it has a high chance of going awry and requiring railroading to get back on track. (It can work fine, though, and for many people it does.) By "ongoing plot", I mean just writing down that "agents of the Twisted Rune are corrupting the Purple Dragon Knights in Cormyr with the aim of assassinating King Azoun", and letting the PCs stumble on that if they may and pursue it if they will.

A scene is what most adventures are based on since the late AD&D 1E and the 2E era. "In this scene, the PCs chase an enemy agent through the streets. In this scene, the PCs fight some Twisted Rune agents in a ruined tower. In this scene, the PCs stop an assassin..." Each scene has a way to "go right", and it's far too easy to write your scene-based plot so that you can't afford a lot of deviation. A situation would be "a group of Twisted Rune agents are hiding in this ruined tower."


As for "shallow, but broad" and "why bother writing a complicated, detailed plot": If you don't know how the plot will develop more than two or three sessions in advance, you can't foreshadow, hint, or leave chekov's guns leading up to anything more three weeks in advance.

I don't think you should need to (or should at all), since you're not writing a book, play, or movie. You're creating a world for a game to happen in. You can do plenty of hints and Chekhov's Guns, though - I can leave a lot of things in dungeons that would be useful against a lot of monsters or enemies in the same or other nearby dungeons. And one of the supporting pillars of a sandbox or an old-school location-based module are rumor tables, full of hints and ideas (false, true, or undetermined).


If the players ask you a question you wouldn't necessarily be able to answer it because you haven't thought that far ahead, so you'd answer it on the fly - and hasty answers tend to be less useful that answers that have been thought through.

I don't agree - I love developing an on-the-spot answer into something more complex and involved. Of course you'll sometimes go "dang, I should have..." but the pressure to be perfect is an illusion I'd rather not labor under.


Think of it like cooking - if you read through the recipe and make sure you have all the ingredients before you start baking you're less likely to have an awkward moment half-way through when you realize you have no eggs.

I'd think of it more like one of those crazy cooking shows where you have a bunch of random ingredients and have to turn them into something fun, exciting, and occasionally a bit absurd.


As for the storyline I mentioned earlier - Last week my players were revealing plot turns and story elements that answer questions they were asking in October (Rise of the Runelords spoilers): Why did the goblins steal the priest's remains? Why are the murdered citizens marked with the Sihedron rune? Is Foxglove the Skinsaw Man?, when we first started the AP. Questions I can encourage the players to ask (by leaving handouts and handing out quests for instance) because I knew the answers two or three months ahead of time, and that the questions would be relevant. I find that if you start out the campaign with an idea of where the players will end up down the road (1, 2, 6, or even 12 months ahead in time) and at least a loose idea of how they'll get there, it's easier to tell a really great story. That's what I think made this campaign better for me, and for my players.

But I can absolutely do that in a sandbox. If I have a dungeon with goblins, I can also have a reason they're there, and doing what they are. You absolutely can weave long-term complicated mysteries into a sandbox setting, and you should. "Who created this dungeon and why? What secrets does it conceal? Why is there a giant doorway in the middle of this room?" etc.


Now I'm not a proponent of railroading by any means, but I do think that having structure and a red thread in the game from the start isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater when you're discussing different approaches to DM'ing.

I haven't said it's necessarily a bad thing. I think games in a modern setting (mostly) can't work as sandboxes, for instance. I'd never try to run Shadowrun as a sandbox, and I am very skeptical of my own desire to just create a giant city (LAM, or the Los Angeles Metroplex) for Cyberpunk 2020, because I think cyberpunk games need to be episodic or continuous-plot.

But I think people underestimate the possibility for emergent story from sandbox games. You absolutely could run a sandbox game about, say, the Phaerimm, or the Shadovar, and their plans for Faerûn, but it'd be up to the players to choose that as the focus during actual play. If I don't put a whole lot of effort into developing those ahead of time, I save myself trouble when/if the players don't choose those as the focus, and I instead develop whatever they do focus on.

In my Artesia: Adventures in the Known World game, for instance, I'd been roughly developing the internal politics of the petty kingdom of Erid Dania, which the PCs short-circuited when one of them got talked into a Hate binding towards one of the three princes they were already poorly disposed towards; being a knight and having entered a tourney the prince was participating in, he "short-circuited" all my ideas by killing the prince "accidentally" in the melee - and I thought it was awesome! The PCs went on to bring the wrath of the witch-hunting templars on themselves, ambush and kill several, and flee north, out of the kingdom, with their eyes set on conquering themselves a keep in a wild frontier. I only "lost" a couple of hours of very general notes and spitballing of ideas (and it will still affect how the kingdom develops while they're away), and we had an awesome story.

[Fighter1000]

I am not too fond of the "railroading" straightjacket. I prefer to let my players go free. This doesn't always work out well, however, and it makes it difficult for a long-term campaign to develop. I just try and make my players happy, and extreme freedom seems to be my way of doing that.
I guess you could say I favor the sandbox approach to Gamemastering.
My friend, whenever he is the GM, is notorious in our group as the "master of railroadin'"
One time, he didn't like how a campaign was going so he sent an avalanche on the PCs. Much to his dismay, however, all the PCs succeeded on their saves and checks. So he went down the ridiculous route and caused friggin' sharks to pop out of the avalanche and just eat them. That was the end of it. I made a character for that campaign but never got to play her because I failed to attend the session(s).

[Jane_Smith]

Usually when I a dm a game I just tell my player's the region, its history, its current people of power, the major news, time of the year, factions, etc. I give them 1 to 3 things there backstories have to include that gives them a reason to group together at the start (like someone you knew, your mentor, your grandfather died, you have all been invited to the funeral to hear his last will), and usually I somewhat railroad the first opening session based on there backstories so they can get there barrings. After that, they are free to do as they please, usually following up with the first mission, but if they want to drop it to do other jobs or look around and just explore, that's fine too.

[Tengu_temp]

The Bad:
After we arrive in a town that is rebelling, we find that the priest of the town has been killed, gutted, and strung up inside the church, and the leader of the town is quite happily using the church, for the last 4 days, as his base of operations.

We have about 30 or 40 people who see this, the town is furious with the leader, and unanimously elects my character (Paladin) as adjudicator in the trial.

Evil Priest Murdering Psychopath: What evidence do you have against me?
Me: The body has been dead for days, you've been there for days and said nothing. Everyone in the town knows this. We have witnesses. We have your documents. We have your diary. We have your signed confession from your aide. We have magic. We have that you attacked the priests who entered the church. We have a surviving priest who escaped. You attacked us as soon as we walked in.
EPMP: So you say.
DM: The crowd boos you, and asks for your evidence.
Me: What? What about all the stuff I just said?
DM: Well he countered you.
Me: With 'so you say'? He countered body, motive, magic, confession, and 40 witnesses with 'so you say'?
DM: Well... it's his home territory, who are you?
Me: I'm the guy the town chose to take it to trial, I'm a paladin and I'm a knight of the religion of the murdered priest...
DM: Well the crowd isn't convinced.
Me: Can I roll?
DM: No. You lose the case.



This is not just railroading, it's also a ridiculous logic and law fail. Which law system? All of them.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

After we arrive in a town that is rebelling, we find that the priest of the town has been killed, gutted, and strung up inside the church, and the leader of the town is quite happily using the church, for the last 4 days, as his base of operations.

We have about 30 or 40 people who see this, the town is furious with the leader, and unanimously elects my character (Paladin) as adjudicator in the trial.

Evil Priest Murdering Psychopath: What evidence do you have against me?
Me: The body has been dead for days, you've been there for days and said nothing. Everyone in the town knows this. We have witnesses. We have your documents. We have your diary. We have your signed confession from your aide. We have magic. We have that you attacked the priests who entered the church. We have a surviving priest who escaped. You attacked us as soon as we walked in.
EPMP: So you say.
DM: The crowd boos you, and asks for your evidence.
Me: What? What about all the stuff I just said?
DM: Well he countered you.
Me: With 'so you say'? He countered body, motive, magic, confession, and 40 witnesses with 'so you say'?
DM: Well... it's his home territory, who are you?
Me: I'm the guy the town chose to take it to trial, I'm a paladin and I'm a knight of the religion of the murdered priest...
DM: Well the crowd isn't convinced.
Me: Can I roll?
DM: No. You lose the case.

http://www.jonco48.com/blog/train_20tracks.jpg

[Slipperychicken]

http://www.jonco48.com/blog/train_20tracks.jpg

http://fakeposters.com.s3.amazonaws.com/results/2013/02/25/f4qn2vympk.jpg

[Saph]

I think the worst railroading I've ever seen was one DM who decided he wanted a puzzle-centred adventure.

Now, normally I like puzzles, but in this case the DM had decided to turn the difficulty all the way up. He also didn't believe in this 'hints' nonsense, nor did he think there ought to be any shortcuts. The result was like one of those old text adventure games, where the only way to proceed is to do exactly the right thing with exactly the right item in exactly the right place in a completely non-intuitive way.

Light a Candle, Curse the Darkness

The adventure starts with us entering a cave and all getting randomly plane-shifted/teleported/whatever to another world. Okay, total sidetrack from what we thought we were doing, but whatever. We arrive in a giant mansion on a hill and outside the mansion is darkness.

Players: "We'll try looking out the windows."
DM: "It's too dark to see anything."
Sorcerer: "We'll go outside then."
DM: "The front door is locked."
Rogue: "I pick the lock." (much rolling)
DM: "It can't be picked."
Ranger: "Find another door?"
DM: "There isn't one."
Cleric: "Windows?"
DM: "They're sealed."

We eventually take the hint and move back into the mansion. We explore the place room by room (it's very big) and find all kinds of strange items. One of them is a candle which radiates magic.

Me: "I'll focus my detect magic on it."
DM: "Roll Spellcraft."
Me: "32."
DM: "It's magical."
Me: "What does it do?"
DM: "You don't know, detect magic doesn't tell you that much."
Me: "If my Spellcraft check is high enough, shouldn't I be able to identify it?" (Note: we're playing Pathfinder, this is explicitly how you identify items.)
DM: "No, I don't agree with a 0-level spell being able to tell you so much about an item. You can find out that it's magical, but that's all."

We try lighting the candle and it doesn't do anything, at which point I stick it in my handy haversack and forget about it.

So we continue exploring the mansion. We start finding lots of hints of plot – it's implied that we're in some sort of fairy tale, and there are illustrations of other fairy tales. There's also something about a princess being kidnapped and an evil wizard, and other stuff we're supposed to sort out. There's a LOT of information, and we work our way slowly through the mansion, triggering several combat encounters. The party sorcerer makes the mistake of splitting off from the rest of the group and gets eaten by a skeletal tiger. From that point on we stick together and go much more cautiously. Eventually we finish clearing out the place and start searching it. There's lots more plot, but we can't really figure out what to do next, so we start reading books in the library and talking to the (non-co-operative) NPCs.

After a while we notice the DM is starting to look a bit restless. He starts dropping hints about how we should be getting on with it. When we asks what we're supposed to be getting on with he tells us it should be obvious.

More time passes. More hints. DM is getting really agitated now. (It's session 4 of the campaign and the DM had claimed it should take 2-3.)

The Solution

At last the DM loses his patience and just starts telling us what to do, step by step. We're supposed to assemble at the locked front door, take out the candle, and then light it. The door magically opens and a shining path appears over the dark landscape, showing us the way to go next.

DM: "FINALLY! I thought you were never going to do it!"
Us: "How the bloody **** were we supposed to know to do that?"
DM: "Don't you remember the picture in the side hall?"
Us: *blank looks*
DM: "The one with the figure with something glowing in their hand, walking along a path over the hills?"
Us: ". . . kind of?"
DM: "That told you what to do, didn't it?"
Me: "Wait, we saw one picture out of dozens three sessions ago with a glowing thing and a path, and from that we're supposed to figure out that we need to take one specific candle that we found two sessions ago to the front door and light it to move on to the next destination we didn't even know existed?"
DM: "Yes. Like in the fairy tale, you know? A candle to show the way?"
Us: *blank looks*
DM: "Well, whatever, at least you found it. Come on, you're not even halfway through, you need to get going."
Me: "Wait, I tried to identify that candle. If it was so important why didn't you just tell us what it did?"
DM: "Because then it would have been obvious. You're supposed to work out what to do."

At this point the full awful truth became clear. The DM hadn't just scripted the route for our adventure, he'd also scripted our actions. There was only one way through and the only way we could find it was to do exactly the right thing at every turn.

The adventure ended up taking about two and a half months of real time. The cleric's player lost his temper and left in the second part when the DM told him he couldn't keep the undead he created (apparently undead weren't in the script either). The rest of us struggled grimly on and finally completed the objective, more through wearing the DM down than by anything else. That bloody princess wasn't even particularly grateful for being rescued, either.

[Rhynn]

At this point the full awful truth became clear. The DM hadn't just scripted the route for our adventure, he'd also scripted our actions. There was only one way through and the only way we could find it was to do exactly the right thing at every turn.

The adventure ended up taking about two and a half months of real time. The cleric's player lost his temper and left in the second part when the DM told him he couldn't keep the undead he created (apparently undead weren't in the script either). The rest of us struggled grimly on and finally completed the objective, more through wearing the DM down than by anything else. That bloody princess wasn't even particularly grateful for being rescued, either.

That's the worst kind of DMing - creating an adventure that requires a railroad, and that's really obscure. Riddles and puzzles are hard enough if done well - when done outright stupidly, they're impossible.

The sad thing is, if a DM learns to run games on, say, D&D 2E, 3E, and 4E pubished modules, this all seems perfectly natural. You have a script that the PCs are supposed to follow from scene to scene in order... gah.

At least it wasn't quite Sierra adventure game level horror. "You fools, you should have talked to that guy and picked up that thing 6 and 7 sessions ago respectively! Now you're facing unavoidable death!" ( :smallfurious: Space Quest 1-2!)

[Lawleepawpz]

Oh, where to begin.

We had just ended a year and a half long game, and our DM wanted a break. A player so graciously volunteered, yadda yadda.

Anyways, the game was based around the Wheel of Time books. By based, I mean EXACTLY like them. He was using the books as his script.
So the party consists of 2 Weavers or whatever (a made up class that can do anything, DM says so. Munchkined wizards on steroids and crack) Me, an in bodies psion, and.... A Monk.

So needless to say, we absolutely demolished encounters. However, if we went away from where he wanted us to: A pack of extremely dangerous wolf tracks are here. They melted into the rock (I forget the names)
We wanted to go over a river. I try to fly over it with my 60 ft fly speed: I fall in the river. 5 times.
We get to a big city, establish a guild and all this to get some money (the weavers had items of near artifact level that only they could use) and what happens? DM says we are taking too long here and sends a blue dragon after us. Now, I attempt to bluff it away (with a ridiculous +52) and nope. It's intelligence is pretty much infinitely higher than mine. Anything I do is immediately Nope'd. He burrows to our underground complex, chases us, and destroys out compound. Why? Because our DM wanted to start the end of the world. 2 sessions of work destroyed in 3 minutes. A bit of it stunned silence.
The worst part? We were fighting save or dies from level 3, and we were only level 4 (8 in my case)
Around this time we are told we HAVE to have our weavers in order to finish the campaign.
Needless to say, we dropped the campaign.

[Nonor_insane]

I am starting a new campaing with 5 completely new players. Their only experience are some pc games. I am generally a very thorough DM, I've been wanting to play this campaing for a while, I have written about 20 towns with NPC, side-quests, jokes and puzzles. So i was very exited to start this game.

After chasing a few goblins and fighting in a town soy they get the basics, we start some days off in the main city. The players start their day and one by one I present the diferent side quests since the plot was in a halt waiting for info to get in from baldurs gate.

The ranger goes out and tries to buy some arrows, finding out that the blacksmith son has escaped and lost himself in the forest. He ignores this buys some arrows and spends the rest of the day idling around. The druid, finds the elder druid of the forest sick and unable to talk. Goes back to the tabern. The rouge finds out about an order of thieves tring to recruit him. The paladin is told that a group of orcs have been sighted a few kilometers south near a town unprotected by the guard.

That night when they get all together at the tavern (I am old fashion, if an adventure dosn't start at a tavern, then it isn't an adventure) they start discusing howthe have nothing to do and if the should just go to baldurs gate to get the info. At that point I simply break character "guys either I start railroading you into the main plot, or you take a hint and start doing side-quests". They ended up rescuing the druid and following that quest line forgetting all about baldurs gate for like 3 sessions. (Dont worry the paladin killed the orcs on his way to the druid, he still has his class lvl. Unfourtunately the blacksmith son was never found)

[Anxe]

To Saph:
If you can't see the tracks how can you stay on them?

[Saph]

At least it wasn't quite Sierra adventure game level horror. "You fools, you should have talked to that guy and picked up that thing 6 and 7 sessions ago respectively! Now you're facing unavoidable death!" ( :smallfurious: Space Quest 1-2!)

It felt exactly like one of those old text adventure games. "You're getting killed by the animated mannequins? All you have to do is to pick up the bottle of glue from the shelf behind the table in the downstairs storeroom and then drop the bottle on the floor when the mannequins attack so that the bottle breaks and the mannequins get stuck in the glue allowing you to get away. Isn't it obvious?" (Actual example from a text adventure I once played.)


To Saph:
If you can't see the tracks how can you stay on them?

Trial and error, apparently. Though the way we ended up doing it was just point-blank asking the DM over and over again until he gave up and told us what to do.

[Rhynn]

To Saph:
If you can't see the tracks how can you stay on them?

You need a candle to see the tracks, duh.

[TuggyNE]

The result was like one of those old text adventure games, where the only way to proceed is to do exactly the right thing with exactly the right item in exactly the right place in a completely non-intuitive way.

"Ye can't get ye flask!" :smallsigh:

[Slipperychicken]

At that point I simply break character "guys either I start railroading you into the main plot, or you take a hint and start doing side-quests".

"As you bemoan your perceived lack of work, you recall the blacksmith's missing son and the Orc warband, both of which surely require your skills."

[Saito Takuji]

I had an interesting campaign that was actually a fun combination of railroading and sandboxing.

started out in a dwarven city, wich was the headquarters of the rebillion against the magick hating empire, our first mission was to go to a giant stronghold and rescue an important member of the rebillion, so we went and did that, we were supposed to use diplomacy and the like, as the giants were a neutral faction, but one of the PC's was trigger happy, and we ended up solving it with violence, and went back to the main city.

next mission was to infiltrate an enemy city, wich we did so by having one of the non-caster party members going in to scout around for an abandoned shop, wich we then built a machine to tunnel into the basement of the shop from quite a ways away, and set that up as both a storefront, and a way to smuggle stuff into/out of the city.

the next part was we were sent to a dwarven outpost to investigate why they had stoped communication, so we had to go investigate that. and from there the light railroading had ended and it moved into sandboxy type stuff


we were given a vacation in union, as there was a festival happening there we were supposed to be there for only a few days, but decided to join in on a few "random" NPCs who were adventuring in the abyss, where we randomly wandered a bit and stumbled across a stronghold and we ransacked it for treasure and freed a number of captured demons who were the original owners of the stronghold. one of the things found in the treasure was a map.

after getting back to union we decided, instead of going back to help the rebillion, we were going to go after wherever the map lead, so went from union to freeport. bought/chartered a boat to start headding out, we hit a handfull of islands before some of our superiors in the rebillion had shown up to ask us what in the 9 hells we were doing for the past few weeks when the vacation was supposed to have been only a few days.

sadly the campaign fell apart shortly after as the GM had moved far away, but all in all it was an awesome campaign

[Rhynn]

How is being sent to do things by someone railroading? A completely free sandbox campaign can be - should be - full of people going "hey go do this thing for me." The trick is that the PCs can go "no" and you won't force them to (the most egregious examples in this thread being the whole "well you get teleported there anyway" stuff).

[Saito Takuji]

well it was more railroading in the sense of here are the rails, follow them if you want, wich is a form of railroading, due to various interpretations, that being one of the best types of railroading. granted it was very light railroading bordering on sandboxing, we as the party just decided to go along with the rails for some time so no hard railroding came about by the GM,

[Rhynn]

well it was more railroading in the sense of here are the rails, follow them if you want, wich is a form of railroading, due to various interpretations, that being one of the best types of railroading. granted it was very light railroading bordering on sandboxing, we as the party just decided to go along with the rails for some time so no hard railroding came about by the GM,

It really isn't railroading, though. Railroading means railroading your players from scene to scene. They cannot get off the rails. "Hey, here's the adventure" with an implication of "please go along" isn't railroading. Forcing PCs, through various methods, to stay on the One True Path, is railroading.

I think this must get confused because people don't quite know what it looks like - even with examples in this thread.

Examples:
- Springing up physical obstacles (that weren't there before) to force PCs onto a specific route. They try to take the wrong road, it's snowed in or the bridge is out. They try to fix the bridge, a tidal wave comes along and washes it away. They try to fly over the river, a hurricane blows them back.
- NPC conductor. An NPC, often a DMPC or DM avatar, who is far more powerful than the party and forces them to do what the DM wants. It can be a guide, or the person they're escorting, or someone who "joins" (forces themselves on the party), usually with incredible magical powers and/or supreme authority.
- Teleporting, often combined with the above. The PCs try to go the wrong way, and succeed, they just get teleported where the GM wanted them for some BS reason.
- Other assorted stupid tricks, like rendering the PCs unconscious and having them wake up where you wanted them, etc.
- Scene transitioning. Just doing it by narrating. "Okay, then you go there, and [long boring monologue], and then you go over here, and ..."

These are serious examples. This happens. I know it's unbelievable if you've never been victim to it, but it's true. That's why railroading is horrible. It's pretty much the worst kind of GMing.

Giving the PCs an external motivation to do something is not railroading, at all. Having the players play along with what they understand is a scenario of limited scope/width, following hooks, is not railroading, at all.

[Kurald Galain]

well it was more railroading in the sense of here are the rails, follow them if you want, wich is a form of railroading,
I disagree. If the players are given the choice whether or not to follow the rail, they're not being railroaded. A train can only follow the rails; a car or bicycle can choose to follow them, or choose to go somewhere else.

What Rhynn said, basically.

[obryn]

well it was more railroading in the sense of here are the rails, follow them if you want, wich is a form of railroading, due to various interpretations, that being one of the best types of railroading. granted it was very light railroading bordering on sandboxing, we as the party just decided to go along with the rails for some time so no hard railroding came about by the GM,
Rhynn covered it above. This is the kind of mindset I alluded to earlier, too. There's not a black & white division between "railroad" and "sandbox," and there's not a linear progression between the two, either. There's other ways to run games; ENWorld is all about "scene framing" these days. I've been reading into a lot of more narrative games like the excellent Dungeon World.

Railroading is a degenerated form of heavy-handed DMing where the players' decisions and actions make no difference in the progression of the game or the events of the shared fictional game-world. It's not the introduction of a metaplot, events happening in the game world, session-by-session play, "cutscenes," narrative pacing, etc. And it's a shame the word has been abducted to include those.

-O

[Rhynn]

Railroading is a degenerated form of heavy-handed DMing where the players' decisions and actions make no difference in the progression of the game or the events of the shared fictional game-world.

Succinct and well-put. It's about loss of player agency - no matter what they try to do, the story goes where the DM wanted.

But you can't reverse it - "the story goes where the DM wanted" is not railroading, by itself. The loss of agency is an integral component - if the players don't try to deviate from the path (for instance, diligently following the hooks and hints in a module, and by happy chance never thinking there wa a hook where there wasn't one), it never gets to be railroading.

[randomhero00]

DM felt we were too powerful so he made up some insanely powerful creatures, that had ridiculous auras....as in time warp auras where everyone but them could only take one action per round no save. :smallmad: they also had TP at will with no error, so err, greater TP I think? Along with a few other things...

[GnomeGninjas]

I'm not sure if this counts as railroading. I had a dm who had a plot but that was about it. We can do whatever we want but until we bump into the plot nothing remotely interesting happens because he hasn't planned anything out. His plot was a little vague so we would spend hours of game time trying to find something to do. It was actually better when he drafted us into the army, geas'd us into staying in it, and railroaded us from battle to battle.

[JusticeZero]

The worst I ever saw was in an old Monster: The Subtitle game. We got sent to some war zone by the employers that we didn't know we were working for until the game started to do.. something, I was never clear what.
When we arrived, we got ambushed, which was reasonable enough all things considered. I mean, we knew it was a warzone when we got off the helicopter.

One of the party members got torn up badly in the fight though, down to the brink of death but not over it, and we'd all blown through everything we could use to help him heal back up. If it was in DnD, he'd be sitting at 0 HP exactly.

He had an ability to merge into the ground and put himself in suspended animation, so we agreed that he would do that while the rest of us went ahead and tried to find something to get him back up to fighting trim. So, we go a couple of blocks and find another fight, this time diving in in hopes of being able to retrieve the enemy's supplies.

Immediately some baddie throws a grenade back the way we came, throwing it a total of six city blocks and bouncing it around a corner to blow up where the team member is hiding.. which we found the rules on and showed actually wouldn't do anything.

This made the GM stop the game in a rage because he was so angry about us having group members who were trying to avoid combat that he couldn't see straight.

[Winds]

My response to that throw would likely be to join the baddies...

Think about it. Sent into a warzone, without clear orders, by someone I didn't know I was working for...and it turns out they can train their basic soldiers to throw like Bullseye and detect hidden foes from that distance? See ya, vague taskmasters. I'm gonna go see what these guys do.

Only halfway serious, of course. But it's an example of why you need to be careful where and how you break the game's rules.