How I feel , when I DM an adventure without putting it on rails

[CyberThread]

http://dndui.com/webcomic/03Hellgate_web.jpg



This is how I feel when, folks complain that DM's don't let players freely chose what to do in game.

[Krobar]

That sign provides very little motivation for me to want to go to Hellgate Keep.

[AuraTwilight]

It kind of weirds me out that there are people who DON'T do the last panel pre-emptively for every contingency he can imagine.

Am I just weird?

[Blackhawk748]

Idk when i see a sign painted in blood i tend to want to go there, looks like fun

[RPGaddict28]

It kind of weirds me out that there are people who DON'T do the last panel pre-emptively for every contingency he can imagine.

Am I just weird?

What I do is plan every contingency for what they do to get them back their. Or, I rename the dungeon and have them do it later.

[MonochromeTiger]

That sign provides very little motivation for me to want to go to Hellgate Keep.

that's why the other path has a differently themed dungeon with a slightly altered floorplan and selection of monsters. all of which lead up to the plot point at the end implying even greater treasure and glory if they go kill the horrors of the keep for the local town that has a conveniently priced inn and town savior discounts.

the trick that I've always seen to an open world campaign that isn't on rails is to make sure every possible direction the players can go, including directly up and down, has something that can be linked to the big work intensive dungeon...and if they already cleared that out the other things either go back to normal challenges or plot hooks for the NEXT big work intensive dungeon.

edit: reading the post after this one, mostly I was presenting a caricature of what my main group's DM tried a few times (he stopped doing it when we started making a game out of finding ways to turn all the plot hooks into completely unrelated adventures).

[PersonMan]

Yeah, DMing an adventure where you have neither a railroad or a party who jumps onto every plot hook (whether the in-game type who jump on anything, or the types to say 'it's the plot hook, let's go there' OOC) is tougher. You generally need to have at least one contingency plan, but to be honest a lot of it is gained through experience or general preparation - make a dozen generic encounters (some of them fights) that can easily be put into any plot, so you have something to give the PCs if they go north instead of going to Hellgate Keep. Especially complex fights can take so long than a single one of those, plus another RP encounter, can fill up a session and give you time to prepare for the next.

EDIT: Reading the above...my number one tip? Don't make some huge work-intensive dungeon, unless you know the party will be going there for sure. It's just not worth it, I think, when there are less work-intensive adventures that are as or more engaging to play. It could just be a playstyle thing, I've never played a game that's all about going into and clearing out a big dungeon as anything but a oneshot.

Ask the party for a plan/goal at the end of every session. Use this to narrow down the area of your focus.

[The Insanity]

I don't make this much preparations. I improvise.

[unseenmage]

I don't make this much preparations. I improvise.

Seconded.
Improvisation FTW.

[beforemath]

that's why the other path has a differently themed dungeon with a slightly altered floorplan and selection of monsters. all of which lead up to the plot point at the end implying even greater treasure and glory if they go kill the horrors of the keep for the local town that has a conveniently priced inn and town savior discounts.
.

Yeah, I'm not too proud to make my players end up resting at the Heckfence Inn, whose owners are doing something nefarious in their absurdly large cellar that opens into a cave system.

[Crake]

Seconded.
Improvisation FTW.

Thirding the improv route. The way I generally do dungeons is decide on a theme, then populate as the players go, have random encounters on the road, and a generous helping of roleplay encounters in cities.

But then again, in my games, almost all of the game is roleplay instead of combat.

[Yukitsu]

I use a modular design. Lots of premade encounters and scenarios which can be slotted into places.

[Slipperychicken]

It's either that, or the party goes to Hellgate Keep, passes by ~10 signs saying "no seriously, don't go there", all the monsters are like 10 CR above them, and then they get curbstomped and the GM comes over here complaining about how dumb his players are for ignoring all the warnings.


Also, I find that some degree of railroading can be acceptable to me. Like if the GM prepared a cool adventure (or he's using a module), and nobody wants to waste OOC time faffing about in town looking for jobs. Then we just fast-forward to where we're right outside the dungeon entrance.

[OldTrees1]

In general I found the best way to be prepared is a mixture of

Before campaigns:
Create general plot skeletons that are intended to occur.

Before sessions:
Prepare in sufficient detail(see during session) for the various paths (on and off rail) that the players can do during the session duration.

During sessions:
Improvise additional detail to finish fleshing out the path the players took.

After sessions:
Adapt the plot skeletons to handle the off rail path the players took. This might involve changing the beginning, middle or end of the plot skeletons.

With this plan you do not waste days of prep per session on places that the players never see. Rather only an hour of prep per session is wasted on reactions that the players do not have.

Sidenote: I have been accused of having too few rails for some of my players.

[jedipotter]

This is how I feel when, folks complain that DM's don't let players freely chose what to do in game.


Most DM's prepare things ahead of times. It is the best way to get a good game. But then it is better to prepare for most things in life.

The ''run from the fun'' is common. Few want to jump into the ''Castle of Doom''.

Option One-You can just let the players play it safe. They want to avoid the adventure, let them. You can spend time having them go fishing (''the DC to catch a bluegill is 13'') or something. They might get the hint that it is no fun to be an adventurer that just goes fishing.

Option Two-all roads lead to the adventure. Maybe a sneaky goblin switched the signs.....lol.

[Brookshw]

Reuse, reduce, recycle reanimate.

Always sucks to spend hours on something the players take one look at then walk away. Try and fit it in somewhere maybe. or say screw it and strong arm them.

[Slipperychicken]

Option Two-all roads lead to the adventure. Maybe a sneaky goblin switched the signs.....lol.

Or maybe it was the denizens of Hellgate Keep are trying to divert travelers into their ambush.

Or some snickering 14 year old wizard magically reversed the sign as a prank.


This is, of course, why you always buy a map in town :smallbiggrin:

[Threadnaught]

When creating a sandbox game, the best thing to do is to create a skeleton of the world, the plot and adventures. Then flesh them out by improvising during the game, always have a few pre-rendered NPCs ready, just in case they're needed and whenever your players are to go through certain challenges that require customization, spend the time needed to finish these before allowing the players access. Make sure you build in a reason to justify why your players weren't allowed to mess with the unfinished product.


This is, of course, why you always buy a map in town :smallbiggrin:

No Slipperychicken, buying maps in town just leads adventurers to ruin. Steve will then pick over their fallen bodies and broken dignity to find the most valuable items he can, maybe something pretty to wear on his tentacles.

[Kelb_Panthera]

No Slipperychicken, buying maps in town just leads adventurers to ruin. Steve will then pick over their fallen bodies and broken dignity to find the most valuable items he can, maybe something pretty to wear on his tentacles.

Oh gods. I nearly forgot about Steve the aboleth.

Threadnaught's right. Maps are the bane of all adventuring parties under level 9.

*snrk* LOL.

[WbtE]

This may sound harsh, but it's true: The cartoon scenario in the OP reflects bad planning on the DM's part. It's not that he got the particulars wrong, failing to drop a good hook for the scenario they'd slaved over or anything like that. He just asked the question at the wrong time.

Instead of presenting big choices at the start of a session, ask them at at the end of the session (or at the end of your character-creation/campaign introduction meetup). If they hedge, stress that you need an indication so that you can prepare the sites they're intending to visit. Sometimes players will reasonably say that they need more time to discuss the matter - in that case, they might be given a couple of days to talk it over before delivering an answer by e-mail, 'phone, carrier pidgeon, gorilla-gram or however your group usually communicates.

(Players who turn up with the intention of pulling a surprise change of plans on the DM should be prepared not to play D&D that day.)

[danzibr]

Yeah, I'm not too proud to make my players end up resting at the Heckfence Inn, whose owners are doing something nefarious in their absurdly large cellar that opens into a cave system.
Ha, this made me lol (which I had to explain to my wife). Classic.

[cakellene]

Prep a dungeon and wherever they go leads to the dungeon, just re-fluff stuff as appropritate for where they decide to go.

[NichG]

Modular is probably best. Heck, you can even re-use modules later on if bits of the content can be shifted about.

Personally, I just don't plan anything. I think about my setting at various times during the week and come up with ideas of 'this might be a thing' or 'people would react oddly to this' or 'maybe this is why X is happening', but in general if you know your setting well enough, you can just respond on the fly.

I could do it for Planescape since I know that setting very well, but I couldn't do it for, say, Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms.

[WbtE]

Prep a dungeon and wherever they go leads to the dungeon, just re-fluff stuff as appropritate for where they decide to go.

Railroading with the added virtue of dishonesty? :smallconfused:

[Slipperychicken]

No Slipperychicken, buying maps in town just leads adventurers to ruin. Steve will then pick over their fallen bodies and broken dignity to find the most valuable items he can, maybe something pretty to wear on his tentacles.

Oh god. Steve is scary. Maybe we can just.. not go anywhere near water for the next forever :smalleek:

[cakellene]

Railroading with the added virtue of dishonesty? :smallconfused:

No, I mean where they decide where to go. Just whichever dungeon they end up going to, use the map you spent 5 hours on and just change the enemies around as appropriate.

[WbtE]

No, I mean where they decide where to go. Just whichever dungeon they end up going to, use the map you spent 5 hours on and just change the enemies around as appropriate.

So how does their "decision" on where to go matter? Why not just say, "you're going to this dungeon"? :smallconfused:

[NichG]

Well, devils advocate, many decisions the players make are not going to matter, because those decisions are made without fore-knowledge.

I would say any truly random decision is fair game for being secretly railroaded, since the players actually had no way of knowing anything about the consequences of that decision. The idea that there must be some 'hidden world' which the DM can only reveal and not move around is kind of silly - I mean, imagine the case where the DM waited till after they chose which direction to go, and then build the dungeon. It'd be the same thing, right?

The better thing to do of course is to actually give good feedback about the consequences of a decision, and gloss over decisions that are basically random. Instead of 'you can go left or right at the fork', its 'you can go left towards the spider-infested forests or right towards the dragon-infested mountains' for example. In this case, what the players are choosing is basically 'do we want to deal with spiders or dragons?'. If it turns out that the floorplan would have been the same, it doesn't matter, because they didn't actually have any information on how the floorplan could have depended on their choice.

Now of course, this all has to make sense. 'Forest' or 'Mountains' is actually information too. If you give them a ruin built into the side of a mountain when they go to the forests, that does remove some of the agency they had when making the decision. So its important to be consistent with all the pre-information the players actually had.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Railroading with the added virtue of dishonesty? :smallconfused:

Meh.

Everybody lies. If you do it well they'll only see the seams if they really look closely.

It's not the method I prefer as a DM or a player but it's acceptable enough. Sometimes you just don't have the time or skill to prepare for every likely eventuality and sometimes the players just completely go in a direction you couldn't possibly have predicted. You can either stealth-rail them or cut the session short.

The only way to avoid the rails completely is if the campaign setting is completely reactive. Any villain that acts proactively, and if they don't they're barely worth opposing, will try to manipulate his enemies into taking the actions he wants them to so as to put himself into a more advantageous position.

If the goal to the adventure is in a dungeon then the party isn't going to be able to avoid going into a dungeon. If you use a map you prepared for a different dungeon and simply re-skin it and switch around a few critters they'll only even have a chance of noticing if you've used it before.

[Slipperychicken]

So how does their "decision" on where to go matter? Why not just say, "you're going to this dungeon"? :smallconfused:

The nicer way of railroading is to say (OOC) something like "Hey guys, this is the dungeon and adventure I prepared for tonight, would you like to play that? I appreciate your willingness to do roleplaying stuff in town, but I'd like to GM this tonight. Is it okay if we fast-forward over there?"

My current GM did this a few sessions ago (he was running a module), and it worked out just fine. I didn't feel like he was cheating or manipulating me. He was completely honest about the situation he was in as a GM and the players were willing to accommodate that. It meant we spend ~2 more hours in the adventure instead of screwing around in town, and everyone at the table seemed happy about that tradeoff.

[TaiLiu]

So how does their "decision" on where to go matter?
It doesn't - that's one of the reasons why I've grown disillusioned with D&D as an open world system.

[Turion]

So how does their "decision" on where to go matter? Why not just say, "you're going to this dungeon"? :smallconfused:

I think something slightly different is actually being suggested here. As a scenario:

The party is given a plot hook: enter Hellgate Keep, kill monsters, retrieve macguffin. At this point, they basically have two options: take the hook and go to Hellgate, or faff about on their own. The DM has one dungeon prepared.

Option A: They take the hook and go to Hellgate. The DM uses the prepared dungeon as the map for Hellgate.

Option B: faffing about. The party finds some other quest to do, or just decides to wander into the woods and kill things. On their murderhike, they come across a suspicious looking castle, or cave, or whatever, and investigate. The DM uses the prepared dungeon for this. If they do decide to go to Hellgate on another day, the DM has a completely different dungeon prepared; he's turned Hellgate into Schroedinger's dungeon.

TL;DR There is no set map for any given location until the PC's arrive there, at which point the DM pulls out a map, which defines the location from that point forward.

[Brookshw]

So how does their "decision" on where to go matter? Why not just say, "you're going to this dungeon"? :smallconfused:

Not so much railroading as "efficient use of finite time". "oh, you guys would rather go overthrow the duke than explore the old ruins? Well, sure, but I don't have time to sink another 6 hours into prepping a map, secret doors, monsters etc so time to reuse the layout and swap the ogres for guards, tweak a few things to fit a ducal manor instead". Player agency is good but no harm it efficient use of the resources you have on hand.

[WbtE]

Well, devils advocate, many decisions the players make are not going to matter, because those decisions are made without fore-knowledge.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here.


I would say any truly random decision is fair game for being secretly railroaded, since the players actually had no way of knowing anything about the consequences of that decision. The idea that there must be some 'hidden world' which the DM can only reveal and not move around is kind of silly - I mean, imagine the case where the DM waited till after they chose which direction to go, and then build the dungeon. It'd be the same thing, right?

I don't agree that the DM should have the right to alter anything committed to paper for metagame reasons. That's as much cheating as the players changing their character sheets between sessions. ("Yes, I had Kellar the Slayer statted out as a Sorcerer previously, but I've decided to redo him as a Psion. Nothing about the fluff changed, what's the problem?")

In a case in which the dungeon is not yet fully developed - it can't possibly be created from nothing, otherwise the PCs could hardly have it in their heads to go there - the DM is still bound to develop the scenario in accord with whatever has been established about that place, rather than to use material that they wrote up and decided was a "can't miss" for the players.


The better thing to do of course is to actually give good feedback about the consequences of a decision, and gloss over decisions that are basically random. Instead of 'you can go left or right at the fork', its 'you can go left towards the spider-infested forests or right towards the dragon-infested mountains' for example. In this case, what the players are choosing is basically 'do we want to deal with spiders or dragons?'. If it turns out that the floorplan would have been the same, it doesn't matter, because they didn't actually have any information on how the floorplan could have depended on their choice.

The DM's map is more than just a floorplan. For what it's worth, I can't see how spider-infested forest sites would be interchangeable with dragon-infested mountain sites, simply because of the physical characteristics of these creatures.


Sometimes you just don't have the time or skill to prepare for every likely eventuality and sometimes the players just completely go in a direction you couldn't possibly have predicted. You can either stealth-rail them or cut the session short.

Or ask them about their intentions in advance. I mean, good players ought to be discussing their plans with one another anyway, what's adding the DM to the loop?


I think something slightly different is actually being suggested here. As a scenario:

The party is given a plot hook: enter Hellgate Keep, kill monsters, retrieve macguffin. At this point, they basically have two options: take the hook and go to Hellgate, or faff about on their own. The DM has one dungeon prepared.

Why didn't the DM add 3 minutes to their preparation time and ask the players about their intentions before sitting down to scribble? Anyway, let's assume that the DM lacks foresight and try to salvage this...


Option B: faffing about. The party finds some other quest to do, or just decides to wander into the woods and kill things. On their murderhike, they come across a suspicious looking castle, or cave, or whatever, and investigate. The DM uses the prepared dungeon for this. If they do decide to go to Hellgate on another day, the DM has a completely different dungeon prepared; he's turned Hellgate into Schroedinger's dungeon.

He's turned it into the opposite of Schroedinger's dungeon: the DM knows exactly what state it will be in when the box is opened, and in fact knows the state of all boxes. I have to say that this Option B scenario takes a very dim and somewhat implausible view of the players, assuming that they want to do "nothing much" rather than something in particular. If all that the players had in mind was to casually raid something, then why are they refusing Hellgate Keep? But if they want to do something definite, why does the DM not have any notes on it whatsoever?

[Honest Tiefling]

Tsk. Dungeon Masters complain when I made a raging murderhobo, but then they wonder why my next character doesn't feel a compulsion to risk his life for no gain to fight Murdershirt the Unstoppable and his demon army hanging around Hellgate.

[Slipperychicken]

Tsk. Dungeon Masters complain when I made a raging murderhobo, but then they wonder why my next character doesn't feel a compulsion to risk his life for no gain to fight Murdershirt the Unstoppable and his demon army hanging around Hellgate.

People complain when I shove their hands into boiling water. Then they're complaining it isn't hot enough when I stuff them into the freezer! There's just no pleasing these people!

[NichG]

I'm not quite sure what you mean here.

I don't agree that the DM should have the right to alter anything committed to paper for metagame reasons. That's as much cheating as the players changing their character sheets between sessions. ("Yes, I had Kellar the Slayer statted out as a Sorcerer previously, but I've decided to redo him as a Psion. Nothing about the fluff changed, what's the problem?")

In a case in which the dungeon is not yet fully developed - it can't possibly be created from nothing, otherwise the PCs could hardly have it in their heads to go there - the DM is still bound to develop the scenario in accord with whatever has been established about that place, rather than to use material that they wrote up and decided was a "can't miss" for the players.

The DM's map is more than just a floorplan. For what it's worth, I can't see how spider-infested forest sites would be interchangeable with dragon-infested mountain sites, simply because of the physical characteristics of these creatures.


What I'm saying is, if its impossible for the players to know, it doesn't matter what something was in the DM's initial preparations. The DM could just as well have left everything totally unprepared and generated things on the fly at need. The reason the DM prepares things ahead of time is to improve the quality of the content when it comes to play.

So, if the players do something that invalidates some of the prep, the DM could say 'okay, you guys went off the rails, so we'll pick this up next week', but that sucks, especially if its early in a session. The DM could say 'okay, now I'll make up something from scratch so we can play it now', in which case you are going to be playing something that hasn't been pre-generated anyhow. The DM could also just use the prepared material with alterations.

What's the problem with using the prepared material? Well in principle, it could contradict something the players know. The prepared material has spiders, but the players are going to the mountains. The prepared material has some sections where there are networks of vines across a pit and some plant monsters, which wouldn't make sense in the mountains. Basically the problem is when the switch-around conflicts what the players know. If you fix those spots, then its indistinguishable from 'ok, I'll just make something new up'.

It's not at all like a player changing out their character sheet, because their character sheet is a known quantity. If they have a +15 to hit, then suddenly they have a +17 to hit, that's an inconsistency with what is known. Furthermore, even if you used the example of, say, someone changing out their prepared spells in secret, that is something where they're explicitly required to set it at a certain moment in time (e.g. last night when prepping spells). The DM could have asked 'okay, what spells are you prepping?', but its basically a courtesy that they don't.

The players cannot similarly ask 'okay DM, give us the floorplans of the two dungeons before we decide which to visit'. If they do have some way of asking this (they send scouts, they use divinations, etc) then I agree it's poor form for the DM to switch them around. But until that point, they're interchangeable.

It all comes down to 'what information has guided the player's choices' that makes those choices meaningful. If you know that the forest has a plot about enemy armies and the mountains have a plot about an artifact of power, then yes, the artifact must be in the mountains and the army must be in the forest.

A random choice confers no agency. It doesn't matter if the Balance-the-Weights puzzle shows up whichever way you choose to go, because you had no knowledge of it ahead of time - choosing whether or not to encounter the Balance-the-Weights puzzle is a degree of agency you never possessed in the first place, so its silly to claim that that agency is being denied.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm not quite sure what you mean here.

Not every decision the players make is informed. Sometimes they make decisions that, from their perspective, have no forseeable consequences but, if you insist that the map must be fixed before they make that decision, it can be a royal pain in the ass for the DM.




I don't agree that the DM should have the right to alter anything committed to paper for metagame reasons. That's as much cheating as the players changing their character sheets between sessions. ("Yes, I had Kellar the Slayer statted out as a Sorcerer previously, but I've decided to redo him as a Psion. Nothing about the fluff changed, what's the problem?")

Your example here is a -completely- different matter from swapping a little terrain around.


In a case in which the dungeon is not yet fully developed - it can't possibly be created from nothing, otherwise the PCs could hardly have it in their heads to go there - the DM is still bound to develop the scenario in accord with whatever has been established about that place, rather than to use material that they wrote up and decided was a "can't miss" for the players.

Cave system A is not significantly different from cave system B is not significantly different from underground dungeon A; at least not in layout or structural considerations.




The DM's map is more than just a floorplan. For what it's worth, I can't see how spider-infested forest sites would be interchangeable with dragon-infested mountain sites, simply because of the physical characteristics of these creatures.

The only difference between a set of forest paths and mountain passes is the mostly non-passable terrain around them and the degree to which elevation changes as you move from one side of the map to the other.

In the forest you have points where spider nests are and in the mountains you replace those with entrances to a cave complex that you already have on file.




Or ask them about their intentions in advance. I mean, good players ought to be discussing their plans with one another anyway, what's adding the DM to the loop?

This presumes a group of proactive players. Some players need to be nudged in a particular direction before they'll move at all and once they're on the move they don't always recognize nudges meant to alter their course. You can either let them wander aimlessly or put the dungeon in front of them.

Even active players can sometimes have monumental lapses in judgement that leave them headed in a direction that no one could've realistically seen coming.

Being able to read your players and even getting them to give you explicit declarations of intent is certainly helpful but it's not a guarantee that things will go according to plan.

[BWR]

A little bit of both. Since I'm running a lot of prepublished adventures and modules, they tend to be a little rail-roady. That's fine. My players are good enough to recognize the hooks and the breadcrumbs and are nice enough to follow the obvious plot without bucking and rearing at every turn because they don't want the DM telling them what to do.
Some improvisation is necessary to make things run smoothly.
Perhaps they missed a clue. Maybe they thought of a better solution than the adventure planned for. Might be they can't do the expected solution because of bad dice rolls or really incopmatible characteres. They might even have managed to do scripted events out of order.
Fine; adopt, adapt and improve.

IME, my games work best if I have a planned a lot of stuff well in advance. Even if I don't end up running it exactly as planned, the fact that I've planned a lot means I know the situation well enough to react decently to what my players do.

[Captnq]

As a DM, I prepare about four things each week.
I throw out the two that suck the most.
Of the two remaining, I usually use one, then put the other one away until the players stumble across it.

I've been running for close to a decade now.

So I have hundreds of back up adventures ready. Don't matter what the players go or do, something will happen.

[Yora]

Games without rails are good. Games without story are not.

Everything that the PCs do has to be in some way related to a long term goal. Wandering the land clesring out dungeons for loot is boring.

[SowZ]

The amount I railroad/plan before a session is inversely proportionate to how well I know the setting.

[The Insanity]

Wandering the land clesring out dungeons for loot is boring.
For you, you mean.

[schoklat]

Only prepping key features/encounters and improvising the rest works well with some experience.
Another trick I use is to have the players make their "important" decisions (left vs right) at the end of a session. Gives me time to prepare and often doubles as nice cliffhanger, keeping the tension. :smallcool:

[Krobar]

I too have a bunch of encounters and maps ready to go.

If you have enough stuff stored away you can make an adventure out of anything they want to do. Always remember, they do not live in a bubble. Stuff happens all around them all the time, and the world is a dangerous place. Even if they just want to sit in the tavern and drink for the next week things can happen. For example, you can have the bouncer throw out a creepy looking guy who comes back that night with a bunch of zombies he dredged up from the local cemetery, which he sends into the tavern to kill everyone in revenge for his embarrassment before he runs away. You can have a gang of thieves come in and rob the place. Or demand protection money.

"Oh, you don't want to go to Hellgate Keep? It sounds too scary? You'd rather go to the mountains? Okay. You head up the trail toward the mountains. As you progress along, the trail gets rockier and less pronounced, eventually disappearing entirely as you reach the foothills. It's a steep, rocky, forlorn place, very uninviting. A foggy pall hangs over the area. As you look around you spy a narrow, steep trail heading up through the foothills toward what might be a pass in the distance between two peaks. It's kind of hard to tell from here, and it looks like it will take at least another day or two to get up there."

Now I can throw giants at them, maybe a dragon, wildlife like bears, wolves, and mountain lions ... I can put a cave up there with a beholder in it, kobolds, orcs ... maybe a bandit party has its base in these mountains. I can have terrain hazards requiring climb checks, rickety bridges, crossing fast-moving streams with waterfalls at the end (only a couple hundred yards away) ... all kinds of stuff. The key is to have a good supply of encounters prepped out in advance so you can just pull stuff out as needed, and improvise the actual map (be sure to draw it out for continuity purposes) and the terrain descriptions as you go.

[Angelmaker]

It doesn't - that's one of the reasons why I've grown disillusioned with D&D as an open world system.

That is not entirely true.

I one of my adventures (actually Gestalt with some added regimental rules, because it was a big party ) I had the basic premises set as the group starting in a small valley being hired by the son of the local noble ( actually two sons and both were PC's ). Every decision they made had consequences, and ai never blocked anything.

I.e. They had a timed adventure/puzzle thing to save someone from suffocating and depending on their choices the guy would've bene found alive. Every choice, of whom to trust, of where to go, at least in my adventures, has consequences.

Open world is not a concept bound to any particular system, it is all dependant on the gm. If your gm uses many prewritten modules, then pretty much yes, open world does not exist. But if he/sge is willing to imrpovise and even change plot points on the fly ( like if you save that guy or not really makes a difference ) then I don't see the problem with an open world concept.

[SillySymphonies]

The only way to avoid the rails completely is if the campaign setting is completely reactive.Actually, yes. That is to say: the world should be at some pre-existing status quo, and the world’s organisations and villains only should start to proactively meddle in the affairs of the PCs if the PCs give them reason to do so in the first place.

It all boils down to whether the PCs are independent agents pursuing their own agenda (i.e. the world/the plot reacts to the PCs) or the gods’ pawns in a Homerian epic (i.e. the PCs react to the world/the plot).

The latter is often considered ‘railroading’, while the former seems a daunting, almost insurmountable task: how to prepare a contingency for every possible course of action the PCs could take? The solution actually has minimal impact on your preparation routine:

Instead of presenting big choices at the start of a session, ask them at at the end of the session (or at the end of your character-creation/campaign introduction meetup). If they hedge, stress that you need an indication so that you can prepare the sites they're intending to visit. Sometimes players will reasonably say that they need more time to discuss the matter - in that case, they might be given a couple of days to talk it over before delivering an answer by e-mail, 'phone, carrier pidgeon, gorilla-gram or however your group usually communicates.But that’s all academics. Let me provide a point-in-case example:
Character creation session: Me: ‘The game is D&D; the world is Eberron.’ The players: ‘Sure. We agreed on this psionic warforged theme for our PCs.’ Me: ‘Sure. Is it OK with you if we first do a prologue adventure so you can get a feel for your characters? It’ll start with your activation at the creation forge.’ The players: ‘Sounds cool.’

Prologue adventure: Party’s activation at the creation forge; trench warfare; the Day of Mourning.
Me: ‘Now that you have feel for your characters, what would you like to do?’ The players: ‘We want to obtain a creation forge in order to create a warforged nation of our own.’

Creation forge adventure: Party tracks down a creation forge in the Mournland, but manages to accidentally blow it up, creating a planar rift in the process. Instead of running away, the party enters the planar rift (but not before securing the creation forge blueprints). This was all quite unexpected, but I just rolled with it (literally!): ECS 92: random planar destinations: Thelanis, the Faerie Court.

Thelanis adventure: The players were still committed to creating their own warforged nation, so I had them encounter some kobolds (think folklore’s mining sprites, not D&D’s small-sized lizardmen) whose mine extended into the Material Plane. (Much like folklore’s kobolds, these kobolds would steal ferrous metal from mines on the Material Plane and then cart it off to the Plane of Faerie.) Long story short, the players took command of the kobold mine, providing them with a source of ore and a convenient way back onto the Material Plane.
Me: ‘You now have a source of ore, but you’ll still need fuel for smelting as well as a power source for the new warforged.’ The players: ‘The arcane creation forge blew up, so let’s power our warforged army with psionically resonant crystal instead. We noticed this ‘Glass Plateau’ on the map of the Mournland: maybe that’s where we’ll find some psionically resonant crystal?’

At this point I hadn’t decided yet on the nature of the Glass Plateau, but I admired their originality, so I prepared an adventure in which the Glass Plateau turned out to be a country-sized psicrystal.TL;DR: despite the PCs having complete agency and being the ones driving the plot, I always new exactly what to prepare for the next adventure.

PS Merry Christmas! :smallsmile:

[TaiLiu]

That is not entirely true.

I one of my adventures (actually Gestalt with some added regimental rules, because it was a big party ) I had the basic premises set as the group starting in a small valley being hired by the son of the local noble ( actually two sons and both were PC's ). Every decision they made had consequences, and ai never blocked anything.

I.e. They had a timed adventure/puzzle thing to save someone from suffocating and depending on their choices the guy would've bene found alive. Every choice, of whom to trust, of where to go, at least in my adventures, has consequences.

Open world is not a concept bound to any particular system, it is all dependant on the gm. If your gm uses many prewritten modules, then pretty much yes, open world does not exist. But if he/sge is willing to imrpovise and even change plot points on the fly ( like if you save that guy or not really makes a difference ) then I don't see the problem with an open world concept.
No, what I mean by 'open world system' is a complete lack of improvisation - or, to be more exact, a world where everything is in real time, where choosing path A will lead to a different place to path B. I recognise that this 'open world system' is completely unrealistic, but it was the reason I got into it in the first place.

[Brookshw]

No, what I mean by 'open world system' is a complete lack of improvisation - or, to be more exact, a world where everything is in real time, where choosing path A will lead to a different place to path B. I recognise that this 'open world system' is completely unrealistic, but it was the reason I got into it in the first place.

That sucks. Sounds like you need to play with more dms.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Actually, yes. That is to say: the world should be at some pre-existing status quo, and the world’s organisations and villains only should start to proactively meddle in the affairs of the PCs if the PCs give them reason to do so in the first place.

It all boils down to whether the PCs are independent agents pursuing their own agenda (i.e. the world/the plot reacts to the PCs) or the gods’ pawns in a Homerian epic (i.e. the PCs react to the world/the plot).

The latter is often considered ‘railroading’, while the former seems a daunting, almost insurmountable task: how to prepare a contingency for every possible course of action the PCs could take? The solution actually has minimal impact on your preparation routine:

There actually is a point in between completely independent agents and pawns of the gods; members of an organization.

By simply being members of an organization they become potential pawns in games of politics, intrigue, and skullduggery unless they advance themselves to higher positions. Even then they're still only higher pieces; rooks, bishops, knights, etc; until they actually become the heads of their organization(s) or leave to become independents.

Being completely independent makes preparation tricky (doable but tricky) while being god-pawns makes the rails too thick and too obvious (though that can, on occasion, be a refreshing change of pace).

The other problem is that, even if you do ask at the end of a session, changing circumstances during the session can lead to the players changing their minds about the course they chose between sessions. This becomes an especially daunting prospect if you try to inject anything unexpected into the plot; the apparent mastermind for the current arc turns out to be an unwitting or unwilling pawn to some greater force, for example; great dramatic moment, planning nightmare.

Also, when I said completely reactive, I meant completely. Even if the setting's major players have a status quo before the PC's get involved, the moment that they start reacting to the PC's, rails begin to appear unless they do -nothing- proactive to try and head the PC's off before their next act of interference.

Avoiding rails entirely is -possible- but it makes for, IMO, a dreadfully boring game.

[TaiLiu]

That sucks. Sounds like you need to play with more dms.
Hm? Most of my DMs were fine - it's just that my view of the game and the actual game don't match. Which is fine; as stated, my view would only work if run by a supercomputer.

[PersonMan]

Or someone who does improvised stuff rather than preparing things, or in a setting where the DM has prepared/ran things for ages and therefore has dozens of in-depth dungeons lying around ready to use, no matter where the PCs go.

[killem2]

I'm so glad I play with close, close friends who don't give a **** about what dungeon they are doing, or what story line is being given to them, only that they can show up again for another 8-9 hours of solid wall to wall D&D.



If I ran down my entire 2 year session they have been playing in, I'm sure I'd be accused of being a railroad artist. I've never had my players complain about it, or go off the given path.

Maybe it's because I write it well enough into what they are doing, that it feels different enough. Maybe it is because I use a lot of dream like message from powerful being to only certain people of the group so they can decide if they share it or not.

It helps that we have a L/G Cleric of Moradin, who has strong connections with a very powerful Clergy of Moradin, and the group tends to listen to that player.

I've had sessions where the entire session is under the deck of a boat, drinking, socializing, and gambling their hard earned money away. We had one single combat that session, and they loved it.

Sure, they were on a one way trip to the the Whispering Kairn, for the age of worms module, but they didn't seem to notice.

[Talya]

I use a modular design. Lots of premade encounters and scenarios which can be slotted into places.

I'm not saying this is the wrong thing to do. A certain amount of tactful railroading is not something I have any problem with. I just want to point out that "All paths eventually lead to the same adventure" is just a different type of railroading.

[Zman]

I generally use a concept I call Psuedo Sandbox.

I focus on creating a world and usually pick a couple of over arcing plot lines that are happening in the background. I also offer many many potential side quests, sometimes linked to one or more main plots, sometimes not. More than the party can ever accomplish at any one time, some will be undone resolved and have consequences before the party can possible do them. I let the party decide where they are going to go, and what they are going to do.

As a rule, I don't flesh each part of the plot lines out in depth, I create concepts, an short summary of what is happening and flesh out the details and the encounters as they come up. I then let the world change and react to the player's actions.

I let the party make its own decisions about what they do and where they go. But, if they want to jump on a plot line, I'll be glad, and if they do, I make sure they have different potential avenues to accomplish said goal. I never let them know about that is going on, I let them figure it out.


It gives the freedom of choice, without being completely unstructured. And if the party as a whole doesn't want to follow a plot line, it will continue happening in the background and will effect their world as a whole. Choice and consequence.

I also don't like to level the world with the party, if the low level party wants to explore the ancient dwarven ruines where the Dracolich is rumored to reside, I'll tier some encounters of increasing difficulty to let them know its out of their sphere of influence, but I sure won't stop them from going there.

If they decide they don't like this area of Faerun, and want to go to the Sword Coast where a simple rumor or minor Plot hook catches their interest, well off we go and I'll create more plot arcs to follow. They might hear about the consequences of their actions as a town they visited was slaughtered, etc, something they could have prevented, just as they would hear about the consequences of any of the plot lines they chose not to follow. Some end up ok, some end badly, some spawn new plot arcs.

After a little bit of adventuring the party will sink their teeth into one Plot line and choose to follow it, mostly, with enough side questing to keep them all happy. And when they choose a certain plotline as their main focus, then I get the opportunity to plan more in depth encounters.


Is it Railroading? Possibly, but to the slightest degree required for a coherent game, there is more choice then not, and it allows us as a group, players and DM, to set up the rails we want.

[Yukitsu]

I'm not saying this is the wrong thing to do. A certain amount of tactful railroading is not something I have any problem with. I just want to point out that "All paths eventually lead to the same adventure" is just a different type of railroading.

That's if I only made 1 module encounter. :smalltongue: This is more like a better made, context sensitive random encounter from a bigass list. It's more like, I pre-wrote a bunch of non-adventures and then pick ones that tie into what the players are doing to make it part of an adventure.

[SillySymphonies]

There actually is a point in between completely independent agents and pawns of the gods; members of an organization.Yes, provided the PCs have a certain degree of autonomy (and/or authority) within the organisation – otherwise it’s just as bad as heavy-handed railroading.


The other problem is that, even if you do ask at the end of a session, changing circumstances during the session can lead to the players changing their minds about the course they chose between sessions. This becomes an especially daunting prospect if you try to inject anything unexpected into the plot; the apparent mastermind for the current arc turns out to be an unwitting or unwilling pawn to some greater force, for example; great dramatic moment, planning nightmare.The players’ input at the end of a session informs me where they’ll be heading next. So I just have to prepare the next adventure location; next session then starts at said location (we usually gloss over stuff like the travelling proper and wandering monsters). Since I prepared the adventure location and the accompanying NPCs and monsters, I’ll have material to work with, even if the party does something completely unexpected. Then again, this may not be to everyone’s taste: 'An Eberron adventure typically involves slow periods of investigation and exposition broken up by intervals of furious action. Whenever action occurs, it should be intense and dramatic. The typical adventure sacrifices “wandering monster” encounters in favour of fewer, more challenging battles.' [ECS]


Also, when I said completely reactive, I meant completely. Even if the setting's major players have a status quo before the PC's get involved, the moment that they start reacting to the PC's, rails begin to appear unless they do -nothing- proactive to try and head the PC's off before their next act of interference.Obviously, but that doesn’t seem like railroading to me: there is a distinct difference between laying out the course of the plot (aka ‘railroading’) and preparing proactive NPCs. But I think we are just arguing semantics here. :smallsmile:


No, what I mean by 'open world system' is a complete lack of improvisation - or, to be more exact, a world where everything is in real time, where choosing path A will lead to a different place to path B. I recognise that this 'open world system' is completely unrealistic, but it was the reason I got into it in the first place.Do you mean something akin to the The Elder Scrolls games, Living Greyhawk (or any other living campaign) or Ed Greenwood’s style of DMing (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Archive.aspx?category=all&subcategory=forgingtherealms)?

[TaiLiu]

Do you mean something akin to the The Elder Scrolls games, Living Greyhawk (or any other living campaign) or Ed Greenwood’s style of DMing (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Archive.aspx?category=all&subcategory=forgingtherealms)?
Something like that, yes - just with a maddening amount of details. Weather fronts, moon positions, nanosecond-by-nanosecond tracking...

Like the real world, but with all the information that is D&D.

[MukkTB]

I'm ok making things up on the fly.

Recently when I was DMing the players screwed up slightly and got in trouble with the law in a L/E kingdom. They were asked not to leave the city and assigned a level 1 guard to watch them. They had business near the city, a halfway finished dungeon, so I assumed the motivation would be to stick around. I was ready for courtroom drama and legal battle. Instead they hit their gaurd with charm person and then legged it out of the city. It took them days in game to leg it all the way out of the country. During the trip I made use of the random monster charts, and came up with a new antagonist on the fly - an uttercold necromancer angry at them for the crime they committed.

But baring freestyle, its easiest to make plans after you know what the party intends to do. You find out what they want at the end of the previous session.

Alternatively you create better plot hooks.

[AlltheBooks]

Everything that doesn't get used goes back into the campaign and keeps ticking. Mark a notation on your gaming calender (you have a couple right?) and keep it growing. If it's a static event then it doesn't matter when the characters get around to it. There is no such thing as a wasted dungeon just DMs that throw them away.

I laugh when players avoid some things. Why? That bad guys isn't stopping their plans and I don't play status quo. If it isn't dealt with soon, may not have the option later. But hey, you really want to go on a shopping trip to Dis, go right ahead. I'm sure everything will be as you left it when you get back. :smallwink:

[Bonzai]

My group has recently been paying a sandbox style game. I have enjoyed it, but it has led to cases where the party is kind of searching for things to do, or nights the game ends early, as the DM now has to prepare for an unexpected turn.

For me, I try an have a seem less trail of bread crumbs from one plot element to the next. The party has a pretty good idea about where they are supposed to be going, but how and when is up to them. If players decide to ignore the plot hooks, then they are free to do so, but eventually they will either get bored as the game starts to lack any focus or direction, or suffer the consequences of their inaction (I.E. Bad guy gets the McGuffin, and they now are subject to his law and whim).

As a player I am guilty of doing exactly what happened in the comic once, and I felt terrible about it. I know the work involved in running a campaign from scratch. The DM was very gracious about it though, realizing that I used simple role play logic from my character's perspective, as it was more or less a side tangent that had nothing to do with the main quest. Still felt bad about it though, when I saw him put away some maps he had drawn for it.

[jedipotter]

I don't agree that the DM should have the right to alter anything committed to paper for metagame reasons. That's as much cheating as the players changing their character sheets between sessions. ("Yes, I had Kellar the Slayer statted out as a Sorcerer previously, but I've decided to redo him as a Psion. Nothing about the fluff changed, what's the problem?")

So if on May 5th the DM made a simple plot, a kobold spellcaster stealing all the wands in the area to fuel his wand forge. The DM makes up a set of caves, some kobold thugs, and the kobold leader, a wizard. Then the DM just sprinkles in the ''missing and stolen wands'' into the game, until the players take the hook and go after the kobold. Though on July 25th, the kobold wizard looks a little bland. So the DM remakes the kobold wizard into a kobold warlock. And you'd say that is wrong.

It is not as if the NPC changed his class every time he ran around a corner. And how would you feel about advancement? If the kobobld sorcerer was level 6 when the NPC was made, but say a year of game time has passed and the character's have gained three levels, would it be wrong to make the kobold 8th level now?




Or ask them about their intentions in advance. I mean, good players ought to be discussing their plans with one another anyway, what's adding the DM to the loop?

Sure, this might work. Until the group comes back and says ''Oh we don't want to go to Dark Keep like we said last week, we go to the Fire Wood instead.'' And even if they plan to go to Thunder Castle, they can get side tracked in no time.

[PersonMan]

And how would you feel about advancement? If the kobobld sorcerer was level 6 when the NPC was made, but say a year of game time has passed and the character's have gained three levels, would it be wrong to make the kobold 8th level now?

I feel that the old 'heroes go on a quest that everyone describes as dangerous and proceed to crush everything there, showing how strong they've become' is pretty underdone nowadays. If the kobold sorcerer was level 6 before, let him be level 6 now.

I feel similarly about rivals - why do they have to be a challenging fight? Why can't you return to your old hometown and find out just how much you've changed from your old self, power-wise?

Some people say easy fights are boring, I disagree. It's a different kind of fun, but it's still fun.

[TechnoWarforged]

What an experienced DM would do (The ones I currently plays with): You continue to go north to your destination, later your party venture back that way again and The sign is still standing (Players can choose to go into the Keep again with encounters adjusted upward for their increase in level.

What would be slightly better (flavour-wise): Your party continues to head north, and in your journeys you heard rumors of the Dark Hellgate Keep with demons coming coming out at night, attacking travelers and nearby villagers. If only a band of brave adventurers would have assault this bastion of evil before it was allow to case all this mayham...

What I would do as the DM: As you continue to head North the path was flooded by the violent storm that's still occuring. You struggle against the weather and in the distant you see, on top of an omninious hill, stood a becon of red glowing light. As you head towards it you saw before you a giant, ancient stone keep with the sign Hellsgate Keep "The Friendly Adventurer's Keep"...

[jedipotter]

I feel similarly about rivals - why do they have to be a challenging fight? Why can't you return to your old hometown and find out just how much you've changed from your old self, power-wise?

Some people say easy fights are boring, I disagree. It's a different kind of fun, but it's still fun.

Most players want a fight to be a challenge. To have an easy fight is just a waste of time. To waste like thirty minutes to do an easy fight, where everyone knew the characters would win, just wastes that thirty minutes.

And worse, in D&D, if you don't face a challenge, then you get no experience points.

[killem2]

Wizards of the Coast and the many 3rd party publishers have came up with lots of ways to randomly insert adventures.


I suppose if my group ever went off track of my main plot, I would just randomly generate something, and have simple adventure path built for their level or just below it.

[Scootaloo]

Games without rails are good. Games without story are not.

You really can't have one without the other. To have a story, you need to have a system of guiding the story forward. These are the rails.

The trick is to have the rails look like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/SunsetTracksCrop.JPG/582px-SunsetTracksCrop.JPG


Everything that the PCs do has to be in some way related to a long term goal. Wandering the land clearing out dungeons for loot is boring.

Well, that's your fault as DM. If they're clearing out dungeons, clearly things live in those dungeons... Or perhaps someone PUT those things in the dungeon. Work that into the story. The PC's see it as a tomb with loot... the local bugbears see it as a sacred cave meant to challenge future shaman of the tribe. So when the PC's kill all the things that live there (some of which were "pets" of the bugbear shamans!) and take away all the loot (ancestral relics) how do the bugbears react?

Random loot-dungeon just became the source of antagonists in the form of a powerful tribe of goblinoids.

[Raven777]

The problem with PCs and story is that we tend to think and formulate plans like early Superman (http://www.cracked.com/article_20069_5-classic-superman-comics-that-prove-he-used-to-be-****.html).

[A Tad Insane]

1) make the sky overcast
2) the pcs go north no matter what direction they go
3) encounter
4) "railroad free" profit

The illusion of choice is the most op spell, as true seeing can't defeat it

[Slipperychicken]

1) make the sky overcast
2) the pcs go north no matter what direction they go
3) encounter
4) "railroad free" profit


What happens if one of them gets a compass?

[Raven777]

What happens if one of them gets a compass?

The compass turns out to be magical and points to the next quest objective, duh!

[TuggyNE]

The compass turns out to be magical and points to the next quest objective, duh!

Also known as "the path to your destiny".