Party requesting to be railroaded - Need help

[Omoikane13]

So I was taught, like all the other good little DMs, that Rule 1 was "Railroading was bad". I've always agreed with people that said D&D was collaborative storytelling. So I gave my players a nice big open world, with a mystery plot if they wanted it, and some other sidequest-y fluff if they wanted to do that. Standard stuff.

Then they asked to be railroaded.

Right to my face, one of my players actually said "Please railroad us" and my DM soul vomited. I've complied for the past couple sessions, but it's really starting to grate on me. The reason they gave is that they "sat around too much". Basically, they didn't go out to find plot/adventure, and wanted it handed to them on a plate, as though they are the protagonists that the world must bow to. I'm all for being the protagonists, but the world isn't your slave, and isn't going to make it super easy for you.

Any ideas?

[Galen]

Some people are not into grand plots. Maybe they just want to find an ancient treasure map, leading to an underground complex to be explored. Room after room of monsters, traps and treasure. Standard old-school D&D stuff.

[Omoikane13]

The last time I tried that, the party caster threatened Pazuzu with a punching. But I understand what you mean, and I've tried that. They just don't do anything if I'm not constantly spurring them onwards. "Uh, I guess we could go on through the tomb" after I've explicitly told them about a suspicious looking section of wall is particularly grating. I just don't want to have to do all the work.

[Kelb_Panthera]

So just force feed them that mystery plot you mentioned. Drop the hooks in their lap instead of waiting for them to find them. It's roughly the same thing you were going to do anyway just a bit more forcefully applied.

[DJroboninja]

I am almost always a DM, but when I'm a player, I don't want to have to write the adventure - I do enough of that when I DM. On the other side of the screen, I find it nice to be walking to town and see a burning caravan with a group of steampunk kobolds flying away from it - it just says "dudes, here's your adventure"

Don't feel like you have to have them magically teleported to the next dungeon every session. Instead, just naturally work the next adventure into the end of the previous one, while giving them the freedom to go elsewhere.

End your sessions with any variation of "the guy wants you to do the thing." That way the players can be like "eff yeah, we get to do the thing next week" or "naw I don't wanna do the thing" and you have a week to prepare accordingly

[Barstro]

I don't mind being railroaded myself. Sometimes games drag.

If you want to trick them into playing a sandbox style game, present them with three concurrent plot hooks. They still get to feel safely railroaded, but were forced to choose to explore one of three areas.

To add on to JRroboninja's's post; end the session with a couple options so they have some time away from the table to discuss and maybe do some actual role playing among themselves before the next crawl. It might just be that they are bad at on-the-spot spontaneity.

[Malroth]

Gnome bard NPC who follows them around and suggests the most obvious existing plot hook whenever the party looks bored. He's also taking bribes from a couple guilds to suggest jobs that further their interests and he's also writing himself into the tales he's writing of their exploits wither or not he's actually being helpful.

[Nibbens]

The last time I tried that, the party caster threatened Pazuzu with a punching. But I understand what you mean, and I've tried that. They just don't do anything if I'm not constantly spurring them onwards. "Uh, I guess we could go on through the tomb" after I've explicitly told them about a suspicious looking section of wall is particularly grating. I just don't want to have to do all the work.

... 0.0

At this moment, I realize that I've been spoiled with my players...

Anyway, sorry op. I do however have an idea for you. Give them a railroady encounter, but at the end of the day give them a choice. For example Local Merchant-man wants them to go collect mcguffin A from the caves of blahblah. They go there only to find come some potentially incriminating evidence of Local Merchant-man. Maybe he's destroying local wildlife with strip-mining, etc etc.

Then have the Local Merchant-man ask the PC's to join in with this activity.

They can chose to turn the merchant in, or kill him or join him. Nevertheless, make their decision direct the flow of the game - the PC's may have to deal with the consequences of their actions for several sessions.

If they join him, the local druid tribe want the PC's and the LM-m out. If they kill him, they're now hunted by the local authorities. If they turn him in, some group of people who were profiting off the LM-m's activities come after the PC's.

So, instead of "Railroading them" make them "deal with consequences" of their actions. Maybe this will work?

[Barstro]

They go there only to find come some potentially incriminating evidence of Local Merchant-man. Maybe he's destroying local wildlife with strip-mining, etc etc.

That's incriminating? Which party is in control? :smalltongue:

[Omoikane13]

These are fantastic. I've used DMPC support characters before as plot hooks, and they didn't work, but that may have been comparative inexperience on both mine and my players' part. I'll try and stride the middle ground that's been detailed here, and hopefully it'll go well.

[TypoNinja]

Well there's a difference between railroading and storytelling.

Think Skyrim vs Final Fantasy (or most JRPG's) vs Minecraft.

You've offered your players minecraft it sounds like, and it may be they don't want outright railroading, just a bit more goals.

An open world is good, but if your players are standing around going "What next" maybe feeding them an option or two isn't such a bad choice. They are adventurers by trade, a bounty board with a few options should do the job, or even have an NPC just run up and beg for help with a problem/offer to hire them.

Don't be afraid to be obvious, this is a mistake I've made. I thought I was leaving a trail of clues that could be easily followed but my players were clueless. The hints seem obvious to the DM cause the DM already has all the information, to the players who hear 1000 room descriptions a campaign, its harder to pick out the important trivia from the mundane.

[Nibbens]

That's incriminating? Which party is in control? :smalltongue:

LOL. It's incriminating to the druids! LOL.

[Odessa333]

I'd Second Nibbons here. Still, if they want the plot to come them, throw them a bone by say, having them become employed by a guild, a king, so there is a legit reason someone would be giving them orders.

From there, railroad them into making choices. If a mercenary guild, do we accept the quest from the druids protecting the woods, or the logging company destroying the woods? Do we help the wizard with the password to the wizard's tower, or the dwarf with the key to some ancient mines? Stripped to the minimum, give them a fork in the road with clear choices, and let them decide which way to go.

One of the 'classic' is for the party to be hired to kill some orcs (or other 'evil' race) by (guild/king/mayor/local authority figure). You fight way through (cave/fort/etc) slaughtering guards, and the last room you find their unarmed women/kids/injured. Do you follow orders and hack away, or help the defenseless here? It's been done for sure, but it's a very polarizing decision.

Whether you use the classics like 'how could trusted NPC betray us?!" to something of your own design, you 'railroad' them into making a decision.

[JusticeZero]

Full railroad is bad. Full sandbox is bad.
Full railroad: "Omg you have to smile at the jailer or else you cannot go on!"
Full sandbox: "Omg plot hooks are teh evil!"
Give them some stuff to work with.

[Troacctid]

Make them part of an organization like an adventurer's guild or a special forces team. Before each adventure, their superior tells them, "Okay, guys, we've got a new mission for you. Here's the dossier."

This gives them a clear goal to work towards and a built-in incentive system (because they get paid at the end). I've also found that it saves a lot of trouble as far as justifying why the group is adventuring together. Paladin and rogue not getting along? Tough. It's your job to work together. Get over it or you're fired. Don't see the point in rescuing this dumb NPC? Tough. You're getting paid to find him.

If you use this device, I strongly recommend against making the organization nefarious or morally ambiguous in any way. They don't need to be capital-G Good, but the players shouldn't have to question the orders they're following or it defeats the purpose. The point is that they are a walking dispenser of plot hooks.

[Barbarian Horde]

Your group just hasn't accumulated enough bad experience from not questioning things. I had a DM one time use a Permanent Image of an extended cliff side. That extended the cliff longer then it was with our prize at the edge. He had a large gap in it and said it looks to be 10feet between me and my prize, so I jumped off a cliff. 20d6 later... Welp rolling a new character.

Like I knew later that it was an old trick, but I didnt think of it at the time.

Hey real quick for anyone that cares to give their opinion. DM Railroads so hard that your spells dont work on the enemy or attacks. Annoying or Not annoying

[Nibbens]

Hey real quick for anyone that cares to give their opinion. DM Railroads so hard that your spells dont work on the enemy or attacks. Annoying or Not annoying

Depends, I'm not a fan of plot armor at all, but I am a fan of reoccurring villains. So if one almost gets away and the PC kills the "killing blow" he'll never know if I just don't 'make him dead', and the players have a few more sessions of enjoyment from a minor annoyance. :)


From there, railroad them into making choices. If a mercenary guild, do we accept the quest from the druids protecting the woods, or the logging company destroying the woods? Do we help the wizard with the password to the wizard's tower, or the dwarf with the key to some ancient mines? Stripped to the minimum, give them a fork in the road with clear choices, and let them decide which way to go.

Word! :D

[Milodiah]

One thing I've learned from Delta Green is that it always helps to have an organization that hands them the next mission, as mentioned previously. Delta Green is always there to hand you a case and then throw you to your inevitable demise. Then throw another set of dudes after you telling them to find out what happened to the first dudes.

I even made my PCs members of the City Watch at 1st level, which I used to ensure they noticed a few of the many plot hooks available. Also, I think perhaps your group has the opposite of mine. My group seems to be of the opinion that everything is a plot hook, to the point where I'm nervous to offhandedly mention a few bits of tavern gossip lest my players pull a 180 and go check that thing out. Happened twice in a row, first I mentioned that a dragon torched a caravan about a hundred miles away and they go on a dragon hunt. Killed a completely unrelated dragon, I should point out, and then took an egg which just hatched last session (which will be fun for me).

Then the party cleric tries to convince the party to go hunting this meteorite that fell several hundred miles to the southeast, and after a bit I pretty much just told them "that's just unsubstantiated rumors". Granted, if they had kept after it, I would have built them something out of my ass, as I tend to do. That cleric is also still in touch with an unnamed-at-the-time goblin cleric from a random encounter, whom he spared, tailored a wedding dress for a sewer-dwelling civilization of sentient rats, the reasons for the introduction of which I cannot even remember, and is working to build a settlement for the discriminated-against minorities in the kingdom (goblins, gnolls, etc.) simply cuz he wants to.

And I'm totally that kind of player, so I understand.

If your players are a bit...unobservant, put some flashing red lights around the plot hook. Go into elaborate detail about the crowd gathered around the town square as the guards tack up a wanted poster for this one really bad dude. Have them bump into those slavers in the process of enslaving folks. Have the BBEG take their lunch money. Anything.

[jedipotter]

Any ideas?

Well, my classic idea is: Sliding Leaping Trekers (From the TV shows Sliders, Quantium Leap and Star Trek) The set up is simple. A dohwor(a penguin humanoid) approaches the group and offers them a job. They are needed to help ''fix'' things multiverse wide. They need to ''put right what once went wrong''. Then are given membership necklaces(that can't be removed) and are payed with ''one item'' for every fix they do. Then it's a simple slide leap to some random place somewhere in the multiverse. They are given no set up or information about the place at all. And they are not told what to fix or how to fix it. They will always come in right at a eventful place and time, often a violent one. They only get seconds to decide what to do, how to act, and such. Once they do the fix, and they will know as their amulets will glow, they can ask for one item that will be dropped on the ground nearby, then they are slid leaped to the next place that needs a fix.

This works great for a group that does not want to sit around, but can't quite figure out what to do.

A typical set up might be: The gray smoke whirls around you....and you appear in a field...in the middle of a battle between elves and orcs. The fix, unknown, to the players, is to simply turn the tide of the battle. And they only get a couple seconds to decide what side, if any to take. I'm against the boring ''ok, lets stop the game and all read to you the history of the elven-orc war'' and even more so against using knowledge checks to ''remember everything''. But the plane and planet and sphere hopping make knowledge skills nicely useless. The players can assume the elves are good, and the orcs evil, and then help the side they support.....or even do the balance idea where they help/hurt both sides. They often get a hint like ''an elf male nearby is thrown off his horse and lands just five feet from you and you hear another elf on horseback say ''Prince Evon has fallen!''. This gives the players a nice chance to ''get right in the middle of it''.

[JusticeZero]

You just need to move away from Minecrsft to Skyrim. Throw them some hooks for big plots until they start following one.

[HighWater]

So I was taught, like all the other good little DMs, that Rule 1 was "Railroading was bad". I've always agreed with people that said D&D was collaborative storytelling. So I gave my players a nice big open world, with a mystery plot if they wanted it, and some other sidequest-y fluff if they wanted to do that. Standard stuff.

Then they asked to be railroaded.

Right to my face, one of my players actually said "Please railroad us" and my DM soul vomited. I've complied for the past couple sessions, but it's really starting to grate on me. The reason they gave is that they "sat around too much". Basically, they didn't go out to find plot/adventure, and wanted it handed to them on a plate, as though they are the protagonists that the world must bow to. I'm all for being the protagonists, but the world isn't your slave, and isn't going to make it super easy for you.

Any ideas?

I feel there is some railroading-confusion here!

Making sure there is only one solution to any given problem = bad railroading.
Allowing the PCs to be heroes that are dragged from one heroic deed to the next = not necessarely bad railroading!

The first is pretty awful, because it is mostly cheating (you veto any other option that might work).
The second can be something desirable, depending on what your players want (and they seem to want this!).

Do your players want the Minecraft experience? (No plots other than the ones you discover/design yourself.) This can be stressful, cumbersome, boring... Basically, it may feel like work!
Do your players want the Skyrim experience? (A few main plots and a lot of optional sidequests, the main pliot will even wait for attention.) Whooo freedom and lots of sorta trivial quests and a marked main plot for when you want to do something meaningful! Can be nice, though the main plot may fade from view...
Do your players want to play Lord of the Rings? (A main plot that drags them in their wake!) The Danger finds them and they must act to stop it! They get to be Heroes!

DnD is storytelling! The third option is not necessarely a bad story, it may actually become a very good story as long as you stay away from the railroad pitfalls (invulnerable enemies, very complicated "solutions" that only exist in the DM's head).

Think of the Hero Archetypes that become completely unplayable in a Sandbox. One examplar is the Reluctant Hero. Think of Frodo. Would he have EVER left the Shire if it weren't for the Ring that fell into his hands by chance? Would he not have stayed in Rivendel if the Big Races had been able to compromise on who was to carry the Ring? He's not looking for danger, danger is finding him. The same applies for a great many fantasy stories: it's not strange for Players to want that because it's a very valid storytelling trope. They want to be heroes in a cool fantasy story, but how many cool fantasy heroes hunt down their own story? Most fantasy heroes are dragged by events and within these events they try to make meaningful choices...

You don't have to give players an open world to give them meaningful choices.
As others have said: give them a nice sweeping plot with some important player choices involved and you're doing your DM-thing well.

[prufock]

Play in Eberron, ride the lightning rail, have adventures. Railroading both figurative and literal.