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View Full Version : DM Help As a GM, what should I learn about this experience?



Dr TPK
2015-04-22, 04:29 AM
I ran a game to strangers in a small "con", which is was an event for 20+ players, mostly university students (some were alumni). We had lots of games with the intended maximum length of 5 hours (It's quite a lot to play at once, isn't it?).

I had a homebrew superhero adventure which gave the players and PCs lots of freedom to do whatever they wanted. Previously, I had run the one-shot games in a sort of railroad-ish manner, which had drawn criticism from one player (Who didn't play in my games any more). The PCs were up to a terrorist group, who intended to strike to two known locations in Quebec. I had two options in mind: The PCs could solve the game as a detective game and find the terrorists (the difficult option), or choose one of the locations and guard it (the hack 'n slash option).

The game was a nightmare. The players seemed lost. One of the PCs wanted to know who ran the security in the location, but it was a third party company called Quebec Securitas, who just had a couple of guards to patrol the areas. The player spent a lot of time interviewing the CEO and finding information about the security company. We had to roleplay several phonecalls, and usually his questions made no sense.

The PCs interviewed all the NPCs and generally wasted a lot of time with each and every one. They had a clue about one of the terrorist, but they didn't start very well with their plan. They had a phone number of one of the terrorist and they called him pretending to be telemarketers, but since the terrorist had bought prepaid just few days which was only known by a selected few people, the terrorists of course assumed that the plan had been compromised and they tossed away the SIM cards and bought new ones.

After that the players sort of folded. They just started to chitchat with the NPCs and had no plan at all. It took 7 hours and then, due to extreme exhaustion, I had the bad guys ambush the PCs and I handed the PCs an easy victory. After this I quickly packed my stuff and departed.

What to learn from all this?

Maglubiyet
2015-04-22, 04:54 AM
Were the PC's skilled in detective work or were they simply people with superpowers?

If they were just supers with no investigative skills you could have fed them the information they needed via a government agent/law enforcement ("we have a lead, could you guys investigate this warehouse?"). That way they just do the fun parts.

If they were supposed to be the ones to solve this case because they actually possess the relevant skills, you could have also fed them leads ("roll your Detective Work skill...okay your informant tells you about this warehouse...")

You don't need to railroad them to force them to do what you want, but it helps to have them where the action is going to be. You're the director telling them where the camera is aimed - they're the actors breathing life into the scenes.

Comet
2015-04-22, 04:59 AM
Any roleplaying game where failure results in "nothing happens" can get super frustrating super quickly.

Always have consequences in mind. If they players are horrible at investigating stuff, they should still experience interesting things as a result of their failure. Even if those things are negative for their characters the players will enjoy them more than having to sit there and guess what the GM wants them to say to advance the story.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-22, 05:03 AM
How did you expect them to solve the case? It sounds like they tried, but it wasn't what you had in mind.

Could you have used their course of action to feed them the info you wanted them to have, even though that's not originally how you envisioned it? Like maybe the security company had a surveillance video they could've shown the heroes that would have led them in the right direction. Or one of the security guards had actually accepted a bribe from one of the terrorists.

Bronk
2015-04-22, 06:57 AM
Well, it sounds like you may have missed the mark on your game a bit. It was a homebrew game, so no one would know the rules ahead of time, and you played it for strangers, so you don't really know how used to role playing tropes the players would be.

Did you let them pick their powers ahead of time or were they pregens? Either way, I can imagine how this played out... you told them it was a super powers game, and then suddenly it was a detective game. They looked at their character sheets, didn't find anything that they thought would immediately help track the bad guys down, then started to lose interest right away while a couple of players wasted time with wild goose chases, talking to random people.

For seven hours!

That sounds deeply boring. I think the learning experience here is to keep things moving. If you don't want to drop direct hints as to what the bad guys are doing, you could at least drop hints to the players about how to use their abilities or how to even play your game. Honestly, this sounds less like a supers game and more like a Shadowrun game.

In a random supers game, I'd be thinking "I can fly... I guess... I do that and look around?" The response here would probably be that nothing would happen.

In a Shadowrun game, I'd be checking contacts, talking to fixers, hiring deckers, buying weaponry and stealth gear... that's all built into the setting as options. A decker could have hacked the guys phone in secret instead of just calling him, for example.

I think you should have also moved time along faster. Say the players found out that the attacks would happen in a week... after several lame phone calls, say that it's two days, then one day, then one hour... put the pressure on, drop hints, use NPCs to offer ideas.

So, TL;DR, two things.

1: Your game went too long... I'm surprised everyone stuck around for the full 7 hours. This sounds more like a one or two hour game, tops. I've played in a bunch of games like this, but with friends, so it was a bit better. Even so, one of our group started playing 'impulsive' characters so that he'd have an excuse to jump start the action when he got bored.

2: I think you started your game in the wrong genre and didn't switch back fast enough. I don't think that would have been 'railroading' so much as just getting on with your adventure. After all... you still only had the one adventure option for them: "stop the terrorists".

Lord Torath
2015-04-22, 08:33 AM
You probably needed to dangle more clues in front of them (see the Three Clue Rule (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule)), or give them suggestions of actions they might take. You could also summarize the conversations with the NPCs, giving them the relevant information quickly, rather than making them roleplay it out. This limits the number of inane interrogations you have to hear. Also, having the PC's superior call up with new information (we finally found a match in the finger-print database. Here's the address!) can help move things along.

Railroading is not the same as giving the players the information they need. Railroading is telling the players "Your Boss tells you to go to the Library of Congress. Thirty minutes later you are standing on the steps to the building when a hidden sniper starts taking pots shots at you!" Having the boss say "We think they're going to try a heist at the Library of Congress. I want you over there yesterday!" and then letting the players decide what to do is not railroading.

Dr TPK
2015-04-22, 10:39 AM
You probably needed to dangle more clues in front of them (see the Three Clue Rule (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule)), or give them suggestions of actions they might take. You could also summarize the conversations with the NPCs, giving them the relevant information quickly, rather than making them roleplay it out. This limits the number of inane interrogations you have to hear. Also, having the PC's superior call up with new information (we finally found a match in the finger-print database. Here's the address!) can help move things along.

Railroading is not the same as giving the players the information they need. Railroading is telling the players "Your Boss tells you to go to the Library of Congress. Thirty minutes later you are standing on the steps to the building when a hidden sniper starts taking pots shots at you!" Having the boss say "We think they're going to try a heist at the Library of Congress. I want you over there yesterday!" and then letting the players decide what to do is not railroading.

I had an one-shot once that was entirely a road trip. The PCs escorted a foreign minister of some European country across the USA while all sorts of guys tried to assassinate him. The time was limited to 5 hours, as it always is. I think was a huge success and the adventure took exactly 5 hours, but one of the players whined "railroad" and now I have decided that I will not push the players to any direction out of the fear of having someone call "railroad!" again. Everyone can go anywhere at anytime, I'm not pushing them at all. Otherwise... It's that call again.

CombatBunny
2015-04-22, 12:48 PM
I believe that if you don't want to railroad, but you want to complete the adventure in 5 hours, you have to prepare your session slightly different.

Your plans must be your “default path”, but nothing more, the sequence that happens if PC’s do nothing. When you are writing your conflicts and scenes, always consider the premise “If the PC’s do nothing… this happens”. And be ready to use what the players throw to you, so that you can adjust your adventure to the things they are telling you they want.

No matter what did you prepared, if it doesn’t triggers is just the same as if you hadn’t prepared it. So if the PC’s make a phone call, make that call matters, they suddenly contacted the rookie of the bad guys who will give all the information away, and then the PC’s hear another voice on the phone: “Who the hell are you talking to? WTF?! Bang!!! Beep, beep, beep”

Or better yet, the bad guys suddenly are tracing the phone call, and after chatting a little while, the PC’s are suddenly surrounded by a large squad of cannon fodder.

That doesn’t means that everything that the PC’s throw to you will be the right answer, but in most of the cases it should, considering it will be a one-shot session. No one will notice your little trick, and everyone will feel rewarded. A PC says: “Let’s break through this storage room, maybe we could find something useful, maybe a gun” Boom! Suddenly you state that it was a military weapons warehouse! Time for some Fireworks, even if your originally planned that it was the janitor's room.

Also, prepare a conclusion that you can trigger anytime, so you can end the session whenever you want.

For example, I ran a one-shot were the PC’s were supposed to investigate strange happenings related to a ghost. The “default route” was that their investigations will lead them to the tomb of a vengeful ghost, whose objective was to have a last confrontation to feel like he died with honour (because he actually didn’t die in battle).

But I made a backup plan and I just stated that if my players were totally clueless, after some investigation and wondering, the Ghost will appear to them wherever they were (Because you know, they attracted enough attention). Also, I prepared many backup encounters that could be triggered any time, if the PC’s were far from getting the clues or in the case that the game was getting stagnant. The game was fun, it was packed with action, no railroading at all, and it had all the necessary structure to tell a good story: Introduction, problem, climax and conclusion. Many of the events were actually dictated by the same players, without ever knowing.

Jay R
2015-04-22, 12:58 PM
1. They have to waste time on red herrings, because they don't know that it's a red herring. But you know it's wasted time. So don't waste it.

Player: I start to investigate the security company.
GM: After some time, you really that this is a blind alley. They are trustworthy, and they don't have any useful information.

2. Have a sequence of clues to drop in their laps any time they get bogged down.

Player: Gee, I'm getting frustrated.
GM: A small boy comes up to you and asks if you're those people who moved into the apartment but never come out except late at night.

kyoryu
2015-04-22, 12:59 PM
What to learn from all this?

The following is not universal advice for all games, but I think it's good advice for the situation you're talking about.

First off, consider being flexible. If the players decide to investigate the security folks, and it's at all reasonable that one of them has a clue, let them have a clue. Think of it like a TV show - you don't have scenes where nothing happens.

Secondly, if you know nothing can come of a set of actions, consider summarizing them. "Okay, you question all of the guards for six hours. None of them know anything." People may complain about "railroading", but really, you've already determined that interrogating the guards gets nothing, so that's where the railroading actually is, not in the fact that you summarized it instead of playing it out for two hours.

A good technique for this is asking the players outright "what is it you hope to accomplish? If you succeed beyond your wildest dreams, what changes, or what info do you get?" And if it turns out that nobody is against what they're trying to do, you can get past stuff a lot faster.


one of the players whined "railroad" and now I have decided that I will not push the players to any direction out of the fear of having someone call "railroad!" again.

A) You can't make everybody happy. If five of six players were happy, you did a good job.
B) If you're going to railroad, it's often a good idea to tell people ahead of time. If you know you're getting on the choo choo, you can have fun. The problem with railroads is usually when people try to veer from them and are "gently" pushed back on the tracks.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-22, 01:00 PM
The same thing your mom told you as a little kid: Stay away from strangers.

obryn
2015-04-22, 01:24 PM
Convention games require a heavy hand with the plot. You don't have the time for a character-driven sandbox in only 4 hours, and your players won't have the background to get that moving.

Dr TPK
2015-04-22, 01:26 PM
The problem with railroads is usually when people try to veer from them and are "gently" pushed back on the tracks.

This is an excellent point which I haven't considered. Thank you kyoryu, you made me think.

Usually people like to call the adventure "railroad" if they have just one option in front of them, such as "the building only has one door and no windows" or "they want to hear the password at the gates but you don't have it". I have had these things in my games that you only got one option (this one-shot was different, since you had at least two options), but I never force my players or the PCs and I take their wandering and "veering" calmly. I did the same in the situation described in the OP, it was just that I got really tired after 7 hours and I just wanted to finish with the pointless game.

Eisenheim
2015-04-22, 01:29 PM
Never have finding the clues be a challenge in an investigate plot, have deciding what to do with them be the challenge. Looking for information is not interesting, don't make it the focus. Make using the information the focus.

In a supers game, you definitely shouldn't bog down in investigation. If the players seem lost, blow something up and get into a running fight.

Dr TPK
2015-04-22, 01:33 PM
Never have finding the clues be a challenge in an investigate plot, have deciding what to do with them be the challenge. Looking for information is not interesting, don't make it the focus. Make using the information the focus.

In a supers game, you definitely shouldn't bog down in investigation. If the players seem lost, blow something up and get into a running fight.

But you didn't understand. The players had a clear choice: investigate the thing OR wait for the bad guys to attack, since the places where they were going to attack were known. I gave the players a choice: either investigate it or ambush the bad guys. This was my genuine attempt not to have that "railroad card" raised. Not this time.

Lord Torath
2015-04-22, 02:03 PM
But you didn't understand. The players had a clear choice: investigate the thing OR wait for the bad guys to attack, since the places where they were going to attack were known. I gave the players a choice: either investigate it or ambush the bad guys. This was my genuine attempt not to have that "railroad card" raised. Not this time.The point remains, though, that time spent looking for the clues is generally boring. Get the clues in their hands as quickly as possible, and then let them piece the clues together and figure out what they mean. That's where things get interesting.

Eisenheim
2015-04-22, 02:48 PM
the real division shouldn't be investigate or wait: it's succeed at the investigation and get quickly into the action that way or fail at the investigation, get taken by surprise and get quickly into the action that way. Especially in a one shot there shouldn't be paths that don't lead quickly into the action. That's not railroading, it's good game design.

veti
2015-04-22, 03:59 PM
But you didn't understand. The players had a clear choice: investigate the thing OR wait for the bad guys to attack, since the places where they were going to attack were known. I gave the players a choice: either investigate it or ambush the bad guys. This was my genuine attempt not to have that "railroad card" raised. Not this time.

The thing is, "investigating" is inherently a slow and tedious process where 90% of the time is spent establishing that various blind alleys are, in fact, blind. Roleplaying an investigation under anything like "realistic" conditions is no fun at all.

Jay R gives a good answer: just shortcut the tedious bits. You know they're wasting time, so just advance the clock an hour and then summarise what they've found at the end of it. (Also, put in-game time pressure on them, so if their investigations end up taking half the day and they're getting nowhere, they'll be under increasing pressure to cut to the hack-n-slash option. And that "half a day wasted" should only take, like, 15 minutes of actual playing time.)

kyoryu
2015-04-22, 04:07 PM
Right. The only "negative" of this is that when they do actually drop into details for a specific interview, they'll OOC know that the guy knows something.

Of course, they won't know *what* he knows, so that's still workable. And it usually beats the alternative.

Sith_Happens
2015-04-22, 04:25 PM
I had an one-shot once that was entirely a road trip. The PCs escorted a foreign minister of some European country across the USA while all sorts of guys tried to assassinate him. The time was limited to 5 hours, as it always is. I think was a huge success and the adventure took exactly 5 hours, but one of the players whined "railroad" and now I have decided that I will not push the players to any direction out of the fear of having someone call "railroad!" again. Everyone can go anywhere at anytime, I'm not pushing them at all. Otherwise... It's that call again.

So you once had one player out of 5-6 react inappropriately to something and decided next time to overcompensate for it, is what I'm hearing.

"Here's what the adventure is about, and if you have a problem with that then the next five hours are going to be very boring for you" is not railroading.


But you didn't understand. The players had a clear choice: investigate the thing OR wait for the bad guys to attack, since the places where they were going to attack were known.

How clear is "clear?" Did someone actually say to them in-character "Here's a spot we think the bad guys might hit next, we'd appreciate some backup over there if you're not too busy" or did you just assume that "They're playing superheroes, this is a thing that will occur to them to do?"

Bronk
2015-04-23, 08:21 AM
Now that I've thought about it a bit more, I think that those phone calls with the Security Company CEO would have been a great time to school the characters about what they should have been doing.

The CEO should have quickly realized that the PCs had no clue what they were doing, realized that the investigation was in the wrong hands, and stepped in to lead them in the right direction. That's a very CEOish thing to do. Heck, he's in charge of security... maybe he'd just hire them! At the very least, he'd start asking leading questions about their powers, gotten the players thinking and kept them involved in the story.

NichG
2015-04-23, 08:44 AM
For a good investigation game, I think its best when the immediate future is obvious but the long-term future is nebulous. So e.g. there should always be something which is 'the next thing' or 'the list of things' to do (not necessarily to investigate, but to take action upon). Then, those action points are interspersed with opportunities to gather new information and revise understanding about the overarching mystery.

In such a game, the reward for doing well in challenges, combat encounters, etc is to control the nature of the clues that are coming your way. If you're forced to kill the henchman, you can't interrogate him and so the only information you get is whatever clues are placed on him; but if you capture him alive, you get to direct the questioning and discover the things you think are relevant rather than the things the DM gives you.

Keeping the design along those lines - 'parts of the mystery will be revealed automatically as the game progresses, but your actions before then determine whether it is revealed on its terms or your terms' - helps avoid the stuck situations. There are some detective shows which follow this pattern - often there's a character who is consulting on the case but is not actually a member of the police department. In such stories, often there's an ambiguity in the mystery and the tension is the suspicion that if the police get conclusive evidence before the consultant figures it out, they'll arrest the wrong person. So rather than 'what do we do next?' its a race for the hero to put the pieces together in time.

So e.g. in this case, I would say that 'can we find the terrorists before they attack' is a problematic design - once you establish 'they're going to attack' it should be immediate, a direct call to action. However, you could have the one attack be a warmup for a bigger move - they're testing out some new superweapon or whatever - and so the attack can be seen as an opportunity to investigate, rather than something you're investigating in order to prevent in the first place. You have an opportunity to try to get at what their motivations are, what their abilities are, etc. If the terrorists are trying a misdirect - they're publically claiming one motive, but actually they have a secondary one - then you have a good investigation story, with the branch point being whether or not the heroes fall for the deception (and then have to work against a disadvantage) or figure it out in time. Either way they're going to be doing something at each moment, but the story is about them trying to take control of the situation.

Mastikator
2015-04-23, 09:04 AM
Any point of the plot or the game world that the players don't already know about exists in a superposition where you can change it free of consequences. It's only after the players have interacted with it that it is collapsed into a single definition.

If (or rather, when) the players insist on going down all the wrong roads, speaking to all the wrong NPCs and finding all the wrong clues.
Those are now the right roads, leading to the right NPCs and they find the right clues.

If you have a huge adventure planned on road A and they choose road B then simply put the adventure on road B. As long as they never find out you'll never get in trouble for it.

Jay R
2015-04-23, 10:25 AM
Right. The only "negative" of this is that when they do actually drop into details for a specific interview, they'll OOC know that the guy knows something.

Of course, they won't know *what* he knows, so that's still workable. And it usually beats the alternative.

In this case, it means that throughout the game, they will know that they are playing the game, and doing something worthwhile. This is an unqualified positive aspect.

kyoryu
2015-04-23, 12:06 PM
In this case, it means that throughout the game, they will know that they are playing the game, and doing something worthwhile. This is an unqualified positive aspect.

I would agree with your assessment. Playing Devil's Advocate more than anything (mostly to shoot it down).

If you haven't noticed, we very rarely disagree :)

D+1
2015-04-23, 12:10 PM
I had a homebrew superhero adventure which gave the players and PCs lots of freedom to do whatever they wanted.First error. In a convention/one-shot situation you can't just let the game meander and go nowhere, unless ending the game with nothing accomplished is an acceptable outcome. You MUST be prepared to drive the game, the plot, the PC's, the players in some direction. It's best if you can lead them (or they can lead YOU!), but you have to be prepared to handle it if things get mired down or just go pear-shaped.

Previously, I had run the one-shot games in a sort of railroad-ish manner, which had drawn criticism from one player
My own experience is that railroading works - you just can't let the players see the rails. No matter what their decisions or conclusions are they should still drive them in some fashion toward the end goal of the scenario. For example, if they came up with some wild and whacky theory that is dead-wrong or could never work, you can turn that against them, prove their theory immediately wrong AND at the same time use the opportunity to toss them another clue as to the correct conclusion - "If it's not X then it MUST be Y!".

I had two options in mind: The PCs could solve the game as a detective game and find the terrorists (the difficult option), or choose one of the locations and guard it (the hack 'n slash option).
Second error. If you're playing a mystery game then run it like a mystery game. If you're playing a hack and slash game then run it like a hack and slash game. Even if you're mixing genres by making solve-the-mystery a big part of what leads to the Big-Showdown-Fight which is your conclusion then by god you still need to GET THEM TO THE FIGHT. When the game time reached the FIVE hour limit and it was clear you weren't anywhere close to your conclusion you should have realized that HOURS earlier you should have switched gears and started figuring out how to get things moving in the right direction and at the speed that was becoming necessary.

The game was a nightmare. The players seemed lost. One of the PCs wanted to know who ran the security in the location, but it was a third party company called Quebec Securitas, who just had a couple of guards to patrol the areas. The player spent a lot of time interviewing the CEO and finding information about the security company. We had to roleplay several phonecalls, and usually his questions made no sense.
You should have asked him WHY he was asking his senseless questions. You kept YOURSELF in the dark about what the player was thinking, what he was trying to find out. So, of course you had no idea how to give him information that would move things along or what that information could be, and it sounds like you allowed him to monopolize game time while doing it. With all that time being spent his efforts should have led to SOMETHING happening, or SOME tidbit of information that could lead to more interesting play than an endless string of silly questions to one NPC.

The PCs interviewed all the NPCs and generally wasted a lot of time with each and every one.
Then AT LEAST ONE of them should have been able to give information that MOVED THE GAME FORWARD.

They had a clue about one of the terrorist, but they didn't start very well with their plan. They had a phone number of one of the terrorist and they called him pretending to be telemarketers, but since the terrorist had bought prepaid just few days which was only known by a selected few people, the terrorists of course assumed that the plan had been compromised and they tossed away the SIM cards and bought new ones.
Then it was your fault. It may have been perfectly logical for that to have been the result but you just smacked the players in the face with a brick wall. You had already presented yourself a good challenge in being able to invent a mystery on the fly or at least manage the unfolding of that mystery without a prepared fallback - but you just described YOURSELF failing to take advantage of an excellent opportunity to move the game along in any number of ways in favor of just saying to the players, "WRONG! Go back to square 1." Even by following your own instinct to have the terrorists dump the phones you could have had somebody SEE it, pick up the phone or the sim card and put it to use. The PC's then track it to that person, who tells them where and how he got it - and that the terrorists had dropped the card/phone into the trash bin right in front of the phone store where they stepped in to buy replacements. PC's then get the necessary information from the shop owner and voila! The game moves forward.

That's just one possibility. There are others. One terrorist mixes up sim cards and accidentally puts in the one he was supposed to throw away. The PC's get data/information about the use of the cards PRIOR to them being thrown away that still gets them where they want to be/what they need to know to get closer - to MOVE THE GAME FORWARD. How many other incidents throughout the session were there that you simply decided it wouldn't work instead of trying to FIND a way to make it work, even just a little bit?

It took 7 hours and then, due to extreme exhaustion, I had the bad guys ambush the PCs and I handed the PCs an easy victory. After this I quickly packed my stuff and departed.
Why did it take another 2 hours after the 5-hour time limit to realize the game was at an impasse and drastic measures were needed to conclude it? Why didn't you throw them an easy victory at, say, the 4-hour or 4.5-hour mark? When you hit the 3-hour mark you almost certainly should have realized that the game was a fish flopping around on the beach and you needed to do something.

What to learn from all this?
I'm willing to bet that you could sit down and write out PAGES of ways in which YOU prevented the game from getting anywhere. When players are relentlessly faced with failure and obstruction of course they'll give up. If you're going to run a mystery in a sandbox you have to figure out ways on the fly of getting even stupid ideas and bad plans to actually contribute to forward progress in solving the mystery at an acceptable pace.

And these were supposed to be superheroes, right? I didn't see a single mention of anything super-heroic in there. No super powers they were given opportunity to use to solve the mystery. No preliminary or sideline fights, knocking skulls of super opponents of any kind much less even mundane criminals. No super clue-finding gadgets. No ESP, flying or teleporting, feats of super strength or speed, or fiery breath. No connections with the chief of police, FBI agents, CIA agents, supercomputers, reporters, investigative journalists, rich industrialist patrons, a Justice League, anyone who might help with clues or just suggest new avenues of pursuit... Am I just missing something, or did you? Where were the superheroics or any of the superhero tropes? Even if they were there and being used why does it sound to me like the terrorist could have been foiled by nobody more super than the Scooby Doo gang or the Sheriff of Podunk County? A mystery involving superheroes should NEED superheroes and as many of their super abilities as possible. If they're going to fight crime with fists then they should be spending time in the game actually fighting something/someone. If they're going to be solving mysteries then their powers should be contributing to that.

And for a plot involving terrorists there sure doesn't seem to have been any urgency in solving things. Even at the end rather than have the terrorists ambush the PC's you could have had one of the two terrorist targets get hit and then, if they didn't already know target #2 give them clues as to what it was and let the PC's speed off to the big fight. Or they could come in late during the attack on target #1. Or the police could have foiled their efforts at target #1 - and then there's clues to go fight them before they reach target #2.

Sandbox games require improvisation, either to make the things that you planned to happen actually happen without seeming forced, or to make up events that you HADN'T planned for that will be just as fun as what you HAD planned. Mostly this sounds to me like you weren't exercising any flexibility or creativity in the how or what was going to take place from your end, despite assuming that anything - or nothing - could happen since you said it would be a sandbox.

kyoryu
2015-04-23, 01:30 PM
Also, one of the key insights from Gumshoe is that in a mystery, it's not getting the information that's interesting. It's what you do with it.

As a GM in a mystery, you should look for every opportunity to give players a piece of the puzzle. Getting the pieces is boring. Putting them together is where the game is.

Jay R
2015-04-23, 07:48 PM
Also, one of the key insights from Gumshoe is that in a mystery, it's not getting the information that's interesting. It's what you do with it.

As a GM in a mystery, you should look for every opportunity to give players a piece of the puzzle. Getting the pieces is boring. Putting them together is where the game is.

Exactly*. Never be afraid to hand the players your clues. They will still manage to misinterpret them.


*Yes, I've noticed that we rarely disagree.

Darth Ultron
2015-04-23, 09:41 PM
What to learn from all this?

Railroad.

A good DM is a Railroad Baron. And, ok, Disclamer: there are a very, very small number of players that can be given a black piece of paper and a pen and spontaneously role play an amazing character plot-storyline-adventure out of nothing at all. And then all the rest of the players need to ride the Train.

And this is even more true with pick up games. When you get a couple of random people for a couple of hours, railroading is the way to go. It works.

Jay R
2015-04-24, 11:07 AM
Correct. A campaign can be a sandbox. But a one-shot needs to have a clear way for players with no history in this world to find the adventure, quickly and without doubt.

Dr TPK
2015-04-24, 12:15 PM
You think you are right about the fact that I should railroad in one-shots. I think my road-trip one-shot was brilliant and fun, and this sandboxing was dreadful. I should keep a tight leash from now on. It just works better!

KillianHawkeye
2015-04-24, 06:10 PM
You think you are right about the fact that I should railroad in one-shots. I think my road-trip one-shot was brilliant and fun, and this sandboxing was dreadful. I should keep a tight leash from now on. It just works better!

Yeah, especially since you were playing with people you didn't necessarily know. Running a sandbox game is a lot easier when you at least know your players and have some expectations in place of what they might do. Without that knowledge, giving the players absolute freedom is a substantial risk. It might go well, or (as you discovered) it might go nowhere. In that situation, you are the only one you can rely on to make sure something happens, so be sure to have at least a minimal amount of tracks laid down in advance.

I also think that you over-reacted and over-compensated to a single outcry of railroading. The appropriate response is less railroading, not zero railroading.

Anyway, you seem to have learned that already. The more experience you get with differing amounts of railroading, the better you'll be at determining how much is the right amount for a given situation or group.

Hawkstar
2015-04-29, 08:08 AM
Looking at your two examples, I'd say the first situation you ran that made you resolve to never railroad again does come across as a railroad - Players seem to be escorting a dignitary on a course set by said dignitary and waiting for enemies to attack? That's as railroady as games come (But can still be fun). In order to make such a session NOT a railroad, you'd probably want to do things like allow the players to set the course and identify threats before they strike, among other tweaks to encourage player proactivity.

However, you took the wrong lesson from that, in part because of a bad definition of railroading. If you are playing a Superhero game where terrorists are about to attack as the only plot... then go all out with it. Give the players the information they look for, or clues where to find it if they're on the wrong track. And let them deal with the terrorists in their own way - interceptions, redirections, ambushes (By either side), etc.

One cool piece of metaphorical advice I learned about DMing is "Never aim at something you're not willing to shoot".