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Takewo
2016-06-04, 03:30 PM
Alright, this is a simple question: what is the most ridiculous example of railroading that you've ever encountered? (In real play, in written adventures or wherever)

Mine was in a third-party adventure that I would have considered playing with my group. The adventure in general was full of choices where if the players chose A, they had to succeed on some sort of skill check. If they chose anything but A, something would happened that rendered the situation just as if they had chosen A and succeeded in their roll check.
My favourite one was a dark pit with a DC 14 climb check to go down. If the party did something other than climbing down the pit, tentacles would come out and drag them down the pit.

The Glyphstone
2016-06-04, 07:58 PM
I just ran into a somewhat egregious example of railroading in a Rogue Trader pre-packaged adventure. The group is effectively compelled to cooperate with some aliens to stop an apocalyptic evil, and thoroughly railroaded into doing so - first by infiltrating saboteurs, then a pursuing alien battlecruiser, then a fiated effect that prevents them from fleeing or doing anything except negotiating with the aliens.

Then, once they've agreed to cooperate, the next scene is a diplomatic/social encounter where they have to then convince the aliens to allow them to help out. It's so hilariously back-and-forth, and clumsy to boot.

Malimar
2016-06-04, 08:07 PM
I once played a campaign where some sort of powerful demon forced us to drink beverages that gave him some sort of control over us, and then kept doing no-save damage to us any time we did anything the demon didn't like.

It was an evil campaign and we were all evil characters, so we would probably have been amenable to just making a deal with the demon, no railroading necessary.

Garktz
2016-06-04, 08:18 PM
It was not rail roading but a couple of failed "rock falls everybody dies" because, as the dm later told us, he just wanted to kill the pc.s in a totally unfair way to tackle the campaing from another angle...

We were sleeping at a tavern, 1º floor, he ask for listen rolls, we make them and suddenly

-"You now are awake and hear some combat noises from the hallway outside your door, as soon as you get up and pick your weapons, the door burst as its hit by a lot of mummys (there are 20 of them, you see 7 but the rest are on the hallway killing other customers)"
so what you guys are going to do? (we were like lvl 4 or 5, so no chance to win that)


-"we throw the candles and the torches to the beds and jump out of the window and then barricade the outside door"


-WHAT? why would you do that?


-well, if we stay we die, mummy have bandages or some kind of fabric wrapped around their body so if we burn the tavern, they will also burn fast and die


-OK WELL ALLRIGHT what you guys do next


-stay to make sure the building burns with all the mummys inside


-OK
....
As you are looking the tavern burn, you guys realize that a patrol of vampires is closing on you, what you do now?


-We run to the nearest house and get in, vampires cant enter a house unless the owner lets them in


-..... as soon as you guys open the door, you see more mummys inside the house



and there we just popped and quited the game

goto124
2016-06-04, 08:32 PM
I just ran into a somewhat egregious example of railroading in a Rogue Trader pre-packaged adventure. The group is effectively compelled to cooperate with some aliens to stop an apocalyptic evil, and thoroughly railroaded into doing so - first by infiltrating saboteurs, then a pursuing alien battlecruiser, then a fiated effect that prevents them from fleeing or doing anything except negotiating with the aliens.

Then, once they've agreed to cooperate, the next scene is a diplomatic/social encounter where they have to then convince the aliens to allow them to help out. It's so hilariously back-and-forth, and clumsy to boot.

I ran a campaign based off a computer game with only-one-overly-specific-solution puzzles like the above.

It went as well as expected, and I'm still repenting for my mistakes.

JNAProductions
2016-06-04, 08:38 PM
I ran a campaign based off a computer game with only-one-overly-specific-solution puzzles like the above.

It went as well as expected, and I'm still repenting for my mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. Did you learn form them?

goto124
2016-06-04, 08:39 PM
I've yet to find out.

AMFV
2016-06-04, 08:49 PM
I ran a campaign based off a computer game with only-one-overly-specific-solution puzzles like the above.

It went as well as expected, and I'm still repenting for my mistakes.

Can you give us some of the details? We crave details so that we too may learn from your mistakes.

Cadex Sideris
2016-06-04, 09:36 PM
Last year, I was a player in a campaign that started to break down as player frustration built up. Culminating in our party deciding to screw our temporary "allies" that most of us had no reason to follow (or even like) and defect to the "enemy" that most of us had no reason to fight against (or dislike). I was actually looking forward to it, but the game broke down almost immediately after this was discussed.

We were later informed that the GM had planned out every major plot point of the campaign from the very beginning. Who we would meet, what we would do, that he was determined that all but one of us would die before the end. Going so far as to have an "ending scene" for the campaign already planned out. And that we would have been heavily discouraged from leaving our "allies", and effectively forced to stay if we pressed the issue.

RazorChain
2016-06-04, 09:59 PM
Times of Trouble 3 part adventure module for DnD 2nd edition. It also had 3 DMPC's that become gods with the players aid.

My party got so fed up that we killed all the DMPC's...and Elminster who was kinda the 4th DMPC.

Mr.Moron
2016-06-04, 10:43 PM
I was once in a game where my PC was basically super bill gates who basically invented the internet in the context of the campaign. This was one of those god-awful WoD games that everyone in my group at the time just loved. Anyway I get it in my head it might be fun to try to expose some of the truth about monsters and what not but am well aware such things are generally not loved by the powers-that-be. But whatever I telegraphed my intentions to the GM and got no objections. I spend weeks of sessions making plans, both in terms of explicit descriptions of what I'm doing with my tech systems and the failsafes I can think of along with making lots of computer checks (highest possible to have mechanically), to cover anything my PC might be able to think of that I couldn't. No sign of trouble. I go to flip the switch on my master plan and one of the NPCs just walks up to me and says "You can't do that!"

No rolls on his part.
No descriptions of any of my safety measures being comprised or addressed.
Not even like a scene playing out before hand where my character gets to be surprised at his stuff not working like he expects, or any foreshadowing/hints that things might not be going his way.

Just.
Me: "OK. I'm activating my protocols!"
GM: "It shuts down immediately. NPC comes in the back door and tells you never to try that again"
:smallannoyed:

I get not liking the idea (shoot it down before I try it, seriously just tell me it's off tone or inappropriate OOC). I even get maybe me being to succeed being totally off the table, given the nature of the game's premise. However, at least make some show of my actions meaning anything. I could have even stomached the auto-failure-no-matter what if it came with some recognition of my efforts having actually existed. Some success or failure some kind of payoff! Not one sentence dismissal by 2k00l4u npc.

Arbane
2016-06-05, 01:19 AM
Not my campaign, I'm happy to say, but:

"Basically, there's no rails in this campaign. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do) Because the PCs tried to use a train once."

---

As for me? Well, in the most recent session of an intrigue based campaign, our GM dropped 1000 skeletons on our level-7 party of four (we were in a big catacomb. He ended up realizing this was an impractical idea, and just handwaved us killing them 8-at-a-time), followed by a Marilith who mind controlled all but one of us, then made sushi out of the 'lucky' player. Then she sent us to fetch some plot-sensitive stuff, and left once she had it.

We were able to get the shredded character raised, it just seemed like poor form to me.

BWR
2016-06-05, 02:02 AM
I can't recall much by the way of railroady things I have done or been subjected to. There have obviously been a few adventures that many people would probably list as railroady but nothing that really sticks out in my head. Mostly, I guess, because railroad journeys are fine if the scenery is nice and the ride is comfortable with good company.
I've had more irritation and feeling of powerlessness in more sandboxy campaigns. The kind of thing where we're free to explore wherever we want and try to do whatever we want but we almost always run into things that are too powerful to handle and have to run away, and end up having little to no effect on the world at all and no real story to go for either.

The worst example of railroading I've heard of is something I have second hand (or is it third hand? can't remember): The Prophecy.

PCs are chosen of the gods type of heroes who have to save the world from being destroyed. They get hold of a big book that details not only what is going to happen if the heroes don't stop things, but also how to stop things. In ridiculous detail, practically to the point of "after fighting X battle, they have to go to Y and convince him to join them, then go fight Z". If they tried to deviate from the script in any way, the book would make ominous noises. If they persisted it would blow up, killing the PCs, then resetting to the last 'quick save' so they could try again. I can't recall if this also happened if they should wipe in an encounter but it wouldn't surprise me.

No-Kill Cleric
2016-06-05, 04:12 AM
Our DM will railroad if the party is talking to long to form or if someone wants to run off when there is literally no reason to.
Basically if the party has been wandering around doing nothing, like drinking or wandering in the market, they force us to run into each other.
We have a player that constantly runs off, doesn't want anyone to know they ran off, then refuses to share important plot information if they find some. The DM is pretty much keeping from having to spend at least half of the session from being that person's solo campaign by forcing them to stick around.

Arbane
2016-06-05, 04:31 AM
Our DM will railroad if the party is talking to long to form or if someone wants to run off when there is literally no reason to.
Basically if the party has been wandering around doing nothing, like drinking or wandering in the market, they force us to run into each other.
We have a player that constantly runs off, doesn't want anyone to know they ran off, then refuses to share important plot information if they find some. The DM is pretty much keeping from having to spend at least half of the session from being that person's solo campaign by forcing them to stick around. They have to be reminded by other party members that running off isn't cool.

I'd suggest to your DM that they should get an egg timer, and make sure everyone gets no more than 5 minutes of spotlight time before switching to the next person in the party. That should keep the game from being half The Adventures Of Moody Loner Guy.

hymer
2016-06-05, 05:01 AM
I recall a short, but particularly pointless railroad. This was 2nd ed. D&D.
The party had camped for the night next to a stream. Nobody gets to make any rolls (there was a homebrew Perception system), we are inescapably ambushed by a wizard. The wizard casts fireball at our camp, and we are all inside the AoE (by DM fiat - we have not been given a chance to choose the location of our PCs). Since we're surprised, we also don't get to make any saving throws (which is utterly against the rules on 2e saves). And the DM decides that we catch fire from the fireball, and we cannot actually do anything during the first X number of rounds (I forget the exact number) except run around. In 2e, a round is a minute, by the way.
Mightily miffed by now, I decide that since I can at least run around, when it's my turn I'll run into the stream and lie down. That ought to put the flames out. Well, no, it doesn't. I'm still stuck running around for the full duration, no reason given, but I get a particularly angry look from the DM.
So, this wizard having the party at his complete mercy (a no-save fireball from a character higher level than the party is pretty four-letter-wording deadly in 2e, and adding a stun effect on top just makes it worse), he vanishes. Never to be heard from in the campaign again. Not that we'd be able to recognize him if he did, because we get no description of him.
Well, he might have been heard from again. I quit the campaign a couple of sessions later.

kraftcheese
2016-06-05, 05:43 AM
In one campaign me and the party were investigating a cave and found a pit that we couldn't jump across, throw a rope over, climb on the walls across, etc.

Every time we suggested a solution to crossing the gap we'd be shot down by our DM: it went on for about half an hour till finally, the DM's irritating DMPC (literally his PC from another campaign) told us to go back into a room we'd recently searched, DISMANTLE A SHACK, and use the shack's planks to bridge the gap...

The Glyphstone
2016-06-05, 12:05 PM
In one campaign me and the party were investigating a cave and found a pit that we couldn't jump across, throw a rope over, climb on the walls across, etc.

Every time we suggested a solution to crossing the gap we'd be shot down by our DM: it went on for about half an hour till finally, the DM's irritating DMPC (literally his PC from another campaign) told us to go back into a room we'd recently searched, DISMANTLE A SHACK, and use the shack's planks to bridge the gap...

And if a travelling salesman appears and offers to sell you a powerful magic sword, don't buy it no matter how cheap his offer gets. Otherwise he won't appear to try and sell you a magic shield five sessions later that is the only possible way to defeat the final boss.

GrayDeath
2016-06-05, 02:26 PM
Well Iw as rather lucky regarding truly awful (in contrast to simply blatantly boring/useless/tryingtoavaoidx" ones).

The two most prominent I remember are:


In a longrunning DSA Adventure there is a point where the Party needs to get some Seasnaketeeth (think Midgardsnake in small^^).

Now the logical move would be to find a dead one and get the teeth. But no, the Adventures DMPC hires the party to a Hunting Expedition. That gets sunk.
Then The PC`s have to hire up with pirates to et off the island they stranded on 8even if, like in our case, my wizard could have gotten them all to safety...in a week or so).
Then the pirates find a Graveyard of aforementioned snakes ...and suddenly big, stupid AdPC agrees to get the teeth from the dead ones.

Yes, I avoided most of the REALLY bad DSA Adventures (or had them when I was so brand new I didn`t realize Iw as being railroaded^^).


The second one was from a Star Wars Game (I dont know if it was a published adventure, itw as from D6 Era).
The Party gets pursued by the Empire, only to be shot down on a planet ... where they get ambushed (we had a Perceptionfocussed Jedi AND a Tech with a Scout Drone in the party) by slavers, which enslave and sell you ... to a rebelling aristocrat (Slaver!!), who promises to free you if you assault an imperial Ship docking in his Space station ... the one that shot you down, and kill ONLY the second officer.

Pex
2016-06-05, 05:12 PM
Our DM will railroad if the party is talking to long to form or if someone wants to run off when there is literally no reason to.
Basically if the party has been wandering around doing nothing, like drinking or wandering in the market, they force us to run into each other.
We have a player that constantly runs off, doesn't want anyone to know they ran off, then refuses to share important plot information if they find some. The DM is pretty much keeping from having to spend at least half of the session from being that person's solo campaign by forcing them to stick around.

That's not so much the DM being a train engineer but a player being a Jerk who cares only about his own fun while the DM is trying to run a game for everyone. The DM tries to get the player involved with the group, i.e. giving him need to know information, but the player refuses. The player needs to be spoken with out of game to knock it off or don't come back. I loathe those types of players and have no tolerance of them at all. I've long since accepted I don't have to put up with it, but I rant digress.

Keltest
2016-06-05, 05:16 PM
A fairly amusing example, but we were a ship in the middle of the ocean, trying to decide where we wanted to go next. The DM got tired of waiting for us to decide, so he up and teleported us into the middle of the plot (and the other side of the continent), which coincidentally happened to also be (hidden) in the middle of a group of nasty enemies, who thankfully didn't notice us right away.

BrianDavion
2016-06-05, 07:44 PM
I once had a GM randomly tell us we'd been captured after a single round of combat (where we where kicking the enemies asses)

Asmodean_
2016-06-06, 01:19 AM
Eleventh level paladin dwarf.
Against an elf and a Drow with a total of five class levels.
The main nope was when he polymorphed into an angel.
Note: One of us had an evil alignment.

Jormengand
2016-06-06, 04:48 AM
Eleventh level paladin dwarf.
Against an elf and a Drow with a total of five class levels.
The main nope was when he polymorphed into an angel.
Note: One of us had an evil alignment.

This makes a bit more sense when you realise that this world had, not so long ago, four twenty-fifth level characters rolling around (they all later died, on account of there being other twenty-fifth level characters out for their blood, but that's a moot point) so of course if you try to steal epic-tier artifacts you're gonna run into someone just a little out of your league. Also, it's your fault for not putting, like, any points into any social skills. Or both jumping on the wolf and having it full-move faster than the paladin could charge, or anything like that. :smalltongue:

goto124
2016-06-06, 04:59 AM
if you try to steal epic-tier artifacts

If I was presented with an artifact in DnD (this is DnD right? It sounded like DnD), I wouldn't know what else to do other than 'steal it'. Nothing short of the GM stepping out and telling me that it's guarded by level 11 NPCs will stop me from trying. I would have expected tough but doable encounters, not NPCs more than twice the total level of the party.

Jormengand
2016-06-06, 05:07 AM
If I was presented with an artifact in DnD (this is DnD right? It sounded like DnD), I wouldn't know what else to do other than 'steal it'. Nothing short of the GM stepping out and telling me that it's guarded by level 11 NPCs will stop me from trying. I would have expected tough but doable encounters, not NPCs more than twice the total level of the party.

This is an artifact of ultimate evil which the ostensible good guys decided they were going to use for evil, despite knowing fully in character that there were people who wanted these things destroyed (and those people had until recently included said epic-level characters). It wasn't even intended to be a combat encounter, so much as the paladin going "Hey, well done, you've managed to get some of these artifacts, now can I have them so I can destroy them?"

Of course, the paladin didn't bank on the fact that the artifacts turned the wielder into undead unless they took specific precautions, so the "Heroes" got to kill (well, dis-unkill) the paladin anyway, and as an added bonus got the swords back.

goto124
2016-06-06, 06:22 AM
Back on topic, in a game about figuring out what happened to a bunch of stolen goods, the PCs were told to 'be discreet' whilst solving the mystery. The game's one-and-only-solution turned out to involve killing people ('be discreet' actually meant 'do not talk to anyone'), and at many times didn't quite make sense. For example, at one point you have to kill a swimmer to obtain a bar of gold, pick up a ruby from a hole in the ground, give the gold and ruby to a jeweler to make a necklace, and then give the necklace to a lady who leads you to one of the stolen goods for no reason.

The GM learnt to never use 'plots' from video games ever again, and has since wondered if any prewritten modules match this level of railroading.

valadil
2016-06-06, 07:01 AM
I've been in a couple games where the railroading got so bad that all the players just zoned out for a couple hours. We'd wake up for a die roll several scene changes later. The GM was so involved in his own story he didn't even notice we stopped listening and was confused when we had no clue what was going on.

Spartakus
2016-06-06, 09:43 AM
-snip-

In a longrunning DSA Adventure there is a point where the Party needs to get some Seasnaketeeth (think Midgardsnake in small^^).

Now the logical move would be to find a dead one and get the teeth. But no, the Adventures DMPC hires the party to a Hunting Expedition. That gets sunk.
Then The PC`s have to hire up with pirates to et off the island they stranded on 8even if, like in our case, my wizard could have gotten them all to safety...in a week or so).
Then the pirates find a Graveyard of aforementioned snakes ...and suddenly big, stupid AdPC agrees to get the teeth from the dead ones.

Yes, I avoided most of the REALLY bad DSA Adventures (or had them when I was so brand new I didn`t realize Iw as being railroaded^^).

-snip-


Oh, early DSA ("The Dark Eye" for those of you living in the english speaking world) has some really bad adventures in this regard.
I played "Stromaufwärts" as one of my first sessions as a GM. It was one event after another, non of them connected to each other and in the end the party was supposed to be rescued by an NPC. THe only redeeming element was that I learned a lot about how not to make a scenario that time.

They got a lot better in the last decades. "Drachenchronik" (Cronicles of the Dragons) was the best official campaign I had the honor to GM.

Millstone85
2016-06-06, 12:26 PM
I am not sure if this counts but...

The party enters a room with a large locked chest in it. Fighting can be heard upstairs.
Newbie mistake, thieves' tools are nowhere to be found between the four of us.
We decide to forget the chest for now and investigate the noise instead.
As we arrive on the next floor, we see a magical device being damaged.
It was the thing that prevented the tower from collapsing under wild magic.
It still does but not for long, so it is time to leave the area in a hurry.
Once we reach safety, we think it is a good thing we didn't get too distracted.

But as the DM explained to us later on, there was important treasure in that chest.
And it looks like the escape sequence would have waited until we moved upstairs.
I thought that was very video-gamey.

But maybe we were just really bad at this, particularly myself.
Later, playing the kill-kill-kill-gal that I was playing, I decided to go on a hunt for a giant centipede, and the loot-guy chose to stay at the camp. That's too bad, because then he would have reminded us that a pile of human bones and clothes might be more interesting than following the fleeing beast.
Later still, there was loot to be found in a giant spider web, but my character was more preoccupied with getting her poisoned self to safety before the spider comes back for another round.

Red Fel
2016-06-06, 12:46 PM
We're playing a Forgotten Realms campaign. Our party has been granted noble title, and leadership of a border settlement that secretly harbors a mythal. We're all settling into our comfortable lives as landed nobles with titles and power and responsibilities.

Then our enlightened Drow Cleric informs us that she has received a vision. Before fleeing their Evil kindred to worship Eilistraee on the surface, her family was Drow nobility in Menzo. Her ancestral armor is still in that city, and Eilistraee gave her a vision that she needed to recover it. For reasons.

My PC, and others, very practically pointed out that we had responsibilities here - which we had as a result of prior railroading anyway - and we were comfortable and well-settled, and was the armor really so important, and we had previously lost friends in the Underdark and had no desire to return, and objection objection objection.

The DM: "So, that night, you pack up your gear and prepare to descend into the Underdark." And the storyline basically became "the tale of a Drow Cleric and her tragic past."

Did I mention the Drow Cleric was the DMGF?

ComaVision
2016-06-06, 01:16 PM
1.The instance I remember being the worst was when my party had to find and destroy the 'source of evil' in some castle ruins. To get to the entrance, you had to walk on a bit of land between the sea and a large lake. The entrance was a gate in the side of a mountain. It's basically absolute tactical suicide to stroll up to.

Since the castle ruins are at the seaside, and my party was currently in a port town, I decide it makes a lot more sense to charter a boat. At first I try convincing some locals to give us a ride so we can make the town safe again (30+ Diplomacy), no luck. I try paying someone to give us a lift, no luck. I try purchasing a boat and hiring a crew, all the boats are owned and busy. I try finding a scroll of teleport or wizard but there aren't any in town. I wasn't even trying to get a boat to the ruins, just near enough that we could get there with a row boat.

In the end, I give up and we stroll up to the gate of the castle ruins. Cue ambush. :smallfurious:

2.Same DM and game: Most/all of our 'quests' were given to us by a rich, and presumably epic leveled, NPC called the Collector. He was having us collect EEEEVIL artifacts from various ruins. My character being a paladin, I'm worried about collecting all these evil artifacts and handing them over. I use the ties with my order, and high social skills (paladin/bard/marshal) to try to find any dirt on the Collector but every NPC assures me he's totally 100% kosher. I'm still suspicious so OOC the DM assures me that the Collector is legit. Skip six months real-time, the Collector was actually a deity and played us all along as part of some convoluted game with another god.

I really liked that character, so if I ever get another opportunity to play him, he's going to have a very big chip on his shoulder about $%^&ing deities.

3.Different DM, different game: This game had been running for about 6 months, without any real over-arching story, and I had to miss two games due to being out of town. In those two games, a DMPC takes over the group (I had been leading most of the time). The rest of the group signs a magical contract with an NPC (that naturally includes me and any future party members) that forces us to help him or we magically die. Everyone else in the party ends up dying, so my character is literally the only thing keeping the stupid contract that I had nothing to do with going. That game did not reach a conclusion before the group broke up.

themaque
2016-06-06, 01:16 PM
2ND EDITION D&D. 9th or 10th level character. I'm playing a Ranger.

The GM wanted to run a prison break scenario for the session. We where on a ship sailing far from shore when another ship came up behind us.

Sails where disabled from spells WAY beyond our ability to return fire. When they arrived they threw magic nets that instantly wrapped around you. No save entangled. hauled on board when they blew pixie dust in your face. Unconscious No Save. Everyone wakes up in an individual windowless prison cell shackled to the wall. No windows, doors have no handles nor visible hinges. Walls & Door are made of steel.

I threw the GM for a loop by getting out of this by throwing myself off the train. Jumped into the water well before they got close enough to us. He husband the SUPER-Munchkin was supposed to break us all out of prison and now her plans where ruined.

I hadn't been playing with them long. It was a bad sign when game started several people got comfy and pulled out hobbies like Chain Mail or playing on their laptop.

Keltest
2016-06-06, 05:19 PM
I am not sure if this counts but...

The party enters a room with a large locked chest in it. Fighting can be heard upstairs.
Newbie mistake, thieves' tools are nowhere to be found between the four of us.
We decide to forget the chest for now and investigate the noise instead.
As we arrive on the next floor, we see a magical device being damaged.
It was the thing that prevented the tower from collapsing under wild magic.
It still does but not for long, so it is time to leave the area in a hurry.
Once we reach safety, we think it is a good thing we didn't get too distracted.

But as the DM explained to us later on, there was important treasure in that chest.
And it looks like the escape sequence would have waited until we moved upstairs.
I thought that was very video-gamey.

But maybe we were just really bad at this, particularly myself.
Later, playing the kill-kill-kill-gal that I was playing, I decided to go on a hunt for a giant centipede, and the loot-guy chose to stay at the camp. That's too bad, because then he would have reminded us that a pile of human bones and clothes might be more interesting than following the fleeing beast.
Later still, there was loot to be found in a giant spider web, but my character was more preoccupied with getting her poisoned self to safety before the spider comes back for another round.

That sounds less like railroading and more like the DM poorly planning encounters for your party. The chest thing in particular violates the "Don't put anything important behind an impossible challenge" rule.

Bohandas
2016-06-06, 05:52 PM
Not tabletop, but I've noticed that a lot of DLCs in the Fallout series are bad with this in The Pitt there's a scripted sequence where the protagonist just randomly surrenders to a handful of lightly armed guys despite having just effortlessly fought their way through an army (they literally don't even have guns; he gets tripped by a couple of guys wielding truncheons and somehow that intimidates him), and Dead Money starts wih the player character being KOed with some kind of knockout gas despite the possibility that they may otherwise be totally immune to poison (from the Heartless trait)

Talakeal
2016-06-06, 06:17 PM
Well, the last session I played began with out party standing at the entrance of the dungeon. We had no backgrounds, no motivation, no explanation, no reason for who we were, how the party got together, what our goal was, or how we got here.

When asked the DM said he didnt want to "waste time with the boring stuff" and told us that the only purpose we needed was that we wanted to kill monsters and loot their treasure, and if we were interested in doing anything else we were to be shown the door.

The Glyphstone
2016-06-06, 06:22 PM
Well, the last session I played began with out party standing at the entrance of the dungeon. We had no backgrounds, no motivation, no explanation, no reason for who we were, how the party got together, what we our goal was, or how we got here.

When asked the DM said he didnt want to "waste time with the boring stuff" and told us that the only purpose we needed was that we wanted to kill monsters and loot their treasure, and if we were interested in doing anything else we were to be shown the door.

Oh come on - with the various DMs from Hell you've spent your entire gaming career under, you've got to have a betterworse story than a DM who just wants to run a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler.

Millstone85
2016-06-06, 06:22 PM
That sounds less like railroading and more like the DM poorly planning encounters for your party. The chest thing in particular violates the "Don't put anything important behind an impossible challenge" rule.Well, it is possible the party overestimated the difficulty of opening the chest because of something that had happened to my character a few days before. Alone in a forge, I had tried to go around a lock with an exploding rune by shooting at it from behind cover, which went as well as one of Wile E. Coyote's plans. And no, thieves' tools wouldn't have helped me then, for it was an open Sesame kind of lock. Anyway, back to the chest, we didn't take the time to see if there was a trap or if the chest could be forced open. We thought we could do that later, but moving upstairs triggered the escape sequence part of the scenario.

Talakeal
2016-06-06, 07:03 PM
Oh come on - with the various DMs from Hell you've spent your entire gaming career under, you've got to have a betterworse story than a DM who just wants to run a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler.

Honestly rail-roading has never been a hige issue for me on either side of the screen which is why I often get frustrated or confused by advice threads that want to turn into a witch hunt for railroading DM.

In this particular case though the DM adamantly insists that he hates hack and slashers and is constantly putting down the munchkins who dont roleplay. He says he wants to tell an epic story rather than Run a wargame, and I think The subtext is that he wants to tell HIS story for which the PCs are just observers and therefore OUR story is irrelevant.

Bohandas
2016-06-06, 11:43 PM
Well, the last session I played began with out party standing at the entrance of the dungeon. We had no backgrounds, no motivation, no explanation, no reason for who we were, how the party got together, what we our goal was, or how we got here.

When asked the DM said he didnt want to "waste time with the boring stuff" and told us that the only purpose we needed was that we wanted to kill monsters and loot their treasure, and if we were interested in doing anything else we were to be shown the door.
I think the solution to this scenario would have been to set the adventure in the Abyss, and revolving around natives of the Abyss, where raiding and looting some building for no adequetely explained reason is proper roleplaying

Anonymouswizard
2016-06-07, 04:22 AM
Well, the last session I played began with out party standing at the entrance of the dungeon. We had no backgrounds, no motivation, no explanation, no reason for who we were, how the party got together, what we our goal was, or how we got here.

When asked the DM said he didnt want to "waste time with the boring stuff" and told us that the only purpose we needed was that we wanted to kill monsters and loot their treasure, and if we were interested in doing anything else we were to be shown the door.

The door to the room or the door to the dungeon? :smallwink:

Anyway, I've never had bad experiences with roleplaying, but one I look back on now was hilarious.

It was a Mutants & Masterminds game, and at the end of the last fight we had all been sucked into another dimension (I know, but it was setting up the next adventure so I went along with it). This turned out to be a shadowy city surrounding a shadowy tower. Now, being the logical person that I am, and seeing as both had the same amount of information in the description, I decided to search the city for the way to open the tower or other useful information. Sure, I didn't go about it in the most serious way, but fun was had as me and the Speedster messed around in the city (and I got inspiration for a new character trait, although the GM left the group after a couple more sessions), before the GM started complaining that we weren't taking it seriously and should just go to the more interesting tower already (hmmm... boring stereotypical evil tower or interesting extradimensional ghost town, obviously the latter is where we're supposed to go), and then started getting annoyed at me because 'my character doesn't do silly stuff' (...she was a big fantasy nerd, and this was a good fantasy setting, of course I was going to explore it).

When we went to the tower because he complained we found this evil guy summoning a horrible eldritch thingyTM and punched him in the face. Then the Big Bad and his three friends showed up, got insane initiative rolls (from a GM who had banned me taking improved initiative because he hadn't bothered to see what it actually did, he assumed it was just +1 initiative), and killed us allsent us to the Shadow RealmDungeon Dimension.

Then the GM whined about how he didn't get to use the speech he had prepared and had to beef up the villains' stats to end the session on time (and we found out later that those stats were higher compared to the planned final boss forms). Not that it mattered, as we escaped from the Dungeon Dimension next session. Dude, it might make an interesting comic, but let the PCs actually feel awesome more than once in a while.

To add insult to existing insult, now that I own M&M3e I can tell that he didn't understand the character creation and powers rules as much as he claimed. He didn't like magic because it had a load of effects, limiting it to PL-3 instead of the PL limit he had put on all other powers, but I got effectively the same thing at PL ranks just because I called it 'wind control'.

Most of my other railroading experiences have either been either 'I'm keeping you away from materials because I don't want you guys engineering' (that GM then banned devices based on how powerful they were in WH40k, not the setting we were using), or the completely understandable 'I'm getting you guys to the mission briefing, then you can mess around as much as you want'.

comicshorse
2016-06-07, 06:11 AM
Our DM will railroad if the party is talking to long to form or if someone wants to run off when there is literally no reason to.
Basically if the party has been wandering around doing nothing, like drinking or wandering in the market, they force us to run into each other.
We have a player that constantly runs off, doesn't want anyone to know they ran off, then refuses to share important plot information if they find some. The DM is pretty much keeping from having to spend at least half of the session from being that person's solo campaign by forcing them to stick around.

We had a guy like that. Told him our group was Roleplaying heavy and he said that's what he liked. He would talk for hours to the NPC's (if the GM let him) but the second another PC spoke to him, we'd be lucky to get two words out of him
In the end he quit, in annoyance I think that we kept expecting him to interact with the other P.C.s

On the main subject;
'Something Rotten In Kislev' For Warhammer 1st ED. Played it an loved it and then the GM actually allowed me to read the scenario itself and we discovered how much he had changed !
Particularly stupid was the end, where having gone through hell to reach the main bad guy the author writes in gloating fashion ( for an entire chapter) how the God-like Bad Guy, plays with the PC's and then slowly murders them for fun. ( Described by the author 'as the bit the GM gets to enjoy')

Also there is a VtM scenario where if the PC's don't find the clues needed, they will literally wake up on a train travelling to where they need to be for the next encounter. If they decide to get off the train, they wake up on it again until they do what they're told

Florian
2016-06-07, 06:14 AM
So far, maybe the Witchfire trilogy.
Not only the whole scripted scenes, but also the hard scripted NPC interaction and "plot twists".

Trekkin
2016-06-07, 07:18 AM
Aside from particular GMs I've had, I think my favorite example of ridiculous railroading is the charm of Yog-Sothoth from Cthulhutech: five minutes of invulnerability that begin whenever something tries to harm you, precisely so that NPCs could be saved for re-use at will. And of course every villain had one.

It's one thing to, occaisionally, look out from behind the screen and say "I really didn't expect the campaign to run this way; please bear with me while I try to help reorient you toward plot." It is quite another to write into the core rules a way to ensure the PCs cannot kill anyone the GM would like to use later.

Earthwalker
2016-06-07, 07:51 AM
I always liked / hated the write up of stats for both Ehran and Scribe and Harlequin in the shadowrun adventure Harlequin (And Harlequins back)

They had no stat block just a description of their personalities along with the lines from the creators, if we give these guys a stat block someone is going to try to kill them.

It was a bit galling when the PC encounter them both the GM instructions are basically. If the Players try anything to interferer here the two have already have spells in place to stop the Players plan. Kind of a you must let this play out as planned.

Khedrac
2016-06-07, 12:11 PM
A many years ago I played a Call of Cthulhu adventure, I think from a magazine, but I don't know which or what either was called...

Basically the party entered Dreamlands (I think) through a forgotten temple/ziggurat somewhere in South America and then got taken on a tour through part of Dreamlands, pretty much being passed along like a parcel from what little I recall. (I almost managed to jump the tracks by not turning away when the "people" whose boat we were on said "she's coming, she's coming" before Shub Niggurath arrived on the beach we had left - but I made my San roll and stayed sane.)
Eventually we reached the bad guy sorceror at the end - and he wanted us to return home, thus opening a gate for him to come through and take over the world. Thus pretty much the entire adventure was a rail-road organised by the bad guy.
(Once out the party is expected to seal the portal by suing an Elder Sign or similar - were were brand new characters and there was literally nothing we could do. We headed back towards civilization wondering if it would still be there when we got out of the jungle.)

Jacob.Tyr
2016-06-07, 12:39 PM
Played in a DnD game where, during one session, 4 of the 5 players got trapped in prison cells in an abandoned temple we were exploring. Nothing we could do would get us out of the cells, including using lock picks, breaking the bars, using a pickax, magic, or even the mining drill a dwarven character had. Turns out there was a hidden switch, and about 2 hours later the one player not trapped in a cell finally ran across it, letting us out.

Arbane
2016-06-07, 02:26 PM
Played in a DnD game where, during one session, 4 of the 5 players got trapped in prison cells in an abandoned temple we were exploring. Nothing we could do would get us out of the cells, including using lock picks, breaking the bars, using a pickax, magic, or even the mining drill a dwarven character had. Turns out there was a hidden switch, and about 2 hours later the one player not trapped in a cell finally ran across it, letting us out.

I've heard that particular flavor of bad GMing called 'pixelbitching', after an old X-Files computer adventure game that required the player to click on a few specific, highly non-obvious pixels to advance the game. (The similarity to a RPG where you can try anything, but only a very non-obvious pre-determined action will accomplish anything, should be obvious.)

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-07, 05:29 PM
Thankfully, the worst I've gotten was a DMPC 15 levels above the party (she obliterated an encounter before I could act) who also had great political ties and questionable morality, so approaching her to go away wasn't happening.

When the DM discovered my plan to convince everyone to leave in the middle of the night, they ended the game.

Themrys
2016-06-07, 05:46 PM
DM: You wake up and realize you have transformed into orcs.

We had NOT ingested anything questionable, fallen asleep in a dangerous place, or had done anything else that could be used to justify this. He just wanted to do this plot. With misogynistic orcs. Despite me having told him I didn't want to have anything to do with any medieval-Europe level misogynists. Orcs in that universe are ... worse.
He knew I would never have accepted an orc as player character in the group, much less willingly played one.

That was the last time I played with that guy, obviously.

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-07, 06:00 PM
That was the last time I played with that guy, obviously.

I'm mildly surprised that physical violence wasn't considered at this point. I hope other people also objected if they knew your stance.

Themrys
2016-06-08, 10:47 AM
I'm mildly surprised that physical violence wasn't considered at this point. I hope other people also objected if they knew your stance.

There was only one other player, and I know that the guy is even more shy and introverted than I am, so I can forgive him for not saying something - I was too shocked to say something, and then didn't dare to. (You know that feeling when someone does something so outrageous that you can't even believe someone would do that?)

Physical violence was not considered because GM is a bear of a man and I'm a small-ish woman. I was rather frightened he'd use physical violence against me if I objected, so only quietly told him that he couldn't have expected me to like that plot when it was over.

Then wrote a mail asking him what the hell he thought he was doing when I had recovered from the shock.

He refused to even acknowledge that it was a ****ty thing to do, so there is that.

OldTrees1
2016-06-08, 02:27 PM
The worst Railroading I've personally encountered was something I myself did:

In one of my sandbox games there was a frontier city with a variety of factions striving for control (as on of the many things going on). The current in power faction was being undermined by the other factions. I had planned 2 instances where the PCs would be able to tip the balance as they wished (and would accommodate others if they suggested).

During both instances the PCs were not passive but resulted in a precarious balance rather than a conclusion.

Then I chose one faction to have succeeded with some BS reason. :smallredface::smallmad:

I know it is not as egregious as some of these other examples and my players made no comment before or after I apologized about it (I don't even know if they disliked it or not). However in that moment I cared more about the story I expected than the story the player's choices would have made.

@Themrys
Wow. I am glad to hear you are not still with such a DM.

kyoryu
2016-06-08, 02:56 PM
Played in a DnD game where, during one session, 4 of the 5 players got trapped in prison cells in an abandoned temple we were exploring. Nothing we could do would get us out of the cells, including using lock picks, breaking the bars, using a pickax, magic, or even the mining drill a dwarven character had. Turns out there was a hidden switch, and about 2 hours later the one player not trapped in a cell finally ran across it, letting us out.

Ah, yes, "Find the button to get to the next scene" GMing.

Worst part is most people that engage in it don't realize they're railroading.

MesiDoomstalker
2016-06-08, 03:22 PM
The worst was right here on these forums. Before I go further, the GM has learned from his mistakes, we are still friends.

This is PTA (Pokemon Tabletop Adventures) an admittedly really unbalanced game. Anyways, the GM had these crazy ideas to make Pokemon world more realistic and gritty. The main way this worked was Pokemon Center's cost cash, Team Rocket (which we were a part of) were really brutal, but secretly ran the Kanto Region and the wilds were absolutely ravaged by huge hordes of wild pokemon. So huge that traveling from city to city in groups less than 30 was considered suicide. Also, the distance between cities was about 2,000 miles. As another player pointed out, thats the distance between Juneau, Alaska and Nome, Alaska, but inhabited by Grizzlie packs and rabid Moose every 10 feet or so.

Anyways, our Rocket Overlords instructed our group to chase after a dude who was fleeing to Lavender Town (which for some reason has an airfield, but Saffron City doesn't?) Anyways, we join a huge caravan and get ambushed by a huge Growlithe Pack, that honestly we didn't have a chance to actually fight. Most of the NPCs weren't combatants, so the pack would have trashed us. Right before we left Saffron, we all got Growlithe's as a "Welcome to the Team" gift. I challenged the Growlithe Alpha with my own. I ultimately lost (the battle in of itself was balanced. Alpha was higher level, but my Growlithe had my Trainer abilities buffing him). One of the NPCs had the ability to talk to mon (it was a class feature for one class) and said the Alpha had claimed my Growlithe, but was sparing the convoy. Sucks, but I was the one who volunteered the challenge, I'll take my punishment for failure.

Now, as we are Team Rocket members, we weren't exactly the most moral. I planned on relinquishing my Growlithe, but coming back and simply returning him to his pokeball later. That didn't work. This wild Pokemon knows about Pokeballs, how they work and that if I still have the Pokeball, then I haven't given him up to the pack. So basically, a Growlithe out in the wild can outsmart a human with 18 Intelligence. Ya ok. We couldn't leave without them burning my Growlithe's pokeball to a cinder.

So, I'm miffed that I lost my Growlithe with the only recourse to be to take on the Pack later when I'm better equipped. Whatever, we still have a job to do. Then the Swarm came. A swarm of half-robotic Skorupi. Literally over a 100 of them. Long story short, we were in no way prepared for that many mon. We knew that we might run into some, there were reports we got prior to leaving that hinted at their presence. On top of all that, there was a half-robotic Drapion as well, working as the hub of their hive mind. For the record, our mon were around level 20. Drapion evolves, at a minimum, of level 40. We never faced it head on (we had the convoy running the second the swarm showed up) but if we had, it would have ripped us apart. The only way we got the swarm to disperse was shredding about a third of it, whilst running away. In the process, we lost a good chunk of the NPCs, most of the convoy and pretty much all of our pack Pokemon that were pulling the convoy carts.

So, what was the point of all this? To run down our supplies. We grabbed a lot of healing items prior to leaving since the GM stressed how dangerous the wilds are. Now were low on supplies, helpful NPCs, and ability to move what is left of the convoy. We keep moving forward, sacrificing our own mon as Pack Mon to keep things moving. Then we get ambushed again. This time, its by the dude were supposed to be chasing. Along with his platoon of combat-ready soldiers, at night, with night-vision googles. This ambush lasted a good 3 or 4 rounds before we ultimately surrendered.

We then all woke up in a relatively-posh prison cell, without Pokemon, or gear and all our abilities negated. Psychic powers? Anti-psychic drug. Mechanical arm? Filled with gel. Etcetra. Those who could break out of a prison cell are nerfed to be unable to. Those who couldn't have no choice anyway. Then the dude we were chasing tries to convince us to join him (individually). Since I'm playing a supportive character, I accept planning to betray him and spring the rest of my friends (or play double-agent, was going to play it by ear). I told the GM up front, OOC, that was my plan and he was ok with it. The rest of the party adamantly refuse (and OOC don't know I'm planning on betraying the dude, so their pissy at me for being a traitor). One PC is taken for interrogation, which involves sucking out his memories. He is only saved due to a mischievous wild Rotom that my PC had befriended and was trolling through the security system. So Mr. Amnesia is left with only the last few weeks of memories but manages to spring everyone else except my PC and the team medic who in a previous adventure had his legs broken.

Said Medic suddenly gets a prophetic vision from Cresselia (Legendaries are more akin to Gods in this world), who then bestows him with power, heals his legs and lets him escape. Fastforward, all the party is gathered except me. The dude knocks me out, thinking I'm the one organizing the breakout (I've been in the dark). He then teleports to the party and they have the big final fight with me unconscious as a prisoner. Despite beating the dude, we still have a base full of solider who want us dead and we learn they just launched some jets carrying the equivalent of WMD aiming towards Saffron. Whilst we aren't the most moral bunch, mass devastation doesn't fit Rocket MO, so we decide we need to grab a jet and chase after them. Problem, most of those soldiers are between us (battered from the big fight) and the jet. Then Cresselia pops up again, fully heals us, grants us a level and plot-armored us to the Jet.

We take flight, but can't seem to get them in our sights. Cause none of us are pilots and they are combat pilots. We're at a total loss at what to do. Eventually the GM suggests I put my Beldum in the trash chute. Besides the obvious question of why a fighter jet has a trash chute, I question the logic of making my pokemon into a improvised projectile, but I oblige. My Beldum proceeds to crash into one jet, causing it to implode. Yes, implode, not explode. Now that worked for one, but now were out of 'ammo'. But surprise! My Beldum flies out of the wreckage as a newly evolved Metang, and rips the other Jet apart. We then go to Saffron and greeted with suspicion and cautious thank yous by Rocket Execs for saving the City, their hides and ultimately completing our mission.

So, to recap;

Forced into a situation where we either TPK, or risk losing one of our Pokemon
a Wild Pokemon outsmarted an Int-Focused character by having intimiate knowledge of Pokeball tech
a ridiculous amount of Pokemon attack our convoy, to deplete our item and friendly NPC reserves
our quarry ambush us with amazing combat soldiers, forcing us to surrender
we are locked up with no way to escape unless we accept his offer
One PC loses his memories, only saved by grace of GM
another PC is only saved by literal Deus-Ex-Machina
my character is imprisoned for most of the adventure, forcibly on the sidelines for the final fight
a second, literal Dues-Ex-Machina to get us where we need to be
a "the one way to win" situation that made no sense and forced us to seemingly sacrifice a pokemon


Overall, it was a great game, but man was it frustrating at times.

2D8HP
2016-06-08, 04:43 PM
In general I'm too grateful that someone else is the GM to worry much about being "rail-roaded"
The only serious rail-roading I really remember has been been from other players, that want to do long, laborious, careful "Ocean's 11" like preparation, when I just want to explore or kick the door in and get the adventure started!
I've also been tasked with playing a "class" that fit the needs of the party, rather than what I want to play i.e. having to play a "Fixer"(a wheeler-dealer) in Cyberpunk rather than a "Nomad" or "Solo" (but what I really wanted was to play D&D instead).
As a GM I've never heard any whines about "rail-roading from my players, maybe because long ago I figured out that my players liked it better the less I prepared and the more I made up on the spot.
But really guys, please just give the GM a break. GM'ing is a lot more hassle, check out this post on a thread started by a GM who's players won't be "rail-roaded"

First off don't use "hooks". Back in my day we didn't bother to use hooks.
Use settings/situations instead.
"Your at the entrance of the Tomb of Blaarg what do you do?" If they're real contrary "Your inside the Tomb of Blaarg, what do you do?".If they're super contrary, "your trapped deep inside the Tomb of Blaarg" etc. Just quickly narrate to the part where the actual adventure begins. They can role-play how they turned tail and ran back to the tavern.
If they still make a fuss?

Hey! How did we wind up here?! I didn't vote for this!
Sheesh!
Damn kids today!
Being a player is most of the fun, and less than half of the headache of being a DM! Your doing them a favor!

Sorry guys, I don't have anything else prepared. How about a game of risk? I've also got Excalibur on DVD and Conan the Destroyer, and Hawk the Slayer on VHS.
or even make one of them "put on the daddy pants" and be the DM!

Here's the screen and some dice. Shall I play my Fighter/Rogue or my Ranger?

weet555
2016-06-08, 11:28 PM
So the first time I DMed I planned an adventure, so at one point I gave them three choices: go left, right or the invisible portal above them that was somehow telegraphed
to the party.

So the catch with the portal was it was one way and I thought the party would go though it together. So one party member goes though and is surprised that he can't go back. The rest of the party doesn't want to go though.

What I do is make the portal literally hunt the party during the night and never stop.

Geddy2112
2016-06-09, 08:45 AM
I am...was in two campaigns just recently that were just story time with the DM.

1-We are all literally plot armored. The DM sent us to explore something(against our will) and when we get to the wrecked ship, there is a CR16 monster thing attacking the people. I try to create a diversion, and in comes a DMPC to solo the thing without rolls. It was going to attack me, but then magical NPC saves the day. I try to attack the NPC, I am told I just fail, and handwave next scene. Later that day, we have some horrible attempt at a murder mystery, which is basically go clean out a sewer and we somehow manage to walk right into the enemy layer, no checks or anything.

Next session, we serve as bodyguards for a touring musical group. Absolutely nothing happens, no danger, nothing. We sit there and have the DM play crappy metal for 4 hours. We just stand around and watch.

2- We are ungodly powerful magic users in a world of commoners. We work for a military to the point where every action we do is totally scripted. We basically go places to watch the NPC's save the day. Go find a horrible slave trade market, NPC solos the place. Need to escape the island after the black op goes bad(nothing we do did this, the enemies just knew) we are forced by NPC's to walk into several traps, none of which would actually kill us but there are plenty of gotchas. Notably "Go grab year gear" but you didn't check for traps so guess what, you failed to notice the firebombs on your gear, take 3d6. Or the sniper gonna shoot you from the other building. Take some more damage and fort save.

Now get on this boat-here comes the enemy ship, but the NPC you travel with is gonna bluff them away, you just stand below deck please. Also, every single NPC is a jerk to the party, but also better. After the session, we were explicitly told "I know it was a lull in combat, but I had to move you guys to this new island to give you your next mission, and I can't have you dying or messing it up"

I quit both games

Anonymouswizard
2016-06-09, 09:06 AM
So the first time I DMed I planned an adventure, so at one point I gave them three choices: go left, right or the invisible portal above them that was somehow telegraphed
to the party.

So the catch with the portal was it was one way and I thought the party would go though it together. So one party member goes though and is surprised that he can't go back. The rest of the party doesn't want to go though.

What I do is make the portal literally hunt the party during the night and never stop.

This is ironically the one time I approve of railroading, although I'd have done it the other way around, and had the party member who went through go back. If the party doesn't want to go somewhere it's insulting to force them to go there.

This is ironically why I prefer plots to dungeons. If given agency about how to go about solving it the players are more likely to go along with it, and actually there's a decent chance that they'll solve it in one of the ways you intended (if not it'll at least be sort of similar and logical). It also means that when the party does separate (which we'll do a lot) there's less danger of overwhelming encounters and we know what the others are doing.


2- We are ungodly powerful magic users in a world of commoners.

Yet not powerful enough to cast effect plot I see.

I never got why GMs will run games and just resolve everything without the influence of the PCs or any dice rolling. I mean, if I wanted that I'd fire up MS Word and write a story, not spend effort to get people together, make characters, and keep people 'entertained' when listening to my story. I mean, I wouldn't enjoy it if I was invited to play chess only to be told the club's watching The Imitation Game (and my thoughts on that film are better left unsaid, as the forum will replace half of it with asterisks).

Whenever I read this sort of thread I'm always glad I don't have any really horrible railroading experiences.

goto124
2016-06-09, 09:38 AM
Yet not powerful enough to cast effect plot I see.

Too bad Shape Metal doesn't work on plot rails!

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-09, 12:27 PM
But really guys, please just give the GM a break. GM'ing is a lot more hassle, check out this post on a thread started by a GM who's players won't be "rail-roaded"

In some ways I agree with this, but with many of these examples, I wouldn't even let the GM into my house, let alone be a player ever again. DMing requires work. It also requires not being an *** and many of these examples are quite extreme.

JNAProductions
2016-06-09, 12:35 PM
In some ways I agree with this, but with many of these examples, I wouldn't even let the GM into my house, let alone be a player ever again. DMing requires work. It also requires not being an *** and many of these examples are quite extreme.

I remember, when I first did Hoard of the Dragon Queen, before we started, I told everyone "Hey guys, just letting you know, I'm still kinda new to DMing, so try to follow the plot. Thank you."

I still did my best to accommodate player agency, but I did let them know that there were rails to follow. I don't do that anymore, but I think just a simple acknowledgement of what's going on is important.

DireSickFish
2016-06-09, 12:39 PM
I remember, when I first did Hoard of the Dragon Queen, before we started, I told everyone "Hey guys, just letting you know, I'm still kinda new to DMing, so try to follow the plot. Thank you."

I still did my best to accommodate player agency, but I did let them know that there were rails to follow. I don't do that anymore, but I think just a simple acknowledgement of what's going on is important.

Yeah we had a DM run it that didn't like the connections between dungeons presented in the book. So we basically got plopped down in front of each without us doing any traveling or much decision making in between. It's not exactly my preferred method, but it was fun and the group rolled with it.

ClintACK
2016-06-09, 12:47 PM
Aside from particular GMs I've had, I think my favorite example of ridiculous railroading is the charm of Yog-Sothoth from Cthulhutech: five minutes of invulnerability that begin whenever something tries to harm you, precisely so that NPCs could be saved for re-use at will. And of course every villain had one.

Ouch. But what the heck happens when a party manages to figure out a way to keep near an NPC for five minutes and then take the charm for themselves? Does it stop working by GM fiat?


It's one thing to, occaisionally, look out from behind the screen and say "I really didn't expect the campaign to run this way; please bear with me while I try to help reorient you toward plot." It is quite another to write into the core rules a way to ensure the PCs cannot kill anyone the GM would like to use later.

Of course, D&D5e is a game where the evil high priest can cast True Resurrection on every big bad you've ever killed -- even if you completely disintegrated their corpses.

2D8HP
2016-06-09, 01:48 PM
In some ways I agree with this, but with many of these examples, I wouldn't even let the GM into my house, let alone be a player ever again. DMing requires work. It also requires not being an *** and many of these examples are quite extreme.
H. T.,
While my reaction to a lot of the posts is still, "Well at least their still playing", after I read more of the thread, yep I agree with you, there some pretty bad howlers. I'm grateful I wasn't there.
-2D8HP

Themrys
2016-06-09, 03:42 PM
I remember, when I first did Hoard of the Dragon Queen, before we started, I told everyone "Hey guys, just letting you know, I'm still kinda new to DMing, so try to follow the plot. Thank you."

I still did my best to accommodate player agency, but I did let them know that there were rails to follow. I don't do that anymore, but I think just a simple acknowledgement of what's going on is important.


That's not railroading, that's ordinary roading - you let them know you'd like for them to stay on the road, but they CAN go off the road if they really want to.

With inexperienced GMs I wouldn't even be annoyed over actual railroading, as long as it is acknowledged as railroading.

themaque
2016-06-09, 04:17 PM
I remember, when I first did Hoard of the Dragon Queen, before we started, I told everyone "Hey guys, just letting you know, I'm still kinda new to DMing, so try to follow the plot. Thank you."

I still did my best to accommodate player agency, but I did let them know that there were rails to follow. I don't do that anymore, but I think just a simple acknowledgement of what's going on is important.

I would totally go along with some massive railroading if someone told me that. New GM's get a lot more leeway than people who tell me they've been GM'ing for years. And even then, you treat them with respect because the Idea is everyone is here to have a good time. GM included.

The problems come when many of these examples of BAD GM's don't want to treat the player with any respect.


I once had a GM who said he had years of experience but accidently fell into a rookie mistake. Railroading CAN Backfire.


We where in an elevator style contraption going to a deeper level of the dungeon. The GM had worked out this mechanical puzzle for us to try and solve to get the thing working again as it breaks down when we get to the lower level. We have an access panel open but can't get the main doors open.

Barbarian "UGH... I hate this thing! Can I force the doors open?!"

GM "No, it's to tough"

Barbarian "Can I hack my way through the door with my AX?"

GM "The doors are made of Adamantium."

At this point, experienced players have realized the problem. So has the party wizard and the thief.

Barbarian "Can I hack through the wall?"

GM "No, the whole car is made of adamantium."

-Wizard and Thief are now trying to hide the drool-

Wizard: The whole car?

GM: Yes, you can't blast your way through it.

Thief: So this access panel is...

GM: Adamantium yes.

Thief. You said it was 3 inches thick two feet by three feet correct?

GM: Yes... why?

Thief: nothing... just planning my retirement.

The party got the hinges off the door and the thief wouldn't put it down the whole dungeon. It ended up being worth more than anything else we found.

Plans to return for the rest of the elevator where scrapped as the dungeon phased to a different dimension for some reason soon after we left that first trip down.

Anonymouswizard
2016-06-09, 04:45 PM
I remember, when I first did Hoard of the Dragon Queen, before we started, I told everyone "Hey guys, just letting you know, I'm still kinda new to DMing, so try to follow the plot. Thank you."

I still did my best to accommodate player agency, but I did let them know that there were rails to follow. I don't do that anymore, but I think just a simple acknowledgement of what's going on is important.

I'd be fine with it. A lot of it is based on respect, 'I plan to run a story based campaign' is effectively the GM politely going 'guys, I might railroad a bit occasionally, is that cool?' There are about two GMs I've played with where I trust them to railroad, one of them presents mysteries that suck us in and the other one once said to me 'yeah, what you're doing makes sense, but get back to the party so you don't get left out of the plot'.

I've also had to explain the difference to people between 'wherever you go, there's plot' and 'the quantum ogre' before. In the previous case the GM has probably hinted where you should go next, but if you decide to go to Vegas instead you can have a fun time taking down the greed demon keeping everyone in a casino. In the latter the planned plot will happen wherever you go. And when it comes down to it I respect a GM who is willing to let me decide that following the plot is more fun than messing around rather than sticking campaign plot in my messing around. This actually has nothing to do with if players can influence the plot, but it's remarkable how much courage it takes to essentially scrap the planned session and improvise, and so for a GM who's willing to do it I'll stay on the rails.

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-09, 04:54 PM
I remember, when I first did Hoard of the Dragon Queen, before we started, I told everyone "Hey guys, just letting you know, I'm still kinda new to DMing, so try to follow the plot. Thank you."

I didn't mean to say that railroading itself is bad, just that some of these examples are bad. I think there's a great difference between a new DM who uses communication and a creepy pervert who doesn't care about the feelings of others.

Telwar
2016-06-09, 07:15 PM
When I railroad my players, I at least have the decency to put them on a freaking train. :smallsmile::smallcool:

goto124
2016-06-09, 10:26 PM
As opposed to making them find the rails themselves, I presume.

Hey, even the GM wasn't aware of the railroading!

Anachronity
2016-07-05, 08:25 PM
The worst one I've had was a relatively new GM who basically OK'd the players to do whatever they wanted character-wise.

The party was getting along poorly in general. While it was agreed that we needed *something* to help us work together, the DM forcibly handing out Gaeas rings that will kill us if we hurt eachother was a bit hamfisted.

Immediately before said ring being forced on me, I had all of my gold somehow stolen by a Wu-jen warforged PC using magnet grip, who was somehow able to levitate all of my gold directly into his bag of holding (the DM tended to allow improvised additional uses for spells, but very often no way to save against or avoid those uses. All of the party magic users abused this rampantly).

Later, said warforged had inexplicably switched to an Incarnum class instead, despite having no soul. I finally had a glimpse of storyline in this otherwise hectic campaign as my character found his evil necromantic father. Unfortunately the warforged punched him out mid-dialogue, and he'd apparently only had a single level of expert despite said necromancies. My character proceeded to go berserk, killing the warforged and causing the rest of the party to lose half of their max hitpoints due to the rings, among other penalties. Undermanned and badly debuffed, they all proceeded to die terribly while trying to escape the necromantic murder mansion (other than the wizard, who'd memorized Extended Rope Trick).

I will say that in this second case the warforged was actually trying to screw the GM over, not me, since the GM had enacted a cruel practical joke earlier involving the warforged player's phobia of spiders (not just fear, actual full-on phobia).

AceOfFools
2016-07-07, 09:17 AM
This the silliest raolroad I've ever seen, also my favorite.

The group I used to do weekly living Greyhawk with was really bad at focusing on the module. We'd run around and end up taking an extra 2 hours to complete them. This was fun, but some people really didn't want to staying up so late.

One week we, as a group, decided we were going to be super efficient and timely. No tangents, no wondering off. We were gong to complete this module as fast as we could.

Litterally the first thing we did after seeing the hook was walk down to the docks to make a gather information check (not unreasonable, given the hook).

As it turns out, there was nothing that could be learned at the docks. So the GM had an adorable little girl walk up to us and ask if we wanted to get back to the mod. I jumped down her throat demanding to know who this "Mod" was, and what he wanted from us.

The GM-a large, older, bearded man,-in one of the best impressions I've ever seen of a traumatized child says, "I just wanted you guys to get back to the mod. "

When the laughing stopped, one of the other players said, "We're wasting our time," before suggesting a reasonable alternative to asking around at the docks.

gooddragon1
2016-07-07, 10:38 AM
A variant of the most dangerous game novel. We're being given a head start to run from sort of avatar of the hunt that's going to chase our party down and kill us. We have a character who can fly. Except guess what, he can't now just because. Teleportation is a no go. I have a character who's a warforged (as in I can run as much as I want without getting tired)... and yet... somehow failing a reflex save made my character fatigued. Yes, a warforged became fatigued. A nice case of DM fiat/railroading.

Sith_Happens
2016-07-08, 12:02 AM
What I do is make the portal literally hunt the party during the night and never stop.

That's actually kind of hilarious.:smallbiggrin:


Ouch. But what the heck happens when a party manages to figure out a way to keep near an NPC for five minutes and then take the charm for themselves? Does it stop working by GM fiat?

It's not an item, it's a spell that stays dormant for up to a day after casting it. One that the PCs can technically learn themselves... after several real years of playing Cthulhutech once a week, which is a feat that I'm just assuming no one's ever actually managed.

Incidentally, giving every remotely important villain that spell is just the tip of the iceberg where railroading in published CTech adventures is concerned.

Khedrac
2016-07-08, 03:15 AM
Running a Living Greyhawk adventure where the party went to a room with three exits, but only one was the adventure (the other two were different adventures) I put signs on the other two doors saying "Under Construction" with sounds of hammering and sawing coming from within.

That said, at some point in a campaign I want to have a lair area surrounded by temporary fencing with signs saying something like "QuikLair Limited (A division of Barrimoor Construction)" - and the party will be able to interact with the humanoids on the work crew (potentially they may be able to get maps of the site being built, bribe well and they can get a secret door installed, though in that case they may later come across the foreman staked out as a warning to the rest of the workers).

Anonymouswizard
2016-07-08, 04:44 AM
Running a Living Greyhawk adventure where the party went to a room with three exits, but only one was the adventure (the other two were different adventures) I put signs on the other two doors saying "Under Construction" with sounds of hammering and sawing coming from within.

That said, at some point in a campaign I want to have a lair area surrounded by temporary fencing with signs saying something like "QuikLair Limited (A division of Barrimoor Construction)" - and the party will be able to interact with the humanoids on the work crew (potentially they may be able to get maps of the site being built, bribe well and they can get a secret door installed, though in that case they may later come across the foreman staked out as a warning to the rest of the workers).

To be fair, this is brilliant for a relatively light-hearted campaign. I personally don't tend to use dungeons (they just take too long), but I'd love to come across something like it in a game. I'd also just view the first room as a joke, I think people would only recognise it as railroading if they tried to go through the other doors.

Kami2awa
2016-07-08, 04:57 AM
Running a Living Greyhawk adventure where the party went to a room with three exits, but only one was the adventure (the other two were different adventures) I put signs on the other two doors saying "Under Construction" with sounds of hammering and sawing coming from within.

That said, at some point in a campaign I want to have a lair area surrounded by temporary fencing with signs saying something like "QuikLair Limited (A division of Barrimoor Construction)" - and the party will be able to interact with the humanoids on the work crew (potentially they may be able to get maps of the site being built, bribe well and they can get a secret door installed, though in that case they may later come across the foreman staked out as a warning to the rest of the workers).

I love this; it's like something from the Zork games. Might even steal the idea if you don't mind.

Khedrac
2016-07-08, 06:05 AM
To be fair, this is brilliant for a relatively light-hearted campaign. I personally don't tend to use dungeons (they just take too long), but I'd love to come across something like it in a game. I'd also just view the first room as a joke, I think people would only recognise it as railroading if they tried to go through the other doors.
Yes - but it is still railroading. My players seemed to like it which is what matters,


I love this; it's like something from the Zork games. Might even steal the idea if you don't mind.
Be my guest. As I have read most authors would say "it is not stealing, it's finding a source of inspiration and producing something new from it".

Oh - as for Barrimoor Construction - that is a direct link to the game world this is for (Mystara)... as Barrimoor is one of the setting's potential boss villains, currently fulfilling one of the requirements of his chosen path to immortality - changing the terrain for a 200mile(?) radius around his home by tunneling extensively. As I see it, why leave this expertise unused once developed? - QuikLair itself will be based in Serraine, but will just be one of Barrimoor's offshoots.

Cybren
2016-07-08, 06:40 AM
I once destroyed a campaign by casting a sleep spell.


Okay, okay. Some more details: I was a wizard in a 4E Campaign, and the DM Really Really Really Wanted to do a skill challenge. So we were investigating something in this town, and find the guy we're looking for, and he starts bolting from us, intending on setting up a chase scene using a skill challenge to complete it. I state I'm casting sleep and the DM shatterpauses before saying i can't. I'm willing to drop it, because whatever, but another party member refuses to accept that- it makes no sense, breaks verisimilitude, etc. him and the DM get into an argument for about twenty minutes before the game is ended prematurely and they're fuming at each other. We never play another session of that campaign. Incidentally, I'm never invited over to the DMs place for their semi-occasional board game night, as apparently the DM never liked me to begin with. Myself and the player that got into a shouting match with the DM refer to that event as "The Sundering"