Would you consider this railroading, or a demanding player?

[Vectros]

I'm still a relatively new DM-I think I have maybe 8 sessions under my belt. I try to keep an open mind with how I do it; at the end of every session, I ask the question, "how was it? Like? Dislike? What do you think?"

I soon changed this to "give me 3 ups, 3 downs". If I simply ask what players think, they tend to give me about 10 negatives and rag on that for 20 minutes, with a brief mention of a positive. Which from my point of view, translates to "you're a crappy DM"-but when I asked if they wanted me to continue they said yes, so I don't believe the group as a whole thinks I'm terrible at it.
One of the complaints from previous sessions involved railroading-and I considered it a justified complaint. The first half dozen sessions were set up for a larger story. Now that we're past that point, I intend for it to be fairly open ended on how the go about solving the stories problems. Yesterday's session was the first in the new story arc. A brief rundown of what happened:

-Party is formed to fight a rising Necromancy threat
-They are told to investigate who/what is behind it. 3 locations are given of hotspot activity, where leaders may be.
-Party is not forced to choose how to make it there; they can use a form of public transport if they choose, steal horses, or walk.
-They end up stealing a pirate ship (one character has a pirate background and...overthrew the old captain) and sail to the nearest port.

Everything thus far was made up on the spot as I went, none of it planned. Once they reach the port, I'd already known I wanted a local to tip them off to a nearby town; the undead threat was centralized around a mountain range, with only 1 known 1 up-a sacred trail controlled by a village elder.

-1 party member, the Rogue, uses his thieves guild connection to find out about the village entrance
-Another, a Yuan Ti halfblood, uses his local cult connection to find out the same thing-but also learned they would need the Elder's permission to use the road
-The Paladin found out nothing useful from the barkeep, only that they seemed to congregate near those mountains.

After the session, one of the first things a particular member told me is "it still felt a bit railroaded. You only allowed one entry up the mountain-despite us having a couple different sources. We basically got the same answer. You could have had like a second secret path or something."

Ok...maybe I'm wrong, but we're talking about a freaking mountain here. If it was a house in town and you asked to climb on the roof and break in from there, sure. Alternate path. But a mountain?

And you say I'm railroading because I made you use 1 path up the mountain? I feel that, given all the other parts, were completely optional where they went and how they did it-I didn't have railroading. In the one instanced of a forced path, it made logical sense. He said something similar a few sessions back-in a puzzle cave, I'd already dropped enough hints to indicate Giant Spiders resided inside. When he asked about how they got further in, I said there were small openings they squeezed through near the roof. I did this because A)Makes sense to me B)I'd put a lot of work into a puzzle that I didn't really want to see skipped. He complained of railroading there too.

So in both these cases....what do you think? Am I railroading? Am I justified? Is he too demanding, and I should tell him to stay quiet cause he's wrong, or do I need to just listen and try to give an opening every time they ask for one?

[RagnaroksChosen]

From the information you provided above. I would say you have not yet railroaded. I think it would depend on the next session when they go to the town it self. If they take the path that is there option but if they want to figure another way to get to the mountain town then if you don't let them do anything but the road then you are railroading. Or at least without some proper setup.

I would tell the player that the only options the players found where the same there are potentially others to be found. A lot of the time back in the day the same information is repeated a lot simple because the town/city may only know one common route. Why would the find alternatives?

I know when I GM my players know that if they get a common answer to a problem across multiple players it is probably a well known fact and may not be the most optimal way to tackle the problem.

Any way, I would tell the player if they want to keep search for other ways they can keep asking around or find another way to go at the problem. They could also just find there own path to the town?

[Vectros]

Well, guess I didn't say it...but we did get past that point. They went to the town, where they had to do some social interaction, fight some stuff, etc. They pretty much didn't question it during the play time or look around, but afterwards made the complaint. Though I still feel that, given it's a mountain, you'll be hardpressed to find routes up there. It'd require some high rolls to make it, like a 20 DC check or something. Didn't come to that since they didn't search, it merely how the informants presented the information. So back to the question...is that railroading? Further, given how the rest of the session went, would you say as a whole I railroaded given that one instant?

[Mhl7]

No, it is not. Don't feel bad about it. It is ok for you to provide just the common information that can be found. If they want to approach the problem in some alternate/creative way it is up to the player to come up with the creative solution. Your task as the DM is to roll with it. You are a bad DM if you stop their creative thinking because.. 'plot'. To think about the solutions is the role of the player, you just have to think about the problem.

Also, there are far to many mountains in the real world that are accessible by only one route in 2017, which I don't see how that would be a problem in a medieval/fantasy setting.

I think most DM would already be hard pressed dealing with characters who decide to steal a ship on the fly. The worst half of the DMs would simply railroad the PC into not finding a ship!

[MarkVIIIMarc]

You could let them find a half crazy Sherpa type who is willing to help them climb up the hard way. This way could be filled with Yetti or some crazy snowmen types or something.

Give the characters some warning its a difficult path but don't make it impossible.

[BRC]

Not really.

The first test of Railroading is: Does this stretch disbelief? Does it make sense that there is only one way to do this thing?

In this case, yes. It makes sense that there is only one route up the mountain, or one easy route anyway. If the rest of the mountain was so impassible that a team of mountaineers/people with magic who could theoretically scale a sheer cliff face couldn't climb it except by this one path, that would be a different story. But Mountains are not naturally known for being easy to ascend.

The Second test of Railroading is: Does this represent a pattern of depriving the players of agency?

Even if the story makes logical sense, a GM can still railroad by pushing the PC's into a steady stream of events that "Just So Happen" to only offer one solution.

In your case, the answer is No. The Party faced several problems, if I'm reading this right.
They had to get to the area

They had to find the town

They had to learn about the path

They have to get up the path (Which presumably the elder won't just let them do)

They had to climb the mountain

and they have to defeat the threat.


Of those steps, exactly one (Climbing the mountain) had only one option presented.

So yeah, you're good!

[Hrugner]

I don't think "railroaded" is the right term for the mountain paths problem, but it is a problem. Essentially, you offered them the social interaction puzzle of finding the best route up the mountain, but there was only one route so there was no need for the information search. The players couldn't have failed the social interaction puzzle and still progressed the story, and they couldn't find an alternate route because there wasn't one. That means all the searching they did was pointless and their decisions and characters had no impact on the game, it could have been handled with a simple "you go into the city searching for information on mountain passes but there only seems to be one route".

Ideally, you'd include a failure state. For example, "There was a couple that came through here a few years back that claimed to go up and down the mountain as easy as anything, their base camp isn't too far from here you could go talk to them about it. Nobodies seem them in years though, so they may have moved on.". They go to the base camp, find it abandoned, find climbing gear and several maps that have been marked as bad routes, with one still good; if the players follow all this out they find themselves in a long abandoned mountain camp looking at the corpses of the climbers and a small cache of contraband destined for the necromancer's hideout. They didn't get where they were trying to get to, but they found some stuff and did some things.

Just try to include failure states.

[Vectros]

You could let them find a half crazy Sherpa type who is willing to help them climb up the hard way. This way could be filled with Yetti or some crazy snowmen types or something.

Give the characters some warning its a difficult path but don't make it impossible.

I'll keep this in mind for future sessions. Not this exact idea, but a spin off for other future events.



I think most DM would already be hard pressed dealing with characters who decide to steal a ship on the fly. The worst half of the DMs would simply railroad the PC into not finding a ship!

Yeah. I thought they'd have been happy; as of now, he actually OWNS the ship, and has a crew that's just sitting not too far off the coast waiting for a signal to pick them up. Which still made sense to me-a combination of a pirate (who was first mate on her ship) and a good role gave them the ship (and a fight of course).

So while I'm on the subject, a point that caught my eye:


Even if the story makes logical sense, a GM can still railroad by pushing the PC's into a steady stream of events that "Just So Happen" to only offer one solution.

I have ideas for the future I don't want to say just in case the players ever manage to view this topic...but to put it into non-spoiler terms, a threat comes up, PC's find out there's only 2 ways, and ONLY 2 ways to really deal with the threat. I am giving them 2 options to do it, but would you still consider this too limiting? It makes logical sense with the story, and I feel with the options it should be ok-but would rather find out now that I need more, so I can plan ahead.

[ThisIsZen]

There's nothing wrong or railroady about a linear adventure structure built around a set of scenes which proceed one to the next, and honestly, that's not even what you have there. You seem to have improvised a branching adventure that just happens to have a bottleneck at the end - it's no different than having a dungeon whose rooms eventually converge on a single passage to the end. Throughout the course of play, your players were able to make meaningful decisions about how to proceed and succeeded or failed in those attempts based on their approach and the availability of information.

I think part of the issue is that the term 'railroading' is used incorrectly a lot. Not every GM is required to run a sandbox game heavy on improv, and not every GM is required to run an ultra-permissive "always say yes" campaign style. Saying no occasionally to impossible actions isn't wrong or bad GMing. (For instance, in the case of the pirate PC stealing a ship, that's fine and logical as it was already established that a ship existed and they were a member of the crew. But I disagree that it's railroading for a PC attempting ship theft in another context to not find a ship - not every player action must be directly facilitated, especially if you're trying to keep to a coherent narrative.)

I base a lot of my philosophy off of Angry's idea that every adventure is, essentially and in structure, a dungeon (http://theangrygm.com/every-adventures-a-dungeon/). Is it railroading to provide a linear path through a dungeon (a set of scenes) with no side branches? (The answer is no, provided the characters can make meaningful choices over the course of the dungeon.)

[DC-Chaos]

Sounds like you're doing a great job! Seems to me you have struck a good balance of letting the PCs do what they want and you getting to play out the adventure story arc you have worked on. Definitely an over demanding player.

I would tell him you are doing your best to give them more freedom and he needs to respect the adventure you have written a little more.
You have spent time creating encounters, NPCs, towns, wilderness etc. and that shouldn't be ruined or skipped because the players want to do something else. Imagine you had to make an encounter for every possible house they could break into or camp to raid. 90% of them would never get used.

I always compare it to a video game where being "railroaded" is rarely complained about as long as the story and encounters are cool. Similarly you could do a Fallout or Elder Scrolls open world style and let them do whatever but personally I find it a bit more dull than proper scripted action. I take a lot of inspiration from video games when it comes to DMing actually. Like how they lay out the story and the choices of what the players have to make.

I once opened a Lvl 1 campaign where there were 5 possible arcs/quests to pursue and lots of NPCs which gave them crazy free will to do what they wanted but I made sure that they eventually did all 5 just as I had planned for the story. It didn't matter the sequence and each quest brought it's own little piece of the puzzle as to what was going on in the big picture. By the time they were done they were level 4 and ready for the big dungeon I had designed which they were eager to do from the things they had learned during the quests.

My last piece of advice is to simply give the illusion of free will. I did it all the time as a DM. Basically no matter what they do along the way they'll end up where you want to be to progress your story. They never know the difference anyway. A simplified example just to illustrate the logic...
you have a puzzle room designed for the party you want them to run into. You ask "do you go right or left?" whatever they choose they end up in the puzzle room and if they back track the other way later it can be a room you wanted them to go to later on.

So you can let them find a secret path up the mountain if they really want but just have it end up in the same place as the main road you had planned them to take anyway.

Good luck!

[MrStabby]

I think I would frame is as you being good, not perfect. By good I mean a lot better than most. You have demanding players, but their expectations and sensitivities may have been honed by previous sessions. i don't think you have anything to worry about.

Just take their feedback in the spirit in which you asked for it. They felt it was railroady. Whether it was or wasn't kind of doesn't matter as it is a game of perceptions.

Also try and infer what you can from patterns in feedback. The guy who complained about one route up the mountain. Maybe he really likes to social scenes, the gathering information, the use of his background. To have that give nothing special and to deliver the same as any other background may be a disappointment to him. It might not be a railroading thing but a chance to use the aspects of his character he most wants to use.

One solution is just to lie afterwards (be careful!). "There were seven routes up the mountain, you discovered from a couple of independent sources the most well known one". Not to be used frequently but if your players are getting the wrong idea it may sill lead to better understanding.

I think you did well though. You adapted, you had depth and the one small place where maybe you didn't may just have stood out to people.

[Sariel Vailo]

its a mountain path lest ya can fly ya got an alternate path

[Temperjoke]

I think your players want to see that it's railroaded, when it's not. Their social skills gathered information about an easy, known route that requires permission to "legally" access. Apparently, they lack the imagination to try and figure out a different route on their own, or attempt to bypass the elder to get access. This is not your fault. I think sometimes players are conditioned to think that it's normal for there to be more than one route option, even when there isn't a logical reason for more than one route.

[busterswd]

The hell...?

Railroading is more a matter of prevention, not a matter of you needing to handfeed them multiple options. It's when you shut down the players when they want to try something creative or unexpected. This is them not getting an answer they wanted, not railroading.

If your players had spider climb, and endure elements, and wanted to try to scale an otherwise sheer face of the mountain, and then you told them the mountain was magical ice that prevented even spider climb from working, that would be railroading. If one of them had a flying horse and wanted to just fly to the site, and suddenly there was a terrible blizzard that prevented all flight, but not walking up the mountain path, that would be railroading. Your players asked 3 factions for information, and all 3 gave them the best known, logical answer. There's nothing wrong with that.

You already do enough work preparing the main storyline for your players, and you're comfortable enough to improvise when they go off the rails. They're expecting you to create 2-3 different scenarios, knowing they'll only use one, for each and every choice they want to make? That's a sense of entitlement there that actually bothers me.


I have ideas for the future I don't want to say just in case the players ever manage to view this topic...but to put it into non-spoiler terms, a threat comes up, PC's find out there's only 2 ways, and ONLY 2 ways to really deal with the threat. I am giving them 2 options to do it, but would you still consider this too limiting? It makes logical sense with the story, and I feel with the options it should be ok-but would rather find out now that I need more, so I can plan ahead.

So here, I would say: presenting them with only two options and preventing all other logical solutions, no matter what, might be railroading. There might have been some course of action that just hadn't occured to you. However, it's NOT your responsibility to prepare a 3rd option, and you have no obligation to say "yes" to their proposed alternate course of action if it doesn't make sense.

[Contrast]

So in both these cases....what do you think? Am I railroading? Am I justified? Is he too demanding, and I should tell him to stay quiet cause he's wrong, or do I need to just listen and try to give an opening every time they ask for one?

My first comment would be that, from what you said, you are pressing them for critique rather than it being offered. So I wouldn't tell someone to 'stay quiet cause he's wrong' - you asked for their thoughts and you got them. I'd find it difficult to come up with 3 pros and cons per session without having to come up with things I wasn't that bothered about. I know people I play with who would struggle to articulate 1 on a regular basis.

That said in this case - did they try an alternative route up the mountain which you shut down? If not, hard to see how it can be railroading. If the players ask the NPCs the easiest way to get somewhere and then take said easiest way without further consideration thats not on the DM.

It seems likely that as others have mentioned - the real issue wasn't railroading per se but rather the feeling that they'd effectively wasted a load of time in town as there was 1 thing to discover there and they took three times as long to progress through as they had to for no real reason. This is partly on the players (trying not to split the party unless needed saves on people sitting around twiddling their thumbs) and partly on you (ideally every interaction should be interesting to the players- if they're not going to get interesting information try and make it interesting in some other way).

Of course its impossible to make every encounter interesting and memorable so its all about doing your best to minimise boredom and maximise fun, whatever that means for you and your party (which it sounds like you're doing a reasonable job on generally so *shrugs* :smallbiggrin:)

[Breashios]

I think your question has been answered - not really railroading - maybe room for improvement.

I want to discuss human nature here. I know your pain. When I had adjudicated something poorly, I got complaints and tried to fix it. Even though it was better - objectively - everyone remembered the previous time and every time someone had a gripe about something happening they would point back to the past. It is human nature to be more sensitive or aware about something that bothered you before, even if what is bothering you now is mostly something different. You have a reputation of "railroading". Sorry but your players will probably look at everything you do in that light for quite a while.

My advice. Try not to worry too much about it. If they are enjoying the campaign, stop soliciting criticism. When you get it, take it at face value, but don't get uptight about it. If you can improve based on the criticism, then do. If you feel it was the right way to do it, then thank them, and keep doing it the way you are - you don't have to tell them that though. Just keep the play fun and engaging. You'll be fine. Eventually, you'll make a different mistake and that will become the focus of their concern.

I've got new players and old in a current campaign. One old player blows up for a moment about something "you always do..." I did not take it personally. After the game a new player came up to me and said, "I don't know what he was talking about. I think you handled that well..." Just sayin'.

[coredump]

The world is what the world is. Sometimes there is only one door to a tower, sometimes there is only 1 route up the mountain, or 1 way across the river.

Now, if they had tried some clever alternate strategies that 'should' work, and you shut them down....then it is railroading.
They decide to use those potions of flying they have, and a 'freak windstorm' makes it impossible. Or they decide to try and go through the wilderness, and keep getting 'lost' and winding up on the path. That would be railroading.

The flip side, is that the world is what you have made it. So if every goal only ever has one solution....that can get kind of boring and make them feel like what they do doesn't matter.

Last of all, as mentioned, if there is only 1 solution; just narrate it. Don't make them go through 30 minutes of 'talking with townies' to get the single obvious answer. Especially when that answer is easy to get, and when you know they will have to get it to advance the story.

[Vectros]

The hell...?

Railroading is more a matter of prevention, not a matter of you needing to handfeed them multiple options. It's when you shut down the players when they want to try something creative or unexpected. This is them not getting an answer they wanted, not railroading.

If your players had spider climb, and endure elements, and wanted to try to scale an otherwise sheer face of the mountain, and then you told them the mountain was magical ice that prevented even spider climb from working, that would be railroading. If one of them had a flying horse and wanted to just fly to the site, and suddenly there was a terrible blizzard that prevented all flight, but not walking up the mountain path, that would be railroading. Your players asked 3 factions for information, and all 3 gave them the best known, logical answer. There's nothing wrong with that.

You already do enough work preparing the main storyline for your players, and you're comfortable enough to improvise when they go off the rails. They're expecting you to create 2-3 different scenarios, knowing they'll only use one, for each and every choice they want to make? That's a sense of entitlement there that actually bothers me.



So here, I would say: presenting them with only two options and preventing all other logical solutions, no matter what, might be railroading. There might have been some course of action that just hadn't occured to you. However, it's NOT your responsibility to prepare a 3rd option, and you have no obligation to say "yes" to their proposed alternate course of action if it doesn't make sense.

Wanted to clarify a bit about the future scenario here. It will involve a very...atypical threat. So like, you know how you wouldn't expect a ghost to get hit by a normal weapon? Because he's a ghost? It's kind of like that, but due to the nature of it, it's a very difficult threat to get rid of; in fact, at that point within the established lore, most characters won't even know how to combat it initially, and it'll be a combination of a smart NPC+the PC's unraveling some knowledge that leads to "threat can be dealt with in 2 ways". The threat is like an extreme ghost I guess...though he's not based off ghosts, that's the best example I can give without actually telling revealing details.

[Ninja-Radish]

Having a plot is not the same thing as a railroad, that one player just comes across as being a bit whiny.

As a former DM who quit because of stuff like this, my advice would be to not ask for comments/feedback at the end of a session. Just end the game and talk about other things. People love to criticize. Giving players an open forum to criticize you and then expecting them not to is like handing a chimpanzee a bucket full of wet turds and expecting him not to throw them at you.

If they want you to stop running the game, they'll let you know. Spare yourself some hurt feelings and just don't ask for feedback.

[RagnaroksChosen]

Well, guess I didn't say it...but we did get past that point. They went to the town, where they had to do some social interaction, fight some stuff, etc. They pretty much didn't question it during the play time or look around, but afterwards made the complaint. Though I still feel that, given it's a mountain, you'll be hardpressed to find routes up there. It'd require some high rolls to make it, like a 20 DC check or something. Didn't come to that since they didn't search, it merely how the informants presented the information. So back to the question...is that railroading? Further, given how the rest of the session went, would you say as a whole I railroaded given that one instant?

Nope I would not consider it railroading. I had a similar game once where the PC's where trying to get to a cult leader who was stuck up in a small mountain village they didn't want to take the main road up there, and had failed all the social stuff in the major city so they bushed wacked it up to stay off the road. (also just offering them the DC 20 check is a sign you are not railroading).


FYI (I used to do alot of extreme hiking in my younger days, well really stupid stuff, like off trail hiking. there is always another way).

[Vogonjeltz]

would you say as a whole I railroaded given that one instant?

No, that's not what railroading is anyway.

If they decided they were going to just head in the direction of the mountain, and then go off-roading (not follow the trail, just navigate using whatever skills they have in that regard) and you always forced them to reach the exact same path...that would be railroading.

But if they want to try getting there some way that's harder than the apparently easy method, that's really on them.

[busterswd]

Wanted to clarify a bit about the future scenario here. It will involve a very...atypical threat. So like, you know how you wouldn't expect a ghost to get hit by a normal weapon? Because he's a ghost? It's kind of like that, but due to the nature of it, it's a very difficult threat to get rid of; in fact, at that point within the established lore, most characters won't even know how to combat it initially, and it'll be a combination of a smart NPC+the PC's unraveling some knowledge that leads to "threat can be dealt with in 2 ways". The threat is like an extreme ghost I guess...though he's not based off ghosts, that's the best example I can give without actually telling revealing details.

The specifics are unimportant. You're basically creating a creature with a catch (fairies and cold iron, vampires and sunlight, werewolves and silver) to make it easier to handle. That's fine. Here are potential things that could happen, that might verge on railroading:

-The players somehow get access to Banish. Presumably your creature isn't of this world, so that spell would at least solve their problem for the short term. Railroading would be somehow giving the ghost last minute immunity or fudging its saving throw. If there's a lore reason why banishment wouldn't work (for example, the creature did actually from the current plane), it's not railroading.

-The players plan ahead and unload a metric crap ton of damage on it that you're not expecting, overcoming whatever resistances it has. Deciding the creature doesn't have HP at the last second is railroading.

Basically, in your head, you know what the creature is and how it operates. If you're changing details at the last second to make it more invincible, that's railroading. If it no sells attacks because that's part of what it is, and this information was available to your players, that's 100% their problem.

[Hrugner]

Wanted to clarify a bit about the future scenario here. It will involve a very...atypical threat. So like, you know how you wouldn't expect a ghost to get hit by a normal weapon? Because he's a ghost? It's kind of like that, but due to the nature of it, it's a very difficult threat to get rid of; in fact, at that point within the established lore, most characters won't even know how to combat it initially, and it'll be a combination of a smart NPC+the PC's unraveling some knowledge that leads to "threat can be dealt with in 2 ways". The threat is like an extreme ghost I guess...though he's not based off ghosts, that's the best example I can give without actually telling revealing details.

Just to make sure I'm clear on this. You're introducing a new creature type. The only way to know how to defeat it is through talking to one NPC. That guy gives them two ways to defeat it.

These are the ways I could see this plan going awry.
-The players see what it is and figure out how to deal with it on their own. If it works, cool they missed a bit of stuff but came to the right conclusion. If it doesn't work, then maybe it'll lead them to someone who knows the right answer. If it doesn't work, but there's no reason why it wouldn't work, then the player who complains about "railroading" is going to become pretty annoyed and they end up at the smart NPC anyway.
-The players go to the NPC, get the answer on how to defeat this thing, but use the reasoning behind this solution to craft a better solution, or to use this new solution to break the game.

Just a few things to watch out for, I wouldn't call this railroading really. Just be sure the smart NPC keeps a journal on the off chance he gets killed before he can help the PCs.