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shadow_archmagi
2008-07-31, 10:26 PM
So, I recently found a new group. Or rather, I discovered that half my friends were fans of D&D and hadn't ever mentioned it.

So, suddenly my group goes from barely-enough to gee-are-there-enough-chairs. Yipee. Only, their DM sucks.

He tried to force us through "A dark and stormy Knight." but seemed to be reading it as he went along (in the "Oh, whoa, I really should've read that paragraph. That room is actually on fire, you can't go in there after all. Roll back five minutes!" sort of sense). There was much railroading.

So I've wrested dibs on the next campaign, which I'll be hosting when I return from vacation in two weeks. I was thinking, for irony, a railroad. So far my concept is:

1. Players are stuck on the train for a few days, during which time there are numerous fights and a murder mystery.
2. The train consists of numerous cargo-cars supported by lots of endless water decanters, with a dragon-type thing dragging the cars to their destination.
3. There shall be a group of nuns, a pair of bargheasts, and a trio of merchant bankers (read: assassin/thieves/mercenary/spy).
4. I shall prepare a backstory, motives, and evil plot behind each of these, depending on which are eliminated and which are ignored by the players, one of them shall seize control of the train and take it to the Elder God's Temple/Goblin Mountain/Undersea Fortress/Ninja Island/Abandoned Hotel In The Woods/The Intended Destination But Not.

Helpful comments? Ideas for more passengers? Would you enjoy this campaign?

My goal here is to get the players to do precisely what I planned by a combination of trickery, deceit, and planning for everything. Campaign level should be lowish, I was thinking around 5. Its still higher than most of what they're used to.

Vortling
2008-07-31, 10:31 PM
The question is, how much of a sense of humor do all your players have? What sort of games do they like playing? If they don't know it's usually best to stick with more basic adventures than the metahumor you're going for with that campaign.

shadow_archmagi
2008-07-31, 10:34 PM
The question is, how much of a sense of humor do all your players have? What sort of games do they like playing? If they don't know it's usually best to stick with more basic adventures than the metahumor you're going for with that campaign.

Oh, I'll put in plenty of humor-humor too. They're all-round gamers, from counterstrike to portal to brawl. I intend for it to be a perfectly usable campaign even if no one gets any metahumor.

EDIT: it will be a basic adventure. Go on a train, find some bad guys, invade a fortress, kill some dudes, get some loot. Its just going to be done with loads of humor in the sidelines.

Number 6
2008-07-31, 11:47 PM
I'm glad you brought it up. There's been a lot of discussion in my gaming group about railroading. Except for one player, all of us agree that some railroading is necessary, only we all have different opinions of how much is too much.

For example, you have a NPC who is the Lawfull Good sjherrif of a town. The players want to torture one of the prisoners for information. Of course he's not going to allow it. Some players would yell "railroading" at this because the players aren't allowed to do whatever they want.

So, while we're at it, we can decide on how much is too much.

Chronicled
2008-08-01, 12:11 AM
The key to railroading well is to be subtle about it.

As an example, did the barbarian rage/charge/critformassivedamage your BBEG in the middle of parley, long before the climactic battle was supposed to occur? Having your BBEG teleport away, completely ignore the attack, or some other way of dodging death is obvious railroading. Having the barbarian's victim be the BBEG's right-hand man is more subtle (and having the BBEG refuse to parley anymore after that is good too, perhaps even letting the party know this immediately via some means).

The first instance makes the players frustrated, as it makes their actions seem trivial and/or meaningless. The second instance lets them feel as if they've accomplished something, but at a cost. And if the BBEG is prepared for that sort of thing in future dealings, it shouldn't be a problem--it's a sign that the player's actions matter. Never mind that the BBEG was actually supposed to be the fellow now dead--the players don't have to know that.

Behold_the_Void
2008-08-01, 12:24 AM
Oh man, my biggest word of advice here is to watch Baccano! (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=7492)

The Flying Pussyfoot arc will likely give you all kinds of interesting ideas, especially in the lines of what happens when about 3 powerful factions are all trying to hijack a train.

quiet1mi
2008-08-01, 12:43 AM
the trick to railroading is.... to provide minions (usually dopplegangers and changelings) in place of the bbeg (especially if he is a psi-agent [Complete scoundrel] and never let the PC know who is doing the murderering....

red hearings are perfect for this and so are the "last minute, always been there,killed people for reasons the viewer could have never known, bad-guys"

in essence what i do to railroad players is to create an obvious villain (evil baron) and give him an alibi to every murder and even offer his help in the catching of the killers, the players will go to great pains to accuse the obvious villain of anything and ignore the possibility of he is not the killer, so you can have a competing villain working in the shadows

TwystidMynd
2008-08-01, 02:43 AM
It's rather strange that I was brainstorming on a very similar subject just this morning!

I plan on aiming for a more Resident Evil: Zero type feel, with a spooky train and undead, plus a mystery (where'd these undead come from? where's this train going?) I like the meta-humor feel of railroading characters like that =)

Athistaur
2008-08-01, 03:18 AM
As I understand your rather looking for suggestions for a "railroad"-Adventure aka train. I've done one of these with my last group.
The approach to the train itself was that it was a dwarfen machine, designed to connect to big city's with an underground train. It had a tunnel prepared for the machine instead of rails and it was driving at a high speed.
The first waggon was the pulling machine(your dragon), behind it further machines as part of the main engine. Next followed the waggons with freight, food, beer, than a rolling-Inn, next a few waggons to sleep and sit. There were four parts to this adventure:

A dwarfen nobel was aboard, he was assasinated be another dwarf, paid for the job and using an invisible dagger with the true name of the victim inscribed to break the magic armour he weared. The players were unknowing and not able to prevent the assasination, but they finaly managed to find the dagger and brought the assasin to justice a swift dead.
They received the Information that the tunnel collapsed and had to stop the train in time to prevent a massiv crash. The last few waggons before the main engine served as an dangerous obstacle and required several well timed jumps on the moving train. One of the players slipped, dropped and was fetched barly alive when the train was stopped.
A few critters jumped on the moving train from the ceiling and attacked it.
The BBEG had a part of the device he was building delivered to him on the same train, the players had to see it when they stopped the train as they had to pass through all the wagons. They did see it and had a good look at it, later the mage even identified it and basicly said "Hey that's dangerous." But beyond that they ignored the device, much to the joy of the BBEG as he received his next toy.


Maybe these can help you for your own "Railroad"-Adventure.

valadil
2008-08-01, 06:43 AM
I'm glad you brought it up. There's been a lot of discussion in my gaming group about railroading. Except for one player, all of us agree that some railroading is necessary, only we all have different opinions of how much is too much.


My opinion is that the GM should always be prepared to railroad, but not do so unless needed and only railroad one step at a time. Show them the train tracks. Then give them a free ride on the train. Then have the conductor flag them down and tell them they're holding up the train. Then have the conductor and his conductor friends mug the group and dump them in the cargo car. Just make sure it's progressively more and more railroading rather than skipping to the cargo car.

I love the idea for the campaign. And it sounds like you've got the right attitude about keeping the humor-humor there too.

shadow_archmagi
2008-08-01, 07:43 AM
My opinion is that the GM should always be prepared to railroad, but not do so unless needed and only railroad one step at a time. Show them the train tracks. Then give them a free ride on the train. Then have the conductor flag them down and tell them they're holding up the train. Then have the conductor and his conductor friends mug the group and dump them in the cargo car. Just make sure it's progressively more and more railroading rather than skipping to the cargo car.

I love the idea for the campaign. And it sounds like you've got the right attitude about keeping the humor-humor there too.

You skipped a step. Depending on what players you have, you either show them the tracks and say "Hey, what nice tracks, sorta like what a train uses. One you guys might wanna, you know, get on."

Or, alternatively:

"Theres a peasant hovel where an old witch lives, a forest full of man-eating ninja zombie bugs, oh yeah and off to the side a train station."

valadil
2008-08-01, 08:11 AM
Heh, fair enough. The point was that you can't just push the railroading to eleven, even though it goes to eleven. You have to turn it up slowly until the players get where they're going or find somewhere else to go. Players that only need a subtle hint shouldn't have to deal with full blown railroading.

Of course it should be pointed out that there are players who are along for the ride and just want to hear the story without contributing to it. A game full of those players will require railroading if it is going to go anywhere.

shadow_archmagi
2008-08-01, 08:29 AM
While I appreciate the rail-roading advice, and I will remember and use it, what I really want is two things:

1. More characters for use as train passengers. I have added dwarves to the list.

2. Ways to get the characters onto the train. This is the trickiest part as they still have access to the rest of the world. Once they're on the train, they have to stay on unless they feel like plunging to their doom.

Athistaur
2008-08-01, 08:50 AM
How to get them on the train ?

Time Pressure; they have to get fram A to B fast... very fast. Teleporting is not taken into account here, besides that, the train is the fastest thing you've got.
Invitation; The Railroad is brand new, recently constructed by some proud mages. Those mages know people which know your party and were impressed by those. They receive a direct invitation to get on the train.
Escort; Either they are hired to escort the train or a package or a passenger. Or they feel compelled out of reasons you would know better, to escort the train or some.
Chase; Have them fight some brutes, thos finally try to get away from the heros. They run away..heros follow...they run coincidently to the train station ..players don't even recognize it. ... they run onto the still standing train... player follows. Dragon roars and gives a quick start. Risk remains that your players try really hard to get off again or kill the last brute before he entered the train.

Aquillion
2008-08-01, 09:29 AM
Eberron's books have a lot of advice about railroading (not the plot kind, the lightning rail kind).

One key thing to remember: Your players are quite likely to want to do the sorts of things they've seen in the movies. These include, but are not limited to:

* Climbing outside / on top of the train (don't forget to have occasional tunnels or low branches when this happens!) Will they have to make balance checks to stay on their feet? What about the wind? Etc.

* Detaching cars, possibly while inside them. How difficult will it be? How quickly will the detached cars come to a stop / drift away from the rest of the train? How fast is this train going, anyway?

* Heading to the engine and slowing / stopping / speeding up the train. If they discover the train is being hijacked towards going someplace they don't want to go, they are going to try to do this immediately. Have a backup plan.

* Changing route at switches by one method or another, often by signaling to the switch in advance somehow.

Also, consider what happens if people fall off the train (some people will. Maybe not players, but someone will, and maybe a player will.) You need to decide how that will work. Also, what will you say if a player asks their chances on jumping? If they actually jump? Can they make a tumble check? Can they use various other abilities that reduce falling damage?

If your players are fifth level, any wizard with them will have access to Fly. This makes keeping them on a train if they really don't want to stay there difficult (although they might not be able to take others with them.) Would Feather Fall help someone step / jump off a moving train safely? Logically you'd expect it to.

If one player falls off (and survives) and the others stay on the train, the party will be split up. You'll need a plan for this eventuality, too. You can't even have them roll a new character while the train is in transit (unless you want their new character to suddenly stand up from the masses on the train and say "Oh hi, I'm a random adventurer who happened to be on the train all along and hasn't said or done anything until now!"), so if you're expecting an extended series of sessions with the players trapped on a runaway train, this could be a serious issue (what do you do if someone jumps/falls off in the very first session?)

A train can be a fun and exciting setting, but there's a lot of things you have to consider. And keeping the players on it if they set their minds to escaping is going to be a lot harder than you think. (In particular, I don't see how you can stop them from simply detaching the last X cars -- or even every car except the engine -- and drifting to a stop, unless you want to say that the whole train is made of enchanted adamantium and welded together so no cars detach, which is, um, railroading of the other sort.)