@Pingwin: you could call it “railroading with branches”, but I was looking at it from a different perspective that once the party has chosen a branch, make sure you can push them along that path at a good pace and make sure it leads somewhere (preferably somewhere good and interesting).

@Nifelhein: that’s what I addressed in the beginning of my post, that I don’t think railroading should be a “bad word” all the time. To me the difference between good railroading and bad is that a DM should generally allow players that want to veer from the path and explore to do so, but that a DM must also make the tough calls of when a sidetrack will not lead to something good or when it detracts from the gameplay or doesn’t add to the overall campaign at all and avoid those. I generally, as a person, don’t steer away from words just because people have negative associations with them if there is something to be gained in using them.

@Level1gamer: I wouldn’t say a railroad is a good thing just because most published adventures are on tracks, I think that’s a cart-leading-the-horse concept. Published adventures typically have tracks because that’s much easier to write in a broad and generic sense when you don’t know the players or the DM/GM that’s running things.

@Vincent: If you ever want to introduce some more roleplaying to your non-RP players, there are a lot of posts written on the subject but I would at the simplest encourage you to mix skill challenges with combats, and introduce places where killing everything is not the best or most obvious/efficient solution. Just in case, that is.

@Scott: That’s probably one of the best ways to do it, but it would fall apart and be less fun if the players knew about it beforehand. It creates an interesting dynamic when it comes to DM / Player knowledge and how the DM can have something planned all along that still seems like the players accidentally discovered it. I’ve had this happen several times to me where the players think they’re destroying my adventure and making me improvise a lot and in fact I’m not or only need to improvise a little bit. I suppose that’s a big part of the fun!

In english, this method entails dangling several plot hooks and after the players choose a direction providing several different options for them to move forward, each with a varying degree of dificulty. If a player comes up with a decent idea they want to try it leads straight to ‘Rome’. While this could be construed as railroading i think it allows the players to go anywhere and do anything, while making an impact on the world but there is always a clear path provided for them at any given stage, if they wish to ignore the path and go off road, they still eventually end up in ‘Rome’.

I believe placing a dead end in your game is simply stating, No your wrong try again. get that answer once or twice when you come up with an idea and the fun seems to fade away.

Great post

Scott

There’s nothing wrong with railroading itself, if the players are ok with it. Dragon Age Origins did fine. Sure the player have many choices in the game. I just feel that compared with typical multiplayer online games, DAO is much more railroad-y. And it needs to be railroad-y, otherwise the story will lose its power.

I’d rather by railroaded along on story than wander aimlessly in a sandbox.

You definitely can’t plan for every whim of 5-6 human beings role-playing around a table, but so long as you know where the plot is going, you can nudge characters now and then in the right direction, without seeming to overt about it.

And some of the side-tracks characters run off on can sometimes lead to a new adventure you haven’t even considered yet.

A key component here is that I think modularization really helps. If you have components which you can easily slot into the story, it will be able to form really, really well. Story hooks are important here, and the incorporation of many, smaller arcs.

Where I think the real power of a “directional DM” (my alternate title for this situation, because they’re not quite railroading, but not sandboxing either) lies is behind the scenes. Railroading DMs often happen because DMs themselves are too boxed-in, and are thinking only like players. They see the adventure as a series of obstacles for the PCs to face, and aren’t ready to intertwine it into a larger plot.

By manipulating the larger events, the DM can still give the players freedom, but at the same time direct the plot. For instance, maybe he doesn’t railroad them by laying a DM Fiat and resurrecting the Big Bad who they killed way too early. Instead, he works around existing characters, and behind the scenes, another one starts maneuvering to the same position.

The key, though, is flexibility. If a DM falls in love too much with their ideas, they’re set to railroad quick and fast.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/1/20/

Though it seems to be the opposite side of things, there are similarities and lessons that can be taken from both sides of the concept.