The term ‘railroading’ usually sends a shiver down the spine of any tabletop RPG player because of the negative implications that come along with it. To be honest, most DMs dislike the term as well and railroading is generally referred to as a problem with an RPG. The implications are that the DM has already planned everything that happens and the players are simply along for the ride. There are certainly players out there who don’t mind being railroaded or even prefer it, simply enjoying the act of playing the game with no real concern for the magnitude of impact their decisions have on the story. On the other hand, many RPG players want to feel as if their characters are a part of a living world and that the decisions they make will have a real effect on that world.
The negative association given to railroading leads to the knee-jerk reaction from most DMs and players of avoiding it completely. I imagine most of you have played in an adventure or two where it was clear things had gone off course or even worse in a direction that led absolutely nowhere. If we try to avoid all aspects of railroading it can work, but it requires a DM who can think on their feet and is comfortable running a game with an uncertain future and resolution. If you have a good DM, good characters, and an intricate world to play in then having no rails at all can certainly be a rewarding and extremely fun prospect. However, I would bet that no matter how good it is every now and then an important plot line dangles unresolved or an adventure simply falls flat due to a lack of direction and overall guidance.
As with most things, there is a happy middle ground that can work with the advantages to both sides of the railroading concept. The basic principle is exactly the same as the railroading that you know and avoid, but it comes with mediation and a group of track layers rather than one conductor and a set of passengers. I’ve developed this idea after looking at some of my own adventures where I attempted to leave the plot more open, free-form, and sandbox-y to give the players control over their own destinies. What sometimes happens is the players simply do not know where to go or what to do, and unlike in real life where it is easy to simply pick a direction and walk; the imagined world of tabletop RPGs often leaves players with too little information.
The root of the concept is that once the players have chosen a direction that they want explore, the DM should not be afraid to introduce a set of rails that direction leads down. Often you will find that the players naturally follow that path once they have made the initial decision of where to go. The key to avoiding the “bad” type of railroading while still providing adequate direction for the players is to give them a clear path to follow when it is apparent they do not know where to go. If your players have decided that they want to solve the mystery in town and reveal the hidden killer, it’s not very much fun for them to wander around town and investigate every single possible lead when only a handful of them actually lead to the killer.
Once they have made the decision to go that direction, it is the DM’s job to make sure the party can advance in that general path and make a good amount of progress before the end of the adventure. If you are attempting to run an adventure without any rails whatsoever, though it can work out, it can also lead to lots of wasted time, second guessing, and dead ends. If the party is unclear of where to go next at every single turn it can result in a lot more work for everyone involved.
One of the best ways I’ve found to railroad in a good way is to have a path that an adventure will progress along but have a variety of lead in events or decisions that set up the trail. Depending on what decisions are made early in the adventure the path will change or new obstacles may come up, but in the end I know the general path things are going to take. One happy accident of this method is that often I am not entirely sure what the conclusion of that path will be, but part of that uncertain conclusion can lead into the decisions being made at the beginning of the next adventure.
If I can’t have an early event or decision that sets up the path, I try to include a lynchpin moment where the path of the adventure is clearly up to the party to choose. However, as I mentioned earlier, once a decision has been made I attempt to provide as clear a path as possible so that the party feels as if they are accomplishing something and progressing the story of the game. I believe much of the negative connotation to the concept comes from the idea of a DM preventing a player’s actions. This will always be an issue, but if you’ve allowed the party to make an initial set of decisions then I believe you will find the majority of the time they will not follow directions which lead them off of the small set of rails you’ve provided them. If they do, then I fully encourage you to improvise or change your plans to make the game fun and engaging. I feel that a judicious use of railroading can lead to an easier time for both the DM and the players.
It is my hope that in the future, if I say that I am a fan of railroading in tabletop RPGs that it does not sound like a bad thing. Instead I want people to think of the times that they have made crazy decisions and the DM has still presented them with a compelling and interesting plot developed from those decisions that took little effort for the party to progress along. I also recommend you read Robin Laws’ blog post on the same topic, discussing hand-waiving the less important scenes of an adventure so that things do not get bogged down unnecessarily.
Also I encourage you to check out my guest blog post over at Obsidian Portal on a similar topic about how to save a campaign that has gone off course.
I’ve dealt with the implication before that any sort of plot or direction introduced by the GM is necessarily bad because it wasn’t introduced by players, which I find very extreme. I think your approach is much better. Ultimately I tend to be a bit right of center (I guess?) with this sort of thing. When I come up with a game, there’s goals and a theme, and it generally isn’t a “you’re in place X, do whatever you want” situation. I don’t browbeat people into the goals and the theme, but I do make most roads lead to Rome, or at least to some place in Italy, mostly because I’m not very interested in sandboxes.
Also I have to point out Gabe from Penny Arcade’s post today on Sandbox games which is very interesting and relates to this whole topic:
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.
An interesting article. My personal method for designing adventures, I call “clear goals and fluid obstacles.” Clear goals means the PCs don’t spend a lot of time waffling about where to go and what to do. There may be a choice of quests available, but once the PCs start down a path, it’s obvious what the mission is. Fluid obstacles means that a number of things stand between the PCs and their goal — but exactly which things can be determined in response to the PC’s actions. This way you can adjust the adventure’s pacing and difficulty; the PCs can’t short-circuit the story because there isn’t a fixed story, it is fluid. But because of the “clear goals” part, it means that I can still plan a climactic final encounter. I find this a good balance between railroading and sandbox game-play.
I like what 77IM has to say on the topic. It’s actually what I’m currently studying in a class, which is about how to write for interactive media, such as video games, and which would also apply to RPGs. Video games are obviously more problematic, because the computer can’t anticipate and respond to every possible action of the players. So there’s definitely a sort of railroading there.
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.
I’m with you on the “railroading” issue. I tend to let my players decide how they want to handle most situations, and to move the plot along. As you pointed out, it’s counter productive to good role-playing to introduce too many negatives into a plot, and a good GM has to be able to accept that their careful trail of plot-breadcrumbs might be ignored in favor of the Characters running off and doing something off the wall.
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.
I totally agree with this post and the comments, I care a lot for stories in my games, GMing or otherwise, but I also want to feel that the group on that table is the one picking the plots and telling the story.
If I’d describe your approach as ‘railroading with branches’ would you feel that is a fair description? Or is there more to it? (It’s not completely clear to me.)
I would avoid using the world railroad just because of how heavy the word is on the rpg world.
.-= Nifelhein´s last blog ..4th Edition is D&D Trend =-.
This post is exactly how I feel about railroading. It’s not always a bad thing for the DM to lay down a path that the PCs follow. As long as the PCs chose to go down the path. I mean if railroading was always such a bad thing, then why are there so many published adventures out there that are pretty much railroads.
I’d rather by railroaded along on story than wander aimlessly in a sandbox.
In the group I play with, I found that most of them aren’t the roleplaying type. Practically the only decision they want to make is which power will make that dragon suffer the most. The fact of the matter is, they are fine with the DM telling the story and pretty much deciding what they’re going to do, story-wise. Combat and skill challenge decisions are left to the players.
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 use a method i’ve coined as the Rome’ing. Ala all roads lead to Rome. More precisely it works as more of a all roads lead to rome, but you can stop at Sparta, Troy and Beijing on the way if you so choose.
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
Thanks for all the great comments!
@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!
just found this post and liked it – sounds like a middle ground between straight track railroad and wide open sandboxes. maybe a better analogy would be a railyard – lots of tracks, lots of switches to change course but eventually wide up at the station but it might be a different platform than you thought.
I started a Forgotten Realms 3.5 campaign a year ago. The DM said it would be “free-form.” What he meant was “I have nothing specific in mind. Here’s a ship now do what you want to. Just don’t make me do any prep work.” Since 3 of us were in a campaign for the first time, and one of the experienced guys was playing a very non-assertive character, it really didn’t go anywhere.