"Railroading" in RPGs

General/Looking For Group
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The term “Railroading” fills most Role Playing Gamers with dread and with good cause. In it’s strictest sense it means that the DM/GM/StoryTeller forces all the players through a preset story and doesn’t allow any of the players to change that story. Is this even possible in an RPG?

If this extreme example cropped up in a game then it wouldn’t be a game at all. It’d be “Here, let me tell you a story that I’ve made up…”. The opposite is true. An extreme case of “No Railroading” leads to “Let’s make up story together from scratch”

My opinion is that some degree of “Railroading” is necessary for structure. The “Plot Hook”, “Final Boss”, “Quest for the Holy Grail” are all elements of Railroading. The GM needs at least the Beginning and End of a story to get any kind of game from it.

Certain investigative games/scenarios require that the players make a skill roll in order to find the vital clue. Which is nice in theory. But what happens when everyone fails their roll? The game stops. The GUMSHOE system solved this by making sure that everyone gets the clues needed to progress so the game can continue. When I first read this I was a bit shocked. It screamed of Railroading and totally put me off. Until I thought about it more and realized that stuff like this is absolutely necessary for a RPG.

Of course any GM with an INT higher than 1 wouldn’t let this stuff happen but some GMs quite rightfully stick to the rules as written.

Imagine D&D ruled that the players must roll a skill check to enter the next room in a dungeon…and everyone failed the roll.

That’ll be one very short session.

Any thoughts on the whole concept of Railroading?

(Just trying to get some discussion going on these forums!)

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It’s a fine line between ‘many plothooks’ and ‘railroad’.

I guess, if the players can’t do anything that the GM hasn’t anticipated for them to do, it’s railroading. If they can take a detour and approach the goal from a different side, it’s a good GM.

Depending on the players and their playstyle, it may be possible to enjoy a railroaded adventure. (I’m thinking of true ‘Hack&Slay’-style players that don’t care about the plot in general and only want to have the next monsters in their way to cut down. The GM basically leads them from one encounter to the next to the next … to the BBEG.)

For your example of the failed rolls to find the vital clue: That can happen in many games. It’s the responsibility of the GM to provide an alternate means to still get the clue. And if it’s a Butler that suddenly remembers something and tells it after the characters all failed.

I personally don’t really like such investigational games. As a GM I try to give my players more hints and Plot hooks than they ever need, sometimes resulting in Players not knowing what is more/most important. I know that, but most of the times can’t help it.

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Well, railroading is actually a relative term and, in my opinion, refers mostly about being obvious in restricting your players’ choice: It’s not about choice, it’s about the illusion of choice (as they say in the political system).

Warning: lengthy explanation of my DMing “philosophy” (for lack of a better word) and mention of a few tricks I have up my sleeve. Do not read it if it might spoil the “mystique” of playing at my table… :wink:

For example, a good friend of mine had a horror story about her first game: they were ambushed in the woods and, being of the elvish persuasion, she decided to climb in a tree…
Clearly, the DM had not planned for it and, wanting them captured as part of the story, just decided she couldn’t climb the tree. It must have been some sort of magical trees… Totally arbitrary decision and clear feeling of being rail-roaded…
Now, I would have decided that the bad guys just spot her in the tree and cut it down… Or that one of the NPCs was actually secretly working with them and rats her out… Same outcome, but it would have felt more natural…

Obviously, the classical dungeon is, in itself, a form of railroading. You can stick the rooms in the order you want the encounters to happen and the story to unfold (and you can put a chest that contain a number of healing potions proportional to how well you ran that evening in the room just before the big bad. Also, a flask of holy water or two 'cause the zombies might overpowered them now that the cleric blew through most of his spells). Such railroading is rarely complained about, because it feels natural…

Another way of doing it: the group arrives to a fork in the road and decides to take right. Good, for them, but you can easily drop the one dungeon you have prepared at the end of either roads…
In fact, if you are feeling fancy (DM trade secret here) you can drop “hints”. If the players examine both roads, they notice horse tracks on the left, and some spilled grains on the right. Then, when they arrive at the dungeon, the first room they met were either the stables of the higwaymen’s cavalry or the one where they stocked up the grain-filled cart they ransomed from the nearby village…

And, truly, in reality, most situation have a handful of very obvious solutions and, by thinking about them ahead of time, you can predict what the players are likely to do…
Sure, you’ll be surprised regularly, that’s what the fun in DMing is… "you guys are doing WHAT? " You just have to improvise as much as you can…
Also, while I don’t remember it ever being that bad, if it really breaks your scenario, I would be open about it: “well, good job guys. You broke the game. I really did not see that coming and you really out-smarted me on this one… Now, you guys take a smoke break and I’ll try to figure out what happens next…”
I think it’s fair enough. That doesn’t make you a bad DM and the players are entitled to be told and feel proud about their resourcefulness…

Finally, my solution to the investigation scenario… and that should be coming up in the near future… is to have a bunch of clues to drop. A few clues, and always leave a witness or two for your player to interrogate. In the worst cases, have the clue bat ready… Maybe they have informants that overheard something, or maybe the perp will try the same thing again, providing the players with another opportunity… And, I guess, try to leave the possibility open for the PCs never to solve the case… don’t hinge the rest of the campaign on it and move on if it gets tedious… After all, most crimes in the world are actually never solved…

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Hey, it worked in Horror on the Orient Express…

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“Alle wegen führen nach Rom” - so let the player’s built those roads!

…except if they want to go to Tokio, now that’s a problem…