Railroading the DM

[chipmafia]

As I write an adventure for a Deadlands Campaign that concerns a train robbery (of sorts), it made me think, "What if the players decide not to get on the train?" Then I thought about the times I've railroaded the DM's plans myself. My story does have a plot, and it is on a train, so in some sense it is linear (a train goes one direction) but at the same time, they do have choices.

Have any of you railroaded the DM's plans? How did it go? How did the DM respond? How did it affect the play session?

Thanks!

[Nickademus]

I think when you agree to be a player in a game, you agree to a certain minimum of railroading. If you know going in that the campaign takes place in the nation of Corneria, you don't expect to immediately leave for the neighboring nation.

I would say the problems that arise in this kind of situation are miscommunications about the premise of the campaign. More specific instances of adventures getting railroaded boils down to the GM's failure to provide proper motivation without taking away choice. A little thought can get around this too.

I have indeed railroaded a GM's game. Didn't know what the game world was going to be (started Forgotten Realms and immediately we were to be moved to Al'Qadim). I had made a dwarven cleric of a fire goddess, that naturally didn't like water and HATED boats. Common stereotype among dwarves plus the influence of his goddess. Seems the first thing we were supposed to do was board a boat to Al'Qadim.

The entire session turned out to be the party trying to knock me out so they could get me on the boat. The game ended with the GM complimenting me on my roleplaying and throwing us all out for the week. Next week I came in with a different character; one that didn't mind boats.

[Doswelk]

To be honest with that adventure I'd probably cheat, and end the week before mentioning they heard of a job/need to meet a friend/save someone/etc. that requires them to travel quickly by train...

Then next week just start the game on the train :D

As to rail-roading the GM, not sure if I have, I did have a situation at the last Con game I ran which was running the new Hellfrost Land of Fire adventure and a whole section of the adventure was negated by a player having real-life knowledge about the creatures involved and thus providing a solution that negated the whole scene!

[dr_venture]

I think when you agree to be a player in a game, you agree to a certain minimum of railroading.

Yeah, I agree. I would try to find a way to emphasize the importance of riding that train to the characters/players, and 99 times out of 100 they'll go for it - players are usually interested in digging into whatever meal laid out by the GM. But every now and then it just doesn't happen, hard as you try.

I've mentioned this before, and people seems shocked by the notion, but when all else fails, I just "break the 4th wall" for a moment and just level with the players - something along the lines of, "Look, mea culpa, dudes: I can't plan for everything, and I figured you guys would go for riding the train. Suffice to say that you need to be on it to advance the story, OK?"

We're all adults, we all know this is imagination and that the GM has contrived to arrange for the characters to have adventures. This type of thing is my last ditch action, as it takes everyone out of the game for a moment... but I've always found that the players are keen to move the story forward and very understanding. It's just a game, let's move on and have fun. Everyone makes a joke about their character's change of heart and readily capitulates (and the good players come up with some reasoning to have fun with it), and the game gets back on track.

That's a last resort "bad form" tactic when all other smoother and less distracting tactics have failed... but I personally much prefer it to the alternate, which is the GM railroading the characters into doing something they don't want to in a somewhat transparent manner. I *hate* that. I'd much prefer a GM just politely explain that I need to take an action to make the game move forwards and me doing that because I want to, rather than finding my character forced into taking actions that either I wouldn't have him take, or that seem totally contrived to force me into something. And I guess that's what it boils down to: it's much nicer to be asked politely to do something than for be forced against your will whether you like it or not.

But again, these are last ditch tactics. In 30-odd years of gaming, I think it's only come up maybe 1 or 2 times, and has never been a big deal: you drop the pretense for a moment, everyone has a laugh, and you get back to gaming.

As to Railroading the GM: don't know if I've ever done it... probably. My buddy spent days in high school one summer preparing a detailed adventure specifically for his brother's high level druid character. Tons of work went into it. Then the next session, as the druid was walking through the woods on a stormy night on his way to a distant city for something not-so-important, he spied a tower where he didn't expect one, with lights in the windows and a strange and intriguing banner flying from the peak... what do you do? His brother was annoyed: "We keep getting sidetracked on these adventures when we're trying to get somewhere and get stuff done. I ignore the tower and continue on my way." "Um... 'distracted by adventures?' Rreally? OK, well... well, you continue marching... (*rolls for encounters*)" He held onto that module for years before another character was in the same area and he could use it.

[chipmafia]

More specific instances of adventures getting railroaded boils down to the GM's failure to provide proper motivation without taking away choice. A little thought can get around this too.

Their motivation is basically written into the setup, which I think will go a long way to getting them on the train. They are moving out West to make a fortune after meeting during the war. They know one another pre-adventure, and pre-adventure they decided to move out West. I think setting it up as such (which I did after posting this) may deter them from derailing me. :) That said, its a relatively new group to RP, and they are just enjoying the newness of it all. It'll also be the first Savage Worlds play session for all of us, so I imagine they'll go along :)


That's a last resort "bad form" tactic when all other smoother and less distracting tactics have failed... but I personally much prefer it to the alternate, which is the GM railroading the characters into doing something they don't want to in a somewhat transparent manner.

This is what I'm trying to avoid, as some of my first experiences with RPG left me sour for this reason. I'm an outside-the-box thinker, and I was regularly told, "No, the rules won't let you do that." by a DM. It wasn't as if I was breaking the laws of physics or anything, it was just he wasn't able to make the rules fit into my request. I try to never say, "No" to my players (at least within reason) and reward them for savvy thinking. I don't allow them to do too much craziness though. Recently, a player thought he could make an Arcana check to imbue some bones with magic to replace his magic implement. There has to be a line drawn somplace! I just try to keep them ling as far away as possible.

[dr_venture]

This is what I'm trying to avoid, as some of my first experiences with RPG left me sour for this reason. I'm an outside-the-box thinker, and I was regularly told, "No, the rules won't let you do that." by a DM. It wasn't as if I was breaking the laws of physics or anything, it was just he wasn't able to make the rules fit into my request. I try to never say, "No" to my players (at least within reason) and reward them for savvy thinking. I don't allow them to do too much craziness though. Recently, a player thought he could make an Arcana check to imbue some bones with magic to replace his magic implement. There has to be a line drawn someplace! I just try to keep them ling as far away as possible.

To me, there's a really big difference between having the game hinge on the players needing to take some specific action or else the story gets derailed, and a DM who won't allow players to do things outside the box. I was describing one of those places where as a GM you have exhausted all other possibilities and the story is in danger of falling apart, or becoming terribly screwed up. I don't know about other GMs, but that hasn't been that much of a problem for me: most modules I've run, whether commercial or home made, don't have many choke points where the players are required to take a specific action or the whole story falls apart... and those that do usually allow enough flexibility that you can work around the problem. I think 1 or 2 out-ofcharacter moments per decade of gaming isn't something to worry too much about: if all the *other* moments are a ton of fun, I'm just not going to sweat an occasional screw-up in an otherwise really fun game.

When a DM simply won't allow actions because the rules don't allow for it, well, that's just really limiting the game to a much smaller playing field than I enjoy. That's generally the DM's limitation, not the game's, and it's not fun.

I totally agree with you: I try to never say 'no' to players, unless they are doing something that is just outside their abilities (like casting a spell when you're not a magic user, or turning undead when you're not a cleric). For things that are within the realm of possibility (bluffing past somebody, impersonating somebody, forging a document, climbing something difficult (but not impossible), attacking somebody with surprise for a bonus, etc.) I try to just weight their chances of success according to the limitations of the character's profession, level, race, etc. After all, the game is about *doing* clever or heroic things, not *not* doing those things. FWIW, that was one of the main things that made me love C&C: it's still very much like AD&D, but with a game mechanic that is simple and allows all of those out-of-the-box kind of actions.

I also agree that you do have to draw the line: there's a reason games have classes and abilities, and that all characters can't all do everything: it's working withing your character's limitations and leveraging their strengths that is what make roleplaying so fun. Like a good story, the fun comes from struggle and conflict - if it didn't everyone would just create an omnipotent god and do whatever they wanted to... which sounds rather dull.

[Iceman]

EVERY time my players play, they railroad me.
Years ago I started doing what I call world adventures. The world is not designed until the players express an interest in something and then pursue that thread. It means that a lot of content goes unused - at least initially. Every group starts in roughly the same spot, so eventually one of the groups will go investigate that thing that took me three months to develop.
But the players can also railroad themselves. If it is not clear by end of game session what they plan to do the following week I ask them. If they do in fact do what they said they would then the adventure continues in that direction. But if at the start of the next game session they suddenly decide to do something wholly unexpected then I thank them for the five minute game session and tell them that I will have their new surprise route set up for the following week.

And in the end if they really torque your wrench you can always kill them all....and not even let a god sort them out.

[Mgrancey]

Being adaptable is one of the top 3 or so skills I feel a GM needs. Which is getting put to test right now. Currently, running the flood and they have decided that they don't want to work for Big Ears Tam and instead decided to break into vault of the explorer's society. So I am now planning opposition for their break-in and getaway.