Working On The Railroad

Railroading is something that I hear DMs constantly talk about and seem to have completely different attitudes to.

If it's a term you're not familiar with railroading is when a player is forced to go down a linear story path. It's a subject I find quite interesting because on one hand role playing games usually sell the dream to players that they have complete autonomy to do as they wish as their character (literally playing a role) but on the other hand players want adventure, interesting characters and an engaging story. How do you create an exciting story for players when they can at any point just not go to your next story beat or choose to do something else entirely? I think it can be a tricky one and I think a lot of people struggle with it.

I recently saw an interview with the actress Deborah Ann Woll who's an avid DnD player where she said that to be a good player you should always be looking to follow the plot threads your DM is giving you as that's where the wonderful pre-prepared elements are. I completely get where she's coming from but I'm not sure if I entirely agree with that because it implies that it's the players fault if the story isn't interesting or that it's bad for the player to pursue atypical objectives. Similarly I had a newer GM ask me for some advise not too long ago because he said that he was struggling to figure out how to get the players to where he needs them to go. I spoke to his players at some point after this and they mentioned that a frustration they were having was that it felt like they had no agency in his story because they came across constant road blocks whenever they tried an action that would circumnavigate an element of his story.

Personally I would say it's one of those problems I'm always looking to improve on but one of the best suggestions that I really take on board is something that was said by Michael Sands (The creator of Monster Of The Week) where he said that you should write a scenario and not a story. I really like this advice because what it boils down to is that you write a series of events as if the players weren't there and then allow them to be the fly in the ointment. If you write like this then you're never relying on the players doing anything specific and it gives them a sense that they're a cause for change whilst feeling more dynamic. The typical example of this is would be a villain with a plan. Rather than pre-planning the players encounters with your villain, you instead know the steps of your villain's plan. The Villain needs to go to Location A to obtain X which means that your players could find that out by whatever means they want to pursue (Or that you point out to them) and could get there before the villain or encounter the villain along the way or get there late and have a new lead to follow as the villain's plan moves into it's next stage. If you've got an idea about what elements in your world are trying to do then you've got an idea of how they will react.

Another thing that I think helps a lot is to have a regular good one-to-one dialogue with your players about their characters. You want to really make sure you're always on the same page with each other about what the characters motivations are and what they're trying to do. If you're on the same page about this then it becomes easier to anticipate what they might do and prevents the feeling of railroading. You're effectively creating the illusion of choice. If a player's character wakes up to find their husband kidnapped and you both know that it's a major goal of their character to protect their husband then their obviously going to pursue the kidnapper in someway. If you're not on the same page then I think you can easily open yourself up to frustrating moments. For example let’s say the party is on their way to a hotdog eating contest and they pass through a town where all the citizens have been turned into trees. If the DM’s intention is for the party to save the town but the party is really motivated to win the hot dog contest then everyone is going to be frustrated. The DM will be frustrated because the party isn’t engaging with the story they’re giving them and the party is going to be frustrated because they want to get to their objective and the town is being presented as a distraction.

I’ve realised as well that sometimes a cheeky trick is that you can get away with a bit of railroading at the beginning of sessions. When there’s been a time lapse between sessions (i.e. we’re not picking up in the middle of a fight or a dungeon or some such) some DM’s really love to go through the characters morning routines ‘you woke up, what do you do?’ and that’s a totally valid approach but if you’re struggling with not railroading then it’s a good opportunity. If I instead start the session by saying ‘okay it’s been a few days, currently your two characters are out having lunch at a lovely cafe you found while the other characters were perusing the market and just stumbled upon a kooky antique shop’. By puting players in ‘starting positions’ I’ve set myself up to initiate a scenario. I could immediately have another table in the cafe create a scene or I could set off a cursed object in the antique shop or have them immediately stumble upon a fortune teller or have someone collapse and die in the cafe. The players still have full autonomy but I’ve thrown them into a situation and handed them the reigns. On top of that as previously mentioned if I know what motivates the characters then I should have an idea of what engages them to act.

Ultimately it’s super tricky and everyone seems to approach the problem differently. I love hearing what DM’s think on this one, as I mentioned I’ve seen many just shrug at the concept and say that railroading is part of the games. People just have different styles. My final thought is that there’s nothing wrong with a bit of mental stress testing, if you run through a scenario in your head as if you’re a player and ever think ‘well what’s to stop the players from just…’ or ‘What if they don’t care about doing…’ then you need to either plug up that hole or be prepared if that scenario happens.