How to GM: Railroading Edition

There are two kinds of people: those who have a plan, and those who plan to have a plan.

In the art of Game Mastering, what the players chose to do is referred to as the Great Unknown. You have no idea what they’ll do, and how could you? No one can see the future. That’s right, unless you’re a soothsayer, fortune teller, augur, or Nostradamus reincarnate, you’re never going to know what the session has in store for you.

That’s prologue to the story of the advent of ‘leading by the nose’, or more modernly, railroading. A practice which says “If you’re not going to do what I want you to do of your own accord, then I’ll force you to do it.” Because accepting the aforesaid universal fact of not knowing the future hasn’t really changed anyone’s personality, and the people who have plans are sticking to them. I believe it was written down into the earliest versions of Dungeons and Dragons, a nod to the notion of how there should be freedom for the PCs to do whatever they want, to behave as realistically as they can and react to the environment in an authentic and organic way, rather than be led along the story the GM had written. It’s a faux pas, shall we say. But what does that really look like?

Railroading takes many forms. Here are a few examples:

1. Presenting a challenge or obstacle, then foiling all the solutions conceived by the PCs until they give up and either ask you what do you or wait until no one can bare the awkward silence, then you just tell them the solution. This can happen by accident, if you genuinely chose a hard puzzle, but if you’re astute enough to know what’s too hard and what’s too easy, it can still manifest if the GM only has one specific solution in mind, rather than planning to reward the creativity and ingenuity of the players.
2. Not being open to new ideas that the PCs present, either in terms of character creation or directing the story in a particular direction. For example, not accepting that an organization of some kind, written into the backstory of one of the characters, can or should play a significant role in the story.
3. Creating anti-PC items, which are objects or NPCs that are impossible to work with, or get benefit out of. For example, a robot which holds useful information but which will not give the information, no matter what. Or, not accounting for a surprise tactical win against a powerful foe which gave the PCs access to their powerful magic items, then coming up with some unreasonable circumstance which destroys the items JUST so the PCs can’t have them.
4. Setting up a linear story and not entertaining the idea of changing it to suit the interests of the players. For example, writing in steampunk but not allowing syncretisms with magic or pulp or noir. Or, writing a save-the-world campaign, and when one PC wants to go off to pursue some person plot, denying them.
5. Interjecting in the discussion of players to add your metagame GM knowledge, as a way of pushing the players in a direction that you want them to go, rather than witnessing and honouring the organic decision making process of the players.

Generally, it’s a case of the GM getting narcissistic and greedy, pushing their way or the highway. It can be extremely frustrating for the PCs. It can be degrading and demoralizing, and most of all demotivating, because what’s the point? The GM’s gonna take us on the journey so why am I even here?

It’s no surprise railroading is a common occurrence in game sessions. Apart from what I’ve mentioned already about how it happens, the unique milieu, a coalescent form of improv, creative writing, storytelling, and acting, is hard to accomplish authentically. Many of us are straight newbs because we’ve had no one from which to learn the craft. GMs are often the ones most interested in writing, the most imaginative, and the ones most willing to do the leg work of putting together the material for a session, but otherwise have no qualifications for accomplishing the task in the way I, for one, envision it. To me, it’s no surprise these folks come at it from the wrong perspective and fall into the trap of leading the PCs through a written story ‘by the nose’.

GMs should be lauded for their creativity. They are in an excellent position to be leaders because of it. The stories they come up with are interesting, and draw the PCs into the action one way or the other, but GMs should be careful not to take it too far. Restraint is necessary. As much as you might like to fill in those gaps with interesting detail, save some of that for the PCs to create for you. The secret is to follow the PCs, not lead them.

Here’s how it works…

At the very beginning, I recommend adopting the attitude that the story is not yours, but everyone’s. Leave portions of it out, to be filled in at a later date by people who aren’t at the planning sessions with you, like saving the leftovers of a meal for someone who couldn’t be there. Or incorporate material from the PC’s character backstories into the plot. For example, a typical campaign’s plot line might be “a terrible series of crimes has been committed in the town of Goodhaven, executed by none other than….” Who? You could decide to write in a cool nemesis, but maybe the story takes on a whodunit character, and the decision on who the perpetrator is can be made at a later date. One can make that decision based on character backstories. Perhaps there’s a fitting character written into those backstories that would make for more drama than any nemesis you could come up with. One can also make that decision based on the interactions the PCs have during the campaign. Perhaps there’s a random NPC that they come to believe is shady. You could write that character in as the perp or a red herring. Perhaps there’s a random NPC that they appreciate. You could write that character in as the very unlikely candidate, or unwitting candidate.

Consider what you plan to be a skeletal structure, like a Greek ruin. This structure has a floor, a few large pillars and a pediment. The floor represents the foundation of your story: the genre and basic problem of your plot. The pediment represents the ultimate goal, usually accomplishing some kind of solution to the problem established in your foundation. The pillars represent important plot points along the story, or a path of how to get from the foundation to the pediment. Establish this first, but everything else in your structure, as the walls and interior decorating, should be left to later planning, as the story unfolds.

Throughout the campaign take notes, be they mental or actual. Note the people the PCs chose to interact with, the kinds of things they think about, the topics they discuss, the items they keep, and how they play out their motivations. Use these as pieces to a puzzle, or rather bricks to lay down as the path to the end goal. Let the PCs write the story for you, and have things come back around.

Here are some practical tips for planning for the Great Unknown:

1. Create a hierarchy of paths, or a hierarchy of decisions, where the top of the hierarchy represents the path most likely to be chosen by the players. As you move further down the hierarchy, paths are less likely. You calculate the likelihood based on what you know of the circumstances and the general attitudes or motivations of the characters, or even from stated resolutions in past sessions. Furthermore, items at the top of the hierarchy receive more planning time, items near the bottom receive less. This makes it more feasible from a time management perspective to plan for so many different paths in detail.
2. Create flexible plot points. An example of inflexible plot points would be as follows: Players meet Bad Guy in Townsville ~> They have an epic battle and some buildings get toppled over ~> Player’s girlfriend gets killed when a building falls on her. So what are you going to do if the players decide to amble through the forest instead of heading to Townsville right away? Or visit Village City, a much smaller settlement with no large buildings? And what if they decide to use diplomacy rather than force? A more flexible version of those plot points would be as follows: Players meet Bad Guy somewhere ~> They have some kind of confrontation ~> Player’s girlfriend dies somehow.
3. Don’t get caught up in the dice. Yes, it’s fun to let the dice decide things, and for the most part, that works. But sometimes, it works much better to use a dice decision as something that had been “planned all along”. Using the previous example, suppose Bad Guy fell victim to a good Diplomacy roll and some sound logic, and was dissuaded from his rampage through Townsville. Or so it would seem…! Player’s girlfriend needs to die, but since they didn’t battle, you decide it should be a poisoning. Thus, you change the diplomatic interaction retroactively: rather than having fallen victim to sound logic, Bad Guy simply decided that his goals had been accomplished and that battling wasn’t necessary (ie. the girlfriend had already been poisoned.) This works better than you think, because the PCs never know what’s going on behind the GM screen. And they’re never going to know.
4. Know your stuff. You should be the best roleplayer at the table, and if you’re not, practice. You need to be able to come up with stuff on the spot, roleplay characters, describe scenes, think of interesting and dramatic events to take place, assuming that what you had planned for doesn’t pan out. But it’s not easy to become a good roleplayer, nor develop the skill of “making things up on the spot” if you’re not naturally inclined to it. I believe memorization is well within the grasp of nerds everywhere and recommend that above practicing roleplaying. After all, you don’t have to make up the name of a town if you’ve got the map memorized along with a list of random town names. Then, as you get better, you can spend time before the campaign begins detailing many different things about the setting. When it comes to the best laid plans of mice and men going off the rails, you’re simply remembering details rather than making them up on the spot.

Hopefully that’s equipped you with some information on railroading, how to avoid it and plan with flexibility and with your players in mind rather than just you. Wishing you a free-form Fiction Life!