# How Do You Get Your Players To Stay On An Adventure Path?



## Zak S (Sep 24, 2015)

I have never (and may never) run an adventure path or any kind of scenario that
wasn't heavily tilted toward "do what you want" there may be consequences for not
addressing problems that come up, but the campaign itself isn't built around set
ways of addressing them.

But I am curious: how do you (personally) keep players on adventure paths?

Do you make sure there's always an overriding in-world imperative?

Are your players just used to it and so make sure they're doing something that's part 
the story?

Do your players go "Ok, we won't try that it isn't in the module?"

Or.... something else?


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## delericho (Sep 24, 2015)

A combination of mind control and regular beatings (needed to reinforce the mind control).

Actually, I don't do anything. Somehow, it's just never been an issue - for the most part, I've found that my players are quite happy just to follow the path of adventures. Of course, them knowing "we're playing Shackled City" may be a factor in that, even though there was actually _nothing_ stopping them just packing up and leaving the city.


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## Celebrim (Sep 24, 2015)

Zak S said:


> I have never (and may never) run an adventure path or any kind of scenario that
> wasn't heavily tilted toward "do what you want" there may be consequences for not
> addressing problems that come up, but the campaign itself isn't built around set
> ways of addressing them.
> ...




How do you get players to get off of one?

Even if I create a railroad with the idea that it might fork at various points, and go off in new directions, in general my players have a tendency to keep trucking down the mainline.  I'm not entirely sure why, but I can give a couple of theories.

1) The mainline is the democratic or consensus direction.  Taking a fork is usually taking a risk or prioritizing something controversial.  Often as not, it means deciding to do something that would make a character in the party uncomfortable and possibly a player.   Why can't we switch sides and start backing the BBEG?  Well, because what are we going to do with the cleric who is supposed to be upholding good and light?   Why can't we just go off and become pirates?  Well, because first no one is actually a good sailor and secondly because the knight is sworn to uphold the law and the parties letter of marque expired when the war ended.  Or conversely, if you have a whole party of renegades any assertion that maybe we should stop acting like a bunch of greedy jerks all the time is likely to get shouted down.   In general, people are afraid to advocate for their viewpoint for fear of creating tension in the party, so they just stay quite and go with the flow - which tends to be in the direction of the adventure path.

One thing I've learned over the years is just how dramatically the number of players you have impacts what stories you are able to run.  So much of Indy gaming advice is so obviously geared toward having 3 players or less.  The few players you have, the more intimate and personal you can run your games and the more the inner mental life and desires of an individual character (and player!) shape what the game is about.  When you get up to 6 or 8 characters, you just don't have time to shine the spotlight on any one character's private life for very long.  You just don't have time to spend half a session on melodrama, character building, and riffing off of a single characters backstory and goals.  Unless every characters goals are on the exact same page, time spent on those side stories has to be sandwiched at sometimes long intervals in between the main plot that interests the whole group.

2) I think there is some fear that if they switched gears and did something that they "weren't supposed to do" that for some reason I wouldn't be able to handle it.  I don't know why they think that, because they know that they are less creative than they think that they are and I tend to stay several steps ahead of them no matter what they do and that I can improvise pretty well, but the fear of 'going off the map' seems to be still there like suddenly if they do the wrong thing they'll walk into an empty set like some episode of the twilight zone.  They know by now that the story is about The Esoteric Order of the Golden Globe and it's front group the Tristar Parcel and Packet Company, the Archmage Keropus and his Strange Engine, and a plot to create a second sun to power Vivamancy.  They know pretty much every dangling hook has turned out to lead back to that plot, even if they weren't immediately sure how.  And so they laser like focus on things they see related to that.  What this tends to mean is that when plot threads lead them to intersections of one plot and the main plot, they also take the branch that goes back to the main plot - even when they might have personal reasons not to.  For example, I had a plot line going with the Cult of Nauti's plot to get the Decamarchy to approve Nauti as an official patron deity of the city of Amalteen where I'd built up a tension between Nauti's high priest and the party cleric, and where I'd introduced a serial killer for them to track, and so forth.  But unless I just greased the rails to force them in that direction, they tended to wander away from it whenever that plot line required them to 'go uphill' and do something somewhat hard like "come up with a plan to infiltrate the cult and/or storm their secret temple".  

3) Honestly, they mostly want to stay on the rails.  Before the campaign started I gave the players a survey/questionnaire regarding what they wanted in a campaign, and collectively they all preferred a game that was further on the spectrum of railroad than it was on the spectrum of sandbox.  They want to be taken for a ride, and to a certain extent it doesn't matter what I the GM want here.  Basically, after 30 years I think you can largely divide players into two camps.  Those that as soon as they see what they think is a hook or a DM cue, bite on as hard as they can and won't let go, and those that as soon as they see what they think is a hook or a DM cue run consistently in the other direction.   I'm not sure which group is actually easier to steer, as both groups have a tendency to act erratically against their self-interest just because they think it is cool or because they just aren't thinking about the consequences of what they do.

4) For the first time ever, I'm running a "save the world" plot.  And I really have mixed feelings about it, because it really gives the party very little freedom to pursue their own ends.  It's big and its epic and at times its cool, and my idea that the whole campaign would be like a chase scene from Last of the Mohicans or Road Warrior is at times playing out well.  But wow is it linear to have this one overriding in-world imperative.  Sometimes I wish the party had a reason to just stop and explore for a while, and not just at times when they'd lost the thread of the plot and don't know what to do next.  For example, one side plot has involved the longest surviving PC's relationship to his family - he was given in to the caring of the temple of the God of Death and raised as a warrior monk (western version, think Knight Templar) at an early age.  For the longest time he was trying to discover who he was and why he was given away.  Their was this long running gag where everyone recognized him and knew more about him than he did.  He eventually discovered that his family was rebel outcasts from a very violent episode in history, and then discovered that they were all a bunch of werewolves and vampires with a plot to take over the country and bring back the worship of The Old Gods.  But no one really raised the idea of, "That's cool.  We should do something about that."   Because, "Save the world first.  Save the country later."  And it's pretty much the same with any other side plot that comes and goes.  If you don't just tie the PC's background down to the rails, in which case, you are railroading the PC every bit as much as if the PCs background didn't matter to the plot, then well, the PC's background doesn't matter to the plot.

5) Most people who think they run open sandboxes don't really.  They just run adventure paths where they haven't figured out ahead of time where people are going.  But they are actually steering the PC's just as hard as if they had have done so unconsciously by the cues that they give the players and the myth they create as they play.  In fact, if anything this "open world" play in my experience is more linearizing than most adventure path play.   At least in an adventure path, it's clear when you've got off the rails because the rails are well defined.  In my own experience as a player with "open world" play, whenever you exit stage left you enter stage right.  With no myth defined for where left, right, or forward leads you, all roads inevitably lead to Rome.  If you go left, the DM is like, "Well, I don't know what is to the left, but here is what I think will be interesting."  And if you go right, the DM says the same thing to himself, functionally making the choice invalid.  The drapes may change on the stage, and some of the props, but the play remains the same.  Justin Alexander wrote an interesting piece where he asked if there was any difference between randomly generating 6 encounters and then regardless of what the player choose to do, presenting those 6 encounters in a row and randomly generating an encounter after each of the players 6 choices.   We feel like one is different, but are they really?


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## delericho (Sep 24, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> How do you get players to get off of one?




Present them with several options, all of which have clear benefits and downsides, none of which can be considered the "obvious" choice, and make it clear to them that they have to make this decision knowing they have imperfect information about the situation.

It's hard for them to keep on running along the main line when there isn't one.


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## Celebrim (Sep 24, 2015)

delericho said:


> Present them with several options, all of which have clear benefits and downsides, none of which can be considered the "obvious" choice, and make it clear to them that they have to make this decision knowing they have imperfect information about the situation.
> 
> It's hard for them to keep on running along the main line when there isn't one.




The "main line" defaults to, "Keep heading in the direction we are heading."   

I think there is some truth to your advice, but in my experience I think you'd have to much further than that.  You have to make it very clear that continuing in the same direction is impossible.

Early in the campaign I had planned a fork.  Either the party could keep chasing the renegade tribe of goblins that turned out to be behind an early story line into the mountains, or the party could return to the capital city to follow up on a clue that the goblins were in contact with someone in the capital.   Neither was to me the obvious choice.  The party lacked perfect information, but they knew that goblin bandits were raiding towns further in the mountains and they had the name of a goblin chief that had been behind the plot.  Back in the capital, they had a lead on a merchant company that the goblins had purchased equipment from and which some cultists had been selling arcane equipment to.  In my mind, this fork was, "Go have wilderness/dungeon adventures?" or "Go have urban/dungeon adventures?"  But in retrospect, I should have known what they choose because in another way of looking at this, it was a question of, "Go somewhere new?" or "Go somewhere we've been before?"  They ended up choosing "Go somewhere we've been before." almost by default.

To not have a mainline, I probably would have needed to make A and B both somewhere in the unknown.  

And to me this brings up a further problem.  If A and B are both in the unknown and the PC's have imperfect information, is this really an informed choice or just a coin flip?  If it's just a coin flip, is it really any better than being on rails?


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## Zak S (Sep 24, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> If A and B are both in the unknown and the PC's have imperfect information, is this really an informed choice or just a coin flip?  If it's just a coin flip, is it really any better than being on rails?




It's way better: When you go see a movie you have imperfect information, but you still can have an opinion about if you want to see the one about the dinosaur or the one about the murder mystery.


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## Celebrim (Sep 24, 2015)

Zak S said:


> It's way better: When you go see a movie you have imperfect information, but you still can have an opinion about if you want to see the one about the dinosaur or the one about the murder mystery.




Yes, but it won't stop you from saying, "Gee, I wish we'd gone to see the one about the dinosaur."  With movies, you can see both and then you know which was to your taste.  With RPGs, choices tend to be more irrevocable.  Movies just sit there on the shelf waiting for someone to watch them, unchanged by the fact you've seen the one with dinosaurs.  At the least, with RPGs now you'll be riding around the murder mystery on a dinosaur or not.


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## Zak S (Sep 24, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Yes, but it won't stop you from saying, "Gee, I wish we'd gone to see the one about the dinosaur."  With movies, you can see both and then you know which was to your taste.  With RPGs, choices tend to be more irrevocable.  Movies just sit there on the shelf waiting for someone to watch them, unchanged by the fact you've seen the one with dinosaurs.  At the least, with RPGs now you'll be riding around the murder mystery on a dinosaur or not.




in every campaign i've been in there's room enough to do both.

Anyway, this is, very ironically a derail of my thread about keeping people on rails so...


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## delericho (Sep 24, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> The "main line" defaults to, "Keep heading in the direction we are heading."
> 
> I think there is some truth to your advice, but in my experience I think you'd have to much further than that.  You have to make it very clear that continuing in the same direction is impossible.




Indeed. I didn't want to write a several-thousand-word essay, so I simplified. 



> Early in the campaign I had planned a fork.  Either the party could keep chasing the renegade tribe of goblins that turned out to be behind an early story line into the mountains, or the party could return to the capital city to follow up on a clue that the goblins were in contact with someone in the capital.   Neither was to me the obvious choice.




I've never played with a single group that wouldn't choose to carry on in that situation. Having come this far, they're invested in that course of action, so they'll see it to conclusion.

A better dilemma would be to offer them a time-limited chance to pursue that lead back in town (that is, go now or lose the chance forever), or raise some imminent threat back in the town that needs their attention, or something of that sort.

And, of course, more choices than two would be even better still - the optimum is somewhere around 5-7 well differentiated options, though of course that's seldom a realistic target. 



> And to me this brings up a further problem.  If A and B are both in the unknown and the PC's have imperfect information, is this really an informed choice or just a coin flip?  If it's just a coin flip, is it really any better than being on rails?




That's why I said "imperfect information" and not "no information" - they need some information so they can differentiate the choices, but they should also be left with some doubt so they find the objectively-best solution.

It's like any of those forms of poker where you can see some, but not all, of the cards your opponents can play with - they might have a winning combination or they might be bluffing, and it's not obvious either way. But you have _some_ information - you can know the odds of some combinations coming out, you can _maybe_ read an opponent's 'tell', and you may know how they've handled this before. So, what do you want to do?


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## Celebrim (Sep 24, 2015)

delericho said:


> And, of course, more choices than two would be even better still - the optimum is somewhere around 5-7 well differentiated options, though of course that's seldom a realistic target.




Oh they had more than that, they just didn't realize it.  In a sense, both of the above choices were staying on the rails.  They could have hopped right off at that point.  They didn't even know about saving the world at the time.  Off the top of my head.

"Screw this.  I want vengeance on the man who marooned me.  Let's go play pirates and kill that SOB."
"Screw railroads.  I want to find my father.  Supposedly he's been seen in the nation south of this one.  Let's just go in that direction and see what happens."
"Rex loves dinosaur.  Rex wants a dinosaur that shoots laser beams from his eyeballs.  Let's find out where there are dinosaurs and go there."

None of that really came up because it was personal, and they were having fun on the rails.  Getting off and forging your own path is risky and requires effort.

They would have had more options at that point, but at the time I didn't know how to manipulate the group as well as I do now.  Most of the group is Self-Centered Ruthless (CN) in inclination - several definitely trend Belkar Bitterleaf CE and would go that way if a few other party members weren't playing the Roy and anchoring them to the heroic.  

But ironically, the guys with yellow exclamation marks over their heads that they tend to admire and get along with the most are not benevolent tolerant sorts, but Lawful Evil manipulators.  Cruel ruthless Lex Luthor types tend to repeatedly earn their admiration and even trust (even when that trust is decidedly not mutual).   They love crime bosses.  They get more offended by the guy that acts chivalrously than the guy that secretly poisons them before interrogating them, and then gives them the antidote afterwards when they've answered their questions satisfactorily.  My initial attempts to associate the group with good aligned and noble mentor/quest giver figures failed spectacularly because the group so clearly wears their badge of amorality that scrupled types often end up deciding they are villains.  So my initial attempts to associate them with someone that could give them insight into what was going on failed.  People I thought would be allies became enemies, and they often end up de facto henchmen of some pretty not nice types.  

Now if I need to insert expository dialogue or a new branching quest, I know just what sort of archetype to turn to.  Not that it matters per se, as they tend to go, "I found rails.  Let's go that way."


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## Ralif Redhammer (Sep 24, 2015)

There’s something I read in the 4e Players Strategy Guide, of all places, that really struck with me. It was something along the lines of “there’s an implicit contract between DM and player that, yeah, you can do anything you want, including ignoring the obvious hooks for the adventure the DM has worked on. But if you do so, you’re probably going to have a poorer gaming experience.” 

For my part, I try to account for the most likely possible player choices, but I will let the players go off on tangents and improvise. But I’ll also try to eventually steer them gently back on track. Maybe an NPC or an added encounter reinforces the danger they’re ignoring. Or the tangent they’re going on eventually just leads back to the main path.

I’ve seen other DMs just outright tell players “You’re not going to find anything there,” or “You investigate the mysterious library but find nothing of interest.” I really try not to do that, but especially in convention play when time is an issue, I can see the necessity.


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## delericho (Sep 24, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Oh they had more than that, they just didn't realize it.




Well, quite. And it's only an issue if you _want_ them to move "off the rails" - in which case you need to make sure they know they have choices.

Of course, and ironically, in that case you've got the DM negating the players choice to stay with the plot they're following. After all, they've chosen to stick with the plot rather than do all those other things, and it's not like that's not a valid choice, even if it's a case of the majority overruling a single player.


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## cmad1977 (Sep 24, 2015)

I don't do much of anything. My players are adults and none of them have the need to be the 'special snowflake'. They've warped the rails plenty though, which I like. 

And manacles. Manacles will keep your players right where you want them


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## Zak S (Sep 24, 2015)

cmad1977 said:


> I don't do much of anything. My players are adults and none of them have the need to be the 'special snowflake'.




I don't understand-- how do your players even know that going east instead of west will make them a subadult who wants to be a special snowflake?

That is: how do you structure the campaign so that the known path is always obvious?


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## cmad1977 (Sep 24, 2015)

Zak S said:


> I don't understand-- how do your players even know that going east instead of west will make them a subadult who wants to be a special snowflake?
> 
> That is: how do you structure the campaign so that the known path is always obvious?




Clearly by railroading my players mercilessly.


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## Zak S (Sep 24, 2015)

cmad1977 said:


> Clearly by railroading my players mercilessly.




"Railroading" though is essentially just a feeling players have when certain techniques are employed and they experience it as negative--what are the techniques you use?

Like there's a Save The World plot with NPCs pointing the way, there's just going "Nah there's nothing over there", there's magical restraints, etc.  What are the methods you use specifically?


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## Morrus (Sep 24, 2015)

Players know they're playing an adventure path. They buy in to the social contract.  I've never had an issue.  As long as people know what type of campaign they're playing, they'll play that type of campaign.

A well-written adventure path makes this easy and natural.  A less well-written adventure path doesn't.


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## Crothian (Sep 24, 2015)

Before the campaign we always talk about what the campaign. If it is an adventure path then the players have agreed to be railroaded to some degree As to how to keep them on the right path I provide hints and clues to them so they know where they are expected to go. But they also know that there are times they can go off the path an it really doesn't matter. I can get them back to the path in time to participate in the next plot point. When we did Kingmaker the players got off track of the AP to explore things on their own for over nine months of gaming. When they were done with what they wanted to do we went back to the plot of Kingmaker.


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## Zak S (Sep 24, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Players know they're playing an adventure path. They buy in to the social contract.  I've never had an issue.  As long as people know what type of campaign they're playing, they'll play that type of campaign.




But even published adventure paths don't always signal "This Strategy Is Not Part Of The Path"--so what techniques do you use to signal to players what is and isn't on the path?

Like if they go "Ok we sneak into the goblin camp using an illusion" do you just go "That's not on the path, investigate what happened to MeadowTown instead"? How does it work?


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## Morrus (Sep 24, 2015)

Zak S said:


> But even published adventure paths don't always signal "This Strategy Is Not Part Of The Path"--so what techniques do you use to signal to players what is and isn't on the path?
> 
> Like if they go "Ok we sneak into the goblin camp using an illusion" do you just go "That's not on the path, investigate what happened to MeadowTown instead"? How does it work?




It's not really any different to a single adventure.  I imagine you've run published adventures from the TSR era before (or some of WoTC 3E adventures, perhaps) so you probably have an idea of what a published adventure looks like. It's just several of those in a row.  Some adventures within a given path might be more linear or more sandboxy in themselves.


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## Nightfall (Sep 24, 2015)

delericho said:


> A combination of mind control and regular beatings (needed to reinforce the mind control).




Dammit Del! stop stealing my control techniques! It's only by fear I rule as a GM!


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## Zak S (Sep 24, 2015)

Morrus said:


> I imagine you've run published adventures from the TSR era before




I have not. I don't run published adventures unless they're pretty open.

I've read lots of them and whenever I do I think "Ok but what do you do if they players don't do one of these options?"

That is one reason I started this thread.


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## S'mon (Sep 24, 2015)

I've only run one full AP, Curse of the Crimson Throne, we have likely one session left to go. My attempt at Rise of the Runelords TPK'd at the end of Book 1.
Some things I did include ensuring player buy in to the campaign premise of opposing the evil queen, and trying to make sticking to that attractive by eg having sympathetic NPCs, though to be honest I don't think I did a fantastic job. 
I think the main thing is just to be honest, say "This AP is about X, do you want to play it?" and taking only players who are enthusiastic about the concept. I'm also a fan of opening up APs and allowing side-quests and sandboxing in places, so they don't seem so claustrophobic - I added a lot of sandbox material in Runelords, and that worked great.


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## cavesalamander (Sep 24, 2015)

If the party finishes exploring dungeon A in the AP, and the path clearly continues to dungeon B, they will either want to follow the thread or they won't.

If they follow the thread, it's most likely because the players recognize that there is a larger story at play here, and they want to see it through. They find it fun and interesting and want to keep going. (They also hopefully recognize that the DM finds the path interesting, and the players will want to cooperate with the DM's fun as well).

If they don't, no power on earth will get them back on track short of the heavy hand of the DM, and at that point the campaign might as well be finished, because the players will sabotage and subvert the path every chance they get. It clearly doesn't interest them, and you can't force them to like it.

In short, there are no tricks to keep the players invested in the AP other than making sure they're having a good time with it, and can clearly see the way to go next.


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## Zak S (Sep 24, 2015)

cavesalamander said:


> and the path clearly




That word "clearly"--that's what I'm asking about.

What makes it "clear"?

I've seen so many adventures where a wide variety of solutions is obviously possible and the module itself only addresses 1 or 2 options, and often ones that don't seem obvious.


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## S'mon (Sep 25, 2015)

Zak S said:


> That word "clearly"--that's what I'm asking about.
> 
> What makes it "clear"?
> 
> I've seen so many adventures where a wide variety of solutions is obviously possible and the module itself only addresses 1 or 2 options, and often ones that don't seem obvious.




A good GM can allow for unanticipated approaches and still continue the AP, adding and cutting material as appropriate. As long as the players are committed to the AP premise they will go back 'on track' eventually.


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## Storminator (Sep 25, 2015)

I ran the Savage Tide adventure path, and at the end of one of the adventures there is a shipwreck, and the PCs wake up on the beach at the beginning of the next adventure.
Me: *reading boxed text about the storm.*
Player 1: I use my Cloak of the Manta Ray!
Me: No you don't - it's an adventure path - *more boxed text*
Player 2: I drink my potion of water breathing!
Me: No you don't - it's an adventure path - *more boxed text*
Player 3: I wildshape into a dolphin!
Me: No you don't *more boxed text*
Player 4: I cast ... I don't, do I?
Me: No.

We had a good laugh, shrugged, and played the next module. You can't actually make your players do anything, the best you can do is have them agree on their own.

In other adventures, where we didn't have 7 more adventures lined up, I've just tossed out the last half of the module, as it couldn't be salvaged after PC action.

PS


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## Nightfall (Sep 25, 2015)

To be fair Stormy, Paizo has only produced like two Adventure paths before Savage Tide. Also I think there are parts of Savage Tide where the PCs can and often do things that the writers might have overlooked.


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## Bawylie (Sep 25, 2015)

You don't need to do anything different at all. 

An adventure path is basically a master plan for the baddies laid out. If the players don't take action to stop the baddies, then they win. And maybe the game is over. 

But if your players are engaged and take one of the hooks you've dropped, they'll get on board with stopping the baddies. 

Mostly, they'll go along within an expected range of behavior and action. But who cares if they don't? You don't need to force them back to where the adventure says they need to be. 

So I guess ultimately the AP is a tool. And you use as much or as little of it as you need in response to the players' initiative. When I use them (fairly rarely), the first thing I do is dig in, find out the baddies' agenda, and rip the rest into components. If they're getting near something the AP wrote, I'll put it there for them to interact with. If not, nbd, I can chuck it. 

And if they all go home or decide the major conflict isn't important, then the game is over and we'll play something else they ARE interested in. 

That said, I don't think I've ever had to force or corral a player to do anything in a campaign. I've run more direct one-shots, wherein I give win/loss conditions and challenge the players to complete it, but that's just a different mode of play.


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## Zak S (Sep 25, 2015)

Bawylie said:


> Mostly, they'll go along within an expected range of behavior and action. But who cares if they don't? You don't need to force them back to where the adventure says they need to be.





Then in what sense are you playing the adventure path?

Like, if your players think up a tactic not accounted for in the module then solve the bad guy problem in a way not anticipated then a whole chain of events planned for that path is derailed and you're not on the path anymore, right?


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## cavesalamander (Sep 25, 2015)

Zak S said:


> Like, if your players think up a tactic not accounted for in the module then solve the bad guy problem in a way not anticipated then a whole chain of events planned for that path is derailed and you're not on the path anymore, right?




Let's say that happens. What are your options as DM?

1) Use the heavy-handed approach: "That doesn't work. You can't do that." Not a good idea. Nobody's happy with that approach.

2) Throw out the rest of the path. "Well, there goes $20 out the window!" If the DM is good at winging things, this could still lead to a fun night at the table, but deep inside the DM will be disappointed.  They no doubt had high hopes for the campaign, and its pretty much just been shot to hell. 

3) Figure out a way to keep the AP moving forward, even if its in a slightly different direction that previously planned. Each path comes full of maps, monsters and villanous NPCs that can still be used, even if the big bad guy in charge of everything has been taken care of prematurely. The least elegant method just has a different bad guy picking up the reigns and continuing on as before ('The wife was the power behind the throne the whole time, who knew?!') 

This should all come with the caveat that I've never run an adventure path so I'm not speaking from actual play experience here.


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## Celebrim (Sep 25, 2015)

Zak S said:


> Like, if your players think up a tactic not accounted for in the module then solve the bad guy problem in a way not anticipated then a whole chain of events planned for that path is derailed and you're not on the path anymore, right?




In general, that's not a problem.  Most of the path stays usable.  You just have to improvise more.   

Storminator's humorous example above is not what you do.

And in Savage Tide particularly, it's not even necessary to stonewall players like that.  The next section of the adventure path is very open world and expects the PC's to explore widely, so the content that they skipped remains in play.  The journey across the island doesn't advance the story much so skipping it is really just skipping grindy content meant to level the PC's up (one my biggest problems with the 1-20 AP concept).  You can if you need to always create new hooks to give them a reason to explore that area, and if not you can always improvise grindy content if you need to.  

In particular, the PC's aren't actually behaving very rationally either.  There are NPC survivors that they'd be abandoning on the beach if they took to the sea, and PC's of that level simply can't sea journey effectively.  A potion?  Are you serious?  Trying to swim 200 miles to shelter without a guide as a dolphin in sea dragon infested waters?  It won't take them long to think better of that, and even if it doesn't, I can improvise content about that journey just fine.  My biggest fear would be that the players are heading to a TPK trying to get off the rails in a very irrational manner.   

Most of the time, the path allows for detours or short cuts.


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## pemerton (Sep 25, 2015)

Zak S said:


> That word "clearly"--that's what I'm asking about.
> 
> What makes it "clear"?
> 
> I've seen so many adventures where a wide variety of solutions is obviously possible and the module itself only addresses 1 or 2 options, and often ones that don't seem obvious.



Good thread, good questions. I don't run APs so can't really offer any answers.


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## delericho (Sep 25, 2015)

Zak S said:


> Like there's a Save The World plot with NPCs pointing the way...




That's what most of the Paizo paths do, at least initially - the PCs get drawn into the plot because some friendly NPC asks them to look into some issue, and then the next one, and the next.

A lot of the paths (and the individual adventures therein) also work by giving the PCs a bunch of objectives for the adventure, but then leave it to them how to solve them - in general, the better the adventure the more open it is to different approaches.

Finally, the level-based nature of D&D (and especially 3e and Pathfinder) means that it's actually very difficult for the PCs to totally derail the BBEG's plans early on - the villains tend to be nested like Russian dolls, and it isn't until quite late on that the PCs even become aware of the end-boss, never mind having the ability to truly inconvenience him/her/it.


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## N'raac (Sep 25, 2015)

Much like maintaining party harmony, keeping a party on track requires some cohesiveness to the group.  If the group has agreed that we will play this AP where we become pirates and sail the seven seas in pursuit of plunder, bringing in Percy the Pure Hearted Paladin without any reason or expectation he will become a pirate is a breach of the social contract.  

Saying "hey, bring in whatever" is how we get to try and run a game for Percy and his buddy, Carl the Cleric of Light as they work with a pyromaniac sorcerer who only wants to burn things down, a conniving Rogue out for #1 first, foremost and only, and Marvin the Mercenary Murderhobo Fighter.


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## N'raac (Sep 25, 2015)

Zak S said:


> But even published adventure paths don't always signal "This Strategy Is Not Part Of The Path"--so what techniques do you use to signal to players what is and isn't on the path?
> 
> Like if they go "Ok we sneak into the goblin camp using an illusion" do you just go "That's not on the path, investigate what happened to MeadowTown instead"? How does it work?




You seem to be looking for very specific answers to very generic questions.  OK, the players want to sneak into the goblin camp.  Is it written up as part of the AP?  Then they are now sneaking through the goblin camp using an illusion, and I can adjudicate what happens using the writeup of the goblin camp.  

Is it not written up?  Then why are they near a goblin camp to sneak into it in the first place?  Assuming they are near a goblin camp that, for some inexplicable reason, the published scenario assumes they will just ignore, then I hopefully have thought "WTF?  Why would the players ignore the goblin camp??" and either removed it entirely, replaced it with something else they won't see a need to investigate, provided reasons for them to see some urgency to moving on to MeadowTown or written up the goblin camp so I am able to adjudicate what happens using the writeup of the goblin camp.

What if 3 PC's continue on to MeadowTown and two slip into the Goblin Camp under an illusion.  Even sandboxes tend to find a split party a pain in the posterior.  Hey. maybe we give them seven different choices and they each pick a different one, going their separate ways.  Won't that be fun to run?  Every game faces these possibilities.  You run with it as a GM.  

Hey, what if they look at all seven choices, say "my, those sound dangerous and uncomfortable - let's go back to town and open up a tea shoppe instead", how do you run that?  At some point, the players need to take an adventure hook, or there will be no adventure.  "You found a tea shoppe.  It is quite successful, eventually building branches throughout the continent.  You all become rich beyond imagination, sire many sons and eventually die peacefully in your sleep after long, happy and completely adventure-free lives."  The next party can even coincidentally meet in the local branch of the Five Halflings Who Avoided Adventure All Their Lives Tea Shoppe instead of the cliché tavern, from whence they will begin lives that hopefully have more adventure in them.

In an AP, they might well investigate the goblin camp, and find some further indication of why they should go to MeadowTown.  Or they have now dealt with those distracting goblins, so on to MeadowTown (as they had nowhere better to go).  Or they have the loot from that goblin camp, including 7 bolts of fine silk and a mahogany dining room suite.  My, they are heavy.  And we need more provisions.  And arrows.  Where can we go?  Well, the closest settlement of any size is MeadowTown, so off we go to unload this loot and reprovision.



Zak S said:


> Like, if your players think up a tactic not accounted for in the module then solve the bad guy problem in a way not anticipated then a whole chain of events planned for that path is derailed and you're not on the path anymore, right?




It's tough to provide a specific answer without a specific question...Let's assume that the BBG, for some inexplicable reason, rides a horse past the PC's in the start of the AP.  Despite not knowing he is destined to become the BBG, Claude the Chaotic decides to "waste him with my crossbow", and rolls a critical hit for max damage killing off the BBG instantly.  "Oh well, throw out those six modules at Page 3 because it's all over?"  Probably not.  More likely, some other member of the organization steps into that BBG's shoes, Claude is hauled off to justice by Percy Paladin, his player leaves the group because "player agency is violated when players other than me exercise it" or some such nonsense, and we carry on, with the "BBG" just a footnote.

If the BBG was Lolth, Queen of the Spiders, I'm guessing she does not make an appearance before our novice L1 adventurers, and if she does, and is attacked, perhaps the NEXT party will demonstrate more common sense.

Most of the AP's (which are a pretty recent innovation over the old 32 page module) provide guidelines on what to do if something unexpected happens, like a key NPC dying at an inopportune time (or surviving when he wasn't expected to).  If not, they provide lots of overall detail, so putting the plot back on the rails is far from impossible.


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## Ralif Redhammer (Sep 25, 2015)

I think knowing what’s the “clear” plot of an adventure is something that comes with age and experience, too. I’ve noticed that in playing at conventions where some people bring their kids to play, the kids tend to be the ones that are all over the place, getting bogged down with exploring minutiae and tangents. With experience, I think good players can recognize the direction and flow of the adventure.

With situations where the PCs come up with novel solutions and approaches not in the written adventure, that’s when a good DM bends to the ideas of the players, not the mandates of the module. It may mess something up later down the line, but running a module should never be a straitjacket experience. If I have to rewrite the final part of the module because they somehow converted the high priest of Asmodeus to worship Pelor, so be it.


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## Bawylie (Sep 25, 2015)

Zak S said:


> Then in what sense are you playing the adventure path?
> 
> Like, if your players think up a tactic not accounted for in the module then solve the bad guy problem in a way not anticipated then a whole chain of events planned for that path is derailed and you're not on the path anymore, right?




I guess under a strict or literal interpretation. But I believe an AP is a bit like a map, really. It has outlined the most common routes to the destination, but so long as the players are still going toward that destination, they're still "on the map."

I'm taking a road trip to Los Angeles. I can take the 91 or the 10. Or the train. Or a plane. Heck I can walk. But even if I choose a non-traditional method of reaching my destination, I'm still on a trip to Los Angeles. If I take a detour to Disneyland and hang out there for a few days, doing whatever the heck I want to do, it doesn't mean I'm abandoning my trip to LA. 

But if you only allow for "physical movement toward destination" as your definition of road trip, thereby excluding stopping for gas, food, and scenic detours, I don't think you're quite with the spirit of the thing. 

Just so with APs. If your (general you, here) definition of AP is exclusively linear progress toward a single outcome, I think you (general) may have missed the point of using APs.


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## Bawylie (Sep 25, 2015)

I once played a game of Clue with a guy who'd never played before. It was like a life sized Clue game as a church fund raiser. We had the rooms all done out and props, and the youth group played the "pieces" in character. But there were teams that "controlled" them as players. It was a neat night, kind of a mix of wine & cheese with big collections for the homeless. Whatever. 

So on round one. The guy who'd never played before made an accusation with a place, person, and weapon that weren't in his team's hand. None of the other teams had any cards to show. He'd inadvertently guessed the solution on the first go. 

The game was up. He got it. 

We all laughed and played again. Now I bring this up to illustrate the point that sometimes players just outright win. Maybe through cleverness, or luck, or whatever. But that doesn't mean they didn't play the game. They did and they deserve their victory. 

Did it matter that they got it right in round one? No. We just played again. Does it matter if the players think up something so clever they win the scenario? No. Good on them. Well done. Here's XP. Want to play something else now? Or keep these characters and move on to the next AP (this one is about the temple of elemental evil)? Sounds good, let's play.


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## Aenghus (Sep 25, 2015)

I've run adventure paths before, and have some opinions on how to do so effectively.

First, you need players willing to play through an adventure path, and PCs who suit the genre and themes of that path. Adventure paths often assume more or less heroic protagonists and may have insufficient motivation for more mercenary or vicious parties. Super proactive players who like burning down settings may not work for adventure path play. Conversely, adventure paths for mercenary types might not suit more heroic parties. 

The adventures in adventure paths may vary in quality, genre and usefulness a lot, due to different authors, bad writing, time constraints etc. The last few adventures in an adventure path often suffer from such problems, being high level and poorly playtested if at all, authors being aware that players often won't get to the last few adventures and not for some time after the module is published. I often highly modify adventures or harvest individual adventures for parts.

I try and pick an adventure path that will suit existing PCs, or arrange PC creating to suit the path. Even so I customise the individual adventures to suit the PC's individual and group goals, and the setting I use.

Adventure paths need reasonable PC continuity, either due to a low casualty rate or the PCs all being associated with some institution(s), group(s) or faction(s) that will provide replacement PCs and archive campaign lore. A TPK or even a casualty or two can derail an adventure path, if the party loses vital information, or  the players fail a morale check.  Early casualties don't matter as much, as the party haven't accumulated history, the parties paranoia will be at a low level and replacements are easy to justify. Further on in the adventure path, it can be more difficult as people miss the old PC, lose some of his or her personal plotlines, and trusting a new PC can be difficult to justify. Further, the replacement PC is likely a new class, possibly creating capability gaps in the party and new vulnerabilities.

There's no guarantee that the adventure path will be played to the end. Nowadays I'm very suspicious of any game making the players/PCs suffer now with the promise held over their heads that things will be great later in the campaign. There may never be a later, and a referee who can't run a fun game now may not be able to do it later either. Don't postpone the fun, make as much as possible fun right now for the players, based on their feedback and interests. If everyone is having fun they are less likely to try and run away from the adventure, and will be easier to get back on track when they do. 

Flexibility is important. Try and anticipate the capabilities of the PCs and actions of the players and even when the players do something that will derail things to a greater or lesser extent, try and roll with the punches. You can always rewrite, add more bad guys, a second boss behind the first. This is where system mastery helps, for games that use mechanics as a primary resolution method. High level adventures often have gaping plot holes though the author not understanding the possibilities of high level magic, or capabilities of high level adventurers. The referee has to patch these as best he can, or throw the flawed adventure out.

Depending on time constraints, enemy bosses can be tweaked to fit the backstories of some of the PCs. 

Sometimes you might need to nudge a player or players in certain directions, and this won't work for those players who immediately head in the opposite direction (barring reverse psychology, which is risky). Active cooperation from players is generally better than an old school adversarial game IMO - I imagine the latter is possible but may be more episodic.

I generally do pare down player decision trees for the big decisions to those supported by the adventure path. By this I mean if the path assumes, for instance, the players will go left or right at a certain point, I ask the players if they go left or right, not "what do you do?". A certain amount of closed question, directed/railroaded GMing may be necessary sometimes - avoid this when possible but accept the necessity when it arises. Players need to buy into this. 

I hope this helps.


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## gamerprinter (Sep 26, 2015)

I've got a trilogy of modules, called *The Curse of the Golden Spear*:* The Gift*,* Dim Spirit*, and* Dark Path*, for my published *Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG)* that have gray boxed contingencies built in, in case players want to deviate from the pre-written intended path of the adventures. One event, helping to defend a wilderness town from an assault by marauding bandits in the first module (if the PCs help) have ramifications in the second and third module - locals have heard the good they've done, so can more easily gain allies to help them in the subsequent modules. The "curse" from Curse of the Golden Spear, is also a controlling element to keep parties from straying too far off the beaten path. In the last adventure the party needs to find a way to escape while in pursuit by bands of samurai and assassins, if they choose to deviate from the prepared escape route, the gray boxed text offers alternatives. Since many of the third module's encounters occur in the wilderness, for example. You needn't change the encounters, rather move them to the path the party has taken, instead of where they were supposed to happen.

The first module is arriving, getting traveling papers and making a delivery to a specific town, castle and local noble lord with 2 optional ways of getting to the destination, because the adventure is a package delivery (which is kind of railroad) it doesn't feel like it. Since the latter two adventures involve getting off the island with many alternate avenues of escape, there's no railroad there either. Not every adventure path is a railroad, if you bulid it correctly.


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## cmad1977 (Sep 27, 2015)

Zak S said:


> I have not. I don't run published adventures unless they're pretty open.
> 
> I've read lots of them and whenever I do I think "Ok but what do you do if they players don't do one of these options?"
> 
> That is one reason I started this thread.




Attach to heroes to the story is some way. Give them an additional bond that connects somehow with the adventure NPCs, locations or events.


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## RedShirtNo5.1 (Sep 27, 2015)

Probably a bunch of this is covered by other posters above, but I'll give this a shot.  I haven't done an full level 1-16ish AP per se, although I've played and DMed some fairly long adventures.  I think most APs work through a combination of player buy-in, explicit bread crumb trails, metagaming, and limiting information and resources.  

First off, what do I think an AP involves?  An AP is a series of scenarios that the players engage in sequence.  Each scenario is basically a mini-adventure, maybe enough for 0.5 to 2.5 levels.  The scenarios are often site-based, but can be event-based.  So for each scenario the AP should set out the personality and resources of the NPCs.  For each scenario, the goal is implicit from the AP setup, or is given by a quest-giver.  Its up to the PCs on how to accomplish the goal, and the AP gives enough information for the DM to adjudicate the most likely techniques.  The DM is expected to adjudicate unexpected actions by the PCs based on the personality and resources of the NPCs.
Example: In the starting scenario, a friendly NPC asks the PCs to stop raids by goblins.  The AP has a map of the goblin caves and sets out enough info to handle PCs deciding to kill the goblins or bribe them to go somewhere else.   In the second scenario, a band of ogres will threaten the village.  The AP has a map of the fort used by the ogres, and sets out enough info to handle PCs deciding to kill the ogres or trick them into leaving.  

Player buy-in.  So, as a player, when I start an AP, my understanding is that unlike a sandbox where I'm driving the overall goals, I'll accept the goals set out in the adventure path.  I expect that I'll either have a quest-giver as a starting condition of the adventure or encounter one early in the adventure.  I know that the quest-giver often has own goals and may even eventually be an enemy, so I'll be alert to the possibility of being a patsy, but to get the ball rolling or keep it rolling I'll accept the task.  
Example:  The DM says "Hey guys, I'd like to DM Rise of the Runelords adventure path.  It's sort of an homage to the G series, with fights against goblins, ogres and giants.  Are you interested?"  Players "Sure, sounds like we need multiple rangers and clerics." 

Bread crumbs.   Either there's fairly clear clue to the next scenario is placed at the end of the current scenario, or the quest-giver has a new task.  
Example:  If the PCs negotiate with the goblin chief, he says he's attacking based on orders from ogres in the West Hills.  If the PCs kill the goblins and search, they find a crude letter in goblin from the ogre leader.  An NPC will be able to read the language of the letter if none of the players can.  If the PCs kill the goblins and burn everything to the ground or don't search, well in a few weeks a couple ogres will attack the village, and the quest-giver will ask the PCs to deal with it if they don't decide to on their own.

Metagaming.  Here I think of two factors.  First,  there are some possible solutions to the goal that players are likely to reject based on the understanding that they are in an adventure path.  Could the PCs suggest that in response to the goblins menace, the whole town should simply up and move away?  Sure, it's possible.  But as a player I generally expect that the AP will have the bread crumb trail, and the crumbs will start where the goblins are.  So my initial choice would be to interact with the goblins somehow.  Second, if we're talking 3e style adventure going from level 1 to high level, there's a pretty steep power disparity.  So if I get rumors of ogres in the west hills from an NPC when I'm first level, even if I suspect there's a connection, I'm not going to investigate that yet.

Limited world-based resources.  So, I think APs work when the PCs start at low level with limited magic and players don't hold a lot of information about the rest of the world and/or powerful NPCs are reasonably far away.  The more well developed the world into which you attempt to slot an AP, the more likely you'll have to deal with unexpected PC actions, particularly at higher level.  In a well developed campaign, you might have PCs saying "Hey, remember that white dragon we encountered, I bet it hates efreeti.  It might help us."  Or in Forgotten Realms, you have "Let's go ask Elminster for help."  The AP assumes that starting PCs just don't have that level of knowledge and that Elminster is far away or is busy.  Now, if the PCs encounter a white dragon as part of the adventure path, and later think of getting as an ally?  If I'm the DM, I think that's great!  If the AP doesn't address that, I'm going to adjudicate based on the personality and goals of that dragon.   
Example:  The village being attacked by goblins is in a generally remote area, far from large cities or any standing army of the nation, so that the PCs have to deal with the situation themselves rather than go to authorities and ask for a squad of soldiers to be sent.  

Limited information.  Here I mean that in order to prevent the players from jumping ahead, information about the future stages simply isn't revealed until late in a given scenario. 
Example: After defeating the ogres, the PCs find out that they are under orders from hill giants.  During a raid on the stedding of the hill giant chief, they encounter a frost giant embassador.  Even if players know drow exist, do they have any reason to venture into the underdark? 

So, back to the questions.  What keeps the players on the path?  Based on all these factors, for a reasonably well-crafted AP where the players have bought-in, it just isn't very likely.  On a scenario-to-scenario basis, they players have accepted that they are in an AP, and are looking for quest-givers or bread crumbs, and they don't know enough yet about the overall plot to jump forward, and the level disparity should prevent them from throwing a sudden wrench in the late-game portion of the adventure path.  What do you do if they players don't do one of the expected options within a scenario?  Again, based on all these factors, for a reasonably well-crafted AP where the players have bought-in, it just isn't very likely.  They started at 1st level so they don't have a lot of unusual resources and what they get is governed by the AP, they don't know enough about the outside world to call on unexpected resources, and they know they are in an AP and are looking for a couple straight-forward tactics to handle the goals that have been set out.  If they still do something unexpected, you adjudicate the best you can based on the NPC goals and resources, just like any adventure.   If they manage to advance to a late scenario out of order, that's fine, level difference will probably force them to back up.  If they do manage to kill an important NPC early and unexpectedly, advance someone else from the organization or otherwise adjust the scenario.


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## Maxperson (Sep 27, 2015)

Zak S said:


> I have not. I don't run published adventures unless they're pretty open.
> 
> I've read lots of them and whenever I do I think "Ok but what do you do if they players don't do one of these options?"
> 
> That is one reason I started this thread.



I let them go wherever they want.  Usually as Bawylie mentioned, they follow the path in some fashion and get to the end somehow.  Sometimes they veer off the path completely and I let them.  The path will continue without them and depending on what it is about, it will impact the world to a greater or lesser degree and could affect them indirectly.  Occasionally, they will veer back onto the path later on.  However it happens, it's all good.  So long as everyone is having fun and the story is progressing, it really doesn't matter if they stay on the path or not.


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## Starfox (Sep 28, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Players know they're playing an adventure path. They buy in to the social contract.  I've never had an issue.  As long as people know what type of campaign they're playing, they'll play that type of campaign.
> 
> A well-written adventure path makes this easy and natural.  A less well-written adventure path doesn't.




Words of wisdom!

The bye-in is essential. When I present an adventure path campaign, I don't keep secrets about it, and I don't allow players many initial secrets either. My intro to my current Wrath of the Righteous adventure path ran something like this: This is troupe play, it is about crusaders and mercenaries facing of against hordes and hordes of demons. The adventures are geared towards paladins. You will mostly have NPCs scouting for you, and casters can expect most enemies to have spell resistance. For this game I got 1 barbarian, 2 rangers, 2 paladins (one went to America to be with his wife, the other later retconned to oracle), and one fighter. Thus, I ended up with no actual paladins, but the group is still very suitable for the missions. Alignments are NG, LG, and LN. The players all bought into the concept and really hate demons and their ilk.

For adventure 2 in this path, the players have a patron. The adventure presents this patron as very humble. Beginning the monologue that was supposed to recruit them, I got interrupted pretty early with "You got us at 'killing demons'. Just point the way!". My problem has had more to do with holding the players back from charging everything. Even in an adventure path focused on demons, there are moments when you're expected to talk.

In another game set in the future-fantasy Dragonstar setting, the players were all soldiers. Each adventure was a mission, orders came from headquarters. You can go, or you can face court martial. As this was all a part of the premise of the campaign, we all had a blast. One of my more successful games.

So, my answer is; everything lies in the bye-in. Be honest and sell the campaign for what it is, and adventure path about this and that. Try and avoid bait-and-switch, where the campaign starts on one leg and then shifts to something else entirely. This is actually a big problem with some published adventure paths; Savage Tide (which actually does this at least twice, depending on how you count), Jade Emperor, and parts 4 and 5 of Crimson Throne being prime examples. Encourage the players to make characters invested in the story - in Pazio adventure paths campaign traits help with this. If you do the foundations right, the rest will not be a problem.


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## diaglo (Sep 29, 2015)

Zak S said:


> Do your players go "Ok, we won't try that it isn't in the module?"
> 
> Or.... something else?




well if you were tracy hickman you would make an army of infinite draconians to force the players back on the right path. or you would make a mist which caused them to die if they inhale too much. or you would put them in the desert so they would die of thirst. or just kill them at a breakfast if you attended gen con.

but since you are not. and i am not. i would avoid railroading them. it is a very bad idea. and makes for bad adventures when not executed by tracy himself.


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## Umbran (Sep 30, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> I'm not entirely sure why...




You come close to one other possibility, but I think you miss it by a hair on (3):

They're fully engaged with what is on the main line, and are happy with the resulting story and play, and don't *want* to pursue other avenues.  They like the current storyline, and if you present them with other things, they actively choose to continue on this one, because it suits their desires.  Whether it is on the rails may be irrelevant, it is the line they are invested in.

Also, 

(5) & (2) Not only do many GMs not run as sandboxy a sandbox as they think - they even more often don't give players enough information to make what the players consider informed decisions.  The players probably want some indication that what they choose to do is at least sensible for the world - this is likely easy to see along a main line that is presented, but not nearly so clear for any desires they draw up for themselves.  It may be less that they think you cannot handle it, but more that they don't know if there's any point to pursuing a particular goal.  They do not have confidence that it won't be a dead end (perhaps with emphasis on the dead part) or just unachievable.


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## Henry (Sep 30, 2015)

Zak S said:


> But I am curious: how do you (personally) keep players on adventure paths?
> 
> Do you make sure there's always an overriding in-world imperative?
> 
> ...




In our Pathfinder games, we almost exclusively use Adventure Paths, which are built with tons of plot hooks to ensure PCs are invested in seeing the plot onward, in the form of vibrant NPCs and campaign Traits. So for the most part, we don't need much prodding, we have an understanding that Main Plot trumps all but small side quests.

In my 5E games, I run it rather loosely, but I usually find some way to route the game events back into the main plot, which keeps my players from feeling railroaded, but at the same time keeps me from having to plan for literally EVERY eventuality. I try to give them interesting threads, and it just so happens that a lot of those threads have skeins that unknot in the direction of the big plot...


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## Aenghus (Sep 30, 2015)

As I and other posters have mentioned player buy-in is crucial. And I mean genuine informed buy-in. 

Situations can arise where players say they agree to play a module or adventure path, and but their actions in the campaign contradict this. This can arise for a number of reasons, including players not consciously knowing their own tastes, not caring about the issues the referee/other players are invested in, being bored, changing their minds, etc. Players typically spend less time working out their opinions on such matters than referees and the forum posters here do, and RPG concepts can get pretty complicated.

The first few sessions of a campaign are important for setting the tone of the whole enterprise. I find it useful to monitor the players, particularly those who may harbour reservations about the game, so that if anyone starts acting out or passive aggressive it's spotted quickly and can be discussed privately outside of game time. 

Adventure paths involve a significant investment in time and emotion for all involved. There is often player attrition, especially early on, as players discover the campaign isn't for them, for whatever reason. Player turnover is a common feature of long lasting games, with old players leaving, and new players being recruited.

The nature of the game can change over time, as can individual people's tastes, so sometimes formerly happy players become dissatisfied and leave.

To conclude, player buy-in needs to be genuine, which is ultimately demonstrated by how they play the game.


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## billd91 (Sep 30, 2015)

Zak S said:


> But even published adventure paths don't always signal "This Strategy Is Not Part Of The Path"--so what techniques do you use to signal to players what is and isn't on the path?
> 
> Like if they go "Ok we sneak into the goblin camp using an illusion" do you just go "That's not on the path, investigate what happened to MeadowTown instead"? How does it work?




As long as the AP is reasonably well developed, I don't find this much of a problem. If I know what the main plot threads are, what the main actors are like, I can usually come up with a way to handle PCs doing unexpected things. This is one reason I usually don't start running an AP until I've read the whole thing. I'll foreshadow things coming up in order to generate player interest.

If, for example, they avoid investigating what happened to Meadowtown and infiltrate the goblin camp, I have a pretty good idea how the goblins relate to the main plots of the AP. I can blend in hooks back to the overall plot that fit that and help players make the connections they need to make to reveal and interact with the AP's plot.


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## Starfox (Sep 30, 2015)

An additional note here. My usual game style is protagonism, essentially a railroad with player bye-in. But if the players decide to pursue a particular path or topic, I can nearly always accommodate that. This may turn a sidetrek into a subplot, a subplot into a main plot, or even elevate a main plot to the campaign topic.



Spoiler



My current main game is based on Curse of the Crimson Throne, but with a LOT of additional material thrown in. We have finished the plot of the six books and defeated the evil queen. But the players are not satisfied; they want to explore what actually happened to the runelord of lust, Sorchen. Well, their wish is my command - using elements of the Emerald Spire Superdungeon and the Moonscar advenure, I am going to grant their wish. Thus a sideplot there mostly for color (The city is built on the site of Sorchen's old capital) became a main plot (find and deal with Sorchen).


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## Imaculata (Oct 6, 2015)

I hate railroading. My personal philosophy is: The story goes, where the players go.

What this means, is that my story is not dependent on the players going to a specific location. The players are free to go where they like, and I write the story around that. I already know where I roughly want the story to go, and the story proceeds regardless of where the players are in the world.

I also write location based stories, or side quests, if that's how you want to call them. But I refrain from having an obvious billboard at an inn with quests waiting to be completed. Instead, I present my players with situations, and propositions from characters, and its up to them if they want to get involved. Not getting involved, also has consequences. But I never force them to do a quest. This means that I sometimes prepare things, that end up not being used. The players even skipped an entire dungeon once, because they chose not to go into the catacombs (they didn't trust the motives of the npc, and rightly so).

Because my story does not rely on the players too much, it is easier to append the actions of the players to the story, and make them a whole. Its surprising how this loose way of storytelling, ends up feeling a lot more like a cohesive story than a railroaded adventure would.


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## Celebrim (Oct 6, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> I hate railroading...I already know where I roughly want the story to go, and *the story proceeds regardless* of where the players are in the world.




I think perhaps you should define your terms.  As I understand it, if the story proceeds regardless of the player's choices, it's a railroad.



> Because my story does not rely on the players too much...




Yeah, this sounds problematic.  I think I know where you are going with this and you probably have a fairly typical broad-narrow-broad-narrow style with branching paths off of a main 'trunk' plot, but it sounds to me like you are using a lot more railroading than you realize.


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## Imaculata (Oct 6, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> I think perhaps you should define your terms.  As I understand it, if the story proceeds regardless of the player's choices, it's a railroad.




I think you misunderstand. The plot is just not bound to a specific location. It can happen wherever the players choose to go. That does not mean that the players don't affect the plot.



Celebrim said:


> Yeah, this sounds problematic.  I think I know where you are going with this and you probably have a fairly typical broad-narrow-broad-narrow style with branching paths off of a main 'trunk' plot, but it sounds to me like you are using a lot more railroading than you realize.




Not really. All that is set in stone in my campaign, is that it slowly moves towards a massive naval battle between two armies. But how they get there, is entirely up to them.

See, the plot is like little chess pieces. They move with or without their involvement. And depending on where they are, they come into contact with different parts of the plot, or sometimes I simply move the plot to where the players are. This does not mean they are being railroaded. In fact, it is the exact opposite. 

I don't need for them to go any specific place, or do any specific quest, and yet they still affect the story dramatically. That is because I'm willing to let go of things. I'm not too concerned about which characters live and die, or which quests are completed and which aren't. Instead I try to think what the logical response of the other key players in this story would be, to the actions of the players.


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## Celebrim (Oct 6, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> This does not mean they are being railroaded. In fact, it is the exact opposite.




Some people would probably define the exact opposite of a railroad as being having no destination and nothing set in stone.  I think what you actually have isn't the opposite of a railroad, but something complicated in the middle.  And that's ok.



> I think you misunderstand. The plot is just not bound to a specific location. It can happen wherever the players choose to go. That does not mean that the players don't affect the plot.




I don't think I misunderstand at all.   Schrodinger's Map isn't bound to a specific location either.  Where ever you go, there the plot is.  As you say, "sometimes I simply move the plot to where the players are".   That's classic railroading technique.

What it sounds like is you are doing 'Broad-Narrow' structure, where you have setting that the players can explore in any order that they want but in which certain specific things eventually will happen or happen to the players.  These key events eventually set in motion a narrow doorway through which the player's must pass so that the story chapter transitions to the next phase.  The players have a great deal of freedom to determine how and when they find the door, and a great deal of freedom to determine how they go through the door, but if the story is to advance it must go through the door.  Sure, they can effect the story dramatically - just not so much that you don't know it is moving toward a massive naval battle.

There are lots of ways to achieve that, and you discuss several of them in explaining your play style.  Things like "If the player's won't go to the plot, the plot will come to them." and "Where ever you go, you find the plot." are railroading techniques that ensure the players find engaging content related to your desired story line.   What you have isn't a pure railroad, but it's not a pure sandbox either.

What you are really describing in my opinion is how to run a functional linear story in an RPG.  I'd give a DM basically the same sort of advice for how to run Chronicles of the Dragonlance or any other Adventure Path in a functional cohesive manner.   Granted, it doesn't sound like your story is as linear as all that, but the techniques you are employing to keep it 'linear enough' are still applicable.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 7, 2015)

If you are plotting a game for the players to follow certain courses of action, you are removing their ability to play the situation as a game.

Don't ever write a plot for the players. Treat the game as players playing a maze and the "rules" as rules for the referee in generating that maze.


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## Maxperson (Oct 7, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> I think you misunderstand. The plot is just not bound to a specific location. It can happen wherever the players choose to go. That does not mean that the players don't affect the plot.




If you mean that the plot follows them wherever they go, then you are railroading.  If you meant that the plot does not follow them, but instead continues on without them while they do whatever they want to do, you are not railroading. 

Which do you mean?


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## Imaculata (Oct 7, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> If you mean that the plot follows them wherever they go, then you are railroading.  If you meant that the plot does not follow them, but instead continues on without them while they do whatever they want to do, you are not railroading.
> 
> Which do you mean?




Actually, it does both. Certain events continue even if the players are not there. For example, I have a villain that is trying to establish a hold on the region. And depending on how much trouble the players cause "it", it may or may not be successful. And if they ignore it entirely, then it will continue its merry work, and they may find some powerful opposition in the future. I do not force them to engage their enemy, and in fact, they are free to ignore the villain entirely. But it does have consequences for the story.

But other aspects of the plot may come to the players, regardless of where they are in the world. I have an undead pirate captain who was accidentally allowed to be resurrected, due to a mistake by the players, and now he came to seek his vengeance. The players do not have to look for him, he'll come to where ever they are. I also have a bunch of cultists, who struck a powerful blow against the city where the players are currently at. It could have happened anywhere really, but this was one of those cases where something dramatic had to happen to pick up the plot again. I try to find a good balance between plot and freedom. Too much freedom, and it ends up feeling like there is no plot, and everything is just random. But too much plot, and it feels like the players are just watching a movie. I prefer something in between, where you have good storytelling, and a sandbox as well.

*The campaign world is basically a confined sandbox. It has a plot line running through it, which is free to branch out in any direction, and it has some mini plots that happen where ever the players happen to be. *

There's never just one plot. There are multiple plots, along with an overarching story. And depending on where the players go, I can pick up a different plot line. Eventually all these plot lines lead to one big conclusion, but since every plot line can be affected by the players, the outcome can change.

So this is not what I would call a railroad. The players do not have to do anything, and they don't have to go anywhere. They are free to explore the world as they want. The only thing set in stone, is the sort of ending that the story is heading towards. But that ending may take many shapes, depending on what allies the players form during their adventures (which may span a whole year of playing sessions). There are some large decisions that may have a great effect on the plot, and the ending is always in motion, changing with each unpredictable thing that the players do. Yes, there will be a big naval battle at the end, and I know what enemy they will be fighting. 

But how many others will be dragged into this conflict? What will happen to the rest of the region? These are things that I have deliberately not written in stone. It's sort of like having a rough idea of the ending to a book, but writing the rest as you go.



howandwhy99 said:


> If you are plotting a game for the players to follow certain courses of action, you are removing their ability to play the situation as a game.




Only if you write both the outcome, and their decisions for them. That is railroading. If you allow choice, and players can affect the plot, then that is not railroading. Having a plot is not the same as railroading. You can have a plot, and also not railroad.



howandwhy99 said:


> Don't ever write a plot for the players. Treat the game as players playing a maze and the "rules" as rules for the referee in generating that maze.




That is a terrible advice in my opinion. Don't ever write a plot? Why not? I think most players enjoy a sense that there's an actual story, rather than the DM just throwing stuff at them. 

I think a better advice would be for the DM to not restrict himself too much, by writing too much of the plot in advance. Come up with a conflict, and the people/creatures that are part of that conflict, and don't write a resolution. Next, throw the players into this situation, and let them sort it out. Then pick up the plot from there.

Railroading, is when you force your players to follow a certain path, and then also write the outcome. D&D should be an interactive plot, in my opinion, where the players make key decisions that alter the plot. Does the villain always escape, or can the players be clever enough to foil his plans? These are the sort of things that break away from railroading.  If you make sure that your story does not hinge on the villain surviving or dying, then there's no need to railroad anything. What ever happens, happens.


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## Starfox (Oct 7, 2015)

A problem with discussing sandboxes and railroading is that sandbox play is generally considered good, and railroading bad. This means that any "accusation" of railroading has to be repulsed, creating a generally defensive discussion.

To me, sandbox <-> railroad is a spectrum. My preferred playstyle is somewhere near the middle (at least what I consider the middle). At either end lies madness and a non-functional game. Sandboxes can be just as nonfunctional as railroaded games.


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## N'raac (Oct 7, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> I think you misunderstand. The plot is just not bound to a specific location. It can happen wherever the players choose to go. That does not mean that the players don't affect the plot.




Actually, I had similar thoughts as Celebrim when I read your initial post.  A plot that follows the players around meets many gamers' definition of a railroad.  "We do not want to play out the plotline of two nations heading to war which will culminate in a massive naval battle, but whenever we seek to depart from it we hear the whistle. "

WHOO WHOOOOOO - All Aboard the Plot Train"

The fact that the tracks move to intersect with the players does not change the structure from being a railroad.  To many players, the fact that they are required to "buy in" to the one central plot is a railroad.  To you it is not.



Imaculata said:


> Not really. All that is set in stone in my campaign, is that it slowly moves towards a massive naval battle between two armies. But how they get there, is entirely up to them.




TRANSLATION BY THE RAILROAD HATER:  We can take any branch line we want, but all tracks lead to the massive naval battle at the hub of the railroad.  For some, this would be even worse than the classic linear railroad, in that it tries to create the illusion of freedom, but whenever the players feel like they have exercised agency and left the plot rain, they find themselves back on the tracks.



Imaculata said:


> Instead I try to think what the logical response of the other key players in this story would be, to the actions of the players.




A "not railroad" would abandon the other key players in this story to move on to another story with which the players have decided (or have the choice of deciding to) interact with, not keep the One True Story of the Campaign going.  I would describe your campaign as an adventure path - the path always leads to the giant naval battle at the end, and the players will find that, no matter where they go or what they do, this plot will always appear once again.  

To the question of the OP, you get the players to stay on the adventure path by having every path they could take intersect with this adventure.



Imaculata said:


> Actually, it does both. Certain events continue even if the players are not there. For example, I have a villain that is trying to establish a hold on the region. And depending on how much trouble the players cause "it", it may or may not be successful. And if they ignore it entirely, then it will continue its merry work, and they may find some powerful opposition in the future. I do not force them to engage their enemy, and in fact, they are free to ignore the villain entirely. But it does have consequences for the story.




Whereas, in a true sandbox, the players could decide to walk away from this region - just ignore it - and it would never again intersect with their adventures.  That story has ceased to be a part of THEIR story, based on their choice not to become involved with it.



Imaculata said:


> But other aspects of the plot may come to the players, regardless of where they are in the world.




Which many would call a railroad - the players are not allowed to escape this plot.  It will come to them if they do not come to it.



Imaculata said:


> I have an undead pirate captain who was accidentally allowed to be resurrected, due to a mistake by the players, and now he came to seek his vengeance. The players do not have to look for him, he'll come to where ever they are.




RAILROAD:  Wherever you go, the pirate captain follows.  SANDBOX:  If you choose to walk away from the pirate captain, he is gone from the story and new plotlines develop (unless you later choose to seek out the pirate captain again).



Imaculata said:


> I also have a bunch of cultists, who struck a powerful blow against the city where the players are currently at. It could have happened anywhere really, but this was one of those cases where something dramatic had to happen to pick up the plot again.




SANDBOX:  The Cult is targeting City X.  If you leave, or never visit City X, they are not your problem.  RAILROAD:  The Cult targets whatever city you are in.  "We cannot escape the railroad - the Cult appears no matter where we go."



Imaculata said:


> I try to find a *good balance between plot and freedom*. Too much freedom, and it ends up feeling like there is no plot, and everything is just random. But too much plot, and it feels like the players are just watching a movie. I prefer something in between, where you have good storytelling, and a sandbox as well.




Emphasis added.  I would rephrase this as a *good balance between railroad and sandbox.*  While not trying to get "too railroady", you also don't want to be "too sandboxy".  Neither the feel of watching a movie (furthest Railroad point on the continuum) nor the feel of flailing about aimlessly with no actual plot (furthers Sandbox point at the opposite end).  But players may not agree with your balance.  Some may well find "no matter where we go, the plot follows us" too railroady, and not the good balance you perceive it as.



Imaculata said:


> There's never just one plot. There are multiple plots, along with an overarching story. And depending on where the players go, I can pick up a different plot line. Eventually all these plot lines lead to one big conclusion, but since every plot line can be affected by the players, the outcome can change.




Phrased another way (as those who WOULD call it a railroad would perceive it), there's just one big plot, an overarching story, with multiple subplots, threading to and through it. And depending on where the players go, they can engage with a different subplot line. Eventually all these subplot lines will lead to the same overall conclusion to the main plot, but although every subplot line can be affected by the players, the final overall conclusion can never be avoided or changed.



Imaculata said:


> So this is not what I would call a railroad.




Others would call it a railroad.  I suggest it has elements of a railroad and elements of a sandbox, and that pretty much every good game also has elements of each.  The balance varies, and different people have different preferences for that balance.



Imaculata said:


> The players do not have to do anything, and they don't have to go anywhere. They are free to explore the world as they want. *The only thing set in stone,* is the sort of ending that the story is heading towards.




Emphasis added.  The fact that anything is "set in stone" indicates a railroad element.



Imaculata said:


> But that ending may take many shapes, depending on what allies the players form during their adventures (which may span a whole year of playing sessions). There are some large decisions that may have a great effect on the plot, and the ending is always in motion, changing with each unpredictable thing that the players do. Yes, there will be a big naval battle at the end, and I know what enemy they will be fighting.




The railroad always comes to the terminus of the big naval battle against a specific enemy the PC's will be fighting.  In a true sandbox, the naval battle might be ignored by the PC's, or they could choose either side, or they could negotiate peace with the parties so there would never be a battle, or they might avert the naval battle (perhaps moving its location to a great battle of armies on a plain, or perhaps sabotaging one side's naval forces so they cannot battle and lose by default).



Imaculata said:


> But how many others will be dragged into this conflict? What will happen to the rest of the region? These are things that I have deliberately not written in stone. It's sort of like having a rough idea of the ending to a book, but writing the rest as you go.




Having the ending is a railroad element.  I could as easily say that the dungeon has nine sequential rooms, but in each the players could negotiate, navigate past by stealth, or engage in combat - and they may win, or they may fail - but the end will still be the climax in the ninth room (unless the players abandon the campaign entirely  which would also mean that naval battle never gets played out).  They can't walk away from that dungeon entrance, though.  Wherever they go, the next encounter will be what was behind that next dungeon door.  That's got more railroad and less sandbox, but the principal is the same.



Imaculata said:


> Only if you write both the outcome, and their decisions for them. That is railroading. If you allow choice, and players can affect the plot, then that is not railroading. Having a plot is not the same as railroading. You can have a plot, and also not railroad.




Another viewpoint is that, if all decisions of the PC's will lead to the same outcome, that is also railroading.



Imaculata said:


> That is a terrible advice in my opinion. Don't ever write a plot? Why not? I think most players enjoy a sense that there's an actual story, rather than the DM just throwing stuff at them.




The fact that a game can be fun while being a railroad, or having railroad elements, is inarguable.  Adventure paths would not sell if many players did not enjoy games with some element of railroading in them.  The fact that it is an enjoyable railroad does not make it any less a railroad, nor will it make the Campaign of the Great Naval Battle any less a railroad, or any more palatable to a player who instead wants to delve deep into the Underdark, or explore the Elemental Planes, or do anything else, and escape surface politics entirely.  He is still railroaded to the ultimate end of the naval battle.



Imaculata said:


> I think a better advice would be for the DM to not restrict himself too much, by writing too much of the plot in advance. Come up with a conflict, and the people/creatures that are part of that conflict, and don't write a resolution. Next, throw the players into this situation, and let them sort it out. Then pick up the plot from there.




Good advice?  Sure.  But this advice is "Find a balance between railroad and sandbox", not "abandon the railroad for the pure sandbox".



Imaculata said:


> Railroading, is when you force your players to follow a certain path, and then also write the outcome. D&D should be an interactive plot, in my opinion, where the players make key decisions that alter the plot. Does the villain always escape, or can the players be clever enough to foil his plans? These are the sort of things that break away from railroading.  If you make sure that your story does not hinge on the villain surviving or dying, then there's no need to railroad anything. What ever happens, happens.




You simply have a different definition of a railroad, which I would more call scripting.  To pick it apart:

 - you have already written the outcome - the naval battle - railroad.

 - you refer to the villain always escaping versus the ability of the players to foil his plans - so can the players foil the plans of those seeking the naval battle?  If not, then railroad.  In other words, your story hinges on the naval battle not being prevented - railroad.


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## Maxperson (Oct 7, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> Actually, it does both. Certain events continue even if the players are not there. For example, I have a villain that is trying to establish a hold on the region. And depending on how much trouble the players cause "it", it may or may not be successful. And if they ignore it entirely, then it will continue its merry work, and they may find some powerful opposition in the future. I do not force them to engage their enemy, and in fact, they are free to ignore the villain entirely. But it does have consequences for the story.
> 
> But other aspects of the plot may come to the players, regardless of where they are in the world. I have an undead pirate captain who was accidentally allowed to be resurrected, due to a mistake by the players, and now he came to seek his vengeance. The players do not have to look for him, he'll come to where ever they are. I also have a bunch of cultists, who struck a powerful blow against the city where the players are currently at. It could have happened anywhere really, but this was one of those cases where something dramatic had to happen to pick up the plot again. I try to find a good balance between plot and freedom. Too much freedom, and it ends up feeling like there is no plot, and everything is just random. But too much plot, and it feels like the players are just watching a movie. I prefer something in between, where you have good storytelling, and a sandbox as well.
> 
> ...




I disagree.  If they can't escape the overplot, they are being railroaded, even if it's a railroad with multiple tracks instead of one and they can ditch some of the tracks.  Your method just makes the railroad easier to swallow.


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## Maxperson (Oct 7, 2015)

Starfox said:


> A problem with discussing sandboxes and railroading is that sandbox play is generally considered good, and railroading bad. This means that any "accusation" of railroading has to be repulsed, creating a generally defensive discussion.
> 
> To me, sandbox <-> railroad is a spectrum. My preferred playstyle is somewhere near the middle (at least what I consider the middle). At either end lies madness and a non-functional game. Sandboxes can be just as nonfunctional as railroaded games.




For a sandbox game to work well, you need proactive players.  Proactive players will set goals for themselves, creating plots that the DM can run with.  Reactive players have to be guided to things, so some level of railroading will happen, because a true sandbox game will fall apart.


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## N'raac (Oct 7, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> I disagree.  If they can't escape the overplot, they are being railroaded, even if it's a railroad with multiple tracks instead of one and they can ditch some of the tracks.  Your method just makes the railroad easier to swallow.




A concise and accurate statement of the issue (way more concise than my post!).



Maxperson said:


> For a sandbox game to work well, you need proactive players.  Proactive players will set goals for themselves, creating plots that the DM can run with.  Reactive players have to be guided to things, so some level of railroading will happen, because a true sandbox game will fall apart.




Very true.  Typically the Heroes are reactive - the Bad Guys do something, and the Heroes become aware of it and work to prevent it, stop it or rectify it.

A problem often noted with a "sandbox" is that the players flounder, not being sure of what they could do, much less what they want to do, because they don't have the knowledge of the sandbox to form proactive goals and assess how to implement them.

The biggest problem with this discussion, which someone above also noted, is that we often proceed on the basis that "Railroad always bad, Sandbox always good".  I don't agree.  I agree with the concept of balancing the two - balancing plot and freedom is the term Imaculata used above - to generate a game which is fun for the group.  Reading a script is not a fun game, but neither is wandering about aimlessly with no clue what to do next.  The ideal point between the two varies between gamers, and there are some gamers whose preferred points on the continuum are not compatible.  Hence the many posts above about getting buy-in to ensure the players are being "railroaded" to the story, plot and game elements they would have chosen to pursue in a broader "sandbox".


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## Bleys Icefalcon (Oct 7, 2015)

The biggest issue I run into, when it comes to keeping the game on track - is distractions from out of game stuff.  I have had to start enforcing a phone/tablet/laptop moritorium during the game.  That and the endless debates about what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong when it comes the the Marvel Cinematic Universe...


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## Celebrim (Oct 7, 2015)

N'raac said:


> A problem often noted with a "sandbox" is that the players flounder, not being sure of what they could do, much less what they want to do, because they don't have the knowledge of the sandbox to form proactive goals and assess how to implement them.
> 
> The biggest problem with this discussion, which someone above also noted, is that we often proceed on the basis that "Railroad always bad, Sandbox always good".




Yeah.  We really need better words to describe what we are talking about.  



> Reading a script is not a fun game, but neither is wandering about aimlessly with no clue what to do next.




It's not merely a matter of lack of proactivity.  Most people playing an RPG unconsciously expect that the game will develop some sort of story through play and that this story will in some way be like the stories generated by other literary media.   But if you run a pure sandbox without scripting and without effectively chasing down the players and making things happen to them, the big problem is that you tend to produce a long series of disconnected events that don't collectively form a story.  What I found, both as a player and a DM, that this works well only for inexperienced players for which the experience of an RPG is fairly new.  When you are 12, you don't really care that there isn't a story, you are too engrossed in fighting goblins, looting dungeons, and so forth.  All of the game is both mechanically and thematically fresh.  After a few years of doing that hardcore 8 hours a week though, it sort of runs into the problem that you've already done all this before.  You've fought the monsters.  You've seen all manner of traps.  You've got high level characters with great gear.  Now what?  All the proactivity in the world doesn't necessarily create a story, any more than ones own real life easily novelizes into a compelling narrative with rising and falling action, resolution and epiphany. 

I have tried to run sandboxes before.  And the problem you run into is player buy in when they look around and don't see a story to pursue and nothing with real lasting meaning seems to happen.  Even if you've got these cool plots hidden in various parts of the sand, if the players don't engage with them then they might as well not exist.  One of the problems I had was that I had all these secrets that were legitimately secret, but no means or reason why the PC's would uncover the secrets or having uncovered them recognize them as having meaning.  Real sandboxes can just overwhelm players with detail.  There aren't any red herrings because there is no plot!  That's in practice the same as saying "Everything is a red herring."  How are the players to know which of these grains of sand are special and important and more importantly interesting enough that they'll allow the players to participate in a heroic story like what they would read in a fantasy story?

Some tables and some systems try to get around this problem by moving tangentially to the linear/non-linear axis.  In both the sandbox and the adventure path you have tons of 'myth'.  That is to say, on the slice of possibilities we are discussing the notion that that there is a concrete setting preexisting the players is largely assumed.  The idea is do away with the setting, which in theory allows you to produce stories with lots of play buy in, but without fixed goals or events because the setting itself isn't fixed and is generated in response to player proactivity.  It sounds good in theory, but in practice it has a lot of huge traps.  One of them is that when you do away with a concrete setting, you remove the one security that the players have that they characters actually have agency.  Theoretically, if the players are being allowed to create the myth based on their metagame desires, then the players have agency.  But if the GM is not being constrained by his prior agreed upon myth, the problem is the GM is not being constrained at all.  The myth that a GM creates for himself and his commitment to stay true to that myth is the one real limit on GM power.  How can you say you overturning the GM's 'will' for the game, if the GM is completely free to create any contingency that they want?  

In fact, what 'no myth' games seem to do is get players to accept buying a ticket on a railroad, and then letting the GM railroad however he likes.  They even openly promote railroading techniques as ways to improve the story, with the GM empowered to create whatever he wants at any moment to have the story move in the direction the GM at that moment thinks will be best.  If the GM wants the bad guy to escape because it's good for the story - a classic sign of railroading - in these games that's what he's supposed to do.  Now, I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong.  Railroading techniques can be used to improve the story.  But fundamentally, all the nar techniques in the world are little different than saying, "Find a GM that creates fun railroads."  A GM that can't create a really fun railroad for you to buy into, also won't be able to sit in the director's chair of a nar game and make it fun for the players.  Why?  Because the tool set that both GM's are using will be identical.   In both games, if the GM decides that the ground opening up and swallowing you makes for a better story, that's what happens and both GMs will justify it in the same way.  

A few systems even note this potential trap and so try to come up with ways to route around it.  The usual way they do this is have players be able to decide what is best for the story, so that they aren't just at the mercy of the GMs designs.  But the ways to route around it have additional traps, the most obvious of which is that it's just no fun to be the person who both introduces the conflict or problem, and the person who resolves it.   If you wanted to just tell a story to yourself, you'd write a novel.  Stray too far into PC's being able to control the myth, and pretty soon there is no real exploration, no real secrets to discover, and no real surprises.   Even worse, too much of the play described by those systems reminds me not of the experience of being in a fantasy story, but rather of the experience of sitting around a table collaboratively working on a movie script.  Even though the end transcription of play might look like a good story, the way you arrived at that story and the experience of arriving at the story is very different.

To short version of this post is I don't think we've described the space of GMing well enough to outline the shape of 'good GMing practice' with confidence.  This single axis of 'Railroad/Sandbox' is not only not well labeled, because it's not objectively true that a sandbox is better than a railroad, but it's only one dimension that describes a very complicated space of GMing technique.  There are things out there that we don't describe as railroads, even though they rely heavily on techniques that in another context, we'd call railroading, because they also have these additional techniques we don't normally use in railroads - like giving player's metagame agency.  But we don't have the language to talk about that with shared understanding.  I can say to someone, "All no-myth games are railroads", and I know what I mean.   But they don't know what I mean, and so hear something like, "All no-myth games are bad.", when what I mean is that projected on to a single axis no-myth games almost invariably use the same GMing techniques that railroads use.   That isn't to say that they are indistinguishable, because there is at least one and probably many ways they can differ.  But if you are measuring just one dimension of complex things with just one ruler, you end up treating herrings and laptops as the same thing because 'length'.


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## Celebrim (Oct 7, 2015)

Bleys Icefalcon said:


> The biggest issue I run into, when it comes to keeping the game on track - is distractions from out of game stuff.  I have had to start enforcing a phone/tablet/laptop moritorium during the game.  That and the endless debates about what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong when it comes the the Marvel Cinematic Universe...




In my opinion, the big source of this problem is a gaming group that doesn't spend enough time together as friends not playing an RPG.  What often happens is that one a week or every other week interaction is the one time that a group of friends have reserved to socialize with each other.  Often as not, there will be members of the group for which this meeting is their primary socialization time.

The problem of "this time is our time to game, so lets pay attention to it" is a lot easier to deal with if the group goes out to see movies together, board games together, and generally hangs out together than it is if all that social pressure is uncorked at the same time you get together to play. 

I admit as a GM being frustrated with the lack of focus on the game.  But I usually understand why it takes 2 hours for the group to get settled down enough to play, and why its so easy for something to disrupt focus and prompt an OOC conversation.


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## Imaculata (Oct 7, 2015)

N'raac said:


> The biggest problem with this discussion, which someone above also noted, is that we often proceed on the basis that "Railroad always bad, Sandbox always good".  I don't agree.  I agree with the concept of balancing the two - balancing plot and freedom is the term Imaculata used above - to generate a game which is fun for the group.  Reading a script is not a fun game, but neither is wandering about aimlessly with no clue what to do next.  The ideal point between the two varies between gamers, and there are some gamers whose preferred points on the continuum are not compatible.  Hence the many posts above about getting buy-in to ensure the players are being "railroaded" to the story, plot and game elements they would have chosen to pursue in a broader "sandbox".




I agree entirely. I don't think that a 100% sandbox game is a good thing, but neither is a 100% scripted game. I think you need to have at least some plot, in order to have a story. But what matters, is how set in stone this story is. I prefer to allow my players to affect the plot as much as possible.  And I want to give them the freedom to do what they want to do. I run a pirate campaign, and so my players want to sail the seas, explore new regions, raid ships, and build a pirate faction of their own. Currently they are even preparing to build their own base on a remote island. All this is perfectly fine with me. Their base will make for an excellent platform to further the plot.

When my players explore an island, I randomly roll for what they discover on their travels. But if there was no plot what so ever, then it would probably get dull pretty quickly. So I write a basic mini plot for each island, that is waiting for the players to uncover. I serve them a mix of story and random stuff. And I change the plot depending on what the players do. 

For example, I had written a plot where one of the villains would attempt to steal a treasure map from the players. But considering the choices of the players, and their current location, it just didn't make sense for the villain to run with that plan. It relied too heavily on the villain knowing things he/she couldn't possibly know, and so I just let it go, and put the idea in the freezer for now. I may find a way to use it some other time.

Now not everyone is going to agree on what makes for the perfect D&D campaign style. I know plenty of players who like a good story, and don't mind if they are being pushed from A to B. But personally I don't ever want to be in a position as a DM, where I have to tell my players "you can't go there, that's not part of the campaign", or "you can't do that, because the plot can't continue otherwise". I think as a DM you should simply never put yourself in that position, where the choice of a player can so easily undermine your campaign. That is why all the characters in my campaign are expendable.

This is also why I often advise people that if they use an existing franchise as their role playing setting, to never introduce famous characters from that franchise. Don't introduce Darth Vader in your Star Wars campaign, and expect your players to not try and kill him. Don't introduce Gandalf or Frodo in your Middle-earth campaign, unless you are prepared to let them die. I know it's not always that black and white, but as a general rule, be prepared to have villains die. Nothing is more annoying than a villain that always gets away, because he has the DM's shield of plot invulnerability.


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## Imaculata (Oct 7, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> It's not merely a matter of lack of proactivity.  Most people playing an RPG unconsciously expect that the game will develop some sort of story through play and that this story will in some way be like the stories generated by other literary media.   But if you run a pure sandbox without scripting and without effectively chasing down the players and making things happen to them, the big problem is that you tend to produce a long series of disconnected events that don't collectively form a story.




I agree on this as well. Say you have the players wander through the jungle, and then they stumble upon a mystical temple with a bunch of bad guys in it. You have a bunch of puzzles, traps, obstacles and fights, along with the usual treasure. But you can only do that so often, till the players start wondering "why is it there?". "Is there any point to all this?".

Having a sandbox to explore is fun and all, but at some point I think most players hope to get some sense of connected events. When my players discovered an ancient cliff side city (a random encounter), I incorporated hints of the main plot in the dungeon. Ancient wall carvings revealed myths and legends, and told a story of a place that they had never heard of. A strange stone gate with eyes, in a stormy sea. And the dead being brought by ship before this gateway. It was a neat bit of flavor text, but the players knew right away that this wasn't just some random fluff text that I was throwing their way. And so they started investigating, and uncovered that the wall carvings referred to a legendary place at sea that is very difficult to find. They may choose to look for this place, or maybe they won't. Either way, I have stuff prepared for when that happens. I sprinkle bits of plot all over the place.

And sometimes you simply have to push the story forward. My players expect not just freedom, but also plot twists and cliff hangers, like one might expect in an episode of Game of Thrones. This means sometimes killing off a beloved character unexpectedly, to raise the stakes. Is that railroading? I think we call that storytelling.

When people talk about railroading, they often use the term as if it means 'any plot what so ever'. But as a DM you are not just a referee, but you are also a storyteller. Telling a story and having a plot, is not the same as railroading the players. A railroad suggests one direction, from A to B. But a plot in D&D does not have to be linear at all. The players can affect the outcome of the plot, or alter its course. That is not railroading. I think if you use the term 'railroading' to describe story, then you are using it incorrectly.


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## Starfox (Oct 7, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Some tables and some systems try to get around this problem by moving tangentially to the linear/non-linear axis.




Off on a tangent here, but is this what is called narrative games in The Forge's Narrative-Storytelling-Gamist theory? I must admit I never quite grasped the concept of narrative as they use it, but this seems pretty close.


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## cmad1977 (Oct 7, 2015)

Anyways... On the topic of the original post and not the  silly "railroad/sandbox" discussion that always comes up and never goes anywhere because everyone is running a sandboxy railroad anyways.... 

Players often choose tactics that are not 'in the books' to accomplish a task at hand. This is where you come in as DM. 
"Ok you've infiltrated the bandit camp..."
"Hey, can we poised n their food?"
"Well... You don't have any poison..."
"What about me? I'm a Druid... He's a ranger... Maybe we can find some toadstools or something that'll give the bandits the runs"
"... Ok... Sure! Give me a nature or survival roll... Jesus a twenty?? Well you found some mushrooms... "

Basically an except from an HoTDQ I'm running. 
I like the philosophy of saying "yes, and" or "yes, but" to the ideas my heroes have. The "yes, but" is an important one in particular I think as it allows me to describe dangers the players may not be aware of(mechanical or otherwise)


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## Celebrim (Oct 7, 2015)

Starfox said:


> Off on a tangent here, but is this what is called narrative games in The Forge's Narrative-Storytelling-Gamist theory? I must admit I never quite grasped the concept of narrative as they use it, but this seems pretty close.




Yeah, I'm referring to Forge theory here, and concretely to some of the Indy games that were designed on the basis of that theory. 

I have a complicated relationship to Forge theory, in that I think that some of the basic precepts of the theory are wholly wrong and don't therefore subscribe to GNS, but I do think that a lot of the thinking about GNS was profitable anyway.  At the very least, the attempt to define terms and grapple with all the unnamed concepts that made up an RPG was very valuable.


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## Imaculata (Oct 7, 2015)

cmad1977 said:


> Basically an except from an HoTDQ I'm running.
> I like the philosophy of saying "yes, and" or "yes, but" to the ideas my heroes have. The "yes, but" is an important one in particular I think as it allows me to describe dangers the players may not be aware of(mechanical or otherwise)




Choice is always good. In my opinion, the players can attempt to do anything they like, and I'll simply ask how they intend to achieve it.  And if there are complications that they may not have thought of, then I'll inform them of it.

Recently we had a big battle with a bunch of ghost pirates in my campaign. The cleric wanted to use one of his water spells to try and cut off the hand of a ghost, so he would drop his ghost-touch sword. Well there was a river nearby, so I asked him if he intended to conjure up the water from the nearby river, which he did. I then made up some reasonable rules on the fly, with advantage because of the river. Obviously as a DM, you don't want this to become a new dominant strategy. But on the other hand, I want to encourage the creativity of my players. I don't want combat to feel like a boring game of whack-a-mole. Bone has a certain hardness, but I didn't know the hit points. So I figured that I could just use a single hit die of the ghost as a reasonable statistic for that. Obviously the foe is a ghost, and thus made from ectoplasma or vapor, but you can still cut through it, even if the lost hand isn't permanent (it reappears shortly afterwards). I figured that the ghost may react to the action as it would normally if it were still alive, before realizing that its already dead, and hasn't actually lost its hand.

There's also been cases where my players have attempted to perform some sort of holy ritual to keep evil creatures at bay. There's nothing in the rules about this, but if the players can give me a good description of what they want to do, and it sounds reasonable, then why not? I embrace this sort of creativity.

So that made for a pretty cool player action.


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## Zak S (Oct 7, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> Choice is always good. In my opinion, the players can attempt to do anything they like, and I'll simply ask how they intend to achieve it.  And if there are complications that they may not have thought of, then I'll inform them of it.
> 
> Recently we had a big battle with a bunch of ghost pirates in my campaign. The cleric wanted to use one of his water spells to try and cut off the hand of a ghost, so he would drop his ghost-touch sword. Well there was a river nearby, so I asked him if he intended to conjure up the water from the nearby river, which he did. I then made up some reasonable rules on the fly, with advantage because of the river. Obviously as a DM, you don't want this to become a new dominant strategy. But on the other hand, I want to encourage the creativity of my players. I don't want combat to feel like a boring game of whack-a-mole. Bone has a certain hardness, but I didn't know the hit points. So I figured that I could just use a single hit die of the ghost as a reasonable statistic for that. Obviously the foe is a ghost, and thus made from ectoplasma or vapor, but you can still cut through it, even if the lost hand isn't permanent (it reappears shortly afterwards). I figured that the ghost may react to the action as it would normally if it were still alive, before realizing that its already dead, and hasn't actually lost its hand.
> 
> ...




I'm sure a lot of people would agree but it doesn't really explain how you keep players on an adventure path if you're running one


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## Celebrim (Oct 7, 2015)

Zak S said:


> I'm sure a lot of people would agree but it doesn't really explain how you keep players on an adventure path if you're running one




Well, part of the problem answering the question is that it is very broad because you don't seem to have any experience with adventure paths, and you seem to have a very wrong idea in your head about how they actually play out in play.  You seem to think that an adventure path goes off the rails the minute anyone does something not anticipated by the adventure, or indeed that an adventure path only anticipates one sort of solution and novelty inherently messes everything up.  You don't seem to be very familiar with the real choke points in an adventure path, so you are proposing problems that usually don't really represent problems, and not asking good questions about the things that provoke the real problems.   For insight into what causes real problems, you need to read essays like "The Three Clue Rule" as very direct attempts to answer the question, "How do you keep players on an adventure path?"

For me, if I'm running a published adventure path, the first thing I do is read the module and look for places where things can go badly wrong.  A good adventure will have rather few of these, make few assumptions about player behavior, make no assumptions that players will behave illogically, and will have comments on how you might handle or how things might change for most of the obvious things players might do.  I think the key thing to realize about any published adventure is that it's greatly constrained by its page count, which is merely an artifact of publishing the adventure.   The published adventure needs to tell a novice GM how to run the adventure, but can generally afford to only cover the basics.  It leaves it up to the GM to deal with unexpected changes in the adventure, while still using the content of the adventure as the basis of setting.

The second thing I tend to do is expand the content in areas that I feel are truncated or weak.  If a town or haven is mentioned, I take some time to pre-create additional NPC's and detail important locations (see B2: Keep on the Borderlands and I6: Ravenloft).  If a wilderness journey seems to play an important context in creating atmosphere, but the described wilderness is too small to create the impression desired (see I5: Pyramid, S2: White Plume Mountain, and I6: Ravenloft), then I expand the wilderness around the dungeon.   Often this amounts to making the adventure effectively more Sandbox-y, even if in truth it's still a Small World with a central attraction.  

I then tend to go over the details and make fine adjustments to correct for the overall atmosphere I want - making comic elements less unnatural, making horror elements more frightening, making the setting more medieval or at least grittier (Dickensian, for example) where the magical elements are too cartoony, removing treasure I consider excessive, and balancing content for my PC's.   

Occasionally, the author will base the story on illogical behavior or specific behavior by the PC's.  In this case, I will need to do some revision (perhaps adding an event/hook) or apply some railroading technique (often Schrodinger's Map) to subtly steer the players through the rocky narrows in the story.

At that point, I'm usually satisfied I can run the adventure without mishap.  But the central thing to remember is that generally players have a 'buy in'.  They want to investigate the adventure in the same way that a reader wants to read a novel.  Inventing new solutions probably isn't going to disrupt a well thought out AP, though it may require a bit of improvisation to rule on the player's proposition (whatever it is, big or small).   

The real issues are things like:

"How do I get the train back on the rails?"  It's always possible.  It just requires a bit of theater.  Even if the death of the BBEG in scene 1 is not a very large derailment.

"Should I get the train back on the rails?"  Sometimes the train goes off the rails because the players aren't enjoying the story.  In which case, should I just go with their new idea and see where that takes me?   At some level, an AP is often just a slice of a setting.  So that content still stays viable if the game suddenly veers into territory you didn't foresee.  Sometimes the train went off the rails because the players bit red herring and are now desperately searching for the rails again.  In that case, you want to gracefully help them back on.


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## Bleys Icefalcon (Oct 7, 2015)

I have long since stopped trying to drive or direct at all.  I have found that if they take the game even somewhat seriously, then out of at least some level of respect to the efforts of the gm (moi) they at least try and figure out/solve whatever puzzle that's been placed before them.  This said, some of the best times my group has ever had was when they went off the reservation with regards to the story/quest/campaign etc.  This, needless to say required some seat of the pants flying on my part - but these unscripted scenarios are utter gems.


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## TheFindus (Oct 7, 2015)

Here is how players are kept on an Adventure Path:

1. The DM tells them: "We are playing this Adventure Path called ______. Here is what the theme of the Adventure Path is roughly about. We need PCs who have some attachment to this theme and a motivation to follow the course of the Adventure Path." 
2. The players then make PCs that follow that lead. Then they start on the Path and follow it. And if they do not know where to go (a situation which only rarely occurs in Adventure Paths because most of the time the Path is pretty clear) then the DM is supposed to give the players a hint about where the Path leads.
3. If the players decide to play something else and do not want to follow the Path anymore, tough luck. The Path ends then. This is not a sandbox, after all, in which world exploration is a major factor. In an Adventure Path this experience might come as a side effect. But usually players who agree to play an Adventure Path want to explore the story of the Path. That is what the AP-game is about. To prevent players from leaving the Path completely, a DM will usually inform the players about the consequences of leaving the Path ("The world is going to end"). If a DM is not open about this, he or she will create an illusion of freedom of moving on and off the Path. Which is not possible, at least not in a major way. And usually the players have invested a lot of time and roleplaying effort and keep following the Path. Adventure Paths are just built this way.

Adventure Paths can be heavily looted for locations, NPCs, monsters, maps, pictures, motivations and ideas as well. So even groups that do not play the Paths because their game has a different focus can use the material. Which is why Paizo sells so many of them and has for years.

A thing or two about sandbox-play from my point of view. It is all fine and good. I have played this kind of game. What I do not like about it is the fact that the world usually does not care about my PC. Whether I play a Warforged with a secret or a PC with a certain background, the world of sandbox play is usually rather unemotional about this. The thing I look for in a RPG, however, is that I want to be challenged in the game based on what my character is about, the essence of it. I want to experience the challenges about what the other PCs are about. The world exploration comes only third, maybe fourth because I really like exiting combats. Also, the notion that a group of adventurers suddenly can turn to turnip-farming is not appealing to me. I like a rather tight theme framing.

Here is a chart that I like. It paints with broad strokes and does not fit everybody. I like it, though.  I am in the Story Now department. APs are in the Participationalism department if done well.
http://evilbrainjono.net/images/Finding_your_GMing_Style.jpg


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## S'mon (Oct 7, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Yeah.  We really need better words to describe what we are talking about.




1e AD&D Dungeoneer's Survival Guide had a very good Open/Matrix/Linear campaign 
typology. I wish people would use it. Open = Sandbox, Linear = 'Railroad' ('Railroading' is 
properly the DM technique of forcing players to stay on the tracks). Matrix campaigns have interlinked nodes and lots of player choice, connected by threads such as the villain plots. They are neither 
Open nor Linear but have some of the benefits of both.


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## Imaculata (Oct 7, 2015)

I used a different method for keeping players on track, for one of my Call of Cthulhu campaigns. The basic goal was:

-Make sure the players always have a clue to investigate, and don't get stuck.
-Make sure that the story progresses each in-game day, introducing new problems/situations/clues/developments.
-Make sure the plot isn't predictable.
-Make sure it isn't clear right away who the villains are.
-Make sure there is at least one scare every session.
-Give the players a good reason to remain in the same city.
-Multiple endings.
-Player hand outs _(CoC campaigns are best when you have physical clues to hand your players)_

To do this, I wrote out a simple progression of events from day to day. The first day of the adventure, I simply introduced them to a mystery, which should give them plenty of angles to approach the adventure from. But the full scale of the terror does not become clear until 3 or 4 days into the story. This ensures that by the last day, the full scope of the situation is perfectly obvious, regardless of what clues the players may have found.

Next I made sure that there were plenty of clues to be found in every major location. Ideally, each location has a clue that leads them to the next location. And thus you lead them from scene to scene (only the order in which they follow the clues or visit the locations does not matter).  I have played this same campaign twice, and only two or three locations ended up not being used (the library, the wellspring and the mausoleum).

I made sure to also tie the daily escalations to clues as well. Even if they are playing extremely poorly, each day would eventually give them something to chase. I also made a list of clues/npc's that I could bring to the players in case they were stuck, but those were only intended as a last resort.

I further wrote down all the details of each location in the campaign. Every location would have a mini story of its own (like a scene in a movie), but with an uncertain outcome. At best, the players can walk away from such a mini plot line with more clues than they started with. At worst, a player-character dies. But suspense would be guaranteed.

Since Call of Cthulhu is a horror game, I also made a list of various random frights that I could introduce at any time, regardless of where the players were.

Lastly I tried to think of several ways in which the story might end. I tried to think of a scenario in which the players are victorious, and one in which they failed completely. I also tried to come up with in between scenarios, where the players may be victorious, but maybe they are too late, or maybe they make a big mistake. 

Now the players were free to explore the town in which this campaign took place, and choose which clues they wished to follow. But of course some things had to be a bit more linear than what I would usually do in a D&D campaign. I made sure that the players would eventually be lead to every scene that I intended for them, simply by controlling when certain clues would come into their hands. Eventually it all leads to the same location, and then its all up to the players to bring it to a happy conclusion... or not.


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## S'mon (Oct 7, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> I agree on this as well. Say you have the players wander through the jungle, and then they stumble upon a mystical temple with a bunch of bad guys in it. You have a bunch of puzzles, traps, obstacles and fights, along with the usual treasure.




That's funny - Celebrim has told me that me doing this - putting a dungeon in front of the PCs exactly as 
you describe - is me Railroading them.


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## S'mon (Oct 7, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Well, part of the problem answering the question is that it is very broad because you don't seem to have any experience with adventure paths, and you seem to have a very wrong idea in your head about how they actually play out in play.  You seem to think that an adventure path goes off the rails the minute anyone does something not anticipated by the adventure




I've played with AP GMs who do indeed disallow anything not anticipated by the adventure.
This Truman Show effect is no fun, and I quit those games pretty fast.


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## Imaculata (Oct 7, 2015)

S'mon said:


> That's funny - Celebrim has told me that me doing this - putting a dungeon in front of the PCs exactly as
> you describe - is me Railroading them.




Haha. Well then maybe my random encounter tables are actually railroading tables. 
Maybe campaigns should have nothing in them what so ever! 

But seriously though. I think its fine to have the players "discover" a random temple in the jungle. Whether its determined by a random roll, or the DM deliberately placing the temple in the path of the players, I don't think any of that is railroading. That's what I would call "running a campaign".


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## Zak S (Oct 7, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> You don't seem to be very familiar with the real choke points in an adventure path,




This is a wholly incorrect impression.



> so you are proposing problems that usually don't really represent problems,




I've gotten really good answers to my questions throughout the thread--I was just pointing out that one answer was off-topic.




> you need to read essays like "The Three Clue Rule" as very direct attempts to answer the question, "How do you keep players on an adventure path?"




No, the Alexandrian's 3-clue rule is a rule specifically for players discovering mysteries and, even in those cases (which I run all the time) it's not a relevant comment because I am not asking 

"What should I, Zak, do?"

I am asking

"What do you (collected EnWorld denizens) yourselves do at the table?"

I have no intention of running an adventure path. The rest of your answer is much more useful.


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## Imaculata (Oct 7, 2015)

S'mon said:


> I've played with AP GMs who do indeed disallow anything not anticipated by the adventure.
> This Truman Show effect is no fun, and I quit those games pretty fast.




It's like playing in a very small box. I can't stand those sort of games. A DM should be able to improvise, and any action that I take as a player should not completely ruin his plot.

This reminds me of a Lord of the Rings campaign that I once played. Right at the start of the campaign, our party was ambushed by bandits, and the DM expected us to fight. I was playing a wizard, but not one who clearly announced himself as such. And I simply surrendered and gave them my money. One of the players said: "I turn my horse around and simply flee".

The DM ruled that neither were options. The bandits attacked my wizard anyway, even though they already got my money, and I was unarmed. And the bandits suddenly had horses, and instantly caught up with the other player. Thou shalt not escape the DM's cliche encounter, dammit! Yeah, that campaign didn't last long.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> It's like playing in a very small box. I can't stand those sort of games. A DM should be able to improvise, and any action that I take as a player should not completely ruin his plot.



A DM under no circumstance is allowed to improvise. They are not playing the game, they are running it. It is the players who choose where to go and what to do by telling the DM how to move their pieces around the hidden game board. And just as in any game anywhere a player cannot "ruin the plot", aka act against someone else's wishes, when playing a game. They are expressing their own desires sure, but really they are attempting to score points in a game.



> This reminds me of a Lord of the Rings campaign that I once played. Right at the start of the campaign, our party was ambushed by bandits, and the DM expected us to fight. I was playing a wizard, but not one who clearly announced himself as such. And I simply surrendered and gave them my money. One of the players said: "I turn my horse around and simply flee".
> 
> The DM ruled that neither were options. The bandits attacked my wizard anyway, even though they already got my money, and I was unarmed. And the bandits suddenly had horses, and instantly caught up with the other player. Thou shalt not escape the DM's cliche encounter, dammit! Yeah, that campaign didn't last long.



This is an example of a DM improvising.


----------



## Celebrim (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> No, the Alexandrian's 3-clue rule is a rule specifically for players discovering mysteries...




Yes, but ensuring the players find and follow the breadcrumbs is the #1 hardest part of running an adventure path and keeping a in between the ditches.   Adventure paths are often a series of mysteries, each of which leads to the next mystery.  Creative solutions are usually only problems if they destroy your breadcrumbs.  (A classic example would be the PC's burn down the dungeon, destroying all the clues in it.  Note almost a whole page of the 16 page G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain is devoted to stopping this from happening.)  Usually when bad DMs panic and insist on single solutions it's when the PC's propose a solution that destroys their only breadcrumbs.

For example, Imaculata mentions the case of an inexperienced DM panicking when the PC's tried to route around an encounter with bandits and not fight them.  Almost certainly the reason that the inexperienced DM panicked is that he wasn't following the three clue rule.  Probably the scenario involves killing the bandits and finding a letter on them that says something important to figuring out where to go next, or if the AP was really crazy stupidly dumb, because the scenario involves the PCs getting captured by the bandits and taken to their camp, where they discover an important prisoner whom they then escape with and the scenario only imagined a single trail of bread crumbs that lead to that point.  Point is, the DM didn't want them to run away or negotiate, because the bandits had the game's only breadcrumb and he needed the PC's to take it.

A well written scenario that involved rescuing an important prisoner from a bandit camp would have like a dozen breadcrumbs out there that all lead to the bandit camp, and each ultimately lead to rescuing the prisoner _by some means_ (including perhaps befriending the bandits, paying the ransom, or any number of other things).  

If you were to write your own adventure path, being wise, you'd either have anticipated the various player actions or being experienced be able to improvise answers.  You probably already do in some fashion, whether you run adventure paths or not.  After all, if you arrange mysteries for the players to solve, you've already got the basics down.  All you have to do to write or run an adventure path is string a series together toward some climatic end.


----------



## Celebrim (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> A DM under no circumstance is allowed to improvise.




Not this again.  You realize you are one of the few people in the world that thinks D&D is nothing more than a tactical boardgame with a hidden board, right?  I mean, there is a sense in which I agree with you, which I mentioned in the discussion earlier regarding "no myth", but you take this so far and so immoderately that it becomes unworkable.  It's impossible to not improvise as a DM to at least some degree.   DM improvisation is what allows players the ability to do things the DM never anticipated.  It's what allows players to "walk off the map".



> This is an example of a DM improvising.




No, this is an example of a DM not improvising, or to the extent he is improvising he is improvising badly.


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## Celebrim (Oct 8, 2015)

S'mon said:


> I've played with AP GMs who do indeed disallow anything not anticipated by the adventure.
> This Truman Show effect is no fun, and I quit those games pretty fast.




Bad DM is bad.


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## Celebrim (Oct 8, 2015)

S'mon said:


> That's funny - Celebrim has told me that me doing this - putting a dungeon in front of the PCs exactly as you describe - is me Railroading them.




Oh, yeah?  Quote me.  If you quote me, it's not dishonest slander.  Or if it is because you quote out of context, I can at least defend against it by pointing out the framing language you left out.  If you can't quote me...

To keep this brief, I never said finding a dungeon was railroading.  Indeed, wandering in the jungle and stumbling on an ancient temple is probably not railroading.  But having a temple wander in the jungle and make a b-line to the PC's because you the DM want them to find it *is* railroading (unless of course, the temple has legs and can cast _commune with nature_).   The problem of having a dungeon move to the PC's was what I called railroading, not merely finding a jungle by accident.


----------



## KingsRule77 (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> A DM under no circumstance is allowed to improvise. They are not playing the game, they are running it. It is the players who choose where to go and what to do by telling the DM how to move their pieces around the hidden game board. And just as in any game anywhere a player cannot "ruin the plot", aka act against someone else's wishes, when playing a game. They are expressing their own desires sure, but really they are attempting to score points in a game.
> 
> This is an example of a DM improvising.




Lolwut?


----------



## howandwhy99 (Oct 8, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Not this again.  You realize you are one of the few people in the world that thinks D&D is nothing more than a tactical boardgame with a hidden board, right?  I mean, there is a sense in which I agree with you, which I mentioned in the discussion earlier regarding "no myth", but you take this so far and so immoderately that it becomes unworkable.  It's impossible to not improvise as a DM to at least some degree.   DM improvisation is what allows players the ability to do things the DM never anticipated.  It's what allows players to "walk off the map".



Then we'll not get into it. You and I both know all the rules in D&D were designed to be a game not a story. And that means no improvising at all by a DM. 

Everything players attempt are run through the game and relayed back to them. Anything confusing the players try is questioned until they are covered by the game system. This could even be as banally simple as "Are you attempting to be the rock and move or are you moving your character to move the rock?" Character/not character could be the only rule and easily judged. 

And it's was widely known that any DM must stop the session if the players reach the edge of the map. That's why DM's generate the game board beyond what the players can reasonably reach in a session.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> A DM under no circumstance is allowed to improvise. They are not playing the game, they are running it. It is the players who choose where to go and what to do by telling the DM how to move their pieces around the hidden game board. And just as in any game anywhere a player cannot "ruin the plot", aka act against someone else's wishes, when playing a game. They are expressing their own desires sure, but really they are attempting to score points in a game.




Improv is probably the biggest and most important DM skill.  Without it, the players don't have unlimited things they can try, they only have the small handful listed in the book.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 8, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> Improv is probably the biggest and most important DM skill.  Without it, the players don't have unlimited things they can try, they only have the small handful listed in the book.



What's in the book are not the rules of D&D, they are suggestions for a secret code the DM is expressing behind a screen. This is default D&D. It's why the game is designed as it is. 

And it is widely known the most common thing a DM does over and over again and must do well is math. Games are a part of math after all.

EDIT: You're talking about storygames and storytelling. The DM is not a player in the game. He's not there to decipher the pattern (he can actually see!) to achieve an objective in it.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> What's in the book are not the rules of D&D, they are suggestions for a secret code the DM is expressing behind a screen. This is default D&D. It's why the game is designed as it is.
> 
> And it is widely known the most common thing a DM does over and over again and must do well is math. Games are a part of math after all.
> 
> EDIT: You're talking about storygames and storytelling. The DM is not a player in the game. He's not there to decipher the pattern to achieve an objective in it.




Math is minor.  The story is the prime way the vast majority of people who play the game have fun and improv is key to that.  Also, the game flat out says the DM is a player, so you can't be right about that claim.


----------



## howandwhy99 (Oct 8, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> Math is minor.  The story is the prime way the vast majority of people who play the game have fun and improv is key to that.  Also, the game flat out says the DM is a player, so you can't be right about that claim.



You're just completely wrong. There is no such thing as a story. And D&D doesn't say any such thing.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> You're just completely wrong. There is no such thing as a story. And D&D doesn't say any such thing.



You should try reading the PHB sometime.  You'll learn some things.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 8, 2015)

quote?

This is a game forum. You might have better luck at a forum for storytelling.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> quote?
> 
> This is a game forum. You might have better luck at a forum for storytelling.




Page 5: "The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling..."

Page 5: "One player, however, takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), the game’s lead storyteller and referee."

What say you now?


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 8, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> Page 5: "The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling..."
> 
> Page 5: "One player, however, takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), the game’s lead storyteller and referee."
> 
> What say you now?



You're in the wrong forum.  This is "*Older D&D Editions, D&D Variants, and OSR Gaming*"
It's a forum about playing and running actual games. Not group storytelling.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> You're in the wrong forum.  This is "*Older D&D Editions, D&D Variants, and OSR Gaming*"
> It's a forum about playing and running actual games. Not group storytelling.




My bad.  It's on page 4 of the 3.5 PHB.  "It's part acting, part storytelling, part social interaction, part war game, and part dice."

Also on that page. "One player is the Dungeon Master (DM)"

Note that acting, storytelling and social interaction come before war game and dice.

The older editions are the same.  You have no leg to stand on.  Your turn to start proving your baseless claims.


----------



## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

whatever this conversation is about improvisation and storytelling and editions in general is, I don't see it leading to interesting answers to the OP.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 8, 2015)

It is a _game_. Players are here to game a game, aka manipulate a pattern to achieve a goal. Whether a game designed by a game designer or found in the world. This is what Game means. 

Trying to disprove your negative means demonstrating its absence. I have nothing to quote as your claims are actually absent from D&D. But if you're interested in the roots of the game, here is an Introduction:



> Games based on warfare have interested men for centuries, as such games as checkers and chess prove. The latter games are nothing less than the warfare of the period in which they were developed, abstracted and stylized for play on a board. Chess  is  so  abstracted that  it  is  barely recognizable as a wargame.  At the other end of the spectrum, and of much more modern invention, are military miniatures. By use of figures scaled down to an inch or two in size the players mare realistically simulate warfare and are not tied to a stylized board. Miniature warfare allows the combatants to hove a never ending variety of battles over varying terrain, even refighting historic actions involving tremendous armies!
> 
> In order to play  a  wargame  it  is  necessary  to  have rules, miniature figures and accompanying equipment,  a  playing area, and terrain to place upon  it. There can be no doubt that you have fulfilled the first requirement, for you have purchased  this  set of rules. Your troops con  be  any scale that you desire. The playing area that the battles ore fought out upon should be a table rather than the floor. It can be from  a  minimum of  4'  to  a  maximum of  7'  wide, and  it  should be at least  8'  in length. These sizes will assure ample room for maneuver There are several methods of depicting the terrain features generally used for wargames, such  as  hills,  woods, rivers, roods, etc.
> 
> ...


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> whatever this conversation is about improvisation and storytelling and editions in general is, I don't see it leading to interesting answers to the OP.



Agreed. 

Best to stay on topic.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

That's why I thought.  You ignore reality and are no longer worth my time.  Carry on without me.


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## S'mon (Oct 8, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Oh, yeah?  Quote me.  If you quote me, it's not dishonest slander.  Or if it is because you quote out of context, I can at least defend against it by pointing out the framing language you left out.  If you can't quote me...
> 
> To keep this brief, I never said finding a dungeon was railroading.  Indeed, wandering in the jungle and stumbling on an ancient temple is probably not railroading.  But having a temple wander in the jungle and make a b-line to the PC's because you the DM want them to find it *is* railroading (unless of course, the temple has legs and can cast _commune with nature_).   The problem of having a
> dungeon move to the PC's was what I called railroading, not merely finding a jungle by accident.




Like I said, you say you consider _placing a dungeon in front of the PCs_ to be railroading. Dungeon is initially unplaced, PCs say they're going west, GM says they see the dungeon in front of them = railroading. As far as I can tell from this statement above, you stand by your opinion.

Edit: Using terms like 'dishonest slander' does you no credit. 
For one thing, if it's written, it's libel.


----------



## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

S'mon said:


> Like I said, you say you consider _placing a dungeon in front of the PCs_ to be railroading. Dungeon is initially unplaced, PCs say they're going west, GM says they see the dungeon in front of them = railroading. As far as I can tell from this statement above, you stand by your opinion.



A "quantum ogre" (ie: an obstacle or feature that appears no matter which choice the players make) is a choker. That is: it is a technique that, if used a lot or if used in a way that the players start to notice or if used in a way that makes the players start to think their choices don't matter will register to them as unpleasant railroading.

If you say "Do you wanna play D&D?" and the adventure is a dungeon and only a dungeon even though theoretically the players could go anywhere else and the players just head in that's "participationism" (like railroading but the players know what they're into and agree). 

If you say "Left is the bridge, right is a desert" and you are going to stick the same dungeon in either path, you've just created a choice that didn't matter that's 
"illusionism". Buried in the game, it's no biggie, but if it happens a lot, player may begin to realize many of their choices don't matter and, for some playstyles, this is disastrous because it means the  players pay less attention.

So I wouldn't say a quantum dungeon is always automatically railroading in every possible circumstance, but its one of the techniques that can lead to that sinking feeling in players--and that feeling is what defines railroading.


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> To keep this brief, I never said finding a dungeon was railroading.  Indeed, wandering in the jungle and stumbling on an ancient temple is probably not railroading.  But having a temple wander in the jungle and make a b-line to the PC's because you the DM want them to find it *is* railroading (unless of course, the temple has legs and can cast _commune with nature_).   The problem of having a dungeon move to the PC's was what I called railroading, not merely finding a jungle by accident.




I think it's only railroading if the players have to visit the temple to progress the plot. And that doesn't become a problem, until the players decide that they don't want to visit the spooky trap-filled temple.

This goes back to the breadcrumb example given earlier. If you want the players to go somewhere, you need to take into account that the players may not do what you expect. Maybe the mystical temple doesn't look very inviting to them? Maybe they have no reason to go there and get themselves killed. Maybe it obviously looks dangerous to them. 

I think a smart DM understands that if the plot hinges on the players finding a particular item, then he could move the item anywhere he wants. So the players ignore the creepy temple. Fine. If they need to find that magical key, then it's probably somewhere else now. What they don't know, does not matter.

Taking my bandit scenario from earlier, the DM clearly wanted this bandit problem to be our focus. This was what we were supposed to deal with. Maybe the bandits had an important clue, so we could track down their hide out or leader. But the plot should not depend on us finding that note (or what ever item it was). Why not allow the party to get robbed, and arrive at the next village empty handed? Maybe there's a friendly farmer who feels bad for these unlucky adventurers, and offers them a place to stay in his stables? Maybe he even offers them food, and during dinner, he tells them of the bandit problem. And there you go, there's your clue, and you've just made up an interesting npc on the spot.

This is why improvisation is key in D&D. A DM should never panic. Embrace the choices of your players, and run with it. So what if they don't go straight to the dragon cave? Make up a village that they encounter along the way, and have the dragon attack the village, and fly off. That's how the story comes to the players.



Zak S said:


> If you say "Left is the bridge, right is a desert" and you are going to stick the same dungeon in either path, you've just created a choice that didn't matter that's "illusionism". Buried in the game, it's no biggie, but if it happens a lot, player may begin to realize many of their choices don't matter and, for some playstyles, this is disastrous because it means the  players pay less attention.




The dungeon has always been there. It doesn't really matter to the players if its left or right. It is okay to place interesting locations in the path of the players. If I want my players to encounter a wizards tower, does it really matter if its at the bridge or at the desert? 

But what if the players turn around at the sight of the wizards tower? A DM should never panic when that happens, and the best way to handle that problem, is to ensure that it never becomes a problem to begin with. Don't make your plot hinge on the players meeting the wizard.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> The dungeon has always been there. It doesn't really matter to the players if its left or right. It is okay to place interesting locations in the path of the players. If I want my players to encounter a wizards tower, does it really matter if its at the bridge or at the desert? .




It matters in the following manner:

if you are going to negate the choice (ie put the tower in their path no matter which way the go) then it is better to have not offered that choice to begin with.


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> It matters in the following manner:
> 
> if you are going to negate the choice (ie put the tower in their path no matter which way the go) then it is better to have not offered that choice to begin with.




They don't know that the DM moved the tower, and so it doesn't matter. You didn't negate their choice, they still went to the desert, and found a wizards tower there.

I also use this narrative trick for sprinkling clues and scenes into locations. When I design a dungeon, I write down some things that the players could discover, and then drop them into a room on the spot where I feel its fitting for the story. The players do not need to know that I did not pin down the locations before hand. If I want them to be scared, or amazed, or puzzled, then I have a bag of tricks that I can drop into the story at any moment.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> They don't know that the DM moved the tower, and so it doesn't matter. You didn't negate their choice, they still went to the desert, and found a wizards tower there.




It definitely matters because of what I said above:

Do it enough times and the players will begin to get the feeling their choices don't matter. They'll notice how convenient it all is. And they'll stop thinking hard about decisions and so you lose that aspect of play.

When something happens you can't show them "See, you chose this and this and this so this happened..."


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> Do it enough times and the players will begin to get the feeling their choices don't matter. They'll notice.




How? How would they notice? They don't know where the wizards tower is. Only I do. And the truth of the matter is, that as a storyteller it can be anywhere I want it to be.



Zak S said:


> When something happens you can't show them "See, you chose this and this and this so this happened..."




Sure I can. In fact, I do that all the time. The trick is to make up logical narrative connections. For example:

The players were in a city, and were wandering the streets at random. I figured that something interesting should happen. I rolled a random encounter, and it landed on an angry mob. So I told them how they encountered an angry mob that was blocking their way. According to the main plot that I had written out, the local dwarven pirates had lost one of their ships recently. I reasoned that perhaps they suspected that the royal navy had been responsible, thus explaining the angry mob of dwarves in the street, demanding justice. It totally made sense, and the players were completely immersed. They immediately tried to use diplomacy to get the dwarves to settle down, and the party leader promised the dwarves that he would speak with the local ruler on their behalf.

This then cascaded into a new series of interconnected events. The dwarven pirate captain who was responsible for getting them so riled up, was now in prison, and his ship had been seized. The only way to calm the dwarves down, would be to get their captain out of prison. But in the meantime his ship had been sold to one of the villains in my campaign. Getting the pirate captain out of prison was going to be difficult, because the captain of the guards was a notorious hard-ass. So the players contacted the thieves guild, who knew a contact that may be able to help them. They met with the mysterious contact, and only later they figured out that, plot twist, the contact of the thieves guild WAS the captain of the guards. And this all eventually lead to a massive battle at the old shipyard, to kill the villain, and take back the dwarven ship. 

*So how much of this was planned? What was dropped in their path, what was scripted, and what was made up on the spot? The players couldn't tell, it all seemed to be part of the intricate plot.*

You can drop anything you want in the path of the players, as long as you can find a good narrative reason for it to be there. If you can intertwine it with other plot points, even better. I don't believe for a second that any of my players realized that I was making most of it up on the spot, and was also dropping things in their path. They know that wherever they go, they will encounter things of interest. My campaign tends to be like a theme park. There are things to see everywhere. And a wizards tower in a desert is not going to stand out in the slightest, among all the haunted forests, enchanted swamps and magical gateways to the nether world.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> How? How would they notice?




They keep making choices where the outcomes don't seem to depend on what they did. for example: a mission seems time sensitive, then somebody makes a mistake which causes the players to have to spend 4 hours doing something. Then when they arrive at the town its (what a coincidence) just in the nick of time. Again. And the GM has some elaaaaaborate explanation for why they just happened to arrive in the nick of time despite dawdling for 4 hours. Can't show them any _notes _to that effect, but says so.

Smart players can ALWAYS tell when a GM is illusioning them.





> You can drop anything you want in the path of the players, as long as you can find a good narrative reason for it to be there. If you can intertwine it with other plot points, even better.




Sure but you can't show them what would've happened had they made a different choice. Because nothing.

You can _make the story make sense_, but you can't restore the players' faith that they made decisions that had consequences.

That's why it's best to tell players there's a plot up front.


----------



## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> They keep making choices where the outcomes don't seem to depend on what they did.




I don't see why dropping things in their path would automatically lead to this conclusion of yours. I would argue that the majority of player choice flows from the players reacting to what happens in your campaign, not where parts of the plot are located on the map. It doesn't matter, it could be anywhere. What matters is what the players choose to do, and how this affects the story.



Zak S said:


> Sure but you can't show them what would've happened had they made a different choice. Because nothing.




The desert or the bridge isn't the choice. The choice is whether they enter the wizards tower or not. And how  they handle the encounter. Does the wizard become their ally, or does he turn them into a toad?

Why are the players going to the desert? Why do they make that choice? Are they looking for something in particular? Then maybe that is what they find, or maybe they find someone who may be able to give them directions. That is what really matters, and not where *<locationofchoice>* is located on the map.



Zak S said:


> You can _make the story make sense_, but you can't restore the players' faith that they made decisions that had consequences.




Bridge or desert isn't really a choice. But seeking a long lost temple, or seeking a legendary wizards tower, that is a choice. The intent of the players is the real choice here. Does it really matter if the players encounter a traveling circus when they turn left at the next intersection? Does it matter that they would also have encountered the circus if they had turned right instead? Have I really lost the faith of my players by having them encounter points of interest regardless of where they choose to go? I think you are blowing this way out of proportion. No, what matters is the story, not where things are located.

*The fact that some DM's get so hung up on where important plot points are located, is exactly what leads to the kind of railroading that so many seem to despise. I don't care if the players travel east or west. I can pick up the plot anywhere I want.*


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## S'mon (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> A "quantum ogre" (ie: an obstacle or feature that appears no matter which choice the players make) is a choker. That is: it is a technique that, if used a lot or if used in a way that the players start to notice or if used in a way that makes the players start to think their choices don't matter will register to them as unpleasant railroading.
> 
> If you say "Do you wanna play D&D?" and the adventure is a dungeon and only a dungeon even though theoretically the players could go anywhere else and the players just head in that's "participationism" (like railroading but the players know what they're into and agree).
> 
> ...




Yes, I certainly agree with that. "You are doing this dungeon no matter what" often leads to railroading. 
However "They're going west - unplaced Dungeon X would be appropriate to place there, then" is not railroading IMO. If the PCs had gone in a direction where Dungeon X was inappropriate and then they'd not encounter it, not railroading. If the PCs decide to avoid Dungeon X and go around it, and the GM allows that, then it's not railroading IMO.
Same goes for placement of NPCs and any other feature in front of the PCs.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> The desert or the bridge isn't the choice.




Then why even present them with that choice?


> Bridge or desert isn't really a choice. But seeking a long lost temple, or seeking a legendary wizards tower, that is a choice.




All the choices are choices.

If a choice doesn't matter, leave it out.



> Have I really lost the faith of my players by having them encounter points of interest regardless of where they choose to go? I think you are blowing this way out of proportion. No, what matters is the story, not where things are located.



Hey, maybe your players don't notice this stuff.

I do and mine do. That's our experience.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

S'mon said:


> Yes, I certainly agree with that. "You are doing this dungeon no matter what" often leads to railroading.
> However "They're going west - unplaced Dungeon X would be appropriate to place there, then" is not railroading IMO. If the PCs had gone in a direction where Dungeon X was inappropriate and then they'd not encounter it, not railroading. If the PCs decide to avoid Dungeon X and go around it, and the GM allows that, then it's not railroading IMO.
> Same goes for placement of NPCs and any other feature in front of the PCs.




A thing is only railroading once players begin to experience it as an unpleasant constraint.


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> Then why even present them with that choice?
> All the choices are choices.
> If a choice doesn't matter, leave it out.




I didn't say that it didn't matter entirely what direction they choose. I said that it doesn't matter in regards to where I want the plot to be. If they want to go on a wild adventure, and explore a mysterious island to the west, instead of the country to the east, then certainly that is an important choice. But if I intended for them to run into a notorious cruel pirate, then I can drop him in their path regardless of their choice. Does this make their choice completely useless? Obviously not. 



Zak S said:


> Hey, maybe your players don't notice this stuff.
> I do and mine do. That's our experience.




I don't think neither you or your players would be able to notice the sort of plot juggling I generally do in a campaign. That is because whenever I place the plot anywhere, I then immediately adapt it on the spot, and connect it to other plot lines, as if it had always been there. 

*For example:*

My players decided to ignore the plot at some point, and explore an island. I rolled some random encounters, and updated the map accordingly with what they encountered on their travels. They met some important npc's, and uncovered a mysterious ancient city built into the side of a cliff. With great caution they lowered themselves into the structure, and started exploring it. Since they reached this important location at the end of our session, this left enough time for me to design a dungeon for the next session.

They eventually reached the end of the dungeon, and had a boss battle with some giant spiders. The spiders were guarding a special room, with a coffin that was sealed shut with a spell. The players broke the spell, and opened the coffin, to find a young girl inside. She was meant as a vessel for one of the evil deities in the plot of my campaign, but now the players had disrupted this plan, and added the girl to their pirate crew. And there you go, the plot is picked up again. Its that simple.

*The players wanted to go off on an adventure, and do some dungeon crawling, and I delivered. Their reward was an important ally, and story progression. The story is in service of their adventures, and not the other way around.

*But there are far more ways in which this little field trip of theirs ties into the plot. They uncovered murals that revealed hints at future plot points, they foiled the plans of an evil deity that up till now had been in the background, and their new ally would become deeply involved in the plot later on.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> I didn't say that it didn't matter entirely what direction they choose. I said that it doesn't matter in regards to where I want the plot to be. If they want to go on a wild adventure, and explore a mysterious island to the west, instead of the country to the east, then certainly that is an important choice. But if I intended for them to run into a notorious cruel pirate, then I can drop him in their path regardless of their choice. Does this make their choice completely useless? Obviously not.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




These examples are quite different from what I was attempting to describe originally then:

A situation where there is a choice presented and it has zero consequences.


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> These examples are quite different from what I was attempting to describe originally then:
> 
> A situation where there is a choice presented and it has zero consequences.




I think that goes without saying. My point is, is that bad DM's often panic if the players go left, when the important plot point is to the right. But does it really matter for the story where the plot is located?

On the WocT forums, someone recalled a story of a DM who was running a campaign module. The players chose not to go fight the dragon, and instead wanted to travel into the forest. The DM disallowed this and he literally said that the forest wasn't part of the module. Now that's railroading.

You could move the lair of the dragon elsewhere, but that is problematic if you've already told them that the lair of the dragon is to the east. That would be bad. But you could move the dragon, or you could place plot points in their path that are related to the dragon. The DM wants the players to fight the dragon, -but the players feel that they do not have a good reason to do so. 

I don't run campaign modules for this very reason, because I can't stand being confined to such a narrow plot. But as a storyteller, you should then ask yourself what could motivate them, if the goal is to still get them to fight the dragon. You can't force them to do so. But maybe they can encounter a village that has been burned to the ground, or a village that gets attacked while the players are there? Or maybe the players find a clue to a weapon that could slay the dragon? Maybe the players meet npc's that help them in their quest, or tell them more about what they are facing? 

The plot could be anywhere.

It doesn't seem to me like a small detour through the forest should completely derail their epic quest to slay the dragon. Its not like these players were actively resisting the primary quest of the module. They just decided to head into the forest. So what is in the forest that is related to the plot? Maybe part of the forest is on fire? This sort of stuff almost writes itself.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> On the WocT forums, someone recalled a story of a DM who was running a campaign module. The players chose not to go fight the dragon, and instead wanted to travel into the forest. The DM disallowed this and he literally said that the forest wasn't part of the module. Now that's railroading.



I see a virtue in this (though I'd never do it) in that it's honest.

If a gm is inexperienced or just really wants to run a module and the players have agreed to run that module, I think it's ok to go "Yeah that's not in the module". It's not ideal, but in a Participationistic situation (players are agreeing to a constricted scneario) then I can see all the players going "Ok, no problem"

A constricted situation becomes a railroad NOT when the players experience the constraint, but when they experience the constraint AS A PROBLEM.

Now your solution is also viable, but it's a solution for a more experienced GM or for a group less invested in what content is in the module.


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Oh definitely. I admire the honesty. If you are a beginner DM, then its good to be up front about it. It prevents an awkward situation where the DM feels the need to force his hand, which is arguably worse. Forcing them to go to the dragon by artificial means is bad, but simply telling the players what the limits of the module are, is perfectly fair.

I think the worst type of scenario, is one where for example the players must be captured by the villains. What if they do a really good job to avoid capture? What if they don't surrender, but fight to the death? These are the sort of choices that I think most players want to have the freedom to make. You don't want to be told by your DM "This is what happens, because my script says so".

This doesn't mean that all railroading is bad. In my campaign, the ruler of a local city was assassinated, and he was always going to die in that attack. There was no way to avoid it really. What mattered more, was the after math of this plot point. I wrote it in such a way, that it really caught them by surprise, and there for it was unavoidable. Yes, it is a railroad, but a minor one. It was a plot point that I felt had to happen, in order for the story to progress. Because it created a lot of interesting conflict for the players to resolve. Who would be the new ruler? Would the daughter of the ruler (now one of their npc crew members) take his place, and abandon their crew? Would they organize a retaliation, to bring the perpetrators to justice? How would they convince all of the important nobles whom the new ruler should be? What would this do the security of the region? Would the privateer contract, under which the players operated, still be valid under a new ruler?

I don't railroad often. But sometimes you can't let a great Game of Thrones moment go to waste. If I feel the players are getting a bit to comfy, then I'll hit them with an unexpected turn of events. The plot needs to stay exciting and unpredictable.


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## pemerton (Oct 8, 2015)

Starfox said:


> Off on a tangent here, but is this what is called narrative games in The Forge's Narrative-Storytelling-Gamist theory? I must admit I never quite grasped the concept of narrative as they use it, but this seems pretty close.



I think you're running together two different things.

_Narrativism_ is, in the Forge's lexicon, a species of motivation/aspiration for RPGing. Roughly, it is RPGing with the goal of having an aesthetically pleasing and significant experience by participating in the creation of a story. A contrast is intended with White Wolf or AD&D 2nd ed or AP-style "storytelling", in which the story has already been authored, and so the players don't get to write it but only to get to learn what has been written.

Narrativist play depends upon techniques that avoid the GM having already written the story and deciding what is significant and what isn't. One technique that is popular for this is "scene-framing": rather than the GM preauthoring a setting which the players then explore via their PCs, the GM frames the players (via their PCs) into circumstances of dramatic conflict/challenge - using, as cues for this, information provided to the GM in various formal and informal ways by the players. The resolution of each scene provides the material (new shared fiction, changes in PCs' dramatic needs, emotional/thematic elements, etc) out of which new scenes are framed.



Celebrim said:


> In both the sandbox and the adventure path you have tons of 'myth'.  That is to say, on the slice of possibilities we are discussing the notion that that there is a concrete setting preexisting the players is largely assumed.  The idea is do away with the setting, which in theory allows you to produce stories with lots of play buy in, but without fixed goals or events because the setting itself isn't fixed and is generated in response to player proactivity.  It sounds good in theory, but in practice it has a lot of huge traps.  One of them is that when you do away with a concrete setting, you remove the one security that the players have that they characters actually have agency.  Theoretically, if the players are being allowed to create the myth based on their metagame desires, then the players have agency.  But if the GM is not being constrained by his prior agreed upon myth, the problem is the GM is not being constrained at all.  The myth that a GM creates for himself and his commitment to stay true to that myth is the one real limit on GM power.  How can you say you overturning the GM's 'will' for the game, if the GM is completely free to create any contingency that they want?
> 
> In fact, what 'no myth' games seem to do is get players to accept buying a ticket on a railroad, and then letting the GM railroad however he likes.  They even openly promote railroading techniques as ways to improve the story, with the GM empowered to create whatever he wants at any moment to have the story move in the direction the GM at that moment thinks will be best.  If the GM wants the bad guy to escape because it's good for the story - a classic sign of railroading - in these games that's what he's supposed to do.



I'm wondering which no-myth/scene-framing systems you have in mind.

The systems of this sort that I'm familiar with use a range of techniques to constrain GM power - mostly tight action resolution mechanics, but also mechanics that allow the players to engage in various forms of director-stance-ish fictional content introduction. And sometime also constraints around GM fictional content introduction (eg the Doom Pool in MHRP).

Your example of having the villain escape, for instance, involves the GM suspending the action resolution rules. I'm not sure what Forge-y system you have in mind that advocates this. I typically associate it with the WW "golden rule", which is exactly the sort of GM pre-authorship that Forge-y narrativism is trying to avoid.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> But what if the players turn around at the sight of the wizards tower? A DM should never panic when that happens, and the best way to handle that problem, is to ensure that it never becomes a problem to begin with. Don't make your plot hinge on the players meeting the wizard.




Hinging the plot on something like meeting the wizard is perfectly fine, so long as you don't force the players to enter the wizard's tower.  If they see the tower and the plot calls for them to enter and foil the wizard who is trying to create a particularly nasty monster, and they ignore the tower and continue on, so be it.  The plot continues on without them and the monster is created and ravishes the countryside, possibly killing people that the PCs know and love or possibly not, depending on where the tower is.  If the PCs go far enough, they may not hear about what is happening.  If they are close enough, stories of the monster will reach them via rumor.  

The key is to never force a plot, ANY plot on the PCs.  Do that and you are not railroading.  Don't do that and you are.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> A thing is only railroading once players begin to experience it as an unpleasant constraint.




Railroading happens whenever choice is removed, pleasant constraint or not.  Railroading only becomes bad when it's unpleasant.


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## Maxperson (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> I didn't say that it didn't matter entirely what direction they choose. I said that it doesn't matter in regards to where I want the plot to be. If they want to go on a wild adventure, and explore a mysterious island to the west, instead of the country to the east, then certainly that is an important choice. But if I intended for them to run into a notorious cruel pirate, then I can drop him in their path regardless of their choice. Does this make their choice completely useless? Obviously not.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




That's railroading.  You denied the players the ability to ignore your plot and forced it on them anyway.


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## cavesalamander (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> It matters in the following manner:
> 
> if you are going to negate the choice (ie put the tower in their path no matter which way the go) then it is better to have not offered that choice to begin with.




If the players make an uninformed choice, then I see no difference as to whether the DM placed the tower there before the game began, during game play because they thought it was cool, or rolled it randomly on a wildnerness encounter table.

If the players make their choice because they intentionally did not want to go to the wizard's tower, then placing it in front of them like that is both railroading and a dick move.


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## N'raac (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> A DM under no circumstance is allowed to improvise. They are not playing the game, they are running it. It is the players who choose where to go and what to do by telling the DM how to move their pieces around the hidden game board. And just as in any game anywhere a player cannot "ruin the plot", aka act against someone else's wishes, when playing a game. They are expressing their own desires sure, but really they are attempting to score points in a game.
> 
> This is an example of a DM improvising.




This was the "you are supposed to fight the bandits, not surrender your money or flee" example.  The GM clearly expected the players to fight the bandits.  Having the bandits take the wizard's money and leave, or shake their fists and curse the fleeing PC's cowardice, would be improvising.  Having the bandits attack the wizard anyway, and suddenly have the means to catch the fellow on horseback, is not improvising - it is failing to improvise by forcing the battle to happen as planned.



Zak S said:


> whatever this conversation is about improvisation and storytelling and editions in general is, I don't see it leading to interesting answers to the OP.




Drift happens.  Your "players" are venturing off the "adventure path" into a side quest, or perhaps are abandoning your plot, never to return.  Why are you trying to railroad them back onto your pre-planned discussion topic?



S'mon said:


> Like I said, you say you consider _placing a dungeon in front of the PCs_ to be railroading. Dungeon is initially unplaced, PCs say they're going west, GM says they see the dungeon in front of them = railroading. As far as I can tell from this statement above, you stand by your opinion.




I'd call that a form of railroading - no matter where you go, there's that temple.  It could not  be avoided.



Imaculata said:


> I think it's only railroading if the players have to visit the temple to progress the plot. And that doesn't become a problem, until the players decide that they don't want to visit the spooky trap-filled temple.




This is just a matter of degree.  I could say "fine, they walk away from the temple".  And there will be another temple wherever they go in a few days (and this one now retroactively has the encounters I wanted to run).  I could say "NOOOOOO!!!!!  You have to explore the temple - that is the game today!!!!!"  I could have them encounter a steady series of "clues" that they should go back and explore the temple.  Or I could just refuse to dangle any more adventure hooks until they either go back to explore that temple, or die of boredom.  All of these are forms of railroading - I am forcing the temple upon them.



Imaculata said:


> I think a smart DM understands that if the plot hinges on the players finding a particular item, then he could move the item anywhere he wants. So the players ignore the creepy temple. Fine. If they need to find that magical key, then it's probably somewhere else now. What they don't know, does not matter.




In a true sandbox, that key sits in the temple.  Maybe that means the plot that hinged on it ends and the PC's go do something else.  Perhaps it means that the PC's all die because they needed that key to succeed.  Too bad.  They made their choices, and nothing in the game can change to alter the consequences of those choices.  "Bad sandbox"?  Sure.  But it's still the sandbox.



Imaculata said:


> Taking my bandit scenario from earlier, the DM clearly wanted this bandit problem to be our focus. This was what we were supposed to deal with. Maybe the bandits had an important clue, so we could track down their hide out or leader. But the plot should not depend on us finding that note (or what ever item it was). Why not allow the party to get robbed, and arrive at the next village empty handed? Maybe there's a friendly farmer who feels bad for these unlucky adventurers, and offers them a place to stay in his stables? Maybe he even offers them food, and during dinner, he tells them of the bandit problem. And there you go, there's your clue, and you've just made up an interesting npc on the spot.
> 
> This is why improvisation is key in D&D. A DM should never panic. Embrace the choices of your players, and run with it. So what if they don't go straight to the dragon cave? Make up a village that they encounter along the way, and have the dragon attack the village, and fly off. That's how the story comes to the players.




CHOO CHOO!!!  

To not railroad this, well, since they did not find the clue, then I guess they will not follow up the plot thread.  Put all 15 levels of that plot aside, since the players have chosen, albeit unknowingly, not to pursue it.  They choose not to go to the Dragon's cave?  Then they do not encounter he Dragon - that was their choice.  Putting the Dragon back in their path?  Railroad.

That railroad is neither good nor bad, intrinsically, but it denies the players the ability to avoid (deliberately or accidentally) the plot the GM wants them to pursue.



Imaculata said:


> I think that goes without saying. My point is, is that bad DM's often panic if the players go left, when the important plot point is to the right. But does it really matter for the story where the plot is located?
> 
> On the WocT forums, someone recalled a story of a DM who was running a campaign module. The players chose not to go fight the dragon, and instead wanted to travel into the forest. The DM disallowed this and he literally said that the forest wasn't part of the module. Now that's railroading.
> 
> ...




CHOO CHOO - if they choose not to go after the dragon (whether for now, or for ever), then they do not go after the Dragon.  Move on to a different plot - the players have rejected this one.



Imaculata said:


> It doesn't seem to me like a small detour through the forest should completely derail their epic quest to slay the dragon. Its not like these players were actively resisting the primary quest of the module. They just decided to head into the forest. So what is in the forest that is related to the plot? Maybe part of the forest is on fire? This sort of stuff almost writes itself.




Why does anything in the forest need to be related to the plot you wish to railroad the players into?  Perhaps the forest is filled with giant spiders, who are bred there by Drow, and the players can find their secret entrance to the Underdark and spend the rest of the campaign exploring it, leaving the dragon in peace.  THAT is a sandbox.



Maxperson said:


> Railroading happens whenever choice is removed, pleasant constraint or not.  Railroading only becomes bad when it's unpleasant.






Maxperson said:


> That's railroading.  You denied the players the ability to ignore your plot and forced it on them anyway.




Agreed absolutely.


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## billd91 (Oct 8, 2015)

N'raac said:


> I'd call that a form of railroading - no matter where you go, there's that temple.  It could not  be avoided.




Meh. Hard to get worked up with that as significant railroading. Might as well call the campaign world a railroad since they can't avoid it. 





N'raac said:


> CHOO CHOO!!!
> 
> To not railroad this, well, since they did not find the clue, then I guess they will not follow up the plot thread.  Put all 15 levels of that plot aside, since the players have chosen, albeit unknowingly, not to pursue it.  They choose not to go to the Dragon's cave?  Then they do not encounter he Dragon - that was their choice.  Putting the Dragon back in their path?  Railroad.
> 
> That railroad is neither good nor bad, intrinsically, but it denies the players the ability to avoid (deliberately or accidentally) the plot the GM wants them to pursue.




I really can't say that putting information in front of the PCs, whether it's from the initial planned source or another, improvised source, is really railroading. You're still giving them the choice of how they use the information. In fact, it'll be the only way they can make an *informed* choice - by knowing about the potential adventures out there and then pursuing one or more of them.


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> That's railroading.  You denied the players the ability to ignore your plot and forced it on them anyway.




Its really not. The players weren't actively trying to ignore the plot. They just wanted to go on an adventure, and hoped that they would find a cool plot along the way. I don't like putting signposts everywhere with "Please go here! No not that way! This way!". 

If I present a problem to my players, like for example a dragon, then I don't force them to fight that dragon. But if the dragon is part of the plot, then I will make sure that they at least learn about the dragon. And I don't expect them to go looking for something that they do not yet know exists. So to some degree, you've got to bring the plot to them. You can't expect them to already know where your adventure hooks will be. And they're not actively trying to avoid adventure hooks. They are role playing, and doing what they think their characters would do in that situation. It is up to me, as a DM, to make the journey exciting. Be it in the form of quests, plot hooks, npc's or random encounters.



N'raac said:


> This is just a matter of degree.  I could say "fine, they walk away from the temple".  And there will be another temple wherever they go in a few days




THEN it would be railroading.



N'raac said:


> In a true sandbox, that key sits in the temple.  Maybe that means the plot that hinged on it ends and the PC's go do something else.  Perhaps it means that the PC's all die because they needed that key to succeed.  Too bad.  They made their choices, and nothing in the game can change to alter the consequences of those choices.  "Bad sandbox"?  Sure.  But it's still the sandbox.




But it's a bad sandbox,and a terrible way to tell a story. We're trying to run a good campaign here I would assume?



N'raac said:


> To not railroad this, well, since they did not find the clue, then I guess they will not follow up the plot thread.  Put all 15 levels of that plot aside, since the players have chosen, albeit unknowingly, not to pursue it.




That is a terrible way to handle it. So you're going to shove all of your story into the garbage bin when ever the players unknowingly walk away from the plot? Then you'll never have a plot. The players aren't psychic, and they probably do want to experience the plot. They just don't know what is, and what isn't plot related. That is why I sprinkle bits of plot everywhere, and many plot threads are not tied to any specific location.



N'raac said:


> That railroad is neither good nor bad, intrinsically, but it denies the players the ability to avoid (deliberately or accidentally) the plot the GM wants them to pursue.




I don't really care what plot line my players do or do not follow up on. But I do care about them at least having a plot. I think there should at least be some sort of a story. And that story can be a side quest, which may or may not be related to the overarching story. It could just be lore that isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things. But my players are on an adventure, and I'll make sure that ride is filled with plot lines.



N'raac said:


> CHOO CHOO - if they choose not to go after the dragon (whether for now, or for ever), then they do not go after the Dragon.  Move on to a different plot - the players have rejected this one.




Do the players know that the forest is not related to the dragon? No they don't. Do you know for certain that the players have no intention to fight the dragon? No, you don't know that either. Maybe the players want to gather more information on the beast first. Maybe they want to make sure they are better equipped. As a storyteller, you should provide those things for them. Have them meet victims of the dragon on their journey. Give them the opportunity to learn more about the beast, and to properly equip themselves. So what if they don't go to the dragon in a straight line? 



N'raac said:


> Why does anything in the forest need to be related to the plot you wish to railroad the players into?  Perhaps the forest is filled with giant spiders, who are bred there by Drow, and the players can find their secret entrance to the Underdark and spend the rest of the campaign exploring it, leaving the dragon in peace.  THAT is a sandbox.




I think a better question is, how long do you think your campaign will entertain your players, if you constantly throw plot-less stuff at them? Why would a DM be so hooked up on where the plot is supposed to be located?

For example:

My players are currently trying to clear an island of a tribe of cannibals. Problem is, they don't know where their village is. The cannibal plot is a minor plot, that is loosely related to the main plot line. I'm not forcing them to go clear that island, that is all their idea. But I made sure there is a story related to these cannibals, and some plot twists along the way. Its their adventure, and I just facilitate the ride.

Now I don't know where the cannibal village is located. And I'm not going to force them to randomly scout the entire island until they stumble upon it by accident. I suppose I could randomly roll for the percentage of chance that they find it, but that is no way to tell a story. It doesn't matter for the story where the village is located. Its somewhere in the jungle, and they'll discover it when I think the story calls for it.


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## Bleys Icefalcon (Oct 8, 2015)

Alright.

For those of you who remeber a few paperbacks came out (cough) awhile ago, for a DnD type variant called Arduin.  The Arduin Grimoire, and all of it's nonsensical and incredible gaming fluff and I have been dear friends for some time now.  Over the long years I would pick a nugget here and there from them and integrate said gems into my ongoing campaign/gaming world.  A few years ago I decided to go all in and created the world of Arduin itself.

And ever since different powers/beings/Gods - et al - have been trying to take the planet over.  One of the unique things about Arduin is it's Plateau of Forever, with portals to every possible where and every possible when.  Imagine a single place that could connect a powerul invading force... to anywhere, or even anywhen.  The possibilities are quite literally infinite.

The players of the game, all of whom are from different worlds, are of different races initially came together to assist in stopping one of these various powers.  Now they are an adventuring crew that simply likes to world hop.  They right wrongs for the most part, but they go looking for what they want to do next and in my case I really don't have to do to much to hook them.  Now, this is an experienced group of players, who kow me very well.  I in turn know then very well.  Our play style as a group, as a whole, does not require for me as their DM to do alot of leading.  We, the all of us know what we are going to do, wherewe are going et al.  And in Arduin, they go everywhere, and at times it seems somewhat haphazard where they will go, and how long they spend on something.  They might be off "trying to save a/the world" for several sittings, or they might spend several in game weeks exploring a new city or dungeon.

With a newer group of players, who don't know one another, or their DM that much, this would be an entirely different beast.  It would require a more firm, more guiding hand - though not with them being pulled around by their rose ring per say.  I have always, and wil always allow a TPK (Total Party Kill) to occur, if it simply makes sense for it to occur.  We have the enough Certificates of Death that most of the surface area on the walls of our garage are covered with them.  They aren't coddled.  This said, I tend to be more heavy handed with a less experienced group than veterans.

And the ones who are more interested in what's trending on facebook than the game at hand are quickly, quietly weeded out.


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## Celebrim (Oct 8, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> You're in the wrong forum.  This is "*Older D&D Editions, D&D Variants, and OSR Gaming*"
> It's a forum about playing and running actual games. Not group storytelling.




This probably deserves a 'fork' but I don't see  a 'fork this to a new topic' button.

You may can bully the noobs with that sort of claim, but I've been around since the first AD&D 1e hardback was published and the OD&D books were still in TSR's product catalog.  Improvisation has been a part of the game since the very beginning.  An irrefutable example is the notion of a random encounter, which in the case of 1e AD&D would have included a percentage chance of being in the lair, which means a DM was expected to be able to improvise a reasonable map of some sort (a ruined castle inhabited by a hitherto unknown orc tribe, a dank cave inhabited by some dragon or fell beast, a sealed tomb containing some ancient evil, etc.) on the spot.  Indeed, a case could be made that their is an implied fully improvised campaign that can be run entirely out of the 1e AD&D monster manuals.  Indeed, there is yet another improvised campaign implied by the random dungeon generator in the 1e AD&D DMG.

So what you are actually offended by isn't 'improvisation' per se.  Fundamentally, stuff that is improvised in play by some means is no different that stuff that is improvised before the session by some means.  In both cases, the DM has the full power to specify what you call the invisible board.  And during a game, PC's will always attempt things or ask questions about the environment that aren't fully specified by the notes regarding the map.  That's every bit as much 'going off the map' as actually trying to step into a part of the map not yet drawn.  

What you are offended by is the DM improvising in an antagonistic manner, either motivated by his desire to 'win' and keep the players from defeating the scenario, or motivated by some other desire to achieve a particular outcome.  You associate this with 'improvisation' and 'story-telling', and therefore declare those things categorically bad.  But you are confused.  Improvisation can be done in a neutral, unbiased, manner as part of just "running the game".  Indeed, every single D&D game I've ever played in featured improvisation, and I'd be willing to bet everyone you play in does as well.  Moreover, declaring as a DM that the PC's can't walk off the map is such bad DMing, that I haven't actually done it since 6th grade (and then only once) and even as a 6th grader I recognized that I wasn't artfully or skillfully running the game and I needed to develop better techniques.  Those techniques basically are doing in play, under time pressure, what you'd normally do prior to play preparing the session.  And likewise 'story-telling' has been a part of the game since the beginning.  Granted, those stories were often open ended, and I agree should be open ended.  But even something as simple in concept as G1-2-3 is a story and has story elements in it.


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## S'mon (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> These examples are quite different from what I was attempting to describe originally then:
> 
> A situation where there is a choice presented and it has zero consequences.




Yes, that is Illusionism and best avoided.


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## S'mon (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> I see a virtue in this (though I'd never do it) in that it's honest.
> 
> If a gm is inexperienced or just really wants to run a module and the players have agreed to run that module, I think it's ok to go "Yeah that's not in the module". It's not ideal, but in a Participationistic situation (players are agreeing to a constricted scneario) then I can see all the players going "Ok, no problem"




My experience of this (in Rise of the Runelords) was that it really sucked, because it broke my immersion.  The adventure listed all these goblin tribes, exposition NPC talks about them, I say "Let's investigate Tribe X", GM says "No, only Tribe Y is detailed in the adventure". That sucked.


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## Schmoe (Oct 8, 2015)

I'm gathering from this discussion that a sandbox consists of the PCs in a sort of stasis bubble in which nothing happens outside of what they directly interact with, because if it did, then hey, it's a railroad plot that happened even though the players didn't wNt it to.


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## Celebrim (Oct 8, 2015)

Schmoe said:


> I'm gathering from this discussion that a sandbox consists of the PCs in a sort of stasis bubble in which nothing happens outside of what they directly interact with, because if it did, then hey, it's a railroad plot that happened even though the players didn't wNt it to.




I don't think that drive by straw men are really helpful to the discussion.  Nor do I think anyone has used sandbox in that manner.  The idea that nothing exists except what the players choose to interact with is closer in concept to the idea of having "no myth" than it is to a sandbox, and is I think tangential to what a sandbox actually is.   I can imagine however a sandbox that works like that, where new 'chunks' of the world are only loaded into the world as needed.  In fact Minecraft works like this, and is clearly a sandbox, abliet a computer game rather than an RPG.  But we could easily play in a sandbox style in a PnP game where the DM created new parts of the game world through some process only as needed.

What a sandbox doesn't have is a DM created goal of play and so it tends to lack content that is created for a specific narrative purpose.  Instead, the DM creating a sandbox is primarily creating content according to some rule(s) in his head formal or informal as to what is 'realistic' for the setting.  The DM's motives in a sandbox are less 'what would be interesting' or 'what would make a good story' than they are, "What would be here if this world was real."   And the DM allows the PC's to explore this simulated reality in their own way and at their own pace, without reference to metagame considerations like balance or story.  

I should say "plot" is thrown around as a very loose term to mean two different things.  People will refer to "plot" is it relates to a story to mean: "the main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence."  In that sense, a sandbox does not have a preconceived "plot", but only acquires something that resembles a narrative through the transcription of play.   But a sandbox can nonetheless contains "plots", if by plots you mean: "a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something".  It's perfectly reasonable and realistic that a fantasy world will contain various groups that are making plans to carry out various activities whether related to or unrelated to the PC's, and that the PC's can - if they go to the right places at the right times - discover these "plots".  But in a pure sandbox, discovery of these plots is triggered by the PC's going to the right places at the right times and if they don't discover the "plots", then that's ok too.   In a purely linear adventure, events tend to be triggered by the arrival of the PC's regardless of time and place of their arrival, because the PC's are meant to see each of the main events of a story as they have been devised and presented by the GM.


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## TheFindus (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> It matters in the following manner:
> 
> if you are going to negate the choice (ie put the tower in their path no matter which way the go) then it is better to have not offered that choice to begin with.



I have a question: by "choice" you mean the players know about the tower and intentionally avoid it, right? Because if the players do not know the dungeon is there at all, it does not exist in play. And as long as something (anything) does not exist in play, there a) cannot be a choice of the players about it which can be negated and b) it does not matter where the DM puts it into play.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Schmoe said:


> I'm gathering from this discussion that a sandbox consists of the PCs in a sort of stasis bubble in which nothing happens outside of what they directly interact with, because if it did, then hey, it's a railroad plot that happened even though the players didn't wNt it to.




This is wholly incorrect for 2 reasons:

1. Events can simply proceed offscreen and players interact with them at different stages depending on when they come in contact with them (real life works like this--if you get tickets to see the Knicks, you interact with the Knicks at whatever stage of the season they're in when you show up. Their path is predetermined EXCEPT inasmuch as the players interact with them.)

2. Players "interacting" with things early on (in even 1 or 2 sessions) can butterfly-effect events far outside what they see during the session. For example, if you run Death Frost Doom in session 1, the players could deal with the effects of DFD for the rest of a 6 year campaign, including things that happened when they weren't watching.

However it's worth noting that 1 (unexplained and unanticipatable events) can be used so much they railroad players.

Again: railroading isn't 1 technique, it's a use of common (often necessary) techniques in such a way that
the players feel them negating their choices.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

TheFindus said:


> I have a question: by "choice" you mean the players know about the tower and intentionally avoid it, right? Because if the players do not know the dungeon is there at all, it does not exist in play. And as long as something (anything) does not exist in play, there a) cannot be a choice of the players about it which can be negated and b) it does not matter where the DM puts it into play.



The more important thing is whether the choice has any effect at all. If not: that's a waste of time.

If the entire content of either choice is the same, the choice doesn't matter. If the tower is the ONLY thing there either way, it was a pointless choice.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

cavesalamander said:


> If the players make an uninformed choice, then I see no difference as to whether the DM placed the tower there before the game began, during game play because they thought it was cool, or rolled it randomly on a wildnerness encounter table.



Then why was the choice there at all? You're just wasting time.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> Railroading happens whenever choice is removed, pleasant constraint or not.  Railroading only becomes bad when it's unpleasant.




It's a semantic argument. A lot of people call "Pleasant railroading" 'participationism". I don't care what you call it.

I will say "choice is removed" is way too vague a description. Choice is always being limited in a game by the mere fact that, say, Glorantha isn't Greyhawk so you can't do Greyhawk specific things there. It's the OVERuse of techniques that limit choice that makes a railroad.

But when have you OVERused them? When the players experience it as negative and constraining.

Like if I go "There are 2 paths" I've just limited choice by not including thousands of other paths. Limiting options is necessary for their to be a game. It's limiting them so much that the players don't feel they have choices that it's a railroad.

Now "negation" is a specific technique--the players make a choice and you retroactively remove its consequences, that's super -railroady. But it's not the only way to "remove choice"--the line about when a choice has been "removed" is remarkably slippery,

Details:
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2010/05/chokers-and-chandlers.html


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## TheFindus (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> The more important thing is whether the choice has any effect at all. If not: that's a waste of time.
> 
> If the entire content of either choice is the same, the choice doesn't matter. If the tower is the ONLY thing there either way, it was a pointless choice.




Say the players decide to go east in the forest and they encounter dungeon 1 without having known that dungeon 1 is there.
If they had decided to turn west and the DM puts dungeon 1 there (the players still do not know about the existence of dungeon 1) then this is lame, bland and unimaginative DMing, I agree. He/she should have prepared (or rolled up or whatever) something else, but not dungeon 1. But no matter what, the players did not make a choice about dungeon 1. Dungeon 1 does not exist unless there is in-play information about it (unless the players know about it in play, it does not exist). No choice regarding dungeon 1 was negated. Therefore it is not railroading.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

TheFindus said:


> Say the players decide to go east in the forest and they encounter dungeon 1 without having known that dungeon 1 is there.
> If they had decided to turn west and the DM puts dungeon 1 there (the players still do not know about the existence of dungeon 1) then this is lame, bland and unimaginative DMing, I agree. He/she should have prepared (or rolled up or whatever) something else, but not dungeon 1. But no matter what, the players did not make a choice about dungeon 1. Dungeon 1 does not exist unless there is in-play information about it (unless the players know about it in play, it does not exist). No choice regarding dungeon 1 was negated. Therefore it is not railroading.




I wasn't talking about whether it was railroading specifically, I was talking about whether it was a waste of time ("a pointless choice").

If there's a choice and the choice leads to no different outcome in any way it's DEFINITELY a waste of time*.

Whether it's railroading depends on some details of how it is handled. Never offering genuine choices to begin with can sometimes railroad people as hard as negating them after the fact.


-
-
-
*Exception in the case of like if it's a spooky and tension-filled choice, but we weren't talking about that kind of situation.


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## S'mon (Oct 8, 2015)

TheFindus said:


> Say the players decide to go east in the forest and they encounter dungeon 1 without having known that dungeon 1 is there.
> If they had decided to turn west and the DM puts dungeon 1 there (the players still do not know about the existence of dungeon 1) then this is lame, bland and unimaginative DMing, I agree. He/she should have prepared (or rolled up or whatever) something else, but not dungeon 1




Now I feel sad. 
IMC the PCs didn't chase some bandits, which would have led to Dungeon 1. So I decided 
to use Dungeon 1 in a different locale instead, and the bandit cave would then be a 
different dungeon.
I dunno what's so bad about giving the PCs a chance to explore Dungeon 1 by having it be one of the ones the PCs become aware of. I only have so many detailed dungeons, after all.  I don't *force* them to explore Dungeon 1 (and in fact tonight they decided to explore Dungeon 2 instead), I just used it as a possible choice.


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

S'mon said:


> Now I feel sad.
> IMC the PCs didn't chase some bandits, which would have led to Dungeon 1. So I decided
> to use Dungeon 1 in a different locale instead, and the bandit cave would then be a
> different dungeon.
> I dunno what's so bad about giving the PCs a chance to explore Dungeon 1 by having it be one of the ones the PCs become aware of. I only have so many detailed dungeons, after all.  I don't *force* them to explore Dungeon 1 (and in fact tonight they decided to explore Dungeon 2 instead), I just used it as a possible choice.




This is how I feel as well. Is the choice of the players negated just because you decided to use an unused dungeon elsewhere? I think not. The dungeon wasn't defined up till that point. 

And to go back to the wizards tower example. Is it meaningless to give the players a choice to go left or right, and then place the wizards tower at what ever direction they picked? Of course that's not meaningless. Yes, the DM could have placed the tower anywhere he wanted. But isn't that true of EVERYTHING in the campaign? Npc's, items, monsters. If I want a villain to show up, he could be staying at the same inn as the players for all I care. Of course that is just an extreme example, but I think you get my point. No, this is not railroading.

Railroading is when you are stuck on a track from A to B, and there are no choices to be made at all. Its when the DM decides not only the story, but also the outcome of the story, and decides the choices of the players for them. That's railroading. When they have no choice what so ever.

Having the players stumble upon a decimated village after entering the forest, is a plot point that is tied to the overall story of the dragon. It confronts the players with a situation, which the players can respond to. That is not railroading the players, that is respecting their choice, and adapting the story according to their choices (the opposite of railroading).

*To give an example from my own campaign:*

My campaign is all about a region in which privateering is a legit business, because the pirates are basically legitimized by the king of a country, that is at war with another country. As long as the players raid the enemy, its all good. Unfortunately another powerful nation is less happy about their trade routes being disrupted by pirates, and so they have enlisted a warlord to take out the pirates for good. 

The players are aware that trouble is brewing. Over the course of the campaign, hints have slowly started appearing that a fleet is being gathered against the pirates. Then ships started disappearing... one by one. Now the players are seeking the help of various pirate cultures, to aid them in this war. Then there's also the rise of a powerful evil entity in the realm of the dead, which is another problem entirely, but still a cause for concern.

That's the basic premise of the campaign, everything else is in their hands. They can sail anywhere they like, and try and recruit allies. They can go on wild adventures, and explore strange and dangerous islands. Or they can go off and hunt other ships, or maybe even hunt sea monsters. Meanwhile they are also building a base (something the players came up with). They can even venture into the realm of the dead.

As a DM I merely have to advance the plot occasionally. I know where the plot is heading eventually, and so do the players (a big battle). But its all about the journey. Any of their expeditions have interactions with a plot. Maybe not the main plot, but there's always some plot. Be it a side quest, or a story regarding one of their crew members, or their own personal plot. But I don't make their decisions for them, and that's the key difference. Yes, I would call this a sandbox. But sandboxes can have a story too. Look at a game like GTA, that's a sandbox, yet it has plenty of story.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> And to go back to the wizards tower example. Is it meaningless to give the players a choice to go left or right, and then place the wizards tower at what ever direction they picked? Of course that's not meaningless. Yes, the DM could have placed the tower anywhere he wanted. But isn't that true of EVERYTHING in the campaign? Npc's, items, monsters.




Not at all in any way--

The DM can write:
"It's sandy on the left, if you go left there's a beach, there are footprints leading only one way to the right, the tower is there"
or the DM can write
"It's sandy on the left, if you go left there's the tower, there are footprints leading only one way to the right, there's the tower"

...those are completely different in every way.

The second choice is literally meaningless. The first is meaningful--the DM provided options, the players chose options in accord with their preference. Meaningful structured choices among options provided by someone else are the underlying engine of every game that ever existed.


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## Imaculata (Oct 8, 2015)

Zak S said:


> or the DM can write
> "It's sandy on the left, if you go left there's the tower, there are footprints leading only one way to the right, there's the tower"




That would never happen. It would be more along the lines of:

*DM:* "It's sandy on the left, and the road slopes up a grassy hill on the right. You smell the sea in the distance, but to the right its nothing but a long stretch of grassland as far as the eye can see."

*Players:* "We go towards the sea."

*DM: *"After crossing a few sandy dunes, you eventually see the endless blue of the ocean in the distance. But as your gaze glances to the left, you see the outlines of a lone tower in the distance."


In this example, the tower was placed where the players were going, towards the sea. And obviously if they decided to turn back at this point, the tower wouldn't also be on the right. But it could have been originally. It doesn't matter for the players, they made a choice to head towards the sea, and that is where they found the tower.


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## Zak S (Oct 8, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> That would never happen.... tower.




Then we're right back where we were a few posts ago where I already said:

if the _sole content_ of the choice is the presence of the tower, that is genuinely a waste of time.

If it isn't, that's different.


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## Bawylie (Oct 9, 2015)

There's nothing wrong (at all) with cannibalizing and repurposing stuff. Dungeon 1 in the Forest got skipped and the players went for the desert instead. 

But the content of dungeon 1, the layout, the pre-generated combat encounters, traps, treasures, can all be remixed and reused. 

Normally, I prep knowing that some stuff will very likely see use in play and some stuff likely not. So I prefer to create the "bones" of the encounters, dungeons, etc., and only flesh it out during play. 

So maybe I'll have a 6 room complex that I can use. And maybe it'll end up a warehouse, or a thieves' guild, or jail. Idk. 

And what isn't used can be banked, remixed, and reused when needed. 

The thing about APs is that the pre-generated stuff is already fleshed out. So if you are going to reuse or remix it, it's a bit more work. This is why I end up taking them apart, cross-referencing pages, and generally treating it more like a toolkit than a structured experience (for regular weekly play - this is all different for 1 shot, or limited session play).


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> Its really not. The players weren't actively trying to ignore the plot. They just wanted to go on an adventure, and hoped that they would find a cool plot along the way. I don't like putting signposts everywhere with "Please go here! No not that way! This way!".
> 
> If I present a problem to my players, like for example a dragon, then I don't force them to fight that dragon. But if the dragon is part of the plot, then I will make sure that they at least learn about the dragon. And I don't expect them to go looking for something that they do not yet know exists. So to some degree, you've got to bring the plot to them. You can't expect them to already know where your adventure hooks will be. And they're not actively trying to avoid adventure hooks. They are role playing, and doing what they think their characters would do in that situation. It is up to me, as a DM, to make the journey exciting. Be it in the form of quests, plot hooks, npc's or random encounters.




By your example, they were on the plot and decided to leave it and explore somewhere else.  By placing the plot inside that new dungeon you took away their agency.  You invalidated their choice to leave the plot behind and go do something by forcing them to encounter the plot again in a different spot when that plot point could have remained with the original plot, and you invalidated their ability to choose whether or not to go back to the plot they left behind.

That's railroading.  I'm not saying that railroading is always bad, but it is what you were engaging in when you invalidated their choices like that and forced the plot on them.


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

Zak S said:


> I will say "choice is removed" is way too vague a description. Choice is always being limited in a game by the mere fact that, say, Glorantha isn't Greyhawk so you can't do Greyhawk specific things there. It's the OVERuse of techniques that limit choice that makes a railroad.




It's only a vague description if you completely ignore context.  We're discussing taking away player/PC choice in what they do.  Therefore, when someone says choice is removed, it is specifically only in that context, not some general statement that someone can take as vague.  To argue that it is vague and can even remotely mean the same thing as deciding what world the game is going to be played in is disingenuous at best.


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## pemerton (Oct 9, 2015)

S'mon said:


> My experience of this (in Rise of the Runelords) was that it really sucked, because it broke my immersion.  The adventure listed all these goblin tribes, exposition NPC talks about them, I say "Let's investigate Tribe X", GM says "No, only Tribe Y is detailed in the adventure". That sucked.



Would it have been better if the GM had just used the descriptions about Y to handle your investigation of X (taking a punt that you would never bother coming back to the "real" Y, or at least giving the GM time to come up with new details for Y)?



cavesalamander said:


> If the players make an uninformed choice, then I see no difference as to whether the DM placed the tower there before the game began, during game play because they thought it was cool, or rolled it randomly on a wildnerness encounter table.



While I'm generally sympathetic to [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] and [MENTION=90370]Zak S[/MENTION] saying that giving illusory choices is a waste of time, I don't think it always is.

I think a lot of these illusory choices are just about creating a bit of colour. By choosing the desert or the forest, the players choose some colour. If the GM is any good, this also means that perhaps the dragon at the bottom of the dungeon gets changed from blue to green, or vice versa. If the PCs choose to go north then the weather at the dungeon is cold (assuming the typical northern hemispheric gameworld); if they choose to go south then the weather is warm.

Contributing to colour in this way isn't the greatest expression of player agency by any means, but I can see why some RPGers wouldn't regard it as a complete was of time. (I think this is at least part of what [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION] is trying to get at in this thread.)



S'mon said:


> IMC the PCs didn't chase some bandits, which would have led to Dungeon 1. So I decided to use Dungeon 1 in a different locale instead, and the bandit cave would then be a different dungeon.
> 
> I dunno what's so bad about giving the PCs a chance to explore Dungeon 1 by having it be one of the ones the PCs become aware of. I only have so many detailed dungeons, after all.  I don't *force* them to explore Dungeon 1 (and in fact tonight they decided to explore Dungeon 2 instead), I just used it as a possible choice.



To me, this raises the question: what is the point of prepared backstory?

By "prepared backstory" I don't just mean prepared material (like a map, some monster statblocks, an NPC with a bit of a biography, etc). The reason for prepared material is mostly to save time at the table. But prepared material doesn't mean prepared backstory - Dungeon 1 can serve as a bandit lair, or something else, for instance.

Prepared backstory means authoring the gameworld in advance - Dungeon 1 is here, the bandits lair in it, is has these other inhabitants, this connection to gameworld history, etc. What is the point of that?

In Gygaxian D&D the answer is easy: collecting information (by way of rumours, detection magic, etc) is part of skilled play; but information is only reliable if the backstory is locked in. Furthermore, locking in backstory allows the players to use information to gain tactical advantages. (Eg the GM just can't author in additional reinforcements to negate the PCs' clever ambush following their use of an ESP spell.)

But once we get to more contemporary, "story"-style RPGing it's less clear to me what prepared backstory is for at all. In a sandbox it creates a backdrop against which the players make choices, but in the absence of player information the connection between those choices and the backstory is something that only the GM is aware of. Perhaps players are still expected to gain information, but given that most detection spells in the game are still set up with dungeon-style ranges/AoEs I'm not really sure how that's meant to work. It's also hard to detail a whole world in the level of detail that a Gygaxian dungeon relies upon if it is to interact properly with the mechanics (eg detection spells, rumours) that players use to get the information they need.

In your (S'mon's) case, for instance, it doesn't seem that the players acquired any information about the connection between the bandits and Dungeon 1, or were even expected to. So I don't see that would be any special virtue in sticking to your original plan for Dungeon 1, rather than changing it up for the reason that you only have so much prepared material.



Maxperson said:


> Hinging the plot on something like meeting the wizard is perfectly fine, so long as you don't force the players to enter the wizard's tower.  If they see the tower and the plot calls for them to enter and foil the wizard who is trying to create a particularly nasty monster, and they ignore the tower and continue on, so be it.  The plot continues on without them and the monster is created and ravishes the countryside, possibly killing people that the PCs know and love or possibly not, depending on where the tower is.  If the PCs go far enough, they may not hear about what is happening.  If they are close enough, stories of the monster will reach them via rumor.
> 
> The key is to never force a plot, ANY plot on the PCs.  Do that and you are not railroading.  Don't do that and you are.



The key to what?

Given my desires as an RPGer, the key is to force the players to make choices, by framing their PCs into difficult situations. I don't know if you count that as "forcing a plot" or not (I'm not sure what you mean by "plot"). It's not forcing _outcomes_. But it is forcing _situations_.

In my most recent 4e session, for instance, when the players escaped Thanatos flying on their chaos skiff to The Barrens, when they arrived at their destination they were confronted by a choice: Oublivae, the demon queen of ruin, wanting to bargain information in exchange for their skiff. Had they not travelled to The Barrens but somewhere else, they would have been confronted by some different situation (appropriate to their destination) but it would still have been something that forced them to make a choice.


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

pemerton said:


> The key to what?




To not railroading.  I thought that was pretty clear from what I said.



> Given my desires as an RPGer, the key is to force the players to make choices, by framing their PCs into difficult situations. I don't know if you count that as "forcing a plot" or not (I'm not sure what you mean by "plot"). It's not forcing _outcomes_. But it is forcing _situations_.




Giving them a choice is fine.  Throwing the same choice at them over and over again until they pick the one you want is not.  If they are following the plot trail and decide to leave it to do something else and you force that plot on them anyway, you are railroading.  You already gave them the choice and they chose to leave it behind.


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## Schmoe (Oct 9, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> I don't think that drive by straw men are really helpful to the discussion.




It's not a drive-by.  While I may not have as much time to participate in this discussion as other people, I'm still here.  And it's not a straw man, it's an observation.  I've seen a scenario where a vengeful pirate tracks down the party described as a railroad.  In fact, I've seen just about every scenario where actions come and find the PCs described as a railroad.  Therefore, the only way to have a not-railroad is to not let anything effect the PCs except things under their direct sphere of influence, hence, the logical conclusion is that some sort of stasis warp prevents things outside that sphere from actually doing anything.



> Nor do I think anyone has used sandbox in that manner.  The idea that nothing exists except what the players choose to interact with is closer in concept to the idea of having "no myth" than it is to a sandbox, and is I think tangential to what a sandbox actually is.   I can imagine however a sandbox that works like that, where new 'chunks' of the world are only loaded into the world as needed.  In fact Minecraft works like this, and is clearly a sandbox, abliet a computer game rather than an RPG.  But we could easily play in a sandbox style in a PnP game where the DM created new parts of the game world through some process only as needed.




Sure.  But at the same time the DM could certainly create a PnP game with several ongoing plots that have real impacts on the PCs without it becoming a railroad.  For a completely contrived and trite example, say Kingdom A and Kingdom B are close to war and provocateurs of Kingdom C are rabble-rousing in Kingdom A trying to get the war started.  No matter where the players go in Kingdom A, they have the potential to see the effects of Kingdom C's agents.  If they ignore it, the effects get worse, until eventually Kingdom A and B are at war and if the players have any interest in preventing war they will become embroiled in the "plot".  Is that a railroad?  It seems like a dynamic world to me, not a railroad, but from reading some of the replies here, I get the feeling people believe it is.

The only reason this even matters is because people seem to have some sort of aversion to railroading.  Like it's a big deal that the DM might participate in the game by providing interesting options for the players.  Here's a question... if the players aren't trying to avoid something, does it really matter if they don't avoid it?  In one of the hypothetical scenarios here, if the players don't know if a tower is down the left or right path, does it really matter if the DM decides to place a tower in their way regardless of which path they choose?   



> I should say "plot" is thrown around as a very loose term to mean two different things.  People will refer to "plot" is it relates to a story to mean: "the main events of a play, novel, movie, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence."  In that sense, a sandbox does not have a preconceived "plot", but only acquires something that resembles a narrative through the transcription of play.   But a sandbox can nonetheless contains "plots", if by plots you mean: "a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something".  It's perfectly reasonable and realistic that a fantasy world will contain various groups that are making plans to carry out various activities whether related to or unrelated to the PC's, and that the PC's can - if they go to the right places at the right times - discover these "plots".  But in a pure sandbox, discovery of these plots is triggered by the PC's going to the right places at the right times and if they don't discover the "plots", then that's ok too.




The only meaningful choice is an informed choice.  Why does it matter if the PC's discover a plot by randomly happening upon it at the right time and right place, as opposed to having the DM place the discovery in their path?  I don't think it does, and I think the distinction is pointless.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 9, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> Improvisation has been a part of the game since the very beginning.  An irrefutable example is the notion of a random encounter, which in the case of 1e AD&D would have included a percentage chance of being in the lair, which means a DM was expected to be able to improvise a reasonable map of some sort (a ruined castle inhabited by a hitherto unknown orc tribe, a dank cave inhabited by some dragon or fell beast, a sealed tomb containing some ancient evil, etc.) on the spot.  Indeed, a case could be made that their is an implied fully improvised campaign that can be run entirely out of the 1e AD&D monster manuals.  Indeed, there is yet another improvised campaign implied by the random dungeon generator in the 1e AD&D DMG.



Randomized generation of a map is not improvisation. It is generation. It is repeating the pattern that is the game so players can game it. You should remember this terminology as you were around early on. All those DMs saying, "I'm not making it up!" DMs are never to make choices after the code of the game is selected prior to play. D&D is after all a (wildly enormous) variant of Mastermind.



> So what you are actually offended by isn't 'improvisation' per se.  Fundamentally, stuff that is improvised in play by some means is no different that stuff that is improvised before the session by some means. In both cases, the DM has the full power to specify what you call the invisible board.



On this point you are completely wrong. You're selling _games_ down the river. 

Like every single game, D&D enables players to play a game by presenting them with a pattern design to decipher. Just like Tic-Tac-Toe, just like Chess, just like every wargame. 

Heck, even every sport. Running isn't a sport. A race with a pre-defined track is, even if played solo.



> And during a game, PC's will always attempt things or ask questions about the environment that aren't fully specified by the notes regarding the map.  That's every bit as much 'going off the map' as actually trying to step into a part of the map not yet drawn.



When the players go off the map the DM must generate more, either on the fly during a session which can slow it down, or by stopping the session. 

Arbitrarily making something up, that isn't part of the pattern of the game, means you are expressing babble. The only game left to the player is deciphering the language code you're using to communicate. Which might improve reading ability, but little else.



> What you are offended by is the DM improvising in an antagonistic manner, either motivated by his desire to 'win' and keep the players from defeating the scenario, or motivated by some other desire to achieve a particular outcome.



This isn't about being offended. I'm not. Any DM not acting like a referee, but attempting to affect the game either favorably for the players or detrimentally is breaking their oath to be impartial. They are trying to be a player in a code breaking game they created. As the DM is only ever allowed to relate what is on the game board, a manifestation of the game, they are never allowed to improvise. They are only and ever a referee.



> You associate this with 'improvisation' and 'story-telling', and therefore declare those things categorically bad.  But you are confused.  Improvisation can be done in a neutral, unbiased, manner as part of just "running the game".



I think your meaning of improvisation requires some explanation. Unless you're referring to unbiased, un-improvised refereeing, I don't see how what you say could be true.



> And likewise 'story-telling' has been a part of the game since the beginning.



This is categorically false. Storytelling has never been part of games. Not until White Wolf published the "Storyteller system" to very disagreeing game public did anyone confuse games with stories. (Heck, storytelling as a culture didn't even exist all that long ago). To be clear, storytelling is not gaming. Code breaking is gaming. They are not even the same culture.



N'raac said:


> This was the "you are supposed to fight the bandits, not surrender your money or flee" example.  The GM clearly expected the players to fight the bandits.  Having the bandits take the wizard's money and leave, or shake their fists and curse the fleeing PC's cowardice, would be improvising.  Having the bandits attack the wizard anyway, and suddenly have the means to catch the fellow on horseback, is not improvising - it is failing to improvise by forcing the battle to happen as planned.



That's my objection. The DM never has any expectations of the players. Let the dice fall where they may. A DM isn't playing the game, so they cannot ever "force" any action.


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## cavesalamander (Oct 9, 2015)

Zak S said:


> Then why was the choice there at all?




The choice the players made was to make an uninformed choice. Investigating the desert and discovering that they could find a wizard's tower there locks that wizard tower into the desert. They should not find _that_ wizard tower anywhere else. If you disallow this encounter because it wasn't placed there ahead of time, then you must disallow every randomly generated encounter ever. 

I don't consider the mere act of encountering something railroading, since there are multiple means of generating said encounters- including random rolls. Railroading happens when the _outcome_ of the encounter is predetermined, and nothing the players do can change that outcome.


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

Schmoe said:


> It's not a drive-by.  While I may not have as much time to participate in this discussion as other people, I'm still here.  And it's not a straw man, it's an observation.  I've seen a scenario where a vengeful pirate tracks down the party described as a railroad.  In fact, I've seen just about every scenario where actions come and find the PCs described as a railroad.  Therefore, the only way to have a not-railroad is to not let anything effect the PCs except things under their direct sphere of influence, hence, the logical conclusion is that some sort of stasis warp prevents things outside that sphere from actually doing anything.




This is just wrong.  Just because you've encountered people who wouldn't know a railroad from a hole in the head, doesn't mean that what you just described is even remotely true.


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> Randomized generation of a map is not improvisation. It is generation. It is repeating the pattern that is the game so players can game it. You should remember this terminology as you were around early on. All those DMs saying, "I'm not making it up!" DMs are never to make choices after the code of the game is selected prior to play. D&D is after all a (wildly enormous) variant of Mastermind.
> 
> On this point you are completely wrong. You're selling _games_ down the river.
> 
> Like every single game, D&D enables players to play a game by presenting them with a pattern design to decipher. Just like Tic-Tac-Toe, just like Chess, just like every wargame.




You do realize that A) every edition of the game says you are wrong in the very rules written by that edition, and B) every time the DM has an NPC respond to something you say, he's improvising since he didn't know what you were going to say, right?  If you don't, you should get someone who knows how to play the game explain it to you, because every time you open your mouth here, you just demonstrate more and more how you know nothing about D&D.


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## S'mon (Oct 9, 2015)

pemerton said:


> Would it have been better if the GM had just used the descriptions about Y to handle your investigation of X (taking a punt that you would never bother coming back to the "real" Y, or at least giving the GM time to come up with new details for Y)?




That wouldn't work in this case - the detailed Thistletop goblins have a very unique lair.

But certainly their stats could be used for improvising a different goblin lair. And really I would have been fine with us maybe not finding an alternate lair, unless we rolled great on tracking. Or we find it and it's a burrow with 3' high earth tunnels, great for goblins but very discouraging for humans - I think that's what I did when I ran Runelords and the same issue came up. The PCs decided not to go in the burrow and go explore Thistletop instead, and everyone was happy.


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## S'mon (Oct 9, 2015)

Schmoe said:


> It's not a drive-by.  While I may not have as much time to participate in this discussion as other people, I'm still here.  And it's not a straw man, it's an observation.  I've seen a scenario where a vengeful pirate tracks down the party described as a railroad.  In fact, I've seen just about every scenario where actions come and find the PCs described as a railroad.  Therefore, the only way to have a not-railroad is to not let anything effect the PCs except things under their direct sphere of influence, hence, the logical conclusion is that some sort of stasis warp prevents things outside that sphere from actually doing anything.




Yes - I agree with you. Upthread we've had any in-world restriction on PC autonomy, such as the vengeful pirate chasing them, described as railroading if the players would rather he didn't. At that point you're no longer running a living world. It's like the Plane of Infinite Law in a Moorcock story, where nothing ever happens. Law is good, but all extremes are pathological.


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## pemerton (Oct 9, 2015)

Schmoe said:


> In fact, I've seen just about every scenario where actions come and find the PCs described as a railroad.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> For a completely contrived and trite example, say Kingdom A and Kingdom B are close to war and provocateurs of Kingdom C are rabble-rousing in Kingdom A trying to get the war started.  No matter where the players go in Kingdom A, they have the potential to see  the effects of Kingdom C's agents.  If they ignore it, the effects get worse, until eventually Kingdom A and B are at war and if the players have any interest in preventing war they will become embroiled in the "plot".  Is that a railroad?  It seems like a dynamic world to me, not a railroad, but from reading some of the replies here, I get the feeling people believe it is.



Whether or not I would describe that as a railroad depends a bit on further details.

There are two things that matter to me. One is that the campaign world, as narrated by the GM, is responsive to player cues manifested via their build and action declaration choices for their PCs. In your example, if none of the players (via their PCs) has any sort of connection to Kingdom A, B or C, and yet the GM is trying to make this some sort of significant thing in the campaign, then I see that as being something like a railroad. ( [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], any thoughts of yours in response to this also welcome!)

The other thing that matters to me is the issue of "secret backstory". I am quite averse to the GM making decisions about what happens to the PCs, or decisions about action resolution, that are driven by backstory considerations that are secret from the players. Whether or not this is railroading in any strict sense, it's something I don't like.

Where exactly I draw the boundaries here is more a matter of intuition than science. For instance, if the information is informing a particular bit of resolution and the players could acquire it by appropriate action declaration but don't, then that's probably on my margins of acceptable - though I would typically try and make sure the secret backstory comes out as part of the denouement of the situation.



Maxperson said:


> If they are following the plot trail and decide to leave it to do something else and you force that plot on them anyway, you are railroading.



I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "plot trail" - but given my dislike of secret backstory, I don't think it's something that's part of my game.


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## S'mon (Oct 9, 2015)

pemerton said:


> There are two things that matter to me. One is that the campaign world, as narrated by the GM, is responsive to player cues manifested via their build and action declaration choices for their PCs. In your example, if none of the players (via their PCs) has any sort of connection to Kingdom A, B or C, and yet the GM is trying to make this some sort of significant thing in the campaign, then I see that as being something like a railroad. ( [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], any thoughts of yours in response to this also welcome!)




In a linear campaign like an AP there is just the one major plot thread (eg "lead A against B & C"), if the players are avoiding that then the campaign is non-viable and should be shelved.

In a sandbox campaign the war can be part of the backdrop, yet the player characters be free to ignore it to the best of their abilities. You could run a crime caper game set in WW2 London. The existence and impact of the war would not make it a railroad.  My own Wilderlands sandbox has some large-scale conflicts - the rise of Neo-Nerath and the brigand warlord Yusan - which impact the campaign environment, but the PCs are free to ignore, fight, or assist these factions. Over time the campaign setting will change as a result of Neo-Nerath and Yusan's activities, and those of the forces opposing them, but there is no pre-plotted script to follow. So far the PCs have generally been more interested in dungeon-delving than in politics, but they have interacted with the political situation.

Edit: A no-myth 'build the world together' game will have different considerations from either 
linear or sandbox play, of course. In that case the significance of the war to the world (not just to the campaign) really may be dependent on player preference.


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## Imaculata (Oct 9, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> By your example, they were on the plot and decided to leave it and explore somewhere else.  By placing the plot inside that new dungeon you took away their agency.  You invalidated their choice to leave the plot behind and go do something by forcing them to encounter the plot again in a different spot when that plot point could have remained with the original plot, and you invalidated their ability to choose whether or not to go back to the plot they left behind.
> 
> That's railroading.  I'm not saying that railroading is always bad, but it is what you were engaging in when you invalidated their choices like that and forced the plot on them.




This is a big error in thinking. There's no clearly marked path called "plot" nor a marked area called "not plot" in my campaigns. The players didn't decide to move away from the plot. They decided to explore. Plot is everywhere, always. What sort of plot they encounter, depends on where they go, but there will always be plot.

So they didn't decide to leave the plot behind at all. Because there aren't any clearly marked plot paths. They could stumble on bits of plot anywhere, because as a storyteller I fill in the blanks of where they decide to go. I just choose to not introduce only none-plot related things. If possible, I make everything I introduce make sense, and ensure that it is some how related to other things in the story.



pemerton said:


> I think a lot of these illusory choices are just about creating a bit of colour. By choosing the desert or the forest, the players choose some colour. If the GM is any good, this also means that perhaps the dragon at the bottom of the dungeon gets changed from blue to green, or vice versa. If the PCs choose to go north then the weather at the dungeon is cold (assuming the typical northern hemispheric gameworld); if they choose to go south then the weather is warm.
> 
> Contributing to colour in this way isn't the greatest expression of player agency by any means, but I can see why some RPGers wouldn't regard it as a complete was of time. (I think this is at least part of what [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION] is trying to get at in this thread.)




What I do is completely adapt the story to what ever choice was made. Maybe the wizard at the beach watches over the sea, and has an army of giant crabs at his command? Maybe the wizard in the forest is actually a druid, who warns them of the dangers of the nearby forest, but offers to help them pass through safely, if they do something for him.

So it isn't a matter of simply adding a bit of color. Everything about the tower/dungeon/npc can change depending on where I decide to move it. And there may be other details apart from just the tower, that the players will have to deal with. The tower in this example, is just one thing that I may want to introduce into the story. Its not a matter of forcing the players to visit the tower, but a case of finding a proper moment to introduce part of the plot (which can happen anywhere).


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> This is a big error in thinking. There's no clearly marked path called "plot" nor a marked area called "not plot" in my campaigns. The players didn't decide to move away from the plot. They decided to explore. Plot is everywhere, always. What sort of plot they encounter, depends on where they go, but there will always be plot.
> 
> So they didn't decide to leave the plot behind at all. Because there aren't any clearly marked plot paths. They could stumble on bits of plot anywhere, because as a storyteller I fill in the blanks of where they decide to go. I just choose to not introduce only none-plot related things. If possible, I make everything I introduce make sense, and ensure that it is some how related to other things in the story.




If there was an error in my thinking, it's because you made it.  You used the phrase "the plot" and when they encountered the dungeon while exploring, they picked up "the plot" again because you forced it on them.  Below is your quote.



> *My players decided to ignore the plot at some point*, and explore an island. I rolled some random encounters, and updated the map accordingly with what they encountered on their travels. They met some important npc's, and uncovered a mysterious ancient city built into the side of a cliff. With great caution they lowered themselves into the structure, and started exploring it. Since they reached this important location at the end of our session, this left enough time for me to design a dungeon for the next session.
> 
> They eventually reached the end of the dungeon, and had a boss battle with some giant spiders. The spiders were guarding a special room, with a coffin that was sealed shut with a spell. The players broke the spell, and opened the coffin, to find a young girl inside. *She was meant as a vessel for one of the evil deities in the plot of my campaign*, but now the players had disrupted this plan, and added the girl to their pirate crew. And there you go, *the plot is picked up again*. Its that simple.




Now, had you created a new and entirely different plot for them to encounter in the dungeon, it would be different, but you didn't.  Instead you forced the original plot on them when the decided to ignore it, thereby removing player choice and railroading them.  You refused to allow the player the option to ignore your plot.


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## Starfox (Oct 9, 2015)

Zak S said:


> The more important thing is whether the choice has any effect at all. If not: that's a waste of time.
> 
> If the entire content of either choice is the same, the choice doesn't matter. If the tower is the ONLY thing there either way, it was a pointless choice.




In the example with the road to two different terrains, (both of which, unknown to the player's, have the same wizard's tower), then the choice is meaningful in that it sets the mood of the milieu. A desert adventure is not the same as a woods adventure, even if both have the same plot. And player skills may also be terrain-specific. 

In a way, this empowers the players - they get to create part of the setting by deciding where the wizards tower stands (and has always stood). The players' choices shape the world. We're moving into narrativism.


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## Imaculata (Oct 9, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> If there was an error in my thinking, it's because you made it.  You used the phrase "the plot" and when they encountered the dungeon while exploring, they picked up "the plot" again because you forced it on them.  Below is your quote.




See, this is what you got all wrong. A dungeon does not need to have a plot. It can be just a maze with some monsters, traps and treasure. But I decided to make it more than that, by including bits and piece of lore, and including something that ties into the lore.




Maxperson said:


> Now, had you created a new and entirely different plot for them to encounter in the dungeon, it would be different, but you didn't.  Instead you forced the original plot on them when the decided to ignore it, thereby removing player choice and railroading them.  You refused to allow the player the option to ignore your plot.




Wrong. This plot would not have happened, had they not gone into the dungeon. I specifically wrote a plot for this dungeon, that would tie into the existing main plot line.

The main plot does not rely on them rescuing this girl. But it adds a new angle to it, and will now have a big impact on the overall plot. It also gave them more insight into the lore and history of the world.



Starfox said:


> In the example with the road to two different terrains, (both of which, unknown to the player's, have the same wizard's tower), then the choice is meaningful in that it sets the mood of the milieu. A desert adventure is not the same as a woods adventure, even if both have the same plot. And player skills may also be terrain-specific.
> 
> In a way, this empowers the players - they get to create part of the setting by deciding where the wizards tower stands (and has always stood). The players' choices shape the world. We're moving into narrativism.





Starfox gets it. The players and the DM are creating the story together. This is empowerment of the players, and not railroading (which you might even consider to be the opposite of empowering).


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## pemerton (Oct 9, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> it isn't a matter of simply adding a bit of color. Everything about the tower/dungeon/npc can change depending on where I decide to move it. And there may be other details apart from just the tower, that the players will have to deal with.





Imaculata said:


> Starfox gets it. The players and the DM are creating the story together. This is empowerment of the players, and not railroading (which you might even consider to be the opposite of empowering).



I don't quite follow this, because [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION] is saying exactly the same thing that I said.



Starfox said:


> In the example with the road to two different terrains, (both of which, unknown to the player's, have the same wizard's tower), then the choice is meaningful in that it sets the mood of the milieu. A desert adventure is not the same as a woods adventure, even if both have the same plot. And player skills may also be terrain-specific.



This is the player-contribution-to-colour that I mentioned upthread.



Starfox said:


> The players' choices shape the world. We're moving into narrativism.



Only very modestly, I would say.


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## N'raac (Oct 9, 2015)

billd91 said:


> Meh. Hard to get worked up with that as significant railroading. Might as well call the campaign world a railroad since they can't avoid it.




This seems to be another example of “if it is not bad, it is not a railroad”.  Railroading is neither good nor bad.  At an extreme, the characters could make the decision to seek out potent magic to allow them to travel to a different plane of existence, thus avoiding the campaign world (after getting out of it, anyway).  If that choice is frustrated, that is an element of railroading.

To be clear, my posts that refer to “CHOO CHOO here comes the plot train” adopt the most anti-railroad, pro-sandbox gamers I have ever run across.  My own preferences, and approaches, are less sandbox-extreme, but they are my own preferences, and there are gamers whose preferences are much more sandboxy than my own



billd91 said:


> I really can't say that putting information in front of the PCs, whether it's from the initial planned source or another, improvised source, is really railroading. You're still giving them the choice of how they use the information. In fact, it'll be the only way they can make an *informed* choice - by knowing about the potential adventures out there and then pursuing one or more of them.




Again, if we’re moving the information from place to place to place, we are railroading the players to at least encounter the information leading to the plot in question.  If they don’t find the clue to lead them to the goblin camp, and go somewhere else where they find clues leading to a completely unrelated wizard’s tower, now we are in the sandbox.  



Imaculata said:


> Its really not. The players weren't actively trying to ignore the plot. They just wanted to go on an adventure, and hoped that they would find a cool plot along the way. I don't like putting signposts everywhere with "Please go here! No not that way! This way!".
> 
> If I present a problem to my players, like for example a dragon, then I don't force them to fight that dragon. But if the dragon is part of the plot, then I will make sure that they at least learn about the dragon. And I don't expect them to go looking for something that they do not yet know exists. So to some degree, you've got to bring the plot to them. You can't expect them to already know where your adventure hooks will be. And they're not actively trying to avoid adventure hooks. They are role playing, and doing what they think their characters would do in that situation. It is up to me, as a DM, to make the journey exciting. Be it in the form of quests, plot hooks, npc's or random encounters.




Again, if they walk away from the Dragon plotline, and you move the Dragon plotline to follow them, I would call that railroading.  You seem very defensive whenever it is suggested your approach is, in fact, a form of railroad, so I suspect you conflate “railroad” with “bad”.   To me, neither railroading nor sandboxing is inherently bad.  Both can be good or bad depending on how they are applied, and depending on the preferences of the gamers themselves.



Imaculata said:


> THEN it would be railroading.




It is no different than any other means of repurposing the dungeon to something the characters encounter later, a strategy many on this thread favour.  Again, “railroad” does not equal “bad”.  As my examples become more extreme, the railroad becomes more and more “GM forcing players to activity they do not wish to undertake”.  That makes the game less fun, and that is bad.  In this case, we have found a situation which is both “bad” and “railroad”.  That does not mean all examples of “railroad” are bad.



Imaculata said:


> But it's a bad sandbox,and a terrible way to tell a story. We're trying to run a good campaign here I would assume?




We’re trying to run a campaign that the players enjoy.  I have certainly met players who feel their characters should interact with a pre-existing world that does not morph to suit the characters.  For those players “we did not find the Magic Mcguffin and so we were wiped out” is the logical and appropriate result.  These players might, in fact, be offended if the DM said “hold up, guys, you will be wiped out if you go there before here”, or even if the DM prevented the PC’s from going the wrong way with a trail of bread crumbs.

It is a matter of degree, and different gamers find different balances they prefer.



Imaculata said:


> That is a terrible way to handle it.




It is not the way you wish to handle it.  It isn’t the way I’d likely handle it.  It is the way other gamers, more focused on the “sandbox” would wish to handle it.  Their way is not objectively “terrible”, any more than yours or mine is.

You are assuming the players want to experience the plot you have created, rather than carve out their own plot, or engage in a more episodic playstyle.  For a lot of players, that will be true.  For others, it will not be.



Imaculata said:


> Do the players know that the forest is not related to the dragon? No they don't. Do you know for certain that the players have no intention to fight the dragon? No, you don't know that either. Maybe the players want to gather more information on the beast first. Maybe they want to make sure they are better equipped. As a storyteller, you should provide those things for them. Have them meet victims of the dragon on their journey. Give them the opportunity to learn more about the beast, and to properly equip themselves. So what if they don't go to the dragon in a straight line?




Actually, my players tend to discuss their plans, so it’s not hard to assess whether they are seeking information and assistance to help them engage the dragon, or just want to do something other than dragon hunt.  But they like a plot, and are not opposed to a railroad, to a degree.  They are not sandbox-centric.

You seem to conflate “your game has elements of a railroad” with “your game is no fun”.  I believe the former is true, and the latter is not.  A game can be a railroad and still be fun.  It can be a sandbox and suck.  And the opposite can be true of both.  As well, the same game can be fun for some players and suck for others, solely because they have different visions on the appropriate degrees of “railroad” and “sandbox”.



Schmoe said:


> I'm gathering from this discussion that a sandbox consists of the PCs in a sort of stasis bubble in which nothing happens outside of what they directly interact with, because if it did, then hey, it's a railroad plot that happened even though the players didn't wNt it to.




At the extreme of “sandbox”, I think that is true.



			
				Celebrim;6724777But in a pure sandbox said:
			
		

> Exactly.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Manbearcat (Oct 9, 2015)

Lots of stuff rolling around in this thread.  Just a couple of thoughts.  

1)  Railroading involves a family of techniques whereby a player's autonomy to make meaningful decisions (which in turn affect the trajectory of current and future play; eg "agency") are subordinated by an external force.  This external force might be (a) the will of the GM or (b) the constraints/boundaries of a metaplot/module.  In either case (a) or (b), if the group has overtly agreed to this dynamic, then play will proceed functionally (even though it is still a Railroad).  If they have not, then the social contract is likely broken (presupposing the antithesis is the default) and one should expect dysfunctional play and meta-conflict to emerge at the table (with some regularity).

2)  "No myth" or "low resolution setting" play, which primarily zooms in on "scene/situation", isn't inherently "Railroady".  In fact, as  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] depicted upthread, systems that support such play typically have built-in GM constraints and transparency in play procedures which make either overt or covert subordination of player agency (the former being GM Force and the latter being Illusionism) extraordinarily difficult if not all-out impossible.

For instance.  After checking on an unresponsive, isolated settlement high in a frozen mountain range, a pair of player characters uncover a Far Realm invasion in the remains of the now-ruined settlement.  The settlers and all the animals for miles and miles are turning into mutated horrors.  Why?  How?  What?  Whether or not the rest of the world is intensely fleshed out does not diminish their abilities to investigate, form a theory, come up with a plan of action, and respond.  They investigate the ruins and find various leads to pursue.  They discover that a few refugee families left (which would put them dead in the frozen wasteland or in one of the few "civilized" places in the frozen mountain realm; the Barbarians of The Coldlands and the Hobgoblins of Earthmaw).  In the course of play, further lore about this place is generated via various player rolls.  A powerful ancient blizzard dragon claims this domain from his glacial lair.  Perhaps an appeal to his hobgoblin servitors would earn them an audience?  Despite his intrinsic nature, perhaps they could convince him of the alien threat to his realm and gain temporary alliance (or get eaten...or slay him and take his treasure)?

Point being, a low resolution, abstract setting (whereby further details/nuance or filled out during play) in no way inhibits the prospects of player agency.  You don't need to intimately know the ethoi of 17 various offscreen Gods, the cash-crop of offscreen city-state A, or the power-brokers of offscreen mercantile guild B in order for players to make meaningful, informed decisions which drive play.  And having tight, focused thematics baked into characters (where the level of zoom becomes very relevant) certainly doesn't inhibit a GM's ability to create situations that appeal to/conflicts with those thematics!


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## billd91 (Oct 9, 2015)

N'raac said:


> Again, if we’re moving the information from place to place to place, we are railroading the players to at least encounter the information leading to the plot in question.  If they don’t find the clue to lead them to the goblin camp, and go somewhere else where they find clues leading to a completely unrelated wizard’s tower, now we are in the sandbox.




Except that information isn't a limited resource. Its presence in one planned location doesn't preclude it from also being in another unplanned location or in a slightly different form that also makes sense. Inserting additional sources of information to replace missed ones doesn't take you out of a sandbox.


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## Celebrim (Oct 9, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> Randomized generation of a map is not improvisation. It is generation.




To a large extent I'm happy to agree with this - even though it is technically wrong - simply because it does no harm to my point.  Anything you create without prior preparation is improvisation, regardless of the technique you employ.  (Indeed, the stuff you create outside of a session is still improvisation, differing only in that it is not done under time pressure.)  But for now I can let this claim stand, because none of the systems I described can depend on pure randomization.  You still have to produce the orc's castle or the dragon's lair on demand.  You don't have a random generator for everything.  And if you'd actually used the random dungeon generator in the appendices you'd know that it doesn't work without some degree of DM guidance and judgment.  The thing can generate nonsense results, spatially impossible results, and requires judgment calls on how to treat all sorts of possible results (chasms, rivers, etc.).  The DMG actually tells users to apply their judgment.  



> It is repeating the pattern that is the game so players can game it. You should remember this terminology as you were around early on. All those DMs saying, "I'm not making it up!" DMs are never to make choices after the code of the game is selected prior to play. D&D is after all a (wildly enormous) variant of Mastermind.




This is just wrong on so many many different levels I don't know where to be.  First of all, there is no 'pattern'.  The dungeon board is arbitrary and the result of whim.  You can't define a dungeon as meeting any sort of pattern.  It can be random or nonrandom.  It's not confined by anything but the DM's judgment.  When you compare it to Mastermind, the real difference is easy to see.  Sure, the positions of the colors on a particular puzzle are random and arbitrary and the result of whim as well.  But each is equivalent.  No particular pattern is special.  D&D by constrast inherently produces 'boards' that are special and different from all others.  They are not equivalent.  Each board is inherently unfair or at the least nothing constrains a board to be fair except again, DM judgment.  D&D is closer in this regard to Calvinball than it is to Mastermind.   The DM not only makes up the board, but the pieces of the board, the rules that apply to those pieces, and the laws that govern all interactions on it.  This is particularly true of 1e, where there were few or no metarules regarding anything, resulting in adventures were every single room had unknowable rules unique to the room governing how the room worked.  A good example of this would C1: Hidden Shrine of Toamochan. 

And yet, for all the copious notes, there is simply not enough notes in the module to remotely decide how to resolve player propositions about interacting with the 'board' without resorting to improvisation.  Nor will answers be found in the 1e DMG to questions of how much it reduces the chance of drowning to try to throw a rope to a drowning man.  It's not there.  It's a requirement of being a DM to be able to make stuff up.  It's unavoidable, because the game isn't definable within a narrow set of rules and no set of rules could ever be complete enough to describe the game.  How the heck do you think this game is decipherable when the rules set is infinite?



> Like every single game, D&D enables players to play a game by presenting them with a pattern design to decipher. Just like Tic-Tac-Toe, just like Chess, just like every wargame.




Not every single game involves a pattern to decipher.  Game strategy can't be equated to a mechanical deciphering of code, because few games are so mechanistic.  I notice you have a remarkable fondness for choosing games that lack any random factor.  Tic-Tac-Toe, Chess, and Mastermind are examples of mechanical games, which lose their savor precisely when they become analyzable.  D&D is not a mechanical game.  The randomness of the game defies any attempt to deduce a pattern from it.  It's not merely a case of being a wargame with a random element to resolution, like say Bloodbowl, where we can apply statistical logic to every element of the game.  D&D is far too freeform for that.  D&D is not a strategy game.  It is a game that may occasionally have a strategy minigame, but its never confined only its strategy minigames.   The DM is free to improvise into the game any sort of minigame of his choosing, according to whatever rules come into his head.  Indeed, improvisation is precisely what separates D&D from a tactical wargame.  Improvisation in the middle of a wargame is the creative act that birthed the RPG.  The exciting notion that the game could go beyond mere 'code breaking' as you name it, and become a story is what caused the board wargamers to give up the dreary plains of Poland and become excited dare we say fanatically role-players from almost the moment that this shocking revelation occurred to them.



> When the players go off the map the DM must generate more, either on the fly during a session which can slow it down, or by stopping the session.




Either way would be improvisation.  The DM must make stuff up through some process.   And the DM is not limited in what he makes up.  If he wants to have a room filled with living candy plants and a dragon that breathes soap bubbles or a room that is a pastiche of the Wizard of Oz, or an inescapable death trap, it may not be good judgment by the DM but he's within his rights.



> Arbitrarily making something up, that isn't part of the pattern of the game, means you are expressing babble.




How in the world do you think dungeon maps get created if not arbitrarily making something up?   



> They are only and ever a referee.




Gygax himself disagrees with that claim in the 1e DMG.  The DM is most certainly not only and ever a referee, but per the rules is much more than that.



> I think your meaning of improvisation requires some explanation. Unless you're referring to unbiased, un-improvised refereeing, I don't see how what you say could be true.




My meaning of improvisation requires only a dictionary.   Your meaning of improvisation is increasingly reliant on nonsense and contradiction.  Explain how the map can be extended without application of DM judgment and choice?   I can certainly see how application of the rules can be done without bias in most cases, assuming of course there are rules covering the situation, which isn't normally the case in 1e or OD&D, but there is no way that its possible to create the game world without bias.   



> This is categorically false. Storytelling has never been part of games. Not until White Wolf published the "Storyteller system" to very disagreeing game public did anyone confuse games with stories. (Heck, storytelling as a culture didn't even exist all that long ago).




For someone who is quick to claim something is false, you sure have a way of stringing together a bunch of obviously false statements that betray just how limited your gaming experience is.  Even were we to except your utterly ludicrous claim that storytelling isn't part of D&D (ever played I6, UK1, DL1, I3-I5, etc.), and even if we were to accept your ludicrous claim that storytelling wasn't what drove D&D from the beginning (do you know anything at all about the Blackmoor campaign?), White Wolf was rather late to the story focused gaming table, already occupied by games like C&S, Pendragon, and even to a large extent Top Secret and Marvel Super Heroes for crying out loud.   There are plenty of academic sources that make it very clear that from the inception of the idea of the RPG, the idea that the game was telling a story and could be used as a collaborative story telling medium has been a part of the game.  And your idea that the DM is creating nothing with no more story meaning than the pins in a game of Mastermind is ludicrous.  D&D content isn't a couple random colored pins - but a setting, with characters, with motives, ands with events.  

And storytelling as a culture has been around since at least the time man invented fire.



> To be clear, storytelling is not gaming. Code breaking is gaming. They are not even the same culture.




D&D has no code.  No rules for constructing this coded board you think exists actually exist, and to the extent that you could construct such rules they would create a game obviously and inherently inferior to D&D precisely because the attraction of having a DM is that the DM has the power to create non-mechanistically and escape any limitations of a code.   People don't play D&D because its code breaking.  They play it because it isn't.  



> A DM isn't playing the game, so they cannot ever "force" any action.




Sure they can.  Any DM worth his pizza can between sessions construct a board such that actions are forced.  The question is not whether he can do so, but whether he ought to do so.  And there is no science to that.  No rules can tell the DM whether or not his board is too linear or too broad.  He has to use his judgment.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 9, 2015)

I'd like to respond back, but I think you'd just repeat what you've said again. For the large part, you're simply naysaying what I've said. "You can't do that! You have to do it this way. Everyone has always done it this way." Well, we can run it as I pointed out. And as D&D was designed to allow players to play it as a game not as collaborative storytelling, it's what we as DMs are supposed to do.

On to answering your questions:



Celebrim said:


> The DM not only makes up the board, but the pieces of the board, the rules that apply to those pieces, and the laws that govern all interactions on it.  This is particularly true of 1e, where there were few or no metarules regarding anything, resulting in adventures were every single room had unknowable rules unique to the room governing how the room worked.  A good example of this would C1: Hidden Shrine of Toamochan.



Game boards (like all the pieces in the game) are function maps of the game's algorithm. C1 is certainly convertible to the game engine as it stands. If the players want it rather than something randomly generated, they can select it - once converted it's all the same.



> How the heck do you think this game is decipherable when the rules set is infinite?



Precisely because D&D is an infinite game, not an finite game. Per game theory terminology.



> The randomness of the game defies any attempt to deduce a pattern from it.  It's not merely a case of being a wargame with a random element to resolution, like say Bloodbowl, where we can apply statistical logic to every element of the game.



On the contrary. Read the front of the box. D&D is a wargame. And certainly not because it has anything to do with war.



> D&D is far too freeform for that.  D&D is not a strategy game.



There is no such thing as freeform anything in games. Gaming is the act of discovery, never invention. And D&D only qualifies as a game when treated by players as a design to strategize within, so they can master their roles within the design. That's the basis of an RPG, at least as D&D is designed. Also, there is no such thing as a game being played where strategy is not performed. 



> Improvisation in the middle of a wargame is the creative act that birthed the RPG.  The exciting notion that the game could go beyond mere 'code breaking' as you name it, and become a story is what caused the board wargamers to give up the dreary plains of Poland and become excited dare we say fanatically role-players from almost the moment that this shocking revelation occurred to them.



You must know you're rejecting obvious reality now. How can you not remember D&D before the 90s? OD&D was 10-15 years of the most hard-nosed, number-crunching, rule tweaking, nerd-filled gamers as ever existed. (Well, barring some 1970s wargamers.) But we were not well-formed, socially fit, artistic, nuanced expressers! Creating a narrative held no game challenge for us. You can't lose telling a story! (which is why those that can never be a game). We were gamers! Everyone of us. As everyone everywhere understood games to be then. Something _in no way_ resembling storytelling - the act of quitting gaming to make something up. This is not what created the craze of D&D. You're putting the absolutism of critical theory before its inception (early 80s) and ignoring the past.  D&D was as addictive as any other number crunching, pattern recognizing, code deciphering game. (or puzzle  ) And just like every other game that requires rigorous mental processing and memory recall it was copied onto a computer, the true successor of RPGs, roleplaying without the referee.

FYI, D&D was actually a breakthrough because it uses extensionality to cover everything any player could ever, perhaps not imagine, but convey to a referee who converted that then into the game system so everything could be actually gamed. That was a game worthy of lifelong addiction where you never wanted a single play of a game to end. Where the depth of the pattern was its complexity and created a hardcore _gamer_ craze in the era of pinball and Pacman. 



> How in the world do you think dungeon maps get created if not arbitrarily making something up?



Generating them, as I said.



> Explain how the map can be extended without application of DM judgment and choice?



JUdgment? Yes. Choice? No. Pull out that protractor and measure. Do the math. Move the game pieces. This is the point of being a referee rather than a player. A referee in D&D (like in Mastermind) does not make choices after the game has begun. They impartially relating the pattern generated according to the attempts of players to decipher. (In the 70s and in D&D expressing a fictional persona had zero to do with roleplaying). 

---

Anyways, I hope the above clarifies things for you and maybe jogs your memory. You're a smart, level-headed guy and I'm hoping you're willing to remember what was actually going on in the wargaming communities of the 70s and 80s and their counterpart community RPGs.

Last point, Gary certainly never wanted D&D to be storygame. He spoke out against "theater games" even at the end of his life (even though he lost one battle to bad game design - "skill games"). He designed massive amounts of rules to ensure D&D could be such a wonderful game and not fall into the non-game cesspit of improvisation. These rules may not have been all great, but their amount certifies his commitment to maintaining D&D's status as a game, for certain.


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## Starfox (Oct 9, 2015)

As much as Howandwhy99 vs. the world is an entertaining spectator sport, I must still intrude to mention that you're discussing from such different perspectives that any progress is impossible.

Howandwhy99 sees the game from an idealized gamist standpoint. The game is a series of maps containing obstacles to overcome. This is is a completely legit approach - extreme perhaps, but completely functional. 

His opponents see this as so extreme as to be nonfunctional, and howandwhy99 sees them the same way. My stand is that you're both wrong and both right; both game styles are functional. Its a matter of preference, not science.

You're never going to convince each other. You cannot debate each other into submission, as these are matters of preference, not reachable by logic. And referring to the early DnD books as if they're some kind of sacred texts won't help either as they are clearly not written by some omniscient authority.


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## Celebrim (Oct 9, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> I'd like to respond back, but I think you'd just repeat what you've said again.




At least I'm producing actual examples.  You are stating nothing but sheer unadulterated meaningless nonsense.



> Game boards (like all the pieces in the game) are function maps of the game's algorithm.




No they are not!  There is no algorithmic way to produce a game board or the other pieces in the game.  Monopolies game board wasn't produced by an algorithm, but a designer.  Chesses game board wasn't produced by an algorithm, but a designer.   In the same fashion, the 'game board' of an RPG is not normally produced by an algorithm, but a designer.  Just as the pieces are.  And in his role as DM, the DM has no limits on the pieces which he is able to create.



> C1 is certainly convertible to the game engine as it stands.




What does that even mean?  What game engine?  Where is this game engine?  Convertible in what fashion?  It's a module?  Are you saying it's not in the proper format to play D&D with until you do some sort of conversation?



> If the players want it rather than something randomly generated, they can select it - once converted it's all the same.




What does it mean to 'convert' it?  



> Precisely because D&D is an infinite game, not an finite game. Per game theory terminology.




Stop using terms that it's clear you don't know what mean.   Conway's Life is an infinite 'game', analyzable because it is based on a very small finite set of rules.  D&D has an infinite number of rules, most of which by necessity are not in the game's text.   D&D is therefore not analyzable in the same way that Conway's Life is.  By restricting the number of pieces and moves to a very small set, that is by removing improvisation, you can transform D&D into something like Nethack, but it will be notably not like D&D precisely in that the players can't improvise (nor can the referee).



> There is no such thing as freeform anything in games.




Good grief, have you never played Poker?  Settlers of Cataan?  Diplomacy?  Even Monopoly?  Tons of games have freeform elements.  One way is to write something like, "Players may trade resources by any agreed upon method."   That's freeform.  Negotiation.  But even where there is not negotiation, any skilled game player will tell you that the secret to many games is in how you manipulate and how you read the other players and influence their decision making.  That's all freeform and its not amendable to mechanical analysis.  Mechanical analysis can tell you the odds of winning.  It can't tell you win and how to bluff, or how to identify find tells and tell them from false tells the player uses to cover and disguise his emotions.  

But RPGs by having an infinite rules set takes this to a whole other level.  It's a freeform world filled with freeform player actions free form DM resolutions and freeform conversations. 



> Gaming is the act of discovery, never invention.




If there is no invention, there is nothing to discover.  Even in a case of Nethack, which is finite and mechanical, what is there to discover is what was invented by the designers.  There is nothing there that wasn't put there by a process of invention.  In the case of D&D, this process of invention is continually on going.



> You must know you're rejecting obvious reality now. How can you not remember D&D before the 90s?




Dude, I remember gaming before the 80's. And you are just full of it.  There are people here on these boards that remember Blackmoor and Greyhawk, and what you describe is just la-la-land.  I don't know who you played D&D with, but this rote mechanical game you claim existed somewhere sure as heck wasn't what most people were playing, nor is it the game Gygax describes in the DMG, nor is the role you make of the DM the role Gygax gives to the DM.  So somehow you are describing a pre 1979 game with a culture fundamentally different than the Blackmoor or Greyhawk tables and yet you think it is widespread?



> FYI, D&D was actually a breakthrough because it uses extensionality to cover everything any player could ever, perhaps not imagine, but convey to a referee who converted that then into the game system so everything could be actually gamed.




Show me where this extensionality lies?  On what page of the rules is this infinite extensibility to be found?  How is it accomplished?  And where are these 'conversion' rules you keep talking about?  The OD&D especially and the AD&D rules as well are notably not comprehensive in the slightest.   Where is this universal rules coverage that lets a referee mechanically turn input into output without bias or improvisation?   The dang example of play in the 1e DMG contains multiple examples of the DM improvising on the spot, so how in the world are you claiming this extensibility exists without improvisation?



> Generating them, as I said.




How was G1 'generated'?  How was C1, S1, B2, S2, UK1, U1, I3, N1, L1, T1 and all the rest and all the fabled levels of Castle Greyhawk 'generated'?  Where is this generator so that I can turn the handle and produce adventure modules that have the features of those adventures?  



> A referee in D&D (like in Mastermind) does not make choices after the game has begun.




That's blatantly at odds with the text of the example of play in the 1e DMG.  It's not possible to play D&D without a DM that does not make choices, any more than it is at present possible to play D&D using a computer as a DM.



> He designed massive amounts of rules to ensure D&D could be such a wonderful game and not fall into the non-game cesspit of improvisation. These rules may not have been all great, but their amount certifies his commitment to maintaining D&D's status as a game, for certain.




Do you think the rules set of D&D is ever complete?  And which do you think came first, Gygax's on the spot ruling or the published rule?   And is not also every DM a rules and content generating engine?


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 9, 2015)

Celebrim said:


> What does that even mean?  What game engine?  Where is this game engine?  Convertible in what fashion?  It's a module?  Are you saying it's not in the proper format to play D&D with until you do some sort of conversation?



The dynamic pattern that is the game was called a game engine, frequently in the 90s. Just like converting a game module from one computer game engine to another a DM needs to convert a module to the one they are running for the campaign. Then it can be included onto the game board. 



> What does it mean to 'convert' it?



Use game elements to model the other person's design. This would still need to be rechecked and playtested by running the NPCs through it to check for holes, imbalancing, miscalculations, and so on. Just like any wargame module.



> Stop using terms that it's clear you don't know what mean.  Conway's Life is an infinite 'game', analyzable because it is based on a very small finite set of rules.



Think back to the 70s. Many, many players talked about the butterfly effect as it related to D&D. And many used game engines (codes) derivative of Conway's, only slightly more involved. His is a couple-three rules. IME D&D varieties are more manageable wargame-sized. Beer and pretzels.



> D&D has an infinite number of rules, most of which by necessity are not in the game's text.  D&D is therefore not analyzable in the same way that Conway's Life is.  By restricting the number of pieces and moves to a very small set, that is by removing improvisation, you can transform D&D into something like Nethack, but it will be notably not like D&D precisely in that the players can't improvise (nor can the referee).



D&D's rules aren't what are in the book. Those are suggestions for sort of "world rules", the code. Rules _players_ are supposed to know were common practice carried over from wargaming or learned through play. And yes, a player can attempt to do anything they desire in the game. But the result is only ever the action's results in the game.



> Good grief, have you never played Poker?  Settlers of Cataan?  Diplomacy?  Even Monopoly?  Tons of games have freeform elements.  One way is to write something like, "Players may trade resources by any agreed upon method."   That's freeform.  Negotiation.  But even where there is not negotiation, any skilled game player will tell you that the secret to many games is in how you manipulate and how you read the other players and influence their decision making.  That's all freeform and its not amendable to mechanical analysis.  Mechanical analysis can tell you the odds of winning.  It can't tell you win and how to bluff, or how to identify find tells and tell them from false tells the player uses to cover and disguise his emotions.



When players "read" (decipher) a player in Poker or just any game where players study other players (including D&D), the player is being treated as the game, or part of it at least. In D&D, Players do this or at least it's assumed they do, whenever they interact with each other. Referees don't need to judge intention. In fact, the very much shouldn't. Ref's must clarify player communications to them until they get an action they comprehend and allows an obvious judgement to be made within the game.



> If there is no invention, there is nothing to discover.



As I said, the game's design must be set prior to play. Just as in Mastermind.



> Show me where this extensionality lies?  On what page of the rules is this infinite extensibility to be found?  How is it accomplished?  And where are these 'conversion' rules you keep talking about?  The OD&D especially and the AD&D rules as well are notably not comprehensive in the slightest.   Where is this universal rules coverage that lets a referee mechanically turn input into output without bias or improvisation?   The dang example of play in the 1e DMG contains multiple examples of the DM improvising on the spot, so how in the world are you claiming this extensibility exists without improvisation?



You generate ability scores. You generate hit points. Damage. Dungeons. Every single thing on the referees map, the game board, must be generated. Encounters. NPC Reactions. And Gary at times simply gave no suggestions in the books he published. At several points he says "the DM should make this up" and we need to set some rules before play can begin.



> How was G1 'generated'?  How was C1, S1, B2, S2, UK1, U1, I3, N1, L1, T1 and all the rest and all the fabled levels of Castle Greyhawk 'generated'?  Where is this generator so that I can turn the handle and produce adventure modules that have the features of those adventures?



I don't believe published modules were generated by rules, just like many published NPCs. But it doesn't matter. They have to be converted into possible generated results by every DM, which means no one is ever going to use them "as is" anyways. They have some basic balancing by way of common practices of the day, how a lot of DMs did it. But everyone of them still needed to be converted. That's obvious. It's only when AD&D was published was there "the one true set of rules (code)" that people felt they need to use. That wasn't a good idea, but they were trying to make a several hundred hour grand strategy game into a one-shot 4-hour convention tournament game. D&D can't reasonably be played as a competitive team tournament IMO, but many have tried. 



> That's blatantly at odds with the text of the example of play in the 1e DMG.  It's not possible to play D&D without a DM that does not make choices, any more than it is at present possible to play D&D using a computer as a DM.



Read the text a different way. There is no improvising occurring. The DM has a map of the game behind the screen. He's noting all the changes the players take on that game board. He's referencing it to tell the players when the monster arrives, when there is a secret door or not, when the hit points run out, what roll is needed to exceed an AC, and on and on. Just like D&D.



> Do you think the rules set of D&D is ever complete?  And which do you think came first, Gygax's on the spot ruling or the published rule?   And is not also every DM a rules and content generating engine?



The code must be complete before play, of course. And yeah, Gygax improvised quite aggressively, giving bad advice on being a referee in the AD&D version, and all of it didn't exactly go over well with a community of gamers. They wanted a game and it is well known he frequently stopped using rules and started improvising therefore negating the game. (Don't try that at a wargame convention, they'll kick you out)


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 9, 2015)

BTW, I think [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION] has it right. Not about the so-called "agenda" stuff, but not coming from the same place. We're not talking about the same hobby given how most it stands today, or even the same practice anymore. For decades D&D more closely resembled a 90s computer RPG than any kind of tabletop "RPG" today, meaning non-gamed story-making.


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## Lwaxy (Oct 9, 2015)

S'mon said:


> My experience of this (in Rise of the Runelords) was that it really sucked, because it broke my immersion.  The adventure listed all these goblin tribes, exposition NPC talks about them, I say "Let's investigate Tribe X", GM says "No, only Tribe Y is detailed in the adventure". That sucked.




Wow yeah...personally I was kind of disappointed for my last batch of RotRL-players not to go off after those other tribes after they turned the AP into an Adventure Loop - as in playing parts of part 2 before finishing with part 1, then go to part 3 and then come back to some of part 2  - But who knows, they still might.. after all they just got back to part 3 now, so there is still time. But then, they have already befriended some goblins, too. 

We do a lot of other stuff on the side, too, as I don't want to rush it. So no, i don't keep them ON the path necessarily. Just around it and somewhere close to it and then back the wrong direction.


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## Lwaxy (Oct 9, 2015)

Could we please stay on topic of how to keep people in an AP and not talk about railroading in general? Because there is a distinct difference to the rails of an AP and what you are doing in a campaign you made yourself. Specifically as it matters where they go in an AP. World isn't changing because the PCs went the wrong way.


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## Bleys Icefalcon (Oct 9, 2015)

It's much simpler (to me) than everything that's been said so far as to how to keep a group of players on the path.  The carrot, or the stick; and when to apply each, and to which extent.


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

Imaculata said:


> See, this is what you got all wrong. A dungeon does not need to have a plot. It can be just a maze with some monsters, traps and treasure. But I decided to make it more than that, by including bits and piece of lore, and including something that ties into the lore.
> 
> Wrong. This plot would not have happened, had they not gone into the dungeon. I specifically wrote a plot for this dungeon, that would tie into the existing main plot line.
> 
> The main plot does not rely on them rescuing this girl. But it adds a new angle to it, and will now have a big impact on the overall plot. It also gave them more insight into the lore and history of the world.




Yes, I understand you forced the plot on the group who walked away from it.  You don't need to keep telling that to me.  There was no need for you to put that girl there and remove their ability to walk away from or take a break from the main plot.


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> I'd like to respond back, but I think you'd just repeat what you've said again. For the large part, you're simply naysaying what I've said. "You can't do that! You have to do it this way. Everyone has always done it this way." Well, we can run it as I pointed out. And as D&D was designed to allow players to play it as a game not as collaborative storytelling, it's what we as DMs are supposed to do.




So it's your contention that every edition of D&D has lied to DMs by telling them that it is a collaborative storytelling game?



> Last point, Gary certainly never wanted D&D to be storygame. He spoke out against "theater games" even at the end of his life (even though he lost one battle to bad game design - "skill games"). He designed massive amounts of rules to ensure D&D could be such a wonderful game and not fall into the non-game cesspit of improvisation. These rules may not have been all great, but their amount certifies his commitment to maintaining D&D's status as a game, for certain.




The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules. ~ Gary Gygax

The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience. ~ Gary Gygax

The books I write because I want to read them, the games because I want to play them, and stories I tell because I find them exciting personally. ~ Gary Gygax

Pen-and-paper role-playing is live theater and computer games are television. ~ Gary Gygax

You make it too easy.  If you're going to make a false claim, at least make it something that can't be thoroughly disproved in a few minutes.


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## Maxperson (Oct 9, 2015)

Starfox said:


> As much as Howandwhy99 vs. the world is an entertaining spectator sport, I must still intrude to mention that you're discussing from such different perspectives that any progress is impossible.
> 
> Howandwhy99 sees the game from an idealized gamist standpoint. The game is a series of maps containing obstacles to overcome. This is is a completely legit approach - extreme perhaps, but completely functional.




I can see and understand his view.  It's okay to play that way.  However, for him to pretend that the game wasn't intended to be a coopperative game where the players and DM create a shared story or that improv isn't involved, is absurd.   Every edition says otherwise in print and Gygax from his own mouth.


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## pemerton (Oct 10, 2015)

I've started a new thread to respond to [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION].


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## Starfox (Oct 10, 2015)

pemerton said:


> I've started a new thread to respond to [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION].




Good call to move this out to a separate thread.


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## pemerton (Oct 10, 2015)

Starfox said:


> Good call to move this out to a separate thread.



Thanks Starfox - I was a bit worried you were going to be irritated that I'd fork-quoted you into a new thread.


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## howandwhy99 (Oct 15, 2015)

Maxperson said:


> I can see and understand his view.  It's okay to play that way.  However, for him to pretend that the game wasn't intended to be a coopperative game where the players and DM create a shared story or that improv isn't involved, is absurd.   Every edition says otherwise in print and Gygax from his own mouth.



I wanted to come back and apologize to you. I not proud of the behavior in some of my posts in this thread to you. I understand you have a very different point of view, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't come to this forum. Please do.

I'm not saying I agree with you, I think we can agree to disagree, but reading back I could have taken a moment to think and should have been nicer. I'm sorry.


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## Maxperson (Oct 16, 2015)

howandwhy99 said:


> I wanted to come back and apologize to you. I not proud of the behavior in some of my posts in this thread to you. I understand you have a very different point of view, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't come to this forum. Please do.
> 
> I'm not saying I agree with you, I think we can agree to disagree, but reading back I could have taken a moment to think and should have been nicer. I'm sorry.




Wow.  Thank you very much for that.  I wasn't in any danger of going to another forum, but I appreciate what you said.


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