Both of my gaming groups currently run canned adventures (using the D&D Eberron series and the German DSA series of modules, respectively).

This usually involves a lot of GM fiat. The GMs try to mask this as well as they can using illusionist techniques, but sometimes, heavy-handed intervention is inevitable (especially with the newer DSA modules, which routinely have NPCs defy the rules or require the GM to "capture the party" etc.)

The players grudgingly accept this and have no desire to derail the plot. You might call it trailblazing except for the 'grudgingly' bit.

One group has GMs go into apologetic mode whenever the railroading becomes obvious, i.e. the GM will warn the players that he is about to narrate large parts of the action ("Okay guys, you won't like this, but suddenly, the sorceress casts _charm person_. No initiative and you fail your saves. I know it sucks, but that's the way it is. I don't like it either.")

This works reasonably well, but I would like to eliminate the bad aftertaste which usually goes along with this.

Basically, I'm toying with the idea of compensating the players whenever the railroading becomes heavy-handed and/or obvious.

I want the system to work with rewards rather than penalties, but I'm not sure whether to give out rewards (a) for avoiding the need for GM fiat or (b) for suffering it.

Some examples are in order:

*-*-*

Situation A: The party has to find a vital clue in the library to advance the plot.

Outcome 1: All the characters fail their "Use Library" rolls.

The GM provides the clue anyway, describing how they got lucky ("You are ready to call it a night when you notice a small tome which has fallen under the bookcase."). Also, he indicates his use of GM fiat.

Outcome 2: A character succeeds.

The GM provides the clue. Also, he indicates that the player has found a vital plot element by his PC's power.

In this case, I'd like to give out a reward for outcome 2 because a PC's competence should be rewarded (else, no one will take the "Use Library" skill anymore).

*-*-*

Situation B: The master villain has to escape to advance the plot.

Outcome 1: The villain gets away by his own power.

Business as usual.

Outcome 2: The villain must break the rules (ignore a critical hit, succeed at an unlikely spell etc.) to escape.

The GM describes the desired outcome in defiance of rules, die rolls etc. Also, he indicates his use of GM fiat.

In this case, I'd like to give out a reward (or compensation, really) for outcome 2 because the PCs are deprotagonized.

*-*-*

Do you see any problems with the basic idea?
Do you know a system which does something similar?

Regards,

Hal

This is a classic use of hero/villain/plot/whatever points -- to ensure success when it's absolutely needed, by either side.

Eden Studios' Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG takes things a little further with its Drama Points, doing what you're talking about initially -- it has the "When Bad Things Happen To Good People" rule, which states that if the GM sets up a situation that the players aren't allowed to get out of, then the GM should tell them so, and compensate them for it with Drama Points. Examples given include a forced capture of a (or all) characters, a villain getting away without the PCs having a chance of stopping it, and a PC's new boy-/girl-friend turning out to be a brain-sucking demon.

When that rule is invoked, the rules further state that the players cannot use Drama Points to try to get out of the situation. (Which is important, since Buffy also allows players to buy Plot Twists with Drama Points... which can be things like the sudden arrival of reinforcements, finding a clue which leads them to the villain, etc.)

--Travis

My suggestion:

Being captured can be interesting. Having a villain escape to recurr can be interesting. Dramatic loses can be interesting. The key word is "can be"--if the captivity isn't interesting, the recurring character isn't cool, or the dramatic loss doesn't become part of a greater drive to glory (or tragedy) then it's failing.

Why I bring this up is this:
1. Ask the players if they think the situations that arise from these fiats are interesting enough to warrant whatever discontinuty they feel from the fiat being invoked.
2. If they do, then it shouldn't be "grudging acceptance."
3. If they're willing to accept it in order to game but really don't think it pays for itself in terms of interest then I'd consider droping it altogether.

There are ways to run games without necessitating fiat or the GM breaking the rules. I think modules have a hard time encapsulating them so I'd tend to think that if the play is primarily from modules then you've got to look at the cost-to-benefit ratio of doing that (i.e. if the only way to play with a half-way decent game that can be reliably run is to use a module then, hey, we go with what we've got--but if not then consider that the GM might be better off making up their own adventures).

A Note on Modules: I think that for some very good reasons pre-created modules will have problems with railroady-ness (I say this from the experience of writing up games for other people's consumption).

a) My game was geared towards specific PC's and was very open-ended. When I write it up, however, if I try to grant other, unknown people (and their totally different characters) the same experience that my group had then I've almost gotta treat their characters exactly as mine were treated (which is not "fair.")

b) If I write up "situation" but the situation is not "tight" (i.e. it's very open -ended and no scenes are required) then the module is kinda incomplete or, possibly worse, irrelevant. If no PC cares about the stuff that's going on or really isn't motivated by it (and the GM makes the mistake of trying to run it--but it might be an honest error where the GM couldn't really know) then the game may essentially collapse if the GM is relying on it for the majority of the action.

c) The motivation of players vs. characters is very tricky to get right. How much do you tell the players? How much do the characters need to know at each stage? For a group with heavy meta-game this may be different for a group with a lot of immersion. Trying to write a module for both aduiences is tough (even if you get the content right, getting the mix perfect is going to be a matter of luck).

For these reasons and others, I propose that if the players don't feel the situational pay-off for the railroading is worth the drawbacks of it that the GM commit to re-tooling the modules to remove those aspects.

-Marco

The idea seems fine, but it seems to me like it would be simpler and easier to simply eliminate the railroading, instead of trying to alleviate its chafe.

Marco wrote: 1. Ask the players if they think the situations that arise from these fiats are interesting enough to warrant whatever discontinuty they feel from the fiat being invoked.
2. If they do, then it shouldn't be "grudging acceptance."
3. If they're willing to accept it in order to game but really don't think it pays for itself in terms of interest then I'd consider droping it altogether.

Halzebier wrote:

Marco wrote: 1. Ask the players if they think the situations that arise from these fiats are interesting enough to warrant whatever discontinuty they feel from the fiat being invoked.
2. If they do, then it shouldn't be "grudging acceptance."
3. If they're willing to accept it in order to game but really don't think it pays for itself in terms of interest then I'd consider droping it altogether.

We've discussed these matters at some length, at least in one of the groups. The players truly do not mind railroading, they only dislike 'poor' railroading.

Example 1: The PCs enter Frankenstein's sanctum _at just the moment_ when lightning hits and awakens his monster. Reaction: No objections and even a few chuckles.

Example 2: The PCs are conned into going undercover in a prison, only to find out that it is all a scheme to get them imprisoned, nothing more. Reaction: Spontaneous applause, as it's friggin' hard to capture and disarm a high-level party.

Example 3: In a battle against an inferior party of highwaymen, one NPC breaks all sorts of rules to make off with an item which the entire party is bent on protecting at all costs. Reaction: Disgust at the module and condolences to the GM for having to run such drek.

Hal

As someone else who uses a lot of modules I run into these problems sometimes. One thing I try to do is choose modules that have fewer issues like this, of course that costs money and time. Sometimes I'll look for a way to modify the module slightly to reduce the logic stretch.

My big preference though is to use a system that is easy to write up encounters off the cuff in so that I really can allow the players to say "No." But that isn't a viable choice in your situation.

Being up front about the issue is probably the best solution. If you want a metagame mechanic to use to compensate the players, just award the players a drama point each time you have to force their path. Then let them spend those points to dodge poor rolls in other encounters (as has been mentioned before).

I wish more modules would consider these issues. I have read plenty of modules that required no more suspension of belief than "Ok, so this is the scenario, let's go do it." At that point, you're really just going along with the genre. Some encounters can be foreced of course without being railroading. The bandits could attack the PCs the next time they enter a forest for example . This then leads to the adventure. Unless the PCs never enter forests or won't leave town, you can spring this on them pretty easily.

In my last campaign, for a while, I had it easy. The PCs had decided to take over one of the dungeons they had cleaned out and used it as a base. They were then logging some trees blown down by a big storm. All I had to do to pull them into the next module was have one of their logging parties attacked, and the trail lead back to the dungeon.

Frank

Dramatic failure is one technique: The PC's fail their library use. The GM declares they find a (false) lead...to an old abandoned house. Here, they are attacked by zombies. After the fight they notice a bookshelf (prompt another library use check).

Failure equals more danger then another chance at suceeding at the same task. Repeat until they succeed.

When overt railroading is needed, offer compensatory XP for it. Seriously, experience is what you get when you don't get what you want (to quote a cheap ass games intruction manual), so it's quite plausible.

Also narrate briefly what would have happened if they had been able to do what they could. Its not so much the winning as the group recognition of tactics being good, that is the real prize. Then give them the XP, which represents what they could have gotten from these actions.

Personally I think modules should be used as a guideline and source of ideas. To quote Helmut von Moltke "No plan survives contact with the enemy.", and a module is nothing more than a plan for an adventure.

I like Noon's suggestion of a false clue leading to a zombie house. The same could be done with the villain. Every "good" bad guy has a few doppelgangers. Saddam had three. Let them capture one of those instead, it even gives the bad guy extra time to get away while the players are figuring out they got the wrong guy. Or maybe he is the bad guy, but in reality is just a puppet for his mother who is the one who's really running the show.

I don't think lying, cheating and tricking the players is railroading, it's just a standard part of GMing. Adapting to what the players do, by moving clues, changing NPCs, giving the players false information and so on, is all fine in my book.

One of the worst sessions I've ever played was a Cthulu module where the GM was playing it as written, except he forgot to give us one vital clue. To make a long story short, we wound up searching everywhere and going door to door, without any success or any hint at all, till we finally by accident (or by elimination as it was the last house we checked) wound up at the right mansion. That is, we spent hours in frustrating boredom before anything happened at all. I don't think that's most peoples idea of fun.

Halzebier: I know people play differently, but I'm a little curious about your statement that you have no alternative to canned adventures. I've played lots of excellent adventures where the GM spent less time on preperation than it would have taken him to read a 32 page module. A little improvisation can get you quite far. :)

Ragnar

Personally I think modules should be used as a guideline and source of ideas. To quote Helmut von Moltke "No plan survives contact with the enemy.", and a module is nothing more than a plan for an adventure.

Halzebier: I know people play differently, but I'm a little curious about your statement that you have no alternative to canned adventures. I've played lots of excellent adventures where the GM spent less time on preperation than it would have taken him to read a 32 page module. A little improvisation can get you quite far. :)

I would go so far as to say that there is nothing wrong with railroading, and no particular reason the players would need to be compensated for it. If it's done well.

By done well, I mean it advances the plot in a believable manner and leads to a more interesting overall play experience than merely letting things fall where they may. In such a case, the play should be enough reward (though there's nothing wrong with handing out drama points or experience or whatever, of course) and the players should have no reason to feel cheated.

If it's done poorly, then I'd say there is very little that would serve as adequate compensation for it.

Hi all! I think the discussion here could be made easier by bringing the term "Participationism", as previously discussed and codified on the Forge, into the mix. Have some threads:

Weekend Game (long) in which the term is first substantially discussed.
Participationism? in which much is hashed out, and hashed again. Calvin's qualifier "If it's done well" gets a lot of play there too.
Illusionism: a new look and a new approach a huge thread started by Ron to get an elegant handle on terminology that was getting increasingly baroque
Do prewritten scenarios=Illusionism/Participationism?, particularly for this thread.


I think rewarding the players for restraining their actions to respect the known needs of the story can be very functional in Participationist play. However, be aware that when you start handing out rewards players are going to seek them out. This means that the players will consistently be driving the game right up to the very precipice of "breaking the scenario" and peering over the edge into oblivion, so that they can receive their reward for turning away instead of plunging over.

Depending on your setting and the rest of your game, this can be strongly functional. At the risk of sounding arrogant I will point to my own thread [Capes] Bluffing for a short discussion of how to turn such limit-seeking behavior into valuable play.

ffilz wrote: One possibility: When I ran D20, I found it a lot harder than any system I have run in the past to improvise in. Why? Because the effort to create encounters is so high, at least if you choose to follow the "rules" on encounter balance (which amazingly enough work if you use them - this is one thing that really impressed me about D20). I did have to adapt modules since I wasn't running D&D but was running Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed so I had to replace monsters, and worse, had to replace character classes. I would spend 2-3 evenings preparing a module for an 8 hour game session.

Frank

Hmm, the problems I had with quickly writing up encounters fall into a couple things:

1. In MCAU, or more specifically The Diamond Throne setting, there are not lots of humanoids at different CRs, so you can't just look through say the CR 5 monster list and pick out the CR 5 humanoid. Since I was adding class levels, I also had to choose additional feats and stuff.

2. Assigning treasure to humanoids. I like to give humanoids treasure that is appropriate for them, so it takes some effort.

Since this was my first D20 campaign, I was trying to follow "the rules" as closely as possible to give them a fair shake (I was coming in with a bias against D&D). I was pleasantly surprised that the balance worked out pretty well, except that I noticed that the spell casters dominated the combats, but appropriate encounters gave the PCs an appropriately hard time.

Oh one other thing, I tended to use mixed groups, having a few leader types and a bunch of common troops. Sometimes the leader type was a spell caster.

I do like to stat things accurately.

For Cold Iron, I have some charts that speed creation of NPCs. I assume some standard skill tracks for humanoids and monsters that allow me to come up with a quick set of attribute values, and then quickly stat out the monster. Usually I stat out 4-6 levels worth at the same time.

For RuneQuest, I would be much more lax. I would figure out the secondary attributes that are directly used (Strike Rank, Hit Points, Damage Bonus) and then just assign skills as seemed appropriate.

In Cold Iron and RuneQuest I don't worry so much about encounter balance, which does sometimes mean I give the PCs an overly hard encounter. Usually after a few sessions, I get a good feel for what's appropriate though.

Frank

TonyLB wrote: I think the discussion here could be made easier by bringing the term "Participationism", as previously discussed and codified on the Forge, into the mix.

Your description is naturally focussed on the preventative Participationist Techniques, since those are what your players are concerned about. That makes it hard for me to tell whether you're deploying a full spread of proactive techniques as well. So I'll just ask.

Does the GM indicate strongly (perhaps even just telling players OOC) what direction they're expected to go? If they're supposed to lose an item (for instance), I gather he doesn't simply tell them that. Because of that his creativity seems to be running counter to theirs in at least some circumstances.

I'm not a bounded-participationist GM myself (i.e. running by modules) but I am getting pretty heavily into cooperative-participation, where the players have equal input into the things that "must happen", and then everyone works together to make them happen. Obviously this pretty much requires being explicit about what things you all have to work toward.

TonyLB wrote: Your description is naturally focussed on the preventative Participationist Techniques, since those are what your players are concerned about. That makes it hard for me to tell whether you're deploying a full spread of proactive techniques as well. So I'll just ask.

Does the GM indicate strongly (perhaps even just telling players OOC) what direction they're expected to go? If they're supposed to lose an item (for instance), I gather he doesn't simply tell them that. Because of that his creativity seems to be running counter to theirs in at least some circumstances.

I'm not a bounded-participationist GM myself (i.e. running by modules) but I am getting pretty heavily into cooperative-participation, where the players have equal input into the things that "must happen", and then everyone works together to make them happen. Obviously this pretty much requires being explicit about what things you all have to work toward.

Hal, player input into what must happen in the game can, indeed, work in Flashbacks and non-linear campaigns. It can also work in straight-ahead, normal campaigns with a linear time-flow. That's what I was referring to, and I'm guessing (from your response) that it may not be something you've considered.

Here's a wholly fictional example:

GM: Okay, I'd like to run an adventure where you're lost in the desert.
PC#1: We could do caravan duty, and get separated from the caravan.
PC#2: Oh come on, I don't want to play being stupid enough to just wander away from a caravan.
GM: Sandstorm maybe? Anyone could get lost in one of those.
PC#2: That works for me... but maybe we could juice it up, and give them some personal responsibility for their predicament.
PC#1: A little girl could have wandered away from the caravan, and our heroes go out into the storm to find her.
PC#2: Yeah, then we have a death-march while trying to keep a little kid alive. Lots of tough choices there.
GM: That works for me. So, that's roughly where we're headed. Let's play you guys getting the caravan-duty job and meeting the little girl.

TonyLB wrote: Hal, player input into what must happen in the game can, indeed, work in Flashbacks and non-linear campaigns. It can also work in straight-ahead, normal campaigns with a linear time-flow. That's what I was referring to, and I'm guessing (from your response) that it may not be something you've considered.

Cool... now I understand more.

So, on the original topic: A reward is something that the players would be able to seek out. From my understanding so far, it doesn't sound like your dealing with players who conscously interact with the illusions the GM is putting forth.

Might it be clearer to describe whatever you plan to give out as a "Consolation Prize"? That connotes (to me) a sense that "Yes, we all wanted me (the GM) to be smart enough to convince you that there was no railroading, but since I wasn't, here's a prize for being good sports about my human failings".