How do you hide your rails?

[Amphetryon]

There's a name for this technique: illusionism. Where you create the illusion of there being a choice. Which can work, unless the players work out that's what you're doing, in which case they will often react badly.

From personal experience, the 'All roads lead to Rome' style of maintaining rails while providing the illusion of (false) choice rapidly leads to rebellious players who react to plot hooks by running vigorously away.

[Jay R]

They will go where the most loot and most interesting adventure is. Put them on the rails.

[Honest Tiefling]

Now I worry about the sort of people I have partied with, as they would not only refuse hooks but murder the hook regardless of wealth that might result from the hook.

[Thrudd]

Start with character creation. Make sure your planned story lines up with the characters' goals and motives, or really vice versa: make sure the characters are created together and have goals and motives which make sense for your story. This is a version of the "make the rails out of candy" advice. If the story is about rescuing the princess, one of the players should be the betrothed prince, another one his loyal bodyguard, etc.
How well this works depends on your players. Can you count on your players to role play motives and pay attention to in-world connections? Knowing your players is a big part of running a successful game. If you want it to be about the story, the players hopefully are the sort to get immersed in their characters and the game world, and by guiding character creation you can make sure you have the appropriate dramatis personae to move your plot forward.

Some players want and expect a dramatic plot and want to follow along with it, just give them the right motives and set the scene. Other players want and expect a sandbox where they can do anything they want. Don't try to confine them to rails, give them a world they can explore and adapt to their actions. With a mixed group it can be hard to give everyone what they want, so it's best to be upfront about whether you are running a story or a sandbox.

[gom jabbarwocky]

Now I worry about the sort of people I have partied with, as they would not only refuse hooks but murder the hook regardless of wealth that might result from the hook.

That's a tad baffling. How else are adventurers supposed to adventure if they murder everyone who offers them an incentive to go adventuring?

The way I see it, as a GM and as a PC, there's a certain recognition that there are some contrivances that we need to accept in order for a game to go anywhere. Some are rather concrete, like Hit Points - yeah, its not realistic, but they are just a game construct to keep things simple and focused. And some are more abstract, like, unless they really deserved it, don't murder the quest-giver. Or, if you do, at least hear them out first. It's common courtesy.

[jedipotter]

From personal experience, the 'All roads lead to Rome' style of maintaining rails while providing the illusion of (false) choice rapidly leads to rebellious players who react to plot hooks by running vigorously away.

I've had the opposite experience. The best games are where the players just play the game by immersing themselves in their characters. So they are not sitting back and analyzing everything through the eye of the game rules, logic and reality. They just play the game as their characters.

So when the werewolf tracks lead to the Dark Tower: The out-of-gamer players jump um ''Aww man we are being Railroaded...the DM is forcing us to go to the Dark Tower! That is so wrong! We should be able to spontaneously create everything our way all the time!''. And the immersed gamers just say ''Eh, the evil werewolf has something to do with evil count Von Doom...who would have thought? We go to the tower."

And maybe I suck at hiding the rails, but they do get suspicious when some threads die or keep leading them to something they ignored earlier. And I disagree that playing the game must involve no input from the players on where the plot goes, so no, I don't think good players just go with the game. Complaining about having no choice (i.e., bad rails) is perfectly fine in my book. Dead or comatose players go with the rails.

Eh, a lot of player input can be bad.

For example: So small isolated town of 100 folks or so. Evil Baron Von Doom takes over the town and country side with his Ogre Thugs. High taxes, harsh laws, and evil all around. So the town sends for help: enter the player characters. Now the goal is simple enough: get rid of the evil baron. And sure, they can come up with all sorts of wacky plans...but they kinda just have to attack the Dark Tower no matter what.

So in trying to ''make their own plot'' players have tried:

1.Set the town on fire, and somehow thinking the evil baron and all his guards and followers would rush over to town to put out the fire and leave the Dark Tower unguarded.

2.Looking for a army. The group wanders around in the wilderness hopping to find an elf or dwarf army that is just standing around that they can use to attack the Dark Tower.

3.Have the town folk attack. They get all the low level commoners and experts to attack the Dark Tower.

None of the plans worked, and the more out-of-game players complained about Railroading...''it's not fair nothing worked''. And that was Group 1.

Group 2, just stayed on the rails. Enter town, got directions to the Dark Tower, attacked the Dark Tower, killed the evil baron and ended the game in just three hours of endless fun. All by staying on the rails.

[Tengu_temp]

Tell the players the kind of story they're interested in and most of the time they will stay on the rails on their own, just to see where it leads.

Do note that some players are rebels for rebellion's sake, and will purposely ignore plot hooks you give them "because they don't like to be railroaded". If you have a story-based approach to DMing, it's honestly best not to play with such people.

Now I worry about the sort of people I have partied with, as they would not only refuse hooks but murder the hook regardless of wealth that might result from the hook.

Without beating around the bush, you played with bad players. My condolences.

[Dimers]

I don't hide rails. I recruit players who like a whole group to have fun (DM included) and are willing to work together for that. Then if they start to go very far off the intended series of plot-related areas and I don't feel capable of improvising quickly, I just say, "I'm sorry but there's no plot there, can you come up with an IC reason to do plot instead?" And they do. Cuz it ain't no thang.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I'm with Thrudd here. A little railroading in chargen is worth a lot of railroading afterwards. PCs built with the plot in mind are drawn to the plot already. IME players want flexibility in how they accomplish goals, not what goals to accomplish.

[SiuiS]

I've had the opposite experience. The best games are where the players just play the game by immersing themselves in their characters. So they are not sitting back and analyzing everything through the eye of the game rules, logic and reality. They just play the game as their characters.

Yup!

So when the werewolf tracks lead to the Dark Tower: The out-of-gamer players jump um ''Aww man we are being Railroaded...the DM is forcing us to go to the Dark Tower! That is so wrong! We should be able to spontaneously create everything our way all the time!''

What? No. That's terrible. That's beyond parody terrible.

For example: So small isolated town of 100 folks or so. Evil Baron Von Doom takes over the town and country side with his Ogre Thugs. High taxes, harsh laws, and evil all around. So the town sends for help: enter the player characters. Now the goal is simple enough: get rid of the evil baron. And sure, they can come up with all sorts of wacky plans...but they kinda just have to attack the Dark Tower no matter what.

So in trying to ''make their own plot'' players have tried:

1.Set the town on fire, and somehow thinking the evil baron and all his guards and followers would rush over to town to put out the fire and leave the Dark Tower unguarded.

2.Looking for a army. The group wanders around in the wilderness hopping to find an elf or dwarf army that is just standing around that they can use to attack the Dark Tower.

3.Have the town folk attack. They get all the low level commoners and experts to attack the Dark Tower.

Are... Are these things actual player attempts from your history?

I still stand by the position that if the game is "you were hired to defeat the evil count" then having that as the end point is not railroading. There is no rail. There is no road. You're not forcing certain behaviors. You are just waiting for them to trigger the Win Condition.

[Honest Tiefling]

I'd believe all of those. I've seen players stroll up to what essentially amounted to bandits expecting to hire some scholars among them.

[Jay R]

Now I worry about the sort of people I have partied with, as they would not only refuse hooks but murder the hook regardless of wealth that might result from the hook.

They're that predictable? What a wonderful tool for keeping them on the rails. Just disguise everything else as the hook.

[NichG]

Rails should never be about methodology anyhow, because they're something to invoke due to the need for something to be coherent overall. If the PCs want to take down the Baron by playing Black Company rather than by playing Avengers, that shouldn't really matter because the end result (the Baron is taken down) is the same. That doesn't mean that stupid ideas should just work because a player came up with them, but getting overly concerned about how the PCs do something rather than the big picture is an easy way to over-use rails where they really aren't needed.

[The Insanity]

To expand on my earlier post:
You don't hide the rails, you let the players buy tickets out of their own free will. And you can menage that by presenting them with a destination that they'll like.

[ElenionAncalima]

The best time to control your railroading is during campaign planning and prep. I agree with those saying node based design is the way to go. Create a few key plot destinations. Adjust as your players move closer to a node or resolve events they skip entirely.

However, it can pretty difficult to build a campaign without making at least a few assumptions about how players will act. In my experience, good players won't try to throw your game of track, just for the hell of it. When things go off track it is usually symptomatic of something else, such as:

• Making too many assumptions in your campaign design.
• Players not feeling invested in the plot.
• DM and players not being on the same page.

Sometimes its best to fight the urge to immediately course correct. Your players may accidently be showing you parts of the game they are more interested in. Once you can figure that out, nudging them in the direction you want becomes much easier.

[mephnick]

You just do the Bioware approach from their RPGs. (Before EA ruined them), which is a good example of "node design."

The first Dragon Age, first Mass Effect and the NWN's all had the same basic structure. Intro -> interchangeable 3 main missions -> conclusion, with sidequests scattered in between.

You had to explore the Elves, Dwarves and Mages in DA, but it didn't matter when you did them, or what order, other than a few dialogue/character changes.

Same with the 3 planets in Mass Effect.

Or the 3 races to ally with in Hordes of the Underdark.

If you went off the rails for hours it didn't matter. You still hit the main plot points and had a semblance of freedom, while still telling the basic story the writer had in mind.