Railroading - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Aragorn": I Hate this campaign.

"Gimli": Oh shut up, you're not the only one who hates this campaign you know.

"Aragorn": No you don't understand, I've got +3 boots of hating this campaign.

- DM of the Rings' PCs bickering about the plot's copious railroading.

262. "I am not allowed to make choo-choo noises when the GM tries to force the plot."

1,150 things Mr. Welch Can No Longer Do During An RPG

So, you're the Game Master of the campaign. You've got this awesome idea for a plot for the game, full of action and intrigue, which the players are sure to love just as much as you do. There's only one problem: the players are the ones who control the protagonists, not you... and they don't seem to be taking the bait, instead latching onto some unrelated background detail you mentioned offhand.

What's a GM to do? Force the Player Characters to play his way, of course! Make sure that everything outside of your plot is boring, put in a prophecy so every NPC insists that the party must do what the GM wants Because Destiny Says So, litter the landscape with Broken Bridges and Beef Gates, pull out Schrodingers Gun, even stuff in But Thou Must and Deus Ex Machina situations if need be.

Railroading is widely regarded as a sign of a poor GM, as forcing the players along a single path defeats much of the purpose of a Tabletop Game in the first place. If players wanted that, they'd just play a console RPG instead. That being said, a subtle GM who knows his players, makes an effort to maintain at least an illusion of free will, and really does make stories that are That Damned Good can sometimes get away with herding cats.

It's also worth noting that a good railroading can sometimes be the only way to get difficult or unimaginative players to do something as simple as leave the first town. It can also do wonders to speed up game pacing. Most Game Masters know to only use it when the game slows to a grinding halt and the players just aren't having fun anymore. Railroading players when they are having fun doing what they're doing is a good way to not have players anymore.

A sneaky GM can railroad players without their knowing it, by employing Schrodingers Gun. Let's say that the GM spent a lot of time preparing a dungeon to the North of the players, but the players want to go Off The Rails and decide to go South instead. Guess what! The dungeon has suddenly moved to the South. By keeping enough of the game world unknown to the players, the GM can place the next stop on the railroad wherever the players move. This is called "Railschroding".

Also note that for players or GMs who treat their tabletop game like a CRPG, this is 100% par for the course.

Pipe Shooter is a videogame subtrope. Contrast with Off The Rails.

Examples:

DM of the Rings is a screencap comic about characters going through the plot of Lord Of The Rings (which doesn't exist in their world, so they don't know it) with a very bad DM who is quite blatantly railroading them, with the players attempting to go Off The Rails as much as they can (including attempting and succeeding at killing Gollum, Gríma and Saruman).
- DM of the Rings provides possibly the best summation of railroading this troper has seen:
  Players tend to stay on the rails better when you place obvious landmines on either side of the tracks.
- In Chainmail Bikini, the semi-sequel to DM of the Rings, the DM (whose name is identified as Casey) has not learned his lesson with the players and is still prone to railroading the players on his Cliche Storm of a plot.
  - This is partially averted because the players still manage to take things Off The Rails constantly despite the attempts at Rail Roading
B.A., the put-upon DM of the Knights Of The Dinner Table, engages in some blatant Rail Roading in one strip. His players catch on when they look back at the map of the countryside that they've just drawn, and realize that the road to the dungeon is a straight line with impassable forests and mountains either side.
- Of course, B.A.'s players are a bunch of genocidal Munchkins who have sometimes been seen derailing everything (normally by killing enormously important NP Cs) just to piss B.A. off, so it's hard to blame him.
Stupid Railroad plot.
Many professionally published adventures rely on Rail Roading to some degree or another to get the characters involved and keep them there. How much of it is done and how blatant it is are generally what separates good modules from bad ones. Good adventures are more flexible and have advice for when players inevitably mess up the Rail Roading and go Off The Rails.

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