Railroading - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Railroaded

DM: You're so tired that the ground around here is not restful enough. You need to rest in the more comfortable area on top of the hill.
Frodo: Then we probably don't have the energy to climb the hill anyway.
DM: No, you have just enough energy to climb this hill, but not enough energy to go on or look for somewhere else to camp.
Frodo: That is a very specific level of tired.
DM: Maybe. Anyway, it's also dark now.
Aragorn: Hey guys, I have an idea. Let's camp on this huge hill tonight.
DM: Good idea.
Frodo: Stupid DM.

— DM of the Rings

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. 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, trap the PCs in a Closed Circle, 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.

Subtle GMs can railroad players without their awareness, 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 (or rather, suddenly the dungeon was to the south all along). 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". This is probably the most effective way to employ railroading, since the players think that they are driving the train - it just ends up in the same place no matter which way they go.

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 video game 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.
B.A., the put-upon DM of the Knights Of The Dinner Table, engages in some blatant railroading 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.
The Order Of The Stick: Stupid Railroad plot.
- Meanwhile, Vaarsuvius has starting Railroading the plot hirself... going to prophetic levels, only to find the plot accelerating without hir.
Widely used by published adventures to keep players on track for the campaign, and herein lies the difference between the good and the bad, the good ones often accomodate players who get off-track, and the worse ones just like to nudge you back on track with the pointy end of a spear.
- A particularly bad example of the type is the Mekton adventure Operation Rimfire which read more like a script then an adventure. While it featured ten pre-generated player characters, five of them were pretty much useless. To make matters worse, two of the other characters (and one of the useless ones!) were indispensable to the plot, however, if the players didn’t choose to play both of those characters, then important developments and revelations would be skipped or confined to NPC-only dialogue (And there is nothing less fun then watching the GM talk to themselves). The story leaves no room for deviation, basically forcing the players to do exactly what the script tells them, otherwise the plot simply will not advance. And finally, the worst straw is the villain’s Narmy death – no matter what the players do, which pretty much amounts to ten people wailing on him at once with guns, rapiers and laser swords, he lives long enough to deliver his twenty seven line dying speech and then execute his master plan anyway.
Back in the '80s, there was a series of Doctor Who Choose Your Own Adventure books. In one of them, about half your "choices" led to paragraphs basically saying "No, that's not the right decision. Go back and pick the other one."
In Darths And Droids, after the plot of Star Wars Episode I is finished, the GM's original plot is shown. So during an Archive Binge, you get to see how the GM accomodated his original plot points after severe derailing by the players.

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