The notion of “the railroad”, meaning a linear adventure that players daren’t deviate from, is an artifact of DMs following APs and other pre-written adventures too religiously. I’m a firm believer in giving players maximum leeway to come up with their own ideas, even if that means spending a lot of table time while they discuss their clever plans. Note that I say “spending” rather than “wasting” their table time, because I think discussions involving player agency and clever problem solving are some of the most valuable uses for table time, even if that cuts into actual combat and exploration.
I can’t claim to be fully innocent of the railroad mindset. Let me give you an example from our Rise of the Runelords campaign a couple years back (minor spoilers involved, but nothing game-breaking).
After defending Sandpoint from a giant attack, the players were tracking the giants back to a fortress in the Storval plains, and had to cross the supposedly impassable cliffs. The scenario wanted them to fight their way through the Storval stairs, but one of the players (a sorcerer) pointed out that he could just fly the characters over the obstacles some miles away from the stairs, and proceed to their real objective. Normally, I would applaud such thinking, but...
I had spent countless hours sculpting polystyrene sheets to build the Storval Stairs in a really impressive setup that was like a yard high and a yard and a half long. I had already spent some game session time setting it up on the table, and everyone was like "oooh! That's so cool!" Then the sorcerer points out that they don't even need to go that way. They joked about it for a while, but eventually started working out their clever plan for a frontal assault on the stairs.
Sure, it was a clear case of railroading. I never said they had to assault the stairs, but it was clear that they really, really, really needed to go that way, given the heavy DM prep involved.
So I'm deeply conflicted about this subject. Sandboxing is all well and good, but DM prep time has got to count for something in the "fun" equation.
At the end of the day, everybody had great fun, the PCs conquered the nasty giants and harpies waiting for them on the stairs, and raked in some essential loot for future adventures.
So, is “the railroad” intrinsically bad? Maybe, maybe not. The final measure of the usefulness of “the railroad” has to be the fun factor – did the players really have more fun playing this way than if they’d been granted greater agency. I have a hard time arguing against player agency. This hobby of ours is really all about a shared story-telling experience. If it’s just a story spun by the DM, many would argue that he should be writing a novel, not running an RPG session. Player agency means that, even if the details of the situation and of the information the players have at their disposal comes directly from the DM, it’s the players who decide what they will do, where they will go, what they will say to various NPCs, and how they will tackle the obstacles the DM puts in front of them.
How can the DM design his adventure to cater to player agency? And how can the designer of an adventure (published or not) put player agency in the foreground?
It’s impossible to plan in advance for every possible choice the players might make during a session. The DM can try. He can try to anticipate possible actions and avenues for the adventure to develop along, but at the end of the day he has to be ready to improvise. To take whatever curve balls the players throw at him and improvise how the world will react to these new tactics.
Let’s take another concrete example from my current campaign, called Pirates and Plunder. The players were witnesses to a brutal murder that took place so fast that they were unable to intervene. The murderer claimed that the victim had stolen a map, and if there’s one thing that you can count on players wanting to pursue, it’s a story involving a treasure map.
They tried to take control of the fight after the murder, but except for a couple clueless underlings, the main antagonists got clean away. After spending the rest of the session following clues about the murder victim and discovering a plethora of additional information, we began the second session with me, the DM, having in hand a dozen possible avenues they might follow. So what do the players decide to do? Something else, of course!
“What happened to the body?” one player asks.
“Eh? Which body do you mean?” the DM asks back.
“Why, the old man’s body of course. I know we left it at The Crooked Hand Tavern, when we ran off following clues, but they must have done something with the body, after cleaning up the tavern.”
This is a perfect example of players taking the details of the situation the DM has presented to them and using logical deduction to think inside the game world to find additional clues that could help them to move forward. I hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what they might find on the murder victim’s body, but as soon as I heard the player’s question, I knew this was a great opportunity for investigation that would both validate the player’s agency gambit and advance the story in interesting and constructive ways. As it turns out, the player was wondering if the old man simply had the treasure map tattooed on his back, even if that didn’t seem to coincide with the idea that he had stolen it from the murderer. I improvised, made up a new location in the town called “The Death House” where bodies were taken prior to burial or disposal, and a new NPC, the undertaker, whom the PCs had to cajole into cooperating with their investigation. Nothing in my written material hinted at what the PCs might find on the body, but I knew I had to reward them somehow for the initiative they’d taken, so I described a unique-looking tatoo on the old man’s arm that in turn led them to a secret society that I had planned to take a key role later in the campaign.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to improvise when you’re in a “theatre of the mind” situation rather than having spent hours creating a three-foot tall model of a ruined giant-built monolith that you’re aching for the players to explore.
I’d say the key to fostering player agency is DM improvisation, internal consistency in the details presented to players, and useful rewards when they follow a path that is logical and dynamic, even if (or especially if) it wasn’t a planned part of the adventure.
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