Railroading tastefully isn't inherently bad. If the GM

>>53098606
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying is actually structured around this sort of benign railroading: with its Act system, the GM is supposed to outline possible actions and story paths for them and negotiate how the emergent details play into prepared scenes and segments. Also, player characters have their characterizations and character arcs prewritten as their specific milestones.

It's a good system, but it really is designed to play out very specific and structured stories. If you're the type of GM to normally overprepare for other systems, you'd get a *lot* out of it.

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>>53098606
Railroading is fine so long as you throw one of these in every so often

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>>53098606
But it's not what my character would do.

>>53099792
then you can fuck right off and miss out on exp and fun while you shop for shirts or whatever the fuck your character would do instead, i don't want to deal with having to convince you with more than two sentences, clock's ticking and my patience is running out both in and out of character

>i don't need your half an hour long speech on how your character is a loner who doesn't trust anyone.
god, this


Railroading/sandbox discussions aside, the worst fucking thing is players whose idea of 'roleplaying' is 'sitting around doing jack shit' or worse, giving long descriptions of what their characters think and feel as they silently brood and avoid interacting with anyone or taking any action

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>>53099792

>>53098954
Due to the nature of the Doom Pool, I liked this as a Time Attack system.
>>53098606
Aren't dungeon crawls inherently 'railroaded'? I mean, what are you going to do, leave the dungeon?
If you just get a bunch of people together who want to kick ass in a dungeon, they're not going to complain as much about muh sandbox. They came here for the fucking dungeon, and the loot that comes from it, so why would they complain if it's heavily structured?

>>53100176
>If you just get a bunch of people together who want to kick ass in a dungeon, they're not going to complain as much about muh sandbox. They came here for the fucking dungeon, and the loot that comes from it, so why would they complain if it's heavily structured?
A dungeon crawling, kick down the door adventure does have choice though; they're tactical choices about where and how to explore and fight the challenges you find in the dungeon, but they're choices nonetheless.

>>53100176
just last night we were about to enter through what was very obviously a dungeon entrance and one of the players refused to come with us because his character was uneasy and didn't think it would be a good idea

i basically had to drag him with me and he complained the whole way, saying in and out of character that i was a useless idiot who didn't know how to handle risks and that first chance he'd get he'd leave me in there

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>>53098606
The trick to railroading is making the players think they're not being railroaded.

I've always known where my players were going to go before they did, all it takes is laying out bait or "Level requirements" (IE: You can't get to the floating island with out flight, but there's a town nearby that can ferry people) that'll make your players think "Doing this is a good idea" and fall right into the plot.

>>53098606
Railroading is good if it's the scenic route with nice views and a dinner included in the price of the ticket. If it's just a bullet train through a mountain and you can't even go to the toilet then it's not a good game unless your sole goal s to see how fast you can be at the end.

I find in 3.PF you pretty much have to railroad.
I stat'd up these ogres for this session so sorry party, but you're either fighting ogres or quantum ogres.

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>>53098606

>God I hate that kind of attitude so much, it makes sessions longer than they should be. Follow the scream, investigate the footprints, read the notes, climb onto the fucking friendly golem's back who's giving us a free ride, i don't need your half an hour long speech on how your character is a loner who doesn't trust anyone.

I agree with what you said, im not one to just ignore any plot hook the GM throws at me, its fun to play a thought out adventure, but there's a big asterisk that goes with that, and its the same problems always come up whenever the players go along with the GM's adventure, its that whenever something unexpected happens, not unexpected like a player's characters starts jacking off in middle of combat, but things that the GM didn't expect to happen, silly things like a player not searching for a key to open a door and just using lockpics (I know the example is bad but you get the idea) the GM doesn't know what to do and the GM then has to choose between fuck with the flow of the story or fuck the players over, so obviously they chose to fuck the players

Its not always the case of couse but in my opinion the adventure should have some backup plans just in case things either go either really bad or too good for the players, the story should adapt to the players (Even if just a bit) lets say the players fuck with the big bad's plan way too early than they should have, change the story to acomodate that instead of fucking them over, now its a revenge story becouse they fucked the bigbag's plan, can even recycle events or encounters if you want to save time

1/2

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>>53100695

2/2

For another example lets say the players are sandbox fags and didn't bother to stop the necromancer they heard about at the tabern, make it so that the bad guy wins, no one bother to stopped him so now he's marching on the city with an army of undead murdering people and plans to take over the city, attack the players on said tabern and make it a problem they can no longer ignore so now they have an adventure where they either have to stop the necromancer OR they have to escape the city, if they escape maybe they want go back and take it back, if they fuck around too much trying to loot stores or whatever then throw an encounter while they're doing that, the riot didn't stopped becouse they're "Having fun" being murderhobos

TLDR: Go with the flow, you're making the story so you can put things that arent writen down in your notes and don't fuck the players for being smart, punish them for being dumb or ignoring every obvious plot hook though

>>53098606

There isn't a single right way to do it. Instead, it's up to the GM and the group to come to an understanding and establish the best way to create a fun experience together.

Some of it can be based on past experiences, too. Asshole GMs who teach players to not trust anything, to run and hide whenever possible because anything that looks slightly interesting is probably going to fuck them in the ass.

Personally, I love biting on plot hooks. I play with GMs I trust, and whenever possible I always take disadvantages that lets the GM throw plot hooks straight at me. Because why not bite? Even if it's a 'bad' thing, like an ambush, that's another fun kind of scene to play out, that kind of desperate struggle.

But this works because of the kind of groups and games I play in. In some groups this would be aggravatingly suicidal and only detract from the experience, because they have a different set of expectations. Knowing what your group tends to do, and adapting to a new group if you join one, is a very important skill.

Eeenh I'll play the devils advocate A LITTLE

You give a rather weird example imo (unless it's the start of the campaign, which, duuh, I mean you're supposed to talk to your players beforehand and usually explain setting/the general prerequisites aka initial plot hook character reasons for doing the thing)
A character should ABSOLUTELY be able to refuse to save someone if it doesn't make sense for their characters to, I think i'm probably arguing semantics and every GOOD player would still go along with the plot, given that there's no reason not to, but if there's any sort of stakes on the line, them being lawful rather than chaotic (aka calling the guards in that example) if they're not interested because they already have a quest they were going to, or if saving person would go against other loyalties or wouldn't benefit the party, it's perfectly ok to walk away.

I had this happen TWICE like, not even an hour ago on my session, A character was about to walk away to complete the quest hook I gave him, and when I revealed an important NPC was actually calling them over, one of them was a noble loyal to the king and decided to rat out the party and we had an entire very interesting conflict, that sorta shit can really spruce things up and keep you on your toes and it's INTERESTING.

Refusing to go into dungeons is just fucking retarded tho, why even play?

>>53100695
Man, you fucking get it. It took me a while to get my mind around this. I've just decided to get a bunch of possible monster stat blocks, write down important NPC's and keep in mind what the flow of the game is supposed to be very loosely nowadays. It's so much more interesting for me to see how it develops just as I'm sure it's made for better sessions.

>>53098606
None of that is railroading. If it doesn't matter whether your players turn up to a session or not, that's railroading, where none of their choices matter at all to the results of the campaign.