"They're all the same town" No Davvy! Don't tell the players the secret!

@jgr7487

3 жыл бұрын

do you guys even plan towns???

@CooperAATE

3 жыл бұрын

New DM here, I have 17 towns (any radiant towns will happen once they travel)

@jgr7487

3 жыл бұрын

@@CooperAATE I have half a town & 1 city planned in a truly sandbox game! I don't know how or why my players keep coming back. and that half town is the starter town!

@CooperAATE

3 жыл бұрын

@@jgr7487 I kicked them out of the starter town 3 sessions ago

@jgr7487

3 жыл бұрын

@@CooperAATE are they radiating well?

Yeah, railroads aren’t always bad, I love trains!

@aionicthunder

3 жыл бұрын

So, what’s supposed to happen when you say “I love trains”? Are multiple trains supposed to come in, is it only the one exact sentence that summons a train, or do these 2 count as the same thing?

@blagachu1107

3 жыл бұрын

trains, mhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

@sangerzonnvolt6712

3 жыл бұрын

I like turtles

@CruddyCpt

3 жыл бұрын

So does your mother.

@worthasandwich

3 жыл бұрын

They can be especially fun to rob while riding dinosaurs. (that was my last D&D game)

I believe when most people use the term railroading they are referring to the dm overriding the players' choices. For example, an NPC offers to tutor the wizard but after the player declines, the dm decides that the wizard did accept the offer.

@hawklegs6940

3 жыл бұрын

Worse is when the Dm finds ways for this tutor to keep showing up, or punishes the player for not accepting the offer. That's when it can get REALLY dicey.

It doesn't matter whether the game actually is railroaded or not, what matters is that the players don't notice the rails.

@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz

3 жыл бұрын

was about to comment that lol

@defensivekobra3873

3 жыл бұрын

Its fine until you bump into the invisible Wall, that "obstacle cannot be overcome cuz plot" that can be issue

@sylvnfox

3 жыл бұрын

problem is the moment you pull out your copy of Curse of Strahd, the players know they are being railroaded. all published adventures/campaigns are railroads

@Daredhnu

3 жыл бұрын

@@sylvnfox that's not a problem if the players know they will be playing a module, modules by their nature are a contained environment for the players to play in and it's assumed that the DM will make shit up along the way to cover the parts the adventure doesn't detail, it only becomes a problem if nobody wants to play the module or the DM refuses to improvise. Another upside to modules is that there is a definitive end to the game, it's once you finish the module, end of campaign.

@sylvnfox

3 жыл бұрын

@@Daredhnu oh I know, i was just talking about all the people that decry railroading in any form then get all excited about playing the new hotness campaign that is released. (CoS, RotFM, ect,)

I don’t mind either, as long as the campaign is fun and isn’t just boring and forced completely

@daddymcdoob7862

3 жыл бұрын

For me it depends. If it is a combat heavy, encounter based campaign, then I don’t mind it being railroaded. However, if it’s very character based and roleplay heavy, I like having the freedom to have our characters affect the world and do as they see fit. A good dm is capable of still pulling off all the story points they want to cover even in an open campaign. It’s difficult yes, but definitely worth it

@defensivekobra3873

3 жыл бұрын

Depends on how you are being railroaded. If you gain an plot relevant item and then instantly have it stolen in game, or just arbitrarily fail at something you are Good at without a Good cause, if you bump into the invisible Wall in an obious way like that you feel not good

one of the things I find helpful to remember as a DM is that nothing is canon until your players experience it. you're always laying out the railroad tracks right in front of their train as it's chugging along, which means you can alter those tracks to fit their momentum and your direction until the moment they contact the existing tracks and solidify into reality. it's like rapidly pivoting Tetris pieces in their final frame, and if you do it right all the players see is the perfect fit and not the frantic scrambling.

The illusion of choice is the DMs greatest too

@benjrc3611

3 жыл бұрын

The greatest what?

@augustinebellini6329

3 жыл бұрын

Tool?

@sangerzonnvolt6712

3 жыл бұрын

@@augustinebellini6329 yes tool it's a great band

The term I use is an intentionally “linear” campaign where there is a story that everyone is expecting to play through vs “railroading” which is a set of tools for a DM that are antagonistic in nature. For example, saying “no, you cannot choose that. Your character chooses to do this instead” by DM fiat, would be an example of “railroading”

Petition to rename these segments as "Chatty Chappy"

@ourpetsarecute3110

3 жыл бұрын

Knight Shiba how about Davvy Chatty

@marcus4046

3 жыл бұрын

How about Davvy Chatts? or or how about Say Spells with Davvy Chappy. idk

@an8strengthkobold360

3 жыл бұрын

Where do I sign?

@CooperAATE

3 жыл бұрын

Chappy Chats

*Clicks on video about railroading This random ad: BE SAFE AROUND RAILWAY TRACKS!

I don't mind either, as long as the campaign is fun and isn't just boring and forced completely

@vvitch5866

3 жыл бұрын

Why is there two comments saying this and posting at the exact same time under 2 different usernames

@Overclocked-nm2vu

3 жыл бұрын

@Joshua Lebron huh, our comments ARE the same, that’s weird, I’ve never seen that happen anywhere else.

@thereaIitsybitsyspider

3 жыл бұрын

Common opinion

I don't like railroad campaigns, but 4/6 of my party has no backstory and no goals (they're new players), so they don't really have the confidence to make their own decisions in our campaign. They took 45 minutes to cross an empty street and open an unlocked door

@ARTEMISXIX

3 жыл бұрын

Is one of them is a bard who spams vicious mockery? I s2g every new player party has that guy

@CidGuerreiro1234

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah with a group like that there's no way around it, you have to push/gently prod them into the right direction to make shit happen. They will be just as bored as you are if nothing exciting ever happens (even if they're also to blame for that) and might stop showing up for games too. That being said, you can/should also talk to them prior to the campaing to get at least some backstory out of their characters. Some of them might be adamant on a "I don't know/can't think of anything" answer but you get even one to come with something, it helps.

I see it as linear vs open-ended. Railroading is when player actions/choices don't matter

@Slayerlord13

3 жыл бұрын

Exactly! This video feels like it's completely missing the point of why people complain about railroading.

@CidGuerreiro1234

3 жыл бұрын

Agree 100%. Linear isn't bad, in fact, I think a lot of players prefer it like that, especially the ones who don't have that much initiative to make stuff happen on their own.

I'm not a huge fan of the term 'railroading' either as it implies that the player has absolutely zero choice or agency. The best way I've found to run games is that I as the DM give the players a destination or objective in the form of a story beat. But the players decide how to get there and how they want to accomplish or not accomplish that goal. Then you play out some consequences good or bad before moving onto the next 'destination'. I've found that if you remove all or most of player choice outside of combat, players tend to get bored. But if you give them absolute freedom they often never know what to do with it. I prefer to think of things as a kind of give-and-take between players and DM's rather than it being one or the other.

@agent00puffball

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah this is how I like to run things too. Here is the task that is required for you to complete, but it is up to you how it is accomplished. You can tie in several different things at once by doing it this way, and depending on their choices could then also further a character arc, or side stories, or anything else. I'm a big fan of having general plot points I want the story to hit, but not necessarily how we reach said points. Players are generally very creative people too, and sometimes the way they come up with to advance the story are way cooler than anything I would have thought of anyway. D&D should be cooperative storytelling, and I don't think it works at all if the DM controls everything or if the players control everything. There has to be a balance.

@CooperAATE

3 жыл бұрын

That's a perfect example

My players are so predictable that I don't even have to railroad.

@lasttarrasque6223

3 жыл бұрын

is that a good thing or a bad thing?

@jgr7487

3 жыл бұрын

@@lasttarrasque6223 yes

@fishyfishyfishy500akabs8

3 жыл бұрын

Last Tarrasque depends, it’s a law vs chaos debate

@gragaten

3 жыл бұрын

@@lasttarrasque6223 well It's good becouse I can make an awesome story without having to be afraid that it gets completely derailed resulting in my players having fun AND it's a lot easier for me as a DM

There is the DM Railroad, the PC Open world and the Dice Generation Chaos. Good campaigns can do all three!

Chappy: God. I love talking about ‘how to write a campaign’ video. *WINK* I could just... talk forever on how to write a camping *WINK* *WINK!!*

I prefer the term "boatride campaign". The party may drift around the river (campaign) and do random things, but they always end up going downstream.

It also depends greatly upon the DM's personal style, some DMs outright have an easier time with sandbox-style games, whereas others need a bit of linear control to keep sane. The important thing here is just making sure everyone is having fun, after all, that is the point to play any game at the end of the day.

The best answer to railroading that I know, I believe was said by Mark Humes the DM of HighRollers, is to “railroad the world not the players”. Events are going to happen with/without player interference, either the player go to the town which they’ve heard the new mayor has been acting strange and discover the demon controlling the mayor, or skip past it to the rumoured hoard of treasures, they avoid it and hear rumours that, that town has stopped trading and no one who’s gone to check on it has returned. They decide if now is the time to check it out or not, and things evolve to worse states if not. Or maybe a band of NPC heroes save the day and the party has competition.

That whole "each city is the same" is something I'm genuinely working on to avoid, and instead I'm trying to give each locale and region its own feeling or iconography.

Railroading only becomes an issue when players’ choices are actively suppressed. For that reason I really like that “all roads lead to plot” approach, because it preserves the story while allowing players to get more invested!

This definitely brings up great points as a story is still being told. There will always be some form of railroading, but it is a question if what is being used is good or bad. All the points in this video I agree they are good versus a bad example where your players feel like they have no agency in what they're doing (example that pissed me off in a campaign I'm no longer in due to other bad DM tactics and I wasn't having any fun was there was a mass human slaughter for the beginning town because there was "too many humans in the world" and there's bickering amongst the gods for how terrible the goddess we were employed to was terrible in another timeline (granted, she was the antagonist in the previous campaign). We decide to make travel easier for ourselves and bought horses and carriages and readied our 9 PC party for our next adventure. *next morning* The city is attacked by a Trent and we are forced to leave the town... No build up for the Trent, the DM just wanted us to move to the next city when we were already planning on it... Morale of the story, give your players goals and freedoms to choose what they want to do cause forcing them down a certain way or die doesn't make for a fun game unless it's plot crucial for why the city is being destroyed

The best one is the railroad where the players feel it's open ended. So nice to get them to do whatever you want but making them believe it's their idea.

Praise the Bard Father for this video.

Railroading is specifically when a player or the party want to do some Backstory, or side quests, or go in a different direction and the dm doesn't compensate for that and says "No, you're doing what I wrote down." Most campaigns are mostly dm driven, but people should know what the term refers to so they don't misuse it.

The best thing I've found in my limited run as a DM so far has been giving them the illusion of choice. I have different ideas/plans (usually 2-3) and make them vague enough that they can be molded to fit where/what the players are planning to do. I dont have the energy to make 17 different encounters and 12 shops/inns/quest givers that might end up in the shredder. I'm sure every DM has been in the situation at some point where they planned out a narrative for a NPC only to have the player not care to talk to them and you wasted 1.5hrs of prep for nothing

My brother is writing a steampunk themed campaign, and it's going to begin with all the players riding on a train. He's hilarious like that.

The way railroading is discussed in this video I don't have any issue with - I actually like it. But the railroading I think most people have an issue with is when it completely removes the player's choice - there is only one way to go and there can be no deviation. For example, I heard a story about a group of players traveling from one village to another - they wanted to avoid an ambush and go through the woods, the DM just refused and told them they traveled down the road. A decent DM would just have had an encounter in the woods, maybe turned the monsters from bandits into goblins and rolled with it - but the railroad DM can't cope with any disruption to their linear path. Its the lack of improvisation/adaptability leading to a novel with a few dice rolls.

Most of the times whenever I feel railroaded by the dm in the campaign is exactly because those little moments miss out, the dm just wants to go from a plot point to another without giving the characters any room to breathe and just be themselves. Also puzzles and dungeon stuff that is absolutely always linear with no sense of exploring and feeling like you're commiting to a choice feels bad too (especially because I also really enjoy the gamey part of rpgs)

Railroaded campaigns are fine if you give your players downtime to do the things they wanna do. Railroad DMs often don't do this though so people hate it. Free roam campaigns have issues with a lack of direction which can confuse players. Or if you have a total free roam, can lead to areas that greatly penalize the players from going there leading to a TPK very quickly. But they often let you have the RP downtime you want for your characters which is very nice.

This seems a lot more like, “On Rails” as opposed to “Railroading.” Best I can find the difference is this: “On Rails” = No matter which option the players take, the consequences are the same. “Railroading” = The players are punished (horribly) until they choose the option the DM wants. Though this could be a generational difference in definitions.

@CidGuerreiro1234

3 жыл бұрын

The way I see it, Railroading isn't necessary about punishing players for getting off-track, but rather cutting them short in every attempt to make something else happen. Just recently one of my players started looking for a way to improve the commerce in the city he's running. His entire backstory revolves around helping/leading that city so I thought it would've been extremely lame to simply tell him "You don't find anything". Instead I told him in-game about some tunnels that I had *totally planned for* and that needed to be clansed of monsters so that merchants could use it to transport good into town, which then turned into a one-session "sidequest" that I also managed to intertwine with the "main quest". Handled that pretty well if I do say so myself.

thank you so much, Davvy, I've been panicking so much DMing this campaign and worrying constantly if I was railroading my players and being TerribleTM, this video calmed me down so much, thank you ♥️

"They're all the same town." Yes. Yes, they are. I've also heard of people doing the same thing on a smaller scale. I remember Runesmith making a video where he needed to get some information to his players and, depending on which direction they walked, either an angel or like a sphinx would give it to them. I found that very interesting. I do hope that when I start running my games in the future I will be able to cleverly mask my railroading, as my peers do.

Really enjoyed this one Davvy appreciate the breakdown/explanation thingy

I tried to railroad my players once, then they took the rail, beat me over the head with it and somehow we're in the Feywild.

"God I could just talk on forever about how to make a campaign" Um. Yes? Please? I swear my ideal KZread playlist is just you and Matt colville and Jacob and everyone teaching me stuff

The "railroaded stories will have better plot" Only works if you are Good at writing, i just get an vague collection of neat ideas but i can never force them into a series of strict events

I think there are two different issues when we talk about railroading. The first which Davvy has covered here is plot points and story arcs that are offered by the DM. These are fine and necessary in most games as it fosters a cohesive story. The issue comes when the railroad is the only choice the players have. Players should be free to jump off the train and hoof it somewhere else if they desire. That is to say, plot points should never be more important then the agency of the players.

Something I really enjoy about Davvy’s videos is that they are short. I see so many KZreadrs spend 10+ minutes on something they could explain in 3 minutes. With DavvyChappy most videos are under 10 minutes and the ones that are over have to be 10 minutes or they would be lacking in information. Keep up the good work DavvyChappy 👍.

So thanks to that title and thumbnail, all I can think about now is how a campaign set on some fantasy-world railroad actually sounds really fun XD

My campaign is 100% open but they still have a story based on the things happening around them which is also influenced by their decisions and everyone has a really really good time. And I pretty much never say no. But at the same time the story is going suuuuper well. One of my players cried at one part.

I am running my first campaign and i tend to run my games open-ended, kind of cause i am not the best at deciding stuff out of nowhere and i am not a great storyteller. What i do have confidence in tho is worldbuilding, so i focus my efforts on that and i kind of have most of the world that can be interacted in the moment ready to react to whatever the players do and so far it has worked. I kind of prepare the story on a session to session basis, like if they reach a place that i don't have ready by the end of the session i usually use the week to build the place and potential hooks based on what they were already doing, if it is by the middle of the session i just improv the shit out of the whole thing and then flash it all out and try to make sense of why is the thing that happened in the last session like that. I think it works mainly because of the players, basically they create the story with their actions while i create the world with the reactions, but i find that having a map with clear boundaries, and some big world events that have consequences in most places help a lot

I think my method has been to be open ended in the sense that, there is a world and many people have many different problems in that world, and problems can impose themselves upon the world. The players can choose to tackle those problems or be interrupted by those problems or focus on whatever else they like, and whatever direction they choose to go, I'll choose to put the effort in fleshing out, so that the "railroading", in this regard, isn't DM-side, but actually player-side. Using the train analogy, instead of the DM driving the train for the players to experience all the sights and action, it is the DM who lays out all the possible branching tracks and lets the players choose what track they choose to go on, with the DM then building those tracks as they go. That's been my approach, at least, and I think it works well; the players feel like they have autonomy since they honestly pretty much have autonomy, and as the DM, I'm reacting to their actions and making sure the world they are going to explore will be ready for as many possible pathways they'll take.

I tend to swing a bit more open ended. If there are 3 cities in my game they each have their own "personality" that the players can find out about on route. That way they are making an informed choice as to where they are going. I will have a few set points that most likely will happen in the game but it is up to the players to drive the story and tell me what is going to be important.

There's definitely a careful balance to strike between railroading and player choice. My preference is to have a concrete location, npcs with a set list of traits and motivations, a few flexible set pieces that can be arrived at in different directions, and a goal for the players, and then just let em loose & go with the flow. It's very note-light and I rarely plan more than 1 session in advance unless they're in a dungeon. My players are often inclined to take the reigns and go in wild directions, so it's often a bunch of improv. One of my favorite moments involved our Ranger using a spell designed to track down food or shelter after the party crash landed a space limo into a jungle, and asked if he could use the spell to find "edible shelter." So I just pulled a gingerbread house out of nowhere and the end of the session was half boss battle against the elderly goblin woman living there, and half the party apologetically healing her and thanking her for her hospitality while quickly trying to leave.

I always like the illusion of choice whereby the dm can just write their stuff and make it seem like we just stumbled on the story organically. Mainly because I've found that when my party has choice, we just argue over the choice for 90% of the campaign.

We recently finished a railroad campaign. It was fun we were literally traveling on a train across an entire continent.

Bro, you think Matt railroads??? He has his WHOLE WORLD planned! When they go somewhere, the world doesn't move with them or stop until they get there, his world is so alive! That's the way I try to go with it, especially in my space DnD campaign where they can visit galaxies and planets

The challenge is that normal railroad lines are more like bumper gaurds to keep everyone focused. Negative or excessive railroading is when the DM refuses to allow the players to influence the world or have their actions count in affecting it.

I like to give players an open world and then present them with a specific location they have to go to. I don't use random encounters, I put a bunch of locations marked in red on the map where the players can stop in the way if they want to, with cool names like "Yuan-Keep", "Avernus Mage's Fortress" or "The Colossal Tower", and when I set their goal, I let them pick a route and choose what places they want to visit on their way. They usually follow the mindset of "the more side content we do, the better", especially since I never award levels on these places (I use milestones) since they're supposed to only level during important story events, but always fill them with cool loot to pick. That's the formula that works best to my players and always makes traveling a bit more interesting, especially when they look at a place's name and immediately go "guys, I don't know about you, but we should probably avoid a place named 'the Purple Worm Swarm' until later levels".

I really do not want to railroad my players and I do not know if I do. They definitly have their freedom, but I have what will happen pretty much planned out. With a few exceptions we never strayed to far from this plan and my players like what I present them! I am baffled by this because some of them are REALLY paranoid when it comes to railroading and start getting annoyed if they think they are being not in control. On the other side those paranoid players are stunned whenever they have the freedom. The Illusion, if you know what I mean, seems to be the most important aspect of this craft. Because of this I myself have a hard time being a player, when I have the rare opportunity. I find it astonishing how deep this oh so fun hobby lets us see so deeply into our fellow men. Exhausting but I love It!

Man.... such good content! Keep it up!

Railroading is another name for having a story arc.

Dig the new face to face format! Added to your authenticity brilliantly, very compelling!

That was well put. I do agree especially as most people seem to think they do not "railroad" when they make a campaign with "achieve X". Some people may try semantics by calling things differently like "on track" or "keep them interested", honestly just accept that any game where a goal is specified is a "railroaded" game. Railroad doe not mean you have to reach the goal via a defined story arc, it could even be that the DM has not defined anything but the world and the goal BUT by doing so, by setting the goal a DM has specified what has to happen for the campaign to end. Except for the death of the group. Even if the DM improvizes everything on the fly, which I tried, he still makes an idea of what can/could happen... i.e. - I get the party to a new continent via shipwreck - I expect them to want to go home - is that railroad? is that open? - I give the party a sandbox - I have 20 hocks spread - I expect them to choose one - is that railroad? is that open? IMO any of those things are DM driven. ALL games are DM driven because the DM makes the world. The DM is literally an omnipotent, benevolent being of a higher power who gives the Heros meaning and reason. Only a game where there is no objective, no goal can not be "railroaded", can be completely random and that would then be called reality. Sorry, I do not like singularly railroaded games much but no railroading at all? What would we game for? RPGs are like real life there, no goals make for a useless and fruitless life.

I actually kept giving my players open ended free reign, they were free to pursue their backstories, go to the beach, get stuck in another plane of existence- i recently asked and they begged me to railroad them back onto a plot, lol. the trick about railroading... is sometimes... things... have plots.

I run Pseudo-Sandbox games. When I create the campaing, I prepare a "World Event". In my current game, the dragons are returning after several centuries of absence. So I created a prologue, taking players from level 1 to 5, and at the end that prologue lead to the World Event (They invaded the lair of an ancient white dragon deep in the ocean because of a guild quest about ships that sank there years ago and things started floating towards the city, which lead said dragon to fly into the city they were in, take one important item back and announce how the dragons are taking over this continent). Now, they are fully invested in the main world event (Which is dragons because we have 2 dragonborns related to the dragon deities) and we are legit playing a Dungeons and Dragons game (Nobody else runs dungeons in my circle of friends). Along the way, still in the prologue, we had shady organizations, guilds, services to the guards, intrigue with nobles and the arrival of the first Aasimar in centuries (An NPC they really liked). We had romance, revenge and one of my players (Wizard) got an aprentice. And all the while I planted seeds and hints about something weird in this sudden return, as if there is more to it. I could go on, but its been a blast for the last 6 months of quarrantine.

Choo! Choo! Yay, Railroad campaigns/modules!

As a DM, I much prefer sandboxes myself. So there is a lengthy cast of NPCs that have bullet points and a loose script. Depending on what the players decide to do I improvise and adapt. And if I have a particularly Troublesome player that doesn't understand what the sandbox is and tries to leave the city and or Island, I allow them to do so but make their turns very short and boring. " so the group is assisting Galeya in creating a Golem for the competition... and then we have Greg the tiefling who decided to venture into the desert, you see nothing but cacti for miles, so anyway what do you guys want to put on this Golem".

I have a somewhat "option c" approach to writing campaigns. First I write a story where the BBEG wins. Then the players come in to derail it as they see fit. However they chose to stop the BBEG, the goal ultimate is to derail my story. So far it has made my job super easy and made my players very happy. Win-win!

what Davvy said at the 6-minute mark is how I do stuff. in videogames, the name is something like "Beads on a Rope" and its when a game prompts you with a choice that will not matter shortly. I'll prompt my party with ~4 choices to get through a dungeon, but each method will only work with the same series of events. the most I'll change is like swapping with a small encounter with a Puzzle knowing it will take the same amount of time.

Davvy looks on point today. I applaud you lookin' fly even in quarantine.

When I was younger I used to play in a Vampire larp. That style of game is 100% player-driven, so I was used to playing a completely open game when I started playing D&D later. In a tabletop game, you're going to have a DM who has important things happening in the world, and the players may or may not go for those hooks. But I like the idea of players having their own goals as well. Depending on how far those goals go, the players could hypothetically make up the entire story arc, with the DM just managing how the whole thing works out.

Thanks Chap-master/meister :) I'm planning an Eberron campaign for some new players and your advice always helps point my brain in the right direction.

Excellent and true video as always :)

THANK YOU! This is a much more honest and fair view of what is in reality a spectrum, not a binary option.

I like it when the handsome Fey man talks directly to me across the camera Davvytalks for the win

@Pheebsgrease

3 жыл бұрын

*chappy chat. Same thing

I find it really charming the little dance he does when he says "Hello there, my name is Davvy Chappy"

In my experience, having the illusion of choice is more important than creating a true sandbox experience.

Even aboard the railroad express, the players should be able to decide which car they enter at what time and what they do there. If they're chained to their seats then they will find it very hard to have fun.

I like it more when you have random screenies of random fantasy art/games

Now I want to try and create a campaign where all the towns really are, in fact, the same town. Same buildings, same layout, same people. Just on different parts of the map. One of the store owners they brought an item from in one of the "other" towns accuses them of stealing from them because their carrying some of their merchandise until it's revealed that said items are still safely still in the owners store. An owner that looks, sounds and even acts exactly like the person they brought it from in the first place. *Que the Twilight Zone music*

Hurrah! More 3d Chappy goodness...

A central storyline implies railroading. Every modular game is a railroaded game. Open ended basically means “Here’s your sandbox, build whatever you want” and for me, that freedom of choice creates inaction, especially in a group setting like a campaign. I enjoy following, being there for the ride, but never driving, so I don’t really get it when people complain about railroading.

Regarding CR, I do believe, though obviously I could be wrong, that a lot of the cities where already established in Matt's head, before they were visited, though it's possible that the plot hooks would have been in whatever city they chose. And regarding my view on railroading, as somebody who's never dm'ed before, I prefer the idea of considering what your party might do, plan for that, and then if they do something completely off the wall, let them, and maybe tell them that you didn't plan for that, and may need some time to determine what is gonna happen.

I'm just sitting here marveling at how Davvy's facial expressions and body language look EXACTLY how he sounds like they'd be. I'm gonna have to re watch this video and actually pay attention.

I always try to find a middle ground, like "there's a civil war going on and you *WILL* resolve it but the choice of which side to support is totally up to you" and so long as the party doesn't split up it's totally fine!

Some sense of freedom is good unless the session is just a dungeon everyone has agreed to walk through, maybe hide the fact all the towns are scripted depending on where you go first but also give them some freedom to explore a town before a pickpocket grabs something mundane and leads them to the tavern and upstairs is the guy they need to find or can give them a lead or two forward in the main story that will lead to a climax

I was thinking of doing a sandbox Greek themed Campaign, but I would craft 2 Epic Quests (each one composed of two connected Main Quests capped with a legendary monster as a bonus end boss) that the players can undertake if they want to that would follow the vein of Railroaded quests (with a lot of wiggle room). I'd also have a bevy of side quests that are interchangeable among the individual City-States (just change a few variable as needed), and assorted factions quests for when Tasha's Guide comes out and the Eberron Patron Feature gets fleshed out. I'd then sprinkle the map with world bosses that are a known commodity which need to be wiped either by a band of heroes or a nearby City-State willing to throw enough men, magic and money at it to clear the lair and claim new farmland. Once the players get tired of the side quests, faction quests, and smaller boss fights then the group can transition to one of the Epic Quest Chains.

So I think it is important to distinguish between a "DM/Narrative Driven Campaign" and a "Railroad" campaign here, lest we create unrealistic expectations. DMs are people, and most of them have lives, and as a result they are not able to create a literal world of content. Thus most DMs create the content that is right in front of you, and a bit of content beyond, and then try to bluff their way through the rest. Basically DM-ing is starting the game with some plan, direction or story beats that the players are going along with while using tools like the illusion of choice or safe bets to get the players to go that direction. When I DM I always have a general idea of where I want to story to go, but rarely bother forming concrete decisions or committing more than a session or two ahead because the players may make those irrelevant. For example I recently had a criminal faction set up for the seedier members of the party to work with, and things were going well on that front until one of the players accidentally blabbed some secrets to another criminal organization that caused a rift in the two crime syndicates symbiotic relationship and could have very well led to the death of the player's contact in the organization. So obviously I had to scrap that plot thread because the player made a choice that I hadn't accounted for and ran counter to the direction I had set up. Railroads on the other hand tend to have things planned out far in advance, and have a far harder time adjusting when things don't go how they were supposed to. Once, for example, I literally had my character killed off by cutscene in a campaign because they refused to have my character pledge their allegiance to a newly met entity and take a ring as a token of their pact. When I confronted the DM about it later he claimed that was because he was planning on throwing an encounter that was going to be above our pay grade during which we would receive a Dues Ex Machina power up that was important to the story. This fight was supposed to take place in two levels. For clarification my character had no intention of leaving the party or stopping the adventure either, as they had their own reasons for staying with the party. While most games have a story Railroads are the games that are unable to show flexibility and adjust when players make decisions that don't follow what the DM had planned, or would like to do actions outside of the story line the DM had set up. They are the extreme of narrative driven games, not the norm. Conflating the two only causes players to set the standard of having choice in games as completely open ended, which is of course a crazy and unrealistic expectation to thrust on a DM.

i did that once for a oneshot they had huuuge ass dungeon with multiple paths and choices, and i just stealth railroaded the whole thing, and just dropped hints what was happening in rooms where they didn't go to... none of the players noticed, and they were all super impressed at my effort

Sandbox on rails is my go-to campaign

Like many would say, railroad and sandboxes are something of a spectrum. The extremes of that spectrum are either unfun or untenable. I tend to lean towards the sandbox end of the spectrum, just because I like my players' choices to actually matter as much as my story. However, doing so requires a lot of notes and a lot of willingness for content you've made to never be interacted with. Which is fine. It gives you more total content you can put towards other things. My main tip for running these kinds of games is to define the work area. Players will get overwhelmed with the choices, and you will get overwhelmed with making content for the entire world. So maybe start with a village, add a few notable characters and some reasonable things they would like sorted. Then expand bit by bit to nearby dungeons, villages, or towns. All the while, keep track of the NPCs and factions the players interact with and how those interactions went. Natural plotlines tend to develop in that way, and often times a "major" plotline will start cropping up due to the background politics of the major factions.

The worst struggle my group had with railroading as players was when we felt we had no efficacy in the DM's story or world. This had a lot to do with him throwing infinite hp bosses at us that only his npc's could defeat, the npc's we were guarding being much more powerful and high level than us, unavoidable fights with random beasts and monsters that could only be solved through violence, and puzzles and traps that could only be solved the DM's way (Your "knock" spell does not unlock the door, instead you have to play a game of chess against me). Ultimately we ended up feeling like we were just watching the DM read through his novel, so in an act of defiance we tried to steal the MacGuffin from the "weak" characters we were supposed to be protecting (who started one round k.o.'ing us), and as a final act of defiance we broke the macguffin, which the DM decided meant TPK. After that TPK we all had a long talk with him, let him know our frustrations, and let him take a break from DM'ing for a while.

The way I generally do towns and cities is I will plan a bunch out over time and leave off the city name then keep them all in my binder(I like to have a template typed up and saved as well for other campaigns) in sections based on size(settlement, town, city, metropolis). Then when they are in, or asking about a city choose one of corresponding size and start plugging in names(also several lists based on race) notable locations, important npcs(yet another list, of named NPCs, their character traits, and any quests they may have or help with), etc. you can flesh out your outline. The General template I use is: Size, government/specific laws and military, leader, population density, wealth and distribution of it, trade, number of bars/inns and their standing, black markets, shops, and temples. Races, Climate, building materials, etc. will all depend on where the city is, so I worry more about how the city runs underneath than what it looks like on the surface. Plugging in from there is just knowing it can be in so many places, depending on the size of the map, so you know you are going to have say 1 metropolis, and 3 major cities on this continent with 10 small towns, well you will know all the factors of the metropolis, and be able to make a vague outline of the 3 cities based on a scheme that can easily be molded to any of the 3(Kings landing style 3 tiered city turns into clover shaped elven encampment, or multi level dwarven mountain kingdom, etc.), and towns aren't near as hard to customize on the fly since they are small.

The worst rail roads are ones that force dumb decisions Like not having the ability to refuse having a child guide on a dangerous quest (Hero of parnast)

4:30 honestly I would love to watch a super long vid of davvy diving into designing a dnd campaign

I feel like railroads are made for campaigns that end at a sertent level, and the goal is to get to that level. Vs open campaigns kinda go as long as the group wants to play

All board the Davvy Express! 🚂🚃🚃🚃 choo choo

I like to run “railgun” campaigns. It’s only on rails at first to build up momentum. After that you’re free in the wind. Idk what’s gonna happen after that, I haven’t planned it yet.

Thank you for having the courage to say what we're all thinking lmao

i desperately need for that couch to be pushed over a bit to the right : x

For me, taz balance is a perfect example of how to railroad a campaign.

as the a wise meme once told me: "Why not BOTH?🤷" have a set of plotpoints as 'must happen', but the 'in between/the order of them' is not set in stone. like Skyrim!

Westmarch dms are a different breed man

You're alright bud, thanks for the video :)

Epaulettes on fleek there, Davvy.

*visits every town to see which is best*

I like to call them road trip games, we have some spots we need to get to but no deadline or route and there's lots of roadside attractions and stuff to check out

@CidGuerreiro1234

3 жыл бұрын

No deadline but I personally like to add a sense of urgency to the "main quest", so that players won't postpone it forever or even forget about it completely. It also makes every decision more important since they might have good or bad consequences in the future. In most videogames the main objective doesn't progress until the player interacts with it, but in a TTRPG you as the DM have the power to change that. The group spent days effing around instead of saving the princess from the necromancer? Well tough shit, the princess got killed and now not only the king wants the players' heads for failing his quest, but also the princess was turned into a powerful undead and is slaughtering her own people.