Avoiding Railroading in Dungeons & Dragons 5e 

Players: "Oh, so we HAD to fight the beholder the whole time?" DM: "No, you STOLE HIS GOLDFISH!"

Also when players think they can do anything with a good roll. "I want to convince the king to end the war" "no, he is not going to do that" "but i rolled a 22 on my persuasion check" "he is still not going to do that" is not railroading.

So to simplify things, railroading is when the dm controls the outcome regardless of player choice.

Drakkenheim was the "eureka!" revelation on how to stop railroading: plan places and who inhabits them + environment and then whatever happens, happens, the whole table figures it out together. Also, your "roll a d6" system completely refreshed our table's enthusiasm, I learned alot from the campaigns. Thanks, Dungeon Dudes!

Kelly doing the choo-choo needs to be a GIF. Make it happen, internet.

The simplest way to not have that “railroad” feeling as a DM is for four rules. 1) always set expectations for the campaign, 2) never force outcomes and 3) be flexible with the storyline and 4) let the players see that they have changed the world. (There is a hidden 5 rule - if you have an idea you LOVE and that the players bi-pass don’t force it in but put it in a binder and save it for later you will get to do it eventually.)

Kelly absolutely depressed over his Bard :(. You’ll get em one day!

I’ve found a lot of success in approaching session prep with the mantra “write conflict, not story.”

I like how Robert E Howard starts many of his tales immediately after the inciting incident. GM, "The Prince's Army has been destroyed, and are routing from the battlefield. The Diabolist's demonic horde is pursing and slaying anyone who falls in to their clutches. Your characters were on the losing side; how do you plan to escape?"

Before discovering your channel I was deeply convinced that i preferred to play as a player, after watching your videos I can't wait to master my own adventure! You are amazing guys!

think it was matt colville who made a distinction between “choice” and “agency”. limiting choice is not necessarily bad, we do it all the time. like you guys said, it’s perfectly fine to say “this is the adventure i have prepared, this is what we’re playing.” that makes perfect sense, and is totally fair! after all, roller coasters are on rails, and people seem to love those. one good way of defining it goes like this: “Railroading is saying no to a player’s good ideas for no reason other than that it’s not what you had in mind.” the villain is invincible, and can only be defeated by the stone of vincibility. no, you can’t just imprison them in the mountain forever, you have to go get the stone. no, you can’t use this other thing that has been established to kill invincible beings, it has to be this one stone. that’s railroading, because both of those are good ideas and it would be really cool to watch them work! it can go the other way too though. sometimes players say they’re being railroaded when they never bothered to come up with an alternative (or they said one thing but it was crazy and ridiculous). there’s the old joke that the fellowship failing to climb Mount Cahadras is the DM railroading the players into Moria because that’s what Tolkien had prepared for the next four months, but really the players 1) didn’t make any provisions for mountain climbing after spending 6 weeks in Rivendell planning their route, 2) decided to just hike up a dangerous pass in their plain clothes and 3) rolled badly to do so. sorry Viggo, you didn’t get railroaded, you just suck at mountain climbing. that’s not the DM’s fault! the problem is that that situation (the players not coming up with a good idea) and the railroad situation (i didn’t think they’d go up the mountains so i just made it really hard hoping they’d turn around and go through the dungeon i had prepared) look exactly the same from the outside. is there a way of telling the difference between them? i don’t know. maybe if Tolkien wanted the players to go through Moria, he should’ve said “this adventure is about going through the dwarves mines” and gotten them on board. but also if the players wanted to take the mountain pass, they should’ve spent time preparing and getting the necessary gear and clothes in their downtime, signaling to the DM that they were ready to skip past Moria and either have a mountaineering adventure or just go straight to Lothlórien. ultimately, it’s about communication. if we aren’t clearly stating what we want from the game, we aren’t going to have much fun (especially in a party of nine lmao). you can get away with almost every cardinal sin if you just talk to your players about it, because then they know it’s going to be okay.

My latest campaign started session 1 with a flashforward where the group was imprisoned for having tried to assassinate the emperor and they had to escape. Once they had we jumped back to present day where they all were from the same little village in the mountains, and the world was a sandbox and the group made all their own decisions. It took 2 1/2 years until a situation presented itself organically to catch up with the flashforward and it was magnificent. Easily the most fun I've ever had as a DM.

In my campaign, my players were going to cross a sea in order to complete a bounty. I wrote up a whole role play encounter where they hop on a small ferry and help a paladin captain reconnect with his faith and cope with the deaths of his previous crew. It was gonna be my first time I introduce a fleshed-out, likable character for my players to invest in and I was super excited for it. That is, until I realized their large sum of money and made one damning thought: What if they bought their own boat? And then they did. In the same session, they fought a pirate ship, killed the captain, severely wounded the rest of the pirates and, when the enemies surrendered, intimidated them into joining the crew. At first, they were going to be nameless faceless goons, but now I saw the opportunity in making likable characters again, so I had them more-or-less happily join the crew. Completely unexpected outcome from the party, but an example of deviating encounters in a linear story

I got some pretty interesting examples from *Waterdeep Dragon Heist.* From my personal experience as well as discussion with other DMs in that campaign, the biggest problem is to get the players to accept a Tavern instead of gold from Volo. If you intend to run it, take that to account and either have something like an appraisal, or a way for Volo to skip town. Another issue I came across is a player having problems accepting that the campaign takes place in one city, that's a good example why Session 0 is important. And last one - if the players get really into the Tavern Simulator portion, they might not be that willing to go on the actual adventure.

"Murdering people tends to result in bounty hunters." LOL

I am personally a linear campaign DM. It is what I like to play and what I like to run. But I have an important rule: A DM can force situations, and they can force problems (though they shouldn't always) - but they can never force solutions. Moving things around behind the scenes to ensure the PCs run into a certain tricky (but memorable) foe will very rare rub players the wrong way like how shooting down reasonable solutions will. A GM's job is to provide interesting puzzles for the players to solve, and the players' job is to solve those puzzles in interesting ways. I find that a lot of GM/player issues arise when this relationship breaks down (players not trying to solve the puzzles; GMs demanding a singular solution to a puzzle; players trying to cheat their way around the puzzle). On the subject of the "forced opening", my first true campaign as DM was a "the PCs are shipwrecked on an island and have to get off" adventure. Fortunately, I had the good sense to TELL THE PLAYERS THIS UP FRONT. Because the nature of the ship was unimportant, I even based some stuff about it on the PCs' backstories (it was a dinosaur smuggling ship). Changing the parameters of a scenario behind the players' back is a bad idea, especially when they've put actual work into making a character for a completely different set-up. You can sometimes get around this by being honest about tone but not specifics (for example, "it's a mystery campaign and you've been tasked with moving an object to this city" but not mentioning that the object is irrelevant to the mystery, which unfolds not when the PCs have reached the city but at the inn they are staying at).

I've never even played DND, but thanks to your content I think I'm pretty prepared to when I get the chance.

i've railroaded once in my time playing dnd. we were short a player for the day and we still wanted to play, so i said to roll up some like level 12-14 characters. only restriction was to be a mountain dwarf. the players were the royal court of the dwarven king 1000 years in the past, and they were attacked by the duergar. their goal was to defend the king, his son, and the svirfneblin representative that was there to discuss new trade routes to bypass the purple worm infestation that had taken over the current one. the one shot was going to end with the party's deaths in all scenarios, but i made the combat as epic as possible and they did a whole lot of cool stuff. the stone and iron golems the duergar had were charging, the duergar were coming in massive waves. catapults were assaulting the king's tower. they killed near 100 duergar and a lot of golems. the king was thrown from the tower by a golem and the party went berserk, they fought with vengeance in their hearts and hatred pulsing through their veins. i asked the players afterwards what they thought, they knew beforehand it was in the past and was going to end tragically, and they all said they had a blast. super fun one shot, lead into the modern day disappearance of the mountain dwarves. a fun way to explore the lore without just monologuing or just throwing info at the players. may not be the best example of railroading, but is in a way.

referencing the story of the dragon your players killed in the lair: you can still have your epic ship v. dragon battle later when the dragon's mate shows up to avenge their fallen partner!

Just started playing D&D in January. Most of our group is virtually brand new to the game with the exception of our DM and one other player. We're playing lost mine of Phandelvar and it's taken until the end of July to kill the head villain. We went on so many side quests we're all fairly rich and have some interesting abilities thanks to all the XP. I think our DM has had to put in alot of extra work because of it but he's never tried to force us to go in any one direction.

Personally, I love the forced start, sort of time rewind-y, Final Fantasy X sort of moment, but it has only worked, ever, when I literally told my players that I was about to do this and they should play along for the first session

I played in a one piece dungeons and dragons where my rogue character tried to steal a devil fruit at an auction by betting money I didn’t have in order to get close enough to grab the fruit, the issue wasn’t that this was a dumb plan, the issue was that the dm basically ignored every deception roll I did by trying to catch me in my lies. I knew the consequences of my actions would be severe but the dm wasn’t trying to reward my good rolls and instead narrowed down on the fact that he didn’t want me to steal this item.

Roll high perception, and if you fail, roll high dexterity to dodge the train.

Don't write stories, write down ideas and scenarios. After presenting the scenario, listen to your players. Come up with more ideas based on the things they show interest in. Always be open to changing an idea if you come up with a better one.

I loved this one. First, thanks for confirming my linear campaign is not a railroad. It had to be relatively linear given the rescue that was needed. Now, I want to add agency by introducing an NPC to NPC interaction before they start where they choose a side and either go down the original path or a very different one ... (yes, roughly like imperials vs Stormcloaks). But adding in the earlier element puts the choices in much more context and gives their decisions. emotional baggage.

Really appreciate the video guys! Its great to see people like yourselves shedding some light on the topic. It has definitely given me some reassurance and insight as a DM to what my options are with a narrative. There have been times where I have just outright changed the requirements to a prewritten scenario to reward the players for a plan they've made and its honestly one of the best feelings for everybody at the table.

Thank you so much, Dungeon Dudes! This is one of the most useful and inspiring videos about DMing I've ever seen. My first campaign as DM started with a force opening, and I saw quickly that my players didn't enjoy it and the campaign itself suffered because of it. Months after that, thanks to your videos and others youtubers related with D&D 5e, I've learned A LOT and I'm enjoying DMing more and more, and my players too. I will share this video with my friends and players. I'm sure that they will love it too.

I think that this is one of their best videos to date. Great, gamble advice. Thanls for all the good work, Dudes.

The stories you guys share of how you made these mistakes is what makes this video sincere and a great tool for teaching others.

I started DM’ing about a month ago and you guys constantly put out quality content that’s helped improve how I run the game. Thanks a ton guys, keep up the great work

Even back in the '80s our favorite phrase was, "Don't say no, assign difficulty."

I used the shipwreck opening before but I made sure to preface the campaign in session 0 with that knowledge. Knowing that they would be sole survivors helped them come up with appropriate characters and set the expectation ahead of time.

I came into this one thinking I wouldn't take too much away from it, and ended up being one of my favorite videos from you guys👍🐲

I love when you give advice about the logistics of play. Keep it up dudes!

When I have a "forced opening" like them being on a boat, or starting in a certain town, I tell them to put in their backstories why they're in the place I'm starting them in, as inspiration for a backstory, and they love it. (Note all my games take place in the same world, so it's pretty easy to say something like, "I was going to this town, taking this ferry there, and stopped here on way" with the knowledge of locations)

Thank you so much for sectioning the video. Very appreciative of your channels content!

I had a session last week where I was planning to have the BBEG dominate two low wisdom characters and use them to fight the others. I figured that at least one would fail, but they both rolled Nat 18+ on their saves. I tried again on the next round, and it happened again. That combined with clever tactics made it only take a couple more rounds before she was dead.

this was such a refreshing video to see because i was having this exact fear - ive been telling a very linear story and being afraid of it being a railroad. even after my players saying how every session is ramping up the fun, theres always that piece in ur head that says "you forced them into that abandoned library" or whatever. thanks so much for your videos!!

I wish I could like this video twice! Great video and very useful distinction between railroading and linearity. Thanks, Dudes!

one campaign this worked in for me as a player. The DM's session 0 was letting us know that our party was indentured to explore a new continent. So we went into the game knowing that first and we could make our dudes to fit that idea. After that, it was completely open.

Very nice advices! And very nice situation examples as well. Giving agency is the key, I especially liked that advice "smiling, nodding and say 'well, you can certainly try' "

I like that this episode had tons of real examples of what they are talking about. It's so much better than talking just in general principles.

[finally has time to watch my favorite dudes] epic win

GREAT video! These are some awesome insights for me as a new DM (who is also new to DnD) to learn from. I RRd my first ever party in my first campaign, and vow to never let it happen again

Great episode guys. Helpful.

Y'all are both literally SO cute and great at educating, I'm so glad I found your channel!! I've been learning so much thanks to you guys.

Excellent resource for DM’s - much love!

Yay a new video in which I can stare at whoever isn't actively talking

This was really helpful, thank you!

My main advice is for the DM to ask at the end of the session for the players to outline what they plan on doing in the next one so you can account for the choices they have made in the previous session. This is particularly useful if you are not as good at improvising outcomes and need some time to think about what effects their actions may have.

I am DMing my first campaign next week and was worried about potentially railroading so thanks for making this video

That was a great topic and video.

Hey thanks for this! I have never played D&D before but have decided to go all in. I will be the GM for a small group and am creating a Halloween 1-shot (that is quickly turning into a campaign). I was concerned I was going to "railroad" them, however, now I'm realizing that creating a "linear structure" is what I'm doing and should be enjoyable for all. Thanks for all the great videos! I am very excited to start playing!

I love your perspective on how a DM should interact with player solutions. I will adopt that viewpoint

Excellent timing

I really appreciated this video and the lengths you go to in order to differentiate railroading from a linear campaign. Before this, I feel like I didnt understand much of the difference.

Nice Tells of the Crypt shirt. Loved that show

An example of standing on the right side of the (non-violent) false start is when a DM had his players make players for setting X, backstories for setting X, and then pulled them out of setting X in session 0, with full intention of the backstory connections drawing them back to setting X. They get back after a few levels and play in setting X with the plot based around the session 0 thing that took them from setting X in the first place.

This might be a rant, but its also about something close to my heart, storytelling. I usually made up what I called story threads that were connected through the story and made those fragments part of a wider story as future possible adventure hooks. I did this from very early in my days as a DM and for me it worked because I'm a story teller at heart, I loved it when I could hold a full class of 22 6 year old's captured by the story I was telling them. My personal record started at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="510">8:30</a> and ended when the kids had to go home. They refused everything but that story telling and I had to continue it for days after. That first day I had to force a stop to have them eat and they made me continue the story while we went for our daily walk. It was insane and I loved it. But that episode just shows how I know how to weave a storytelling and I could do that because had seeded the whole campaign with droplets of clues or fragments of red threads as I liked to think of them, because they were mini stories on their own yet lead to something more. I've had players stop after a description of a rune covered wall during play and then seeing him looking through his note in what almost looked like a panic, then he stopped and looked at me with the oddest look. All he said was "How did you do it, how did you know?" Later I found out that he clued in on one of the huge story lines I had made and that the group had found like 3 or 4 minor thread pieces already, but my description of those runes gave hime the clue to pull it together. I've never seen that guy so confused, wowed and annoyed at the same time. It was especially funny sine I had deeply wowen one such red fragment thread into each of their backstories through their families. One of those included a prophecy I had told them 2 years earlier and the player suddenly find that what he had done though playing freely in the world I had created and thanks to several hidden threads fit him to a perfectly. That player went around and wondered if I could actually see the future for weeks after and was very carefull looking over his notes every day for then. The trick is to guid the players without forcing or hindering them to do something, My threads do that as sooner or later they stumble on either a minor story or a major story while doing what ever in the world. If the group needed money there was always this or that reward for doing something either for a ruler of a land or a farmer or just something needs doing in the local area. Robbing the players a few times until they learned to protect their stuff helped here, and when many of such minor gold awards have pieces of maybe 2 or 3 or even more fragmented red thread scattered everywhere. A rumor might hold more info about a task, but also a single fragment of something more. I had then so hooked that they refused to end the characters after playing them for many many years and to honor them I actually turned their characters into NPC in that said world. Hey they did save a city and fixed it by spending huge amount of time there in game. It's the gnomes fault that the inhabitants thought it funny as hell to claim the name Goat City.. Why is a very long story. Sadly that way of storytelling do not work for writing a story, there just to much world history with scattered pieces of some puzzle. Doing that as an RPG works because you can use this to get them to do anything you'd like simply by giving them options they don't want or don't trust. The typical hocks works well as distractions too. The party is celebrating this or that successful adventure when a mage storms in the door of the inn with wild eyes and looking around until his eyes hit on the players. The mage offered them a small reward for some dumb adventure involving clearing out an old keep, because the local government has sold off the place or something like that. When he complained about an earlier attempt they really didn't want to do it, but hidden in the mage's explanation were story fragments one player was very interested in. The players refused so hard that they planed to go the other way where they ran smack into a team of idiot goblin raiders who liked x-bow. The player had ran into these guys before and felt sorry for them especially when the spoke person last time had explained about them being forced out of house and home by some monster. This time though the goblin raiders gave up after firing a few painful shot since they only then recognized the players, as I said they were all idiots. Instead of running away they surrender and told the players that their boss had told them to do it. in this explanations were 2 threads, the boss was an outsider and was looking for anything with a special mark. At least 3 of the players recognized the mark as some runes they had been searching for so they wanted to know more.... From there it was easy to lead them down deep into the rabbit hole and it was all their idea in the first place. During the whole life of those characters I rarely had to push them to do anything, they stumbled into it sooner or later. Along the way they had made some enemies they hated and I do mean hated. They went so far as to created a special golem to just f*ck their enemy with a huge, well they named the golum Biggusdickus so you can guess from there, they wanted that enemy gone in the worse way especially since he normally had more than one way to get away. The party mage learned spells to block teleportation just to trapp the bastard, only to fine he had trapdoor escape routs too. Of course after messing thing up for said NPC enough time that NPC went looking for revenge and managed to frame the whole party for murder in the worse place that could happen. The NPC only wanted them delayed or out of the way, so he did stuff like that to them and worse... I think it was the NPC's seeking for power and using the fat from newborns to make his special candles sort of tipped them over the edge. I got text in the middle of the night now and then were they explained in details how and what they would deal with that NPC next time. So Clue in and create a memorable enemy that seems to be good at getting away and your player will pull together like nothing before. Giving the players a living breathing everchanging world helped too, I had thousands of years of history made up they could dig into if they wanted with only key points noted down. Go looking for a specific story about an elf they were seeking had me more or less tell them everything they could find in that particular library about that elf. Of course since that person was someone important he had done something important too and there were many stories connected to that NPC, just from a handfull of keywords. My mind was weird like that because I could just pull the stories out of my head and remember it all. Then I got sick and now I have trouble remembering where I put the car. Oh how far I have fallen, but now and then my memory kicks back in and I remember stuff like this. Annoying sickness, I really really hate it.

thanks guys!

This is a GREAT video! Thanks, Dudes! So many of us need to learn this, what railroading is and is not. Yes, sometimes a DM needs to try to get the players to pick the path he prepared - or - why did he do all that prep work? What if this DM is not that good at making up encounters on the spot - what if he needs time to build good encounters? So so SO many times I've read a DM saying "I did all this work and no one wanted to do it" - and the easy solution was to let them start doing what they wanted and then put the prepared encounters in front of them - and entice them into doing them. What DMs with independent-minded players should do is let them pick what they want to do and don't start off with this big overwhelming intro that locks in to a thing they might reject. Instead, give them some rumors and let them pick stuff. Look at their backstories and think how you can link your prepared materail to their backstories. Drop hints that some element of their past is just around the corner. Let them FIND your prepared encounters - let them think they picked it, but you set it up so they would. Instead of forcing it down their throats. There is a subtle art to doing this, and as a DM you mut learn this - or some version of this - of soft-selling it and letting them discover the thing you want htem to engage in - they almost always are happier this way. And feel engaged, and feel not railroaded - and technically they haven't been railroaded - bu they still end up engaging w/ your prepared material.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="398">6:38</a> This is so... so... so very important, very well-said and thank you for sharing this story, Kelly :)

Great advice guys !

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="232">3:52</a> Such a great reference. Good one

Professor dungeon Master had a really good video on this and made very similar comments that you guys made at the end. Essentially he does like I do, set up a situation without any idea how the players are going to get through it, toss it at the players, sit back and watch them figure it out for themselves. Whenever you start thinking about how the players are going to deal with the situation you throw at them you are starting down the path of railroading. It's hard then to step back and let them do their own thing. I find this actually saves me a lot of time because I don't have to prep as much and it is created some really fun scenarios.

I really loved Kelly's & Monty's stories. I understand that the channel is prominently 'Hints & Tips for Players & DMs' but I would certainly welcome more content like this.

I think this is your best video yet (that I've seen).

This is one of your best videos so far. Its link should be printed somewhere on the dm's guide.

I'm a new DM with new players and am trying to nurture them to make crazy decisions and try new things rather than rely on me to drag them from place to place. Your videos make it much easier to plan for sessions and make better decisions for them. I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate your videos.

Your discussion on "opening with failure" reminds me of a livestream game I watched with Matt Colville, which seemed like "the exception that proves the rule." The campaign started where the party were mercenaries hired to do an assassination, but their target, instead of being who they thought it was, was the Big Bad of the campaign. So it was a party of level 6s (or something) facing a CR 20, who summoned a CR 17. The baddies focused in on the Party Leader, and he started dropping fast, and yelling for the rest of the party to run. But they did a good try at saving him for 2 rounds, before he got hit with extra attacks until his Death Saves were out, and the rest of the party retreated. They had to run to the harbor while the BBEG's minions assaulted them at every turn, and the Campaign then became about traveling across the sea to gain power, so they could come back for revenge. Though I didn't stick with the campaign, I love this scene because it does All Of The Things you're told never to do... but somehow it all worked perfectly! Everyone was told to have a backup PC. I'm pretty sure the "Leader"s player was in on it because he didn't seem upset at all, and just rolled seamlessly to his backup. The party now, not only had to plot their revenge, but also deal with the fact that their Leader was taken out, and there was a relative power-vacuum.

One group I rolled with in college had the "5Rail" rule. Basically, the first 5-ish sessions would be fairly railroaded, to establish information and put the party on the scent of what needed to be done (think the first section of a lot of games where you're on a very linear path, just to really establish what's going on, introduce notable figures, etc). Could go more (to help rookies) or less (if the party establishes competence), but 5 was kinda the benchmark of "Okay, now that you know what's going on and what the world's like... go for it"

Such a great video dudes :)

This is an awesome video! So didactic! 😊

Great video gentlemen.

With that Bounty Hunter scenario, that shouldn't be a consequence that affects other party members if those others hadn't been part of the shopkeeper death!

Thank you for clarifying the difference between railroading and a linear campaign. I have a railroad story to tell. I was playing a human frontline spearman character from the campaign's equivalent of ancient China. My country was at war with neighboring barbarian tribes and losing. So imagine my surprise when an orc general of the enemy army ambushed me and my party in our home base. The GM left the session there, and for two weeks until the next session, I plotted and strategized on how to defeat the orc general. That kind of enemy represented an existential threat to my character, so I really really really wanted to defeat him. I worked out how I was going to draw the orc general into the kitchen where I would have the advantage, (my spearman fighter was also a waterbender) and how I was going to use my summonable spear (like Thor's hammer) to hit the general from behind to gain an opening. Two weeks, all I had in my mind was how I was going to win this. Then the session resumed. I did my best, describing to the GM my actions and my placement. And to my utter frustration, the GM somehow deflected or sidestepped my ideas and tactics, always letting the orc general keep the advantage. I could not tell the GM my strategy outright, or he would simply shut it down (red flag #1), I had to maneuver the orc general into the proper position, to prevent the GM from making backsies. But every single time I played my cards, the GM simply shut them down by saying, "oh, the orc dodges your attack" or "the orc turns around and catches your spear from behind." Weeks of planning, and this is what I got. Turns out we were never meant to defeat the orc general. He was supposed to be called down by his supreme leader, who we were working with (under my character's protest). That orc general was supposed to be the equivalent of orc Lu Bu, and that encounter was supposed to be a show of strength. Well, my character and me IRL did not take the forced defeat well, and at one point I was shouting in frustration at the prospect of letting the orc general go. Real life, shouting-across-the-table kind of shouting. Soon, I was ready to leave the whole campaign, both in-character and out. In the end, a combination of conversation from the players and the DM (in-character) convinced my character to stay. But I was ready and willing to leave the table right there and then. I'm not proud of it, I should have handled my anger better, I have since apologized to the other players I shouted at, but I do not apologize for the anger I felt. There was certainly an element of character bleedthrough, but I knew without a doubt that what happened there was a mistake by the GM. That was what railroading can do to players.

Nice Outer Limits reference/easter egg!

Love the nicknames every time.

I literally started my last campaign on a railroad. It is a Weird Wild West campaign and the players started off on a train headed to a small town to meet with some people to become bounty hunters / adventurers.

I agree with the party knowing about the "forced opening." I started a PBP with "you're in a roadside shelter outside Daggerford. The duchess expelled you and warned you not to return any time soon. Write me a post that tells why." And they were allowed to have been together or on their own or in pairs or whatever. We got some really good character development. Then the Raven Queen showed up and sent them all to Barovia. Now THAT was railroading!

As a young DM, I wanted to force an edgy scenario where a PC knowingly teamed up with a bad guy to defeat him from within his organization. I didn't explain this to the player; instead, I tried to make him an offer he couldn't refuse. The bad guy said join me or die. He refused. He was willing to die rather than team up with the bad guy, and I nearly went through with it, when I realized it was no longer fun. We hit the reset button, rolled some random encounters, and started a new campaign with his character. That led to the very linear Giant and Drow series, to about 10th or 11th level, and we all had fun despite the linearity.

I used shipwreck opening in my current game. The players worked really hard to keep the ship afloat and they did a great job, doing things I didn't think of. So the ship sunk anyway, just it sunk closer to shore, and they aren't as injured as they would have been. They didn't know about the shipwreck, but they did know they were fleeing an invasion onboard the ship.

This may be more due to it being a linear story, but one time I felt “railroaded” was in the beginning of Horde of the Dragon Queen where you have to head to the town. It’s been a while since I played that part, but it kinda removes player agency as that’s the intended direction the module wants you to go. Great video as always!

Good advice. Also, speaking as a DM, after awhile you will begin to understand how your players think. You can always add in side quests based around player preferences, while still continuing the main quest.

You could have ended this video after Kelly gave his first example of railroading as a DM, such an impactful description of why a DM exists; to create a fun game for the players

I definitely railroaded a party with the forced opening trope you are discussing. I think it worked out relatively well, but I do want to check back with that party, and check if I crossed a line there. Essentially, I was a player in a group, we were taking a break in the DMs campaign, and I was taking over for a bit. I had everyone make a secondary character to join our main party before they took off of a long oversea Expedition. I asked the DM to create a transition for us that would kill off all of the new characters just made. Hopefully our original party members survive, but that was ultimately up to the encounter that the previous DM had set up for us. We fought a suped-up kraken and it decimated the new party members. The original party was severely injured, but escaped, we didn't win the fight at all. I think the previous DM did go a little easy on us once the new members were killed off when we tried to create an escape route, so it might have felt a little forced at that time. Ultimately the recently killed off party members wake up on an island at the end of this horrid massacre where they are now in the setting for my campaign. It was important that they died to enter that realm. But the party members weren't informed of that, so I could see how it could come off as a cheap move. But I see it similar to how in the beginning of Curse of Strahd, the DM has to force the players to enter Barovia. Idk, do you guys think I handled it well, given the context provided? Or was I taking away their agency?

A linear campaign only becomes a railroad once the party tries to leave the road and finds the wheels won't leave the rails. It's an important distinction to make and I'm glad it was highlighted in the video!

just watch your bard video from 2018 for some ideas, and have to say monty your grow into your look dude, keep it up

Nice, I was just thinking about that

I've had a few adventures That in the moment even I thought I was railroading, because the players were following my notes exactly. But I had written out two or three different outcomes, and left room to improv. In hindsight, the fact that the players took the more obvious choice forward that I had set up, wasn't railroading on my part or a lack of creativity on theirs. They were given enough information to act on, and had compelling reason to do so. The fact that they just happened to be on the same wavelength when solving the scenarios as I was when creating them does not a railroad make.

The "base the campaign on fixing a massive loss" idea can work really well as a "flash back". Let them play a session or two after you've generally covered what happened. But then after session 2 or 3 have them find some information, end the session and tell them "I want you guys to each create a level 13 character before next session. Go all out and have fun with it" These are the characters that will play out in the backstory (that their main characters are "reading") and ultimately die.... but it's not the characters they spent so much time creating for the campaign or have awesome backstories. Side tip: have those backstory characters they create come back as right hand men to the BBG or something, if it works with your plot. Makes for a cool fight.

As long as I have room to go slightly off the rails or have the illusion of choice of going off the rails before being led I enjoy it. Tbh I prefer it to completely sandbox experiences, because I will go so far off in the weeds never pushing the story forward if given true freedom in a game.

So glad the distinction between railroading and linear is made clear - I've only played with friends and the first time I DMed I went online to get tips etc. (Including from this channel) and saw the horrors of railroading like some kind of boogy man The result was I landed my players in a fleshed out and realised coastal Inn and ... They had no clue what to do, it was a lot of their first time playing too - I ended up having to get an NPC drag them to a quest. At the end of the session I apologized for railroading and none of them knew what I meant.. I think a lot of talk about the dangers of railroading can lead to newbies (like myself) not adding sides to the sandbox (to use your metaphore) and nothing happening Cheers!

Tempted to re-watch taking a shot after every time you say 'shenanigans', but i have to work in the morning. I really do like that term. It embraces the fun and creativity of the players way better than the 'forkery' (it's a family channel) that I thought to myself after my players upset my carefully balanced plans.

This has been a really interesting video to watch, and certainly made me question my own plans a little.. I'm currently in the process of designing my own homebrew world to try my hand at DMing for the first time, and I've already put some thought into the concept of how I want to start the campaign. My plan (which I have explained to my potential players already) is that they will all start out as "lvl 0" villagers with their choice of one of 6 or 7 homebrew backgrounds that I've designed - artisan, labourer, scribe, etc - but what they don't know is that, during session 0/1, the village will be attacked by [insert overwhelming force here], before being saved by one of the kingdoms patrols who had been tracking said force. The players would be among the few survivors of the village, and would be offered the chance to avenge their loved ones by going back with the soldiers to the capital and being trained in the classes of their choice. Timeskip 6 months or so, and the campaign proper starts with them at level 1. I know the guys said forced starts CAN work so long as the players aren't caught off guard, but I'm curious to know what people think - is this railroading in the worst sense? Or is it an acceptable example of linear storytelling to get the campaign started?

Admiring Monty's "Outer Limits" description of Railroading = they control the vertical. they control the horizontal

You have to be a firm believer in the first rule of improv... "Yes and..." Always build on what they want to do. You can always twist it later to get it to the beats you need to later on. You can still railroad to the points you need, and give them the illusion that it came organically.

This video was very helpful! Next weekend I’m hosting my first ever one shot as a DM (only been a player for 3 years) and this helped calmed my nerves about my rather linear dungeon design

One way to semi avoid this to be able to on the fly come up with similar scenarios to what you wanted to happen that still make sense. Maybe when the party kills the dragon, instead a horde of its children attacks them on the boat. There are issues with this approach and it takes a lot of context awareness to know when its better to just let something go and say what your original idea was to the group after the session is over, but sometimes using things not going to plan to then put a clever twist back onto the party can keep the satisfaction of the party’s accomplishments without feeling like you lost something to do it.

I noticed several mentions of “I noticed my players were not having fun”. Although it is worth gauging your players, be careful of serving their needs too much. What can happen is that you train your players to manipulate you when you give them anything they don’t want to deal with. Eventually, they end up playing on easy mode because they force you (by looking like they are not having fun, expressing frustration, complaining) to only give them things they can handle. What you need to do is step back and consider whether you are really being unreasonable or not. A certain amount of quiet time (with nothing much happening) and mystery and hardship is needed to make the high points feel meaningful.