Railroading, Agency, and Choice | Running the Game 

I loved this line too!

"What are you guys even doing? Did you all forget about the fact the Mob Boss has you blood to track you? Who is keeping track of the inventory? Omg why aren't you using the cool magic item I gave you?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T WANT TO ENGAGE WITH THE DUDE OBVIOUSLY GONNA TEACH YOU THE COOL MULTICLASS IDEA YOU WANTED???"

Plo

@@DrgoFx "Mob boss has your blood to track you" sounds like a plot only a true gentleman would consider

@@jhinpotion9230 Most certainly. Though this gentleman is my setting's equivilent of Bahamut (Neutral Good tho) polymorphed as a French Elven mob boss. The idea is their ideology is innocent until proven and protect the innocent, and this city where they operate is run by a corrupt government and upper class, so this Dragon has taken matters into their own hands as laws the do not protect the innocent should be abolished. Also one of my players was a follower of his.

At least he didn't use Charisma as a dump stat. That could have ended badly.

Should have multi-classed into another Ranger archetype, then chosen a new favored terrain.

@@paulcoy9060 Except that RAW you can't do that. And it'd take a pretty generous DM to allow it.

@@AlbertaGeek If there was an in-game reason, like a Forest Ranger got kidnapped, and sent on a ship across the world like Odysseus, he could pick up some nautical Favored Enemies. I'd allow it, if the story held water (Ha Ha!).

@@paulcoy9060 Allowing a PC ranger to re-choose their favored terrain and a favored enemy after a certain amount of in-game time is one thing, but *_multi-classing to a second archetype_* is very much another. And just throwing this in here: Odysseus never went anywhere near "across the world'. He didn't even do the _known_ world at the time. He spent all those decades wandering around maybe half the Medierranean Sea.

Also Gandalf was just an DMPC and the players were finally following what John prepared, so he killed him off.

honestly

Those nasty Hobbits thought they could skip straight from level 3 to 5 just by hiding behind a pillar.

Got the XP and the sweet level up.

Nah, Gandalf's player read the module ahead of time and knew there was a sweet chase encounter in the mines that they knew everyone would love.

Wow, that was five hours ago. Are you okay!? :-P

Totally going to steal this xD

Join in our prayer in our song of conquest and love

Seriously. I haven't gotten a MC-DM video recommended in a while. :/

I found this one between an actual train-hopping video and a railfan video on how crossing signals work.

@@707thSteelLegion It shows up about as often as 'Puffin Forest' does. Which is to say, anytime I view a D&D-related video, suddenly - a wild Matt appears! No ... not THAT one, THIS one.

I work in aged care and there's an old lady that would always refuse her shower and lie and say she had it the day before or in the morning. So instead of asking if she wanted a shower, we'd ask her, "Do you want your shower before dinner, or after dinner?" And that worked like 95% of the time.

using this

Yes! We learned this as parents early too. Do you want the red popsicle or the orange? Not, what do you want for desert? Too many choices mess up kids heads, especially if you can't deliver their choice.

Me: I learned something new about DMing, from now on I'll treat you like toddlers Players: Dada...

Yes!! I came to the comments to say exactly this / make sure someone had said it! It gives toddlers choice inside the narrative. I love the parallels between good parenting and good DMing.

They *do* take the path of least resistance ... when the path of least resistance is bypassing the adventure.

@@mitigatedrisk4264 And, really, nothing takes less effort than saying "we excavate the collapsed tunnel", and the DM spends a couple minutes describing how they took days of hard work clearing it out. To the players, it basically happened in an instant, even if their _characters_ are cursing their players for the back-breaking labor they did. This, incidentally, is why random encounter tables exist. While they're trying to brute force their way around the adventure, they're also rolling every 20 in-game minutes or so to see if the monsters come to them.

His comment about the Fellowship not prepping for a tough mountain pass and then getting some bad rolls was perfect.

Their prep was: ‘oh, hey, it gets cold up there, grab some wood.’

@@satiricalbard1 players are really good at not planning adequately. I often wonder for certain situations why players didn't do things a certain way. I ran an encounter once in Princes of The Apocalypse where the players came up with a brilliant plan I didn't think of, then proceeded to derail their own plan, though still succeeded. One of the party members was a drunken master monk who started his own brewery. The plan was for him to approach an enemy keep under the guise that he was a local merchant looking to sell a few barrels of ale. The party arranged for a cart and horse, and even had some of the barrels filled with actual ale in case anyone decided to inspect further. They were very convincing in their roleplay so the guards at the keep talked to their boss and agreed to buy the ale. Now the whole party minus the monk gets wheeled inside of the keep, Trojan Horse style. I thought "man, that is just genius. I bet they will wait until nighttime and sneak around the keep, slowly dealing with the enemies in small groups rather than all at once". Nope, 5 minutes later the party bursts out of the barrels in broad daylight and tries to fight the entire keep all at once. I panicked because I thought this would surely end in a TPK with 40 some enemies not including the boss and miniboss who were both in the keep. After a 2 session long combat, the party emerged victorious, and somehow managed to avoid anyone getting dropped to zero HP (the encounter was really tough, but they strategized and used really good teamwork to achieve this, so it was 100% because of how they handled it and not DM intervention). Ironically, this is also the same session I learned that CR is meaningless.

"Subtly"

Rat-catchers 3!

Let us bask in his wisdom.

Yep. Helpers can still be misanthropic if the reason they help is just to feel the pride and relief of fixing something. On the other hand, if it gets you to help, if it gets you to participate, it's good. It's just it'll only get you so far.

I've heard a similar thing about creating portfolios. That is, never include work in a portfolio that you wouldn't enjoy creating loads more of. Inevitably, the client will be attracted specifically to the work you don't enjoy, and hire you exclusively to do that.

Art! This is my greatest weakness as a DM. Certainly not the greatest artist, or even in the top 10%, but I can do a passable job on many things. So I believe art makes the adventure memorable. If the players don't pursue my path, I can't share my now irrelevant artwork I prepared for them in this session. That is my challenge to overcome as a railroading DM.

@@eddarby469 I definitely feel that! I do all our tokens and maps and I definitely feel a bit sad when a cool monster mini I made doesn't get a chance to shine, but it is useful to remember that none of the stuff you prepared ever goes to waste! If they miss it this time, then that's just one piece of prepwork you don't have to worry about when you fold the missed area or encounter into a different game some day down the line! :>

@@eddarby469 For sure. As emergency says in their reply, it's never wasted. You can always move something to a new location. That encounter, map or monster that the PCs avoided can still be used in a different spot. If they actively avoid something "No, we are NOT going to that spooky castle", then you shouldn't force it. If they just miss what you created because they went a different way, no reason you can't "move" that abandoned tower or forest glad to another part of your world/adventure.

@@kevinbarnard355 No need to even move it further into the adventure, just base your next campaign around the idea of going to a spooky castle to confront the big bad. You could spin that for any level range pretty easily by using necromancers with zombies for levels 1-5, vampires and witches for levels 5-10, demon/devil worshipers for levels 10-15, or liches and even more demons/devils for levels 15-20. Bonus points if the lich is in a Demiplane that resembles an spooky castle like maze with shifting staircases and hidden corridors straight out of hogwarts.

Would love to hear more about this if you don't mind sharing. Helps instill the lesson to hear more examples.

It says a lot about you that you can see that, recognize it, and improve for yourself and your players :) We'd love to hear about your game/situation and how you move forward

It's all about learning.... I've DMed maybe only maybe 200 hours so far, but I am in awe of people like Matt, Jim Murphynor Cody who have so much under their belt and are ready to share it!

@@silentobserver6908 Veyr briefly: Party encounters a Circle of Druids, that gather more and more people grieving over dead ones. A fungal "entity" (it's Zuggtmoy, lets be real) creates copies of those dead people, to lure grievers, and slowly convert them into mulch for herself (plus make a new species - not important). The way I saw this - I was gonna have the party fight Zugg... but now I want to give them more options, and not railroad them into an epic fight with a massive Abomination, made from all the bodies in the Circle, no matter how cool it sounds in my head. I'm gonna give them an option to purge Zugg through Druidic means, or even scare her off.

@@leovaeg Instead of twisting everything towards the epic head I envision in my head, I'm gonna give the players a few options to choose from, when dealing with a demonic fungus possession. A purge system of energy-beaming basalt cubes; finding allies to weaken the demon; cutting her ties to the material plane; basically the "epic fight" would be a last resort, instead of the main dish.

@@Dyundu +

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yup. the only channel i have notifications for.

By far my favorite series on RU-vid!

Always 💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽

It was good to flip it.

That wasn't the Misty Mountains, it was Caradhras. (Might be spelling that wrong.)

@@Voldine2 Know I'm late, but Caradhras is a mountain in the Misty Mountains.

High praise indeed! :D

This is probably the best niche complement that I could imagine.

I've been playing D&D longer than I thought!

Yay! Bob - I watch your icespire peak videos before every session!

Ajax, called Immortal. What a legend.

Kinda looks like a weiner.

Oh my god YES!! hype

Or... use that glorious voice to make audiobooks out of Priest and Thief

@@TomMentink Ugh, yes. If there's one author who needs to voice his audiobook personally, it's Matt. That voice is smooth like butter.

Well it IS Castle Amber. Those are some very heavy pages!

32 pages is more work than I half of the people who play D&D with me lol.

Maybe he was supposed to pick up the hardcover version that Goodman Games made into a 5th edition conversion?

@@rylanvillard I thought I recognised that cover. I read that thing twice and still don't understand what was happening in it.

@@nikkibrowning4546 it's so bonkers. I can't wait to run it for my group

I missed doing this in my second to last session. And I quickly remembered why I do this. I had to sketch out at least three different directions and it was WAY more work than normal 😳 Not making that mistake again any time soon.

Surely it would be better to have lots of plots. A world ready for adventure might have many interesting situations and conflicts, many overlapping, that the PCs can get involved in. They might start attempting to rob the palace, but on the way to the loot see a murder. The murder might be something I throw in as set dressing, but if the players do something with that situation then it becomes part of the emergent story. I would be very unhappy with a GM who didn't let me just explore her world and find fun.

bruh, dishonored 2's 'a crack in the slab'. i mean, the entire series is somewhat based on player agency affecting the world (for example, high chaos in the first one meaning more guards/rats). but that particular mission was freaking epic for making your choices feel weighty

@@sillyking1991 Dude, Samuel betraying me in the Dishonored 1 when I finished in high chaos actually gave me a heart pang the first time I experienced it. And then Emily's reaction at the end of that mission was terrifying.

@@Pete-- oh its a good story for sure, but in the moment im referring to, theres sometjing you can do that changes the entire level

This is why NPC bards are so useful. Nothing cheers up a party like hearing their heroics portrayed in ballad.

they did. the eagles said no

Because they didn't like their odds when there's a great big f'ing EYE in Mordor looking for exactly the thing you're asking them to carry in right into Sauron's airspace. On the other hand, If you're the right level, dogfighting against nine liches riding dragons would make for a cool bossfight.

@@seannicolson136 Also, because the Eagles are intelligent and powerful, they are subject to the Ring's temptation. At that point, we already saw both Gandalf himself and Galadriel tempted by the Ring, and have to stop themselves from taking it when offered. Later in that adventure, we saw a member of the party succumb, and try to steal the Ring. You think the eagles wouldn't have been tempted as well? Instead of a Dark Lord or a Queen, you might have had skyborne horrors, barons of the winds, whose eyes see all and who cannot be outrun.

@@seannicolson136 Arcadia issue 3 dog fighting rules seem like less of a coincidence now 🤔

@@Bluecho4 thank you for seeding the idea for my next campaign 😁

He probably just got his hands on a Potion of Longevity.

Kinda rude but okay

Yeah, its gonna happen eventually. I remember hearing Matt say on a stream that there's going to be "Priest," "Thief," "Knight," "Wizard," and "Paladin." I might be misremembering some of the ones in the middle there, but I distinctly remember the last one being called Paladin.

@@wanderingshade8383 Fighter is the name of the third book, he reads excerpts occasionally on stream. :-)

You WILL be a perfect DM for some players. Just keep having fun :)

Yes, yes... we must feed the all mighty ALGORITHM! Blessed be the Dice God's! HaHa

Ditto, I keep forgetting how what we do impacts the algorithm.

Same

ENGAGEMENT FOR THE ENGAGEMENT THRONE!!!!

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Here here (hear hear?)

@@matthewshroba1511 “hear, hear” is correct: it’s short for “hear him, hear him”

@@Ellebeeby thank you!

@@matthewshroba1511 you’re welcome :)

I watch quite a few gm shows and matt definitely has well constructed arguments and good vocal pacing.

Best of luck!

Sweet Caroline (bam bam bam!) You're game will be super cool!~

I miss Matt’s “Running the Game” videos as well.

Got an episode an time stamp for that?

Dude so true!

One time my DM said, flat-out, "This is a railroad-y oneshot." We had a BLAST. I think it all comes down to expectation and execution. The first solved by communication, and the second solved by experience

It isn't for the GM to write the 'story'. Stories are emergent; resulting from player actions against a backdrop of a world you create.

Came here to say the same! Nothing turns me off RPG content more than consistent use of exclusively male pronouns, etc.

Yes I thought that was considerate, without being forced. Very nice. Classy.

If I remember correctly, most of the time in 3.5 books if the player was referenced directly in the text, they were treated as female.

@@galechan4724 I recall they switched the pronouns, from first example to the second, and then second to third, etc.

I'm definitely not gonna argue against it, but I found it weird to switch between "he" and "she" vs just using "they" the whole way through. This way it's more obvious when you first heard "he" and it then switches to "she", so you have a short moment where you're surprised and have to think about it. But I think "they" would be more inclusive.