Railroading

Oh no! You heard the stories and now it's happening to you. Your GM is railroading. You don't have any agency! They're fudging rolls so the dice don't matter. You might as well be reading a book. What do you do?!

First, is it a problem? Depending on the type of player you are, railroading might actually be a good fit for you. If you're enjoying the game, don't let people convince you that you should be upset.

For everyone else, railroading is something that a lot players have a problem with (myself included). The correct way to address railroading is a mature conversation, though what you say depends on how and why the GM is railroading. To be clear, when I say Railroading, I am talking about the GM using their control of the game world to take agency away from players in a way that is not fitting with the setting/genre or in a way that negatively impacts the play experience.

Did you buy a ticket?

There are some signs at the start of the game that you are about to get on a railroad. If you choose to join the game anyway, don't get upset that the game is a railroad, because at that point you are one being the bad player not the GM. This is why it is always good to have a conversation about expectations before a game starts.

The most obvious sign is that the GM is going to run a module. These prepackaged adventures tend to have a linear plot and allow only slight variation from the intended actions. Many even have advice on how the GM should railroad you. If you've agreed to play a module, you agreed to ride the train.

Other signs that you're getting on a railroad:

• The GM has run the adventure before. Whether they mean to or not, they will expect you to follow the same plot as the first time they ran it. They will also have a lot of prepared material they expect you to go through.
• The GM has a list of specific types of characters that have to be in the party. If someone has to play a dark priest of Rezick who was excommunicated for breaking the Hollow's Silence, that is an author GM and they are going to expect the characters to do very specific things to serve their plot.

Are you actually on a Train?

Don't assume that a few things not going how you think they should or the GM being prepared means that they are railroading you. The GM is probably rolling behind the screen because it's easier to separate player and character knowledge that way and not to fudge the dice. It could be that an army is trying to kill you because you tried to stab the king, not because the GM is out to get you. Not getting your way does not equal railroading.

Sometimes players will just assume that they are being railroaded when that's not the case. If you don't think you have options or you think your choices don't matter, you can often box yourself into making that true.

A few years ago, I had a player say, "I think doing this job is really stupid and dangerous, but the GM drew a map so that means we have to." Another player explained that wasn't true in our game. The player had a different direction he had wanted to go for several sessions but figured he wasn't allowed and so had never mentioned it. His plan involved stolen military equipment, a hired biker gang to carry loot, and a semi-truck with an extendable ramp for jumping classic muscle cars over a fence. I think everyone had more fun once he spoke up, I certainly did.

Types of Trains

There are lots of different things people call railroading. Think about what in the game is bothering you and identify the specific behaviors. Don't worry too much about whether it is "technically" railroading. If it bothers you and it's not railroading it probably needs to be addressed anyway. Here are some common types of railroading to help you identify the problematic behavior:

• The Magician's Train The GM makes you think you have options, but that's just an illusion. All paths lead to Castle Doom and the same seven encounters. Maybe the GM lets you roll for something, but they've already decided the result or they roll behind the screen and make up whatever result they want.
• The Train to Nowhere The GM isn't breaking any rules. It's just that every NPC you encounter happens to have a magic sword and is a trained warrior with magic powers, and they'll murder your entire crew before you even make it out of the bakery with that loaf of bread you stole. You end up rolling up your fifth character of the night while the GM sits in the corner mocking you.
• The Steamroll Engine The GM is using overwhelming force to make the characters to comply with their wishes. If you don't go along with whatever the GM has dictated, you will be killed, imprisoned, or otherwise made to suffer. I once had a GM who made six level 20 assassins appear when we refused to take a job. We were level 2.
• The Terminal Railway The GM puts unreasonable insurmountable obstacles in your way. Anything you want to do that isn't in line with the GM's plans just fails or leads to a dead-end or requires impossibly high rolls to accomplish, i.e. an office door requiring a 50 on a 20 sided-die roll to kick down. Sometimes the GM will not communicate what they expect and you just have to keep guessing until you find the "right" solution.
• The Sleeper Car The GM is putting training wheels on the game. They're fudging rolls to keep your characters alive or ensure success. You roll a 1 and somehow still spot the hidden door that has been lost for centuries. There's never any real danger or chance of failure.
• Reading Railroad You are reduced to being a spectator as the GM's story unfolds. Nothing you do will change the plot and the ‹ber-cool NPCs get to do all the interesting/important things. Sure you get to make decisions and aren't forced to do specific things, but nothing you do actually matters or changes anything.
• The Emotional Baggage Car The GM uses either real world emotional black-mail, coercion, or personal attacks to force you to act how they want. "Don't want to hunt wolves? Well the wolves kidnapped/murdered your children? Still no? Guess you're not a very good person, since the wolves are eating orphans and you don't care." I've had a particularly terrible GM try to dictate how my character should behave because of my real world religious beliefs. When I quit the game, he called to say that everyone he worked with (who I had never met) thought I was pathetic for quitting his game. That is the creepy extreme, hopefully you'll never encounter it.

Why is the railroad a problem?

Once you have identified the behavior, formulate why the behavior is a problem so you can explain it. Some common reasons that railroading is upsetting:

1. The GM is lying to you or playing a trick on you. Most people don't like being deceived. This is especially problematic because when you discover the lies it can cast a shadow over experiences you had previously enjoyed.
2. The GM has turned this into a competition and is beating the crap out of you and the other players for their sadistic pleasure. Especially if they're gloating about their "win" or criticizing you as a result. Winning when you make the rules is meaningless and the GM is fundamentally misunderstanding their role at the table.
3. You feel forced into doing things. You feel like you have no options or control. Losing agency is never fun.
4. You feel like you're wasting your time. The "right" solution seems arbitrary or unfair and is based more in guessing what the GM wants than what makes sense.
5. The GM is robbing you of victory or challenge, especially if it feels patronizing. Being able to take risks and have real consequences is important for a lot of players.
6. You aren't getting to take an active roll in the game. It's boring.
7. You feel manipulated, insulted, or disgusted by the GM's behavior. Emotional manipulation or attacks on you as a person are never appropriate.

Why do they railroad?

It's almost time to have the conversation. But first, ask yourself why the GM is railroading you. Realize that they are probably doing it so:

1. You can have more fun.
2. They can have more fun.

Why does the GM think that railroading is improving anyone's fun? Well, for years a lot of the standard (and in my opinion bad) advice for GMing has been to tell GMs to railroad players. A lot of GMs think they're supposed to railroad because that's the right way of to run a game. Maybe they think their story is really cool and if you go off-script you're not going to get to see the really cool thing they prepared for you. Maybe the GM is worried that if your character gets killed it's going to ruin the fun for you so they fudge dice to keep you alive.

If they're making things more fun for themselves, it's often about the GM feeling stressed. Maybe they are not good at improvising and when the players go off-script, it is hard for them to manage the game. The GM may have put a lot of work into something and doesn't want it to go down the drain. If they've spent hours fleshing out this story and building this villain, but you pull out a cool trick they didn't know about and wipe the villain out in 10 seconds, it is understandable that they might be disheartened and maybe want to save some of their work.

Getting off the train.

Now it's time to have that mature conversation with the GM outside of game time. Why do it outside of game time? Because it is inherently confrontational to start telling the GM to change in the middle of the game, which is a bad start, and you have an audience which always puts people on the defensive. It you want a productive conversation, wait until the next day or when you're seeing them at some other activity you share with them. At the very least wait until the end of the game. The conversation should go something like this:

1. Remember that the GM is not actually trying to ruin the game.
2. Start the conversation by explaining how you feel (ex. like nothing I do matters or like my rolls are meaningless). Don't start the conversation by telling them what they're doing wrong.
3. Follow with some suggestions for what you think would help improve the game for you.
4. Listen to them. At this point, they're probably going to want to explain themselves and may also criticize the parts of the group's behaviors that they don't like. It's natural that they're going to be a little defensive and critical.
5. Don't get defensive in turn. Realize that you knew this conversation was coming and they didn't, so they probably didn't have time to really formulate how they feel about the game the same way you have.
6. Once they've had their say, offer some compromises to make everyone have more fun.
7. Wrap up with things you like about how they've been running the game, it will help ease some of the tension and it's always a good idea to let GMs know what you're enjoying, because they'll be inclined to do more of it.

Next Time

I'll discuss some compromises and strategies for reducing railroading.