Ask a Gamer – Off the Rails and Into the Unknown

It’s a sentiment as old as the hobby itself: no plan, no matter how carefully crafted, survives contact with the players.

No GM wants to see hours of work wasted because the players decided to make friends with the evil sorceress instead of having the big, epic battle that was intended, and while some GMs might simply decide that the sorceress and her minions attack anyway, quite a few others are loath to tell their players how they’re allowed to play a game that, ultimately, is all about imagination and, well, roleplaying. Still, a GM is responsible for running a campaign, not reading his players’ minds. What should a GM do when the PCs opt to take things–as we like to say–off the rails?

A Game of Expectations

It is often said that, at your typical gaming table consisting of one GM and four players, that 20% of the table is responsible for 80% of the work in making the game a success. The thing to remember, however, is that 100% of the people at the table are there to have a good time (at least nominally), and so it’s in everyone’s best interest to make sure that fun is being had.

Does this mean that players should suck it up and do whatever the GM planned for, regardless of what they want to do? Absolutely not. In fact, the onus is on the GM all the more to ensure that the game being run is fun for everyone, and that includes the PCs being able to play out the adventures they’re interested in having. This requires not only knowing the players well, but also knowing what sort of expectations they have not just from the tabletop roleplaying hobby in general, but from your game, in particular.

For instance, some settings are more broad and vast than others in terms of what themes and content they’re meant to cover; a Dungeons & Dragons game about courtly intrigue and convoluted politics is all well and good (and perhaps a nice change of pace for certain groups!), but when the player who rolled up a Half-Orc Barbarian finds himself without much to do, then that’s a failure to account for player expectations.

Some systems handle this better than others, of course. Evil Hat’s Dresden Files RPG makes figuring out how and why your characters have anything to do with one another an integral part of character creation. Fantasy Flight Games turned Star Wars into three separate core releases to focus separately on the different aspects of the saga that are equally valid and equally rife for roleplaying potential. Both of these approaches ensure that the play group knows what it’s getting into before dice even hit the table, but they don’t completely negate the need for the GM and players to be on the same page.

Knowing what your players expect and want out of a game allows you to better plan for things that will play to their interests. It’s not a guarantee that the PCs will never surprise you (far from it!), but it’ll save a lot of headaches and–even more importantly–prevent a campaign from being doomed to failure from the start.

The Dreaded R-Word

It’s okay. You can say it. “Railroading.”

Of all the things a GM can be accused of doing–fudging the dice results, interpreting a rule differently, being too in love with a pet NPC–nothing is as damning as being accused of railroading the PCs. Now, in a way, this makes sense: in a hobby that’s all about player choice and being able to act in a freeform manner, anything that robs the players of that agency is anathema.

Now, by that same token, many GMs are aware of the pitfall that railroading is, and do whatever they can to avoid it (many of whom are nevertheless accused of it anyway). Still, as the GM, it’s important to remember that you’re the arbiter, host, and referee of the game, and there’s a big difference between forcing the PCs to take a certain course of action and ensuring that they’re focused and on-task and not simply goofing off out-of-character. Also, frankly, sometimes players forget things, and need the occasional kick in the pants to remind them of what they’re supposed to be doing.

The biggest mistake a GM can make, along these lines, is prohibiting a course of action simply because it wasn’t planned for. Now, for a novice GM, this is actually a big deal, because it’s hard enough to run a game when you do have an idea of what to expect; whether it’s a published module or simply a first adventure penned by a newbie GM, you probably don’t have material on hand to deal with every possible eventuality that might crop up, and learning how to adapt on the fly takes practice. Even so, it’s important not to panic–very likely, having things go off of a pre-established course isn’t going to wreck everything.

If someone suggests something that isn’t accounted for in your material, think about the situation logically; if it’s a published module, the write-up probably includes some description of either the villains’ motivations or other relevant scenario information, and if it’s your own adventure, presumably you’ll know how the NPCs and world need to react. Maybe you need to call for a brief five-minute break in order to brainstorm something. Either way, sometimes removing the immediate panic of needing an answer right away can be the biggest barrier to thinking of something interesting, and once that’s a non-issue, you can continue planning without being on the spot.

The Gating Factor

Part of what makes railroading so detrimental is the perception that the GM is robbing the players of agency. The thought that nothing the PCs do matters to the plot can really take the wind out of the players’ sails, and lead very quickly to boredom, frustration, and other forms of resentment.

Now, a key point to the above is the matter of perception, and certain things stand out more than others in making railroading look very obvious.

First, never have the way forward in the story contingent on a single roll or check. Not only does the game come to screeching halt in the event that nobody thinks of the right roll to make, it leads to confusion in the event that someone does think of the right roll, but doesn’t succeed. “Is there some expected means of success?” the players will ask themselves. And their thinking won’t get them anywhere.

Second, and related, try not to apply puzzle-solving logic too strongly to the conflicts in your session. While puzzles can be a lot of fun, it can really ruin the immersion if the problem is something that only the players–not their actual PCs–can solve, with nothing in-game providing the right hints as to the GM’s proposed solution, or allowing for other solutions at all.

For both of the above, there are plenty of times where GMs will have preordained solutions in mind, and it’s very important, as a GM, to allow for alternatives. If a player has a legitimately clever idea, and if the dice back it up, allow them to succeed–don’t punish them for not thinking of the same solution you did. Remember, this isn’t a video game; single solutions don’t need to be hard-coded into the game.

All Roads Lead to Rome

Continuing with a point made in the above section: if one of the biggest issues with railroading is player perception, then changing the perception can remove the biggest of issues.

For instance, perhaps you’ve planned for the Big Bad’s trusted lieutenant to get away, only to return in a later session in a bigger, badder form. If, in the course of the encounter, the PCs wind up killing said lieutenant, that doesn’t have to wreck your plans. Perhaps the Big Bad simply has another lieutenant who can fill the same role, or some other NPC the players are familiar with can step up and serve that purpose. Heck, depending on the setting, maybe the fallen foe is brought back to life with either horrifying technology or dark magic, partially explaining why he’s become so much more powerful in the first place.

In any case, the players still have the second encounter you planned for; the details surrounding it might be slightly different, but the players won’t ever know that it’s an encounter that was repurposed, and they still get the satisfaction and accomplishment of defeating your NPC, without you having to rob them of a rightfully earned victory.

Sometimes the players will make decisions that alter the world or story in ways that don’t support this approach–but that’s okay, too. An encounter is more than just the sum of its parts, but nevertheless, those parts could still be repurposed; maybe the NPC stats you had for one villain could be used later on for a different but similarly themed NPC, or the collapsing warehouse you hoped to stage the fight in can be host to a different encounter altogether down the line. Sure, you maybe didn’t get to take things where you initially intended, but your work wasn’t completely wasted, and your players’ choices still mattered–everyone wins.

GM Be Not Proud

There’s another angle to consider: if you’re hankering for your PCs to go off in one direction, but the PCs are all excited to go off in another direction entirely, maybe they’re right and you’re wrong.

All right, so it’s probably not actually a matter of literal right and wrong, but the fact remains that if the players are excited and invested in a certain course of action, they’ll have a lot more fun and gain more satisfaction from following it than they will if you make them do something else (and especially so if you outright forbid them from taking initiative into their own suggestions). Everyone at the gaming table showed up to have a good time, not just the game master, and putting the kibosh on fun for the sole purposes of shotgunning your story down the players’ throats is, quite frankly, bad form.

Yes, as storytellers, we GMs can get very attached to our plots and the various twists and turns we write into our tales, but tabletop RPGs are, at the end of the day, a group storytelling effort–and if the group thinks a certain aspect of the story would be more fun than the exact way you envisioned it, go with the flow. This is easier said than done for novice GMs, sure, but for more people who have more experience running game sessions and longer campaigns, the ability to adapt on the fly isn’t just a useful skill; I’d argue it’s an essential one for top-tier, truly epic gaming.

For that matter, if you’ve got your sea legs about you already, GMing-wise, use this to your advantage and do it preemptively, without waiting for the players to throw you for a loop. When a campaign is just gearing up, or when a major story thread has wrapped up and you’re not quite sure where to have things go next, pepper a number of potential plot hooks around and see which one(s) your group gravitates towards most and let things build from there. Odds are, they’ll never even notice that you let them pick what the next scenario is going to be about (imagine if you could have that power with your favorite TV shows!), and you take some of the stress of planning off of your hands at the same time.

In Conclusion

Depending on how confident you are in your abilities as a GM, a player group taking an unexpected turn could either throw you for a loop completely or simply add a fun, exciting wrinkle. Whichever the case, getting hit with a turn of events that you weren’t planning for doesn’t have to be a disaster.

In a worst-case scenario, just remember that nobody expects a GM to be able to have something in store for literally every possible eventuality or decision point (well, nobody reasonable expects that, at any rate). If you need to take a break or even end a session earlier, don’t be afraid to do that–in almost all cases, “no gaming” is better than “bad gaming,” after all.

And hey, if you can get past the idea of always needing to keep things going the way you, as the GM, expect them to go, then it’s time to relish in your newfound freedom. After all, the players are going to surprise you anyway, so why not let them surprise you in a good way by letting them take the game’s story in a fun new direction you weren’t expecting?

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Kevin Frane

Kevin Frane is a freelance Japanese translator, editor, and science-fiction author living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a big fan of tabletop roleplaying, Star Wars, board games, wine, and good food.

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