Is it railroading to have my Player's godly Patron's tell them to continue the main plot when the players have decided to pursue other plots. I want to run a sandbox to allow my players to decide what their goals are. If I tell them what to do as their Patrons doesn't that take away their agency? It makes sense for the story but it also just feels like the DM telling the player what to do.
My party recently failed to stop the BBEG from acquiring the Macguffin to plunge the world into darkness. Instead of giving chase my players decided that they've messed up and this world is beyond hope so they returned to a Wizard friend and are going to help him build an extradimensional portal and start a plane hopping adventure. Leaving all the nefarious plans of the BBEG they have discovered behind and more on to planescape adventures. I should have remembered the Chekhov's Extrademinsional Portal, "If you show a planar portal in 1st act, it must be used in the next act." I beleive their current goal is to use the planar travel to build strength and allies to defeat the BBEG, but it seems the BBEG's goal doesn't matter too much to them. I'm considering having their patrons tell them to stop the BBEG's goal to put some pressure on them. The BBEG is a vampire who made a pact with Asmodeus to plunge the world into darkness.
I have a Raven Queen Warlock and a Paladin of Pelor (Xalicas' child aasimar). Both of them have stated that they have to do whatever their patron tells them to do; the Warlock because the Raven Queen literally owns his soul and the Paladin because he is naturally compelled to listen to his angelic guide. They were tipped off the Vampire BBEG's plan by their patrons and now they want to bail because they essentially rushed into Strahd's castle unprepared and got embarassed. Is it too heavy handed to have their Patrons appear to them in a dream and say "HEY WTF are you really bailing on the quest I gave you? Go save the world!" They are bound by contract to do what the patron says, the Warlock would literally die(players choice) and the Paladin will betray his oath.
Whether or not it constitutes railroading depends entirely on the delivery. If you wish to avoid railroading, you can still have your Patron intervene, so long as doing so doesn't significantly limit the players options. For example, your Patron's message might be cryptic and vague, without clear instructions. (Flashes of emotion, locations, and things). Or, your Patron's message might be blunt and clear, but you could imply that something isn't quite right. Introduce doubt into their motives or sincerity. (Maybe something is posing as the patron in the vision. Consider employing reverse-psychology.)
Basically, separate yourself as the DM from the NPCs as unique characters. Use the NPCs to show them that they have options, but that you, as the DM, are equally excited about whatever they choose to pursue. Once you've offered them the choice, accept the change in direction and try to accommodate the player's decision as best you can. Sometimes that means abandoning an arc, or reintroducing it later under different circumstances.
The Raven Queen would most certainly want her agents to yank a Vampire’s leash and haul his ass to her. After all, that’s one that got away, and that won’t do. She would most certainly be well within her rights (and the scope of her power) to send that Warlock dream visions or something implying that the Vampire is a target.
She doesn’t have to tell them how to proceed. Making them do it a specific way would be railroading them. Just having the patron indicate what she desires of her “employee” isn’t railroading at all. After all, the PC can totally decide to *** off and do something else. The Queen can revoke her patronage for it too. That still isn’t “railroading,” it isn’t forcing the party to do anything at all. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences for breaking the Pact.
I consider a warlock’s patron who doesn’t interfere and tell the warlock to do things that they don’t want to do a wasted role playing opportunity!
Even a celestial patron whose warlock servant is good is going to give it’s servant unpleasant tasks from time to time. That’s part of being a warlock.
I'm under the understanding that there was only one MacGuffin to capture? Maybe come up with two or four more that are suddenly needed. IMHO, not a great plan to have a single point of failure. Remedy is to create new failure points in the BBEG's plan. Give the party a fighting chance, but make it slim. Start the "darkening" but don't finish it to suddenly. Draw it out for dramatic effect.
I'm with IamSposta that at least one patron will want this handled, like mob boss handled.
There's potentially an entire pantheon seething at the idea that this BBEG could succeed. It's not outside the realm of possibility to expect the patrons and deities to lean on their followers at at crucial time like this. Maybe even the wizard gets a little visit from a friendly messenger with a request to help out. (Offer he can't refuse kinda request)
Also, why not explore the idea that what the PCs are attempting to do is a viable solution. Does time in their current plane continue at the same rate when they're out hunting for reinforcements on another plane? Why wouldn't it be reasonable that the powers that be throw the whole nine yards at your BBEG this close to the goal line? At this point, every demon lord in the abyss would be willing to help the celestials if it means that a devil wouldn't be their ruler.
There are still opportunities for the party to get ahead of this. As was previously stated by Memnosyne, it's all about not making your party solve the problem in "your way". Figure out how to make their solution work.
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The tenth word of the original post is "Tell". That tells me most of what I needed to know to answer the question, but I went ahead and read on anyway. It's already a rail-road. Choo-choo.
I notice that at least two of the players have bought into this. Both the Paladin and the Warlock are willing to suffer terrible consequences if things go wrong and say they have to follow orders. What do the rest of the players want? Maybe your problem is that they want off the train ride.
Talk to your players. Always, always, always, it comes down to communication. If things aren't working out, you need to talk things over. If what you want is a Sandbox kind of game, then Patrons and the like make suggestions, rather than telling people to do things. Players should want do do things to advance the story, and their character should not feel that they have to follow orders, they should want to.
The question is, do the characters have the option of not following the quest? If you want to avoid railroading, make it a quest that has rewards for the entire party that they can consider doing or not doing.
For the warlock, the Raven Queen owns his soul, that's nice, but that doesn't control his actions. Presumably doing her bidding doesn't get his soul back, the knowledge to become a warlock has been given and can't be taken back. Now apparently you and the warlock have decided that she is willing and able to murder him if he doesn't do what she wants, but that seems more likely to result in trying to undermine her than anything else.
For the paladin, what oaths has he taken that would require him to obey?
In general, a warlock pact and paladin oaths do not allow the patron/gods significant control over the character. I'll grant that in both of your cases of mind control, the players are apparently in on it, but you are using the mind control over those characters to control the rest of the party, so everyone should have to approve it. I call it mind control because the effects are greater than even geas.
It's not really different from motivating the party by threatening their family members. Both are offers they can't refuse.
Agreed, but I get the impression that you're defending this rather than criticizing it. Threatening family members should be very very rare, once in a campaign at most (not counting threats to a large number of people that happen to include family). PCs already tend towards having no ties outside the party, attacking those ties just means your players will tend towards even fewer ties.
What it really comes down to is that everything that has a preconceived plot concept is "railroading" by definition. The DM has a primary idea that he want the players to interact with and enjoy. The characters may have pursuits and goals independent of the DM"s plot premise. Even if you want to offer a "Sandbox" style of play, you can't plan in depth for every situation the players will get into. There has to be an understanding that there is prepared content and adlib Most groups try to find a balance between One Path to Destination A and We SO Rando Sidetracker Squad.
I know someone will come along and claim that they don't railroad their players;
"I let my players make their own decisions. In my world, the BBEEG just does what he does and the players can decide if they want to do anything about it".
Find some way to let them know that there is still hope to defeat them. It sounds like they think there's no way to fix the problem. Have the Patron provide an asset or show them that it's still possible to defeat the bad guy. If they still don't want to, let them do what they want, but have something in the other plane be effected by the decision.
This is a bit of a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.
THE TREES: What you're seeing is that the players are abandoning the storyline that they are supposed to be on, and are instead going off at a complete tangent. This causes you to want to put them back on the right path by forcing them to do so by basically making their patrons into divine railroads.
THE WOOD: Your players are failing to live up to the DM-player contract that is required of them. This may be because they don't understand it, or because they are being deliberately difficult (most often this is because they ultimately don't like the campaign they're playing in). They have bailed on the game that you planned for them, and are forcing you to create a new game under their own parameters.
The DM creates a story and a sandbox location, and drops the players into it. The players then need to respect that they're in a story and that you as DM do not have unlimited time to create every possible location, and that they need to follow breadcrumbs when they're presented with them. Some people see the idea of freeform world exploration as being the ultimate goal of DnD, but it doesn't make for a good game because you can't prep it; there's no drama in it; and ultimately, there's no possibility of balance.
The PCs are in a story. They need to respect that, and not go wildly off course. If the peaceful town of Undratack is under attack, the players should respect that they need to resolve it. They can do so through any means available; diplomacy, combat, transporting the village to another plane, summoning angels to do the fighting for them, organising a triathlon and winner takes all - that's how player agency comes in. But if they ignore the game that you are putting them into - they are bad players, and they are deliberately messing your game up.
What I recommend you do in this situation is to stop pandering to the player whims, and progress the story as it unfolds.
"my players decided that they've messed up and this world is beyond hope so they returned to a Wizard friend and are going to help him build an extradimensional portal and start a plane hopping adventure"
Wait, what? They're abandoning all the people in the world because things got rough? These PLAYERS need a talking to, not the characters. It simply isn't fun for the majority of DM's to run a campaign when the players are this self-focused. What possible incentives can you give them to go on quests when they are literally willing to write off a whole world just because it got difficult? By abandoning your main storyline, they have cut off your ability to give them anything to motivate them. What they're asking for is a world of random chaos, where they just do as they please. Like a game of Animal Crossing but with sporadic, meaningless violence.
So what I'd suggest, since they've stopped pursuing the BBEG and let him get on with his plans, is let them build up their extraplanar portal. And in the minutes before it's due to activate, have the BBEG turn up with sufficient forces to wipe the party out. They literally let him power up and continue to build his schemes. If they want to play in a sandbox type world, show them that there are consequences to not dealing with the threats that they're up against.
Honestly, I've faced this with a party before and there was no real way of resolving it. My druid player just wanted to find a home and settle down. The paladin had decided he was a total pacifist and refused any combats. The rogue just wanted money, and would have been happy as a baker. None of them were interested in any amount of storylines I could throw at them, no matter how personalised I made them, or how much I pandered to what I thought they wanted.
If you ignore the BBEG in a campaign, it's going to kill you. That should be stated to all players in session zero.
@Sanvael, if it were possible I would upvote and downvote your post at the same time. You say in more detail what I paraphrased about respecting the DM's prepared content and the player's right to explore outside the box. Your final conclusion is to passive-agressively railroad, which I warned against.
I will propose a few ideas that we have used in the past.
1) Play BS adventures. This can be random combats or rp/downtime sessions. Really anything that doesn't have a set parameter beyond what if fun for the characters to pursue. The players have to understand that this is spur of the moment and may not be a masterpiece. Maybe the DM can even switch to a player(we had this option) while someone else manage a few sessions. We've had great fun with this.
2) As I stated before, try to balance the railroad feel(respect player agency) and random/sidetrack(respect a story arc) feel of the game. Even though we say DM and Players, it's really DM Player and Character Player, and all Players should be having fun.
3) Combine the ideas above if possible. Try not to have everything on a "needs to be done now time frame". Try to run some serious story arc progression. Take a break, offer downtime activities, personal story options, etc.
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Is it railroading to have my Player's godly Patron's tell them to continue the main plot when the players have decided to pursue other plots. I want to run a sandbox to allow my players to decide what their goals are. If I tell them what to do as their Patrons doesn't that take away their agency? It makes sense for the story but it also just feels like the DM telling the player what to do.
My party recently failed to stop the BBEG from acquiring the Macguffin to plunge the world into darkness. Instead of giving chase my players decided that they've messed up and this world is beyond hope so they returned to a Wizard friend and are going to help him build an extradimensional portal and start a plane hopping adventure. Leaving all the nefarious plans of the BBEG they have discovered behind and more on to planescape adventures. I should have remembered the Chekhov's Extrademinsional Portal, "If you show a planar portal in 1st act, it must be used in the next act." I beleive their current goal is to use the planar travel to build strength and allies to defeat the BBEG, but it seems the BBEG's goal doesn't matter too much to them. I'm considering having their patrons tell them to stop the BBEG's goal to put some pressure on them. The BBEG is a vampire who made a pact with Asmodeus to plunge the world into darkness.
I have a Raven Queen Warlock and a Paladin of Pelor (Xalicas' child aasimar). Both of them have stated that they have to do whatever their patron tells them to do; the Warlock because the Raven Queen literally owns his soul and the Paladin because he is naturally compelled to listen to his angelic guide. They were tipped off the Vampire BBEG's plan by their patrons and now they want to bail because they essentially rushed into Strahd's castle unprepared and got embarassed. Is it too heavy handed to have their Patrons appear to them in a dream and say "HEY WTF are you really bailing on the quest I gave you? Go save the world!" They are bound by contract to do what the patron says, the Warlock would literally die(players choice) and the Paladin will betray his oath.
Whether or not it constitutes railroading depends entirely on the delivery. If you wish to avoid railroading, you can still have your Patron intervene, so long as doing so doesn't significantly limit the players options. For example, your Patron's message might be cryptic and vague, without clear instructions. (Flashes of emotion, locations, and things). Or, your Patron's message might be blunt and clear, but you could imply that something isn't quite right. Introduce doubt into their motives or sincerity. (Maybe something is posing as the patron in the vision. Consider employing reverse-psychology.)
Basically, separate yourself as the DM from the NPCs as unique characters. Use the NPCs to show them that they have options, but that you, as the DM, are equally excited about whatever they choose to pursue. Once you've offered them the choice, accept the change in direction and try to accommodate the player's decision as best you can. Sometimes that means abandoning an arc, or reintroducing it later under different circumstances.
The Raven Queen would most certainly want her agents to yank a Vampire’s leash and haul his ass to her. After all, that’s one that got away, and that won’t do. She would most certainly be well within her rights (and the scope of her power) to send that Warlock dream visions or something implying that the Vampire is a target.
She doesn’t have to tell them how to proceed. Making them do it a specific way would be railroading them. Just having the patron indicate what she desires of her “employee” isn’t railroading at all. After all, the PC can totally decide to *** off and do something else. The Queen can revoke her patronage for it too. That still isn’t “railroading,” it isn’t forcing the party to do anything at all. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences for breaking the Pact.
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I consider a warlock’s patron who doesn’t interfere and tell the warlock to do things that they don’t want to do a wasted role playing opportunity!
Even a celestial patron whose warlock servant is good is going to give it’s servant unpleasant tasks from time to time. That’s part of being a warlock.
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I'm under the understanding that there was only one MacGuffin to capture? Maybe come up with two or four more that are suddenly needed. IMHO, not a great plan to have a single point of failure. Remedy is to create new failure points in the BBEG's plan. Give the party a fighting chance, but make it slim. Start the "darkening" but don't finish it to suddenly. Draw it out for dramatic effect.
I'm with IamSposta that at least one patron will want this handled, like mob boss handled.
There's potentially an entire pantheon seething at the idea that this BBEG could succeed. It's not outside the realm of possibility to expect the patrons and deities to lean on their followers at at crucial time like this. Maybe even the wizard gets a little visit from a friendly messenger with a request to help out. (Offer he can't refuse kinda request)
Also, why not explore the idea that what the PCs are attempting to do is a viable solution. Does time in their current plane continue at the same rate when they're out hunting for reinforcements on another plane? Why wouldn't it be reasonable that the powers that be throw the whole nine yards at your BBEG this close to the goal line? At this point, every demon lord in the abyss would be willing to help the celestials if it means that a devil wouldn't be their ruler.
There are still opportunities for the party to get ahead of this. As was previously stated by Memnosyne, it's all about not making your party solve the problem in "your way". Figure out how to make their solution work.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The tenth word of the original post is "Tell". That tells me most of what I needed to know to answer the question, but I went ahead and read on anyway. It's already a rail-road. Choo-choo.
I notice that at least two of the players have bought into this. Both the Paladin and the Warlock are willing to suffer terrible consequences if things go wrong and say they have to follow orders. What do the rest of the players want? Maybe your problem is that they want off the train ride.
Talk to your players. Always, always, always, it comes down to communication. If things aren't working out, you need to talk things over. If what you want is a Sandbox kind of game, then Patrons and the like make suggestions, rather than telling people to do things. Players should want do do things to advance the story, and their character should not feel that they have to follow orders, they should want to.
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The question is, do the characters have the option of not following the quest? If you want to avoid railroading, make it a quest that has rewards for the entire party that they can consider doing or not doing.
For the warlock, the Raven Queen owns his soul, that's nice, but that doesn't control his actions. Presumably doing her bidding doesn't get his soul back, the knowledge to become a warlock has been given and can't be taken back. Now apparently you and the warlock have decided that she is willing and able to murder him if he doesn't do what she wants, but that seems more likely to result in trying to undermine her than anything else.
For the paladin, what oaths has he taken that would require him to obey?
In general, a warlock pact and paladin oaths do not allow the patron/gods significant control over the character. I'll grant that in both of your cases of mind control, the players are apparently in on it, but you are using the mind control over those characters to control the rest of the party, so everyone should have to approve it. I call it mind control because the effects are greater than even geas.
It's not really different from motivating the party by threatening their family members. Both are offers they can't refuse.
Agreed, but I get the impression that you're defending this rather than criticizing it. Threatening family members should be very very rare, once in a campaign at most (not counting threats to a large number of people that happen to include family). PCs already tend towards having no ties outside the party, attacking those ties just means your players will tend towards even fewer ties.
What it really comes down to is that everything that has a preconceived plot concept is "railroading" by definition. The DM has a primary idea that he want the players to interact with and enjoy. The characters may have pursuits and goals independent of the DM"s plot premise. Even if you want to offer a "Sandbox" style of play, you can't plan in depth for every situation the players will get into. There has to be an understanding that there is prepared content and adlib Most groups try to find a balance between One Path to Destination A and We SO Rando Sidetracker Squad.
I know someone will come along and claim that they don't railroad their players;
"I let my players make their own decisions. In my world, the BBEEG just does what he does and the players can decide if they want to do anything about it".
That's just passive-aggressive railroading, lol.
Find some way to let them know that there is still hope to defeat them. It sounds like they think there's no way to fix the problem. Have the Patron provide an asset or show them that it's still possible to defeat the bad guy. If they still don't want to, let them do what they want, but have something in the other plane be effected by the decision.
Only spilt the party if you see something shiny.
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This is a bit of a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.
THE TREES: What you're seeing is that the players are abandoning the storyline that they are supposed to be on, and are instead going off at a complete tangent. This causes you to want to put them back on the right path by forcing them to do so by basically making their patrons into divine railroads.
THE WOOD: Your players are failing to live up to the DM-player contract that is required of them. This may be because they don't understand it, or because they are being deliberately difficult (most often this is because they ultimately don't like the campaign they're playing in). They have bailed on the game that you planned for them, and are forcing you to create a new game under their own parameters.
The DM creates a story and a sandbox location, and drops the players into it. The players then need to respect that they're in a story and that you as DM do not have unlimited time to create every possible location, and that they need to follow breadcrumbs when they're presented with them. Some people see the idea of freeform world exploration as being the ultimate goal of DnD, but it doesn't make for a good game because you can't prep it; there's no drama in it; and ultimately, there's no possibility of balance.
The PCs are in a story. They need to respect that, and not go wildly off course. If the peaceful town of Undratack is under attack, the players should respect that they need to resolve it. They can do so through any means available; diplomacy, combat, transporting the village to another plane, summoning angels to do the fighting for them, organising a triathlon and winner takes all - that's how player agency comes in. But if they ignore the game that you are putting them into - they are bad players, and they are deliberately messing your game up.
What I recommend you do in this situation is to stop pandering to the player whims, and progress the story as it unfolds.
"my players decided that they've messed up and this world is beyond hope so they returned to a Wizard friend and are going to help him build an extradimensional portal and start a plane hopping adventure"
Wait, what? They're abandoning all the people in the world because things got rough? These PLAYERS need a talking to, not the characters. It simply isn't fun for the majority of DM's to run a campaign when the players are this self-focused. What possible incentives can you give them to go on quests when they are literally willing to write off a whole world just because it got difficult? By abandoning your main storyline, they have cut off your ability to give them anything to motivate them. What they're asking for is a world of random chaos, where they just do as they please. Like a game of Animal Crossing but with sporadic, meaningless violence.
So what I'd suggest, since they've stopped pursuing the BBEG and let him get on with his plans, is let them build up their extraplanar portal. And in the minutes before it's due to activate, have the BBEG turn up with sufficient forces to wipe the party out. They literally let him power up and continue to build his schemes. If they want to play in a sandbox type world, show them that there are consequences to not dealing with the threats that they're up against.
Honestly, I've faced this with a party before and there was no real way of resolving it. My druid player just wanted to find a home and settle down. The paladin had decided he was a total pacifist and refused any combats. The rogue just wanted money, and would have been happy as a baker. None of them were interested in any amount of storylines I could throw at them, no matter how personalised I made them, or how much I pandered to what I thought they wanted.
If you ignore the BBEG in a campaign, it's going to kill you. That should be stated to all players in session zero.
@Sanvael, if it were possible I would upvote and downvote your post at the same time. You say in more detail what I paraphrased about respecting the DM's prepared content and the player's right to explore outside the box. Your final conclusion is to passive-agressively railroad, which I warned against.
I will propose a few ideas that we have used in the past.
1) Play BS adventures. This can be random combats or rp/downtime sessions. Really anything that doesn't have a set parameter beyond what if fun for the characters to pursue. The players have to understand that this is spur of the moment and may not be a masterpiece. Maybe the DM can even switch to a player(we had this option) while someone else manage a few sessions. We've had great fun with this.
2) As I stated before, try to balance the railroad feel(respect player agency) and random/sidetrack(respect a story arc) feel of the game. Even though we say DM and Players, it's really DM Player and Character Player, and all Players should be having fun.
3) Combine the ideas above if possible. Try not to have everything on a "needs to be done now time frame". Try to run some serious story arc progression. Take a break, offer downtime activities, personal story options, etc.