I recently started dming, and I'm finding a pattern that keeps repeating itself. I look at what my group did during our last session, create the dungeons and events and whatnot, and then, when we get to the actual game, everything changes. They go down one road for a bit, and then take an immediate left turn. And then, when I improvise because I wasn't prepared for their actions, and I do it decently, they go a completely different direction, and then I have to improvise again.
The reason why I have options for quests and stuff in my games is because too often I find video games railroading people into one story line and it ends up being rather tedious, or straight boring.
As a result of my style of gameplay, though, I'm unable to keep up with my players as they change everything that I'd planned for. Here's an example:
The group enters a town, finds a taskboard with three missions on it, and go after one of them. They go out, finish the quest, and somehow find a big baddy they were supposed to take on three levels later (or 7 sessions later), go after him, and kill him. Now, I have to create a chain of events that came about because of their slaughtering the demi-bbeg.
On the flip side, a friend of mine with dm experience came to me the other day and told me that I should stick to railroading for a bit. Every ounce of me sees that as just giving me, and that I should just keep trying, so, naturally, I'm conflicted.
What are your thoughts?
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If they are taking down a bbeg 3 levels earlier up the CR of the encounter. Alternatively if you give them 3 options and they go a different path, just run the encounter.
GM: "Ok you killed the gnoll encampment good job guys, back to town?"
PCs:"No we're going to wander around the woods and see what else we can kill."
GM:"Ok you guys run into the bandit camp that was listed on the board."
PC's:"Cool after we beat that we're going to continue going through the woods."
GM:"These woods are a dark and treacherous place. Are you sure?"
PCs: "Yeah this is a sandbox game so let's do it!"
GM: "Ok you happen upon a +6 CR encounter. Roll for initiative"
PCs: "Crap! lets get out of here! These woods are dangerous!"
Not everything in the world is beatable or at their level.
Just keep encounters prepped, the same bandits in the woods can be a gang of thugs in an alley ect.
If they still stray too far give them missions with time limits.
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I know the feeling. A few suggestions:
Talk to the players about it. If there is a particular story/quest you'd like to play through, just say so. If they know where you want to go, they can more easily get there.
Build a library of encounter/set-pieces. This can be literal, like a binder, or figurative. Many of the encounters, characters, and monsters from published adventures can be pulled into a game without too much difficulty. Real game example, my Kingmaker group decided to head east. They weren't supposed to go there for quite a while yet, so I wan't prepared. What I did know was they would be crossing a mountain range, so I pulled an appropriate encounter, hook mountain massacre to be precise, that I had recently looked over into the campaign. Since the players didn't know what was supposed to be there, they thought that was how it was supposed to be.
It can be a helpful tool when learning. There is enough foo in the PF system that you'll be getting under your belt and so on, so talking with your players, and remind them hey, new at this, is helpful.
Also, for larger groups, some amount of railroading can be helpful, even later on. Gamers can be like cats, sometimes.
Thank you guys for all the advice. I very much appreciate it. Also, that word 'sandbox' very much applies to my world, and having a book of events would be extremely useful. Thank you again guys. This helped tons.
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When I sandbox I usually build myself random encounter tables. I also make a series of quick and easy 5 room dungeons. That way I have a bunch of options for the players. After they have completed several of those quick and easy quests, I start to chain some together and build on larger quest chains. A plot develops based on the PCs actions.
They go out, finish the quest, and somehow find a big baddy they were supposed to take on three levels later (or 7 sessions later), go after him, and kill him. Now, I have to create a chain of events that came about because of their slaughtering the demi-bbeg.
How did they "somehow" find out about the sub-BBEG? It would seem you let them find out and then go after him. Not always a big deal but you make it sound like they did something they were not supposed to. It would be interesting to hear how the events unfolded in more detail.
On the flip side, a friend of mine with dm experience came to me the other day and told me that I should stick to railroading for a bit. Every ounce of me sees that as just giving me, and that I should just keep trying, so, naturally, I'm conflicted.
That is pretty good advice. The APs tend to be good railroad adventures. At least the ones I have GM/played in. They offer a lot of choices to the players and require some buy in too. Not a bad place to start if you ask me.
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It depends on what you're doing.
If all you're doing is having them go to the town square and read the announcement board or find a dungeon and loot it, then have a bunch of equally viable encounters ready and let them do their thing. That becomes the adventure and you should let the PCs choose what path they want to take at a given time. Exploration and looting adventures can be fun. That is definitely the way a lot of old school D&D was. You found a dungeon complex and went about exploring and clearing it as you wished.
If there is a story to be told, you're going to need to do a bit of railroading to keep them on task. You should do it in a fashion that keeps them invested in the story. They should feel doing the task is of primary importance.
They key is to make the story flow feel like a natural progression of events. The NPCs should give them information that reinforces this natural progression. Encounters should reinforce this. The morality of the overall group should reinforce this. A PC group is often like the protagonist in a story. He ends up involved in some event that leads to a chain of encounters and evidence gathering he must undertake to defeat the BBEG and save whatever he is trying to save.
A lot of players appreciate a DM that doesn't make them think about things too much. They like it when the breadcrumb trail to the next combat is obvious. Some players are over-planners that spend too much time trying to think up elaborate strategies to defeat something that a straight-forward and simple plan will accomplish. The other players grow bored waiting for a caster to get all his perfect spells and execute this unnecessary plan. You as a DM tell them all the planning isn't necessary and to go get it. It helps if you can read your group and move things along to maximize group fun.
As long as you're keeping things fun and maintaining an advancement pace that satisfies the group, you'll be good whether your railroad some or allow them to wander.
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I usually start out thinking a sandbox might be fun and end up swearing I'm just going to run an AP next time. That said, if you can find issues of Dungeon magazine on eBay or are willing to invest in the PDFs they're a great source of canned adventures. There's even a Dungeon Index online you can use to find adventures in the right level range for your party and read a short description of them.
If you see an adventure you like but it is a few levels too low for the party it is easy to fix that up with templates. A similar approach can be used with adventures you create yourself. Perhaps there are CR2 dire wombats in the woods outside town. If the party heads there at 1st level maybe they meet Young dire wombats. If they go at 3rd perhaps they've grown into Giant dire wombats. At 4th level they might be CR4 Advanced Giant dire wombats. Other templates such as fiendish might make more sense for other monsters. You could also scale the number of monsters present up or down to help move the CR even further.
If you tie a different home made or canned adventure to each significant town/area and are prepared to scale it a bit you might be able to arrange the adventures in concentric circles of difficulty and have some hope the party will face them in roughly the right order. Some higher level stuff can rely on "time release" adventure hooks (maybe after 3 years of adventure a lich awakens or Keraptis dares the party to explore White Plume Mountain). That reminds me that WotC used ot have a lot of older edition adventures available for download on their website and probably still have up 3.5 versions of Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain.
For a truly "old school" experience, the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide also had a great random dungeon generator.
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Railroad is fine
going from A to B to C to D etc, as long as their is some choice what to do between and at the station's. All paizo AP are a railroad, some more than others
I tend to find that if players begin to wonder way off what is planned I just say "ok I haven't planned for this so it's now your turn to add more input and ideas as we make stuff up on the fly".
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Some railroading is fine. I use it at low levels to keep a campaign smaller and easier to manage. Are you familiar with The Legend of Zelda series? Link typically is confined to a small area, until he completes a certain part of his quest and the "world map" opens up. Similarly, I let the party's area of influence expand with their level.
But if it makes you feel better, then instead of railroading you can say that you are using the narrative to provide incentive for the players to pursue a course of action. When the players make the choice - and it ends up being what you want - that is always better. On a couple of occasions in the past when they wanted to go to a certain area that I hadn't prepared yet, I simply told them so. I can handle stuff on the fly pretty easily, but I also like to take my time to preparing the more important parts of an adventure.
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myself i usually have an overarcing story arc for the entire campaign in mind and completely railroad my players through the first few sessions until it is absolutely clear to everyone what the long term goal is. Then setup a broad outline of mid-term goals that have to unfold in no particular order and not bound to any specific challenge rating until one day the grand finale is at hand.
my current campaign is based on end of the world plot. Im railroading them through the process of why and how the apocalypse is at hand, from there on its pure sandbox every step dictated by my players. In this game the first seal is broken, the apocalypse has started and cannot be stopped, they have to prepare the world for what is to come, and break the seals so the endgame beginns when they and the world are ready. How they will achieve this is entirely up to them.
i find this way to be a good one to sandbox a game without the problem of completely random player behavior. the palyers have clearly defined goals in a completely open world, this makes it alot easier.
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I alternate between being a player and a GM, and here's a dynamic I've seen occur pretty regularly:
As a GM, you drop some hints about where the players stand in the overall plot of your campaign, and they don't see the significance of them. You drop a few more hints and they still don't put it all together. This can go on for a long time.
The problem is that they aren't as familiar with the details of your campaign as you are, so things that seem like big clues to you are just random details to them. In order to give them enough of an idea of what's going on, you often have to give them pretty specific and obvious explanations-- stuff that feels like railroading to you, but only because you've spent several hours going over all this stuff beforehand. The players are only hearing about it for the first time.
Often, the players feel like you've just let them drift without any clear idea of what they ought to be focused on, when you think you're giving them just the right amount of subtle clues to piece together the plot.
I've found that if it feels to you like you're railroading the players a bit, they're probably just happy to have enough of a idea of the plot to figure out their next move.
