On Railroading

There’s a very good piece of advice that most roleplaying games give: when you’re the GM, don’t force the players’ characters to act the way you want.

As I said, it’s good advice. But, when you’re the GM, you also have a responsibility to keep the game moving, and that can get hard when the players decide that something you thought would be important really isn’t. Sometimes, they’ll just come up with a brilliant solution to an obstacle you didn’t think of. Other times, they’ll decide their characters aren’t motivated to pursue the obvious action.

In Good & Evil, Incorporated, the latter problem is ameliorated a bit by the setting: you can actually build story out of a character being forced to investigate something they think is trivial. On the other hand, if the character’s lack of motivation reflects the player’s, then you’ve got a problem. You should let them go off the rails, but what are they going to find when they get there?

First of all, stepping outside the bounds of the GM’s plans should never get the characters entirely out of trouble. If they’ve done something clever, you should reward both the players (with praise or candy) and the characters (with something they want out of the ploy), but there should always be more complications around the corner. Here’s some possibilities:

But what about the other guy?

When the players kill of a significant antagonist, or bluff their way past the villain’s chief buttkicker, their actions don’t happen in a vacuum. This is when you reach for one of those other things you had dangling, or you come up with some consequences.

In the average session, there’s some things players just walk past. Little things, like who killed the chauffer if Miss Murray has analibi, or why Trevor, who doesn’t seem to be involved at all, got so defensive. Take a moment, find one of these things, and decide why it’s absolutely critical. Maybe a team from a competitor whacked the chauffer, and now they want the artifacts the characters came for. Maybe Trevor really isn’t involved, but he’s figured out what the PCs are up to, and, in being afraid of them, is going to do something stupid.

As for consequences… did they convince the cult leader’s bodyguard to let them by? Imagine how he’ll feel when he finds out that let his boss get murdered. Maybe he’s angry and guilty. Maybe he sees a prime spot for advancement. Either way, he’s likely to get in the cast’s way, whether it’s on a revenge kick or looking to prove himself as a worthy successor. He might even try cutting a deal with them- let him keep the cult, and he’ll help them (or maybe just let them out alive).

That’s just what I wanted you to do

This is something you shouldn’t do very often. Heck, it’s something you shouldn’t do at all in some groups. But, used sparingly, it’s entertaining and very effective.

In this situation, the characters’ apparent victory has actually helped their enemies. They’ve escaped the witch’s lair… but their car is carrying a deadly hex back to headquarters! The man they killed wasn’t the sorcerer- he was the final sacrifice!