In short, a nonsense railroad is an adventure where the PCs are required to perform a predetermined sequence of specific actions, which they will certainly NOT take of their own volition because the actions make no sense, and - when they’re clumsily and overtly forced to take those actions - they will feel stupid doing so. If you’re familiar with the old computer adventure games, then you’ve likely encountered this same type of tortured logic in a different guise. There’s absolutely no chance that they’ll take it with them or leave one of the PCs behind to keep an eye on it.” “I think we can all safely assume that the PCs will leave the pocket-sized object they’ve been sworn to protect unguarded in their hotel room while they go shopping.“You’ve got rock solid evidence that So-and-So is guilty of the crime you’re investigating, but please don’t do anything with that evidence because the adventure will immediately break.”.“I’ve mentioned some random object, why aren’t you stealing it?”.I’ve seen much worse than this on countless occasions, including professionally published adventures. This is not, bizarrely, an exaggerated example. None of them are given a reason to be done, many of them are completely illogical, and quite a few are actually the opposite of motivated - they’re actively inimical to the PCs’ agenda. They need to immediately leave the dinner and go down to the warehouse in order to interrupt the voodoo ritual being performed there.Īnd, again: All of this needs to happen unprompted.This will not give them any information about the gang lord’s business affairs, but they will find one scrap of paper that says “something weird is happening at one of our warehouses at the docks.”.

Once in the office, they need to take the time to search through all the file cabinets.

During dinner at their rivals’ mansion, one of the PCs needs to sneak away and break into the rival gang lord’s office.

The players have to propose that peace talks take place at the rival gang lord’s mansion.

The players have to decide that they should make peace with the rival gang at an arbitrary point in the gang war.

Then imagine an adventure in which, unprompted: Instead, the actions mandated by the nonsense railroad are hidden, capricious, unlikely, and/or idiotic.įor example, imagine that the PCs are playing Triads locked in a gang war with another organized crime outfit. Second, if you do want to design and run a railroad - (please don’t!) - then the secret to making it work even some of the time, as I describe in How a Railroad Works, is to make sure that every choice is obvious and appealing: You need the players to know what they need to do and you need them to want to do it.Ī nonsense railroad is basically what you get when a railroaded adventure doesn’t do that. Instead, prep interesting and provocative situations that create rich opportunities for the PCs to make decisions and give you, as the GM, the toys you need to actively play the world in response to those decisions. Tangentially, this is a pretty basic tip: Don’t prep what the PCs will do, because (a) that requires precognition and (b) deciding what the PCs are going to do is the players’ responsibility. In practice, though, we’ll talk about “prepping a railroad” or “railroaded adventures,” by which we mean scenarios which require the PCs to make very specific choices, therefore forcing the GM to either railroad the players into those choices to avoid having the scenario fall apart.

Technically, therefore, railroading can only happen at the actual game table. Railroads happen when the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome. A patron asked me to explain what I mean when I say “nonsense railroad.” (Which is something I occasionally do in reviews and online discussions.)įirst, in The Railroading Manifesto I defined “railroading” in an RPG as:

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