The year is 1991. Darksun has only recently been released by TSR.
We (the characters) started out as slaves, which, given the setting, is no big surprise. After escaping from the slave caravan, we made our way to the only place near enough to find water before we died, Tyr, where we promptly found ourselves in a situation where our choices were to do what we were told or die. We did some jobs for our boss, and it was entertaining. The campaign was still new to us, and, even tho we had no choice in what jobs we were assigned, we were well rewarded for success.
Naturally, after getting to level 6 (pretty sure it was 6), we decided that we'd rather be masters of our own destiny. Working for someone is all well and good, but it gets stale after a while. So we gather supplies for our newest mission and head out into the desert, with no intention of ever returning to Tyr.
We wander around in the desert, and it begins to become apparent that, dispite telling him a couple weeks in advance what we were planning, the DM has no idea what to do about his derailed story.
Out of nowhere, an army of about 5000 lizardmen in plate armor comes marching right toward us (have I mentioned we were in the middle of the desert?). Naturally, we figure it'd be best to get out of their way. We start moving, and quickly find that there's only one way we can go to get away from this army without fighting their 20-man (or, rather, 20-lizardman) scouting parties.
To make a long story short, if that's possible at this point, this army of lizardmen showed up almost continually to force us in one direction or another. We managed to catch one out solo and figured we'd capture and interrogate him to find out why the heck they were always where we were, but found that we could inflict no damage on him. That one lizardman killed 3 of us before the rest could escape, and he never even felt anything we did to him.
TLDR version: We were chased around the desert by an army of invincible lizardmen who's only purpose was to force us to go where the DM wanted.
I'd love to hear your stories of extreme railroading.
It's a small thing, and in retrospect, fair, but our DM once had a horseman grab the Rogue's magical shortsword and ride away, off of the battlemat into the unknown, with it, probably moving a good 15 squares to do it, without any roll. Essentially, the DM had given him an overpowered item without considering the consequences, because this was 3.5, we were a party of two, and we were woefully underpowered.
He decided against this later in the session and came up with a perfectly reasonable excuse to get rid of the item, but his short term solution just struck me as pretty funny in its total lack of options. Just, poof, weapon's gone.
That is just, wow. Even a new DM should never be THAT inflexible.
It's a small thing, and in retrospect, fair, but our DM once had a horseman grab the Rogue's magical shortsword and ride away, off of the battlemat into the unknown, with it, probably moving a good 15 squares to do it, without any roll. Essentially, the DM had given him an overpowered item without considering the consequences, because this was 3.5, we were a party of two, and we were woefully underpowered.
He decided against this later in the session and came up with a perfectly reasonable excuse to get rid of the item, but his short term solution just struck me as pretty funny in its total lack of options. Just, poof, weapon's gone.
Reminds me of the time an Umber Hulk stuck it's arm out of the side of the mountain we were walking beside, grabbed my magic sword and took off back inside with it. Yay DM capriciousness.
That is just, wow. Even a new DM should never be THAT inflexible.
It's a small thing, and in retrospect, fair, but our DM once had a horseman grab the Rogue's magical shortsword and ride away, off of the battlemat into the unknown, with it, probably moving a good 15 squares to do it, without any roll. Essentially, the DM had given him an overpowered item without considering the consequences, because this was 3.5, we were a party of two, and we were woefully underpowered.
He decided against this later in the session and came up with a perfectly reasonable excuse to get rid of the item, but his short term solution just struck me as pretty funny in its total lack of options. Just, poof, weapon's gone.
Reminds me of the time an Umber Hulk stuck it's arm out of the side of the mountain we were walking beside, grabbed my magic sword and took off back inside with it. Yay DM capriciousness.
That's hilarious. You must have been pissed.
Reminds me of the time an Umber Hulk stuck it's arm out of the side of the mountain we were walking beside, grabbed my magic sword and took off back inside with it. Yay DM capriciousness.
Haha, oh the mental imagery!
Jerk-move, though.
I actually can't think of a particularly railroaded gaming experience...But, somewhat related - I certainly come across the deus ex machina scenarios more often than naught. Most recently, in a SW campaign, the GM had an NPC tag along with us the entire time (double our level). Later he included another high level NPC Jedi. When it came down to the final showdown with the BBEG, the party was handling the little guys while the 2 high level NPCs handled the Sith Lord.
...Yaaaay.
Actually, now that I think about it, that SW campaign did have some significant railroading ('accidental' time-travel, being forced to help the main NPC in his quest for power despite the fact he was obviously dark).
All in all, probably the worst gaming experience I've had in a long while.
- - -
That is just, wow. Even a new DM should never be THAT inflexible.
It's a small thing, and in retrospect, fair, but our DM once had a horseman grab the Rogue's magical shortsword and ride away, off of the battlemat into the unknown, with it, probably moving a good 15 squares to do it, without any roll. Essentially, the DM had given him an overpowered item without considering the consequences, because this was 3.5, we were a party of two, and we were woefully underpowered.
He decided against this later in the session and came up with a perfectly reasonable excuse to get rid of the item, but his short term solution just struck me as pretty funny in its total lack of options. Just, poof, weapon's gone.
Reminds me of the time an Umber Hulk stuck it's arm out of the side of the mountain we were walking beside, grabbed my magic sword and took off back inside with it. Yay DM capriciousness.
Its ok
Well as the party went along the DM was telling us how we saw village reject skirt the edges of light from our celebratory bon fire. Then he tells us we spend the next 10 YEARS as the hell spawns personal servants. He said we should have known better than to let that guy walk by us?!!
My own personal railroading episode happened when another player was using IOCC to harrass another player. When he wouldn't stick with goingto where he originally planned I had the forces of nature blow him back. He demanded some saves and he passed so he started getting trip attacked and dragged by a pack of worgs. He used his ultimo-rare item to deal with them and kept going. I then told him the skies alight with a soft blue glow. Then a huge blue beluga whale comes down fro the parted sky to fly by and swallow you (gargantuan creature with swallow). I even made the sounds of the whales majestic song. He was dumped where I felt it was fair. He promptly quit and I was happy with my win-win (for me) scenario.
He said we should have known better than to let that guy walk by us?!!
Well, obviously.
Squish.
You'd think that when a player is told that they are standing on top of an 80ft tall stone wall with no banners, ropes, or hand holds, that they'd take the staircase, right? Did I mention that the wall was occupied by guards while the stairs were clear? And that the stairs were the quickest route to get back to the party? I mean, honestly, the only way to have made it more of a railroad was to have replaced the top of the wall with a dead end.
I mean, honestly, the only way to have made it more of a railroad was to have replaced the top of the wall with a dead end.
Or to have like a pixilated wall, or just dead space like creation stopped. I'd also have gone with the wrong way warning from Mario Kart.
I feel like the DM wrote a novel that we have to follow or he doesn't know what to do. He spent 1 hour describing this city, drew pictures of buildings on our battle mat. That got me excited thinking a battle might happen till he erased it. Out of six players he focused on two players during the "roleplaying" encounters so the rest of us are bored out of our freakin minds
When reading several entries I was reminded of an old game. A party of four entered town and were led into a back alley. There we got jumped by 50pirates with no way out. We were left behind naked. All of us were so pissed that the game had immediately ended and that GM never DMéd for us again.
Players hate when it's painfully obvious they had no choice but to go the way the DM wants to. IMHO it's a sign of a bad or new DM.
When reading several entries I was reminded of an old game. A party of four entered town and were led into a back alley. There we got jumped by 50pirates with no way out. We were left behind naked. All of us were so pissed that the game had immediately ended and that GM never DMéd for us again.
When my eyes skimmed over this and saw the words "pirates" and "naked", I was very worried about what turn this story was taking.
IMHO it's a sign of a bad or new DM.
What do you mean "or"?
IMHO it's a sign of a bad or new DM.
What do you mean "or"?
A bad DM could be a bad DM for like, years.
When reading several entries I was reminded of an old game. A party of four entered town and were led into a back alley. There we got jumped by 50pirates with no way out. We were left behind naked. All of us were so pissed that the game had immediately ended and that GM never DMéd for us again.
When my eyes skimmed over this and saw the words "pirates" and "naked", I was very worried about what turn this story was taking.
In my last session we interrupted a trans-species necromantic orgy. Which my players are now having to recreate in order to resurrect their fallen comrade (using his little black book to find enough women for the rite). I don't think naked pirates would be much of a shock after that, I'm afraid.
Unless they started dancing.
IMHO it's a sign of a bad or new DM.
What do you mean "or"?
I guess I should have said bad and/or new dm
When reading several entries I was reminded of an old game. A party of four entered town and were led into a back alley. There we got jumped by 50pirates with no way out. We were left behind naked. All of us were so pissed that the game had immediately ended and that GM never DMéd for us again.
When my eyes skimmed over this and saw the words "pirates" and "naked", I was very worried about what turn this story was taking.
In my last session we interrupted a trans-species necromantic orgy. Which my players are now having to recreate in order to resurrect their fallen comrade (using his little black book to find enough women for the rite). I don't think naked pirates would be much of a shock after that, I'm afraid.
Unless they started dancing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQatWLEIJrA
We're doomed.
Reminds me of the time an Umber Hulk stuck it's arm out of the side of the mountain we were walking beside, grabbed my magic sword and took off back inside with it. Yay DM capriciousness.
I had a DM run a pixie up to my fighter, snatch his magical dagger (his off hand weapon of choice) and go running off into the woods with it. My character shrugged his shoulders, considered it only a dagger, and pulled out his spare short sword from his backpack to use in his off hand instead. He kept going along with the party on their original path after having loudly wished the pixie luck with whatever it needed the dagger for.
That was on railroad I didn't try to ride, hehe.
That was on railroad I didn't try to ride, hehe.
It hasn't happened yet, but whenever the party is investigating some scandal and they get the obligatory "Stop it. You gon' get blightninged" death threat, I'm always tempted to be like "I don't wanna get blightninged, **** this."
Actually, I guess I've been lucky - I haven't ever had a problem with a DM doing unrealistic (...given the background...) stuff to keep me going where HE wanted me to go.
The closest I've ever gotten to being railroaded was one year I went to PentaCon with a really bad head cold. I couldn't think straight, so I just had my character stick with everybody else. We got split up and I was alone for a while. The DM was giving me rather obvious hints about what to do next, and I just followed along...
(The good news was that he dropped me in another character's lap to babysit me instead. Poor dwarf fighter, he got humiliated when my Bard took out 2 foes and was working on a third while he messed around with JUST ONE because he kept using Power Attack and missing.)
Long story short we came upon a city after having a lot of trouble in other cities recently. We decided as a party to play it safe and camp through the night on the outskirts of a nearby forest. The conversation with the DM went something like this.
Us: This town looks suspicious...we could have trouble here....
DM: So you guys are going into the city right?
Us: On account of all the trouble we have had in cities recently we have decided to camp here on the outskirts of this forest and continue our journey in the morning, completely bypassing this city which we are suspicious of.
DM: Okay, so you are walking through the city when you are attacked on both sides by some local group of nutjobs who want you dead for various reasons.
Us: Uh....I guess we roll initiative?
Chew-cheeeewwwww!!!!
The current DM begins the adventure by burning down my character's house and using this as a reason for the party to visit his PC's family in a place beyond the range of teleport spells (We play round-robin DMing, so each player DMs for a couple of months and then we switch).
Two of the PCs are geased(but these are not RAW Geases) to bring some diamonds from a far away island and not tell the rest of the party that they have been geased. If you are not familiar with 3.5, it bears to point out that geases are relatively simple to get rid of for a high-level character if you follow the rules, but the DM emailed myself and the other player of a geased character to ask that we play along, so we did. The debilitating effects of the geas took place whenever we didn't chase the DM's plot at the speed the DM wanted (Resting one night to regain transportation spells brought it down on us, while spending a week solving some unrelated mystery didn't).
Finally, we found the diamonds, and I pointed out that I could just teleport back to the geasing npc and give him the diamonds in a couple of seconds. This caused some panic on the DM's part and via email he once again asked me "play along". I do so and the party travel back to geas giving NPC and hand over the diamonds.
I would like to point out that the DM had repeatedly pointed out that we expected no ill intent from the NPC in question, furthermore, the two geased characters were the cleric and the sorcerer (who were responsible for pre-combat buffing and prepping), so no preparations were made.
The diamonds are handed over and my character gets shot by about 12 arrows(some by another PC who was also geased) and is killed instantly, without being allowed to roll a single die. The rest of the party is summarily slaughtered, one by the DM's PC.
I grumble.
But, as a newly fledged DM one year ago, I did make a lot of mistakes and didn't know about 'railroading'. I made the classic mistake of having a higher level NPC follow the PCs around (temporarily, of course) who got most of the kills. As for railroading, I can only recall two events - though, I did not realise that I was doing it. One was when one of the PCs, a warforged shaman acquired the ability to fly and wanted to fly some place that was on another continent but the skies were ablazed with something unknown that I said impeded how high he could fly - he wanted to fly into outer space and then fly down towards the intended destination. Obviously, he wasn't happy about this - he eventually left some weeks later.
Another was when the party was in the plane of water and were in the depths and he wanted to return to the portal gate but I told him that it was too dark and he couldn't find his way back - he quit in that session. I think there are others (as a new DM, it's probably unavoidable) but I forget. In any case, I learnt quickly about how not to railroad players.
I have a high-level NPC currently following the party as a back-up/healer. She (the NPC) used to be the one who did the most damage & got the most kills until I changed her role to a more supportive one (I learnt my lesson). She doesn't attack as often, and if she does, it's to quicken the battle - that can take ages (and I'd rather the PCs concrentate more on the task(s) at hand than just fighting in random encounters) - they're at paragon level at the moment.
In the other game I GM, Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader, I did a lot of 'railroading', some unintentional, some intentional. But, I only did it to 'cancel out' some of the stupid things the PCs got up to. And with my current players in this group (Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader), they can. Though, I did put very difficult to kill (or 'unkillable', in their words) bosses in their faces.
{begin voice of Johnny Cash singing}
This is not 28, this is Old 97
{end voice}
... WE beat THEM to a pulp.
The DM had to scramble, and I got a chance to show off my background. The slaves are supposed to be put in a caravan leaving town at dawn. My character just happens to be a Caravan Master in training, so I had a perfect excuse to ask to be hired on - because "training but no practice is just words." We worked our way back into the designed plot about 1 skill challenge later.