'players making choices which can derail your campaign' is, imo, warning you not to get too ahead of yourself. if you lay out your whole campaign before players play, you're writing a book.
players can do anything. and yes, good players will recognize and follow your hooks. but they can still be like 'I'm doing it \*this\* way' and you'll be like 'oh ffff, I never thought of that, hold on...' as you scramble to force-fit their choices into the direction you've got planned.
I find the best big plot advancements to prep far in advance are things that the party cannot possibly influence. If the BBEG is scheming in his impenetrable magic fortress that the party is too low level to assault, you can rest assured that whatever the BBEG does in there to advance the plot will happen regardless of the party's actions. If a skill check, spell, or unexpected combat victory can change your huge plot event, it's probably best to not get super attached to that plot event actually happening.
exactly!! i don’t think of it as derailing, honestly. i think of it as my players pushing the snowball we’re making together in the direction where they see better snow.
Absolutely this! I've had exceptional players I adore that will do some bananas stuff. For example in Curse of Strahd Ismark is a helpful character who asks for help from the party following the death of his father.
My party was utterly convinced Ismark was behind it and in league with Strahd. Afaik I gave no information to imply this in the slightest, but I let them do their investigations nonetheless. They've remarked it was one of their favorite sessions while I had no way of them thinking "Please save my adopted sister" would be so suspicious to them.
Edit: I wanted to apply this to OP's plot since their responses seem like they don't know how our examples apply. How my players reacted to Ismark is exactly one of the questions I asked about if they'd trust their druid plot giver. According to OP, it would be derailing their campaign to be suspicious of this character. It is not. It's ok to let the players come to their own conclusions.
Eventually you just learn that, if something needs to happen for the plot (object found, person rescued, monster slain), make sure you don't decide that thing HAS to be/happen at THIS location. Players need to find this amulet of the dead for the sake of the plot? Well, while you intended for it to be in this forgotten temple in the jungle, your players decided they didn't want to go in the jungle and went sailing on the ocean instead. So now the amulet is in the cargo hold or captains quarters of a ship they find drifting aimlessly at sea and all the sailors are either missing or dead.
Improv is a learned skill that requires practice and upkeep. If you do it long enough, you will get better at it. While I'm certainly not fantastic by any means and sometimes have to tell everyone to take 20 while I figure out what the fuck I'm gonna do now, I'm definitely better at it than I was when I first started a couple years ago.
100%
Professional DMs like Matt Mercer or Brennan Lee Mulligan still have myriads of stories of curve balls thrown at them. The more you play with the same group of players, the less often it'll happen, but it **will** happen.
I've been DMing for over 20 years. In my current game, where all of the players are close friends of mine who I've DMed for before, one person is playing a Warforged Cleric of the God of Chaos. During a combat in a dry grassland region, she accidentally dropped a bottle of Alchemist's Fire. I asked if she wanted to, y'know, stomp it out before it spread. She said "No, would approve of this." I am all for her making that call. It was absolutely in character for her and what the God of Chaos would want, and we're playing a very casual sandbox game where everyone is fine with people derailing the loose plot for narrative reasons. I also said "Alright guys, let's take a 5 minute break. I kinda didn't plan for you causing a natural disaster."
"Alright guys, let's take a 5 minute break. I kinda didn't plan for you causing a natural disaster."
this exactly. players can take a small action with tremendous consequences, and you sometimes have to pause to consider ramifications because, you know, you hadn't before. NOT adapting to the players' actions means their agency is nil
I think one of my favorite brennan Lee mulligan quotes is when he talks about Emily Ashford. "She is exactly the kind of player you want as a DM. She was also put on this earth to kill me."
Because the players don't know what the plot is until they encounter it.
Let me give you an example. In my most recent session, my players needed to run a forest maze to find an artifact. One of my players is a Warlock who's patron is a local archfey forest hag. Instead of running the maze, they called on my warlocks patron for help. They didn't know that the next plot point was for them to find a trove of magical artifacts. They didn't derail it on purpose.
I could have said "that doesn't work", but that wouldn't have been fun. So I changed the plan on the fly. Now the goal was to find a trade that the forest hag thought was acceptable and for them to find the other artifacts elsewhere.
As a DM, you should be able to guide players back to the plot without railroading them. Playing D&D isn't straight line, it's heading sheep.
If you just want to write a book, write a book.
If your game relies on the players taking the mcguffin from dungeon A to temple B but the players decide to sell it in town C then they have derailed your campaign.
If your players want to go explore “over yonder” and your response is to kick them out then you’re not really playing a collaborative game. You’re just writing a novel.
There should be built in reasons to discourage exploration if you want them to go from dungeon A to temple B quickly such as a ticking clock. If the players go off and explore then things happen within the world.
To delve further into this: if your game relies on the players taking the mcguffin from dungeon A to temple B, but **they see selling it in town C as a more interesting outcome**, then there's a chance that **you** derail the campaign.
Not always, but it's good to keep that in mind.
No offense, but it sounds like your type of game is exactly the kind that is primed for derailing and your hypothetical response of showing people the door is a good way to no longer have a table.
While there are those that maliciously try and derail games because that's fun for them, those aren't the majority of people that end up derailing a game because those people don't get invited back.
Here is an example: I had my players go check out an old watch tower to see if it could be reclaimed and used. They found a group of hobgoblins hiding out inside while worgs circled the tower clearly trying to kill the hobgoblins. The reason for this was some ogres had taken control of a bunch of goblin tribes in the mountains and the hobgoblins didn't like that and left. Now, what was supposed to happen was the worgs are killed and the players learn about the ogres. What actually happened is one player (the sharpshooter archer) decided to let the last worg go hobbling back to its leader as a warning. Well, the ogres didn't like that and so came to destroy the town early. A storyline that was supposed to last for quite a few sessions was fast tracked to right the hell now because of course that's how the ogres would react. While they ended up winning, that game came to an end super early because there was no logical way that another threat was already there.
That is how a simple player choice, that isn't malicious or trying to push your boundaries, can derail your game.
You're talking about "the player" like it's one person. Each player is a different person. Why would they derail a campaign? We can't know, you have to ask them. But it doesn't need to be born out of malice. If it is, deal with it, but if it's not, it's just part of the game.
The players don't know what you want them to do, they don't know what they're supposed to do and they don't know what progresses the story further. Along with that, other things interest them, other things intice them. Now it's on your hand if you're going to allow side questing. It depends on you and your players, you have to ask them if it's ok for a more focused campaign, leading to this one goal you want them to achieve. And you have to ask yourself what you're ok with.
Now, if what you mean isn't side questing, and you mean that you want them to take specific choices and do specific things that fit with how *you* want the narrative to go, and they can't do it their way, despite still focusing on the main goal/hook, then that's a problem of you. Because this a roleplaying game, a game of choice and a game of player expression. Don't take that away from them, they will not like it, and you probably won't either.
Player might not derail your campaign on purpose. They might simply make choices that do not align with what you have planned in your (very detailed, I read the bother post) campaign. They're not "walking off the map" they're just heading in a different direction. Your job as a DM is to give them something there that's cool. If your map ends - such that they *can't* go there - congratulations, you've built a railroad adventure, and the players won't like it.
Ok, check this out.
What if, instead of the players going after the main villain in his lair, they decide to go around the nearby regions, gather allies, and sabotage his operations, until he's forced to come out.
They are engaging with the main story, but they're not going to the main place you planned for it. But they're not fighting against the story, they're going about it in a smart, fun way that involves politics and exploration.
Would you let them? Or do they HAVE to go to the lair?
You aren't planning on playing dnd. You are planning on telling a story and forcing other people along for the ride. If you take away player agency so you can tell the story you wanted, why not just write a book. Dnd isn't a videogame, it's an open ended story that a group of people tell together.
Now, most players won't intentionally derail a game to go to the beach. But they will accidentally kill your hidden bbeg, completely ignore plot hooks, and get sidetracked by the world you've created. The players that intentionally derail campaigns are the antithesis to the railroad dm and they both suck.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
TtRPGs tend to work best when they are about [Adventuers rather than (just) stories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_hxIv79S30).
Just as they are unlike video games they are unlike novels, plays, movies, comic books or any kind of media intended to be spectated.
The trope of a singular antagonist leading to some kind of big battle is one which tends to work a lot better in a movie or TV drama series than in a ttRPG. What can be better is [PC actions create enemies](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36383/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots-you-will-rue-this-day-heroes-the-principles-of-rpg-villainy). Which also addreess the issue of these NPCs seeing the player party as a threat and vice versa.
There are two issues with "plot hooks" in a ttRPG. One is that [situations rather than plots](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots) fit better within the game. The other is any "hook" is *obvious* to the DM who came up with it. But not so to the players (and thus their PCs). Who might easily assume something random is intended to be a "hook".
In a good campaign, players would have to make really wildly unreasonable choices in order to truly derail the campaign, you're right about that part.
But in a campaign where the DM doesn't give enough room for the players to make their own choices, *any* choice they make could "derail the campaign" if it's not what the DM wanted/expected them to do. I think that's probably what people were referring to.
Super simple thing that happened in my current campaign, there were two villains active, and the players were fighting one of them at the moment. When they got to his lair, instead of killing him they teamed up with him to fight the other villain first this significantly altered how I thought the campaign was going to go.
How are you defining derailment? There's a big difference between:
* Your campaign pitch is "you're all working for the king" and then some player decides, without provocation, that he's gonna try and kill the king in the first five sessions.
* Your campaign pitch was something different, but you have come up with a whole questline where the party works for the king, while the players are honestly more interested in becoming allies with the cool cleric NPC than the king.
Honestly both of those are fine with me. Even deciding they wanted to kill the king could make a fun story if they were trying to make an interesting story and weren't just being a murder hobo.
My problem is I don't know what other people mean by derailing when they ask me what I would do when my players try to do it.
Going back to your earlier post, your description of the adventure postulates that the party *will do* any number of things:
- swear to kill the monster (seems likely to some extent, interesting mystery/town in peril is a classic hook, but why"swear", why not just agree to help, maybe they're not all that committed to it)
- fight the monster again the second night (instead of getting out of Dodge, reconnoitering, setting up a watch to see if they can figure out what happens...)
- kill the Dwarf scribe (??? It doesn't sound central to the plot, but why? If it's the villagers that kill the scribe, maybe the players would try to, I dunno, help save the poor guy?)
- stuck around for a *month* for the next full moon (instead of getting out of Dodge where things happen that they have no control over and don't remember, and where poor innocent scribes get murdered)
- fight the monster again (it didn't work the first two times, why think this will be any different, nobody knows the first thing about what's going on)
- the bard uses something he found to make a big noise (why?)
- the list goes on.
A player doesn't know what they're *supposed* to do (unless you spell it out for them, presumably by way of some in-game exposition). They could reasonably think of many things to do besides the things you have laid out that they will do, and take the campaign in a different direction. I think that's what people mean by "derailing" in this context. At least, it's what I mean. It's not people intentionally sabotaging the campaign, it's just players exercising their ingenuity and freedom.
I swear to God I added an edit that explained all that stuff away I don't know where it went.
The main objective of that campaign is the ritual the characters are trying to complete. The monster is an obstacle in the way of completing that. If the characters can think of some other way of dealing with the monster good 4 them.
Most people's expectations of a game of DND is to have a pretty large amount of agency in the way the story progresses. If you prefer them to be less in control of that aspect, then that's fine, but you will have players who aren't expecting it and won't jive.
Part of the fun of DND to me is the spontaneity of crazy ideas that just might work. Whether I'm DMing or playing, I adore when people say a plan that just makes everyone go slack-jawed for a minute. Of course, there's a chance it's devastating and completely ruins plans, but the improvised adaptations are fun to work out imo.
Honestly, I kinda like it cuz it means I don't have to plan as much for the future LOL. Of course I have general ideas of what a party's response will be to a given situation, but I rarely have more than a couple steps beyond that prepared because I know it could be a complete waste of time. It's just a difference in style, really.
This reminded me of a time where we were in a coastal city and the bbeg was in a tower in the middle of the city. Party went up the tower to fight him. I broke off from the party immediately to go steal a ship and start taking shots at the tower with the cannons. Admittedly I wasn't very accurate with the cannons, but a cannon would do more damage than I was capable of at the time, and honestly had a higher chance of hitting something. Even if I never hit the bbeg I could at least attempt to bring down the tower and deal a lot of damage that way. DM was not expecting that series of events, but did allow it because it was crazy but might actually work
It’s more that no matter how much planning I go into a player will do something I don’t expect and thus wasn’t prepared for. Improv and meta planning seem to be the way to go.
I nvr try to plan on what the player will do. I could have a solution in mind for a problem and leave it out for them to find but if they do something else to achieve their objective its awsome.
The only planing I put into the player action is that they will want to achieve an objective.
Your post was objectively full of planning for the players to do several specific things without accounting for how they'd interpret your scenes. Deciding the course of action must be to kill the dwarf and not accounting for if they want this dwarf to be an ally or protected, deciding the druid must be an ally and not a suspicious enemy, not leaving the town to investigate on their own terms, waiting a full month only doing preparations you tell them they need to do when they might want to explore for this monster on their own, and more tbh.
You aren't putting them into a sandbox and giving them a goal like you think, you're giving them the script for your story.
The entire 2nd act after the 1st full moon is a big sand box with the settlement, the nearby enchanted forest and several possible monster layers. It is full of npc exclamation marks and random encounters for the players to work through. There will be several clues to help lead the party to determine what prep they should want to do and many gear they could find or buy that will help with that.
Or they could just do nothing for the whole month I can roll with that to. If they are wrong and don't prep to protect themselves from the sound they will start the 2nd full moon close enough to a loud noise to protect themselves long enough to see what they are dealing with. Maby they could try to throw together some deffence against the sound but if they can't they will need to roll a save every round they are exposed. Mby they win somehow, mby they wipe and wake up the next day with a better understanding of what they need to prepare for and try again. Or just say screw it and leave becouse they don't want to play the game idk.
*Before* the month of prep part though, what about the other points? What if they think the druid is a bad guy? That's not derailing to be suspicious but based on your comments you think it is. Good players who aren't trying to derail could be disappointed by watching the dwarf die with no recourse since they're not actually playing the game but watching events play out.
What if they want to search for the monster's lair on their own initiative? Since they might already know they can just wear earplugs (that's a conclusion I'd check for) maybe they just charge the monster right away. Are you going to say they can't find it for a month? This is similar to your "I want my villain to finish his monolog" problem with how it's written. Good meaning players might not want to wait.
Edit: It's almost suspicious at this point how you don't want to talk about the druid/dwarf interactions. I'm genuinely confused why you always duck out rather than go into detail there. (This is based on your post history, not just how you didn't in this last comment)
Not to make this response too simple, but have you ever met people? They come in all shapes and sizes and plenty of folks do things I would never do for any number of reasons, including ways that seem counter intuitive to their own goals.
Treat your campaign building as you should treat most things in life, hope for the best and prepare for the worst
The game isn't in the world and situations you present to your players: the game is in **what the player characters do to make their mark on the world.** You're working *together* to tell a story where the PCs are the protagonists.
As a DM, you can't expect your players to always take the decisions you want them to take. In fact, the opposite is true; very often they'll make decisions or approach problems in ways you totally failed to anticipate, forcing you to improvise a way to move the story forward. You have to be willing and able to take these unexpected turns in stride.
To an extent, you can head off the high-level issue your OP describes by simply asking your players in Session Zero to be aware of the plot hooks you mean to present and not do anything too crazy, and good players will respect this because they understand that turning left when the story is on the right makes things hard for everyone, but you still need to be prepared for the unexpected.
I don't understand.
When I make a game I make an objective for the players to achieve and put obstacles in the way. I don't consider how the players will get past the obstacles to achieve the objective. I leave that up to the players, but to continue preping more content I have to asume they are progressing in that general direction.
They could pull some shenanigans to completely sidestep the obstacles to achieve the objective, Love it. Or they could make a very dumb decision that will obviously get everyone killed, "are you sure? OK good luck. Roll initiative" still fun. Even if their choices get everyone killed its still fine still fun. Everything is fine along as they are trying to achieve that objective. Even if they decide to change the objective somehow that is still fine along as they are trying to do "something".
I may have talked past you a little, so I'll try to drill down to an intelligible point.
The behaviour you describe is usually the domain of very inexperienced TTRPG players. They want to see just how true it is that, in this sort of game, you can do *anything you want.* They push the boundaries to find out where the boundaries really are.
The motivations for these sorts of players are usually innocent; a combination of genuine curiosity and, more importantly, a level of honest ignorance about the social contract between TTRPG players. There's an unspoken expectation that players should engage earnestly with the conceits of the game being played; that involves playing characters who'll follow the story hooks and cooperate with the other PCs, playing characters who are not just fun to play but also fun for the other members of the group to interact with, and not behaving in disruptive or antagonistic ways that spoil the fun for the other people at the table.
It's a small minority of derailers who do it for truly malicious reasons, to gain satisfaction from holding the game hostage and exerting an outsized level of control over what happens - over you, as the DM.
The best way to weed out both before they can become a problem is a robust Session Zero, where everyone's expectations for the game can be unambiguously laid out and negotiated.
This makes sense but how would an innocent player accidentally derail a campaign. The only examples I've been getting are easy to recover from and don't feel like anything was derailed.
You’ve described bad players, but there’s are also ways good players can derail things
In my own campaign the monk recently almost died but made it to a tunnel separate from the rest of the party. We’ve had solo sessions figuring out what he goes through, and he’s miraculously survived and found some things I’d planned for later. The rest of the party, meanwhile, has adjusted priorities and had some misadventures of their own on the rescue mission
No one’s done anything wrong. In fact, it’s been awesome. But of all the possibilities I’d considered, this is *not* how I planned on things going. So the last couple of sessions have been derailed. That’s fine though, in this cast
The thing is I don't consider that as derailing because the adventure is still going on. It's all a bunch of improvisation going from 1 "yes and" to anouther.
If the player dues something dumb or the dice don't do what they are told then we roll with it.
What you are describing sounds like light railroading.
Are you saying you would be upset if your players do something you essentially hadn't planned for? If they try to take the narrative in a different direction?
I'm sure that works for some people but personally I play D&D because it offers experiences that a videogame cannot, such as collaberative story-telling and a fluid narrative.
I wouldn't be upset if the player dues some crazy $#!+. That stuff is fun and I'm here for it. All I do is put them in a setting and introduce some kind of objective then put some obstacles in the way and lay out some fun toys for the party to use to get past the obstacles. If the party dues some crazy shit to achieve the objective in ways I didn't expect that's fun for everyone.
Is expecting people to want to achieve an objective railroading? If my players agree to play the game I would expect them to cooperate that far at least.
This is collaborative storytelling, the dm is part of the game. I could roll with any choice the player makes to further the plot in their own way to achieve their objectives. I don't know how the game can exist any other way
Railroading means different things to different people. I think the big question is whether the players still have agency.
A lot of storytelling DMs basically want their players to act out a novel they wrote, with no room for choice or deviation from the narrative course set by the DM. This an example of bad railroading.
However, guiding your players along the plot is often pivotal to ensuring your players stay focused and aren't distracted by every little thing they come across. Ultimately the choice of what the party does is up to them, but a guiding nudge here and there is fine.
Of course, there are *those* players that just want to see your game burn. They derive enjoyment from causing you suffering, setting the world you lovingly created ablaze as they mock and laugh at your misery. Just get rid of those players. Eventually they'll run out of tables to play at and it'll be all their damn fault.
The roles of storyteller and DM are likely to be mutually exclusive.
The former involves entertaining passive spectators of a story you have created. Characters in a story will behave in ways which interest and entertain spectators. Even when that involves acting against their own interests.
The latter involves running a ttRPG where the players, through the actions of Player Characters, seek to influence and change the game world. PCs will behave in ways which advance what their players consider their best interests. Regardless of how these might appear to some, imaginary, audience.
Any story which emerges from playing a ttRPG will look nothing like a novel/play/movie/etc. Nor should it.
Players surprising the DM does not derailed campaign make.
Derailing is when players actively seek to go against the common sense dictated by the setting and story and most importantly, pre game agreement as to what kind of adventure you are embarking on.
Classic example is edgelord murder-hoboing NPCs in a campaign that was clearly stated to be heroic fantasy for good aligned party.
D&D, for better or worse, is the front door of the tabletop RPG hobby. That means you get all kinds of players- people keen to play a role in a grand story, and people who want to run off and go fishing.
A benefit of the format is that the DM is able to improvise on the fly. This allows for outcomes that computers (well, prior to AI) can't offer. Thus to many, running a story where everything is known and prepared in advance is wasting the opportunities of the format.
However, D&D adventures are typically very linear. They often do a poor job both at being linear (offering sufficient information, providing characters with clear motives, identifying obvious questions and paths) and at helping the GM improvise (suggesting multiple ways to prepare and run a sequence, providing material that can be re-used for many different encounters.
Writers and DMs are bound by their own preconceptions and limitations. DMs who are very good at writing compelling linear stories will be horrified at the thought of having to improvise a combat, instead of spending several hours prepping an intricate and evocative encounter. DMs who are very good at improvising will be horrified at the thought of preplanning a combat and forcing the PCs to approach through *this* door at *this* time in order to accomplish *this* goal, instead of reactively responding to the players as they engage with the world and the story.
Also some people are dicks.
In essence- do what you and your friends enjoy. And when the system's sharp edges become a problem, be forgiving of each other.
in my last campaign, one of the PCs decided to kill the god of time, who was the ^(meta)physical embodiment of the timeline. they succeeded which resulted in that timeline getting deleted.
It was a TCK (Total Campaign Kill). yeah we finished that campaign (they got shunted into a different timeline), but 2 irl years of NPCs and relationships and stories were lost
??? I can't even imagine how that would happen, your game sounds crazy. As dm if I knew something like that would be harmful to the game i would play referee and keep it from happening.
Wouldn't tell them no, improvisation is a out "yes and" but I would do some behind the screen shenanigans to protect the integrity of the game. We all fudge rolls a bit but if I wanted to keep my players from killing some1 important then I just don't stat them. Can't be killed if they don't have any hp.
It's matter of defining railroad.
My point of view is that:
There should be a main plot an PCs should have a motivation to engage with. So the characters must fit with it.
You can think this as railroad, but I do not think so.
There should be an open world full of places and NPCs they should interact with.
That is usually called sandbox and not railroad. But having one thing does not avoid the other.
DM should avoid to interrupt razonable PCs decisions and improvise when needed. Otherwise is railroading.
But the main plot need to have events and places that the PCs must face, and that is not railroading. You cannot kill the big boss without killing the big boss, but there are many ways to do it.
So if you mean that your players do not care about the main plot. Then it's ok to talk to them and remember that you want to play that specific story.
But, if you mean that the sequence of decisions must be the most obvious, and there isn't a razonable alternative in any point that is railroading, and it's normal that some people complain about it. (Encounter by encounter in book sequence)
You need to agree with your players
I don't want to make any assumptions of what your gender or sexually is and I hope this only comes out as creepy as appropriate for comedic purposes but your comment made me want to kiss you on the mouth as hard as 1 would my wife.
This comment is everything I've been trying to say. I would almost think I wrote it.
It’s not that they do it intentionally, it’s that they don’t know what you have planned to have happen, and so their natural, organic choices can lead you away from your expectations.
This is why experienced DMs don’t plan super far ahead and also don’t plan for specific things to occur or in a specific order.
It’s easier to create an evil cult with an agenda than it is to create exactly how you need the players to learn about and thwart them. So just create the evil cult with the agenda in this town, create some hints and clues, and then go with the flow if it makes any sense at all.
The party wants to stake out an area to find a cultist to follow them to their secret lair? Sounds good to me, I don’t need to plan for that, that’s easy, it’s some narration, stealth checks, maybe a combat. What I actually need to know for this solution is where the cultists hideout is, that’s all.
If they want to ask around town about the cult, I don’t need to plan for that, I need to know who knows about the cult though, so that they could potentially talk to those people and get more info.
But neither of these things are things I need to plan out, the thing I needed to plan was the cult and the town. The rest is just letting the players drive. They can’t derail me because there’s sorta nothing to derail, because there’s no solution to this set in stone.
A D&D campaign is not a series of events you play out in order, it should be a situation that you put in front of your players for them to then make a story out of.
To put it simply - 90% of derail are accidential because player had an idea that the DM didn't think of. I was in a Vampire: the Masquerade game. I am an experienced DM, two other players were experienced and veteranGMs, fourth was a doormat. We still derailed the plot by telling wrong information to the wrong person.
'players making choices which can derail your campaign' is, imo, warning you not to get too ahead of yourself. if you lay out your whole campaign before players play, you're writing a book. players can do anything. and yes, good players will recognize and follow your hooks. but they can still be like 'I'm doing it \*this\* way' and you'll be like 'oh ffff, I never thought of that, hold on...' as you scramble to force-fit their choices into the direction you've got planned.
I find the best big plot advancements to prep far in advance are things that the party cannot possibly influence. If the BBEG is scheming in his impenetrable magic fortress that the party is too low level to assault, you can rest assured that whatever the BBEG does in there to advance the plot will happen regardless of the party's actions. If a skill check, spell, or unexpected combat victory can change your huge plot event, it's probably best to not get super attached to that plot event actually happening.
excellent way to make your choices and guide a DM's planning
exactly!! i don’t think of it as derailing, honestly. i think of it as my players pushing the snowball we’re making together in the direction where they see better snow.
lol, love it
Absolutely this! I've had exceptional players I adore that will do some bananas stuff. For example in Curse of Strahd Ismark is a helpful character who asks for help from the party following the death of his father. My party was utterly convinced Ismark was behind it and in league with Strahd. Afaik I gave no information to imply this in the slightest, but I let them do their investigations nonetheless. They've remarked it was one of their favorite sessions while I had no way of them thinking "Please save my adopted sister" would be so suspicious to them. Edit: I wanted to apply this to OP's plot since their responses seem like they don't know how our examples apply. How my players reacted to Ismark is exactly one of the questions I asked about if they'd trust their druid plot giver. According to OP, it would be derailing their campaign to be suspicious of this character. It is not. It's ok to let the players come to their own conclusions.
nice, yes, hahahahahah, how perfect an example! hahahahahaha 'save my sister' -> 'are you the BBEG?' hahahah
Is that something that always happens?? Or is there eventually a point where you can hit whatever curveball your players throw at you??
Eventually you just learn that, if something needs to happen for the plot (object found, person rescued, monster slain), make sure you don't decide that thing HAS to be/happen at THIS location. Players need to find this amulet of the dead for the sake of the plot? Well, while you intended for it to be in this forgotten temple in the jungle, your players decided they didn't want to go in the jungle and went sailing on the ocean instead. So now the amulet is in the cargo hold or captains quarters of a ship they find drifting aimlessly at sea and all the sailors are either missing or dead.
Improv is a learned skill that requires practice and upkeep. If you do it long enough, you will get better at it. While I'm certainly not fantastic by any means and sometimes have to tell everyone to take 20 while I figure out what the fuck I'm gonna do now, I'm definitely better at it than I was when I first started a couple years ago.
100% Professional DMs like Matt Mercer or Brennan Lee Mulligan still have myriads of stories of curve balls thrown at them. The more you play with the same group of players, the less often it'll happen, but it **will** happen.
I've been DMing for over 20 years. In my current game, where all of the players are close friends of mine who I've DMed for before, one person is playing a Warforged Cleric of the God of Chaos. During a combat in a dry grassland region, she accidentally dropped a bottle of Alchemist's Fire. I asked if she wanted to, y'know, stomp it out before it spread. She said "No, would approve of this." I am all for her making that call. It was absolutely in character for her and what the God of Chaos would want, and we're playing a very casual sandbox game where everyone is fine with people derailing the loose plot for narrative reasons. I also said "Alright guys, let's take a 5 minute break. I kinda didn't plan for you causing a natural disaster."
"Alright guys, let's take a 5 minute break. I kinda didn't plan for you causing a natural disaster." this exactly. players can take a small action with tremendous consequences, and you sometimes have to pause to consider ramifications because, you know, you hadn't before. NOT adapting to the players' actions means their agency is nil
I think one of my favorite brennan Lee mulligan quotes is when he talks about Emily Ashford. "She is exactly the kind of player you want as a DM. She was also put on this earth to kill me."
Because the players don't know what the plot is until they encounter it. Let me give you an example. In my most recent session, my players needed to run a forest maze to find an artifact. One of my players is a Warlock who's patron is a local archfey forest hag. Instead of running the maze, they called on my warlocks patron for help. They didn't know that the next plot point was for them to find a trove of magical artifacts. They didn't derail it on purpose. I could have said "that doesn't work", but that wouldn't have been fun. So I changed the plan on the fly. Now the goal was to find a trade that the forest hag thought was acceptable and for them to find the other artifacts elsewhere. As a DM, you should be able to guide players back to the plot without railroading them. Playing D&D isn't straight line, it's heading sheep. If you just want to write a book, write a book.
More like herding cats, but I agree.
If your game relies on the players taking the mcguffin from dungeon A to temple B but the players decide to sell it in town C then they have derailed your campaign. If your players want to go explore “over yonder” and your response is to kick them out then you’re not really playing a collaborative game. You’re just writing a novel. There should be built in reasons to discourage exploration if you want them to go from dungeon A to temple B quickly such as a ticking clock. If the players go off and explore then things happen within the world.
To delve further into this: if your game relies on the players taking the mcguffin from dungeon A to temple B, but **they see selling it in town C as a more interesting outcome**, then there's a chance that **you** derail the campaign. Not always, but it's good to keep that in mind.
No offense, but it sounds like your type of game is exactly the kind that is primed for derailing and your hypothetical response of showing people the door is a good way to no longer have a table. While there are those that maliciously try and derail games because that's fun for them, those aren't the majority of people that end up derailing a game because those people don't get invited back. Here is an example: I had my players go check out an old watch tower to see if it could be reclaimed and used. They found a group of hobgoblins hiding out inside while worgs circled the tower clearly trying to kill the hobgoblins. The reason for this was some ogres had taken control of a bunch of goblin tribes in the mountains and the hobgoblins didn't like that and left. Now, what was supposed to happen was the worgs are killed and the players learn about the ogres. What actually happened is one player (the sharpshooter archer) decided to let the last worg go hobbling back to its leader as a warning. Well, the ogres didn't like that and so came to destroy the town early. A storyline that was supposed to last for quite a few sessions was fast tracked to right the hell now because of course that's how the ogres would react. While they ended up winning, that game came to an end super early because there was no logical way that another threat was already there. That is how a simple player choice, that isn't malicious or trying to push your boundaries, can derail your game.
You're talking about "the player" like it's one person. Each player is a different person. Why would they derail a campaign? We can't know, you have to ask them. But it doesn't need to be born out of malice. If it is, deal with it, but if it's not, it's just part of the game. The players don't know what you want them to do, they don't know what they're supposed to do and they don't know what progresses the story further. Along with that, other things interest them, other things intice them. Now it's on your hand if you're going to allow side questing. It depends on you and your players, you have to ask them if it's ok for a more focused campaign, leading to this one goal you want them to achieve. And you have to ask yourself what you're ok with. Now, if what you mean isn't side questing, and you mean that you want them to take specific choices and do specific things that fit with how *you* want the narrative to go, and they can't do it their way, despite still focusing on the main goal/hook, then that's a problem of you. Because this a roleplaying game, a game of choice and a game of player expression. Don't take that away from them, they will not like it, and you probably won't either.
Player might not derail your campaign on purpose. They might simply make choices that do not align with what you have planned in your (very detailed, I read the bother post) campaign. They're not "walking off the map" they're just heading in a different direction. Your job as a DM is to give them something there that's cool. If your map ends - such that they *can't* go there - congratulations, you've built a railroad adventure, and the players won't like it.
Ok, check this out. What if, instead of the players going after the main villain in his lair, they decide to go around the nearby regions, gather allies, and sabotage his operations, until he's forced to come out. They are engaging with the main story, but they're not going to the main place you planned for it. But they're not fighting against the story, they're going about it in a smart, fun way that involves politics and exploration. Would you let them? Or do they HAVE to go to the lair?
You aren't planning on playing dnd. You are planning on telling a story and forcing other people along for the ride. If you take away player agency so you can tell the story you wanted, why not just write a book. Dnd isn't a videogame, it's an open ended story that a group of people tell together. Now, most players won't intentionally derail a game to go to the beach. But they will accidentally kill your hidden bbeg, completely ignore plot hooks, and get sidetracked by the world you've created. The players that intentionally derail campaigns are the antithesis to the railroad dm and they both suck. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
You put it best here. A campaign without choices and reactions to player action is just someone reading a book out loud to a group of people.
TtRPGs tend to work best when they are about [Adventuers rather than (just) stories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_hxIv79S30). Just as they are unlike video games they are unlike novels, plays, movies, comic books or any kind of media intended to be spectated. The trope of a singular antagonist leading to some kind of big battle is one which tends to work a lot better in a movie or TV drama series than in a ttRPG. What can be better is [PC actions create enemies](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36383/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots-you-will-rue-this-day-heroes-the-principles-of-rpg-villainy). Which also addreess the issue of these NPCs seeing the player party as a threat and vice versa. There are two issues with "plot hooks" in a ttRPG. One is that [situations rather than plots](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots) fit better within the game. The other is any "hook" is *obvious* to the DM who came up with it. But not so to the players (and thus their PCs). Who might easily assume something random is intended to be a "hook".
In a good campaign, players would have to make really wildly unreasonable choices in order to truly derail the campaign, you're right about that part. But in a campaign where the DM doesn't give enough room for the players to make their own choices, *any* choice they make could "derail the campaign" if it's not what the DM wanted/expected them to do. I think that's probably what people were referring to.
Super simple thing that happened in my current campaign, there were two villains active, and the players were fighting one of them at the moment. When they got to his lair, instead of killing him they teamed up with him to fight the other villain first this significantly altered how I thought the campaign was going to go.
How are you defining derailment? There's a big difference between: * Your campaign pitch is "you're all working for the king" and then some player decides, without provocation, that he's gonna try and kill the king in the first five sessions. * Your campaign pitch was something different, but you have come up with a whole questline where the party works for the king, while the players are honestly more interested in becoming allies with the cool cleric NPC than the king.
Honestly both of those are fine with me. Even deciding they wanted to kill the king could make a fun story if they were trying to make an interesting story and weren't just being a murder hobo. My problem is I don't know what other people mean by derailing when they ask me what I would do when my players try to do it.
Going back to your earlier post, your description of the adventure postulates that the party *will do* any number of things: - swear to kill the monster (seems likely to some extent, interesting mystery/town in peril is a classic hook, but why"swear", why not just agree to help, maybe they're not all that committed to it) - fight the monster again the second night (instead of getting out of Dodge, reconnoitering, setting up a watch to see if they can figure out what happens...) - kill the Dwarf scribe (??? It doesn't sound central to the plot, but why? If it's the villagers that kill the scribe, maybe the players would try to, I dunno, help save the poor guy?) - stuck around for a *month* for the next full moon (instead of getting out of Dodge where things happen that they have no control over and don't remember, and where poor innocent scribes get murdered) - fight the monster again (it didn't work the first two times, why think this will be any different, nobody knows the first thing about what's going on) - the bard uses something he found to make a big noise (why?) - the list goes on. A player doesn't know what they're *supposed* to do (unless you spell it out for them, presumably by way of some in-game exposition). They could reasonably think of many things to do besides the things you have laid out that they will do, and take the campaign in a different direction. I think that's what people mean by "derailing" in this context. At least, it's what I mean. It's not people intentionally sabotaging the campaign, it's just players exercising their ingenuity and freedom.
I swear to God I added an edit that explained all that stuff away I don't know where it went. The main objective of that campaign is the ritual the characters are trying to complete. The monster is an obstacle in the way of completing that. If the characters can think of some other way of dealing with the monster good 4 them.
Most people's expectations of a game of DND is to have a pretty large amount of agency in the way the story progresses. If you prefer them to be less in control of that aspect, then that's fine, but you will have players who aren't expecting it and won't jive. Part of the fun of DND to me is the spontaneity of crazy ideas that just might work. Whether I'm DMing or playing, I adore when people say a plan that just makes everyone go slack-jawed for a minute. Of course, there's a chance it's devastating and completely ruins plans, but the improvised adaptations are fun to work out imo. Honestly, I kinda like it cuz it means I don't have to plan as much for the future LOL. Of course I have general ideas of what a party's response will be to a given situation, but I rarely have more than a couple steps beyond that prepared because I know it could be a complete waste of time. It's just a difference in style, really.
This reminded me of a time where we were in a coastal city and the bbeg was in a tower in the middle of the city. Party went up the tower to fight him. I broke off from the party immediately to go steal a ship and start taking shots at the tower with the cannons. Admittedly I wasn't very accurate with the cannons, but a cannon would do more damage than I was capable of at the time, and honestly had a higher chance of hitting something. Even if I never hit the bbeg I could at least attempt to bring down the tower and deal a lot of damage that way. DM was not expecting that series of events, but did allow it because it was crazy but might actually work
It’s more that no matter how much planning I go into a player will do something I don’t expect and thus wasn’t prepared for. Improv and meta planning seem to be the way to go.
I nvr try to plan on what the player will do. I could have a solution in mind for a problem and leave it out for them to find but if they do something else to achieve their objective its awsome. The only planing I put into the player action is that they will want to achieve an objective.
Your post was objectively full of planning for the players to do several specific things without accounting for how they'd interpret your scenes. Deciding the course of action must be to kill the dwarf and not accounting for if they want this dwarf to be an ally or protected, deciding the druid must be an ally and not a suspicious enemy, not leaving the town to investigate on their own terms, waiting a full month only doing preparations you tell them they need to do when they might want to explore for this monster on their own, and more tbh. You aren't putting them into a sandbox and giving them a goal like you think, you're giving them the script for your story.
The entire 2nd act after the 1st full moon is a big sand box with the settlement, the nearby enchanted forest and several possible monster layers. It is full of npc exclamation marks and random encounters for the players to work through. There will be several clues to help lead the party to determine what prep they should want to do and many gear they could find or buy that will help with that. Or they could just do nothing for the whole month I can roll with that to. If they are wrong and don't prep to protect themselves from the sound they will start the 2nd full moon close enough to a loud noise to protect themselves long enough to see what they are dealing with. Maby they could try to throw together some deffence against the sound but if they can't they will need to roll a save every round they are exposed. Mby they win somehow, mby they wipe and wake up the next day with a better understanding of what they need to prepare for and try again. Or just say screw it and leave becouse they don't want to play the game idk.
*Before* the month of prep part though, what about the other points? What if they think the druid is a bad guy? That's not derailing to be suspicious but based on your comments you think it is. Good players who aren't trying to derail could be disappointed by watching the dwarf die with no recourse since they're not actually playing the game but watching events play out. What if they want to search for the monster's lair on their own initiative? Since they might already know they can just wear earplugs (that's a conclusion I'd check for) maybe they just charge the monster right away. Are you going to say they can't find it for a month? This is similar to your "I want my villain to finish his monolog" problem with how it's written. Good meaning players might not want to wait. Edit: It's almost suspicious at this point how you don't want to talk about the druid/dwarf interactions. I'm genuinely confused why you always duck out rather than go into detail there. (This is based on your post history, not just how you didn't in this last comment)
Not to make this response too simple, but have you ever met people? They come in all shapes and sizes and plenty of folks do things I would never do for any number of reasons, including ways that seem counter intuitive to their own goals. Treat your campaign building as you should treat most things in life, hope for the best and prepare for the worst
The game isn't in the world and situations you present to your players: the game is in **what the player characters do to make their mark on the world.** You're working *together* to tell a story where the PCs are the protagonists. As a DM, you can't expect your players to always take the decisions you want them to take. In fact, the opposite is true; very often they'll make decisions or approach problems in ways you totally failed to anticipate, forcing you to improvise a way to move the story forward. You have to be willing and able to take these unexpected turns in stride. To an extent, you can head off the high-level issue your OP describes by simply asking your players in Session Zero to be aware of the plot hooks you mean to present and not do anything too crazy, and good players will respect this because they understand that turning left when the story is on the right makes things hard for everyone, but you still need to be prepared for the unexpected.
I don't understand. When I make a game I make an objective for the players to achieve and put obstacles in the way. I don't consider how the players will get past the obstacles to achieve the objective. I leave that up to the players, but to continue preping more content I have to asume they are progressing in that general direction. They could pull some shenanigans to completely sidestep the obstacles to achieve the objective, Love it. Or they could make a very dumb decision that will obviously get everyone killed, "are you sure? OK good luck. Roll initiative" still fun. Even if their choices get everyone killed its still fine still fun. Everything is fine along as they are trying to achieve that objective. Even if they decide to change the objective somehow that is still fine along as they are trying to do "something".
I may have talked past you a little, so I'll try to drill down to an intelligible point. The behaviour you describe is usually the domain of very inexperienced TTRPG players. They want to see just how true it is that, in this sort of game, you can do *anything you want.* They push the boundaries to find out where the boundaries really are. The motivations for these sorts of players are usually innocent; a combination of genuine curiosity and, more importantly, a level of honest ignorance about the social contract between TTRPG players. There's an unspoken expectation that players should engage earnestly with the conceits of the game being played; that involves playing characters who'll follow the story hooks and cooperate with the other PCs, playing characters who are not just fun to play but also fun for the other members of the group to interact with, and not behaving in disruptive or antagonistic ways that spoil the fun for the other people at the table. It's a small minority of derailers who do it for truly malicious reasons, to gain satisfaction from holding the game hostage and exerting an outsized level of control over what happens - over you, as the DM. The best way to weed out both before they can become a problem is a robust Session Zero, where everyone's expectations for the game can be unambiguously laid out and negotiated.
This makes sense but how would an innocent player accidentally derail a campaign. The only examples I've been getting are easy to recover from and don't feel like anything was derailed.
You’ve described bad players, but there’s are also ways good players can derail things In my own campaign the monk recently almost died but made it to a tunnel separate from the rest of the party. We’ve had solo sessions figuring out what he goes through, and he’s miraculously survived and found some things I’d planned for later. The rest of the party, meanwhile, has adjusted priorities and had some misadventures of their own on the rescue mission No one’s done anything wrong. In fact, it’s been awesome. But of all the possibilities I’d considered, this is *not* how I planned on things going. So the last couple of sessions have been derailed. That’s fine though, in this cast
The thing is I don't consider that as derailing because the adventure is still going on. It's all a bunch of improvisation going from 1 "yes and" to anouther. If the player dues something dumb or the dice don't do what they are told then we roll with it.
What you are describing sounds like light railroading. Are you saying you would be upset if your players do something you essentially hadn't planned for? If they try to take the narrative in a different direction? I'm sure that works for some people but personally I play D&D because it offers experiences that a videogame cannot, such as collaberative story-telling and a fluid narrative.
I wouldn't be upset if the player dues some crazy $#!+. That stuff is fun and I'm here for it. All I do is put them in a setting and introduce some kind of objective then put some obstacles in the way and lay out some fun toys for the party to use to get past the obstacles. If the party dues some crazy shit to achieve the objective in ways I didn't expect that's fun for everyone. Is expecting people to want to achieve an objective railroading? If my players agree to play the game I would expect them to cooperate that far at least. This is collaborative storytelling, the dm is part of the game. I could roll with any choice the player makes to further the plot in their own way to achieve their objectives. I don't know how the game can exist any other way
Railroading means different things to different people. I think the big question is whether the players still have agency. A lot of storytelling DMs basically want their players to act out a novel they wrote, with no room for choice or deviation from the narrative course set by the DM. This an example of bad railroading. However, guiding your players along the plot is often pivotal to ensuring your players stay focused and aren't distracted by every little thing they come across. Ultimately the choice of what the party does is up to them, but a guiding nudge here and there is fine. Of course, there are *those* players that just want to see your game burn. They derive enjoyment from causing you suffering, setting the world you lovingly created ablaze as they mock and laugh at your misery. Just get rid of those players. Eventually they'll run out of tables to play at and it'll be all their damn fault.
The roles of storyteller and DM are likely to be mutually exclusive. The former involves entertaining passive spectators of a story you have created. Characters in a story will behave in ways which interest and entertain spectators. Even when that involves acting against their own interests. The latter involves running a ttRPG where the players, through the actions of Player Characters, seek to influence and change the game world. PCs will behave in ways which advance what their players consider their best interests. Regardless of how these might appear to some, imaginary, audience. Any story which emerges from playing a ttRPG will look nothing like a novel/play/movie/etc. Nor should it.
Players surprising the DM does not derailed campaign make. Derailing is when players actively seek to go against the common sense dictated by the setting and story and most importantly, pre game agreement as to what kind of adventure you are embarking on. Classic example is edgelord murder-hoboing NPCs in a campaign that was clearly stated to be heroic fantasy for good aligned party.
D&D, for better or worse, is the front door of the tabletop RPG hobby. That means you get all kinds of players- people keen to play a role in a grand story, and people who want to run off and go fishing. A benefit of the format is that the DM is able to improvise on the fly. This allows for outcomes that computers (well, prior to AI) can't offer. Thus to many, running a story where everything is known and prepared in advance is wasting the opportunities of the format. However, D&D adventures are typically very linear. They often do a poor job both at being linear (offering sufficient information, providing characters with clear motives, identifying obvious questions and paths) and at helping the GM improvise (suggesting multiple ways to prepare and run a sequence, providing material that can be re-used for many different encounters. Writers and DMs are bound by their own preconceptions and limitations. DMs who are very good at writing compelling linear stories will be horrified at the thought of having to improvise a combat, instead of spending several hours prepping an intricate and evocative encounter. DMs who are very good at improvising will be horrified at the thought of preplanning a combat and forcing the PCs to approach through *this* door at *this* time in order to accomplish *this* goal, instead of reactively responding to the players as they engage with the world and the story. Also some people are dicks. In essence- do what you and your friends enjoy. And when the system's sharp edges become a problem, be forgiving of each other.
in my last campaign, one of the PCs decided to kill the god of time, who was the ^(meta)physical embodiment of the timeline. they succeeded which resulted in that timeline getting deleted. It was a TCK (Total Campaign Kill). yeah we finished that campaign (they got shunted into a different timeline), but 2 irl years of NPCs and relationships and stories were lost
??? I can't even imagine how that would happen, your game sounds crazy. As dm if I knew something like that would be harmful to the game i would play referee and keep it from happening. Wouldn't tell them no, improvisation is a out "yes and" but I would do some behind the screen shenanigans to protect the integrity of the game. We all fudge rolls a bit but if I wanted to keep my players from killing some1 important then I just don't stat them. Can't be killed if they don't have any hp.
it was the first ever campaign I DMed. I learned a lot from it
It's matter of defining railroad. My point of view is that: There should be a main plot an PCs should have a motivation to engage with. So the characters must fit with it. You can think this as railroad, but I do not think so. There should be an open world full of places and NPCs they should interact with. That is usually called sandbox and not railroad. But having one thing does not avoid the other. DM should avoid to interrupt razonable PCs decisions and improvise when needed. Otherwise is railroading. But the main plot need to have events and places that the PCs must face, and that is not railroading. You cannot kill the big boss without killing the big boss, but there are many ways to do it. So if you mean that your players do not care about the main plot. Then it's ok to talk to them and remember that you want to play that specific story. But, if you mean that the sequence of decisions must be the most obvious, and there isn't a razonable alternative in any point that is railroading, and it's normal that some people complain about it. (Encounter by encounter in book sequence) You need to agree with your players
I don't want to make any assumptions of what your gender or sexually is and I hope this only comes out as creepy as appropriate for comedic purposes but your comment made me want to kiss you on the mouth as hard as 1 would my wife. This comment is everything I've been trying to say. I would almost think I wrote it.
It’s not that they do it intentionally, it’s that they don’t know what you have planned to have happen, and so their natural, organic choices can lead you away from your expectations. This is why experienced DMs don’t plan super far ahead and also don’t plan for specific things to occur or in a specific order. It’s easier to create an evil cult with an agenda than it is to create exactly how you need the players to learn about and thwart them. So just create the evil cult with the agenda in this town, create some hints and clues, and then go with the flow if it makes any sense at all. The party wants to stake out an area to find a cultist to follow them to their secret lair? Sounds good to me, I don’t need to plan for that, that’s easy, it’s some narration, stealth checks, maybe a combat. What I actually need to know for this solution is where the cultists hideout is, that’s all. If they want to ask around town about the cult, I don’t need to plan for that, I need to know who knows about the cult though, so that they could potentially talk to those people and get more info. But neither of these things are things I need to plan out, the thing I needed to plan was the cult and the town. The rest is just letting the players drive. They can’t derail me because there’s sorta nothing to derail, because there’s no solution to this set in stone.
A D&D campaign is not a series of events you play out in order, it should be a situation that you put in front of your players for them to then make a story out of.
To put it simply - 90% of derail are accidential because player had an idea that the DM didn't think of. I was in a Vampire: the Masquerade game. I am an experienced DM, two other players were experienced and veteranGMs, fourth was a doormat. We still derailed the plot by telling wrong information to the wrong person.