Keeping Your Adventures On Track

Since I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about running games again, I’ve been thinking about how to be a better GM (gamemaster).  I’ve had the benefit of the past eight months or so of not running a regular game (or even playing in one) to really examine what others are doing and study game and adventure design and GMing prinicples.

I’ve also spent some of my time cleaning the house.  No, I don’t mean in some figurative existential sense.  I’ve literally cleaned out my garage and a couple of spare rooms that we’ve been using mostly for storage for years.  During this process, I came across quite a few ghosts of games past.  I’ve thumbed through old character sheets and campaign notes.  I’ve sorted through maps and adventures.  I’ve alphabetized rule books and filed gaming magazines.  I’ve combed the detritus of entire worlds of material since I last ran a game.

It has been an interesting exercise and I’m not finished with it.

Through it, I’ve been able to look at the evolution of my campaign, adventure, and world design.

Brontosaurus

Back in March, Chuck Wendig was seeking some advice on running a con game for sessions of Hunter: The Vigil and Changeling: The Lost he was going to be running at SimCon.  There were some excellent things shared in the comments of that post, and I was able to take several things away from reading it.  The first is that if a Bad Ass Dude (TM) like Chuck can ask others for advice on how to run a game, then I definitely can (and should) do the same.  Nobody is above seeking advice. Of course, that is something I’ve always believed.  The most important thing I took away from reading those comments is…

Are you ready?

Brontosaurus.

Yes, I know that it doesn’t exist and, according to scientists, it never did.  Still, that totally fabricated dinosaur breed is one of the most useful pieces of GMing and adventure design advice I’ve ever read.

You see, Corey Reid mentioned in the comments that the most valuable piece of gaming advice he had ever heard was “Brontosaurus.”   As he pointed out, the Brontosaurus concept comes from Kevin Kulp (though in all fairness, Kevin didn’t actually name the faux-dino in the thread on ENWorld in which the concept seems to have seen print for the first time).

The gist of the whole Brontosaurus thing is this: Your adventure (or campaign) should be narrow at the beginning, wide in the middle, and narrow at the end.  That is, the players should have limited choices to make at the outset, then have a number of possible outcomes based on player choices, leading to a climactic conflict, followed by a resolution with few choices necessary.

When I was a kid, I was into dinosaurs in a big way, but I outgrew my fascination, as I think most kids do, when I was still pretty young.  There was one thing I was fascinated with as a child that I am still interested in now.

Trains

I’ve always been a train buff.  I’m a part-time model railroader (very part-time, since that takes lots of time and money that I don’t have), I love train travel, and I’ve done my share of railfanning and railroad photography.  With that in mind, I decided to reframe this concept a little bit using the railroad theme.

Here it is: Your adventure/campaign should be like a railroad yard.  A few tracks enter the yard and a few leave, but in the middle, there are a dozen or more sets of tracks.

One Track Mind

As gamers, we’ve all heard the term “railroading” applied to adventure/campaign design and GMing. Railroading is the term used for what happens when a GM forces players/characters/the game on a single pre-determined path.  The players either get no opportunity to make choices, or their choices don’t matter.  The game goes chugging along down that single set of tracks until it ends.  Usually with an armed uprising of the players.  Or at least with no more players at the table.  I determined many years ago that I didn’t want to be guilty of that.

I’m pretty sure everyone would agree that an adventure (or campaign) that chugs along a single set of tracks from beginning to end without giving the players any choices is poorly designed.  And boring as hell.  Most of us have even played video games just like that.

Fairly early in my GMing career, I became conscious of the inexperienced GM’s tendency to turn the game into a “railroad.”   Sure, I know that, as Rob Donoghue wrote, some degree of railroading is necessary.

Unfortunately, I didn’t always know this.

Once I discovered the dangers of railroading, I compensated by completely taking away the tracks.  Sure, I tossed out a number of plot hooks and other devices.  I threw them all out there into the giant open world I had created to see which ones would “stick” with the players.

Playing in the Sand

A wide open game, with almost limitless possibilities and a myriad of choices, is known as a sandbox game.  Where video games are concerned, I love sandbox games.  Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are some of my favorite games.  I’ve spent massive amounts of time playing them and exploring the huge open worlds.

photo credit: Paul Lavelle

Except…

My name is Darren and I have a problem.

I’m a creative type with a streak of Attention Deficit Disorder a mile wide.

All those games I listed above… those games I love so much?  I have a confession to make:

I haven’t finished any of them.  Not a single one.

I’ve finished the entire single-player campaigns in several of the Halo and Call of Duty games, but those grand, wide-open sandbox games?  Uh-uh.  I’ve never finished them.

There’s the problem.

Rob quotes from Ken Hite’s seminar at Dragonmeet 2010 that “Railroading is a pejorative term for a game in which something is accomplished.”

What happens to a train when the tracks aren’t strong enough to guide it?  Yep.  It derails.  The same thing that happens to an adventure/campaign when the GM makes the rails too weak or removes them entirely.

In theory, the sandbox is a lot of fun to play in.  In reality, I remember a lot of playground fights breaking out in the sandboxes of my childhood.

A table of players without any rails can end up working at cross-purposes, or even sitting around trying to figure out, unsuccessfully, what to do next.  The entire game can grind to a halt, paralyzed by too many options.

photo credit: Marcus Winter

Back on Track

It turns out that single set of tracks is a good place to start.

You start your adventure, or even your entire game, with that single set of tracks.  No choices.  Just a narrow right-of-way with a single pair of steel rails and some old wooden railroad ties.  Make the scenery pretty.  Throw in a sweeping curve or two but, at first, keep it down to that single set of tracks.  Then, just when the players are are getting comfortable, but before boredom sets in (waaaay before that point – you and your players have to determine the right time, so be attentive to the signals they’re sending), you have to throw in a switch.

Give them that first choice.  Allow them to make some momentous decision and (this is important) let them decide to take either set of tracks. Do NOT make both sets end up in the same place.  Let this decision actually mean something for the game.  Don’t let them feel that things would’ve ended up the same no matter which choice they would’ve made.

Soon, you can throw in other branching paths.  Just don’t throw them at the players all at once.  Give them a manageable number of choices or branching paths and let them just start to get settled on the route they chose, then throw another switch at them.

Before long, you’ll have a whole maze of tracks.  It isn’t exactly a sandbox.  There are rails to guide them.  Sure, there are lots of different possible routes, but it isn’t a sandbox.  Keep the rails strong.  Let the players see the other paths when possible.  Occasionally give them a chance to cross back over to a path they have previously abandoned.  Ration out the branching paths and momentous choices.  With your rails there to guide them, the players won’t feel overwhelmed.

Leaving the Yard

After the players have negotiated the all of the choices and different branching paths, let things start coming back together.  Start reigning things in.  Show them a few obvious routes that will take them to their big, climactic encounter(s).  That climax can be a combat encounter or not.  It all depends on you, your players, and the type of game you’re running.  Whatever it is, make it big.

Then, follow through with the resolution.  Don’t just end at the climactic encounter.  I’ve seen it happen too many times.  The party storms the temple of the dark god, kills the big bad guy, grabs the treasure, finds the McGuffin, whatever.  Then the game ends.  What?  No!  Don’t make that mistake.

Let the players see the results of their decisions.  Let them see the impact of what they’ve done.  Make them escape the dark temple.  Get them out of the train yard and close off those paths that branched off along the way, where possible.  Take them back out onto that single pair of rails and get them back out into the scenery before they reach the end of the line.

Some Examples

There are a couple of published adventures for various systems over the years that are great examples of this type of structure.  One of the first examples I can remember of a published adventure that followed this type of structure was a 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure that actually began its life as a tournament adventure.

A4 - In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords

In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords by Lawrence Schick begins with the player characters as prisoners of the nefarious titular slave lords.  They are nearly naked and without their gear or weapons.  They have a simple, single track at the beginning: They need to figure out if escape is possible and, if so, how to make it happen.  Paths begin to quickly branch off in many directions, until a large-scale event occurs (no spoilers on the off chance you aren’t familiar with this one) and the choices begin to taper into a final battle with the slave lords and an escape from their secret hideout.  The final escape can be as exciting and dramatic as a ride on a runaway train, but it is still a single track.

Another, more recent adventure for a different system that follows this structure is an SAS from White Wolf’s Hunter: The Vigil.

Bad Night at Blackmoon Farm

Chuck Wendig’s Bad Night at Blackmoon Farm also begins with a single set of tracks.  The player characters are investigating a farm that belongs to a cult.  When I ran it, the party was specifically assembled by the Department of Homeland Security to investigate cult activity in Eastern Pennsylvania (though it was just a cover for Task Force: Valkyrie to evaluate the characters).  Extremely early in the adventure, there is a sudden surprise event that shoves the players toward that first switch.  Then, the players begin to enter the railroad yard, with paths branching out on either side.  As the adventure reaches its climax, they are gradually shunted through the yard (in this case, literally a farm yard) as the options close off around them until they find themselves confined in an enclosed space with few options.  Then, they have to make their way back out onto the single rail line: the need to escape.  Again, even the single track leading out of this adventure can be an exciting full-speed wild ride.

Runaway Train?

I like this aerial view of a massive railroad yard in Chicago as an excellent diagram of the structure of an adventure.  The narrow tracks enter and leave the yard at the top and bottom of the picture, with the huge width of the main yard in the center containing dozens of different sets of tracks.  Go ahead, click on the photo to enlarge it.

All of these principles are also appropriate on a larger scale for a longer campaign/chronicle of linked adventures.

What do you think?  Do you know of any adventures that follow this structure?  Do you think it works?  Let me know in the comments.

photo credit: David