There is a general consensus in D&D that railroading your players is a bad idea. It takes away their sense of agency. But I think I found a circumstance when railroading the adventure is actually a good idea. Let’s see if you agree.
Railroading vs. Proscriptive Adventure Design
I recently ran a one-shot D&D adventure for a group of four adult players, using 5e rules. These folks have played D&D before but it had been a while. We had three hours set aside to play and there was no guarantee or even talk about playing again. This was truly a one-shot adventure.
As the dungeon master, I wanted to make the session fun and seamless. We had limited time and no prior history for who the characters where, what their backstory was or how they came together as an adventuring party and so forth. This means I needed the introduction to get the party into the action quickly and efficiently, yet in an engaging way.
We agreed that each player would roll up an 8th level character of any race and class they chose. They told me ahead of time, so I at least had a sense for the party’s make-up. But whatever they chose, I had to find a way to make the adventure work. Even if it was a one-shot, it still needed to make sense.
I realized at the very beginning of my prep that I’d have to proscribe a great deal of this adventure rather than let things happen organically.
In other words, I’d have to railroad the party (sort of) in order to make it work.
I’ve spoken before about the dangers of railroading. I even posted a video where I describe how railroading my players destroyed the entire campaign. So why would I suddenly change my tune and say that railroading is okay?
Well, as with most things in life, it all depends. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on your goals. It depends on your expectations and the expectations of your players. It depends on a lot of things, and as with a great deal of D&D in general, things can and sometimes “should” change from the norm based on the circumstances and what you’re trying to accomplish. It depends on expectations.
In this case, I wanted to give the players a tight adventure that had a beginning, middle and end. It had to fit into a three-hour play session. It had to provide some emotional motivation that got them invested in the story quickly and enthusiastically. I wanted the story to have a relatively clear objective — the party had to know what they were trying to accomplish and that completion or failure wouldn’t be nebulous or subjective.
I wanted to make sure they had a good time along the way.
An open world where the group can go anywhere they want and look for quests along the way wouldn’t have achieved our goals. If you have a group where your characters and their base of operations are already established, and you want to have a session that is deliberately not tied to the main campaign arcs, then you can still follow the open-world and sandbox approach.
There are dungeon masters that get paid to run games. They are hired to come in and run a one-shot for a group of players, and the expectations are usually kind of high that the action will start fairly soon, it will hit all three pillars of a good D&D game — exploration, social interaction and combat — and that there will be a defined ending. Hopefully the party has a reasonable but not guaranteed chance of success.
In all of these cases, being a lot more proscriptive as a Dungeon Master makes sense. It helps to have a clearly defined introduction and kick-off to the adventure, where the players know right off the bat what they’re trying to accomplish and where. They quickly get a sense for who the villains are. And they also have a clear goal — there isn’t a bunch of time wasted wondering what they’re supposed to do or why.
To be clear, when I say that railroading makes a bit more sense when running one-shots, I’m not saying the DM has to control everything. You absolutely still want players to have a great deal of agency over what their characters do and how they do it. This advice is about specificity.
Be Specific
Be specific about the character’s identity. If the players roll up their own characters ahead of time or you provide ready-made characters, eliminate waste of time associated with any kind of Session 0 activity.
Be specific about location and establish their starting place right up front. Assume the party has already been formed. Avoid wasting time with the characters finding each other to form their adventuring party.
Be specific about their end goals. Find a way to assign their quest, in whatever creative way makes sense for your style as a DM and the preferences for the players, and convey that information quickly. Don’t make the players guess about what they’re supposed to accomplish. It’s fine and appropriate for them to have the freedom and agency to figure out how.
Remember that one-shots need to be fairly self-contained. They should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Give the players a clear beginning with a fairly well understood definition of what the end should or could be. It’s okay to let them wander a bit in the middle, but if you leave it too open or with too many options, then they may never reach the end.
Having said all this, I want to go back to something I mentioned a bit earlier in the video about expectations. If you’re going to run a one-shot, it’s assumed that the players know it’s a one-shot, so get that established right away. Second, discuss with them what their desires are for the game. Do they want to explore a new wilderness area for three hours, finding whatever they happen to find? Cool.
Do the players want to have an adventure in the underdark, focused on a retrieval mission? Those are great because the end goal is clearly defined, and you’ve got a clear-cut area where the adventure will take place.
What if the players want an adventure that is heavy on social interaction? Load up on NPCs and define their personalities, then let them wander around meeting these richly crafted people you’ve already invented. Those kind of one-shots can be fun because they’re a bit more dynamic, but you need to be on your improv A-game. It’s a good idea to get into the head of a half dozen personalities beforehand, and then you can choose dynamically which personality you want to use based on where the party goes and who they meet.
Agree on What’s Fun
Ultimately, a one-shot is like a handshake agreement between the players and the DM to enjoy a more particular and fairly well specified form of fun within a short and finite period of time. You’re not railroading them by telling them what to do, but you are keeping the options of where and what the party can do to a more limited set of options.
Above all, discuss and define what the expectations are with your players about what the one-shot will provide. If you are providing them with the type of adventure they asked for, your players won’t mind a bit higher guardrails and boundaries that otherwise would feel a bit like railroading.
