Not to gang pile you Cain, but I think the answer is kind of in the middle. It's a player and a GM issue. It sounds like you clearly care about your group, so please don't get your hackles up In my experience you seem wont to think of everything in personal terms, when it's not always the case), so I can see why you'd be offended by someone calling your GMing into question. But I think what you said about players can be just as true about GM's. Everyone brings something different to the table-the key in my opinion is finding a way to make it all mesh. From what you report, it sounds like you do just that.

The question isn't about just me, though. I've played with probably hundreds of GM's over the thirty years or so I've been gaming. Yes, some were more condusive to roleplay than others; but in every case, it was the player who brought out the roleplay, not the character and not the GM. The GM can encourage it, but it's still not a question of hyperspecialist vs gimped "roleplay" character. They're not opposites.

It's always been a question of players. Some players simply do a better job of roleplaying than others. Some are better at min/maxing characters; but they're not a different group. You can encourage roleplay all you like, some players will never get it. My "special needs" player is an extreme example: he honestly is incapable of getting it quickly, so we give him special allowances. He's come a small way in the last few years, so we're hoping he'll do better after a few more. He's had good GM's, he's had a variety of character types, but it's taken a whole lot of work for him to not think in terms of murdering everybody in the room.

I'm sorry if you felt my post was solely addressing you. When i say GM-I mean the collective GM's out there, not just your game.

@Cain

I already told you, that a "bad" (meaning not so capable or just a not so outspoken person) has always problems. I think thats something everybody agrees on.
And a smart charasmatic person gets along better. I think everybody can agree on that.

But just because something has an influance on game, it does not mean that this is the only factor.

What you say is only true if you ignore the sheets for social interaction or simpler tasks. In this case yes, it has no drawback to play with an hyperspecialist.


Of course it does not modify the capability of the player. It can only lead to situations in which the image of the character breaks apart.
Take the ex Marin. Because you were going ranged combat, this guy has only strength 1. (Optimized because it is cheap to buy it up later with karma)
In a run, where you can count on the GM not to start asking for some strength tests out of the blue, the minmaxing does not hinder roleplay.
So now the GM is going to let you gather information in a gym and you have to impress an other person by making bench presses. (Even if the GM has made better rules for lifting stuff)
Well, your character will fail.
It continues with the marine running scared/beeing tricked from/by a little girl because he has no dice in charisma etc.
While there is a face to protect you from such little girls, there won't be a problem...


Was not meant to be an attack, I just wanted to point out what I assume.


I did not say anything about forcing anybody. Just take the example.
The runners get a call from an contact, his little girl (might already be 26) has been kitnapped by some serial killer/rapist/scum who struck the neighboorhood several times. (I think I got something like that out of one of the books, can't remember which. Or just take a detective or bottle shaker story of your liking)
As a GM you have thought about what your players might or might not do. Talk to parents/friends/partners of other victims, go through the police database, getting some footage of the night she was taken, getting some footage of the abduction of the other girls etc. etc.
Now you think about what they will find if they check the information and make yourself a list.
Like:
Girl1
Parents: Hint A, B, Missinformation A
Footage: Hint C, Missinformation B (a guy who did not do it) (Of course you explain what they see in the video)
Friends: no relevant information.
Etc.
So you make notes to every encounter you forsee. (The action you did not see comming, you have to make up on the fly)
Of course you add some redundancy, so that if they did not get one hint or did not understand that hint they will still be able to make it.
If everything goes as planed the players will have even disagree on the subjects but will figure it out at some point...
The challange is if they can do it in time...
I do not see, how this is railroading in any way, would you please bring it to me?
But of course if the whole group is going to Parents 1, Friends 2 etc. serial, the girl will probably be dead. (Exept they just picked the right once ...)

Over the years I've noticed you can tell a lot by how players introduce their characters:

I've got a character that could be introduced as either:

1: This is Mercury, he's an alcoholic sociopath elf with a real thing against the Tir Natons

or

2: This is Mercury a combat mage specializing in Elemental fire sorcery

Both would be accurate, but the first is the one I usually go with because it gives a lot more insight about what he's like

(AS an FYI he pre-dates the release of Jak Koke's Mary Sue of a similar name)

For the paranoid:
3: This is my character, a tall elf that is wearing all black, he was introduced as "Quicksilver".

Wearing all black, not hardly the guy wears beat up old jeans, a leather duster, a flame pattern T-shirt and has frosted spiky hair with flame red tips to the spikes. (FYI no distinctive style flaw I didn't think that was enough to qualify) He also smokes filter-less cigarettes at an alarming rate.

You're mistaking "primary factor" for "only factor". Just because the player is the one who is ultimately responsible for roleplay doesn't mean the GM doesn't have a part. It took me two years, but I managed to encourage the "special needs" player to not murder everything in sight. Still, a lot of it is on him; I do what I can, but he does the rest.

And your problem is? An ex-marine with strength 1 is crippled and he knows it. It makes for an entertaining few moments sometimes, because flaws can be as much fun to roleplay as strengths. Same with getting tricked by a little girl, it might even become a running joke. Characters without strengths and flaws are usually boring.

Because players *never* follow every lead, forcing them to chase down each one is a waste of their time, and making encounters out of every one is a waste of your time. I just wing it. I can never fully guess what the players are going to do next, so I just run with whatever they do. Setting up a predetermined path-- or even a predetermined matrix-- is railroading them from scene to scene. If they want to give up and do something different midway through, I can deal with it (won't like it, but I can deal).

But that's exactly the thing: you can never fully guess what the players are going to do next. Other GMs might have, for example, a greater ability to predict their players' actions [or more predictable players], but less of an ability to extemporize. So that GM would be better served doing prep work ahead of time, trying to anticipate players' likely actions. That doesn't mean the GM is limited to only operating from the prep work: players will surprise even the best-prepared GM, so sometimes extemporizing is necessary. That doesn't mean prep is a waste of time.


He's not talking about a predetermined path or matrix; he's talking about anticipating the likely strategies of the players and preparing for them. That doesn't limit the players to only being able to perform those predetermined actions; if they wander somewhere the GM hasn't prepared for, he'll need to make it up as he goes along. That happens.

This kind of preparation also means you don't really have to give a damn what the players decide to do; you have a variety of pre-established situations from which you choose, that can be adapted on the fly to whatever the players decide to do. They eent to the stripper instead of the city councilman like you thought they would? That doesn't waste your efforts, it just means you'll give the same information from a different perspective, and with a different characterization. [If the stripper would have that information, of course.]

Some GMs can totally fly by the seat of their pants, and they do better that way. Others need to prepare for months to anticipate every possibility, because they're don't think well on their feet but they know their players well. Most GMs lie somewhere in-between. The point is, every GM is different. So generalizations about what works and what doesn't and what's a waste of time are almost inevitably fallacious.

You're setting up a straw man. I never said prep was a waste of time. What I said was, trying to move from set scenes to set scenes is railroady. Now, some players don't mind it as much, so maybe that's fun. But it doesn't change the fact that the plot demands they go from point A to point B to point C. You might matrix it a little, but the goal is the get them from the beginning to the end of the scenario. You don't have to do it that way, although it can be fun.


Hey, if it's fun, then there's nothing I can argue about. However, it is railroading. Ultimately, only by presenting a problem and completely responding freeform to their actions can you avoid railroading, and not every GM has fun with that. But if someone's going to accuse me of railroading, then it's only fair for me to point out the locomotive they're sitting on.

Hyperspecialists (and some slightly hyperbolic examples of them) have come up on this thread - I'm not really sure that is what MortVent was talking about. See, I wouldn't call someone who has a super-high dice pool and glaring weaknesses to be "perfect". Min-maxing is about minimizing your weaknesses as well as maximizing your strengths. A shooter with no social skills and a Strength of 1 is not really a very effective character, even if he has a pistols dice pool of 24. A truly min-maxed character might only have a dice pool of 20, but also be able to function in normal social situations, and be strong enough to do things like drag a wounded teammate to safety.

The problem isn't so much with optimization itself, it is when players wind up creating cookie cutter characters because every one of them is min-maxed in exactly the same way. Same spell selection, same brand of pistol, same loadout of commlink utilities, same armor, etc.

@Cain

Which perfectly fits the agility 9. Well no, it does not. Yes you can always try to give some kind of explaination, but in the end they will fall apart if you can't ignore your flaws.
Ok, lets take an other form of explaination:
A strength 1 character should have major problems even shooting a heavy pistol. But the game says he does not. (The extream example for that is the strength one pixie shooting a barret mid air.)
Rulewise possible but in no way plausible. So the marine with strength 1 works, as long as this attribute is never brought up in game and nobody really knows.
To go one step further it would be no problem to give min. strength requierments for each set of firearms. (Be it like: Holdouts, light pistols (both hands) 1, heavy pistols(both hands), light pistols, MPs 2 etc. up to Sniper rifles from the shoulder 5 or assault cannon 6 or even 8. I do not know.)
Those rules would be good fit to reality but now the optimized character does not work anymore.
If you optimize your character to fit the rules (and the rules are not perfect) you have to take points from attributes which are ignored in the rules and but them on attributes which are used. You are not optimizing to get a character which can survive in a realistic invironement, you are building a character which does the best in the challenges you anticipate.


Mostly thats the excuse I hear from lazy ass GMs. (I am not saying you are one, but thats where I get stuff like that)
I am more guessing you do not really know what the word railroading means.
It means that decisions the players make, have no impact on the adventure.
Meaning I always get to the ending/scences I want (if no player kills himself etc).
If you go to the theoretical extream even that won't work. It is like "I jump down that cliff, I want to die" "Ok, you are caught by a griffon which brings you to the tower of the dark mage".

Mostly if I have seen GMs going unprepaered at an adventure (or with this comment) it went down like the example above or the players had to make this one move he thought of.


Thats just a lie. I watched GMs doing that, and I have never seen more railroading in my life.
If you do that, you have no other choice than railroading. Because you can't keep up with the ideas of the players without doing so.
There are only a limited set of possible path the players can take (which would also be functional) but if you do not even prep some of them, you are forced to force the players down that one you could make up on the fly. (Or you just let fly everything and the decsions of the players do not have any impact on what happens)
If I come prepared I do not need to force players down a path.
Why? Because it is no problem to make up one scene/chain of events if you have 3 scences to possibly connect it to and 3 encounters time.
But on the fly you are only able to let it lead to one or two other scence and" hello to the railroad." (Which will be basicly the same)

Yes, maybe I will only get to use 80% of my preaped scence, because the players did not take that special road. Thats ok. Sometimes they are even able to skip 50% and go down an completly unexpected line. But because I know the layout of the adventure well in my mind, because they also walk in encounters I have planed etc. it is no problem to make up this road and connect the dots. (But only if I prepared myself)
It gets very obvious if you play an adventure with an other group. To improvise is so much easyer if you already have a lot of scence in your mind.

The only problem is, they should be sitting on one... The only thing you pointed out where straw mens. "If you foce them down every road..." Well, nobody said that.
But to have a hit rate of 70% is more than possible, even if you do not know the group.
Every Story has points you have to go to, in order for the story to proceed.
It is like if somebody ask me where the guy next door will buy a milk, a CD and a ham. There are just a limited number of shops which sell any of those iteams and he will probably try to get the stuff near one place. So that narrows it down. Yes, I could be wrong. But making 3 guesses, it is more than likely one will hit.
If you write a detective story, the players will ask witnesses. Thats what a GM can see up front. If one or two players have an Idea for a shortcut and you have a lot of scence prepared you know to which this would lead. So you only need to make out what the sortcut will be like. (If you do not, the plan you have improvised falls apart...)

Boring to you. Maybe even boring to the people you play with. But boring for everyone? Maybe not.



I think maybe there's a miscommunication occurring here. Are you basically saying playing a character with no strengths to balance his or her flaws seems like they'd be boring, or difficult for the average player to make decent use of?

I was referring to when you said this:




Yes, you were very clear about that, and I didn't intend to dispute it. My point was that Irion didn't seem to be talking about moving from set scene to set scene, in any way. What he suggested was, "...having thought about what your players might or might not do....Now you think about what they will find if they check the information and make yourself a list....So you make notes to every encounter you forsee. (The action you did not see comming, you have to make up on the fly) Of course you add some redundancy, so that if they did not get one hint or did not understand that hint they will still be able to make it." That's not a series of set scenes, and it's not railroading. It's anticipating the possible actions your players will take, and being prepared for them. There's no set route, there's no matrix, there's no inherent plot, just anticipation of which leads your players will follow up.


You've got a run with some Bugs snatching homeless people off the street. You know Killmaster usually calls his bartender when he's looking for street-level information, so you figure out ahead of time what the bartender would know. Sometimes Nemesis checks with a homeless guy in the neighborhood, and this is a run involving the homeless, so it's reasonable to work out in advance where the homeless guy will be, and what he's seen. You don't require the players to call those people, and if they don't, they don't get that information, or they get it some other way. They haven't been railroaded, they've made all their own decisions, all along the way: you've just anticipated those decisions, and if you're wrong, you extemporize. Please explain how any of that is railroading.

This confuses me, because it sounds like GM fiat territory and I thought you were opposed to that Cain. Are you saying, "It doesn't matter what my players do, I'm just going to decide the consequences and make what I want happen?" I hope not. Because that sounds like a really crappy game to me.

Oh please, we're talking about a game with flying lizards with lethal halitosis. Realism went out the window several editions ago.

Yes, and that's exactly what I'm talking about. As long as you're using a linear or matrix build for your adventure, you're on a railroad path. It doesn't matter what the players do, it means that they'll end up at a set scene, even if magic flying ponies need to come safe them from jumping off a cliff. A totally freeform adventure allows them to break out of a linear design, jumping around from scene to scene, inventing things in response to what they do.


If you're good at it, you can let fly with any decision the players make, any situation they can throw at you, completely freeform. Some of my best games have been when my careful prepwork was totally derailed, I didn't get to use hardly any of it... and we still had fun.

Both. Not impossible, of course, some players can handle just about any character. But a character that's larger than life, in flaws and in strengths, is easier to grasp that a subtly average Joe. That makes the character more fun to play, because you don't need to spend so long figuring the character out.

Let's use a published run for an example. "On The Run" has you searching for a disk. You don't know that Nabo the rapper has info, but you can use music contacts to find it. Of course, most PC's won't have music contacts; so if they don't find the data in X hours, someone sends them a secret tip letting them know to find Nabo. That's railroading: no matter what they do, they need that information for the plot to continue, and they'll get it rammed down their throats if they can't get it otherwise. And to a lesser degree, that's exactly what you're saying you do.

First of all, after the dogpile, I'm seriously offended by this. Would you like to rephrase that in a less offensive fashion?

Second, you've got it completely backwards. All that matters is what the players do. Everything I do is reactionary: I respond to their decisions. Player choice is everything in my games. If the players want to blow off the adventure and spend the night playing pool with hookers? Fine. It might be a short game, but fine with me. As long as everyone is having fun, I don't really care what happens. I play games to have fun; that's what counts.

Clearly you're taking this personally. As such I'm done. This is supposed to be a conversation between adults.

I accept magic elements dictated by the background. Or I should go and play another game.
I accept some simplifications but too much of that just makes the game feel strange.


Ok, you understood.

Well it depends. I can't tell what you actually mean so I let it stand.
You could mean two things. With one I would totally agree and with the other I would totally disagree.
Just as a note: If there would be no way to fail by making wrong choices, it would take the fun out of the game for me as a GM and a Player.
I take satisfaction as a GM in giving the players just the information they need to make the right once (and some wrong or even better once then I have thought of) but they still need to think about it. But maybe we are getting at the bottom: I need preparation to limit my freedoms in game too. Because if I decide everything on the fly it feels like GM Fiat to me.
If I can't say this works, because after the scenario I worked out before it has to work... Well it just does not feel right to act like that.
So if players later on ask me if why something worked or did not work I like to give them an awnser and also be able to point out how they could have found out about it.
(if I realise that they just jumped so much that they did not have the possibility anymore I hold the Hand of God over the players because it is not right that there characters die, because I did not see the idea comming and now they have no clue why what they are going to do is a bad idea. Yes, that a bid of railroading but the other way feels unfair.)

Well, I have read this once, but I have it right here so I do not know how good I remember it.
But naturally you need to do some things to get behind the mystery. I mean every detective has to interview the witnesses. Including Information which is only optainable if the players bring the right tool by luck, is in my opinion not railroading it is just bad design. Railroading is if you do not allow your players to fail if they do not find the info. Or do not allow them to solve it otherwise, if that would be possible. And some secret tipp also does not have to be railroading. The players can choose to ignore it.

Some people seem to have weak ideas of what railroading is. Shamus Young goes over the topic well. If players can't do anything but follow the tracks, its railroading. So giving a free hint to keep the story going is not railroading, forcing the players to follow the hint would be railroading. Players trying to go to the docks when the GM has nothing planned for that and finding out that the GM just has them kidnapped and brought to the showdown with the big bad goon who will get away in the end no matter what, is railroading. Putting out flares for players to follow, as opposed to letting them find their way through the woods, hardly forces them down the tracks.

There's a profound difference between internal consistency and lack of realism: a strength 1 character shooting a heavy pistol is a rules oversight [with some degree of intent], while flying lizards are an internally consistent characteristic of the setting.


Doing prep work to have an idea of what contacts might say to the players if they speak to those contacts is not linear or matrix building. That's all anyone is suggesting, so if you believe what's being suggested is linear or matrix building, you're mistaken, which explains why you're mistaken that anyone's recommending railroading.


So...you do prepwork, then. How is your prep not railroading, and his prep is?


No, you misunderstand what it is I'm saying to do. Let me say again, "You don't require the players to call those people, and if they don't, they don't get that information, or they get it some other way. They haven't been railroaded, they've made all their own decisions, all along the way: you've just anticipated those decisions, and if you're wrong, you extemporize." And just to be clear, "He's not talking about a predetermined path or matrix; he's talking about anticipating the likely strategies of the players and preparing for them. That doesn't limit the players to only being able to perform those predetermined actions; if they wander somewhere the GM hasn't prepared for, he'll need to make it up as he goes along." "There's no set route, there's no matrix, there's no inherent plot, just anticipation of which leads your players will follow up."

And to quote Irion: "Thats the differance between railroaded plots, where there is only one way to go and plots where every idea of the players crates an other possibility. It might turn out to be a shortcut or wasted time. Up to the players to decide how to move." "I did not say anything about forcing anybody." "As a GM you have thought about what your players might or might not do.... Now you think about what they will find if they check the information and make yourself a list.... So you make notes to every encounter you forsee. (The action you did not see comming, you have to make up on the fly)."

None of that suggests that "they'll get it rammed down their throats if they can't get it otherwise," and in fact it explicitly says otherwise. Both Irion and myself have explicitly said otherwise. In fact, now that you're talking about doing prep, it looks more and more like you're running the game essentially the same way he is, so I don't have any idea what it is you're disagreeing about. No one is suggesting railroading, and everyone's explicitly saying they avoid railroading, and nothing anyone's doing is railroading, so what's going on?

You're going for the straw man again. I never said prep work was railroading, I said linear and matrix-style adventures all had railroady elements to them. The goal of those type of adventures is to move the players from scene to scene, instead of letting the players determine which scenes they want to do.

Straw man again. Besides which, I don't do that sort of prep work anymore. I carry in my head general attitudes towards events, so if the players do X, the NPC's will likely do response Y. This is of course modified by roleplay, cleverness, and whatever's fun at the time.


I've never played at Irion's table (or yours) so I can't comment on what he and I do differently. So, I'm using "On the Run" as a common starting point. In that one, if you don't get the key info in time, for whatever reason-- bad rolls, no useful contacts, or just sluffing it off to drink at the bar-- you get the info rammed down your throat. That particular module is railroady in the extreme: you have to follow the plot scenes, in order, to reach the end.

Edit: Note that this has nothing to do with what you and Irion do/don't do at your tables. This is an example of a published adventure, not a slam on your home games.

Right, but no one here was suggesting such an adventure, so what, exactly, is your objection? You keep talking about how people are generating straw men, but all we're doing is trying to explain that you have a profound misunderstanding of what everyone else is trying to say, because you're condemning "hav[ing] an idea of what contacts might say to the players if they speak to those contacts" on the basis that it's "linear and matrix-style," and thus "railroading." Except that it's not linear or matrix-style, so thus the argument you've erected is the straw man.


Well, yeah, exactly: we all agree that we hate that, and everyone's saying they don't do it. Whatever. There's apparently no actual disagreement in the thread: everyone seems to like the same things and dislike the same things, so I'm having a hard time understanding why you're objecting in the first place.

Irion appears to be suggesting a scene-to-scene model of game, which I find to have railroading elements to it. Now, I can't object if he finds that fun; but if he's going to accuse me of railroading, I will show that it's not me doing the railroading scenes, but that his styles does lean in that direction.




I object to being accused of railroading players. If anything, his method is more likely to be railroading than my own. That's why I'm disagreeing.

I think the best quote I ever heard on Railroading is this: Players don't mind the railroad if the view is pretty and the destination is awesometown

If you're going to railroad even a little make sure you meet the other criteria or your players won't be happy.

Still I learned a long time ago as a GM if your players do something unexpected but it's still going to be cool, do your best to roll with it and make it fun for all involved.

I always thought it was the mark of a good GM that even if the players do something that will not be cool, to make the outcome fun for everyone.

If this all boils down to your wounded pride, I'll go ahead and check out, then, as well. Adieu.

Then thank you for taking your ball and going home. Being condescending during your departure isn't a terribly adult thing to do either. /condescension + hypocrisy

That being said, railroading can be done in a variety of fashions and Cain is merely describing it in a more blanket term. If any part of your adventure has to take place at point X or Y and your players aren't going there, you either have to find a way for them to end up there or call the adventure and start doing free form. The mission that Cain used is a great example of steering but eventually ends up as railroading if they can't get the hint otherwise. It's definitely bad to think of an adventure as a single track, rather than multiple branches that can still have the same destination point. Total free form GM'ing can be very difficult to make as fun for players. Sure, they are making the story at that point and that can be precisely the problem, you shouldn't even trust some of them to write a postcard, let alone a story, lol.

And then you pointing it out isn't very adult. And then me pointing that out isn't very adult. So we're all guilty of nudging people whose behaviors we find troubling.

To be fair, we've been having these conversations with Cain for 12 years or so now, so please forgive us our little frictions; I can only promise you're seeing the adult version of these interactions.

Yeah, that is an issue sometimes with freeform. However, even doing something for the bartender when you see your tab can be a fun adventure. It's also more "organic", since it stems from something the players have come up with. Still, I personally think the rewards outweigh the risks, although I do understand this is a YMMV thing.


Closer to 15, I think. But look at it this way: has accusing me of immaturity ever make one of our frictions any *better*?

Really, honey? Really? Contradict me in front of our friends? It was 1999: I'd been hired to do Y2K upgrades and had broadband access from work for the first time. It's so typical of you not to remember. You're so insensitive. This is why I burned all your stuff, you know.

I understand Flawed Characters is the topic of the thread, but I think that means Flawed Shadowrun Characters....

In other words, after a point is made move on... Either to a new point or a new topic in another thread...

Thanks Redjack! Normal service is resumed ...

I like my players to make characters with interesting flaws and hooks that I can use, but it's not a requirement. Saying that, all characters must be approved before being allowed in the sandbox. That means the STR 1 ex-marine would be a no-go, unless the PC can persuade me that, say, he is an old pro completely gone to seed with at least a Moderate addiction to alcohol or BTLs (to try and forget some of the things he has seen) and an unhealthy diet that has bloated his waistline etc. Even then, I would warn the player that his character would not be able to carry more than one big gun with a limited supply of ammo without receiving encumbrance penalties (10kg limit to carrying as per RAW).

I like my PCs to have skillsets that would be logical to the background they are selling me. For instance, the ex-marine should have at least a point or 2 in the Athletics group, and if he was an officer perhaps some Leadership or the Influence group, and so on. I always ask new players to think hard about how their character got their higher ranked skills and high-end 'ware, and let them take it from there.

I give bonus karma for players that bring their characters to life in game, whether it is playing up to their flaws or letting me flesh out an adventure from plot hooks they gave me in their character background. For instance, our party mage took Incompetent (Pilot Ground Craft) with a background reason that he witnessed his mother being gunned down in a mafia war era crossfire. The player acts out this flaw by taking a voluntary -1 penalty to any actions when he is in a car, going up to -2 when bullets are flying, and I sporadically give him bonus karma for this.

I agree with Paul in that I don't think throwing a few free knowledge points into fluff skills like Interests (Fine Art) makes a 3-dimensional character, but I do like my players to take a few fluff knowledge skills to reflect their characters outside interests. And of course, those rare times obscure knowledge or language skills help the team out in a run, the player really appreciates that bonus point of karma ...

Well I would say it depends. It is railroading, yes. But the question is, if it is the worst choice at the moment. If your players run into circles and getting more and mor frustrated it might be better to but them back on the track, so they might enjoy the rest of the Run.
Railroading is a emergency response if you failed your prepwork and the players just can't get to the point they want to.
It is kind of beeing a dick not to throw a stick for players who are begging for a hint. You should try to prep a so this kind of intervention is not called for but if you get down to railroading for 5 min or screwing the hole game for everyone... Railroading is, in my opinion, the better choice.


@X-Kalibur

The point is: They are mostly self betrayal. You railroad the players to the idea which you just had. If they want to go with the run, it will be a one way run, because you will in no case have time to think of different ways. The problem is, you often will not be able to hold it together if players try multible ways. (Yeah we could get access over that guy, but you said he has a sister who is working at the same company. Lets take both routes. No it starts with: What name does she have, where does she live, does she have a boyfriend or even kids, what kind of character does she have etc)
While repeated interaction with one or two NPCs is still possible on the fly but making this a five or ten, will just fail. So every "free GM" is forced to limit himself to a few possible roads with a few possible NPCs. Players can't really switch around those roads much, becuase the GM will soon loose track about which NPC was descriped how.
(A great Idea for that I heared once was preparing NPC-sheet you may use several times)

To make a real free play, is an ass full of work. You simple have to prep a whole city you want to play in. Not just the parts the advanture you want will take you to (because you do not have an adventure).
It starts with generic NPCs (for shadowrun it would be a dozen human, maybe 6 ork, 4 elf, 3 dwarfs, 4 Trolls) who you can fastly adept to what you need.
Then you go on with locations as Bars, clientel, surrounding etc.pp. , homes, shops, factories etc. pp.

To make every person in a bar interactable is very hard. Because the Player one will be talking to the troll, player 2 to the elfen girl, and player 3 wants to play pocker with the strange looking bunch at the end of the room. Well, thats not very complicated for now. But if players start leaving with destinct NPCs and you have to keep track of every single one of them....

If you can't beat 'em ...

OK, on the free form vs railroad debate, here's my 2 new yen:

All jobs have some railroady element, as to how they get there notwithstanding, they will eventually have the showdown with the gang holding the target hostage, or break into XYZ Corp's facility to steal the McGuffin etc etc. I would agree with Irion that, if the PCs miss all the clues or just have plain bad rolls and are getting nowhere fast, throwing them a bone ("You remember that photo of her and the tall guy at a club on her mantlepiece, you suddenly remember where that club is, you've been there recently.", or whatever) is the way to go. Deux ex machina/railroady I know, but it's just plain more fun if it gets the Perplexed Cinderellas (PCs) to the ball.

If my PCs were to turn down a job offer, they would be chewed out by their fixer less than 5 mins after the meet ("I bring you this cushy job, and you spit it back in my face? If you guys don't wanna work for a living, I've got plenty of other folk who'd be happy to take the job. Should I bother to contact you next time I get the call?"), and unless they can give a good reason why they turned the job down they'll have to mollify their fixer in some way or other, possibly with a percentage of whatever hair-brained heist they decided upon instead.

I know my guys are more professional than that, but if PCs were ever to go off the reservation for some mid-job bunraku parlour for R&R, the consequences of their failing the mission would play out and they would find themselves in need of a new fixer with an angry Johnson to after their sorry hides to boot ...

Free form is a great ideal, but I have seen such games where the characters were floundering. Sometimes the players want a bit of direction from the GM. But I think there is a difference between giving the players some guidance or nudging things along, and forcing the players into a predetermined sequence of events with predetermined outcomes.

The latter is boring to me - I prefer to let the players surprise me, and roll with it. If they kill the main bad guy in their first confrontation, great - now the main bad guy's two lieutenants are fighting for control, his axe-crazy lover is out for the blood of the PCs, the main bad guy's rival is taking advantage of the situation to move his own organization in aggressively, and so on.

It's kind of a weird 'debate' to me, because I don't believe that either extreme exists in reality. Everyone plays some form of flexible, guided game. It's ludicrous to get up in arms about the whiff of 'railroady elements'.

Extremely railroady games certainly do exist in reality. Many people here have testified to experiencing games where nothing they did mattered: they were forced from scene to scene, often times just to watch GMPC's do cool things while they sat on their thumbs. Heck, I freely admit to having done it when I was starting out as a GM.

But as Glyph put it, I like being surprised by the PC's. Instead of fighting them, I work with them and the crazy, gonzo stunts they come up with.

I disagree. We've had tons of fun in the past with dysfunctional teams that screwed up big time. It all boils down to individual preferences in the end.

As a GM, I make sure to desgin my NPCs with appropriate flaws and shortcomings in mind. Among other reasons, this is supposed to tell the players that they don't have to min/max in order to stay alive. Well, I've had my share of vat-grown super soldiers, of course, but my players know that they can actually afford to make characters with flaws if they are so inclined (and more power to them if they are).

They need a this thread has become internet wankery smile.

Oh it does! For years a friend of mine used to make the most perfect characters. They generally couldn't exist if not for the group. Of course I know someone else that makes as close to a perfect generalist as I've seen. His chars have little need of the group, any one objective can be accomplished by him: kill someone, talk his way out of trouble, escape a dangerous situation.

Don't all threads do this quickly after the first page?

Daylen, I don't see how your response connects to my quote in any way. I was talking about railroad-vs.-freeform, nothing about generalists/specialists. It is true, though, that the majority of people are in the middle of *that* range, too… though probably more toward specialist.

this thread has gotten wacky, I'm having a hard time following it seems

That's the problem when you go off the plot railroad.

@CanRay
Thats why some players want a bit of railroading. They can fall asleep, wake up later and just go on...

Sometimes. Other times you end up like I did in one game of Star Wars D6, ordered to stay on the ship, and spent the game playing Vigilante 8 on the GM's PSX.

That can be done in unrailroading games. Although it does lead to some strange events, nothing like waking up and hearing the GM say oh good you woke up just in time, now roll for defense, your on top of a vehicle moving at high speed and being attacked...

WTF on so many levels.

Sometimes, some players certainly do want to be a little more reactive; it depends on the game/table/etc.

In SR3 I made a human programmer and then goblinized him into a Troll. He was middle of the pack in terms of skills but then the penalty of becomming a troll made him stupid enough that the corporation didn't want him around (not to mention behavioral issues related to the goblinization). He was tons of fun. He's the one that started our Shadowrun tradition of "I need a new deck so I go to a coffin motel and shotgun the first decker I find." Good times.

I always thought it funny that SR fluff had globalized trolls keeping their initial scores and longevity, while the crunch wasn't always so supportive.