![]() Occasionally, the train can be put back on track ( any track) with a little help from Schrödinger's Gun and copious amounts of improvising. Note that this doesn't apply when there were no rails to begin with. Compare Total Party Kill, where the game-ending disaster comes from incompetence rather than malice or loss of control over the game. This trope is effectively the players' version of Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. The Henderson Scale of Plot Derailment has been invented by 1d4chan (the wiki for all things /tg/) to measure just how far off the rails a game can go, named in honor of the legendary Old Man Henderson. Alternately, if there's just one player who's dissatisfied that keeps grabbing the throttle and gunning the proverbial train, that player's character may be subject to a lightning bolt on a cloudless day, or sudden violent chest pains, or a drive-by mauling by a mind flayer that leaves everyone else untouched, or the rest of their group forcing the train back on the rails by way of tossing their body into the boiler. Of course, good Game Masters rarely have their players revolt on them in the first place.Ī party going thoroughly and maliciously Off the Rails is often the beginning of the end of the gaming group, or at least the end of one person's tenure as Game Master. On rare occasions, a truly great Game Master will be able to change the story itself to work with the players' actions, creating something entertaining for everyone involved. One of the hallmarks of a good GM is being able to roll with the punches and adapt the game on the fly or just pull something out of thin air. A more creative Game Master, on the other hand, will take this player revolt and run with it, spinning a new plot out of the threads of the players' actions. If the Game Master is inflexible, the GM ignores all actions that disrupt his plot, changes the rules so that his plot stays on the rails, or drops a whole ton of rocks on everybody when he can't take it anymore. At its core, the players disrupt the Game Master's carefully-crafted plot by Sequence Breaking, employing an Outside-the-Box Tactic, killing an important NPC that was supposed to survive, saving an NPC that was supposed to die, finding out about an important secret at exactly the wrong moment, suddenly turning evil or turning good, or just refusing to go where the plot demands they should go. More benign variants come from a dissonance between the expectations of the GM and the players, in which the latter derails the former's campaign simply because they didn't know any better. Going Off the Rails can take many forms, and isn't always malicious or even intentional. ![]() The time has come to strike a blow for freedom, for better plots, and for teaching this idiot Game Master a lesson he won't soon forget. ![]() It's about halfway through the campaign, and the players have decided that everything is only going to get worse. ![]() Meanwhile, the players have decided that the huge scope has made the world shallow, it's only "elegant" if you like a Cliché Storm, the plot was lifted straight from the third remake of something, the setting looks like it came from Manos: The Hands of Fate with the Serial Numbers Filed Off, and the so-called supporting cast of NPCs are cookie-cutter stereotypes who make the players feel like the supporting cast. Its scope is exceeded only by its elegance, its elegance only bettered by its plot, its plot only bested by its setting, and the whole thing is held together by a compelling supporting cast of NPCs. The Game Master has created an epic plot that spans time, space, and dimensions. Igor (while roleplaying The Lord of the Rings), Dork Tower ![]()
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