Was it worth it? In short, yes. All the story elements that had been planted in the lead up came to fruition. Only by being captured could they be confronted with interesting moral decisions and a proper build up to a climatic battle.

Everyone had fun and I think the take away is simple: “Don’t be afraid to ask.”

I do want to point out that although the answer was to ask the players to be captured, this did come at the expense of being after a rather long and painful process that I thought I had in the bag (mechanically) and it was a bit of egg on my face.

John’s Railroad Tokens are an interesting mechanism, but does require a bit of disturbing the suspension of disbelief upfront. I also have to admit I might not have the foresight to do this upfront. (Oops! forgot to put the coin out, can I do it now?) But more importantly, I like his point of letting the players be compensated for the strong armed tactic. I think it is safe to say that this should be a rarely used tactic.

Now some specific comments:
@Bevin Flannery – Thanks for the complement. Although the idea was good, it came much after the fact — after the damage was done.

@Squish – Trust is very important. I have had lots of discussions since the game about Rule 0(and am surprised people didn’t mention it), but sometimes you really do have to invoke it, make it apparent you are invoking it, and move on. “This shot IS going to hurt!”

@zacharythefirst – I also hate railroading and this event confirms it. I agree that the best way to have railroading is to have multiple routes ending the same result. The best part of that is the route they take can still color the result the way they want it colored — but its still the same (major) end result. Thanks of reminding me to put that back in my toolbox.

@Scott Martin – You are spot on. The frustration became palpable. They were succeeding albeit very slowly.

@Sarlax – Your ideas are good, but alas, did not come into my mind at the time. So goes one’s brain late at night sometimes. (Ok, adding more monsters was one of the ideas I had, but they would have been truly demoralized into continuing the adventure).

@thelesuit – I agree that sounds good on the surface, but not all party groups I’ve worked with are so forth coming and willing to contribute. Some people are not as willing to make tradeoffs when they figure they never had to trade off in the first place. However, I will keep that in mind.

I would like to point out that if the players had chosen NOT to be captured, I would have toiled to make the result work — somehow. The real problem would have been the loss of momentum the adventure would have taken.

Again, thanks for the input. I also want to thank my players for being open minded and willing to work with me on a bungled situation. Tomorrow we continue the adventure. Hopefully I will be able to live up to the now hyped up dramatic ending that required such a strong handed turn.

If the plot really needs the party to be captured by the BBEG, tell them that.

“Hey, guys, it would be really helpful if you got yourselves captured in this next scene.”

Creative players will run with this and play it to the hilt…probably more theatrically than as a GM you had envisioned. Especially if it gives them a chance to hog some spotlight time.

CJ

Railroad/plot tokens are a good way of manifesting this without taking a lot of table time discussing/dropping out of character for assurances– at least after the first time or two, when everyone understands what it means.

1. Overtly, by making PC actions and abilities irrelevant or fudging.
2. Functionally, by simply escalating difficulties (more monsters, even worse knock out gas) until failure was the only option.
3. Gradually, by allowing them to escape, experience an intervening scene, then creating a new and “better” encounter from which they cannot escape.

The very nice thing about LesInk’s decision is that it seems to have preserved the fun for everyone. LesInk is able to use the cool encounter he created while the players were recognized for their exceptional prowess and rewarded.

It can be tough, especially if you’re blatant about it, but a good, deft, and lucky GM can railroad without the players ever knowing it.

Then again, my games unabashedly skew towards centralized GM power in lieu of increased player narrative control. In return for that sacred trust, I never railroad, unless the aforementioned real-life considerations merit it. But I’ve always found players give you enough rope to manage without having to resort to extremes.

@CaptainHairy – I’ve never played M&M, but I can see a superhero game doing something like that. There are so many times when a superhero story involves the hero failing before getting back up.

@Squish – Railroading can definitely leave a bad taste in players’ mouths. I think, like LesInk did, telling the players upfront eliminates a lot of the trust issues.

@DNAphil – Thanks. I have to say, I totally agree that the visual indicator and the rewarding the players is paramount to my implementation of the idea. When I was developing this idea, I kept thinking of video game cut scenes. There were a few games that put a big icon on the screen when they were occurring. Aside from that they used all in-game models. The icon was the only clue that you couldn’t just move around and do stuff like normal.

@John Carr – Bennies would definitely fit into a SW game more than a separate point. I tend to like the plot affecting (as opposed to mechanic effecting) types of points for something like this. That is personal play preference though.

@Matthew J. Neagley – I’m never a fan of railroading players. I’ll usually change my story or plot to accommodate player actions, but there is a beautiful story element to having the characters overcome some form of failure. However, since most games are 5 on 1 and no player ever likes to lose (for fear of a permanent loss), we tend to rail against any attempt to take control away from our characters.

@BryanB – I’m going to use this if the situation comes up in the next adventure I run. I’m running off of Dungeon-a-day right now, so it may or may not come up. It will be interesting to see in effect, but I think many “necessary” railroading situations merely call for letting the players know beforehand, and like Kurt said “getting them ‘all aboard’”

Regardless of the mechanical side of it, making sure your players are “all aboard” is one way to let the train leave the station intact.

My first game after a long hiatus, I warned each player in advance “You can’t win every fight”. When the bandits showed up and got the drop on the party, they remembered the warning, and played along. In hindsight, it was a risk, but it worked out fine at the time. The party lost all the gear they had just spent hours buying, and had plenty of motivation to track down said bandits.

And in distant hindsight, they learned to trust their GM a bit.

“No, these manacles were made to hold giants.”

A beat or two passes.

“Oh, so then I can just slide my hands right out then!”

Loooooong pause. “Er, no … they shrink to fit your wrists.”

Your token idea is great. By giving an indication that the GM is taking a stronger narrative control, using a visual indicator, the players can follow along. Then by rewarding the players for their trust, you balance the extra control.

I am going put this into my bag of tricks right away.

Years ago I had a Storyteller (Werewolf) knock our party members out. We were tied up and being marched someplace. We would change form and try to break our rope bounds. And she would simply say ‘you can’t’. Was there somethings special about the ropes? no, she’d say. I remember most of us getting really frustrated because she wouldn’t even let us roll the dice to see if we could snap these ropes with our werewolf strength. The whole situation ended up causing some distrust with the players… I’d always wondered if their wouldn’t have been a better way to force us into the story-line she wanted, without causing such a degree of stress amongst us.