A patron asked me to explain what I mean when I say “nonsense railroad.” (Which is something I occasionally do in reviews and online discussions.)

Let’s start by laying some groundwork.

First, in The Railroading Manifesto I defined “railroading” in an RPG as:

Railroads happen when the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome.

Technically, therefore, railroading can only happen at the actual game table. In practice, though, we’ll talk about “prepping a railroad” or “railroaded adventures,” by which we mean scenarios which require the PCs to make very specific choices, therefore forcing the GM to railroad the players into those choices to avoid having the scenario fall apart.

Tangentially, this is a pretty basic tip: Don’t prep what the PCs will do, because (a) that requires precognition and (b) deciding what the PCs are going to do is the players’ responsibility. Instead, prep interesting and provocative situations that create rich opportunities for the PCs to make decisions and give you, as the GM, the toys you need to actively play the world in response to those decisions.

But I digress.

Second, if you do want to design and run a railroad — (please don’t!) — then the secret to making it work even some of the time, as I describe in How a Railroad Works, is to make sure that every choice is obvious and appealing: You need the players to know what they need to do and you need them to want to do it.

A nonsense railroad is basically what you get when a railroaded adventure doesn’t do that. Instead, the actions mandated by the nonsense railroad are hidden, capricious, unlikely, and/or idiotic.

For example, imagine that the PCs are playing Triads locked in a gang war with another organized crime outfit. Then imagine an adventure in which, unprompted:

• The players have to decide that they should make peace with the rival gang at an arbitrary point in the gang war.
• The players have to propose that peace talks take place at the rival gang lord’s mansion.
• During dinner at their rivals’ mansion, one of the PCs needs to sneak away and break into the rival gang lord’s office.
• Once in the office, they need to take the time to search through all the file cabinets.
• This will not give them any information about the gang lord’s business affairs, but they will find one scrap of paper that says “something weird is happening at one of our warehouses at the docks.”
• They need to immediately leave the dinner and go down to the warehouse in order to interrupt the voodoo ritual being performed there.

And, again: All of this needs to happen unprompted. None of them are given a reason to be done, many of them are completely illogical, and quite a few are actually the opposite of motivated — they’re actively inimical to the PCs’ agenda.

This is not, bizarrely, an exaggerated example. I’ve seen much worse than this on countless occasions, including professionally published adventures. Strangely common varieties include:

• “I’ve mentioned some random object, why aren’t you stealing it?”
• “You’ve got rock solid evidence that So-and-So is guilty of the crime you’re investigating, but please don’t do anything with that evidence because the adventure will immediately break.”
• “I think we can all safely assume that the PCs will leave the pocket-sized object they’ve been sworn to protect unguarded in their hotel room while they go shopping. There’s absolutely no chance that they’ll take it with them or leave one of the PCs behind to keep an eye on it.”

And so forth.

If you’re familiar with the old computer adventure games, then you’ve likely encountered this same type of tortured logic in a different guise.

In short, a nonsense railroad is an adventure where the PCs are required to perform a predetermined sequence of specific actions, which they will certainly NOT take of their own volition because the actions make no sense, and — when they’re clumsily and overtly forced to take those actions — they will feel stupid doing so.

(Because, again, they make no sense.)

Railroads are bad and nonsense railroads are their nadir. They are overtly hostile to the players and, when published, an act of sabotage aimed at the unwitting GM.

On New Year’s Day 2023, many a brave soul embarked on an ambitious enterprise: To design one dungeon room each day, every day, for a full year!

On New Year’s Eve 2023, Dungeon Masterpiece decided to do the whole thing in ONE DAY!

Baron de Ropp invited a bunch of conspirators and collaborators to join him throughout the day, plowing through level after level of the megadungeon.

I was one of these collaborators, and you can see me join up at 4 hours and 47 minutes.

Bedlam in Neverwinter is a D&D-themed escape room board game for 2-6 players.

Which is a lot of stuff for designers George Feledichuk, David “Duvey” Rudow, and Leo Taylor to cram into one box.

If you’re not familiar with the escape room board game genre, the basic format is a box filled with hidden cards and sealed containers or envelopes. Players are presented with a series of puzzles, and the solution to each puzzle will indicate which card to draw or sealed box to open in order to find the next puzzle.

In the case of Bedlam in Neverwinter, this primarily takes the form of a card deck and map boards. Each card has a three-digit number on the back. The map boards, on the other hand, depict different locations that the players can explore, each labeled with a three-digit number which indicates which card to draw when you go there. In addition to advancing the narrative of the story, each card may also include instructions (to draw additional cards, for example) or a puzzle (the solution of which will be a three-digit number indicating which card to draw).

If you’re not familiar with D&D, then… Wait. Really?

In any case, D&D is a fantasy roleplaying game in which players create characters by selecting their race, class, and ability scores. The actions taken by these characters are resolved by rolling a 20-sided die, adding a bonus from a relevant ability score, and comparing the result to a target number. There’s also a combat system in which damage is tracked and characters die if they lose all of their hit points.

All of these elements are also found in Bedlam in Neverwinter, albeit in a heavily modified form: Players will create their characters by selecting from a familiar range of races and classes, each of which will grant them proficiency in one of the six ability scores. Each class also has a unique, themed skill/power and will gain additional abilities as they level up at the end of each adventure.

Various cards will require either solo checks (which the current player rolls) or group checks (everyone rolls and at least half the group must succeed). Each check has one or two ability scores associated with it, and if you have a matching ability score you add +1d6 to your d20 roll.

Combat is resolved via round-robin skill checks against the monster’s target number. Weapons and other items can be equipped, granting additional bonuses if your attack roll is high enough. (For example, if you roll 17+ with a Sword of Sharpness, you deal +1 damage.)

And that’s basically it: Bedlam in Neverwinter consists of three adventures, each with a separate deck of cards and map boards. As you play through each deck, you’ll discover and overcome puzzles and monsters. The box states that each adventure takes about 90 minutes, but our experience was closer to 2 hours. (But we did have an ultra-excited 7-year-old playing with us, which may have prolonged things a bit.)

IMPRESSIONS

There will be ONE MINOR SPOILER in the discussion that follows. It will have no impact or insight into the puzzles or other hidden secrets of the game, but ye have been warned.

My overall takeaway from Bedlam in Neverwinter is that it’s an extremely easy game. The box lists a difficulty of 4 out of 5, but at no point did the group I was playing with feel remotely challenged: The puzzles were all trivially dispatched and the combat never once made us feel in danger for our lives.

As a result, it really felt more like an activity than a game. I mentioned that we played it with a fairly young child, and that may be an ideal use case: A pleasant way to pass some time with your friends and/or family. We certainly enjoyed it as such.

The biggest question I have about the game is why, if it’s called Bedlam in Neverwinter, is the entire story set in Icewind Dale? It’s quite baffling, honestly. My best guess — and it’s just a wild guess — is that somebody said, “Don’t we have a movie coming out in 2023 that’s set in Neverwinter?” and a few references to Neverwinter were shoved in and a new title pasted on the cover.

(I’m not going to get more specific than this because, again, I’m trying to avoid spoilers. But it’s very confusing.)

Bedlam in Neverwinter’s biggest flaw, however, is the map boards. As I mentioned before, the idea is that you put a map board on the table and then each player chooses where they want to explore, places their miniature there, and reads the associated card describing what they find. Unfortunately, the illustrations on the map boards don’t match the card descriptions. The first sentence on a card will be something like, “This body appears to have been…” and you’ll look back to the map board in confusion because there’s no body there.

The first few times this happens, you may think you’ve made a mistake, but you haven’t. The bigger problem, however, is that this failure is so pervasive that selecting map board locations is basically just random noise. Other decisions make this even worse. For example, there’s one map where a clearly Dexterity-based activity is depicted. So you send the Dexterity-proficient character and… ha! ha! Nope! The skill check here is a Charisma-based check where you encourage the most dexterous character in your group to do the activity. (The most dexterous character does not actually contribute to the check in any way.)

I’m not certain if this sort of thing was a deliberate bait-and-switch or just more bad design, but either way what could have been — and arguably should have been — the most significant interactive element in the game is needlessly rendered meaningless.

Which, ultimately, brings us back to what I said before: The game basically plays itself, but the activities along the way are a pleasant way of passing the time.

You’ll want to keep in mind, though, that like other escape room board games, Bedlam in Neverwinter is not designed to be replayed: You’ll play this once and then never again. (Unlike some games of its type, however, Bedlam in Neverwinter is not destructive, so you could reseal the envelopes and pass it along to someone else easily enough.) You’ll want to keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to grab a copy.

BUY NOW

Join me on the RPGBOT.Podcast and Get Ready For Epic Sessions!

No more searching for ways to become a great Game Master! If you’ve ever wanted to unlock your potential to create unforgettable tabletop roleplaying games, then the new book So You Want to be a Game Master by ENnie Award-winning and USA Today Bestselling Author and game designer Justin Alexander is the perfect guide for you! With step-by-step tips, tricks, and strategies for running incredible sessions on any game system, this book is a must-have for aspiring Game Masters. On this episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast we talk with Justin Alexander and learn about the secrets of crafting amazing encounters, battles, and dungeons.; and find out how you can make your gaming nights even more fun and memorable!

Spotify – Apple Podcasts – Amazon Music

As we enter the new year, I’ve got some updates on what’s going on with So You Want To Be a Game Master.

To quickly bring everyone bring everyone up to speed:

• The book arrived at the publisher’s warehouse in mid-October and was immediately shipped out.
• The street date was November 21st, but stores stocked them in mid-November as they arrived.
• For many overseas countries, the books were still in shipment on the North America release date: Either in container ships, hung up in customs, or processing through local distributors.
• The book almost immediately began selling out. Domestically, this meant rapid fluctuations in estimated delivery dates until, shortly before or just after Christmas, most online retailers reported the book to be completely out of stock.
• Overseas, the pattern was more complicated: Initial release date was usually conservatively listed as January (since they didn’t want to over-promise on the vagaries of international shipping), but in many cases the books arrived in December. But they would then almost immediately sell out — so people would see delivery estimates go from January (cautious promise), to December (it’s here!), and then to June (we’ve waiting on international shipping again!).

Obviously, everybody involved — me, Page Street, Macmillan, the bookstores — want to be able to sell you the book. So what’s happening?

First, some people have told me that the publisher “obviously” shorted the initial print run. This is not the case. The initial print order was quite large for a first time book, and reflected both their confidence in the book and the amazing success the book had in preorders.

(Tangentially: Thank you to everyone who preordered the book. It has an exponential effect on a book’s success in the modern book market, and it’s also the reason we have an audio book!)

The book was just INSANELY successful. Literally no one expected it to become a USA Today Bestseller, but it did!

This is what followed, and where we are now:

• Within three days of the book’s release, a second printing had been ordered.
• This second printing was then MORE THAN DOUBLED in size.
• It was not enough, and a THIRD PRINTING of the same (more than doubled) size has been ordered.

The second printing has come off the presses and is now in the bindery. Within days, these new copies will be shipped to the publisher’s warehouse. From there they’ll be shipped into distribution.

The third printing is slightly behind the second printing, but should arrive in the publisher’s warehouse by the end of January.

In North America, this makes it likely (but not certain!) that new copies will start reaching readers by the beginning of February. I am sorry to say, however, that international retailers are going to face the same wait with international shipping that they did with the first printing. (We are very hopeful, however, that the new supply should be sufficient that the book will not immediately vanish from shelves again.)

BUT I WANT THE BOOK!

Of course you do!

If I was forced to pick one problem for the book to have, “unexpected runaway bestseller” would certainly be the one I would pick. But it still sucks, and I feel awful that so many people haven’t been able to get the books they ordered.

So here’s the deal:

1. Barnes & Noble currently has 700 copies. We don’t know how many copies are in their distribution center for online sales vs. how many are on shelves in B&N stores, but if you’re looking for a copy of the book RIGHT NOW, check your local B&N and/or their website.
2. Call around to other local stores, including game stores. There could very easily be a copy sitting on a store shelf near you.
3. If you have a preorder with a retailer you trust to honor the preorder, keep that preorder (at least until you have another copy of the book in hand). It should give you priority when the second printing resupplies the distribution channels, and will likely be the quickest way for you to get a physical copy in many cases.
4. Otherwise, place a preorder ASAP. Again, this will give you priority in getting a copy ASAP when the second printing arrives.
5. There is both an e-book and, in North America, an audio book edition, available from all the places you’d expect to find e-books and audio books available for sale. If you just can’t wait (and I don’t blame you!), there’s no faster way to get it.

I know this is immensely frustrating, but I’d like to thank all of you once again for your support. And I hope you all find the book worth the wait!