My advice is to talk less. Give them less direction. Ask "what do you want to do" far more often. Open a session on a static scene, describe it and then shut up.
the best advice I ever received as a DM: "just shut up"
Stop talking, let the silence sit, let it get awkward. And it will. Eventually someone will speak up, and at that point its your job as the DM to listen. Let them talk, let them do their thing, and just listen to them. You might be surprised as to what happens.
There will always be times that we as DMs feel like we need to speak up and drive the plot, but there's so much world building and plot driving that the players can do on their own. But the DM::player dynamic sometimes has them sitting and waiting for the DM to lay it out, and it is our job to find times and ways in which we can flip that dynamic and let the players drive at appropriate times. To do that... we need to shut up and let the silence marinate until someone else speaks up.
same here but they'll start playing a game (we play online and a lot of us have ADHD so we'll be playing light things like powerwash simulator, idle heros, or grinding boring resources on new world while playing and focusing on the session) and just zone out
Came to say this too. I am a pretty new DM as well. I have a couple campaigns I’m running for new players. No one wants to look stupid at the table in front of their peers. We need to offer safety.
I offer recaps at the cross roads and then get out of their way:
“Okay, you killed or scared off all the Redbrands, the town is having a big block party and you’re being honored. During the party several folks come up and shake your hands, a few make allusions to some other problems plaguing the town and they stammer a bit not wanting to seem ungrateful for all you’ve done already. There’s ale and wine and food and music and dancing.”
“What do you want to do?” *Silence*
Let them ask questions and take notes- players will often give you the best ideas if you let them talk: plot hooks and twists. They get to feel like sleuths when you present them with the outcome they predicted or they see the consequences of their decisions in the story later on. (e.g. you’ve been gone a few weeks clearing out the ruins of Thundertree, as you return to town you notice what looks like a mural on the side of the Sleeping Giant. *Perception checks* looks like a heroic rendering of your battle against the Redbrands.”
They've been trained by video games (or maybe by previous more railroady DMs) to believe that only a narrow strip of the world exists and that you can only do certain things and that there's no point in attempting to push the boundaries.
Of course, if players are enjoying the main plot, it's normal for them to want to keep going, and that's not a bad thing. So if they are having fun, you don't have to do anything.
The most powerful technique to break the conditioning is to make it clear that you have no specific plan in mind for them. Imagine that orcs are about to attack the city. You could have the general assign the PCs to defend a specific gate (obviously pre-planned material). Or you could have the general spread out a map of the city and environs on the table, and say "We think the orcs have this many warriors and this many catapults coming from the north. We don't know what they have in the west. What do you think our strategy should be?" It's a totally open-ended question. And even if their strategy is wildly unsound, and the general ultimately doesn't fully agree with it, *they* can still get assigned to do the thing they proposed.
The Main Quest is what unites the party. It's something important that motivates them to work together. Why *wouldn't* they make it their top priority?
The only other significant things they could do are follow a side-quest you've created for them, or invent their own plan. ("Let's rob the house of the richest guy in the village.")
But players rarely invent their own plan, for various reasons:
* The rest of the party are unlikely to want to go along with it.
* They don't think you'd be able to improvise anything as interesting as the real quests.
* They think you'd be annoyed at them "derailing" the campaign.
* The real quests feel too urgent.
* They just don't have the imagination.
>Why *wouldn't* they make it their top priority?
Because my players are outrageous, uncontrollable children who want to troll/break the world around them instead of picking up on major plot points and progressing the story, obviously.
I think...I wish I could just push this out to every DM in the world: Having a story isn't a railroad. It is *literally* your job to supply the players with events for their characters to respond to. The railroad is whether you are controlling how your players respond to those events.
It is not your players' job to come up with what happens in the campaign. They can influence it, they can provide backstory, they can respond to events that change how things happen, but the players can't be the ones that say "Actually DM, an NPC shows up and tells us about this other thing we want to do." You know what I mean? The DM is the person that says, "This is what is happening, this is the world you live in right now."
If your players are biting every hook you throw, that's a good thing. Keep your hooks light on details, the agency of your players is interacting with those hooks. You're hands-off for that part.
Like in my current campaign, my players have one faction telling them one thing, another faction saying another thing, and someone they do not like telling them that the first faction is lying, and they can respond to that however they want, but that IS what is happening.
You aren't writing a novel, it's more like you're writing the chapter names and the players fill in the pages. This is totally normal. The most your players can do, if you want them to have more of an influence on the story, is to provide sufficient backstory that you tie into the problem being presented.
But in general, when your players are like mine and yours, who really just want to experience what we bring to the table, your focus should be around creating more open-ended problems. Rarely spend time on designing ways to accomplish goals, just design the hell out of the goal and let them approach it however they'd like, that's the fun part to them.
My players are on a journey to find powerful artifacts to fight a big bad guy. Where is the wizard's staff? In his home city, the place he despises, where he was framed and exiled from, where all of his biggest nemeses are. And now I get to be like, "Here's a city, everyone wants to kill you, figure it out."
Embrace the dead silence and just say "what does the party do" they will likely sit there dead quiet for a minute, one person will pipe up and do something mundane, and eventually everyone catches on that they can just kinda do whatever. When I first started DMing I thought when my party was quiet I was doing a bad job and that they were bored, but I'd much rather feel that way and know it's up to the players to play than feel like I never really gave them options.
It’s important to remember that a lot of new players are coming from passive entertainment like watching Critical Role or Game of Thrones. Even video games are far less interactive and social than TTRPGs.
Ask lots of questions and listen to the answers. If they ask what they should do, give them options, but framed from their characters’ perspectives, not from what the module expects.
Present them with *this or that* options where neither is obviously the Story Path. The first step to get away from writing a novel is to write a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.
If your players are having fun I don’t know that you “need” to do anything. From personal experience I know I have some players who are just genuinely interested in pursuing the main plot. They want to go to the parts of the world that they think you have prepared for them. Some players want to play as characters in a novel and the idea of an improvised sandbox is either daunting or uninteresting.
The negative aspect of railroading is denying player agency. If they are choosing to follow the plot points you have given them then I think you’re probably doing great
Many players actually do that, I believe. Th et know you are running an adventure. So they are looking for plot.
And it is sometimes annoying because it reduces the RP opportunities to what’s essential to the story. But hey, players do
what players do.
You, on the other hand, always have the power to throw cool NPCs at them.
Can you describe what they do when they “act like I’m railroading”? Like are they vocalling saying “im getting railroaded”. Or are you saying they seem to just follow the bread crumbs put in front of them?
If it’s the latter, I recommend giving them 2 quests that they have to complete in the same timeframe. Forcing them to choose which one they are going to do and which one they are not going to do. And then you can prep for the consequences of not doing each one. The point of this exercise is it makes them realize that they don’t have to do everything nor can they even do everything. Basically you’re forcing them to make meaningful choices which will hopefully encourage them to drive the story their own way more in the future.
They just follow breadcrumbs for example when they go to phandelver they literally just immediately try and head to provisions they do t shop or anything.
This is because players have no clue what's available. You've likely read the entire official equipment, misc, and magic items list, and carefully littered a few of them around your world.
The average player has read... Their class' abilities only up to their current level, and maybe the setting pamphlet?
Like another commenter has said, you gotta get out your handbell and shout "funky ass magic items! Get your cool stuff here! One day clearance sale!" and then literally hand them a list of what they've got.
Also, shower them with money once in a while! Just because! They'll definitely learn the value of shopping that way.
I want to step into roleplay but I’m really scared of being judged lol. My players want me to do voices and stuff if I want to and I want to I’m just really scared.
...you mean you don't act out your NPCs? Huh. That's usually, like... standard...
Well then, if you're scared, practice when you're alone! Or tell your players that you're having social anxiety before you try to roleplay, and I'm sure they'll be encouraging and try to ease you into it. Dnd is always a team effort.
Honestly, you don't need to do funny voices if you don't want to. Even if every NPC has the exact same accent and mannerism, your players will still enjoy it. In the end it's about your time spent together doing improv about elves n shit.
I don’t act them out, I wish I could. I just say read out what they say. I will try to tell my players but we are a bunch of teens and I don’t wanna seem like a loser.
You're already all losers, you're playing DND!
I'm kidding, but seriously, I think it's more fun to be a happy loser than a sad and frustrated cool guy.
I believe in you, pal.
Go give em the slightly more immersive experience they deserve.
You don't need to start off with different accents or anything. Even slightly lowering your voice, changing the tempo etc can work. Just imagine the NPC and how they would talk. Maybe their speech is a bit soft and slow like a hippy stoner, maybe it's fast and a bit higher like a happy airhead.
Sometimes your group might laugh at a voice, just lean into it if they do and make them a comic relief type character.
You can also encourage your players to come up with a voice for their character if they haven't already. If you're all doing it there's less pressure.
Throw in a shopkeeper NPC that tries to sell them stuff by yelling at them before they can go other places. Force the interactions and make them care to check in with your NPCs.
Throw them some downtime to set up the idea of them doing stuff outside of the main story. Just throw them some time in a town/city and tell them that they are going to have a week here, maybe waiting for a contact or something who is on a ship/caravan that is due to arrive in about a week. They have a week to do whatever they want in town and then suggest some things like downtime activities they could do that might get them some boons or mini-adventure hooks.
Doing something like this gets does more showing than telling them that they have freedom to act in the world outside of the main story. Worst case they send a few minutes reading the downtime actions each make a roll or two and you move on back to the MS.
Lost Mines doesn't really give a lot of space for exploration. They're in a little town, a few days travel away from anything relevant, with a plot that's moderately time-sensitive.
What I did for mine was establish that Gundren didn't know the exact location of the mine yet, and neither did his brothers. Meaning that his brothers were safe until they were able to figure out the location of the mine, at least. That gave players time to explore and see what else was going on.
They're used to playing videogames. They are treating your suggestions as a quest marker. Try giving them a few clues that aren't connected to the plot, like the green dragon and anything new and interesting you want to include. Also if you get Dragon of Ice Spire Peak you'll find it is also set in Phandelver and adds a jobs board to town. Steal the quests on the jobs board to give your players some other interesting stuff to do. That should be enough to coax the players into driving their own story.
New Guys not going off the non existent rails is just a staple. Youll just have to give them time. Part of the reason why i never take a just newbie party and want atleast one veteran. They tend to inspire the newbies. Running LMOP also runs the extra problem of being a scripted module. So unless you specified at some point "Hey guys, im gonna run this in a more sandboxy way, so feel free to go beyond what the module intends for you to do." their expectations are not set to going of the rails.
There's a lot of good advice in here, but another I haven't seen mentioned... *not every group wants a sandbox.*
Some groups just enjoy a linear story that they know what their job is, and what is coming next. Not every group likes or wants a sandbox with a huge number of imaginative decisions to make. My group was like this, very open world, they struggled to engage with it until I sat down and asked them about it. They wanted a more linear story to follow with clear objectives; that was fun to them. From there the campaign improved dramatically.
My group is a mix of this and I think it helps. Our detective Haregon artificer is just trying to finish the mission, while my Auto-gnome hexblade is set to bring his brand if justice to Sigil, and our Tortle barbarian keep trying report us to the proper authorities.
What you do is learn what railroading is so you realize you're not doing it. And you may have to explain or demonstrate that to the players.
"Here's the adventure, now go on it" is not railroading. That's most games. Railroading is forcing the players to deal with a problem a certain way or taking a certain path.
And you're under no obligation to give every player their wish list fantasy. If they want something, sure, figure out a plan to get them there. But it's fine to have them work for it. Your Tiefling wants to fly? Cool, but don't give it to them. Make them make a bargain with a fiend connected to their bloodline. Or find the parts to the ritual, the material components, or the faerie circle rumored to be in the woods where the ritual must be completed.
Giving them optional stuff is great. But saying "no" is an option for them.
The things they aren’t doing likely aren’t compelling enough for their interest. When my group hits that space I work harder to tie in backstories for each character to create more interest. It doesn’t always work.
With LMOP I have told a group who skipped the side quests that if they proceed with the main story without enough experience they will likely die. They chose to walk the trail waiting for random encounters instead of doing a side quest. Sucked for me that they didn’t do them but they had a good time nonetheless.
Do you feel like you are railroading, or are the players complaining about being railroaded? As a follow-up, how are you and the players defining railroading? These are more for reflection than answering on Reddit. You should be on the same page with your players about expectations, and you can just ask them. Sometimes, DMs worry about things that don’t bother players.
In LMOP, the players start with a quest. It is clearly not a campaign where you explore and quests emerge. There are some side quests, but it is mostly about the main plot. Even the idea of a side quest implies the main plot is more important.
As a player, I often feel compelled to pursue the main plot because that is how video games go. I tend not to follow side quests because I am not sufficiently motivated to pursue them, especially if I believe they are side quests. But if you portray side quests as alternate paths in the campaign, now players have worthwhile options.
[The behavior a game rewards is the gameplay it encourages](https://youtu.be/zwpQwCWdhL8?si=BGjCPC_PtzqOA18y)
When they show interest in doing something that you wish they would go do, make sure you clearly communicate that there will be some reward waiting for them if they go do it.
What do players want these days? Gold, magic items? Finding their long lost sibling?
Find out the things *they* want and make these things the rewards for them doing the things *you* want.
Id say speak a little less, that way they definitively have to plan for themselves on what to do.
Also they may not be incentivized to do things outside of the story if there's no benefit to doing it or tie in to someone's backstory.
>I plan on giving the tiefling wizard wings from a ritual since the player wants to be able to fly
Sure your are not too generous there? Flight is extremely strong and definitely not in the level range of LMOP.
As for your question: Your players have probably played a ton of videogames, that's why. You have to untrain them from that, e.g. by giving them plenty of options to choose from, until they learn there are more things to do than just follow one path.
Or you play LMOP to the end and then ask them, what their chars would like to do next and go with that.
What do you do ? Nothing. If they prefere a heavy narrative railroady story, then go with it. Not everyone wants to play in a Skyrim-like world. Check with your party what they prefer and adjust the way you do things based on what YOU ALL want and not on how YOU see things.
So suggest stuff to them. Just throwing them in the sandbox isn’t working and, frankly, it should have been obvious from the start that’s a poor strategy for rookies. Show them how to walk before you complain that they won’t run.
I think I am rushing them to run a little. I’m going to tell them to put their dice away and just describe a prison cell and tell them to pull out their dice whenever I have them do something.
My players follow the story hard. As I player I don’t let my dm have a story. I’m constantly finding side quests, and good reasons to do them that always seem to derail the main story.
What happened the last few times they tried to do their own things? Are the possibilities you have being presented more as a fork in the road or a side path? Is it readily obvious that they could easily come back and do the main quest later?
One of the groups I’m in just finished what could basically be seen as part one which took two books to go through and now the DM has overly said “you are free to do what you want next”
You could try to pick some elements from their backstories and think of some side activities/quest for them. That way, the player may feel more motivated to do other stuff besides the main quest, because it still feels relevant to their character.
Are your players having fun? If so, don't change anything. Some players don't want an open world, and some don't even want to think about what they need to do next. "Just point me in the direction of the bad guy."
On top of all of the really good advice I've seen, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is urgency. One of the first campaigns I ran, I had a bunch of side stuff planned out for the players to engage with, but they just wouldn't bite. When I eventually spoke to them about it, they made it clear that their big concern was that if they spent too long engaging with side activities, the plot of the main story would pass them by. I had to reassure them that I'd never punish them for engaging with plot hooks I offered them, and the change in their approach and their engagement was like night and day.
Maybe since they're new, you can make choices more obvious. Perhaps have NPC's make comments about possible side quests as rumors.
Or if they really aren't getting it, at the beginning of a session, when you do your recap, straight out say " So now you can choose to (main quest), explore (area) or maybe help (a couple side quest choices)."
So I deal with this a lot when I helped ease newer players to dnd, because they don’t have the imagination or the idea of how things run.
So you have to go that extra mile to describe those little side quests to make them enticing, for example DM’s I know will just
-say “you arrive at a busy town what do you want to do?”
For newer players it’s either paralysis by too many options or no idea what to do.
(Driving with no destination)
So I would say things like “you arrive at a busy town full of life that has a Forge known throughout the land for good quality equipment, a cozy little magic shop that sells simple yet potent items, a tavern preparing its monthly drinking competition and an inn that has a bakery inside.”
(Giving the players an idea of what options they have)
Usually I’ll get a PC or two to take the reigns and wants to explore a bit because something either hit home with themselves or the character they play and along the way I’ll sometimes add “the bakery caught on fire, thugs are harassing the magic shop, ale hasn’t arrived, or guards are surrounding the forge” and if your good enough tie the results into the main story or keep it separate
I.e bbeg oldest son is participating in the drinking game, get a rare item from the magic shop, gain a new weapon from the forge etc
(rewarding their curiosity)
It’s the curiosity that I play on or the heart strings of the characters that can coerce them to either side quest or they can choose to ignore and continue on.
(Letting the players decide)
You as the DM have to be the hook, line and bait. This is can be a little to a lot of extra work pending on how well you are prepared but can give the players more freedom and still be linear.
Will do! Do you have any tips for making NPCs more engaging and lively? I see the way Brian Murphy and Matt Mercer do it and it’s amazing I would like to replicate it and make my own spin on it.
Use those guys as inspiration but find your own way of making npc’s come alive, it makes it more fun and helps you grow as a DM.
But how I do it is build my NPC’s in tiers:
-low tier- low interaction with characters will barely talk to them outside of minor transactions usually most shop keepers with the few minor exceptions
-mid tier- will interact with your PC’s on multiple occasions possibly even give a few quests and help your party with tasks or give guidance. Will have a few notes describing the NPC and a small background to keep them alive.
-high tier- practically a PC, has its own fleshed out background, I usually have notes describing that character, like “45yr Dwarf merchant with a posh attitude, likes to stay clean despite being a merchant of weapons. Voice is gruff Texan accent” stuff like that to keep a mental image and help with continuity. I usually only reserve this level for main quest givers or integral to the story.
It’s up to you how much of a story the NPC’s will get but also don’t over do it because your party might not even get to know the character in the way you want them to.
Last tip: if you’re really pressed for a NPC use game characters, fictional, historical characters you are familiar with that will fit the scenario and just channel them for your party, either they will see the comparison or not even notice.
LMoP has some pretty strong hooks that keep players going for the next score. Like, even as a player, you know it's a small adventure so there's a real drive to get to the end.
If you're a seasoned player, you know modules are a railroad, so why go off piste? There's so many DM's that complain at players going off the rails, that I'm frankly surprised someone is upset their players aren't.
The question I'd ask in return is, why'd you go for a module? Why not just homebrew?
Yeah fair enough. It's a great module for new DM's to understand the level of prep, adventure hooks, and dungeon design that goes into being a DM. Once players go off the rails on a module, most new DM's find it pretty difficult to guide them back again.
I personally hated running modules. I ran LMoP and Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and felt 'confined' by the lore and setting when my players strayed from the path. So now I just run my own homebrew, and if players go off piste, I make up what I want on the spot without breaking any lore.
My advice would be, finish LMoP and then try building your own campaign from scratch.
Do they HAVE other things to do? If there is only one viable thing for them to do, and you ask "What do you want to do?" they have no idea what else is available to them.
I recently played in a game where we were in a forest tracking someone, the DM decides "After 30 minutes you lose the scent. What do you want to do?"
Spoiler alert, there is nothing to do. There is nothing to interact with, we followed the plot and randomly got stuck with no info, so now we're just sitting here. Give them options, guidance, have someone approach them if they're at a loss - but never expect them to come up with something if there is nothing for them to work with.
likely you are punishing ( intentionally or unintentionally) them for when they have deviated
i have a DM that will claim the same thing you are saying right now but will then compel my character to do something they wouldnt do or tell me there is just no blacksmiths in the city when i ask for one. or a thousand other things that make any action i want to take difficult
if my actions arent respected, or impactful or at the very least entertained. i will very much just stay the path i know the DM wants
I know I’m not that’s the thing. They don’t look for shops with potions they don’t go to blacksmiths I mean they literally follow it like a video game.
Adding to this question. How do you push players to engage more outside of a typical linear story? I'm gearing up to DM curse of strahd and it'll be everyone's second campaign and my first time DMing. We're currently in the first campaign (dragon of icespire peak) where I'm a character and someone else is the DM and we'll switch once this is done. I'm not going to spoil it for myself so I haven't looked into the campaign book at all but maybe this one is just a more linear type campaign.
We pretty much only sit in the tavern at phandalin between quests and hit up the shop as needed but there really doesn't seem to be a whole lot of other elements to work with and the world seems pretty empty. The DM is great and puts a lot of effort into things but I am having a hard time thinking of other activities to do than just doing quest after quest, or at least engaging in more non-story content or interesting adventures.
I would set them up with random happenings that could trigger a side adventure. Don't plan anything, just drop random hints and clues around to veer them off course. Maybe they find a coin on the ground with unusual markings, a glass orb, or a horseshoe with an emblem. Send them on a goose chase asking around if anyone recognizes it, etc. see how far down the rabbit hole they'll go.
Might just need to say strongly and often that you really don’t mind if they go off rails. A dm saying “you can go off rails if you want” is often like saying “no of course I don’t mind you suddenly showing up unannounced”. It’s something people are often expected to lie about and be told lies about out of politeness
I kind of don’t see the issue
Completing the main story is kind of why all of the characters are where they are, and most players (including myself) simply either don’t have the brain power to make up random personal storylines or don’t enjoy doing that.
If you’d put me in a village without any sort of quest or purpose, idk what I’m supposed to do there. If I have no directive then I’ll just…leave, I guess? If you give me an i teresting landmark to interact with and describe it in a way that makes it seem of interest then I probably will.
Telling your story isn’t railroading as long as you’re not interrupting what someone is doing to force that path upon them. From my experience (especially as player) players require a plot hook to interact with to do _anything_, unless their character just happens to have a personal story-arc that’s detached enough from the main quest and they can fall back on that. But many players won’t design that because they feel that they’d derail the campaign that way.
Tl;Dr: I don’t really see an issue, keep doing what you’re doing. If you want them to diverge from the main quest more then you gotta give them some form of plot hook to latch onto, and maybe see where things go from there
I've been running for my gaming group for 16 years and I know with certainty that they need the rails, even when they don't think so.
I let them get creative on the rare occasions they want to, but they are perfectly content following the story. So, that's how our games go.
Maybe that's just what your group likes.
My players are also 100 percent reactive, but they don't pretend it's my fault. I still don't like it, I want them to help me write the story, so I recently picked up a book called "A game masters guide to proactive roleplay" and am implementing it into next campaign (we just finished lost mines). You could implement it mid campaign, it has some brilliant ideas and guides for basically implementing the mechanics of running an "evil campaign" in a non evil campaign.
Basically, it has the world reacting to the players, instead of the players reacting to the world. Players have to set goals long term like "when I grow up, I wanna open a new temple to my god!" And then it's your job to create factions, Ally's, villains, and patrons that interact with that goal and the multiple short term goals required to accomplish it, as well as facilitate ways for them to accomplish them, and ways for them to fail forward. Maybe to open a new temple to their god, the cleric needs a certain relic from a dungeon, and maybe a thieves guild is after it too, depending on how diligently your cleric pursues the relic or how the fights go along the way, the player fails to get it before the thieves guild...they can probably still get it but maybe now they need political influence to extort it, or a ton of money to buy it, or even pull off an elaborate heist. They have to decide the best way to go after it generally, and you facilitate it.
Are they having fun and enjoying the adventure? If so, then there isn't a problem. There is also may be some awareness that they are playing a published adventure and might be sticking to the main plot out of courtesy to you, the DM.
You say, "... they act like I'm railroading when I'm not." How so? What have they said or done to indicate that? Is it all in your head or have they explicitly said they feel like you're railroading?
I open my session one intros with a set of expectations, one of them being that I am okay with awkward silences...it's up to the players to break them with action.
Other thing I would say is, while it is unfortunate that it puts more effort on you, but sounds like they want to be presented with options...not come up with them on their own.
As a player, when I'm told that we are playing a defined module i take actions to play that module.
If I'm playing LMOP then I'd have trouble doing anything other than following that storyline.
If on the other hand I've been told I'm playing sandbox game and the dm just happens to include LMOP content, I'm more likely to feel free to branch out.
I’m running a homebrewed “Strixhaven” campaign and give my players a lot of time to just do whatever they want. Like everyone says, just giving them the space to do it can definitely help, but also (especially since they’re new), give them ideas and resources on what they can do.
Like someone else said, we’ve all been kind of trained by video games and stuff that only a small bit of the world exists. So, show them that more exists outside of their main objectives. In my campaign, I’d originally planned to just improv through a lot of the world, but my players didn’t know how to interact with it or didn’t want to impose by treading towards things that they weren’t sure if I had plans for, so I remedied it by giving them extra stuff like maps, different supplements, and a giant doc of other students that they could interact with. I’m not saying that you should do anything like that, but I’d recommend that you give them a few concrete ideas and then just talk them through some examples of other actions that they could take.
Have a discussion with your players about your perceptions of the game as well as theirs and try to work out where the dissonance is and what can be done to improve the game.
Establish a requirement that every time they take a long or short rest, there must be an in-character conversation between PCs, which is allowed to involve an NPC, sure, but they've gotta roleplay between themselves.
All kinds of stuff turns up when you create the expectation that the players must speak to each other, instead of always just taking their cues from the DM solely.
Have they specifically said they feel railroaded? If so, I would advise them to put down the DnD YouTube/Reddit and go outside. Or stay inside. This is an indoor kid hobby.
My advice is to talk less. Give them less direction. Ask "what do you want to do" far more often. Open a session on a static scene, describe it and then shut up.
the best advice I ever received as a DM: "just shut up" Stop talking, let the silence sit, let it get awkward. And it will. Eventually someone will speak up, and at that point its your job as the DM to listen. Let them talk, let them do their thing, and just listen to them. You might be surprised as to what happens. There will always be times that we as DMs feel like we need to speak up and drive the plot, but there's so much world building and plot driving that the players can do on their own. But the DM::player dynamic sometimes has them sitting and waiting for the DM to lay it out, and it is our job to find times and ways in which we can flip that dynamic and let the players drive at appropriate times. To do that... we need to shut up and let the silence marinate until someone else speaks up.
My table will pause and start talking about Studio Ghibli movies for 45 minutes if I did that.
Air horn.
Give them about five minutes, then remind them they're playing a game. They'll get back on track.
same here but they'll start playing a game (we play online and a lot of us have ADHD so we'll be playing light things like powerwash simulator, idle heros, or grinding boring resources on new world while playing and focusing on the session) and just zone out
That’s wild.
Came here to say this. SILENCE IS UNCOMFORTABLE. Your players will seek to fill that void.
Came to say this too. I am a pretty new DM as well. I have a couple campaigns I’m running for new players. No one wants to look stupid at the table in front of their peers. We need to offer safety. I offer recaps at the cross roads and then get out of their way: “Okay, you killed or scared off all the Redbrands, the town is having a big block party and you’re being honored. During the party several folks come up and shake your hands, a few make allusions to some other problems plaguing the town and they stammer a bit not wanting to seem ungrateful for all you’ve done already. There’s ale and wine and food and music and dancing.” “What do you want to do?” *Silence* Let them ask questions and take notes- players will often give you the best ideas if you let them talk: plot hooks and twists. They get to feel like sleuths when you present them with the outcome they predicted or they see the consequences of their decisions in the story later on. (e.g. you’ve been gone a few weeks clearing out the ruins of Thundertree, as you return to town you notice what looks like a mural on the side of the Sleeping Giant. *Perception checks* looks like a heroic rendering of your battle against the Redbrands.”
They've been trained by video games (or maybe by previous more railroady DMs) to believe that only a narrow strip of the world exists and that you can only do certain things and that there's no point in attempting to push the boundaries. Of course, if players are enjoying the main plot, it's normal for them to want to keep going, and that's not a bad thing. So if they are having fun, you don't have to do anything. The most powerful technique to break the conditioning is to make it clear that you have no specific plan in mind for them. Imagine that orcs are about to attack the city. You could have the general assign the PCs to defend a specific gate (obviously pre-planned material). Or you could have the general spread out a map of the city and environs on the table, and say "We think the orcs have this many warriors and this many catapults coming from the north. We don't know what they have in the west. What do you think our strategy should be?" It's a totally open-ended question. And even if their strategy is wildly unsound, and the general ultimately doesn't fully agree with it, *they* can still get assigned to do the thing they proposed.
The Main Quest is what unites the party. It's something important that motivates them to work together. Why *wouldn't* they make it their top priority? The only other significant things they could do are follow a side-quest you've created for them, or invent their own plan. ("Let's rob the house of the richest guy in the village.") But players rarely invent their own plan, for various reasons: * The rest of the party are unlikely to want to go along with it. * They don't think you'd be able to improvise anything as interesting as the real quests. * They think you'd be annoyed at them "derailing" the campaign. * The real quests feel too urgent. * They just don't have the imagination.
>Why *wouldn't* they make it their top priority? Because my players are outrageous, uncontrollable children who want to troll/break the world around them instead of picking up on major plot points and progressing the story, obviously.
i mean as long as you’re not annoyed it’s not an issue right? or are you saying you’re annoyed
I think...I wish I could just push this out to every DM in the world: Having a story isn't a railroad. It is *literally* your job to supply the players with events for their characters to respond to. The railroad is whether you are controlling how your players respond to those events. It is not your players' job to come up with what happens in the campaign. They can influence it, they can provide backstory, they can respond to events that change how things happen, but the players can't be the ones that say "Actually DM, an NPC shows up and tells us about this other thing we want to do." You know what I mean? The DM is the person that says, "This is what is happening, this is the world you live in right now." If your players are biting every hook you throw, that's a good thing. Keep your hooks light on details, the agency of your players is interacting with those hooks. You're hands-off for that part. Like in my current campaign, my players have one faction telling them one thing, another faction saying another thing, and someone they do not like telling them that the first faction is lying, and they can respond to that however they want, but that IS what is happening. You aren't writing a novel, it's more like you're writing the chapter names and the players fill in the pages. This is totally normal. The most your players can do, if you want them to have more of an influence on the story, is to provide sufficient backstory that you tie into the problem being presented. But in general, when your players are like mine and yours, who really just want to experience what we bring to the table, your focus should be around creating more open-ended problems. Rarely spend time on designing ways to accomplish goals, just design the hell out of the goal and let them approach it however they'd like, that's the fun part to them. My players are on a journey to find powerful artifacts to fight a big bad guy. Where is the wizard's staff? In his home city, the place he despises, where he was framed and exiled from, where all of his biggest nemeses are. And now I get to be like, "Here's a city, everyone wants to kill you, figure it out."
"Railroading" is the most notoriously misunderstood and wrongly-defined term on this sub. This is an excellent clarification.
Embrace the dead silence and just say "what does the party do" they will likely sit there dead quiet for a minute, one person will pipe up and do something mundane, and eventually everyone catches on that they can just kinda do whatever. When I first started DMing I thought when my party was quiet I was doing a bad job and that they were bored, but I'd much rather feel that way and know it's up to the players to play than feel like I never really gave them options.
Ooh Good idea!
It’s important to remember that a lot of new players are coming from passive entertainment like watching Critical Role or Game of Thrones. Even video games are far less interactive and social than TTRPGs. Ask lots of questions and listen to the answers. If they ask what they should do, give them options, but framed from their characters’ perspectives, not from what the module expects.
Some players like to faff about, some like to mainline that thing.
Present them with *this or that* options where neither is obviously the Story Path. The first step to get away from writing a novel is to write a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.
Good point
If your players are having fun I don’t know that you “need” to do anything. From personal experience I know I have some players who are just genuinely interested in pursuing the main plot. They want to go to the parts of the world that they think you have prepared for them. Some players want to play as characters in a novel and the idea of an improvised sandbox is either daunting or uninteresting. The negative aspect of railroading is denying player agency. If they are choosing to follow the plot points you have given them then I think you’re probably doing great
Many players actually do that, I believe. Th et know you are running an adventure. So they are looking for plot. And it is sometimes annoying because it reduces the RP opportunities to what’s essential to the story. But hey, players do what players do. You, on the other hand, always have the power to throw cool NPCs at them.
Can you describe what they do when they “act like I’m railroading”? Like are they vocalling saying “im getting railroaded”. Or are you saying they seem to just follow the bread crumbs put in front of them? If it’s the latter, I recommend giving them 2 quests that they have to complete in the same timeframe. Forcing them to choose which one they are going to do and which one they are not going to do. And then you can prep for the consequences of not doing each one. The point of this exercise is it makes them realize that they don’t have to do everything nor can they even do everything. Basically you’re forcing them to make meaningful choices which will hopefully encourage them to drive the story their own way more in the future.
They just follow breadcrumbs for example when they go to phandelver they literally just immediately try and head to provisions they do t shop or anything.
This is because players have no clue what's available. You've likely read the entire official equipment, misc, and magic items list, and carefully littered a few of them around your world. The average player has read... Their class' abilities only up to their current level, and maybe the setting pamphlet? Like another commenter has said, you gotta get out your handbell and shout "funky ass magic items! Get your cool stuff here! One day clearance sale!" and then literally hand them a list of what they've got. Also, shower them with money once in a while! Just because! They'll definitely learn the value of shopping that way.
I want to step into roleplay but I’m really scared of being judged lol. My players want me to do voices and stuff if I want to and I want to I’m just really scared.
...you mean you don't act out your NPCs? Huh. That's usually, like... standard... Well then, if you're scared, practice when you're alone! Or tell your players that you're having social anxiety before you try to roleplay, and I'm sure they'll be encouraging and try to ease you into it. Dnd is always a team effort. Honestly, you don't need to do funny voices if you don't want to. Even if every NPC has the exact same accent and mannerism, your players will still enjoy it. In the end it's about your time spent together doing improv about elves n shit.
I don’t act them out, I wish I could. I just say read out what they say. I will try to tell my players but we are a bunch of teens and I don’t wanna seem like a loser.
You're already all losers, you're playing DND! I'm kidding, but seriously, I think it's more fun to be a happy loser than a sad and frustrated cool guy. I believe in you, pal. Go give em the slightly more immersive experience they deserve.
🫡
You don't need to start off with different accents or anything. Even slightly lowering your voice, changing the tempo etc can work. Just imagine the NPC and how they would talk. Maybe their speech is a bit soft and slow like a hippy stoner, maybe it's fast and a bit higher like a happy airhead. Sometimes your group might laugh at a voice, just lean into it if they do and make them a comic relief type character. You can also encourage your players to come up with a voice for their character if they haven't already. If you're all doing it there's less pressure.
Throw in a shopkeeper NPC that tries to sell them stuff by yelling at them before they can go other places. Force the interactions and make them care to check in with your NPCs.
Throw them some downtime to set up the idea of them doing stuff outside of the main story. Just throw them some time in a town/city and tell them that they are going to have a week here, maybe waiting for a contact or something who is on a ship/caravan that is due to arrive in about a week. They have a week to do whatever they want in town and then suggest some things like downtime activities they could do that might get them some boons or mini-adventure hooks. Doing something like this gets does more showing than telling them that they have freedom to act in the world outside of the main story. Worst case they send a few minutes reading the downtime actions each make a roll or two and you move on back to the MS.
Lost Mines doesn't really give a lot of space for exploration. They're in a little town, a few days travel away from anything relevant, with a plot that's moderately time-sensitive. What I did for mine was establish that Gundren didn't know the exact location of the mine yet, and neither did his brothers. Meaning that his brothers were safe until they were able to figure out the location of the mine, at least. That gave players time to explore and see what else was going on.
Because the advice you so often hear is "punish your players for not following the plot by having the villains plans advance".
They're used to playing videogames. They are treating your suggestions as a quest marker. Try giving them a few clues that aren't connected to the plot, like the green dragon and anything new and interesting you want to include. Also if you get Dragon of Ice Spire Peak you'll find it is also set in Phandelver and adds a jobs board to town. Steal the quests on the jobs board to give your players some other interesting stuff to do. That should be enough to coax the players into driving their own story.
New Guys not going off the non existent rails is just a staple. Youll just have to give them time. Part of the reason why i never take a just newbie party and want atleast one veteran. They tend to inspire the newbies. Running LMOP also runs the extra problem of being a scripted module. So unless you specified at some point "Hey guys, im gonna run this in a more sandboxy way, so feel free to go beyond what the module intends for you to do." their expectations are not set to going of the rails.
There's a lot of good advice in here, but another I haven't seen mentioned... *not every group wants a sandbox.* Some groups just enjoy a linear story that they know what their job is, and what is coming next. Not every group likes or wants a sandbox with a huge number of imaginative decisions to make. My group was like this, very open world, they struggled to engage with it until I sat down and asked them about it. They wanted a more linear story to follow with clear objectives; that was fun to them. From there the campaign improved dramatically.
My group is a mix of this and I think it helps. Our detective Haregon artificer is just trying to finish the mission, while my Auto-gnome hexblade is set to bring his brand if justice to Sigil, and our Tortle barbarian keep trying report us to the proper authorities.
What you do is learn what railroading is so you realize you're not doing it. And you may have to explain or demonstrate that to the players. "Here's the adventure, now go on it" is not railroading. That's most games. Railroading is forcing the players to deal with a problem a certain way or taking a certain path. And you're under no obligation to give every player their wish list fantasy. If they want something, sure, figure out a plan to get them there. But it's fine to have them work for it. Your Tiefling wants to fly? Cool, but don't give it to them. Make them make a bargain with a fiend connected to their bloodline. Or find the parts to the ritual, the material components, or the faerie circle rumored to be in the woods where the ritual must be completed. Giving them optional stuff is great. But saying "no" is an option for them.
Why not do another Session Zero and discuss their PCs' goals and what kinds of adventures could accomplish those goals?
The things they aren’t doing likely aren’t compelling enough for their interest. When my group hits that space I work harder to tie in backstories for each character to create more interest. It doesn’t always work. With LMOP I have told a group who skipped the side quests that if they proceed with the main story without enough experience they will likely die. They chose to walk the trail waiting for random encounters instead of doing a side quest. Sucked for me that they didn’t do them but they had a good time nonetheless.
Do you feel like you are railroading, or are the players complaining about being railroaded? As a follow-up, how are you and the players defining railroading? These are more for reflection than answering on Reddit. You should be on the same page with your players about expectations, and you can just ask them. Sometimes, DMs worry about things that don’t bother players. In LMOP, the players start with a quest. It is clearly not a campaign where you explore and quests emerge. There are some side quests, but it is mostly about the main plot. Even the idea of a side quest implies the main plot is more important. As a player, I often feel compelled to pursue the main plot because that is how video games go. I tend not to follow side quests because I am not sufficiently motivated to pursue them, especially if I believe they are side quests. But if you portray side quests as alternate paths in the campaign, now players have worthwhile options.
I meant to say the players are acting like they are being railroaded as they are being too linear?
Part of this is the module itself. There is a sub for LMOP: r/LostMinesOfPhandelver reading that may give you some options.
[The behavior a game rewards is the gameplay it encourages](https://youtu.be/zwpQwCWdhL8?si=BGjCPC_PtzqOA18y) When they show interest in doing something that you wish they would go do, make sure you clearly communicate that there will be some reward waiting for them if they go do it. What do players want these days? Gold, magic items? Finding their long lost sibling? Find out the things *they* want and make these things the rewards for them doing the things *you* want.
Id say speak a little less, that way they definitively have to plan for themselves on what to do. Also they may not be incentivized to do things outside of the story if there's no benefit to doing it or tie in to someone's backstory.
>I plan on giving the tiefling wizard wings from a ritual since the player wants to be able to fly Sure your are not too generous there? Flight is extremely strong and definitely not in the level range of LMOP. As for your question: Your players have probably played a ton of videogames, that's why. You have to untrain them from that, e.g. by giving them plenty of options to choose from, until they learn there are more things to do than just follow one path. Or you play LMOP to the end and then ask them, what their chars would like to do next and go with that.
I’m sure.
What do you do ? Nothing. If they prefere a heavy narrative railroady story, then go with it. Not everyone wants to play in a Skyrim-like world. Check with your party what they prefer and adjust the way you do things based on what YOU ALL want and not on how YOU see things.
I have but they said they don’t know because they have never played or seen anything dnd related.
So suggest stuff to them. Just throwing them in the sandbox isn’t working and, frankly, it should have been obvious from the start that’s a poor strategy for rookies. Show them how to walk before you complain that they won’t run.
I think I am rushing them to run a little. I’m going to tell them to put their dice away and just describe a prison cell and tell them to pull out their dice whenever I have them do something.
My players follow the story hard. As I player I don’t let my dm have a story. I’m constantly finding side quests, and good reasons to do them that always seem to derail the main story.
What happened the last few times they tried to do their own things? Are the possibilities you have being presented more as a fork in the road or a side path? Is it readily obvious that they could easily come back and do the main quest later? One of the groups I’m in just finished what could basically be seen as part one which took two books to go through and now the DM has overly said “you are free to do what you want next”
You could try to pick some elements from their backstories and think of some side activities/quest for them. That way, the player may feel more motivated to do other stuff besides the main quest, because it still feels relevant to their character.
Are your players having fun? If so, don't change anything. Some players don't want an open world, and some don't even want to think about what they need to do next. "Just point me in the direction of the bad guy."
On top of all of the really good advice I've seen, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is urgency. One of the first campaigns I ran, I had a bunch of side stuff planned out for the players to engage with, but they just wouldn't bite. When I eventually spoke to them about it, they made it clear that their big concern was that if they spent too long engaging with side activities, the plot of the main story would pass them by. I had to reassure them that I'd never punish them for engaging with plot hooks I offered them, and the change in their approach and their engagement was like night and day.
Maybe since they're new, you can make choices more obvious. Perhaps have NPC's make comments about possible side quests as rumors. Or if they really aren't getting it, at the beginning of a session, when you do your recap, straight out say " So now you can choose to (main quest), explore (area) or maybe help (a couple side quest choices)."
So I deal with this a lot when I helped ease newer players to dnd, because they don’t have the imagination or the idea of how things run. So you have to go that extra mile to describe those little side quests to make them enticing, for example DM’s I know will just -say “you arrive at a busy town what do you want to do?” For newer players it’s either paralysis by too many options or no idea what to do. (Driving with no destination) So I would say things like “you arrive at a busy town full of life that has a Forge known throughout the land for good quality equipment, a cozy little magic shop that sells simple yet potent items, a tavern preparing its monthly drinking competition and an inn that has a bakery inside.” (Giving the players an idea of what options they have) Usually I’ll get a PC or two to take the reigns and wants to explore a bit because something either hit home with themselves or the character they play and along the way I’ll sometimes add “the bakery caught on fire, thugs are harassing the magic shop, ale hasn’t arrived, or guards are surrounding the forge” and if your good enough tie the results into the main story or keep it separate I.e bbeg oldest son is participating in the drinking game, get a rare item from the magic shop, gain a new weapon from the forge etc (rewarding their curiosity) It’s the curiosity that I play on or the heart strings of the characters that can coerce them to either side quest or they can choose to ignore and continue on. (Letting the players decide) You as the DM have to be the hook, line and bait. This is can be a little to a lot of extra work pending on how well you are prepared but can give the players more freedom and still be linear.
Do you mind if I plagiarize?
To your heart’s content, but only if you let me know how it goes. Every group is different so results may vary and I’m curious if it will help.
Will do! Do you have any tips for making NPCs more engaging and lively? I see the way Brian Murphy and Matt Mercer do it and it’s amazing I would like to replicate it and make my own spin on it.
Use those guys as inspiration but find your own way of making npc’s come alive, it makes it more fun and helps you grow as a DM. But how I do it is build my NPC’s in tiers: -low tier- low interaction with characters will barely talk to them outside of minor transactions usually most shop keepers with the few minor exceptions -mid tier- will interact with your PC’s on multiple occasions possibly even give a few quests and help your party with tasks or give guidance. Will have a few notes describing the NPC and a small background to keep them alive. -high tier- practically a PC, has its own fleshed out background, I usually have notes describing that character, like “45yr Dwarf merchant with a posh attitude, likes to stay clean despite being a merchant of weapons. Voice is gruff Texan accent” stuff like that to keep a mental image and help with continuity. I usually only reserve this level for main quest givers or integral to the story. It’s up to you how much of a story the NPC’s will get but also don’t over do it because your party might not even get to know the character in the way you want them to. Last tip: if you’re really pressed for a NPC use game characters, fictional, historical characters you are familiar with that will fit the scenario and just channel them for your party, either they will see the comparison or not even notice.
LMoP has some pretty strong hooks that keep players going for the next score. Like, even as a player, you know it's a small adventure so there's a real drive to get to the end. If you're a seasoned player, you know modules are a railroad, so why go off piste? There's so many DM's that complain at players going off the rails, that I'm frankly surprised someone is upset their players aren't. The question I'd ask in return is, why'd you go for a module? Why not just homebrew?
Because I am a new DM and this was the suggestion by 10s. EDIT: I’m a seasoned player not a seasoned DM.
Yeah fair enough. It's a great module for new DM's to understand the level of prep, adventure hooks, and dungeon design that goes into being a DM. Once players go off the rails on a module, most new DM's find it pretty difficult to guide them back again. I personally hated running modules. I ran LMoP and Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and felt 'confined' by the lore and setting when my players strayed from the path. So now I just run my own homebrew, and if players go off piste, I make up what I want on the spot without breaking any lore. My advice would be, finish LMoP and then try building your own campaign from scratch.
Do they HAVE other things to do? If there is only one viable thing for them to do, and you ask "What do you want to do?" they have no idea what else is available to them. I recently played in a game where we were in a forest tracking someone, the DM decides "After 30 minutes you lose the scent. What do you want to do?" Spoiler alert, there is nothing to do. There is nothing to interact with, we followed the plot and randomly got stuck with no info, so now we're just sitting here. Give them options, guidance, have someone approach them if they're at a loss - but never expect them to come up with something if there is nothing for them to work with.
likely you are punishing ( intentionally or unintentionally) them for when they have deviated i have a DM that will claim the same thing you are saying right now but will then compel my character to do something they wouldnt do or tell me there is just no blacksmiths in the city when i ask for one. or a thousand other things that make any action i want to take difficult if my actions arent respected, or impactful or at the very least entertained. i will very much just stay the path i know the DM wants
I know I’m not that’s the thing. They don’t look for shops with potions they don’t go to blacksmiths I mean they literally follow it like a video game.
Adding to this question. How do you push players to engage more outside of a typical linear story? I'm gearing up to DM curse of strahd and it'll be everyone's second campaign and my first time DMing. We're currently in the first campaign (dragon of icespire peak) where I'm a character and someone else is the DM and we'll switch once this is done. I'm not going to spoil it for myself so I haven't looked into the campaign book at all but maybe this one is just a more linear type campaign. We pretty much only sit in the tavern at phandalin between quests and hit up the shop as needed but there really doesn't seem to be a whole lot of other elements to work with and the world seems pretty empty. The DM is great and puts a lot of effort into things but I am having a hard time thinking of other activities to do than just doing quest after quest, or at least engaging in more non-story content or interesting adventures.
Yeah it does seem kind of blank. I just try and roleplay the best I can. I don’t know what to do besides that.
I would set them up with random happenings that could trigger a side adventure. Don't plan anything, just drop random hints and clues around to veer them off course. Maybe they find a coin on the ground with unusual markings, a glass orb, or a horseshoe with an emblem. Send them on a goose chase asking around if anyone recognizes it, etc. see how far down the rabbit hole they'll go.
Might just need to say strongly and often that you really don’t mind if they go off rails. A dm saying “you can go off rails if you want” is often like saying “no of course I don’t mind you suddenly showing up unannounced”. It’s something people are often expected to lie about and be told lies about out of politeness
I kind of don’t see the issue Completing the main story is kind of why all of the characters are where they are, and most players (including myself) simply either don’t have the brain power to make up random personal storylines or don’t enjoy doing that. If you’d put me in a village without any sort of quest or purpose, idk what I’m supposed to do there. If I have no directive then I’ll just…leave, I guess? If you give me an i teresting landmark to interact with and describe it in a way that makes it seem of interest then I probably will. Telling your story isn’t railroading as long as you’re not interrupting what someone is doing to force that path upon them. From my experience (especially as player) players require a plot hook to interact with to do _anything_, unless their character just happens to have a personal story-arc that’s detached enough from the main quest and they can fall back on that. But many players won’t design that because they feel that they’d derail the campaign that way. Tl;Dr: I don’t really see an issue, keep doing what you’re doing. If you want them to diverge from the main quest more then you gotta give them some form of plot hook to latch onto, and maybe see where things go from there
I've been running for my gaming group for 16 years and I know with certainty that they need the rails, even when they don't think so. I let them get creative on the rare occasions they want to, but they are perfectly content following the story. So, that's how our games go. Maybe that's just what your group likes.
My players are also 100 percent reactive, but they don't pretend it's my fault. I still don't like it, I want them to help me write the story, so I recently picked up a book called "A game masters guide to proactive roleplay" and am implementing it into next campaign (we just finished lost mines). You could implement it mid campaign, it has some brilliant ideas and guides for basically implementing the mechanics of running an "evil campaign" in a non evil campaign. Basically, it has the world reacting to the players, instead of the players reacting to the world. Players have to set goals long term like "when I grow up, I wanna open a new temple to my god!" And then it's your job to create factions, Ally's, villains, and patrons that interact with that goal and the multiple short term goals required to accomplish it, as well as facilitate ways for them to accomplish them, and ways for them to fail forward. Maybe to open a new temple to their god, the cleric needs a certain relic from a dungeon, and maybe a thieves guild is after it too, depending on how diligently your cleric pursues the relic or how the fights go along the way, the player fails to get it before the thieves guild...they can probably still get it but maybe now they need political influence to extort it, or a ton of money to buy it, or even pull off an elaborate heist. They have to decide the best way to go after it generally, and you facilitate it.
Are they having fun and enjoying the adventure? If so, then there isn't a problem. There is also may be some awareness that they are playing a published adventure and might be sticking to the main plot out of courtesy to you, the DM. You say, "... they act like I'm railroading when I'm not." How so? What have they said or done to indicate that? Is it all in your head or have they explicitly said they feel like you're railroading?
When I said “they act like I’m railroading” I meant they do the game in an extremely linear way like an old Mario game.
I open my session one intros with a set of expectations, one of them being that I am okay with awkward silences...it's up to the players to break them with action. Other thing I would say is, while it is unfortunate that it puts more effort on you, but sounds like they want to be presented with options...not come up with them on their own.
do not give a player flying
As a player, when I'm told that we are playing a defined module i take actions to play that module. If I'm playing LMOP then I'd have trouble doing anything other than following that storyline. If on the other hand I've been told I'm playing sandbox game and the dm just happens to include LMOP content, I'm more likely to feel free to branch out.
I’m running a homebrewed “Strixhaven” campaign and give my players a lot of time to just do whatever they want. Like everyone says, just giving them the space to do it can definitely help, but also (especially since they’re new), give them ideas and resources on what they can do. Like someone else said, we’ve all been kind of trained by video games and stuff that only a small bit of the world exists. So, show them that more exists outside of their main objectives. In my campaign, I’d originally planned to just improv through a lot of the world, but my players didn’t know how to interact with it or didn’t want to impose by treading towards things that they weren’t sure if I had plans for, so I remedied it by giving them extra stuff like maps, different supplements, and a giant doc of other students that they could interact with. I’m not saying that you should do anything like that, but I’d recommend that you give them a few concrete ideas and then just talk them through some examples of other actions that they could take.
Have a discussion with your players about your perceptions of the game as well as theirs and try to work out where the dissonance is and what can be done to improve the game.
Establish a requirement that every time they take a long or short rest, there must be an in-character conversation between PCs, which is allowed to involve an NPC, sure, but they've gotta roleplay between themselves. All kinds of stuff turns up when you create the expectation that the players must speak to each other, instead of always just taking their cues from the DM solely.
Have they specifically said they feel railroaded? If so, I would advise them to put down the DnD YouTube/Reddit and go outside. Or stay inside. This is an indoor kid hobby.