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Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Post-Mortem (Spoilers)
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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8544141" data-attributes="member: 22779"><p>There is another aspect to pay attention to as well.</p><p></p><p>What do people actually mean when they call something a railroad?</p><p></p><p>Take our Dragon Heist adventure. Sure, the opening adventure is pretty linear - but, it's the introduction adventure, so that usually gets a pass. It's pretty hard to plop down in a wide open sandbox right out of the chute. You need to ground the players a little bit into the setting.</p><p></p><p>Then there's clearing out and setting up the Trollskull Manor. Now, this isn't a railroad. This is very open. There's no fixed schedule for what needs to be done, no particular order or in fact no particular reason to do any specific task. Add to that the tasks from the various factions, which are all a la carte, and this is a very wide open section of the adventure that can last quite a while.</p><p></p><p>Then once that's settled, we have the meat of the season's adventure starting with the explosion outside the Trollskull Manor. Yup, pretty linear, although, it's possible to shortcut (my group certainly did) various tasks and each task has multiple potential resolutions. It's linear, but, not particularly railroady.</p><p></p><p>Then you have the finale with the dragon. Bog standard dungeon crawl, more or less. </p><p></p><p>Is this a railroad? Not really, IMO. Parts of it are linear, and parts are very wide open. For my group, the wide open parts were the ones that failed and failed rather hard. They absolutely wanted rails. </p><p></p><p>At the end of the day, it really, really depends on the group. I think Dragon Heist's biggest problem is it really, really needs buy in from the players. If the players don't care about the setting this adventure will fail hard.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 8544141, member: 22779"] There is another aspect to pay attention to as well. What do people actually mean when they call something a railroad? Take our Dragon Heist adventure. Sure, the opening adventure is pretty linear - but, it's the introduction adventure, so that usually gets a pass. It's pretty hard to plop down in a wide open sandbox right out of the chute. You need to ground the players a little bit into the setting. Then there's clearing out and setting up the Trollskull Manor. Now, this isn't a railroad. This is very open. There's no fixed schedule for what needs to be done, no particular order or in fact no particular reason to do any specific task. Add to that the tasks from the various factions, which are all a la carte, and this is a very wide open section of the adventure that can last quite a while. Then once that's settled, we have the meat of the season's adventure starting with the explosion outside the Trollskull Manor. Yup, pretty linear, although, it's possible to shortcut (my group certainly did) various tasks and each task has multiple potential resolutions. It's linear, but, not particularly railroady. Then you have the finale with the dragon. Bog standard dungeon crawl, more or less. Is this a railroad? Not really, IMO. Parts of it are linear, and parts are very wide open. For my group, the wide open parts were the ones that failed and failed rather hard. They absolutely wanted rails. At the end of the day, it really, really depends on the group. I think Dragon Heist's biggest problem is it really, really needs buy in from the players. If the players don't care about the setting this adventure will fail hard. [/QUOTE]
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