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That's a good point too. We used to bounce around systems A LOT back then. Part of having so much more free time I suppose. But, thinking back to the 80's and into the early 90's (basically high school and uni), I must have played more than a dozen different systems.

I'd suggest that we'd probably all benefit collectively if people took responsibility for their means of communication instead of blaming everyone else around them for "looking to be offended". When you use a term you absolutely know is going to antagonize people, you don't get to look around...

Well, there's no real way to know. I mean, going back to the old WotC surveys, the average half life of a campaign was something like 12 months. That's why 3e was designed the way it was - so that you could get the full game experience (1-20) in something like 12-18 months. There's no real...

Exactly right. The term "campaign" while it might vary a bit - you mean it somewhat differently than I do, for example - is never meant in any sort of negative context. You run a campaign. I run a campaign. At no point is anyone going to see that in a negative light. Pretending that...

Well, actually, yes it makes perfect sense. Very, very few people have ever played in these open, multi-year campaigns. Even back in the day, it was very uncommon for people to play that way. It's not like there weren't serial adventures back then - GDQ, A1-4, the U series, just to name a...

Oh, fair enough. Although, I would clarify that this is hardly new for me. Even all the way back in the dark ages of the eighties when we started play, it was the same. Campaigns had a half life of about 18 months at most. Once I hit university, campaigns had a half life of a school year -...

I think this is where we agree. To me, it's the conflation of linear -which @hawkeyefan straight up admits that he doesn't see a difference - with railroad that causes all sorts of problems. Like you say, AP's are linear. Well, mostly anyway. There are a few more sandboxy AP's out there...

LOL. While we might disagree on some stuff, we're very much in the same boat here. I'm really happy with my current crop of players who are much more interested in faffing around and poking into stuff. Out of the Abyss, for example, is pretty linear as written. It doesn't have to be, but...

Ok, I'll take a stab at this. Railroad: The DM has a pre-determined outcome The DM will force this pre-determined outcome regardless of any action the players take. The DM can force this pre-determined outcome in a number of ways, including straight up cheating/changing numbers/ignoring rules...

Well, that's the base of the problem though isn't it. We might both be using the term "railroad" but, we are not speaking the same language. It's miscommunication all the way down. And that's not your fault. I'm certainly not blaming anyone for that. To me, the term rail road has always...

Yes, but, remember, most commonly, a campaign only has a half life of about 18-24 months, tops. After that campaign taps out, you simply pull out a new campaign and start again. The idea of "running out of ideas" gets a lot less of a problem when you constantly start new campaigns. I mean...

I am going to disagree with you here. Linear =/= Railroad. Like, at all. Railroad specifically talks about a degenerate form of play where the restrictions being placed on the game are unreasonable and are being done in order to promote a specific outcome dictated by the DM. Linear is...

I get that. I have players like this as well. I actually put it to the players fairly recently, asking how much freedom they wanted. Did they want me to sort of hold up signs saying, "Adventure thisaways" or did they want to hunt on their own? And their response was mostly they wanted me to...

::hangs head in embarrassment.:: Thank you kind people. I'll be over here if you need me. :p Been on these boards forever and I never knew you could do that. Wow.

As you can see (now posting this from Chrome) none of the text formatting buttons are lit up. But, in Chrome they are all functional. Erm... No idea how this happened.

So, this is a weird one. None of the text formatting buttons work for me while I'm in Firefox. And the quick keys don't work either. If I CTRL-B, it opens bookmarks instead of bolding the text. I'm going to do a screenshot of this, then post it using Chrome.

Because it's apropos: