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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 5914709">That depends HIGHLY upon the group.  And honestly, the number of people who post here advocating for a D&D that is little more than LOTR makes me think a LOT of people like very story-heavy games.HOWEVER, a story will be generated either beforehand, or after the game, in the end your game can only ever follow one path, even if you split up the party, the story still covers all their separate doings.I like to create stories in my games, but I integrate them into the game-world as events that are going on.  There's generally a rough sketch of how I think things might have to go if the group seeks to handle these events, a "plot" of sorts that would have to be generally followed to bring these events to a conclusion.I don't consider this railroading, there are specific "sites" that the enemies are targetting, and the best way to stop the enemy is to engage them there.  The further a party moves into engaging a specific enemy, or specific event, the less able they are to extricate themselves from the problem.  I find the idea that the party can just up and grab their stuff after defeating half the Eladrin revolution, aiding the Wood Elf kingdom, and then just walk off into somewhere else.  I do believe that by that point, their alliances and actions would have rippled far enough to cause serious consequences for failing to complete the event.Anyway, again, how much of a railroad is enjoyable depends on the party, and how much of a railroad is tolerated, depends highly upon the cleverness of the DM.  I mean, ENWorld's own Burning Crusade campaign is highly linear, but it's still a very fun and engaging game to play.  There's player-control when necessary, but again, there's no ability for the party to just take a boat to another land without serious consequences, or some heavy railroading keeping them in the game.Again, a story is created beforehand, and followed.  Or a story is created by the adventures of a group.  As above, the further a party involves itsself into some kind of event, the less realistic I find it that they can just pack up without repercussions.  From something as simple as the town being overrun by Kobolds, and then the families of the townsfolk send out assassins after the party that abandoned their town, or the King arresting the party as they try to leave for being traitors because they helped only so far, but decided to quit half-way through.By mere existence in the game-world, the players are automatically invested in it's outcomes.  It should be highly improbable, if not impossible, for them to simply switch paths half-way through.  I believe some method of forcing players to engage their current events is highly preferable to a world which has no care for their doings or deeds.</blockquote>

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