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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SKyOdin" data-source="post: 4581235" data-attributes="member: 57939">This gets down to the heart of things. My big theory on railroading is that it is the result of a DM who plans things out heavily beforehand. The more heavily planned out a campaign is, the more likely it is to involve a lot of railroading.For example, a certain DM may have his entire campaign planned out in advance, with every encounter pre-built before the players even start (which can easily happen if the DM relies heavily on modules). Specific NPC dialogue may already be written out. In order to use this material as written, the DM needs to be a little heavy-handed with railroading.Another DM may write out an adventure in the week leading up to the D&D session where he comes up with a plotline and a set of of pre-built encounters. The DM intends to use all of the encounters in order during the session, but leaves himself enough room to fiddle around with details and modify events to match player actions.A third DM comes into a D&D session with his notes on what happened last session, his notes on the motivations of various NPCs, and an index of various monsters he could throw together to form an appropriate combat encounter. From there, he wings it. This DM is almost incapable of railroading, since he doesn't have a particular direction for the adventure in mind.This is obviously a very simplified way of looking at things, particularly since railroading vs. not-railroading vs. illusionism vs. sandbox is more of a broad spectrum, but I think it is a useful one. Now then, Krensky, because you mention that you use "improv notes", talk about doing some significant tweaking and swapping of antagonists, plot structure and the like around, I don't think that you are actually doing something different than the illusionism that some others proposed. As far as I understand it, illusionism involves using the exact same stats, encounters, etc. no matter what path the PCs take, in order to give the illusion of player freedom. Since you are talking about making tweaks and adjustments, what you are doing is one or two steps removed from that. Since I haven't played in one of your games, I won't presume to say how much player freedom your set-up allows.Going back to the basic point of this thread, I think that the most important step to avoid railroading is to not plan out the future of the campaign in meticulous detail. A DM's campaign notes should be more "improv notes" than a set script. A DM who doesn't want to railroad should be prepared to adapt material, change encounters, improvise NPCs on the spot, and rewrite the story at the drop of a hat.</blockquote>

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