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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 1075981" data-attributes="member: 3400">Ultimately, any campaign focusing on a DM-delineated plotline is essentially a railroad. If you don't follow the adventure hooks to some degree, you won't get in on the plot. That said, there's a difference between DM-fiat railroading and DM-Player Cooperative Railroading. As DM, yes, I have a plot in mind and some stuff prepared. But I recognize I can't prepare for everything the players may want to do so I try to come up with ways to pull the PCs into the plotlines without it being excessively forcible. I want them to willingly agree to follow the plot because it's good for their characters and how they want to develop them or it fits in with the characters' listed motivations and desires.  And if they go a completely different direction, I'll come up with ways to potentially steer them back, on the fly if I have to, so that they end up coming back into the plotline. If I can't do that, then I have the extra work of dissassembling what I've got and reusing as much of it as I can. The players may have to endure some relatively short, disjointed, poorly integrated episodes as I rework some of my plans and come up with a scratch plotline.As Graf says above, a DM should be willling to let players deviate from the plot here and there, screw up here and there, and adapt and move on. He should never make his plot too rigid or dependent on the PCs following one course of action. He should present them with a situation whose resolution fits in with the goals (long or short term) of the PCs and let them deal with it from there.</blockquote>

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