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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 3439340" data-attributes="member: 20741">On the subject of railroading and science fiction / space opera settings...The problem with all futuristic settings is that they turn the entire game concept that began in Original D&D on its head and bring it to a complete polar opposite.Think about it. You go from a dungeon setting game where the choices a player has are relatively restricted - (in terms of where they will go - left or right, through the door or take the passage to the north) and replace it with a setting where player choice leaves a GALAXY of directions and choices as to where to go and what to do.While D&D started to branch out from this primitive dungeon into allowing the world to be more full explored as the game evolved - the choices for the players are still relatively restricted.But a Sci-Fi setting - especially one where the players have a ship - is about as far removed from D&D in terms of campaign adventure structure as you can possibly get.It becomes impossible as a GM to prepare for a Sci-Fi game where this level of player choice is available if the players are "wing-it" types. It's turns a controlled scenario into a totally 100% improvised game.Some DMs are better at that than others - but I think, generally speaking, the plain truth is that this overabundance of player choices is the root problem of all future setting games.How many SCi-Fi campaigns have you played in that lasted 50 or 80 sessions of improv play? Seriously. How many?  Do you know other gamers who have played in such campaigns for years?Because I don't. I've never met anybody who has. And I mean  never.There are some out there perhaps - but in my experience, this has to be a rare event.My point: I think it is deceptive and mostly a delusion to apply the "railroading sucks" mantra that many ENworlders natter on about endlessly in a D&D setting,  without understanding that most Sci-Fi games NEED railroading and overarching plots of some kind to have even a chance of survival. Otherwise, the magnitude of choices presented to "players with a ship" is just so far beyond those of the "PCs with horses" that to pretend they are equivalent does a great disservice to everyone discussing it.  They are NOT the same.</blockquote>

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