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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1869767" data-attributes="member: 812">Now you're confusing me.How is not assuming the players will take one course of action or another the same as FORCING THEM TO CHANGE THEIR PERSONALITIES?Cause I have trouble seeing that one, myself.Some people are active and some are reactive. What I'm talking about has nothing to do with personality.What I'm saying is, that since you can't count on your players to automatically do what YOU THINK they should do, you ought to plan for the eventuality that they won't, and have things ready to happen to keep the game interesting even if they don't go off and tackle the bad guy you've set up for them.Whether or not your players are active or reactive people has nothing to do with it.Active people can follow your story OR they can just go running off after some idea you never saw coming. What do you do then?If you're railroading, you try and get them to do what you had planned.If you're not railroading, you come up with some way of keeping the story fun and thrilling and cool. Which, unless I've been doing this wrong all my life, involves coming up with THINGS TO HAPPEN."We're not going to go after the Nameless Tyrant. We're going to go up into the mountains to find the secret lair of the Frost Giant King.""Okay, you're heading up through the pass when suddenly a huge form rises up in front of you and raises its axe. Roll for initiative."Hey, look! A bad thing just happened to the party. Is that suddenly going to change their very nature? What is this, hypnotism? "You are getting sleepy... You feel... reactive... lethargic... You have no will of your own..."Sheesh.The basic function of a DM is to invent things to happen to the party. If you only invent things that will happen IF the party takes a certain course of action, and then try to force the party to take that action even when they think of something else they'd rather do, you are railroading. If you invent things to happen to them REGARDLESS of what they do, or can come up with stuff on the fly in response to whatever they do, you are NOT railroading.Not railroading is less risky than railroading because railroading is only fun if your players want to follow the course you're prepared to accept. If they are, then both styles are equally fun, but if they aren't then not railroading is more fun, so not railroading is less risky.I don't really know how to make this more clear. Let me know what you're having difficulty grasping.</blockquote>

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