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<blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5303046" data-attributes="member: 21169">Railroading is a hotly debated topic on ENWorld and the term has multiple meanings.One is non-pejorative and just means 'the opposite of a sandbox'. The idea is of a continuum with the perfect railroad at one end and the perfect sandbox at the other. All real games fall somewhere in between but can be sandbox-wards or railroad-wards.Another definition is pejorative and refers to the GM denying options to the players to which they feel entitled. There is a strongly subjective element to this definition of railroading.I think there's a big difference between freedom at the start of an adventure and freedom at other points. Lack of freedom at the start, railroading, such as the paladins and red dragon example above, is widely accepted. Mostly players will bite adventure hooks. However I think loss of freedom at later points is widely regarded as less acceptable, the bad kind of railroading. An example of this would be the auto-capture at the end of A3 or the BBEG vampire escaping by carriage in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade.This is mostly how I do it. I don't prepare that many adventures for each session, so I expect the players to bite hooks. Once they do, they have a lot of freedom. That said, my current game seems to have so many avenues for adventure now, that I may be reluctantly forced to call it a sandbox. I prepared a four level dungeon for last session (it had a map! and wandering monster tables!), the previous one having ended with the PCs on the first level near the entrance, and then they promptly left as fast as they could, never returning. I had to make up some crap about ogres!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Doug McCrae, post: 5303046, member: 21169"] Railroading is a hotly debated topic on ENWorld and the term has multiple meanings. One is non-pejorative and just means 'the opposite of a sandbox'. The idea is of a continuum with the perfect railroad at one end and the perfect sandbox at the other. All real games fall somewhere in between but can be sandbox-wards or railroad-wards. Another definition is pejorative and refers to the GM denying options to the players to which they feel entitled. There is a strongly subjective element to this definition of railroading. I think there's a big difference between freedom at the start of an adventure and freedom at other points. Lack of freedom at the start, railroading, such as the paladins and red dragon example above, is widely accepted. Mostly players will bite adventure hooks. However I think loss of freedom at later points is widely regarded as less acceptable, the bad kind of railroading. An example of this would be the auto-capture at the end of A3 or the BBEG vampire escaping by carriage in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade. This is mostly how I do it. I don't prepare that many adventures for each session, so I expect the players to bite hooks. Once they do, they have a lot of freedom. That said, my current game seems to have so many avenues for adventure now, that I may be reluctantly forced to call it a sandbox. I prepared a four level dungeon for last session (it had a map! and wandering monster tables!), the previous one having ended with the PCs on the first level near the entrance, and then they promptly left as fast as they could, never returning. I had to make up some crap about ogres! [/QUOTE]

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