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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4205351" data-attributes="member: 5143">True.  Besides, I don't think railroading is even bad in all cases.  A lot of people on these boards shout "Railroad!" all the time like its the end of the world.(I'd like to state in advance that although some of my ideas may be similar to some of the ideas presented in the 4e DMG, that I'm not trying to break my NDA for anyone who might be reading this.  A lot of them are common sense and things I knew about role playing long before I read it.  Please don't hurt me.)That being said, let's move on.The idea of designing and running an adventure is fairly simple.  You, as a DM, are supposed to come up with framework and basic "shell" of the adventure.  The players interact with that shell and provide the details.It's a lot like a choose your own adventure novel.  As a DM, you design a "problem" or "conflict".  Then you present the idea to the players.  There are large portions of the adventure that you'll be able to predict in advance as they will be so obvious or completely out of the player's hands.For instance:  There is an evil wizard who is trying to take over the world.  In order to do this, he has summoned a Demon Prince who will eventually provide him with an army of demonic creatures to take it over.  However, he has to do something for the Demon Prince first.  He must provide the Prince's minions with a large amount of humans to be used as food.  The wizard doesn't want to draw too much attention to him so he has paid some slavers for that many slaves.  Problem is that the slavers don't have that many.  So they are traveling around the country kidnapping people who are walking down the road or in the middle of the night in alleys.So, you have the plot of an adventure.Next, you need a framework of how an adventure will likely play out:  The PCs are in a city when they hear rumors about people going missing mysteriously.  They will likely investigate and be lead to the slavers who will give up the wizard who the PCs will track down and defeat.That's the basic framework.  It plays out in a couple of different modes:Exploration: The players interact with their immediate environment.  You narrate what their environment looks like, what the NPCs around them do, and answer questions.Combat: The players battle some enemies.Decisions: The players are given the choice as to which direction the plot takes(either short term or long term)The point of all this?Players aren't supposed to be able to make decisions ALL the time during an adventure.  They don't get to decide what the NPCs do, they don't get to decide what rooms look like, they don't get to decide what happens to them if they choose to go left rather than right.  In all those cases, it is up to the DM to "railroad" them.  It is only at the Decision points that the PCs are given the choice of which way to go or what to do.How does this all relate to Skill Challenges?  Well, one thing to keep in mind is that a Skill Challenge should be run in Exploration mode.  In the same way that you would describe a room of a dungeon and allow the players to interact with it, so should a skill challenge provide the players a chance to do something, have the results of the action explained to them and try something else.Some skills might never be used because the chance to use them doesn't come up in the running narrative of the skill challenge.  I think that's the key to understanding them.  At least it was for me.  I can say that running skill challenges has not been easy for me.  It is a whole new skill to learn and it requires thinking in a bit different way than I am used to.</blockquote>

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