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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6701536" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yes, but I've not yet given the definition of "a railroad".  I've only given the definition of "railroading".  The definition of "a railroad" is some thing like a campaign or adventure marked by heavy-handed and consistent use of railroading techniques.  The definition of railroading though is simply, a list of techniques.Because "a railroad" involves a measurement of things that are hard to quantify, it makes precisely defining "a railroad" difficult.  But having a list of techniques at least lets us be conscious of when we are doing things that might turn our game into a railroad, even if exactly when we've gone to far is harder to define.You provide a list of situations which if present you argue that this particular railroading technique would not turn the whole adventure or campaign into "a railroad", and for my part if I want I'm free to agree with you without quibble and without it harming my point.   Yes, it may be true that with those additional details player agency is not sufficiently constrained to make this "a railroad" (noun), but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be conscious of the fact that you have "railroaded" (verb) the players to get them to the destination. As for whether or not dungeon crawls constitute a railroad, there are plenty who have argued before that they do, in cases where features that they feel give the players enough agency are missing.  For example, some sand box purists I've heard argue what amounts to, "If you have to go into the dungeon, then its a railroad."   It's worth noting that even if the have the choice to not enter the dungeon, if the only island of content that exists until the dungeon is entered is the dungeon (common in cRPGs which almost invariably are railroads), chances are it is either Small World or False Choice technique.   Likewise, many sand box purists have noted that many published dungeons are constructed as a linear series of rooms to advance through, though they may take steps to disguise that fact by making the path crooked or appear to fork with a meaningless side excursion.   For them, that's enough to make the dungeon a sort of railroad.   Your only choices are to advance to the next room or else do nothing, with the latter not being a real choice since it is equivalent to not playing.And for that matter, these complaints echo what you yourself have advanced.  In your own terms. If the players can choose not to engage with the dungeon, and instead engage with different meaningful content, it's not a railroad.If the players can choose from sufficiently large number of different paths and approaches to navigating the dungeon, then it's not a railroad.If the players can choose to advance to a specific location out of some explicit order, then it's not railroad.But while all of that may be true, the converse - labeling something a railroad when it lacks all these features is trickier.  Some people will claim that a linear dungeon you just have to explore to the end is a railroad, others will claim it is not because if it were many dungeon crawls would be railroads.   This later group will point to different features, like the fact that there might be more than one way to 'solve' each room.</blockquote>

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