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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6725722" data-attributes="member: 6681948">This seems to be another example of “if it is not bad, it is not a railroad”.  Railroading is neither good nor bad.  At an extreme, the characters could make the decision to seek out potent magic to allow them to travel to a different plane of existence, thus avoiding the campaign world (after getting out of it, anyway).  If that choice is frustrated, that is an element of railroading.To be clear, my posts that refer to “CHOO CHOO here comes the plot train” adopt the most anti-railroad, pro-sandbox gamers I have ever run across.  My own preferences, and approaches, are less sandbox-extreme, but they are my own preferences, and there are gamers whose preferences are much more sandboxy than my ownAgain, if we’re moving the information from place to place to place, we are railroading the players to at least encounter the information leading to the plot in question.  If they don’t find the clue to lead them to the goblin camp, and go somewhere else where they find clues leading to a completely unrelated wizard’s tower, now we are in the sandbox.  Again, if they walk away from the Dragon plotline, and you move the Dragon plotline to follow them, I would call that railroading.  You seem very defensive whenever it is suggested your approach is, in fact, a form of railroad, so I suspect you conflate “railroad” with “bad”.   To me, neither railroading nor sandboxing is inherently bad.  Both can be good or bad depending on how they are applied, and depending on the preferences of the gamers themselves.It is no different than any other means of repurposing the dungeon to something the characters encounter later, a strategy many on this thread favour.  Again, “railroad” does not equal “bad”.  As my examples become more extreme, the railroad becomes more and more “GM forcing players to activity they do not wish to undertake”.  That makes the game less fun, and that is bad.  In this case, we have found a situation which is both “bad” and “railroad”.  That does not mean all examples of “railroad” are bad.We’re trying to run a campaign that the players enjoy.  I have certainly met players who feel their characters should interact with a pre-existing world that does not morph to suit the characters.  For those players “we did not find the Magic Mcguffin and so we were wiped out” is the logical and appropriate result.  These players might, in fact, be offended if the DM said “hold up, guys, you will be wiped out if you go there before here”, or even if the DM prevented the PC’s from going the wrong way with a trail of bread crumbs.It is a matter of degree, and different gamers find different balances they prefer.It is not the way you wish to handle it.  It isn’t the way I’d likely handle it.  It is the way other gamers, more focused on the “sandbox” would wish to handle it.  Their way is not objectively “terrible”, any more than yours or mine is.You are assuming the players want to experience the plot you have created, rather than carve out their own plot, or engage in a more episodic playstyle.  For a lot of players, that will be true.  For others, it will not be.Actually, my players tend to discuss their plans, so it’s not hard to assess whether they are seeking information and assistance to help them engage the dragon, or just want to do something other than dragon hunt.  But they like a plot, and are not opposed to a railroad, to a degree.  They are not sandbox-centric.You seem to conflate “your game has elements of a railroad” with “your game is no fun”.  I believe the former is true, and the latter is not.  A game can be a railroad and still be fun.  It can be a sandbox and suck.  And the opposite can be true of both.  As well, the same game can be fun for some players and suck for others, solely because they have different visions on the appropriate degrees of “railroad” and “sandbox”.At the extreme of “sandbox”, I think that is true.</blockquote>

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