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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 9559816" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Well... There is railroading and there is... plot motivation? I'm really not sure about the term. Expanding on this particular context. 1) The game was politically heavy. We started with one of the character's being royalty and the others working at the castle. Then the royal character's Aunt killed most of her family and took over the kingdom, with us fleeing into the wilderness. 2) The Knight worked for the Aunt, was a murderous jerk, and (as I remembered AFTER the fight) was the head of a Knightly Order. Working with him was "impossible" for our characters. Also, he wasn't after us, he was there for the castle and its occupants3) The castle was a stated goal from the beginning of the campaign, but also it was the location that a tribe of orcs had taken refuge in. This tribe a) Had evidence against the Aunt (she was claiming a plague had taken the royal family) b) was holding the royal character's little brother as collateral. So.... there was no other way for this to go. Not because none of our decisions would have mattered, but because to abandon the orcs and the little brother was unthinkable and would actively hurt our goals, and because the people we were dealing with were powerful, wealthy, and wanted us dead or captured. And it could feel like a railroad, except at the beginning of the campaign, we all agreed that a political drama with one character playing royalty while the others played her retainers sounded like it could be a ton of fun, and so we bought into that initial premise. And from there, we couldn't exactly decide in-character to stop caring about the things we cared about.</blockquote>

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