Is this adventure idea/setup logical/railroading?

[Noldor Elf]

Thank you for nice advice.

- I think that it's best to have just part of the village in the plot. Other villagers would have no other knowledge about actions than what the people who plotted it had told them. Naturally this opens a possibility that someone from village saw what actually happened.
- The villagers who are on the plot are quite important for the village: smith, herbalist/magewright and some hunters as main actors in the plot.
- Sleep spell is great solution to how they disabled the guards. I had thought that the memory of the caravan crew had been kept blurry by some alchemical potion that the herbalist have given to them while he had been taking care of them.
- If only small group of villagers are in the plot, it makes it more plausible that information about missing cargo is sent quite rapidly onwards, thus allowing party to arrive.
- I have to agree that letting werewolf escape and really cause the damage adds tension to the scene. More reason for certain individuals to be afraid (and perhaps hate) the monks, more reason to players get involved with the monastery.
- For using the silver, the villagers are probably acting based on myths and not very accurate knowledge. I thought that they are just trying to forge silverbars into weapons. Some clue that this is happening might still be usefull.
- I would rule (haven't checked) that werewolves in Eberron are tied to some specific moon (perhaps even individually). Full moon in the adventure thus being in relation to the same moon as during escape of the werewolf last time.

This is starting to get good shape. Just hoping to get game scheduled soon.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Also check out this article on lycanthropes and the Silver Purge:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050404a

This sounds like an excellent adventure to me. There's a conception out there that any kind of plot outline or plan for the PCs is railroading, but I don't think that's the case at all. Railroading is when either: a) The PCs have a single path that they must follow and cannot deviate from (such as the mysterious fog example above, or a linear line of clues that goes from A to B to C) or, b) When the outcome of the adventure is predetermined to the point where the PC's actions don't matter (the classic example here is that of the villain who gets away at the end of the module, no matter what, in order to return in the future).

As long as you've got multiple avenues for the PCs to take, and the outcome is based on what they do rather than what you want set up for the next adventure, then you'll be fine. This adventure actually sounds like it gives a lot of free reign to the party- they have initial info on the setup, but everything else depends on them exploring the environment and finding the clues for themselves. As long as you have enough information for them to discover the plot, and decide what to do, then you're good to go.

 

[Dave Turner]

By including "actual facts", you've taken a step towards railroading.

Let's take the first one. The goblins absolutely had nothing to do with the attack and are being framed. If the PCs attacked the innocent goblins, then they're been duped by the villagers. But what if the players like the idea that the goblins did it? If they find out that they were lied to by the villagers, then they might feel that they're being railroaded. The players thought that events were a certain way, but the DM informs them that they weren't. This railroads the game into the predetermined vision that the DM had.

Why not look at the scenario and reconstruct it without any actual facts? Just give the players all the rumors and the villagers' story and see what they do with them. Do they agree that the goblins must be to blame? Then that becomes the "actual fact" of what happened. Do the players decide to follow the thread about the monastery and the lycanthropes? Then *that* becomes the "actual fact". Don't predetermine what the "actual facts" are.