It needs to be more of a sandbox than a railroad?

[ExploderWizard]

I like your points. I think they make nearly any published adventure hard to run as published. Almost all published adventures either set out an area and its inhabitants, or set out a series of events/locations for the PCs to progress through.

With the former, it is very hard for "what happens next to make sense in the context of PCs, NPCs and setting" unless the GM injects most of that content. Or unless you count as "makes sense" nothing more elaborate than the orcs from room 2 rush in when they hear combat between the PCs and the orcs in room 1. That is a very narrow form of "meaningful choice" which is well-suited for a certain sort of classic D&D game but I think is different from what many contemporary players are after.

With the latter - event/travel-to-locations type adventures - the basic issue is that the story of the PCs is prescripted. Which is mostly at odds with "reactions/outcomes to previous activities demonstrating an effect and change on the setting".

A good example of a module with a plot, that does not also pre-script the story of the PCs is L2 The Assassin's Knot. The module is a murder mystery investigation that leaves players to their own devices on going about solving the case. There are location & NPC details, and also a timeline of events which will progress in a certain manner if the PCs do nothing or are ineffective in their efforts.

It is available free on the wizards website

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20001229b

 

[pemerton]

There's no difference between a choice and a false choice, from a railroading perspective.

I don't quite understand this.

Suppose the PCs are enemies of a cult (either as part of their backstory, or as a result of an earlier episode of play).

The GM, to open the session, says something along the lines of "As you are walking through town, you see someone you think is following you, on the other side of the street. She's wearing a cloak and hood, but you think you recognise the tatoo on her neck - it reminds you of the one that the cultists wore."

That forces a choice. But I don't see how it is a railroad. If the GM doesn't present the players with situations that invite them to make choices for their PCs, I'm not sure how the game is meant to take place.

 

[gamerprinter]

I wrote and published a short module/long encounter product called Haiku of Horror: Autumn Moon Bath House set in the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) that includes a detailed hand-drawn 5 story Japanese bath house, a cast of NPCs comprised of owner, attendants, guests and neighbors, several haunts, a curse and a tragic ghost. A single haunt has the trigger of midnight (every day at midnight the haunt is triggered) which starts the activities, but beyond that, there is no story per se, rather a ghost with a curse that forces the PCs to need to lay it to rest (if they fail their saves). Once the curse is placed, the location serves as a sand-box for a general murder mystery to resolve the problem.

Note: the Ju-on curse doesn't necessarily force the affected PCs to do anything, however, the curse moves the anchor that holds the ghost to the bath house location (the site of the murder) to the affected PCs so that when the ghost rejuvenates, she appears whereever the PCs are and will continue to rejuvenate and attack the cursed PCs until she is laid to rest. That's a curse, not a railroad.