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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oryan77" data-source="post: 6382857" data-attributes="member: 18701">That would work just fine for me. The sandbox games that I played didn't even give that kind of option. Even then, I would hope that the DM has a good idea about what each of those adventures entail. Or be really good at making them fun. Cause you can usually tell when a DM is making up his adventure when he goes. It's usually pretty bland, mostly just "random" encounters, and there is no real twists or suspenseful scenarios and NPCs.Definitely. We've always had a hard time pinpointing on a broad scale as to what exactly makes something a sandbox and a railroad. I'm pretty sure though that when it comes to talking about specific adventures, we're all on the same page for the most part. People are calling a published adventure with a linear storyline (path) a railroad. And adventures that give lots of location fluff, timelines, and behind the scenes actions that allow PCs to skip around chapters and even avoid chapters all together as a sandbox. So my beef is with saying that one so much more important than the other, as if the other (the linear railroad adventures) are a huge mistake. I personally find the more flexible adventures way harder to prepare as a DM and they are overwhelming to me since I have a poor memory and need to make charts just to keep up with their details. I've never ran a railroad adventure and thought anything negative about it, unless there is a scene that requires PCs to bypass a puzzle (or similar) in order to move on. Even then, I've never found it to be a negative on the adventure style itself and things like that can always be worked out.It starts out with me wanting to run a certain type of adventure, or I ask the players what kind of adventure or locations they'd like to play in. Lately I've had an itching to run another arabian or egyptian type adventure in my Planescape game. So I'll find a published adventure that looks good or has had good reviews. Maybe it's a pyramid dungeon crawl. I buy it, read it, and prepare it. I put a ton of prep work into it. I probably spend twice as long prepping it as I do running it. Maybe even more. That's part of the fun for me though.So when I do this, there is no way it will go to waste. Even if the players are talking about traveling to the nearby snow covered mountains, they'll be playing in this egyptian pyramid adventure. That's the part where I railroad them. It depends on the current situation, but I would never be blatantly obvious that I'm railroading them. I might let them go to the mountain, and then something happens that causes them to end up in the desert (the benefits of Planescape). Or maybe something happens in town that convinces them to put the mountain journey on hold and travel to the desert instead (their decision, not mine...I just tricked them into wanting to make that decision). Any way I do it, it is done in a way that they want to do it or enjoy the change in direction. Also, now that I know they want to go to the mountain, I can prepare a mountain adventure while we are running the pyramid adventure. So I repeat the process.While I'm running the pyramid adventure, I railroad them to stay on track by using the same methods. I will adjust things accordingly so their choices feel meaningful. I don't put up an obvious wall so they can't veer off, but we'll end up doing a full circle to get back on track because I want to run the adventure and have my fun too. If I need them to do something because the adventure calls for it, and they just aren't going in that direction, I'll guide them down the tracks so we move on with the adventure. I just don't make it obvious.Among all of that, I incorporate backstory and write my own adventures (or run published ones) geared towards particular PCs. They can even tell me where they want to go and I'll run an adventure (most likely published) based on that. But I will railroad them through the adventure so we finish it. And if I don't want to deal with what they are trying to do, I'll railroad them off those tracks until I can figure out what to do. Again, just don't make that obvious.This is why I was saying there is a difference in a railroad adventure, and a railroad campaign. I have no problem with a railroad adventure. I don't see why anyone would if it is fun. I do understand how a railroad campaign might be more boring to play in though if you never feel like your PC is yours and not just a character that the DM wrote into his story.</blockquote>

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