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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 7053992" data-attributes="member: 3400">What this is all telling me is that you have a very narrow definition of "plot" and very wide definition of "railroad". And clearly your definitions of these are out of sync with many of the rest of us.The way I see things, there may be a main plot when you retrospectively look back on a campaign, particularly if you focus on one set of players and their PCs in a particular timeframe, but there are also supplementary plots and sequences of events occurring all the time that crisscross with the main plot. But then, I've also participated in campaigns that involved multiple groups, multiple PCs, multiple locations, all within the same campaign setting that we viewed as one campaign, not multiple campaigns. So each of these groups had main plots, some intersected with other groups, and all intersected with the advancing timelines the DM worked through his campaign from wars to summoning great demons to little quests for valuables or lost mines. So for me, in RPGs, plots are mutable, intersecting things, constantly being interfered with by both PCs and NPCs. Yet, since they all advance in time even if we do not interfere with them, they're all plots in the sense that they are all sequences of events causally linked together. Your definition of plot works from a literary viewpoint in which a novel presents a primary sequence of events (though a lot of multivolume serials tend push the envelope on that definition pretty hard). But in an RPG, I don't think that works very well, not if the DM is trying to present a world in which things happen that aren't simply focused around the PCs (or one group of PCs). To use a particular metaphor, it's like a 10,000 foot view of the setting, viewing the highlights, but if you zoom in to a 1000 foot or 100 foot setting, you'll see a lot more plots running at the same time.  Your definition of plot is what you get if you're running a single character-driven TV show, but mine is more like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (including the TV shows).And as far as your definition of railroad, just because a DM has events planned out, if the PCs can choose to interfere with them or not interfere with them, I don't think it's a railroad. Plots operating in the background that affect the PCs in various ways, whether positively or negatively, aren't railroads if the choices the players make still matter. If the evil baron is oppressing the serfs particularly badly and I can choose to get involved or not get involved, then that baron plot isn't a railroad. If I came into the campaign playing a champion of truth and justice, then what that baron is doing may push my buttons enough that I can't let it pass by. But that's my choice because I chose to play a character who would care about such things.</blockquote>

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