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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7055561" data-attributes="member: 6775031">NPC villains are frequently proactive, especially at the start of the campaign, when the PCs haven't done anything for them to react against. Many a campaign has been kicked off by the Big Bad capturing a royal heir, or stealing the magic crystal. That the forces of good will fail to hold off the forces of evil, unless the PCs intervene, is part of the premise which makes the campaign worth running. Given the multitude of possible worlds that we could play in, the world where the PCs might make a difference is much more interesting than one where good or evil will prevail regardless of their choices.But that's all part of the premise. It happens entirely outside of the game. Choosing which premise to start from is like choosing which movie to watch or novel to read. We can only judge the integrity of a story by how well it follows from the premise.  It's also (ideally) played with dice, much like an adventure path. The numbering of plans that are simultaneously in motion has no significance upon whether those unfold organically or through contrivance. You can railroad three plot arcs as easily as you can railroad one, as long as the DM insists on biasing their outcomes.In most such games, there's probably going to be a most-obvious path that will get the PCs from point A to point Z, but they don't need to follow that path if they have any better ideas. You don't need to go take out the Dragon in the Dragon's Den before you confront the Big Bad. You don't even necessarily need to deal with the Dragon, or befriend it, or acknowledge its existence in any way. The players have the freedom to do whatever makes sense to their characters. The only limit is the actual capability of their characters to affect change within the world. The DM is operating under the same constraints - their NPCs can do whatever makes sense to them, limited only by their individual agencies (and motives) within the world.All railroading is done by the DM, because the DM is the only one with the agency to declare what is true within the world. The player can't decide that there is a nearby pitcher in which to catch blood, or that the one artifact they happened to find was also coincidentally the one that was being sought by an archaeological dig several days away, unless you're playing in one of those weird hippie games where that's a thing (usually moderated by some sort of metagame resource, like plot points). In D&D, nothing is true unless the DM decides that it is true. To do so, the DM can either make a judgment call based on known and unknown factors and possibly roll some dice to account for their own uncertainty, or they can just pick an outcome based on what they want to happen. In the context of this thread, as posited in the opening post, the latter method is railroading. It doesn't matter why the DM chooses that outcome; if they're doing it for any reason other than as a judgment call on what should naturally happen based on existing factors, then it's railroading. If the players decide to follow the plot in a certain direction that you did not expect, you have three basic options as the DM: 1) You can railroad against them, forcing the plot back toward your original path; 2) You can railroad with them, forcing the plot to develop in such a way that their new path will be interesting; or 3) You can make a judgment call about how that path would look, based on existing factors, and let it play out on its own merits.Most people in these forums are likely to say that (1) is bad, because it takes away player agency. Some people might say that (2) is good, because (1) is bad and (3) might very well be boring. All three choices have their own merits, but the fact remains that (1) and (2) are both cases of the DM railroading the players in the direction they want; the only difference is what the DM wants in each case.</blockquote>

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