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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 8515769" data-attributes="member: 97077">I would say (as the DMG does) that there are two types of adventures: Location-Based and Event-Based. Location-based adventures involve the characters exploring some forgotten ruin or wilderness location. An event-based adventure involves the interaction between the characters and the villains as the villains do their dastardly deeds - the location is secondary. A given campaign - which is just a series of adventures - may have a mix of both. All of them will take place in a world or setting.The rest is really about how the DM structures the prep and what processes are used to present and resolve content. A DM might use a hex crawl or a point crawl design for location-based adventuring and as part of world-design and a detailed dungeon map for certain locations. An event-based adventure might just be a timeline of the villain's actions that will occur if the PCs don't intervene, plus relevant locations where some of the action takes place and NPCs that can help or hinder the PCs. As above, it may be a mix of these things.Whether or not something is a "railroad" depends on the DM. Railroading isn't about the linearity of the structure of the adventure in my view, but rather whether the DM interferes with the players' ability to make reasonably informed choices that change the direction of the adventure and campaign. It's a subversion of what the players want to do. If, on the other hand, the DM and players all agree that they will play a particular adventure path ahead of time and will stick to it, then this is not railroading. There is no coercion or subversion happening here. The players have made an agreement and a choice to stick to the prepared material as best they can. If, however, the DM presents the option to engage in the adventure path or not and the players choose not only to find they're engaged in it anyway, then we probably have a case of railroading.</blockquote>

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