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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9543284" data-attributes="member: 4937">My thoughts on railroading began with the realization that it was a meaningless term and yet the thing people were trying to describe was real.  Your stricter definition won't work, and it won't be me alone noticing that.  One of the long running sources of comedy in Knights of the Dinner Table is B.A.'s efforts to railroad the players into the stories he images and the players forever evading those stories in various ways.   At one point B.A. gets fed up and prepares a linear adventure with a single path to follow with literally impenetrable forests and literally impassable mountains.  Of course, the party gets derailed thinking the impenetrable forest is a puzzle to solve and spends all their time uselessly attacking it or trying to bypass it.  B.A. gets frustrated and leaves, and the frustrated players thinking they've been presented with an unfair problem check his notes to find that he's written something like "No action taken by the players allows them to pass into the forest". You're trying to tell me that it's only a railroad if I react and not if I literally prepare a linear adventure that can't be deviated from?  Does that really make sense?  How does it matter how I achieve the PC's having no agency so that I get the story I wanted?  Isn't the outcome what's important?Oh, there is, but whether or not they are a railroad isn't the distinction.</blockquote>

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