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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8995587" data-attributes="member: 75787">[USER=4937]@Celebrim[/USER] I've noticed that when you start using game terms, you seem to use them in the most extreme version possible. When we were talking about fudging, you defined it as "anything that changes the record of the encounter", meaning that use of X-cards, deciding not to narrate a villain death scene, shortening a scene for pacing -- everything is defined as "fudging".Similarly here, you seem to be defining any constraint placed on players actions that is not requied by the world definition  as railroading.Now here's the thing about railroads. They have rails. Lots of it, and you stay on it all the time. Having one fixed piece of track does not make a railroad -- you need it all the way. If I put a piece of track outside my front door in Chicago, and a friend in Berlin put a piece of track outside their front door, it would be ludicrous to suggest I had built a Chicago-Berlin railroad. Now perhaps some small gaps are admissible, but in the normal sense of the word, a railroad is an essentially complete system of transport on rails where little to no deviation is allowed.In game terms, it's ok to broaden this a little bit, but for a game to be a railroad, it must remove player agency at least a high percentage of the time. Maybe not 99%+, as a real-world railroad does, but it's got to be the predominant fact of the campaign. We can debate the exact percentage of the time, but your assertion that a Pendragon campaign that lasts 5 years is a railroad because it has one fixed point in it is like my proposed Chicago-Berlin railroad. It's a ludicrous suggestion.I do not accept your extremist definition of railroading. One piece of track does not make a railroad. To be railroading, you need to be continually removing player agency to ensure a given fixed point.So, just to be clear, unless you can find community support for your extreme definition, I am not using it.The usual definition requires that a railroad reduces player agency. The fact that under your definition it can increase it makes it even more clear that your definition is basically just not a good one.Does anyone else think that the classic "fade to 3 days previously" is an example of railroading? That it takes away from player agency so much that it puts the whole adventure on rails? Again, your extreme use of the term means that even exceptionally common GM techniques that most people would agree are cool and fun fall into the pejorative term "railroading"I don't actually need to, as you stated "there are times you can railroad players in order to increase player agency", so you have already agreed that it can. But since you ask:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Because we knew that the target was definitely non-human, we did not spend a few hours following false leads or making enquiries that were going to lead into dead-ends. Our agency was not reduced because our characters were not stopped from doing so (there was no railroading), but with the additional knowledge, the players could concentrate on taking actions that were less likely to run into dead ends</li> </ul>Again, the extremism. I state that I plan, in probably 5 years of game time, to have a one fixed final scene, and Celebrim translates that to being a campaign running on rails. If I correlate time with distance, this is like saying that if lay 20 miles of track into Berlin, that is enough to establish a railroad between Chicago and Berlin.Yeah, they have. That has no conflict with the final battle fixed point.Amusingly, this might have been me. Certainly I posted somewhere that exact potential storyline (Sir Hwyel critted his Lustful roll on seeing her, then rolled 17 on 3d6 for his degree of effect -- I think he's on Amor (Gwenhyver) 26.But again, no conflict with the final battle fixed point.Again, no conflict with the final battle fixed point.I'll finish this response with your quote, because I think it shows the problem you are generating for yourself. You feel that a foreordained conclusion is exactly equivalent to a railroad -- indeed, anything anywhere along the way that is foreordained makes things a railroad.As the quote goes -- "you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does".  Now, maybe I'm wrong and one instance of fixed point means a "campaign on rails". But I'd need to hear that from a larger pool of people</blockquote>

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