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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8996298" data-attributes="member: 29398">There's an in-between state that I think many would still define as railroading, that being that there's lots of different rails that go lots of different places and crisscross numerous times while doing so (think the London Underground) and the primary player-side choice is which rail to ride until a crossing point comes along, where they can - if they like - transfer to a different rail.Very much so, yes; in that enough elements of the outcome are already known (e.g. if all the PCs with all their gear are present now, none of them can have died or lost everything three days ago in the flashback) to make it one.Flashbacks in RPGs are neither cool nor fun.  They work great in books and movies where the end-state of the plot is written down but don't work in situations where the story is emergent and the end-state is by definition unknown and unforeseeable.  If played through as normal you have to railroad the hell out of the flashback in order to prevent it changing too many elements already established in the "present day".The whole campaign might not be on rails but everything that allows that foreordained conclusion to occur has to be, or else it doesn't occur. (I was thinking about this just the other day after re-reading some of The Belgariad, the entirety of which works on this premise with the key thing being that many of the protagonists don't always realize they're pawns in a greater game and just go about their lives; lives which in fact are one great big railroad)I'm not saying this is a bad thing, if done in moderation (Eddings massively overdoes it), but let's call it what it is. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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