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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9235081" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Its been strange observing people pitch rpgs as games where you can do or try anything and yet simultaneously refuse to run actual sandboxes. Thats where I feel a lot of the railroading behavior is coming from, as a contradiction in expectations. And historically, since Dragonlance there's been a persistent thread of attempts at (forcing) long form narratives, which also leads to this. But besides that, theres also the other kind of railroading, fudging. Having such a fundamental distrust in the fun of the game you're playing that you start selectively abandoning it in favor of fiat storytelling. Storytelling is fine and all, but if you don't find the game itself fun you should probably find something that is fun for you and play that. Its touchy, but thats the logic that leads me to believe a lot of people in the hobby don't actually like these games at all. Sure enough many are just stuck in an obligation to DND, but thats just more of the same idea. How many people ostensibly play and enjoy DND but have zero interest, to the point of active refusal, in playing something else? They may or may not genuinely like DND, but I think it says something if no other RPG can capture their interest, and it isn't really that DNDs better or does something some other game doesn't do (nevermind do better). It says that person probably doesn't actually like rpgs and wouldn't miss it if the game disappeared in the midst of whatever it is they're actually there for. But anyway, I soapboxed there what do you know. Long story short, railroading is an expectation issue. If you're going to try make a story happen, it should be collaborative unless everyone's on board with just riding the rails, and collaborative means it should be, at bare minimum, sandboxy, if not a true sandbox.</blockquote>

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