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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 1687101" data-attributes="member: 259">I'm not sure reailroading is always bad. I just ran the pilot session of a new game; the plot for the first session went roughly like this:-PCs, as part of a rebel force, search a field for an artifact.-The bad guys attack from a super-powerful ambush!  The PCs get basically no chance to detect this ambush (since it involves magics beyond their ken).-The rebel force is getting slaughtered!-The PCs fall down a hole torn in the battlefield by the magic.-After experiencing various trippy effects caused by the artifact, the PCs find the artifact, getting in one last fight with one of the lower-level bad guys. As you can tell, it was quite the railroad they were on.  And I knew that some players had trouble with the session, so I asked them all afterward for feedback. Turned out that the tripy stuff underground annoyed several of them, but they unanimously praised the first, extremely railroady section. Why did it work?  Here's my thoughts:-The railroading stemmed from the fact that the bad guys were so obviously outclassing the PCs.  Plus the one coincidence (the hole torn in the ground by the battle).-The bad guys had a good in-story reason for outclassing the PCs.-There was a certain appearance of freedom of choice.  I knew the PCs would fall down this hole at some point, but I waited until a good, dramatic moment to spring this on them.  When a PC described running backwards while firing shots at the enemy, why, that was the perfect opportunity <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=":)" />.-The railroading was over fairly quickly, at which point the PCs had more freedom of choice.  If all the following sessions were equally restrictive, I'd have a problem.-While it was railroady, the PCs had something fun to do.  Namely, they got to kill almost twenty enemy mooks in a running fight, and watch cool spectacles elsewhere on the battlefield.jmuchellio, I agree that some of your examples of railroading are problematic--but usually because they break suspension of disbelief.  If the mayor is attacked by an assassin, either the assassin is or isn't far more powerful than the PCs.  If she is more powerful, why doesn't she just kill the PCs?  If she isn't, why can't the PCs make a good attempt to capture her?  If the mayor is offering them money, why isn't he offering it first to the town guard?  Why does he trust the PCs? However, if he attacks the PCs for some good reason--he's possessed, a PC looks like an infamous criminal, etc.--that's not a problem IMO. So I guess I'd say that if events are plausible, and if things are only briefly out of the players' control, and if the railroading sections involve fun things for the PCs to do, they're probably okay.  But you neglect any of these choo-choo features at your peril. Daniel</blockquote>

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