NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9723287" data-attributes="member: 6915329">Imagine you're in an adventure and there's a monster between you and your goal. The GM expects you to kill the monster, but instead you decide to negotiate with it or even befriend it. In a linear adventure, the GM will be OK with that. In a railroad, the GM will do their darndest to make you kill it, or punish you for not killing it. In a railroad, the GM will take over the character, at least a little, to ensure that the PCs do what the GM wants. In the game I was in (Changeling: the Dreaming), the book says that redcaps are always hungry and will eat anything and everything. The player tried to eat stuff. The GM didn't want it and so took over, telling the player that no, their character wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat, because their eating was getting in the way of the GM's story. In reality, it wasn't at all--the player wasn't eating anything (or anyone) that the plot required or that was anything more than mere scenery (seriously, it was a stream of magically-created pies). But the GM didn't want the player to do that and so intervened. Also, in a linear adventure, the plot hooks are usually enough to make the players want to continue on the adventure's path. In a railroad, the players aren't given a choice but to stick to the path. Think of video games where you literally can't continue until you perform whatever the next quest is. In a railroad, parts of the world simply aren't open to the players unless they're part of the story. A door won't open, no matter how well the player rolls, or the room beyond will have nothing in it, or a monster far too powerful for the PCs to hope to even dent, simply because that door isn't part of the GM's story.While that's pretty railroady, that's clearly because the GM doesn't have anything prepared and isn't used to improvising. <shrug> That depends on the GM. Many GMs have scads of material they can run, or, again, are good at improvising, and can handle detours. Assuming they didn't rewrite parts of the adventure to begin with. Yeah, that's railroady. Or the GM being bored without combat. Either one.</blockquote>

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