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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMforPowergamers" data-source="post: 8715137" data-attributes="member: 67338">a linear story has a beginning middle and end but how you get through it is still up to the player, and the player choices in the beginning and middle effect the end.in a railroad the DM has his ending picked out and doesn't matter who plays what or what they do.A GREAT linear story could be a simple mega dungeon. You have to go through the rooms until the campagin ends... but it's not really a sandbox. it's very linear (1st floor 2nd floor) with SOME choice and variatn (did you find the secert door from level 2 to level 4 skipping level 3?) but I doubt many would call that a railroad. A GREAT railroad story is one where the king sends out a summons for warriors to battle for the right to be his champion (and no that wasn't discussed in session 0) and one player say "Im a str 8 Con 11 wizard sage... I am no a warrior and I don't battle" but the DM says "Sorry you signed up and are in the next group melee that is how we are meeting the party" and the Rogue says "Um, wait why are we meeting as warriors I thought this was a water based ocean pirate game?" and the DM says "Trust me we will get to that..." and we start facing the melee... and he repositions us so we end up together (yes he moved our minis to many objections) and when it was clear our 2nd level party was not going to win he had warriors turn into minions that drop to one hit... a target that had a 14+ AC (13 had missed a round earlier) all of a sudden was hit when I hit a 9....   so he had the king great us as the great warriors, offer us magic weapons and armor... but none of us wore armor and most of us didn't need weapons (we made light weight character for sea travel like my barbarian was happy to get an axe but my con+dex was good for me) but he 'story pointed' we all took long swords, long bows, and field plate (maybe it is called half plate). of the +1 veriaity... the monk, wizard and rogue pointed out those were useless to them unless we were going to sell them and the rogue said "Can mine be a knife or short sword or rapier?" and he was told no... (oh there was a reason) so we got an info dump about the islands we were going to... so we go to the ship, and get ridiculed for wearing heavy armor (my barbarian's background was pirate and when I pointed out I wasn't wearing it the DM overrulled me...) so the captian made us strip and threw our new magic gear overboard (no big deal no real loss except to the hex blade) but it was a weird waste of time... until we get attacked by mermen in our armor and weapons... and he already had them stated as +1 longswords and +1 mithril plate (he didn't mention the mithril until now) but hey we would get them back after the fight right... wrong, the captain said all spoils of battle go to the ship... we tried to point out he had called it stupid BUT NOW he wanted it... and he sold it in the first town on the island... so we COULD buy it back with treasure... I could go on but at no point did we ever make a meaningful choice.</blockquote>

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