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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadowslayer" data-source="post: 3314146" data-attributes="member: 8400">I'm totally uninitiated to this fairly recent phenomenon, so I'm curious about a few things. My game store doesn't carry them, and I've never seen one to flip through it, hence the questions.I realize what an adventure path is...a sequential bunch of adventures with an overall theme that will take a game up to X level, and basically constitutes a whole campaign. My question in a nutshell, is how do they get a party from 1st to 20th without railroading anyone? How much leeway is there to be had and still stay on track?I've never been a railroad DM. My world is never cut and dried at the start of the campaign. I tend to start out with a general world-view, basic starting area, include some encounters and enough adventure to keep us going for a couple weeks, and a raft of adventure seeds. Then I write more depending on what directions the players seem to gravitate towards. Unfortunately, I don't have time for a lot of this prep these days and am finding it harder and harder to DM this way. I'm thinking of giving adventure paths or adventure chains a look.My first DM, back in the old days, always had the next string of adventures planned. (His path read like a D&D's greatest hits montage!) We started at Saltmarsh, battled the lizards, then the Sauhaugin, then did Baltron's Beacon...and on and on working up to Ravenloft, Ravenloft 2 and then Deserts of Desolation series. It never felt like a railroad. We were just easy to please and always bit the hooks.  Do current adventure paths assume this level of co-operation from the players. or are they designed with a lots of room for variations?</blockquote>

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