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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quasqueton" data-source="post: 2953958" data-attributes="member: 3854">I like D&D because playing the game is telling a story. Everything the PCs do leaves a story in their footprints (wake). You may not set out to create a story with D&D, but if you play the same characters for any length of time, you’ve told a (their) story. This is a big difference between RPGs and other games. I've always thought of it as a big selling point for RPGs over other games.If you enter the Caves of Chaos and proceed to kill or drive out all the evil there in, you’ve told a story (what you did and how you did it). A story no less than if you entered the Sunless Citadel and drove through to the evil druid and defeated him (what you did and how you did it). In both scenarios, a story unfolded through Player action in response to the adventure situations.If the baron offers to pay you 10,000gp to go into the Dungeon of Danger and retrieve the Glorious Gem for him, you’ve started a story. How you go through the dungeon and find the gem is a story. When you turn the gem over to the baron, you’ve told a story. What the baron uses the gem for may continue the story.If you recover the gem and decide to keep it for yourself, or perhaps to take it to another city and sell it to the highest bidder, you’re telling a story.If you tell the baron to go screw himself, and you ignore the Dungeon of Danger to instead run off hunting goblins, you are telling a story.If the baron sends troops and assassins after you for your actions (or inactions), that is just the natural cause/effect, action/reaction, consequences of the story *you are creating*.The term “railroad” or “railroading” gets thrown around a lot, but I think most uses/abuses of it are just for insults. (It's like using the term "munchkin" -- it has no real meaning other than, "I don't like the way you play".) For instance, the baron threatening you with imprisonment if you don’t go after the Glorious Gem is not a railroad – you have a choice, even if that choice is to fight off his guards and escape from his palace. It is still not a railroad even if the baron has overwhelming force.A railroad is when the DM, as a player of a game, disallows the Players, as players of a game, from taking action outside what the DM wants to have happen. You are being railroaded when the DM, as the controller of the *game*, *tells* you what happens without your taking action, or he prevents you from taking action. Railroading means the DM doesn't give the Players a choice, at all. Your actions are dictated.In the scenarios above, railroading is the *DM* not letting you take the gem for yourself, or just telling you that you return it as instructed. You are not allowed to tell the baron off. Or the troops/assassins succeed automatically, without you being able to actually play out the fight. Railroading is a completely out-of-game (or meta-game) action.Telling a story is not railroading. Setting up an adventure is not railroading. Having consequences to action/inaction is not railroading. “Linear” adventures are not railroading.Telling a story is not the opposite, or in opposition to playing the game and having free reign on your character’s destiny. Telling a story is what happens when you play the game and use your free reign on your character's destiny.Why have so many people locked "railroading" so tightly to "telling a story"? People are much too quick to shout railroading at others telling about their game story, as if merely having (or stating that you have) a story means the DM is railroading.I've noticed it with some of the adventure design discussions going on right now -- it almost seems that if there is a BBEG at the end of the adventure, people are calling it a railroard. If there is a plot to the adventure, people are calling it a railroad. If there are consequences for acting or not acting, people are calling it a railroad.Quasqueton</blockquote>

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