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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 9288185" data-attributes="member: 57112">Things associated with RPG railroads that are actually terrible:*The DM telling the players &quot;No, you can't do that.&quot;Things associate with RPG railroads that are fine, actually:*Literally everything else.&quot;Plotting&quot; gets a bad rap in TTRPG circles that it doesn't really deserve. The problem isn't writing a plot; the problem is remaining stubbornly wedded to it to the point where you needlessly restrict player choice. Plotting is fine, and a perfectly valid way to run a RPG, honestly. It's perfectly reasonable to make assumptions about how the PCs are going to act or react to any given situation and plan accordingly. It's better when you can do branching plots, or prepare for multiple outcomes, but it's even honestly fine to heavily signpost things with big &quot;hey, the next scene is this way!&quot; flags. Which, it should be noted, is what every clue actually is, whether there's one, three, or 1,200. The problematic behavior is preventing players from going off the rails. &quot;But your writing will go to waste if you have to pivot and improvise!&quot; So? Show me a creative writing profession or hobby where a good chunk of your writing doesn't end up going to waste in the end. I end up having to scrap scenes, plots, whole drafts of prose fiction all the time, and I actually get to control the characters in those! Plotting isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea of course. I find dungeon crawling dull and uninteresting, personally (though I love a good hexcrawl!). Different strokes, and what not.JA has some really good advice and he also has some really wild takes and he also contradicts himself more than a little bit. That's life, really.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 9288185, member: 57112"] Things associated with RPG railroads that are actually terrible: *The DM telling the players "No, you can't do that." Things associate with RPG railroads that are fine, actually: *Literally everything else. "Plotting" gets a bad rap in TTRPG circles that it doesn't really deserve. The problem isn't writing a plot; the problem is remaining stubbornly wedded to it to the point where you needlessly restrict player choice. Plotting is fine, and a perfectly valid way to run a RPG, honestly. It's perfectly reasonable to make assumptions about how the PCs are going to act or react to any given situation and plan accordingly. It's better when you can do branching plots, or prepare for multiple outcomes, but it's even honestly fine to heavily signpost things with big "hey, the next scene is this way!" flags. Which, it should be noted, is what every [I]clue [/I]actually is, whether there's one, three, or 1,200. The problematic behavior is preventing players from going off the rails. "But your writing will go to waste if you have to pivot and improvise!" So? Show me a creative writing profession or hobby where a good chunk of your writing doesn't end up going to waste in the end. I end up having to scrap scenes, plots, whole drafts of prose fiction all the time, and I actually get to control the characters in those! Plotting isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea of course. I find dungeon crawling dull and uninteresting, personally (though I love a good hexcrawl!). Different strokes, and what not. JA has some really good advice and he also has some really wild takes and he also contradicts himself more than a little bit. That's life, really. [/QUOTE]

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