D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Maxperson]

But the core problem is that a novel is plotted. You can't have a plot AND have agency to break the plot. You can maybe have side adventures that are unrelated to the plot, or maybe you can encounter aspects of the plot in a differing order.

Sure you can. A plot is like a battle strategy. It only lasts intact until contact with the enemy. Breaking the plot doesn't mean abandoning it completely. It just means the DM has to flow with the agency displayed by the player and adapt the adventure to react to player decisions, not force the plot to remain as the DM wrote down

 

[Maxperson]

It's from the player's perspective, not the DMs. If they players feel they have no choices to make, then they are being railroaded. If the players feel they do have choices and it just so happens by complete coincidence that the authors of the adventure correctly predicted their choices and wrote further adventures for the DM to use, then it is linear. "Railroads" are about player feelings, which is why the word has a "negative connotation".

Take out the world "feel." It doesn't matter what the players feel. It matters what is. If they players feel like they only have the one thing to do, but there are several other things that they don't think of, it doesn't become a railroad just because they feel that way.

There have been times where my group has been stymied or don't necessarily want to do what they perceive the obvious thing to do is. Sometimes after the game they'll bring up a moment like that and I'll rattle off 3 or 4 things that they didn't consider(a non-exhaustive list) before they made their decision.

To be a railroad the DM needs to force them down the one option no matter what else the players want to do.

 

[Maxperson]

I literally not was sure what people meant by "linear." Now as it seems that they do not mean linear by "linear" I better understand why people think that "linear" adventures ae different thing than railroading! But yeah, it is a terrible word choice that is bound to lead to confusion, so on those grounds I certainly object it!

Linear refers to the adventure, not the characters. When the DM sets up a linear adventure, the way he writes down to get from A to Z is a line. That doesn't mean that is the only way to reach the end, or that the end even has to be reached. The characters might find or forge a different route.

The prepared portion of the adventure is a line, but the characters are not forced to walk it.

 

[AnotherGuy]

@Maxperson audited the thread and it was found wanting.