D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[Celebrim]

You only need to prepare more than enough content for the next session.

That's true of a linear game because you can generally expect where the next session is going to be. But in a true sandbox you are unlikely to guess what is going to happen. Generally speaking, I'd only expect to be able to prep for only the next session in a sandbox campaign if and only if it was a sandbox campaign that morphed into an adventure path early on because the players bit a hook that really intrigued them and not have clear definable long term goals and short term objectives.

 

[soviet]

I would join this thread ....

but I know where it is going.

I guess that it makes it the most aptly named thread ever!

You're not allowed to join this thread, Snarf Zagyg wouldn't do that.

 

[Celebrim]

I remember the original Dragonlance books being published, and some of my gamer friends were really excited to play the modules they published shortly thereafter. But later, they expressed disappointment; I was given to understand that you could really only follow the published story in the modules. They wanted to go off-script. It's maybe not really a Railroad; it's a "scripted adventure" which is I'm sure what the authors assumed the players wanted.

The Dragonlance adventure path was the first time I remember this becoming a big debate, precisely because by the text the adventures had a lot of very heavy handed railroading advice. Railroads had occurred before in D&D, but not campaign length ones and not with just heavy handed devices for keeping the players on track and certainly never before with stage direction telling the player how to play the character.

Many people said, "These are terrible, it's not even real D&D" and other people said "Well, the guard rails are there just for newbs, you don't have to force things on to the rails if you don't want to."

 

[Charlaquin]

That's true of a linear game because you can generally expect where the next session is going to be. But in a true sandbox you are unlikely to guess what is going to happen. Generally speaking, I'd only expect to be able to prep for only the next session in a sandbox campaign if and only if it was a sandbox campaign that morphed into an adventure path early on because the players bit a hook that really intrigued them and not have clear definable long term goals and short term objectives.

I mean, I disagree that it’s so hard to guess what the players’ immediate next goal will be. But more importantly, if one does find it difficult, the simple solution is to just ask the players, “What do you guys want to do next week?”