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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bloodtide" data-source="post: 9754883" data-attributes="member: 6684958">11.   Here's an example of bad railroading I experienced back in the day. We were playing a game, a friend of a friend was the DM. We were in a town, helping out the towns folk and getting established. We were planning on making this our base. The DM kept giving hints that something was going on on the other side of the woods, well out of town. We wanted to get some more stuff done in town before heading out to who knows where. Well, the next session, our characters wake up and there has been a time skip. The town is dilapidated and abandoned, we are the only living things around. Oh, but hey, there's a mysterious light leading to the woods....This is Railroading, sure, but really it is just far beyond it. For the DM to do a time skip and change things is so bad. It’s controlling.Don’t do this in your games.The main problem here is Downtime. What the players are doing, establishing a town and base, is a Downtime activity. The DM clearly wants to do active Adventure gaming.  So, much like above, the players here should not be sitting down to play an active adventure type game and then in the game play doing only Downtime activities. This is something that should be talked about before the game, not an in game “gottha”.If the players do really wish to do hours of Downtime activities, they should tell the DM and have the DM agree. An all Downtime game can be fun, but only if everyone including the DM, whats to do that. And, most games are only 2-3 hours, maybe 5-6 if your lucky. And a lot of groups can only get together every couple of weeks or less. But even if the group can get together every week, taking most or all of a game session for Downtime is a lot.On a bit of the other side, the DM should not require all the Downtime activities. You don’t need to play through in an active game with rolls to do every task. If the players want to make a wooden wall, you don’t need to roll a d20 to chop down every tree.  The DM also needs to allow the players downtime often. Maybe not every game session, but at least every couple.In my games, for example, I strive to end game sessions at safe points where most active events have been brought to a conclusion. Not the whole story arc, just whatever was active for that game session. Also having the PCs get to a relative safe place, often a town or city.  This way we can use the last half hour or so of the game session to wrap things up and the players can do Downtime activities. This often adds a time skip to the next session.This gives players plenty of opportunity to do Downtime activities.</blockquote>

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