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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9760222" data-attributes="member: 4937">I mean, OK, I'll bite.  What do you mean by that?  I can think of some specific ways of talking like metagame direction, "Are you sure you want to do that?" which is railroading, but what do you mean?Yes.Why not?  I've already given examples of how it could be.  I mean the goal of most railroading is to get the players to willingly and maybe even unknowingly board the train to the destination you want.  So if I want them to go to Funtown and they say, "Hey lets go to Funtown" and I decide to handwave away anything that might possibly get them from not going to Funtown,was I railroading or not?  Like no one above the maturity level of a 14-year-old actually railroads people by saying, "No you can't do that."  So why if I put up a big sign that says, "All the fun is in Funtown!" (or maybe more deviously "DON'T GO TO FUNTOWN!" depending on what I know about my players mentality) and when the players show interest, I holler, "All board to Funtown!", how is not railroading?  If that happens enough, and my goal is to conduct a railroad, I'm succeeding.  But if there is like lots of details and naturalistic events between here and Funtown, you know the players might well decide, "No, I want to investigate this other thing.  That's more interesting."  And then if you are a railroad conductor you get sad and start improvising a new train to Funtown.UPDATE: There is a Knight of the Dinner Table sequence that is about this where BA is using a handwave to get to the adventure because playing out the journey always results in his group finding and forcing some thing he hasn't prepared for on him, and then when after they have started on the journey he tries to handwave them to their destination they go into revolt because they think they are being railroaded - and in this case they actually were.  (BA was also using Obdurium Walls to make sure they couldn't get off the train, but the group actually derails the handwave precisely because they get fascinated by the Obdurium of the walls and think it must be important.)</blockquote>

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