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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 3268911" data-attributes="member: 29398">Someone earlier mentioned &quot;soft&quot; and &quot;hard&quot; bottlenecks...points in an adventure that will be met regardless of anything else, if the adventure is to be completed.&nbsp; I'd add a third type: the &quot;no return&quot; bottleneck, an example of which comes at the start of Q1 (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) where the party have to go through the abyssal gate in order to continue, and once through they're stuck with no way back until a large part of the adventure is done.Here's a question: is it railroading if a situation arises where the PC's have involved themselves (either by their own choice or not, intentionally or not) in something that is so far above their heads that no matter what they do they can have at best a miniscule influence on events?&nbsp; Where their best option is to just get out of the way and let events take the course that I as DM have already determined ahead of time?I ask because this very thing came up in my game last weekend...a long story leads to the PC's getting *way* in over their heads almost by accident, involved in a battle between gods that they don't know is coming until mere moments before it hits; and whether they choose to let events run their course or try to insert themselves into the situation is going to make little if any difference to how things turn out - these guys have some power, but they are *not* up to taking on divinities - other than to add to the casualty count.&nbsp; As it played out they (wisely) got out of there; the party had already done the only useful thing possible - rescued a companion who had been taken prisoner and was being held in what would become the battle site - but if they had stayed and tried to get involved it would have amounted to an exercise in going through the motions until they either got killed as collateral damage or fled; 9-10th level characters against gods is like flies against flyswatters... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />&nbsp; But, would you consider this a railroad, and why (or not)?Lanefan</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 3268911, member: 29398"] Someone earlier mentioned "soft" and "hard" bottlenecks...points in an adventure that will be met regardless of anything else, if the adventure is to be completed. I'd add a third type: the "no return" bottleneck, an example of which comes at the start of Q1 (Queen of the Demonweb Pits) where the party have to go through the abyssal gate in order to continue, and once through they're stuck with no way back until a large part of the adventure is done. Here's a question: is it railroading if a situation arises where the PC's have involved themselves (either by their own choice or not, intentionally or not) in something that is so far above their heads that no matter what they do they can have at best a miniscule influence on events? Where their best option is to just get out of the way and let events take the course that I as DM have already determined ahead of time? I ask because this very thing came up in my game last weekend...a long story leads to the PC's getting *way* in over their heads almost by accident, involved in a battle between gods that they don't know is coming until mere moments before it hits; and whether they choose to let events run their course or try to insert themselves into the situation is going to make little if any difference to how things turn out - these guys have some power, but they are *not* up to taking on divinities - other than to add to the casualty count. As it played out they (wisely) got out of there; the party had already done the only useful thing possible - rescued a companion who had been taken prisoner and was being held in what would become the battle site - but if they had stayed and tried to get involved it would have amounted to an exercise in going through the motions until they either got killed as collateral damage or fled; 9-10th level characters against gods is like flies against flyswatters... :) But, would you consider this a railroad, and why (or not)? Lanefan [/QUOTE]

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