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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5439519" data-attributes="member: 42582">My preferred way of going here is not to shift from sandbox to (quasi)railroad, but to have a range of encounters each of which is compelling in relation to the others even if the PCs handle the earlier encounters in different ways.Bastion of Broken Souls provides an example of this (provided that you completely ignore the actual text in the module suggesting how to run the encounters):*SPOILERS BELOW*There are encounters with a hag who collects information from the dreams of others, an angel who is the living key to a prison, and a banished god inside that prison. Whether the PCs kill or bargain with the hag, assuming that they are invested at all in the scenario they will want to find the prison. Whether they then kill or bargain with the angel, they will want to meet the god inside. And they can get the artefact from him that they need whether they kill him or bargain with him.This contrasts, for example, with Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, which has (in my view) far too many encounters, none of which is related to the previous one in any sort of thematic or story-related way unless the players just ride the rails from one to the other. An extremely disappointing module that I was really looking forward to, but have sadly got almost no use out of because of its overwhelmingly railroading tendencies.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5439519, member: 42582"] My preferred way of going here is not to shift from sandbox to (quasi)railroad, but to have a range of encounters each of which is compelling in relation to the others [I]even if[/I] the PCs handle the earlier encounters in different ways. Bastion of Broken Souls provides an example of this (provided that you completely ignore the actual text in the module suggesting how to run the encounters): *SPOILERS BELOW* There are encounters with a hag who collects information from the dreams of others, an angel who is the living key to a prison, and a banished god inside that prison. Whether the PCs kill or bargain with the hag, assuming that they are invested at all in the scenario they will want to find the prison. Whether they then kill or bargain with the angel, they will want to meet the god inside. And they can get the artefact from him that they need whether they kill him or bargain with him. This contrasts, for example, with Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, which has (in my view) far too many encounters, none of which is related to the previous one in any sort of thematic or story-related way [I]unless[/I] the players just ride the rails from one to the other. An extremely disappointing module that I was really looking forward to, but have sadly got almost no use out of because of its overwhelmingly railroading tendencies. [/QUOTE]

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