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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8038760" data-attributes="member: 18">Yeah, this.The other definitions seem at once too broad and too narrow.There's a difference between a premise and a railroad. That's a premise.The problem usually occurs when the DM, for whatever reason, refuses to explain the premise of the adventure as a premise, and instead decides to just drop it on the players. It's incredibly easy to avoid this being a problem. You just either:A) Explain that the premise will be secret and surprising, and ask the players, are they up for absolutely any start? If you get a yes, you're good to go.B) You explain what the premise is, i.e. that you start in a dungeon with no stuff, and ask if they're okay with that? You get a yes, and you're good to go.Many good adventures have a highly specific premise. Indeed, my experience is that adventures that start with a specific premise tend to work better than "You meet in a pub"-type campaigns. But you need player buy-in, either a generalized "any premise" buy-in (which you will likely get from groups you've played with for a long time), or quick summary of the premise (which can actually often lead to more interesting characters).The tavern situation is an actual railroad, on the other hand.Maybe? This is more about the DM than the adventure. If the DM is absolutely unwilling to break away from the adventure and change the scenario, no matter what happens, that's going to be railroading. But if the premise is "We must stop Jarl Torrfin", and Mr Torrfin won't let himself be taken alive (if he can avoid it) and won't negotiate because it's not in his nature, that's not railroading. If you suddenly get towards the end, never having heard of Mr Torrfin, and an NPC steps out and is like "THOU MUST MURDER THIS GIANT!" and the PCs are like "What, no..." and the NPC is like "BUT THOU MUST!" and so on, that is likely railroading.With adventures rather than DMs, people typically refer to adventures as railroads when they don't allow the PCs to make choices where it seems like there really would be choices. Especially if NPCs, magical barriers or the like enforce that lack of choice. I've seen it a number of times in a very clumsy way, where the PCs arrive at some sort of scenario, and are expected to do a specific thing, but that's not reasonable expectation, and many players/PCs will not do that, but in order for the adventure to go anywhere, they must. So just avoid that. Think about groups very different to your own, and what they might do. Think about whether the premise of the adventure necessarily required characters that would do this. If your premise was "jolly adventures in this small region", and half-way through said jolly adventures the PCs are suddenly expected to get on a boat to the new world, not to return for years if ever, and one of the PCs was designed so they had a family and stuff, and others have ties too, then obviously it's unreasonable to expect them to get on said boat - but if all the rest of the adventure relies on the boat, well, yeah, that's a railroad of a really extreme kind.Forget about it Jake, it's an RPG messageboard.Er, or more to the point, the irrational and extreme hatred some people have for illusionism of the most minor and harmless kind can never be truly accounted for. I was particularly amused on another site when some guy posted a massive rant about illusionism, and kept going for pages, when his actual play on the same site showed he was engaging in what most people would call illusionism...I mean, I get being irked by the concept, but when people get into terms like "fraud", hoo boy.</blockquote>

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