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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 4627373" data-attributes="member: 704">To work within the metaphore, a D&D adventure can be looked at as the players trying to travel from point A (the beginning of the adventure) to point Z (the end of the adventure).  Now, as long as the railroad is going where everyone on the train (the players and the DM) want to go, there are not going to be any real problems with the journey its self in general terms.But there are occasions where things can go wrong even if everyone on the train wants to go to the indicated destination. - Railroads do not have shortcutsIf at any point during the trip, the players think they are close to the end point, they may want to jump ahead and go right to the end.  Maybe the players forced a combat with the final villain before the story called for it.  The typical railroad solution is for the villain to escape or survive, no matter what the players do.  A less obvious approach is to have Villain mark 2 with identical stats show up and the villains plot marches onward as though the players did not do anything.The tendency for rail road adventures to hit every plot point (station) between A and Z no matter what the players try is a potentially huge source for player frustration. - Railroads invite train wrecksIf the DM decides to try to go ahead and let the players shortcut happen, it is quite possible that the rest of the adventure becomes a trainwreck.  An encouter at point 'P' along the adventure track may call for a mercenary hired by the villain to attack the players.  But if the villain was killed at point 'G', who hires the mercenaries?  Ok, so I guess we skipped point G.  but point G also let to points H through K, where the players find the magical sword that is the only weapon that can harm the villains pet Golem.  The mercenaries who never ambush the players had the map.  And your players are at point 'U' and getting TPK'ed by a golem before the DM realizes it.Or perhaps at point 'N', there is a plot point where the villains start to react to the players, but because the villain never escaped that fight, the other bad guys should not have that info.  So how do you justify it happening?A badly managed railroad plot is not very resilient to player improvisation, and can result in story elements that make no sense. - Railroads can have unwanted passengersSome railroad plots will saddle the party with NPC's who are critical to the plot that the players want nothing to do with.  It could be the NPC who is all too obviously a traitor.  It could be a DMPC much stronger then the players who steals the spot light.  In either case, they cannot be told to go away and the players cannot murder them.Dropping the metaphor, Railroad adventures are typically disliked when they make what should be valid choices impossible for the sake of preserving the assumptions of the plot.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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