Would you consider this railroading?

[CCamfield]

Well, it's episodic - I'd make sure to communicate this plan to your players.

For instance, if at the end of one adventure a player wanted their character to go somewhere next, and you ignore that and run your next planned adventure that takes them away from where they want to go... that could cause friction.

 

[Henry]

That's not railroading, that's In Media Res. Many good novels, TV shows, and gaming sessions start out this way. I've done it before, I'm likely to do it again. As long as know the limit of what to "throw the players into", then it's fine.

If you start off with one PC hanging off of a balcony seven stories up , with the other PCs fighting the bad guys so they can rescue him, with the balcony slowly deteriorating, that's not bad at all. If you start out with him taking 20d6 falling damage with no chance of saving himself, that's just plain bad. Raiders of the Lost Ark opened with Indy raiding a tomb, running from a boulder, and dodging poisoned blowdarts, why can't I?


As an alternative, open the adventure JUST as the action heats up. In the Eberron adventure the Forgotten Forge (and also in an Eberron Demo game I recently ran), I opened up as the PCs were making their way through a rainy cityscape, WHEN SUDDENLY a woman's cry rang out, from a murder taking place just 60 feet away.

 

[Savage Jim]

Episodic.

 

[iwatt]

You present the characters with a situaiton, and they go off on their adventure. You run the evenings fun and you are then done. Rather than pick up where you left off the next session, you start them off half a continenent away and 1/2 a year later in a new "start the adventure" scenario.

Dude, I'd love to play in a campaign like the one your talking about. I want some Down Time . My DM is obsessed with keeping us racing from one point to another. The problem is, the p'arty has about 4 feats invested in Item creation, and we can't ever use them. The poor wizard might as well have played a sorcerer for all the scroll scribing and research he can do. The only reasons I stick with this game is that one of my friends can only play this game and the DM does create very memorable combat encounters which are useful to hone my skills as a DM.

 

[takyris]

I'd be fine with it as a player, provided that I got to affect things in each individual scenario, and that the scenarios offered me more than one long hallway I had to move through one step at a time.

Heck, I'd still be fine if I later learned that all adventure paths (inquiring about the disappearance of the gnomish musical troupe, signing up for the lumberjacking competition, or volunteering to find out who is vandalizing the cathedral's privy) led to the Ninja Vampires in the Cathedral, as long as I got there in a way I found fun.

 

[The Grackle]

Yeah, the old lumberjacking hook. Get's 'em every time.

 

[Harmon]

What's to be ashamed of?

Because when I have done it I feel like a dork- "man, I screwed up that portion of the campaign," I guess I use it for a 'they are in to deep,' or 'what the hell was I doing?'

Poor planning on my part. Mayhaps this thats not this GMs intent to try to straighten out a screw up maybe thats how he likes to GM <shrug> I know not, but I use it when I screw up, thus the shame.