From a Blog Post: Let's Run That Railroad Through the Sandbox...

[The Perilous Dreamer]

From the blog These Old Games subtitled: A website dedicate to games of all favors and varieties, from video games to good old D&D, I have linked to this post Let's Run That Railroad Through the Sandbox...

I am interested in what take all of you have on this article.

He says:

I had an interesting conversation with my kids about DMing games.

Here was the scenario: The party gets in a fight. The winner of that fight gets jumped and their cash and prizes are stolen. Then the party chases down the second group of people and gets their stuff back.

"You planned all of that in advance. You were railroading us!" they whined.

"No. I wasn't." I pulled out my notes and showed them.

This is interesting to me because, it touches on the subject of railroads and what is or isn't one and it touches on gaming with kids.

[hengest]

Great link, nice work.

I wish I could game with this guy.

Good example. I would never have conceived of planning in this way. Maybe I should start.

I agree that what he describes is not a railroad. Raises the wortwhile question about whether one might wish to avoid even the appearance of railroading. My guess is no, that the appearance itself is okay because plays will still ultimately feel their agency. But I haven't thought about this much...

[Death Even XIII]

Something important here that should not be missed

When the party isn't present, I pick the most viable option because I'm not stopping play to fight a combat against two NPC groups against each.

Here it is in one short sentence, this is how you run a living campaign, where things proceed whether the players are there or not. Seems to me I have read about a couple of different men who kept a slew of 3x5 cards and once a month they took out the cards for all the different NPCs and updated them for events that occurred out of the view of the players.

[xizallian]

Kids will call you out every time, fun that he had an answer ready for them.