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Indeed, I've seen as many games fall apart due to railroading as I have due to players bickering over what to do or a DM just not being able to cope with the frantic "I wanna go here! No over there! Wait, way over there now!" kind of prep work nightmare that can occur when players have complete freedom. There's no One True Way to run a game. |
Of course it also helps that I always hint that following the plot will result in epic loot that is often above their WBL via planning threads. (How many games have a genie as a reward?)
I find often getting the players involved in writing the plots also helps. If you make planning threads and get them involved and telling you what they want they often are more willing to follow it.
"Hey my guy is a pirate who wants to meet up with an old flame, and such."
"Awesome, let's do a pirate themed expansion quest where she's a key player. It'll also let me play out a few other plots I want at the same time."
"Great let's do it."
The only thing he asked me to do was not killing the old flame, which I wasn't planning on doing anyway.
The only time I had to railroad them is when they forgot about a a prior NPC they ran into that I planned on them asking for help, and even then I've managed to switch that to my advantage.