@jonn aha! Okay, I see now. It’s not dissimilar from a sort of dungeoncrawl one shot— explore the place anyway you want. Sorry the files are lost!

@hexedpress what I feel is an important distinction between the "railroad" approach and "goal-setting" approach is that when you set up your one-shot as a funnel A -> B -> C or D or E -> C1 or C2 | D1 or D2 | E1 -> F, players can really feel it.

So yeah, I agree with your definition of raliroad, but when we read many-many adventures designed to be one-shots, we see the A->B->C railroads. Which is, in my eyes, reduces maximum engagement and largely makes the play *irrelevant*. Which is the exact opposite to what we want in terms of goal-setting and either achieving it through play or not achieving it.

To put it very succinctly:

> The goal of a one-shot adventure should be achieved or not through play, not through the scenario.

@jonn this is true. Many one shots though have other goals— for example, demonstrating different elements of a game system or setting that push the makers into more rigid, set paths than they might otherwise develop.

@hexedpress oh, I love to incorporate mechanics demos in my scenarios, but I tend to make those optional. For example, I've incorporated an amazing mechanic for racing by a great Latvian game designer Jevgenijs Gavriljuks (whose #BOLIDE system will inevitably become a huge success once he starts publishing bits and pieces of it). It was a really cool interaction where if players decide to pursuit Grinch (Snarf, in my module) who has stolen Santa's (Tinsel, in my module) memories on Tinsel's horses, they will get out of the zone of illusory concealment and reveal to be pegasi (my take on Santa's deers).

But the adventure had a completely different option for less reckless adventureres that involves scouring through libraries and traveling the wilderness in a race against time.

I have a feeling that mechanics demos are normally either something that GMs make for S1 in a campaign with new players or something that people who are affiliated with system designers put into their products.

So I guess this toot is a long way to say "I doubt that *many* is the right adjective, I would probably go for *some*".

@jonn sometimes the motivation is as sample as wanting to hit all the pillars or engage all the players of different styles. I think there’s a real temptation in a one shot to hard-code in a little bit of everything to try to please everyone possibly at the table.