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I have a post on how to successfully railroad. The ways you can do it are varied. I could give you various examples of how to create railroads using techniques other than obdurium walls, but it's probably best to just give you a link to start that discussion...

Even if I don't want to dispute that, if I decide ahead of time that everything I don't want to have succeed is either impossible or has impossibly high difficulty, how is that very different from deciding on the spur of the moment that everything I don't want to have succeed is impossible or...

My thoughts on railroading began with the realization that it was a meaningless term and yet the thing people were trying to describe was real. Your stricter definition won't work, and it won't be me alone noticing that. One of the long running sources of comedy in Knights of the Dinner Table...

I'm not saying that there aren't meaningful differences between processes of play. I'm saying that your definitions of "railroad" and "react" are not reified enough to be meaningful. Yes, there are (or can be) real differences of mindset and intentionality on the part of the GMs, but when you...

I'm not "busting chops" as you seem to think, nor am I suggesting that the problem is a failure to adhere to one's principles. I'm asking instead for people to examine their own process of play to see it for what it is outside these arguments about the right way or the wrong way to do things...

With no intention to be hurtful, that's disingenuous. I understand the stand you are making, but there is no such thing as a DM who isn't making things happen. You may be trying your best to minimize your own agency and maximize the player agency, but even minimizing their own agency the GM is...

I feel like you have very carefully responded in such a way as to completely avoid responding to my point. Likewise, there feels to me like an attempt to semantically evade even addressing your own process of play by simultaneously saying you aren't protecting anyone's story, but you are also...

We can generalize this in a way that doesn't presume dysfunctional DMing. Both players and DMs are incentivized to protect their fun, because fun is the reason we are playing. For players this almost always involves protecting their PC's from harm. For DMs this is a bit more abstract and...

From my perspective, I think ultimately your complaint resolves down to how bad most social resolution systems are and how little attention they play to real world nuance - like getting someone to fall for a lie depends not just on how charming you are but also how good the lie is. The vast...

This is such a hugely complex topic and broadening it out into search check adjudication - how we handle abstract interaction with the game universe - may make the confusion less or worse. I can, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that unlike complex physical combat rules they...

For someone who doesn't even offer a good faith argument, doesn't show signs you even understand my argument, and who spends most of your post doing ad hominem attacks in an apparent attempt to draw moderation down on me, you have a massive amount of confidence. That's not true and it doesn't...

I either have blocked who you are talking to or they have me blocked, but it's both. It's both playing a role and being able to play the role. They aren't in my mind really separatable. If you can make the choices the character would make, but can't speak as that character, you aren't capable...

This wouldn't even work logically in a case of being deceived publicly. If you are deceived in public, unless everyone in the room is similarly deceived, you will appear foolish and simple if you are deceived. You get public contempt if you go along with the deception, not if you don't. One...

But if you as a GM are yourself a gifted actor and entertainer and have crafted by some means a skillful script or monologue whether improvised or planned, and the players react to that NPC as being a likeable, funny, witty and so forth, then you don't have to tell the players how to react...

That's actually the most concise version of my thought I've seen written, so well done.

I know people dislike this conclusion, but how much you dislike it doesn't change the truth of it. I never said that it wasn't. I don't think you actually understand the argument. If a player is allowed to make their choices or left to make their own choices based on their own store of...

Of course they do. And, they have little or no volition in their actions, because they are following a script and doing the actions that someone has written for those characters. This is exactly what my statements would predict.

I not talking about the loss of completely free choice. I'm talking about the loss of all choice. The only way to let a player of any mental or social skill or trait play a character of any mental or social skill or trait is take all volition and agency from the player. This is an absolute truth.

It doesn't matter whether you use free roleplay or any other methodology, you can't keep an RPG a game without also having the problem that certain subsets of players aren't able to play certain characters who are heavily defined by their mental or social attributes. Let's imagine the easy case...

No, because they literally can't replace those skills. An NPC telling a funny joke and declaring that an NPC has told a funny joke and is amusing because they made a difficult charisma check are always two different non-equivalent experiences.