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I don't think any other definition is useful. That's always been what railroad means; when players feel like the GM is taking away their agency by fiat. You're reaching for some kind of platonic ideal, which is why your attempt to define a railroad is getting so much pushback. It has little...

When I say more like a novel, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a predetermined plot already written before you even start. Not even all novelists write that way. It can mean having the skill of pacing the session, and having the tension of a novel. It can mean more complex character...

You may be right, but the problem is that your interpretation lacks nuance and is taking the end points as the only points on the spectrum. Trad players don't want to experience a fantasy novel AND have full agency. They want an experience that is MORE LIKE a fantasy novel but WITH agency...

You're never going to make any progress. Different people have different nuanced views of what these kinds of things mean. Incessantly trying to get everyone on the same page before you can talk about anything is why online discussions are often so tiresome and useless. Just say what your...

But that completely misses the point. A railroad isn't a railroad until the DM tries to force the players back on to the track when they're doing something else. In my opinion, you can't write a railroad, unless you explicitly write "don't let the players do this, even if they really want to" as...

I know, and I don't at all disagree. I'm just not sure how else you write that kind of thing to begin with. I tend to design my own adventures as a combination of the 5x5 method and the Fronts method; there's a matrix of things that are expected to happen (mostly NPC instigated) about bunch of...

I haven't the foggiest idea what "2025 FR D&D" players should do, but my players should be wary of pretty much everyone they meet. And yes, there are plenty of evil—not with scare quotes—humanoids for them to run in to.

Yes, that's exactly my point.

You can't easily write a satisfying and interesting adventure without at least some assumptions of what the PCs are going to do. I mean, even a completely site-based dungeon-crawl assumes that the PCs aren't going to say, "screw it!" and head to town to set up a thieves' guild or something else...

Reducto ad nihilis isn't an effective way to have a conversation. The fact that there's a hex map or something like that with stuff on it isn't a hook, unless you reduce the meaning to hook to something that is meaningless. I'm talking about the sandbox zealots who ardently preach, complain...

I mean the idea that the DMs don't even provide hooks; the PCs are meant to go make their own adventure or find their own hooks. Or ignore the hooks that the DM has and do their own thing. Like I said, it's a platonic ideal of a sandbox, not a realistic one. But I see sandbox zealots promote...

I tend to agree. I understand the concept of the pure sandbox, but my experience is that few players actually want to play that way. It's a Platonic ideal, not a realistic one. That said, everyone pretty much knows what railroading is. A few ornery voices online misusing the term doesn't mean...

Not that I'm likely to, but if I ever use Asian dragons, that's exactly how I'll have them travel. They float with magic and their method of propulsion is farting. Sure.

I think it looks ridiculous, but I was never going to use a topaz dragon for anything anyway, and if I did, I'd be even less likely to use that art, so so what?

I have access to most of the major ones either through my cell phone plan or my internet/cable plan. But if I didn't, I doubt I'd keep any of them other than Amazon Prime. And even then, only because I want the free shipping.

The problem is that most people aren't capable of very nuanced thought, and so tend to fall back on false binaries. Real life is a like a scatterplot. You have to be able to notice two things simultaneously: 1) any given data point can, within reason, be anywhere on the plot, and 2) recognize...

As much as there are problems that I've always had with the core mechanics of D&D (I don't mean details, like how the magic system works, etc., but the whole core concept of rolling a d20 to solve most things, the six ability scores, stuff like hp and ac, etc.) after many years of...

I paid attention to your numbers, and found them nonsensical half thoughts, regardless of the rhetorical context around them, given the fact that not even Paizo, arguably the most overpriced major RPG studio, charges what you claim is necessarily to be economically valid.

Troll Lord Games sells their core full color hardback rule books for $49/each, and they don't use low cost printing countries. Maybe they're really bad businessmen and are losing $50 on every book that the sell, but they certainly look like a counter example to your math there. And they're only...

The movie felt like it'd been pretty chopped up in editing, and what was mostly missing was some of the character development. Still; I can't complain. Compared to what I feared the movie would be, it was pretty good.