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Okay. You got me there. I could expect the sun to rise in the north tomorrow. I can't think of the specific instances, but I know I've seen some that had me scratching my head. But yes, I do agree that job context does matter for a chunk of them.

Okay. I do agree with both of those. What I meant specifically was that your intent doesn't matter as far as whether it's offensive or not. I does matter in that intentionally offensive is FAR worse than unintentionally offensive. It's the same for context. You can't be offensive to a large...

I think with power gaming, a lot of it was a misperception that power gaming was munchkinism or other bad extremes. It was reclaimable because the reality was that it wasn't a bad thing inherently. Railroading is not reclaimable. It's so overwhelmingly viewed as bad, because such in such an...

I don't think it can be neutral at all. While I agree with you that there are some very specific and rare instances where a railroad isn't bad, I think that in something like 95%-99% of cases, it's bad. For that last little bit of the time, saying something like, "I think that in X specific...

Yeah. The difference is force as in to coerce(your definition) or to force as in to force open a stuck cabinet(my definition) which clearly has no will. With my definition, most of the time if something is living, it's not going to like force used against it, so will be a negative. Sometimes...

Because linear is unforced. Like I said, linear is like walking down a forest path. You are on a line, but at any time if you want to step off in a different direction to look at or do something else, you can. The bolded portion is not a part of linear. You can deviate if you want to. The...

The system has nothing to do with it. The players have nothing to do with it outside of those rare circumstances where they agree to be on one. It's almost always a DM problem.

That's another good one. In that case, though, I'd let them know ahead of time. I don't believe in putting people on the rails as a surprise. One guy I played with for a long time was like that. He just wanted to be a fighter or thief(rogue) and then not think about much.

Do you often force yourself to do things, because one way you feel forced and the other way you generally don't unless you are forcing yourself to stay on the path? Then there is no railroad. That's a DM problem, not a playstyle problem. Most likely. As I said, there might have been something...

This. Plus @bloodtide is assuming the player is trying to ruin fun. Perhaps the king has been being a pain in the rear to the group and everyone there is upset at him, and that's just that particular character's way of showing the displeasure. Such a thing isn't always going to be in bad...

I guess it's all how you define railroad. If you define it as forced onto a path, then against their will isn't the main qualifier, even though most times it will be against their will. If you define it as forced onto a path against their will, then there's going to be a fundamental disconnect...

My kid certainly seems to orbit me.

I'll thank you to keep my weight out of this! :eek:

Is your position that force has to be unwanted to be force? If so I'd like to introduce you to boxing and all kinds of sports where force is used between folks who agree to it. If that's not your position, then I'm unclear about what you are saying.

Okay. That was unclear to me because I couldn't see who you were originally talking to. My first reply was to your reply to that person. The second was to you saying forcing everything. :P

What context am I missing between the DM forcing everything, including PC actions and behavior, and the DM only forcing the group down a track and not the actions or behavior at all?

That's not quite the equivalent of what we are saying. If I don't know that I'm off the rail, the DM has to push me back onto it. A push is force. With your frog example, that's just the player agreeing to the railroad(becoming a frog). It's when the frog jumps onto the wrong lily pad by...

The difference is that with a railroad, I still get to play my character within the confines of the train. I can burn one train car down, repair the next, and so on. I may be stuck on the train, but the choices I make while on the train are mine. My agency is limited since some choices(those...

Yes. The D&D rules grant unfettered power to the DM, but also caution against abuse. They don't put in any limiter to that abuse, but only give warnings. The example I gave would constitute an abuse of the DM given authority, and would be in my opinion bad DMing. Bad enough that I would just...

I actually agree with @TwoSix here. You can agree to a railroad. It's very rare, but can be done. In all my time playing I've only agreed to it once. One of my players wanted to try DMing, but asked us to stay on the adventure he made and not try to deviate. His reason was that it was hard...