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A thing is only railroading once players begin to experience it as an unpleasant constraint.

Then why even present them with that choice? All the choices are choices. If a choice doesn't matter, leave it out. Hey, maybe your players don't notice this stuff. I do and mine do. That's our experience.

They keep making choices where the outcomes don't seem to depend on what they did. for example: a mission seems time sensitive, then somebody makes a mistake which causes the players to have to spend 4 hours doing something. Then when they arrive at the town its (what a coincidence) just in the...

It definitely matters because of what I said above: Do it enough times and the players will begin to get the feeling their choices don't matter. They'll notice how convenient it all is. And they'll stop thinking hard about decisions and so you lose that aspect of play. When something happens...

It matters in the following manner: if you are going to negate the choice (ie put the tower in their path no matter which way the go) then it is better to have not offered that choice to begin with.

A "quantum ogre" (ie: an obstacle or feature that appears no matter which choice the players make) is a choker. That is: it is a technique that, if used a lot or if used in a way that the players start to notice or if used in a way that makes the players start to think their choices don't matter...

He was helping Alex set up his bar in Portland in August and was gonna come back but he had to go to Colorado for his aunt's funeral. Haven't heard from him in like 2 weeks. He posted a lotta Earl Sweatshirt on Facebook this morning though.

whatever this conversation is about improvisation and storytelling and editions in general is, I don't see it leading to interesting answers to the OP.

This is a wholly incorrect impression. I've gotten really good answers to my questions throughout the thread--I was just pointing out that one answer was off-topic. No, the Alexandrian's 3-clue rule is a rule specifically for players discovering mysteries and, even in those cases (which I...

I'm sure a lot of people would agree but it doesn't really explain how you keep players on an adventure path if you're running one

You're acting like there's literally a game design flaw in Vancian casting rather than "I. Ezekiel, prefer to play a more powerful wizard". It's just taste.

Even assuming the Fighter has 18 STR, the wizard is doing 28 or 14 to _every foe in the area_. So in one fight the wizard could do more damage than the fighter does all day. And, of course, after level five (75% of the levels in the game), the wizard is doing more and more damage and more...

Ya think?--magic is still SO overpowered compared to punchin' and shootin' in 5e. I mean, if you go by the book, you've still got fireballs doing d6xwhatever vs weapons doing one die each.

I don't know if everyone has seen this, but it's a wonderful explication of why Vancian casting is far more than just a design constraint (after all, they could just have made weaker spells castable at will): http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/06/just-so-you-know-this-is-vancian-magic.html

I've never seen any flaw in Vancian casting. Just taste differences. Newbies are sometimes surprised to find they can't cast the same spell over and over...then they get used to the idea after 10 minutes and have a lot of fun. Desperation is the mother of invention and invention is the best...

Then in what sense are you playing the adventure path? Like, if your players think up a tactic not accounted for in the module then solve the bad guy problem in a way not anticipated then a whole chain of events planned for that path is derailed and you're not on the path anymore, right?

People worry too much. If you get one you don't like, you can always just get more.

That word "clearly"--that's what I'm asking about. What makes it "clear"? I've seen so many adventures where a wide variety of solutions is obviously possible and the module itself only addresses 1 or 2 options, and often ones that don't seem obvious.

I have not. I don't run published adventures unless they're pretty open. I've read lots of them and whenever I do I think "Ok but what do you do if they players don't do one of these options?" That is one reason I started this thread.

But even published adventure paths don't always signal "This Strategy Is Not Part Of The Path"--so what techniques do you use to signal to players what is and isn't on the path? Like if they go "Ok we sneak into the goblin camp using an illusion" do you just go "That's not on the path...