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<blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 6095409" data-attributes="member: 6688858">Why is player choice so important and&nbsp; railroading so bad -- is it just because the presence of the rails is&nbsp; harmful to immersion (i.e. railroading=clumsy storytelling), or is it&nbsp; because there's a metagame shared expectation that the players will be&nbsp; making real contributions to how the story turns out and what it means&nbsp; and railroading turns that into a lie?If the players have the&nbsp; power to make real story contributions then the other players and the GM&nbsp; become their 'audience' at least some of the time, and the players now&nbsp; have at least some of the responsibility to make the game good (and I don't just mean showing up and not being actively disruptive, I mean making good dramatic contributions via their portrayal of their PC).I think most people going for more&nbsp; story-oriented D&amp;D would say that they want the players to have&nbsp; some real power to influence the story and that illusionism is undesirable even&nbsp; if it's really well done, but I rarely see anybody talk about how one can&nbsp; be a better roleplayer, it's all about how GMs can coax good roleplaying out of their players, which&nbsp; seems imbalanced to me.I have low roleplaying expectations when running OSR D&amp;D, I'm like Goldfinger:&nbsp; &quot;I don't expect you to talk, I expect you to die&quot;<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="(:" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; (:"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname="(:" />p)But if I were&nbsp; going to run a more story-focused game (where it's not really actually&nbsp; up in the air whether or not the protagonist is going to get sliced in&nbsp; half by some trap) then I would start by telling the players that now&nbsp; that I don't get to watch them be amusingly paranoid and actually struggle with player&nbsp; skill-oriented challenges as much, they need to play more dramatically&nbsp; interesting and thematically coherent characters and entertain me more&nbsp; in that way (not in so many words, but basically).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Libramarian, post: 6095409, member: 6688858"] Why is player choice so important and railroading so bad -- is it just because the presence of the rails is harmful to immersion (i.e. railroading=clumsy storytelling), or is it because there's a metagame shared expectation that the players will be making real contributions to how the story turns out and what it means and railroading turns that into a lie? If the players have the power to make real story contributions then the other players and the GM become their 'audience' at least some of the time, and the players now have at least some of the responsibility to make the game good (and I don't just mean showing up and not being actively disruptive, I mean making good dramatic contributions via their portrayal of their PC). I think most people going for more story-oriented D&D would say that they want the players to have some real power to influence the story and that illusionism is undesirable even if it's really well done, but I rarely see anybody talk about how one can be a better roleplayer, it's all about how GMs can coax good roleplaying out of their players, which seems imbalanced to me. I have low roleplaying expectations when running OSR D&D, I'm like Goldfinger: "I don't expect you to talk, I expect you to die"(:p) But if I were going to run a more story-focused game (where it's not really actually up in the air whether or not the protagonist is going to get sliced in half by some trap) then I would start by telling the players that now that I don't get to watch them be amusingly paranoid and actually struggle with player skill-oriented challenges as much, they need to play more dramatically interesting and thematically coherent characters and entertain me more in that way (not in so many words, but basically). [/QUOTE]

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