All Aboard the Invisible Railroad!

What if I told you it was possible to lock your players on a tight railroad, but make them think every decision they made mattered?

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Picture courtesy of Pixabay.

While this may sound like the evil GM speaking, I have my reasons. Firstly, not every GM has time to craft a massive campaign. There are also plenty of GMs who are daunted at the prospect of having to figure out every eventuality. So, this advice is offered to help people scale down the pressure of being a GM and give them options to reuse and recycle their ideas and channel players through an exciting adventure that just doesn’t have as many options as they thought it did. All I’m suggesting here is a way to make sure every choice the players make takes them to an awesome encounter, which is surly no bad thing.

A Caveat​

I should add that used too often this system can have the opposite effect. The important thing here is not to take away their feeling of agency. If players realise nothing they do changes the story, then the adventure will quickly lose its allure. But as long as they don’t realise what is happening they will think every choice matters and the story is entirely in their hands. However, I should add that some players are used to being led around by the nose, or even prefer it, so as long as no one points out the “emperor has no clothes” everyone will have a great game.

You See Three Doors…​

This is the most basic use of the invisible railroad: you offer a choice and whichever choice they pick it is the same result. Now, this only works if they don’t get to check out the other doors. So this sort of choice needs to only allow one option and no take backs. This might be that the players know certain death is behind the other two doors ("Phew, thank gods we picked the correct one there!"). The other option is for a monotone voice to announce “the choice has been made” and for the other doors to lock or disappear.

If you use this too often the players will start to realise what is going on. To a degree you are limiting their agency by making them unable to backtrack. So only lock out the other options if it looks likely they will check them out. If they never go and check then you don’t need to stop them doing so.

The Ten Room Dungeon​

This variant on the idea above works with any dungeon, although it might also apply to a village or any place with separate encounters. Essentially, you create ten encounters/rooms and whichever door the player character’s open leads to the next one on your list. You can create as complex a dungeon map as you like, and the player characters can try any door in any order. But whatever door they open after room four will always lead to room five.

In this way the players will think there is a whole complex they may have missed, and if they backtrack you always have a new room ready for them, it’s just the next one on the list. The downside is that all the rooms will need to fit to roughly the same dimensions if someone is mapping. But if no one is keeping track you can just go crazy.

Now, this may go against the noble art of dungeon design, but it does offer less wastage. There are also some GMs who create dungeons that force you to try every room, which is basically just visible railroading. This way the players can pick any door and still visit every encounter.

This idea also works for any area the player characters are wandering about randomly. You might populate a whole village with only ten NPCs because unless the characters are looking for someone specific that will just find the next one of your preset NPCs regardless of which door they knock on.

What Path Do You Take in the Wilderness?​

When you take away doors and corridors it might seem more complex, but actually it makes the invisible railroad a lot easier. The player characters can pick any direction (although they may still pick a physical path). However, it is unlikely they will cross into another environmental region even after a day’s walk. So as long as your encounters are not specific to a forest or mountain they should all suit “the next encounter.”

So, whichever direction the players decide to go, however strange and off the beaten path, they will encounter the same monster or ruins as if they went in any other direction. Essentially a wilderness is automatically a ‘ten room dungeon’ just with fewer walls.

As with any encounter you can keep things generic and add an environmentally appropriate skin depending on where you find it. So it might be forest trolls or mountain trolls depending on where they are found, but either way its trolls. When it comes to traps and ruins it’s even easier as pretty much anything can be built anywhere and either become iced up or overgrown depending on the environment.

Before You Leave the Village…​

Sometimes the easiest choice is no choice at all. If the player characters have done all they need to do in “the village” (or whatever area they are in) they will have to move on to the next one. So while they might procrastinate, explore, do some shopping, you know which major plot beat they are going to follow next. Anything they do beforehand will just be a side encounter you can probably improvise or draw from your backstock of generic ones. You need not spend too long on these as even the players know these are not important. The next piece of the “proper adventure” is whenever they leave the village so they won’t expect anything beyond short and sweet. In fact, the less detailed the encounters the more the GM will be assumed to be intimating it is time to move on.

Following the Clues​

Finally we come to the most common invisible railroad that isn’t ever considered railroading (ironically). Investigative adventures usually live and breathe by allowing the player characters to uncover clues that lead to other clues. Such adventures are actually openly railroading as each clue leads to another on a proscribed path. The players aren’t forced to follow the clues, but what else are they going to do? The players are making a point of following the railroad in the knowledge it will take them to the denouement of the adventure. What makes this type of railroading entertaining is that the players feel clever for having found the clues that lead them along the path. So if they start to divert too much the GM can put another clue on their path or let them find the next one a little easier and you are back on track.

The "Good" Kind of Railroading​

Now, all this may all seem a little manipulative, but modifying events in reaction to what the players do is a part of many GM’s tools. Any trick you use is usually okay as long as you do it to serve the story and the player’s enjoyment.

That said, never take away player agency so you can ensure the story plays out the way you want it to. This sort of railroading should only be used just to make the game more manageable and free up the GM to concentrate on running a good game instead of desperately trying to create contingencies. So, remember that you must never restrict the choices and agency of the players, at least knowingly. But it is fine to make sure every road goes where you want it to, as long as that is to somewhere amazing.

Your Turn: How do you use railroading in your games?
 

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Andrew Peregrine

Andrew Peregrine

But that's not the scenario I outlined. The assasin is just a random encounter, or maybe its a subplot I'm setting up for later. The player just knew they were going to get information about a villain they are pursuing....they choose the blacksmith, and got specific information. If I didn't have the random encounter would it be a railroad? Of course not...the player's choice was validated with the blacksmith's info.
No it wasn't. Under that scenario they were going to get the information no matter who they talked with. Total railroad and complete invalidation of the player's choice. The choice literally didn't matter.

Whether the encounter is random or not, if there's no possible chance to avoid, it's a railroad. It's you forcing something on them. I mean, random encounters are fine, but if they hear something approaching with a roll and decide to get the hell out of dodge, they have avoided the encounter. If running or however else they choose to avoid can't make a difference, you're just forcing your agenda on them. They have no agency.
 

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No it wasn't. Under that scenario they were going to get the information no matter who they talked with. Total railroad and complete invalidation of the player's choice. The choice literally didn't matter.

Whether the encounter is random or not, if there's no possible chance to avoid, it's a railroad.
I in fact said that the fact they went to blacksmith gave them specific info for the plot. I guess I wasn't specific enough, I meant that if they had talked to someone else they would not have gotten that specific information.

Onto your second statement, this is where you and I fundamentally disagree. I can respect if the players were given a choice on how to avoid the assassin, and the DM just ignored that...then I could see that being considered a railroad. But in this case, at no point was a player's decision invalidated, because they were not making any decisions about the assassin.

And going down that rabbit hole to me leads to madness. I mean if we are at that point, then your saying the only acceptable world in dnd is a hugely rich constructed world where hundreds of npcs have to have their schedules completely laid out, because I can't just drop a random encounter or an NPC on my party without it being fully immersed in the world and completely logical to the world's schedule or else its a railroad. Oh you decided to go to the blacksmith on tuesday? Well let me consult my npc chart to see if Mary the jester would be near by that day.... oh no that's her poker night. Oh but what about marigold the flower lady, wait did you go at 4:30 or going at 4:35? she only walks that area exactly at 4:30 so I need to time that roleplay encounter to check if whether you missed or not.

The notion of "plot convenience" happens in dnd all the time. The party "just happens" to meet an npc that could be helpful to them on their mission...even though the chance of that happening in real life could be less than 1 in 10,000. The party rescuses a woman who happens to be the old flame of one of the pcs....because its cool and dramatic (even though the odds are astronomical) Dms do this all the time, because tracking every minute of every day is just ludicrous, and we want our players to be heroes and to have interesting and dramatic things happen to them.
 

I in fact said that the fact they went to blacksmith gave them specific info for the plot. I guess I wasn't specific enough, I meant that if they had talked to someone else they would not have gotten that specific information.

Onto your second statement, this is where you and I fundamentally disagree. I can respect if the players were given a choice on how to avoid the assassin, and the DM just ignored that...then I could see that being considered a railroad. But in this case, at no point was a player's decision invalidated, because they were not making any decisions about the assassin.

And going down that rabbit hole to me leads to madness. I mean if we are at that point, then your saying the only acceptable world in dnd is a hugely rich constructed world where hundreds of npcs have to have their schedules completely laid out, because I can't just drop a random encounter or an NPC on my party without it being fully immersed in the world and completely logical to the world's schedule or else its a railroad. Oh you decided to go to the blacksmith on tuesday? Well let me consult my npc chart to see if Mary the jester would be near by that day.... oh no that's her poker night. Oh but what about marigold the flower lady, wait did you go at 4:30 or going at 4:35? she only walks that area exactly at 4:30 so I need to time that roleplay encounter to check if whether you missed or not.

The notion of "plot convenience" happens in dnd all the time. The party "just happens" to meet an npc that could be helpful to them on their mission...even though the chance of that happening in real life could be less than 1 in 10,000. The party rescuses a woman who happens to be the old flame of one of the pcs....because its cool and dramatic (even though the odds are astronomical) Dms do this all the time, because tracking every minute of every day is just ludicrous, and we want our players to be heroes and to have interesting and dramatic things happen to them.
That's not what I'm saying. Let me ask you a question. If you had a random encounter or non-random encounter set up in town that they had no idea about and they decided a few hours before it was set to happen to leave town to go find the magic mushrooms that they read about a few sessions back, would that encounter still happen?
 

@Thomas Shey I'm not sure what your point is. I've said that I'm not opposed to communicating, but everything can never be covered, and players can make their preferences known too. And what is printed in the game books being used probably should have some connection to what the expected baseline is.

My point is that people coming into a game aren't even going to know what a DMG says in many cases (and that's assuming the characterization of it telling GMs to lie to their players is correct, that if true is a pretty retrograde thing for a modern incarnation to be doing, but I'm not a 5e person so I wouldn't know--its certainly not something I've often seen other games do). So, really, I do consider this part of kind of a basic checklist of things (along with certain common trigger topics) that should be gone over in session zero.

But ultimately I don't get this need to thought police the GM, and I don't want to play with people who are going to do that, epically they throw around judgemental language like "lie" or "dishonesty." I think I've been perfectly open about how I feel about this, and I certainly would do the same in the RL too, if I had the slightest inclination that anyone would actually care.

Whereas I think a lot of GMs are still carrying over baggage from the beginning of the hobby that I don't think were great ideas even then and have less excuse now, and I absolutely won't hesitate to tell people so. Especially when it carries the odor of the usual top-down-GM-is-right-no-matter-what-the-players-think view about it.
 

Depends on whether or not you define what is described in the essay as "fun." A lot of us don't.

He's got a point though; the issue as I see it isn't that the "invisible railroad" isn't fun for some people. It absolutely is. My objection in this thread is the assumption that it will be for everybody, or that you can take it as a default it will be and then get self-righteous when it isn't for someone and the object to it. You don't get to have it both ways; if you won't go to the trouble to make sure your players are on board that sort of thing, then when you find out the hard way, that's on you.

But to the degree some posters seem to imply its bad even with voluntary cooperation, yeah, that's dumb badwrongfun reactions because its deciding other people are required to feel as you are. I don't recall seeing too much of that, but I could have missed some.
 

However, what if while watching the scene, the DM sees the other players eyes start to roll, "oh here goes Bob again with one of his subplots". So the DM could let Bob go through this whole blacksmith scene, consuming the game time while the other players have to wait....or he could nudge Bob back on the main plot that all of his players are enjoying, and so now they get to participate. Remember that sometimes the DM has to step in when one player's agency can step on teh agency of others.
Why do these people play together if they (a) hate one another's preferences so much and (b) cannot actually communicate enough to have an adult conversation about the problems they have with one another? The (much bigger) problem here is the railroad being used as a kludgy bandaid over the group being dysfunctional and not actually respecting one another. (Bob doesn't respect the others' time and preferences, the others don't respect Bob's interests.)

Don't railroad this. Have a conversation with the players, preferably a set of one-on-one chats before meeting up as a group and trying to address the issues with forthrightness and respect. The railroad is just glossing over a very serious group dynamic problem.

Again its never that black and white, which is my issue with this debate. I am willing to accept there are certain levels of railroading that are generally bad and excessive, but it seems like there are others that any amount of railroading is absolutely unacceptable. Those are incompatible viewpoints, with nothing in the middle to work towards agreement.
Evidently, some people consider certain actions "railroading" when I absolutely do not, just as some people apparently have such a casual definition of "fudging" as to, in my opinion, water the term down until it's nearly meaningless.

So, in the interest of hopefully clearer communication, I'm going to use the terms "fakeoutism," "forgery," and "enthrallment." All of these are clearly distinct from the usual terms, so I'll have to define them.

Fakeoutism is a style of DMing where the DM is, metaphorically, "selling a bill of goods," that is, intentionally presenting a situation that is misleading to the players, not just their characters. A rather obviously unkind example of fakeoutism is when a DM dislikes a particular option (such as a class or race) but, instead of banning it, instead chooses to make the game unpleasant and/or unfairly ultra-difficult for any player who chooses that option, rather than just banning it or having a conversation and trying to reach consensus. That is, the "fake-out" is that the DM is not actually allowing that option to play, they simply want to give the (false) impression that they allow such things while instead actually banning them in practice. This was rather unfortunately displayed in some of Gygax's early DMG text on how to get players to only play humans, "allowing" them to play powerful non-human options only to constantly kill off or unfairly target those characters until the player either leaves in frustration or wises up and starts choosing the right option (namely, humans.)

Many other forms of fakeoutism exist, however. It's any form of hollow pretense designed to fool players into thinking something matters or is respected by the DM when it is not. Note, again, the utterly critical difference between fooling the characters and fooling the players. The characters may have incomplete or incorrect understanding of the world, that is perfectly fine (in moderation of course) and can lead to a great deal of fun gaming. Characters, despite being played by humans, are not actual people and do not have agency or thoughts of their own, being personae worn by the players. Even though a character being fooled is usually a surprise or even a shock to the person playing them, this reaction is (in general) desirable and consented to by the player in advance. If everything we're perfectly predictable all the time, it would likely get dull, that's part of why we use dice.

The players, on the other hand, ARE actual people and thus should be equipped with full information about what kinds of things they are playing: theme, tone, rules, DM style/methods, etc., the stuff that should always be covered in detail during Session 0 and pre-game discussion. Much as, for example, if you're watching a movie, revealing the plot details ahead of time is usually considered a bad move (not always, but usually), while giving a trigger warning if there are deeply unpleasant or graphic scenes is generally wise. The former is in the realm of "fooling the character," as referenced above, while intentionally hiding any unpleasant scenes so that they will shock and apall someone would be "fooling the audience(/players, for games)." I hope we can agree that intentionally trying to upset someone more by having them watch something that contains (frex) a graphic dismemberment without telling them is a disrespectful, possibly even cruel, deception.

This leads to "forgery." Forgery is a DM technique in the fakeoutism toolbox that fools the players by explicitly appearing to use the rules consistently and fairly, while secretly not actually doing that. Hence the name: the results are a forgery, a fake document or account passed off as though it were true. Many DMs recommend the use of forgery (by other names), but absolutely all who do so will explicitly tell you to never, EVER let the players find out that you forge the results of the rules. The "fake-out" here is that players in general (NOT everyone, but certainly a large plurality) want to play a game where the rules are understood and can be learned, reasoned about, and applied reliably and consistently, but they are only given the superfical appearance of rules that meet this standard, when in truth they do not. Forgery prevents the possibility of having rules that can do these three things. Firstly, because forgery is almost always covered up, the players cannot actually learn how the game really works; they can only learn the false pretense that is presented to them. Secondly, because forgery is necessarily unknown to the players due to being hidden from them, they cannot actually reason about it, meaning the conclusions they draw will necessarily be faulty. Finally, because the true rules are unknown to them (and likely, though not guaranteed, to be inconsistent), the players cannot actually apply the rules, they can only apply the false pretense they have been given.

This is why forgery is so easily eliminated simply by having an honest conversation (so there is no pretense) or by establishing ways in which the true rules can me discovered and potentially exploited/defeated. If you tell people what is going on, then they have been informed and can see what the "real" rules are. E.g., to use the extremely common example, it is emphatically not forgery to end a combat earlier than "when every enemy has 0 HP," even though that is the official rule, IF you let your players know that you are doing so. "This fight is over, there's no way the ogre can defeat you now. Fighter, tell me how gruesomely you kill this bandit filth." Yes, the official rules are set aside, but they are set aside openly, allowing the players to know what's going on. Likewise, telling the player, "I just rolled a crit, but frankly that's not interesting, so I'm going to say that you just got protected by Athena from that blow. A golden nimbus of light surrounds you, looking almost like a hoplite's shield, and the blow is deflected away harmlessly. The goddess is apparently watching over you today and has decided this is not your time to die...which may come with strings attached. You know how the Olympians are." This is not forgery, even though it is blatantly disregarding the text of the rules, because the player knows what is going on.

A third, more subtle case would be extending the life of an interesting "boss" creature that died "too quickly." Doing so by simply upping the creature's HP secretly would be forgery, plain and simple. However, if you make the change diegetic and support the players trying to find out what the hell that was and how it happened, it is no longer forgery: you are making that transformation a real part of the world, and more importantly making it learnable, which ensures that it can, at least in theory, be reasoned about and applied to future plans (whether to exploit it or to prevent it.)* The players may fail to learn all there is to know or may bungle their attempts or the like, what matters is that they had the genuine, no-fakeout opportunity to try. And, as I've mentioned before, for things where there is no intersection with player agency at all, then there's no pretense in the first place and thus no false pretenses.

Now we come to "enthrallment." And yes, I chose this word very intentionally. When a DM engages in enthrallment, they are practicing a form of fakeoutism on the level of semantic content (the meaning, purpose, or value of the game) rather than on the syntactic content (the rules and structures of play.) Consider the first sentence of the OP: "What if I told you it was possible to lock your players on a tight [predefined pathway], but make them think every decision they made mattered?" Notice the terms involved here: "lock," "tight," "make them think every decision they made mattered." This is very clearly the language of control, controlling the players' beliefs and, consequently, their actions; the OP even recognizes this in the very next sentence, saying, "While this may sound like the evil GM speaking, I have my reasons." It sounds like that for the very excellent reason that that's exactly what it is, manipulative and coercive DMing. That it is manipulative or coercive with good intentions (or, in some unfortunate cases, allegedly good intentions) does not erase the manipulative or coercive nature--just because you want to make an enthralling (as in exciting, fully-engaging, indeed spellbinding) experience does not mean you are not putting the players in thrall to you.

Enthrallment manifests in a variety of ways, some benevolent, some less so. As noted above, I consider the "but I worked so hard on this" response highly unconvincing, because (a) I think it's important for creators to not be so precious about their work, and (b) there are plenty of things you can do with that prep that don't involve a whiff of forcing that prep to happen exactly the way you originally envisioned. Again, though, even with that situation, there is specifically an ingrained element of control: "If players realise nothing they do changes the story, then the adventure will quickly lose its allure. But as long as they don’t realise what is happening they will think every choice matters and the story is entirely in their hands." Explicitly, it's recognized that this technique is risky--if you're caught, it's not just bad, but very bad--and that it requires deception, specifically so "they will think every choice matters" (a phrase the OP has now used twice, so it's no accident.) Fooling your players into believing they have freedom and control when they actually don't is clearly the point, particularly in that the players are never supposed to "realize" that they don't. That's quite clear from the OP: the invisible rails must stay invisible at all costs, and the players should never be told that they will be on invisible rails, that fact should be kept completely secret from them.

That bit I mentioned earlier about methods that don't involve any DM force at all is particularly important because, if you actually run a game where player choice matters, you should be running into a LOT of so-called "wasted" prep work. Answers to questions players never thought to ask, locations players never visited, treasures players unknowingly missed, NPCs they forgot to speak to, etc. Instead of treating these as a stumbling block that must be obliterated with fakeoutism, it's much better to treat them as learning opportunities. So the players missed a treasure--surely other people will come through the lair later, looking for whatever pickings they can find, and will discover that treasure instead. That creates an opportunity: perhaps the treasure is powerful and was found(/bought/stolen/etc.) by a rival of the players, leading to a more powerful and dangerous opponent down the line; or perhaps this powerful treasure sets the adventurer who found it on a dangerous path because they're able to take on threats they aren't experienced enough to deal with but which the are now powerful enough to deal with, making them dangerous to themselves and others. As above with my example molten-obsidian-golem fight, perhaps a "missed" fight gets filed away to be recycled into something new, as with my Raven-Shadows doing a "how did we screw up" analysis on the place, finding the solidified ex-golem, and trying to replicate its accidental creation in a more controlled manner.**

But--again, this is the critical component--if you DO actually make it clear that you do this, if you actually have a real, sincere conversation with your players and inform them, then you're golden. They get a chance to push back. They get the opportunity to express their concerns or talk about their preferences with you. There is no deception, because no false pretense is presented to begin with. The OP explicitly and repeatedly refers (in different terms) to creating, and maintaining, a false pretense, knowing that if its falsehood is revealed, the players will be upset and their pleasure in the game will be damaged. (Well, knowing that that's true for some players. Obviously not all players feel that way...but a large enough group does to warrant the warning to never let it slip!)

That's all that is required to avoid fakeoutism: either communicate, or have the game be what it actually appears to be. Don't rely on implications and conventions and "well they should just know" etc. Those things are exactly what support the worst, most problematic false pretenses in the world. Be respectful and forthright with your players. That doesn't mean giving away every single little secret or exhaustively detailing every single statistic or feature. It just means....playing fairly, letting the players know exactly what they're signing up for, and making sure you have affirmative consent, not presumed implicit acceptance.

*I once did the reverse of this: diegetically reducing a fight. Long story short, the players had chosen to burst down the most dangerous threat, and nearly killed it, but the tide of little nasties would probably have done them in. So the big shadow tried to save itself by vamping most of the small shadows and then bolting. That didn't end well for the big shadow! This power had not been absolutely explicitly described in advance, but shadow-spirits like this had stolen health from living things before, so it wasn't a stretch.

**This idea came to me as a result of participating in this thread, and I'm excited to see where it leads. My players will, hopefully, also be excited, as it kinda lets them have their cake and eat it too (they got to outsmart me, and yet will also--YEARS later IRL--get a taste of what they "missed" before.)
 
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(…) if we are at that point, then your saying the only acceptable world in dnd is a hugely rich constructed world where hundreds of npcs have to have their schedules completely laid out, because I can't just drop a random encounter or an NPC on my party without it being fully immersed in the world and completely logical to the world's schedule or else its a railroad. Oh you decided to go to the blacksmith on tuesday? Well let me consult my npc chart to see if Mary the jester would be near by that day.... oh no that's her poker night. Oh but what about marigold the flower lady, wait did you go at 4:30 or going at 4:35? she only walks that area exactly at 4:30 so I need to time that roleplay encounter to check if whether you missed or not.
I’ll note that DMs who are so strongly opposed to “illusionism” are usually fine with random generation. So, given that it just isn’t possible to plan everything to such a degree of detail, I think the more realistic logical extreme of this position (that is to say, the one you’re arguing against) is a world that is entirely procedurally generated.
 

I’ll note that DMs who are so strongly opposed to “illusionism” are usually fine with random generation. So, given that it just isn’t possible to plan everything to such a degree of detail, I think the more realistic logical extreme of this position (that is to say, the one you’re arguing against) is a world that is entirely procedurally generated.
I have no interest in illusionistic techniques. Nor am I into procedural generation. Nor the sort of planning/prep/notes that @Stalker0 describes in the post you quoted.

Those are not the only alternatives to illusionism. Open scene-framing, and "say 'yes' or roll the dice", based around player-stipulated stakes - basically, what the 4e rulebooks advocate - is an alternative. And as the 4e books illustrate, entirely compatible with D&D.
 

These don't seem to me the same as what you described upthread, of permitting the players to declare actions to try and travel to another world although you've already decided that that isn't possible and hence that those actions will fail.

I don't see how players making a choice, that choice changing the flow of the game, and weather they succssed or fail (by die roll or just cause something isn't possible (but they then learn why it isn't, and even THAT changes cause they can do things to MAKE it possible) is in any definition railroad...

if tomorrow night (witch I doubt the game is new and I doubt they would think of it yet) they declaired they wanted to find a way to plane shift to the city of brass (just an example it could be spell jame to kryn or what ever) they would have to reserch and quest for the ability to do so... that adventure, that research and quest would look VERY diffrent thenif they instead said "I want to research vampires... are there any to hunt in your game world?" and that too would require reserch that would lead to a quest (and as I sit here typing I don't know the answer cause I don't have any vampires stated as anything important yet) but that again would not be what I expect...
This is all you, as GM, making decisions. There's no objective reason why, to learn about the fire, the players have to have their PCs ask about a blacksmith. This is a contrivance that you as GM have set up. Likewise for the churches.
well they don't have to use the words "I am going to look for a blacksmith" they might do 100 things that bring up the fire... but there are also 100 things that wont. I know the fire is a plot hook (I always have 3-5 but sometimes I have WAY more) but I also know my game doesn't depend on them finding the plot hook or demand they take it... maybe they just see it as a fun cool story about why there isn't a blacksmith... or maybe they investigate.

MY entire current style (except for pre written adventures) is what ever the players put effort or time into is what i run with.
Setting up hoops for the players to jump through,
you mean make them play there role as a character... and tell them what happens as they play the role and make decisions?
while making the nature of those hoops obscure, again seems to me to fall within the general conception of railroading: the GM is deciding what happens in the fiction, perhaps using the actions that the players declare as cues, but the meaning (if any) of those actions is completely obscure to the players.
um... how would a DM EVER tell a player the results of what they are looking for by your way?
This claim isn't true.
no it isn't


edit: my group is pretty liberal with control... we are all DMs at some point or another (although with varying levels of success) and we all know the rules well, and we all have experience with our group house rules and my individual house rules...PCs often in my games add things to the world.. but it is still the DM that unfolds what happens, I can't understand how else it would work?

WOuld a player say "I go to the blacksmith, spend 7gp and buy a shield and he tells me that the villian is weak to cold iron"? what if the DM already had set up and even hinted (if the PCs got it or not) that the villian was weak to adamantine does that then change it to cold iron?
 
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Well from the players perspective, there aren't bandits on both roads. There are bandits on the road west where they went, they have no idea what was on the north road because they didn't go that way..
if I were going to pull this I would just say that 'randy the bandit' is in the north and 'sam the bandit' is in the west... and warn the players of alot of bandit activity.
 

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