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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stalker0" data-source="post: 8695701" data-attributes="member: 5889">Again I consider this a matter of degrees.A player of mine goes into a town, and does the following:1) Decides to put on their extra special shoes. Nothing magical of course, they just think they look cool.2) Wears some loose summer clothing, because its quite hot in the city.3) Puts their money pouch tight around their leg, because they have heard of bandits around.4) Prepares the absorb elements spell today.5) Decides to go the west part of town to talk to the blacksmith.I as a DM, do the following:1) I make no adjustment to any of my encounters due to the shoes.2) I do not make any checks for the hot weather, and would not have done so even if they wore "normal clothing"3) The PC was not pickpocketed at any point in the day, so the choice of money pouch location has no meaning.4) The PC is not hit with any elemental damage spells, and so this spell preparation choice was meaningless.Have I railroaded so far? A lot of player choices have had 0 impact on the adventure so far, so am I a bad DM? Should I have improvised some pickpockets or had them get struck by lightning to ensure a few of these choices were impactful?5) Now we get to the blacksmith. I as the DM decide to do an assassin encounter, and yes would have done that regardless of which direction the PC goes. However, because they choose to go to the blacksmith before the end of the day, the blacksmith is there, and they have a long talk and get some key info about the bad guy they are pursuing. And with a great persuasion check, gets 5% discount off some wares.So for 5, the players choice absolutely mattered. Their decision to go to the blacksmith did not have any impact on their combat encounter, but it did absolutely have impact on what information the player was able to obtain, which now impacts the plot.So does a player choice have to impact every single element of my story in order for it be impactful, or can we agree that as long as the player choice had some key impact, that's its not required for it to have ABSOLUTE impact over everything?</blockquote>

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