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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8696868" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't see how the sort of decision-making you are talking about changes the game from railroad to not a railroad.Here are two reasonably well-known modules which are both railroads: Dead Gods, and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Suppose a GM asks their players to choose which of these modules to play: that doesn't make the ensuing game not a railroad.Suppose the GM introduces two different hooks, one which leads to Dead Gods and on which leads to Expedition: that doesn't make the ensuing game not a railroad.In your example, the adventure, research and quest all seem to be things that the GM has decided, or will decide (eg you refer to your, the GM's, lack of having made up anything about vampires). The players are making a contribution about topic, but that seems to be it.Again, everything here seems to be authored by you the GM. As you describe it, the players are "lucky dipping" into your box of stories and seeing which one they pull out. Maybe they can throw aside one they don't like and have another draw. Is that what you mean by meaningful choice?I've already mentioned other ways of approaching play. There is the approach set out in the 4e rulebooks, where the setting backstory is shared (it's presented in the PHB, mostly under the entries for races and for gods), and players are encouraged to author quests for their PCs, and the system for resolving actions (both combat and non-combat) is transparent and player-facing.Of the RPGs I know, the one that has the most robust and unrelenting implementation of the 4e approach is Burning Wheel. While 4e is not quite as robust nor as unrelenting, it still works fine.Another well-known approach is that found in Apocalypse World and well-known spin-offs like Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, etc.One thing these approaches have in common, which is directly relevant to "railroading", is that the GM is not permitted to rule that a player's declared action fails just because, in the GM's imagination, the fiction makes success impossible. Or to put it another way: these approaches do not treat the GM's unilateral, secret ideas about the shared fiction as authoritative.</blockquote>

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