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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8698430" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Meant to include this in my quotes, must have missed it.Firstly: it absolutely does not come across, AT ALL, WHATSOEVER, as merely "guiding meandering players toward the interesting stuff." It certainly does involve creating the illusion of a bigger world, that I'll grant you. But we have sentences like the very first one, but several others too:"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? While this may sound like the evil GM speaking, I have my reasons.""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.""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.""...as long as no one points out the “emperor has no clothes” everyone will have a great game.""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.""Sometimes the easiest choice is no choice at all.""Now, all this may all seem a little manipulative...""But it is fine to make sure every road goes where you want it to, as long as that is to somewhere amazing."This advice is about how "to lock your players on a tight railroad." It "may sound like the evil GM speaking." It makes players think the adventure has many options, while it "just doesn't have as many options as they thought it did." Hell, the OP even explicitly says, "nothing they do changes the story"!It's worth noting, there are statements meant to pull back a bit from this. Things like:"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 [sic] no bad thing.""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.""That said, never take away player agency so you can ensure the story plays out the way you want it to.""So, remember that you must never restrict the choices and agency of the players, at least knowingly."But do you see the disconnect between these two sets of quotes? The admonishments tell you not to take away the feeling of player agency, nor even to take away player agency at all...and yet the actual advice, the "what to do," explicitly does do that, by the author's own admission. E.g., "To a degree you are limiting their agency..." etc. These statements contradict one another, telling you to do a thing and then telling you you absolutely shouldn't do that thing. Only one of those two positions can be correct--and it's pretty clear, from the title alone, which of the two positions is the one actually being advocated.And  yes, I know the author is a poster here who posted something intending to clarify his intent. I frankly don't really care. Death of the author and all that. The content of the post is the content of the post, and that's what I'm critiquing. I don't really care if it was meant to only ever be a suggestion to make preparation easier. What it actually says, as in the words actually written and the connections between them, is what matters, not whether the author approves of what people see in those words.Secondly: your "framing" example is fine, in the limited presentation of this post, because there are no meaningful choices to be had along the path. As Thomas Shey said, this doesn't even register as "railroading" to me, and I see no reason whatsoever why the DM would need to be coy about it. It would seem to be easier (and more honest) to just say, "Moving along, you reach the heart of the forest where the old cottage awaits..."But that's not what people are talking about when they talk about the "invisible railroad" or the like. They aren't talking about scene-framing things so the action arrives more quickly or smoothly. They're talking about quantum ogres and haunted houses which show up no matter which direction the players go. They're talking about dungeons that are a linear sequence of rooms dressed up as though they were a sprawling complex. They're talking about mysteries where it is a foregone conclusion that the players will solve it, and any time they look like they might not solve it a new clue will miraculously drop into their lap so they "stay on track" (a bit more literally than is usual for that phrase.)</blockquote>

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