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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 2848070" data-attributes="member: 8835">I think some folks haven't learned the difference between Choice and choice.At this EXACT moment, you have a tone of choices to make.  Few of them are Choices, however.Whether you scratch your nose with your left or right hand is a choice.  But it's not significant.You have a choice to take your keyboard and stuff it into one of your orifices.  But it's not a choice you are likely to take.When you go to work, you have the choice to punch the next person to disagree with you.  But once again, it's not a choice you are likely to take.Life is filled with a plethora of little choices.  Things that don't matter, and paths that a rational being won't go down.Real Choices have real consequences and have real alternatives that require actual consideration.If you want to argue that the path with gold and danger is a railroad, because the other path just has danger, and it's not realistic, then you haven't lived long enough.  When I woke up today, I had a choice, go to work, or stay home.  If I stay home, I won't get paid, and I won't be able to pay my bills, and I'll become homeless.  If I go to work, I'll get paid, and keep all my stuff.  It's my choice, but in reality, there is only one real Choice, goto work.  Technically, I have a choice of finding a new job, but that's really a variant of the "goto work" path.  The stay at home path has so many negatives as to eliminate itself as a Choice.All this is the nature of life and choices.  It applies to PCs as well.  There are some choices that are effectively chosen by the nature of your PC, rather than actively made.Real railroading is when the DM ordanes that events will happen, and NOTHING a PC does can avoid that event.  We're not talking stuff like "the sun will rise tomorrow, and you can't stop it."  We're talking things the PC could change, but the DM keeps twisting things (by adding extra events or resources) to thwart the PC's action.The most common railroad is when the DM's adventure says "the PCs will be captured and ...."  A railroading DM will read that and do everything they can to make it happen.  This will include bringing in overwhelming numbers, or extra enemies after the original enemies are defeated.  If the adventure had been written to say "the enemy will try to capture the PCs" there's a completely different attitude, and allowance for the PCs choices to make a difference.</blockquote>

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