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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shadzar" data-source="post: 5455153" data-attributes="member: 6667746">I disagree because that is using a system of control as a fake choice. Thus why many view it as simple railroading, because the players are NOT given a choice to make. You are saying You can buy New Coke or do without. Pepsi surely likes those kind of choices, because the company belittling the consumer will find themselves with less consumers.But you are a forceful DM, and feel that you should "work to make the players accept" your view.This does not make it a choice, only a system of control.It is as others have mentioned the One Ring. It has been expressed over the years and even on this forum, that a DM should not have a one-way door that leads to another one way door for players.This is a railroad. You are using a VERY lose definition of "choice" being having more than a single option by presenting ONLY those two options.You would be giving the players a list of finite options. A or B. D&D isn't about the players picking A or B every time. They have every right to choose Z or J.As a DM you must rationalize why they chose Z or J and determine if it would be acceptable. If ONLY A and B are valid options, then you have exerted your control over the players and are railroading them to tell your story.That is why you NEVER have a puzzle, with only a single solution. This is just another puzzle, and the players would be presented with only a single solution, not a choice.A list of options is what you present with a selection set of 2.By doing so you have already made every choice for the players. Why is it invalid for them to do something else? Why only those 2 in the list of acceptable options?What you are presenting is something containing the word choice, but actually is something else, multiple choice:You are giving them the only possible way to handle this situation in the form of a list of accepted resolutions. You are controlling the choices that are allowed to be made.The problem with the sacrifice or the BBEG lives is that you are deciding the only options available to the players and not letting them find others. This is a form of railroading.Multiple choice IS a form of choice, but for only a specific purpose. It works for creating characters as giving the list of available races to be played either based on published material or DM discretion, but during play it does NOT work to allow player control over their own characters. It is the DM controlling the player's characters at that point and the players ability to choose is removed, and thus they are removed as the players of the characters. Their choices are no longer meaningful if they don't pick what you want them to: Option A or Option B.</blockquote>

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