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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Heathen72" data-source="post: 5593200" data-attributes="member: 7029">This is the nub of it. If your GM isn't prepared, or able to come up with a totally new adventure on the fly, it doesn't mean he is railroading you. For me, railroading is when the GM continually negates unexpected player actions to keep them "on the rails", i.e., bring them back to the game he has prepared. Some examples: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The GM has created a pressure plate trap for the players. He expects them to fall into it and be captured by the Villain. Everyone falls down the trap, but the wizard casts levitate and avoids the trap. The GM suddenly decides the trap comes with an anti magic shell.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The GM creates a session where the players have to ride through the night on horseback to deliver a vital message to the King. The players, concerned the dangers in the forest (described by the GM to raise the stakes) present an unacceptable risk to the mission and decide instead to sell their horses to pay the 'witches' (who they know from a previous session) to send a telepathic message. The GM has the witches refuse, because he hadn't thought of that idea, despite how reasonable it is.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The players are in an area with a foot high stone perimeter. The map has only been drawn to include the area within the perimeter. A player decides to jump over the stone wall, but can't, no matter how high he jumps. When he asks the GM why not, the GM replies "Computer says no"</li> </ul>Okay, the third one was a joke, but the point is one of the defining pro's of gaming (as opposed to computer gaming) is that a GM can react to and accommodate unexpected player actions. It can be frustrating as a player when the GM blocks a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem he has presented, not because it's a bad idea, but because he just didn't think of it. It's like being asked a bad riddle and having your answer rejected because it, despite fitting the riddle, is not the answer the creator had in mind. Sure, railroading is an emotive term, because it is either used to describe things that aren't actually railroading ("What! But I don't want to do the  dungeon you spent ages on. I want to travel to arcadia to study at the feet of Flaubert the Master Chef This is a Railroad!!") whereupon the GM has to engage in a futile exercise of appeasing the player's sense of entitlement, or because it is an accurate call and the GM just has to admit the player outsmarted him. How hard that is to deal with depends on the GM. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />So, as GM, what are the solutions? What do you do if a player catches you out and you realize that their clever play has potentially rendered loads of prep work, (or worse, your 'story') useless? I, for one, would suggest going with it, seeing how your impro skills hold up, and holding onto your forest encounters for another time. But if you aren't confident with GMing on the fly, perhaps the best thing to do is just fess up. Tell the players you hadn't thought of that. Give them a load of XP, and then ask them if they are still interested in playing through what you had prepared. In the second example above, for instance, you might just say    "Ah, Of course. Damn. I hadn't thought of that. Good idea! Um.... look. This whole session was based on you going to the King. Do you mind if we assume that at the end of your telepathic discussion the King sends back the message that he needs you to come straight to his side? He says he wants to send you on a mission based on your intel. To help you he has arranged for a guide to help you through the woods, and will pay for new mounts for you to get to him as soon as possible. Is that cool with everyone?" Hopefully your honesty will keep everyone happy.If don't want to 'fess up', fearing it might dispel your air of GM infallibility, or destroy the illusion of reality, it is still important that you still make sure that the players are acknowledged and rewarded for their smart play. Because if you end up ignoring the impact of their actions, and charge them for the horses, they are going to feel ripped off.</blockquote>

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