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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9623103">Fair enough. I didn't mean this to say always and every time. I meant it can beAgain the issue is whether the players agency is being thwarted. The GM can respond in a variety of ways. But railroading is when they respond to constrict choice sot that the choices that the GM wants them to make happen My point was agency is about the freedom player has to engage the setting or adventure with their character, so they can make meaningful choices. That is how most people mean it in an RPG context. It depends on context. I think for most groups, agreeing that there is an adventure and sitting down to play T1 is entirely fair and not going to be considered a railroad. A railroad might be something that could come up in the adventure though. For example I have been running some 90s Ravenloft modules and those have railroads in them in many instances. And the railroading here constrains player agency by doing things like making sure no matter what they do, something specific still happens or by giving a particular NPC immunity from harm, even if the players stab him in the head and do enough damage to kill him. And in some of them, the adventures have such a linear structure, that it is hard to get off of and I would say many people would see that as railroady and presenting agency issues. All that said, I love these modules and have a lot fun with them. But it isn't a line where player agency was paramount I think in another campaign though, that is maybe more open, the players not being able to avoid the hook fro T1 could be considered a railroad and an imposition on agency. My only point was that agency is about having fewer constraints on what players can try do. That doesn't mean having 100% agency is always going to be a good thing. If I am running monster of the week adventures and one of the players wants to open up a lemonade stand and is persistent about it, and the other players feel like they aren't getting to move on to the next monster of the week, then that players agency is less important to me than the premise of the campaign</blockquote>

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