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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7053409" data-attributes="member: 42582">One can tell, from a single event of play, whether that event of play was driven by the GM or the players (assuming one has all the relevant information). And given that that is what I'm interested in when it comes to the content of a railroad, that's enough to answer my question.(There might be other questions - is the occurence of GM force atypical? or (perhaps more likely) is allowing an episode of play to unfold in a player-driven way atypical? But these are questions that would be relevant, say, to deciding whether to join a group. They don't seem to help me analyse the play that is taking place, or how various approaches and techniques are informing that play.)This goes back to [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s comments about the assassination of the marquis. Without telling me more about what is at stake, I can't make the call. To relate it to my OP, is the villain's escape an outcome in the relevant sense? Or mere colour. If it's an outcome, then I would never just declare it (ie the GM can't "say 'yes'" to him-/herself!) The dice would have to be rolled.I'm familiar with the concepts. My point is that I don't think they can bear the explanatory load that is being put on them.For instance, we're told that "An adventure is a series of scenes and encounters that comprise a single, complete story." But what marks a story as complete? Who gets to decide that nothing more is at stake? If it's the GM, then we're right back in the realm of GM force - so the idea of an adventure as a meaningful unit of play brings railroading with it per se; if it's the players, then when they decide that there's nothing more at stake for their PCs presumably the campaign is done.This seems to assume that "the plot", if it is to exist at all, must be authored by the GM - and hence that there is no difference between "the plot" and "the GM's plot" - the latter being the phrase you used in your earlier post, to which I responded.But that assumption is simply false. And not just false in an abstract or theoretical "it might be otherwise" fashion, but in the very concrete "I am currently GMing 5 campaigns - two 4e, one MHRP, one Cortex Fantasy hack and one Burning Wheel - in which there is no such thing as "the plot" in your sense.For instance, as I wrote up <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?530990-Into-the-North-Cortex-Plus-Heroic-Fantasy-actual-play&p=7051249" target="_blank">here</a>, on the weekend I GMed a session of Cortex Plus fantasy. The session involved the (fantasy viking) PCs travelling into the northern hills and mountains to learn about a curse/doom befalling their land.How did we establish that that was why they were travelling north? Because the players determined it: one explained how there were perturbations in the northern light, a sign of trouble among the gods; another told how his PC had heard cries of anguish from the great spirits of the spirit world, and for that reason had come to the village to seek aid, despite normally being a solitary traveller; a third talked about the need to investigate the Dragon's Curse. So the core elements of the plot were settled by the players, not the GM.The first encounter the PCs had was with the steading of the giant Loge? Is Loge a friend or foe - an ally in the quest, or another force bringing blight to the land? That wasn't known at the outset. There was no "plot" in this respect. We learned that Loge had a shaman in his steading who thought that the PCs were right to be concerned about dire portents, and who therefore urged Loge to align with them rather than eat them, because one of the PCs spent a plot point to establish that shaman as a resource. And we learned that Loge was able to be persuaded by his shaman because in the resolution of the social conflict the PCs who achieved the final victory had the d6 representing the shaman as one die in his pool.There is no "presented plot" here, which the players might deviate from or ignore. There's a set of tropes - eg everyone knows that the land of vikings is full of giants in their halls, who sometimes can be allies but ultimately are not to be trusted; there is an overall orientation chosen by the players - a curse or blight or doom that needs to be lifted/prevented; there is a situation that engages the players - will they treat with Loge, fight him, or (perhaps, but in my experience less likely) ignore his steading altogether? But that is a series of premises or thematic elements. It's not a plot.Well, the whole point of the OP is to put this claim under scrutiny, by asking "Which GMing decisions in the adjudication of the game tend towards railroading, and which don't?"(In passing: "improvised" is ambiguous between "no prep" and "no pre-authored plot". The latter doesn't entail the former. For instance, I din't make up stats for the giant on the spot - I used a stat block from the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide, which is to say I relied on (someone else's) prep. But the story wasn't pre-authored.)If the GM has already decided how things will turn out, that is a railroad.What you describe here might be one approach to the GM's job at the table. It is not the only one. For instance, it depends upon there being "a plot", "a story" which the GM is (quite literally, in your examples) curating and parcelling out to the players. I personally don't see how that doesn't count as railroading. It's certainly not a case of the players determining outcomes in the fiction.</blockquote>

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