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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9543359" data-attributes="member: 4937">This is complicated by your limited understanding of how a GM can control players, but your intention in the above is I think good even if your strict definition isn't.  Let's call it railroading when the GM wants to control what the players can accomplish or how they can accomplish it, and I think we'll both be in agreement.  Simplistically you might think that the party that chooses to start a bootlegging enterprise in Dee instead of helping the guy obtain the Manual of the Nine Claws has more agency and if the GM says "yes" that they are letting the players go where they want to go and set the agenda.  And most of the time you would probably be right, but in both cases the GM is equally "making things happen".  This can be a bit of a side trek, but  lets say I have envisioned this interesting story in which this guy obtaining the Manual of the Nine Claws is one step, and my players don't cooperate but decide to set their own agenda and become bootleggers.  Bootlegging isn't an inherently interesting occupation.  It's mostly going to be tedium with long periods establishing yourself as trustworthy business men in the black market, finding buyers, earning their respect, and basically living out a pretty normal life like going into work every day and managing finances.  So who is the railroader?  The one that gives the players a realistic but boring campaign as bootleggers, or one that "makes things happen" by upon seeing that the players are excited about this theme goes ahead and begins introducing dramatic twists, foils, rivals, and interesting story lines around the player's choice?  Which group of players ends up with more agency?  The one that is given a realistic but boring story where nothing exciting happens, or the one where the GM is introducing plots and devices of his own imagining?  The notion the players that are creating the boot legging story are creating all their own fun is a flawed one.  It's not real.  It's an illusion.Yes, but you do that by making things happen.  That's why I said every good GM utilizes the coincidence.  Wherever the players go, there is the fun.  Real life doesn't work that way.  It's an aesthetic choice and you create it as a GM by making things happen.There is a spectrum here, but it's a little more complicated that most people realize when they are for "team sandbox" or whatever.  There is a difference between linear and open world games in presentation and feel, but we can't easily say which is better or which has more agency or that one doesn't involve the GM making things happen.  And remember, I start with a session zero where I get player agreement as to what sort of game we are going to play.  So if suddenly in the middle of that, someone wants to change what the game is about and get off the adventure path and become a bootlegger, something probably went wrong.  If I'm such a bad GM that I can't make the adventure path fun and now everyone wants to get off the train, then chances are I can't make bootlegging fun either.</blockquote>

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