Hussar
Legend
Personally, I find all these railroading arguments go away with a simple definition:
Railroading - when the DM is acting in bad faith to enforce a particular outcome pre-determined by the DM.
There, no more problems. @RangerWickett is not engaging in railroading in the slightest because he is not acting in bad faith. He's doing what a DM is supposed to do, keep the game moving along at a pace the group finds enjoyable.
I find that this particular definition of railroading is so much more productive. We can ask ourselves why we decided to do something like moving the ogre. Is it because we have decided that no matter what, that ogre MUST BE ENCOUNTERED, regardless of any other consideration? Then, yup, that's bad faith. Typically this sort of thing happens when the DM has decided that X must happen in order to increase difficulty/challenge. The NPC acts in blindingly suicidal fashion so the players MUST rescue the NPC. That sort of thing.
As soon as we move the discussion away from the tool to the intent of the use of that tool, then we can get to the heart of any issue much more easily.
Railroading - when the DM is acting in bad faith to enforce a particular outcome pre-determined by the DM.
There, no more problems. @RangerWickett is not engaging in railroading in the slightest because he is not acting in bad faith. He's doing what a DM is supposed to do, keep the game moving along at a pace the group finds enjoyable.
I find that this particular definition of railroading is so much more productive. We can ask ourselves why we decided to do something like moving the ogre. Is it because we have decided that no matter what, that ogre MUST BE ENCOUNTERED, regardless of any other consideration? Then, yup, that's bad faith. Typically this sort of thing happens when the DM has decided that X must happen in order to increase difficulty/challenge. The NPC acts in blindingly suicidal fashion so the players MUST rescue the NPC. That sort of thing.
As soon as we move the discussion away from the tool to the intent of the use of that tool, then we can get to the heart of any issue much more easily.