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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8008994" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Again, I haven't caught up with the thread nor have I come close to reading every reply with a critical eye.  I'm basically skimming right now as I have a moment.Just going to use this post to springboard some analysis.  We've talked about Force a lot in the past (which is a specific instance of play), but I'm going to say something about the broad issue of Railroading.This is how I look at the issue:"Railroading is a phenomenon that occurs in proportion to a GM (or an adventure) encoding a winnowing of player decision-points."As such, a session (or a campaign that features such sessions) that has encoded in its "DNA" a surplus of meaningful gamestate interactions whereby decision-points and attendant outcomes are narrow is "more railroady" than one where where breadth is encoded (and therefore significant branching if you instantiated the starting conditions of the session, say, 100 times). Force, is a singular instance of this encoding and the encoding is complete (the encoding can occur preemptively by the GM or in the spur of the moment when play trajectory is wrested from the GM's designs); meaning a singular outcome imposed by the GM.</blockquote>