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Message: <blockquote data-quote="zarionofarabel" data-source="post: 9735881" data-attributes="member: 7026405">Okay. Well, I've always thought that was just the way one was supposed to GM <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😊" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60a.png" title="Smiling face with smiling eyes    :blush:" data-shortname=":blush:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />. Like, the whole point of being a GM was to foster narrative that incorporates the players preferences as to what they want to experience out of a game. If I have a player that makes a badass combat god PC, I am assuming that they want to engage in some furious combat, to not include any combat for the player to engage in, would just be bad GMing, IMHO. Same goes for a player that creates a PC that is obsessed with discovering eldritch secrets, but then is never presented with the possibility of ever discovering said eldritch secrets, would be a failure on the GMs part to properly foster narrative that engages the players interests. I think I have always done that kind of thing as a GM, in that as I like to run player driven narrative games, the narrative more often than not revolves around the PCs personal interests, which in turn engages the players personal interests. Which when all is said and done is something that, while I feel I have always done that, I did experience in a codified way when I read the Burning Wheel TTRPG for the first time. BW does an amazing job mechanically supporting that principle as the entirety of the system's gameplay loop is centered around the PCs explicitly stated personal goals and personality traits. Frankly, I wish more systems had a razor sharp focus on a PCs personal goals as their main focus. I'm actually surprised to this day that BW's BIT system hasn't been something that I've encountered in other systems. It's such an elegant way to express a player's interests through their PCs statistics, it should be way more of "a thing" in the hobby, IMHO.All that being said, I am still unsure as to how NOT doing that is considered railroading. As, at this moment in time, I understand railroading to be a removal of player agency. While I do understand that NOT doing that is akin to being a less good GM, how does it equate to a removal of agency? To sneak in a quote from Galaxy Quest, one of the greatest satires of all time, alluding to the scene where evil green alien guy tells the captain to explain what acting is to the friendly squid alien leader...Explain it to him as if he were a child!Oh well, if the whole thing just has to be about you, then I'm gonna...oh wait...I think I already do that! At least, far more often than not, anyway.</blockquote>

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