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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9756052" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't think I did that.  I think the issue here is something like "pornography", famously defined as "I know it when I see it".I think the term "railroading" has a massive negative connotation.  And think people's reasoning goes something like this:a) I'm a good DM.b) Good DMs don't railroad.c) Therefore what I do isn't railroading.d) But, I can see that sometimes it goes too far and that's bad.e) That going too far is what "railroading" is.I didn't like a definition that depended on a subjective opinion about what went too far.  People say things like, "Railroading is when you remove player agency" or "Railroading is when you remove player agency to achieve a result you desire", and the definition I'm giving is within some degree of nuance of that.  But in reality this definition gets really congruent with the application of GM force and GM fiat.  And yet, it's really hard to have a GM and also not have those things to some degree, and yet also games with GMs for a lot of reason tend to be more popular than ones without them.  Because the universe that we play in is simulated in the head of a person, it's really not possible to have a theoretical "no railroading" game where the GM is only leaving the results up to player decisions, the pre-established rules, the dice, and a pre-established fiction that arose from those things.  Everything else involves some amount of limiting player agency to achieve a certain result, some of it vastly more obviously than others.  And a "time skip" or a "hand wave" is such a big obvious example of that in my essay it was like the first technique that came into my head.  And I know from play experience, that playing something out and time skipping or hand waving don't produce equivalent results.  You can't just assume that the player wouldn't make some important story changing choice in the "down time".  Rather, you have to balance the opportunity for the player to have agency against the other goals that you are trying to achieve for everyone to have a good time.  And that is a very important concept to understand and accept and recognize that clears up so much of these arguments in the way steps A through E above just doesn't.  What I figured out is powerfully clarifying and illuminating and not obfuscating.</blockquote>

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