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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9760164" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, because I can give you counter examples.If you have a consistent procedure of play that isn't influenced by the GMs judgment where the GM adheres to the procedure of play in such a way that he is forced to accept the outcome, then that's not railroading.  For example, if our tables always rolls to hit rolls in the open (or the GM never fudges even if tempted) to determine whether or not the monster is hit, then there is no railroading in that process of play.  The GM has taken their own judgment out of it as much as possible.  And if the modifiers to that roll are well known and established and transparent even when circumstantial, then again the GM has taken their own judgment out of its as much as possible.  And the GM writes down the AC of the monster before the combat and adheres to it, again, that's not railroading.  It's only railroading if the process of play is influenced or influenceable by what is happening in the meta - that is whether or not the GM thinks that misses or hits would be good for the drama at the moment.Ok, so if you exclude everything where the GM has an unbiased and documentable process of play, then I do agree everything is railroading.  If we dispense with having rules and if we improvise all content on the fly and we rely solely on GM fiat, then yes, it's all aboard the choo choo all the time.  But in a game like D&D, that's almost never done.Your statement here would only be true if the GM could hypothetically remove their bias from the decision making process (leaving aside whether that is a good thing) and act as a perfectly unbiased arbiter.  Someone early mentioned the minimum amount of railroading in Ironsworn is zero, and theoretically speaking that's true since Ironsworn leaves potentially every decision point up to the die.  Of course, in practice you would need to assign probabilities to outcomes in an unbiased manner (everything is a coin flip!) and this might not actually be the best thing for a story, which suggests that at some level people recognize that the Secret Keeper making his preferences happen to make the story more interesting isn't entirely a bad thing so long as he leaves some fair share of agency to the players as well.</blockquote>

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