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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9761007" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, one of us doesn't.So?  Even if we accept your imperfect understanding, if the players end up where I wanted them to be the fact that theoretically they had some other choice is irrelevant.  I was still successful at forcing them to be where I wanted them to be and invalidating their agency.  In fact, one of the most common railroading techniques is False Choice where in theory the players have multiple things they can choose to do, but by making all the choices but the one I want highly undesirable, I'm all but guaranteeing the players will do what I want them to do.  As a crude example, I might have a powerful Monoarch or Archmage show up and tell the players, "You can either do what I tell you to do, or you can die.  Your choice."  The fact that in theory the players could choose death or to fight Eliminister or whatever doesn't mean I didn't railroad the players to get them where I wanted them to go.  Likewise, the fact that some keyhole exists to squirm through to get off the rails and in theory the players could have chosen to go through the keyhole doesn't mean that they weren't railroaded.  The Obdurium Walls that keep the players on the rails don't have to be literally invulnerable to any attempt to breach them.  They just have to be practically invulnerable.  If I tell a player, "Sure you can try." but I'm ruling they need a natural 20 (or better) to do it, then I've just told them "No" with some extra steps.  You don't have to make it impossible to get off the rails.  You just have to make it difficult and undesirable to get off the rails, and if you are truly devious you have a plan B to get them back on the rails if they do manage to get off, such as "Where ever they go, the encounter follows them."The point is that one doesn't have to remove all agency from a player in order to force them to where you want them to be.  In fact you can generously give them all the agency in the world so long as in the end you get what you want.  Which is why that if you are good at this, you can run a game where it felt like to the player they had all the choices in the world and could do anything they wanted and still was totally in control of the GM the whole time.  This is why [USER=6790260]@EzekielRaiden[/USER] has to put his caveat about retroactively realizing that you were railroaded and withdrawing consent means you were railroaded.I don't have to use perfect and absolute force to steer the players where I want them to go.But then the obvious question should be, well, how much force can I use?  Like if making an option require a natural 20 because I don't want it to happen is bad, would it be OK if I only required a natural 15 or higher?  Well, except they probably won't unless you've given them reason to suspect Schrodinger's Map or you used a particularly inelegant sort of chute to drop them where you wanted them.  Because time skips are "normal" and "desirable" (and at a micro scale common), players aren't generally going to question them.  But more to the point, with a time skip you are pretty much always trading agency for pacing.  That might be the right choice for your game; I'm not judging how anyone plays, but a time skip does take away choices and information from the player.  And it should always be in a GMs mind to consider just how much agency you are potentially taking away with a time skip.How much influence is necessary before we can agree that is the removal/negation of all player choice? Do we adopt an outcome based definition like "If the players ended up where GM wanted them then it was sufficient"?   Because I think everyone is going to agree that if I make the hurdles high enough, it doesn't matter if theoretically if I didn't completely negate player choice if I made the chance of them implementing a plan for getting off the rails like 0.1%.  So where is the line?  Hint: There is no line.  There are only tradeoffs and very conscious attempts to control for your own bias about what you want to see happen.Why?  Why even say it then? You influenced them by asking the question!  It seems obvious to me.  How can you know the question didn't change their proposition?  So does this force you to agree that if my influencing is effective it is also railroading?  Think of it as like a craps game with loaded dice.  The fact that any one throw could potentially be anything doesn't change the fact that in the long term I am very likely now to get what I want.  I mean even if I'm the house and the game is craps with unrigged dice (and some modern RPGs feel like that to me) then even if occasionally the players can get what they want, in the long run I still get what I want.  One doesn't have to leave zero wiggle room in order to railroad someone.  All they need to do is ensure in the long run that the player ends up where they want.One doesn't need to use total force to steer the players where you want them to be.  You just have to put your thumb on the wheel.</blockquote>

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