What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

[Hriston]

But I'm happy to rephrase, this time cutting and pasting for accuracy: what is an example of unexpected stuff that no one would just choose here and now, if left to their own devices?

I'm not @pemerton either, but, to quote Vincent Baker, it's "things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create" -- "outcomes that upset every single person at the table." It's "things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject." I hope that helps.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Anyway, two questions:
1) Do you specifically think what I did here was "railroading"?
and 2) In general, how do you define "railroading" or being railroaded as a player ina game?

1. No. It's not railroading.

You presented a unique/unusual situation to your players. At most that particular player seems to have had a failure of imagination about what's going on in the game world. Dropping some clues about what's going on might help. But I see no fault on your part here.

2. Since I mostly play in the Forgotten Realms, I consider railroading to occur when a DM is more concerned with following the lore of the Realms then they are with the players and their choices at the gaming table. To extend that beyond the Realms, I think a DM who is more concerned with preserving the structure of their plot/story than they are with presenting players with unique and/or unusual scenarios and accepting the choices the players make--including breaking the plot--is railroading the players.

 

[pemerton]

Huh. You're right, and it wasn't intentional (I was typing from short-term memory) but...does it really make that much difference to the point? Other than to give a possible escape hatch to the responses? ("I didn't say that wouldn't ever choose to do that..."). What significant difference are you seeing between 'choosing stuff' and 'choosing to do (stuff)?'

I think (or at least hope) that it was clear enough that by "stuff" I meant component/elements/events of/within the shared fiction.

"To do" seems to confine to declaring actions.

As for "ever" vs "here and now": it can be true that a person, left to their own devices, wouldn't choose, here and now, that a particular character is petrified; or is smitten by this other particular character; without it being true that no one would ever choose that some or other character be petrified, or some or other character be smitten by another.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm not @pemerton either, but, to quote Vincent Baker, it's "things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create" -- "outcomes that upset every single person at the table." It's "things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject." I hope that helps.

Very pretty prose, but not really very explanatory.