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

[Gradine]

Railroading is when the referee denies player choice. I don't see how denying this choice is less railroading than denying that choice. If you're saying denying player choice outside of the session is separate and distinct, sure. We'll just need a new name for that particular kind of railroading. Light railroading. Pre-game railroading. Etc.

The problem with this is that the term "railroading" is never going to be able to drop its derogatory baggage. And so insisting that setting campaign expectations is necessary some form of "railroading" is to necessarily designate that as a "lesser than" style of gaming. Which I get is your position, but that is neither a common opinion nor does it lead to anything resembling useful discussion on the topic.

I appreciate that you do not see the difference between establishing campaign expectations and directly countering player agency in-game, but I am telling you that these are extremely significantly different, different enough to warrant entirely different terminology for. Certainly different enough that using different terminology would help us maintain the distinction without saddling a very normal thing that a lot of games include with the very derogatory (which I would argue is earned) connotation. I prefer the term buy-in, but I'm open to other suggestions that do not relate this, again, very common behavior to railroading

 

[CreamCloud0]

railroading to me when the GM only has a single goal for the situation/campaign that they are going to allow, one that they will enforce by denying all solutions or ideas that do not directly lead to that goal and even sometimes denying ideas to that goal that don't follow the path they imagined you taking to get there.