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

[GrimCo]

If nothing else, reading this thread has opened my eyes to just how completely restricted a GM can make player choices and not be accused of railroading.

At the end of the day, it's about player buy in. You can be very restrictive and not be accused of railroading if you are open and honest when you pitch the game to the players and they willingly self railroad themselves.

My short games (1-3 sessions and done) are railroads trough and trough. There is glowing arrow with "this way" sign before players at all times. But i'm open about it when i pitch players my ideas. Never been accused of railroading cause they buy into it. They agree to ride along, accept hooks and follow yellow brick road. If for whatever reason they decide to go off that road, well, i won't stop them. But they better be prepared to become very pro active and self motivated, cause i usually don't have wider world prepared and i'm improvising at the spot, which means i'm mostly reacting to their actions. There were few instances where i just stopped the game all together with some variation of : " Sorry guys, it seems you wanna do something else, i haven't prepared anything else beside this adventure we all agreed to play and my improv tank is empty today. How about we just stop playing and just hang out."

 

[pemerton]

It's probably easier to avoid bad GMs.

Most of my RPGing involves me GMing. So my response to @bloodtide was from that perspective.

 

[pemerton]

If nothing else, reading this thread has opened my eyes to just how completely restricted a GM can make player choices and not be accused of railroading.

My general view is that if the GM is establishing the stakes, establishing the situation, establishing the theme and establishing the (meaningful) consequences, it's clearly a railroad.

As per one of @hawkeyefan's posts upthread, a lot of module-esque play falls under this description.

Start to relax one or more of those parameters, and we can start to talk about degrees of railroadiness, and (conversely) of player agency.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I mean truthfully, there are so few bad players (especially when grouped with other good players) and so few DMs, that this is argument is running on hyperbole.

This should not be understated.
Good players rub off on poor/bad players as they find inspiration from them and happily surprise you when their roleplaying style starts to match the table's. Carrots whether it be via the narrative or small mechanical benefits as rewards also help retrain their ways.

I have a player who is returning to the game after a long absence from RPGs where of old we had terrible habits...and I can see the process of him improving.