Yes, except for the part that's no, which is all of it. How come it's so hard for you to understand that people can enjoy something that they didn't think of? Do you become some sort of lesser beast whenever something comes up in real life that you didn't think of, but enjoy? I sure don't, and neither have any of the hundreds of players that I've played with over the decades.
It isn't hard for me to understand anything at all! I'm not arguing that. You're the one that claimed that I'm doing it wrong because the players had to actually decide what they wanted and think of things. I'm not saying its 'wrong' to feed them some pre-built story, or make all the decisions about what is in the story, unless they don't want that. I DO believe that players are, generally speaking, very willing and interested in coming up with stuff. More than you give them credit for sometimes. There's no right or wrong way to play. I only object to statements like you telling me I'm denying them choices because I don't play your way. It just isn't like that. Understand?
So as long as you can connect it to a PC interest, however tenuous, it's okay?
No, what I think is that when you put forward an element like "the skeleton of a knight chained to a wall" it is so general that it COULD relate to almost anything. The knight could hold some secret that can be obtained by laying his bones to rest. His bone could be magical. Finding his resting place could earn a reward or garner favor somewhere. One of the characters might see it as a duty to lay him to rest, despite resistance or danger. He could be a relative of a PC and his death require vengeance. He could owe the PCs a debt that he will repay in some future time. I can think of 50 different ways to tie that into various PC agendas. The problem is I can make up INFINITE things like that, drawn from myth, legend, literary sources, my own imagination, player suggestions, etc. I need some filter, some process with which to winnow down the content included in THIS game at THIS time to something manageable so that the game can flow instead of just flailing around from one minor incident to another. Expressed player interest, campaign or genre focus, etc., all used in Story Now games, can be such a rule. Its a good one because it does mostly guarantee interest in the content.
Railroading is also taking control of the PCs without having an in game reason for the control, eliminating choices, and more.
Nobody is dictating character actions here. Just narrating the effects of player choices. The players stated they wanted to travel to the giant cave, so they did. Its literally absurd to call that 'railroading'. When you do so you lose all credibility in terms of your analysis. Its like somebody that tells me some absurd IT Architecture fable, I just laugh and stop listening to them, they're clearly not a source of reliable analysis in that field.
It can't be stronger on options. Players in both styles can think of all the same things, but only one of the styles has a DM also thinking of things for the players to have fun with. Also, nice bit of hyperbole with the whole infinite fun things. People are flat out incapable of even coming close to thinking of infinite things, let alone infinite things that are fun. Heck, at any given moment they aren't even capable of thinking of all the things that they have had fun with in their lives.
I don't agree, in Story Now, the GM is framing the scenes. He can bring in practically any element he can think of as long as he can tie it into the story and make it relevant (or I guess if it is just purely color then whatever). When I say 'infinite things' I mean that I, and presumably a lot of other people who play RPGs, can keep thinking of 'stuff' indefinitely. If you ask me to give you some sort of piece of game material, and you keep rejecting my offerings, I can keep supplying new ones. I don't know of any limit to my ability to do so, though I guess after a while they might start to become more and more similar to old material. I don't know if that constitutes a proper infinite set or not, it isn't really important to me. The point is I can generate material sufficient to absorb any conceivable amount of time people would actually have to play it in the real world. That is sufficient for the argument at hand.
No, that's provably false. If you can think of even one thing that is fun, your statement there is false. I never said they couldn't think of fun things. I said they can't think of all things that they would find fun, and that's a fact. People are limited, even geniuses.
But they CAN think of the things that they personally find fun. They are uniquely qualified to do that, and nobody else is so qualified. I MIGHT think of things my friends will find fun. If I know them well enough that's even likely, but they're the ones who can navigate their own moods, changing interests, whims, ideas and interests they've never conveyed before, and know what they are bored by and tired of, or just not wanting to do today. That is sufficient. The GM is less qualified to do that FOR the players. What your claim represents is AT LEAST that you will do a better job of it than the players, or I guess alternatively that you are so set on your style of play that you'd rather play a game less interesting to the players in order to play a certain way.
Now, I think you can make a reasonable case that there are things some players don't want from Story Now, maybe they really DON'T want to think about their motives, maybe they want you to tell them a story. Maybe they want to sip wine in taverns and listen to tales. Maybe a lot of things. I don't NEED to impose a style of gaming on people. I only assert that players often want to engage their own interests and that Story Now does that, and does it best!
Yes, I know that you can opt to miss out on the fun things along the trip in an RPG. My point with the example was to demonstrate through an analogy that you can encounter enjoyable things along a trip that you didn't think of yourself. This is a fact. In an RPG you can indeed not think of something, have the DM think of it, and still enjoy it.
I can opt to miss out on BORING things in an RPG. That's one of the major attractions. I don't have to deal with things that aren't interesting. Yes, the GM COULD invent something interesting for me to do along the way, or he could end up boring me. If I chose my own destination with an eye to what I wanted to do, then chances are extremely good that I will have fun there.
Beyond that, if the GM can engage my interests with some sort of challenge that interposes between me and the destination I wanted to reach, fine! Maybe its in the form of something I could move on past too. Maybe War Machine sees a car crash and he can decide to save people or else go on and finish up what he's doing. Instead of proceeding to New York he stops. OK, that could easily be considered "challenging a character's belief", but I wouldn't want to overuse that kind of ploy. Its fine as a way of illustrating the "price of being a hero" and creating a dilemma that helps define the character, but constantly dangling such things along every path would be silly. Dangling utterly unrelated things along the way is just gumming up the works IMHO. It is totally hit and miss.
I also don't agree about your 'pacing argument' that there has to be 'trivial stuff' along the way to make the 'good stuff' stand out. There are a lot of ways to produce pacing and rising and falling tension. Cluttering the story with trivia is crude at best IMHO. Notice what both Jackson and Bakshi cut from Fellowship of the Ring, Bombadil. While it is a cool and interesting story in its own right, and JRRT was a great storyteller, so he makes it work, it is still a sidetrack. MANY people who read the books lost interest there. Many skipped the whole section. These sorts of side plots and distractions are questionable at best, and in many cases simply bad news. Unless players signal they're really wanting to go off in some other direction, I don't TRY to introduce them. I certainly don't try to introduce pointless little 'intersections' that lead nowhere and just bog down play. I can create a break in the tension in a fun and interesting way instead, or the players can do that.
