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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bardic Dave" data-source="post: 8335488" data-attributes="member: 6789591">I think of "railroading" as a bit of a moving target: what constitutes an unacceptable restriction on player choice will vary from table to table, and from player to player. There are a few best practice principles that I think can be useful no matter where you fall on the railroading continuum, however.Some amount of gently prodding the party in the "right" direction by the  DM is necessary—desirable even—in order for the game to not descend into total inaction and/or chaos. Players need some kind of feeling of forward motion, and DMs need an allowance for the fact they're only human and can't possibly provide a satisfying gaming experience for every conceivable direction the players might try.However, a light hand is best and a little goes a long way. And when you absolutely must force a particular direction or outcome, if you can maintain the illusion of player choice by concealing your hand everyone will be better off.As a DM, I aspire toward as sandboxy/freeform a game as I can muster. I welcome player creativity and deviations from the "ordained" "storyline", and am perfectly happy to go into uncharted waters on a player's whim. However, I also recognize that I have limits on my ability to improvise. It's a fine balance.As a player, I loathe feeling like I have absolutely no ability to affect the outcome of a scenario. In a recent Dungeon World game I was playing, a plague victim (a monk at the local abbey) was turning into a horrific aberration before our eyes. Every conceivable cure we tried to concoct was stonewalled by the DM; everything from researching a cure at the abbey's library, to casting restorative magic, to summoning supernatural creatures skilled in the healing arts. Every avenue to gain more insight into the nature of the plague was stymied.Finally, with heavy hearts we decided we had to dispatch the victim, but no, the abbott disallowed us from killing one of his order. Fine then, let's lock him in the cellar to prevent the eventual horrific aberration from escaping and murdering all the monks. The DM: "The abbey doesn't have  a cellar". Ok, let's lock him in the abbot's study and post a sentry outside at all hours. The abbot was amenable to this.Guess what happened? The sentry "fell asleep", and a novice monk disobeyed the abbot's orders and let the aberration out because he was curious. So we had to fight the aberration, which is the outcome we were trying to avoid, but was plainly the outcome the DM wanted.Any single one of these "Nopes" from the DM would have been justifiable in isolation, but the sum total of havingEVERY single choice that might have led to a different outcome stymied was just too much for me. The two-ish hours of gameplay to get to this pre-ordained outcome felt like a waste of time. This felt like a particularly heavy handed instance of railroading and definitely crossed a line for me.And yet, I have played through entire Pathfinder adventure paths before, and rarely felt railroaded. In those games, the DMs were able to successfully walk the tightrope and deliver on the promise of player choice, even though the broad strokes of the plot were entirely pre-ordained. It's definitely an interesting balancing act, and where you draw the line is ultimately a subjective judgment and a matter of personal preference.</blockquote>

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