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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flamestrike" data-source="post: 8335604" data-attributes="member: 6788736">Every adventure ever written ever is a rail road. A series of planned encounters leading their way to the showdown with the BBEG.This includes sandbox adventure paths like those from Pazio and WOTC.Within that railroad, there are different tracks (turn left at the dungeon hallway instead of right, or go to the temple now, and deal with the bandit camp later etc) but effectively all roads lead to Rome (the showdown with the BBEG).Choices made by the players matter to the outcome, and they have freedom to explore the story and adventure with relative freedom. Unconventional solutions to problems are sometimes effective, and you all wind up telling a communal story. The railroading disappears.Thats different from a DM forcing players down a series of encounters with no way to avoid them or resolve them any differently than a preordained outcome, and where nothing the players do matters. It's in the latter area where the problem lies. Effectively this DM is just narrating a story to the PCs, who lack any agency to affect the story, and where their decisions dont matter.You know you're in the latter (bad) kind of railroading when no amount of investigating or lateral thinking works, clever solutions are met with a 'nope' or shifting goalposts (or even more heavy handed techniques like AMFs popping up, DMNPCs stepping in to 'guide' the PCs along the path, absurdly high DCs that even if hit, do nothing etc), the only solution to any problem is the one the DM thought of himself, and your PCs are best served just sitting around waiting for the next encounter to trigger, and any attempt to do something innovative, or go 'off script' is met with some dues ex machina dragging you back to the story and outcome as planned.As a DM you want some structure to your story, but to also allow the PCs to go off script, resolve your encounters in unexpected ways, and have freedom to contribute and narrate the story as they go, rather than forcing them to adhere to an inflexible preordained path.</blockquote>

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