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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8336177" data-attributes="member: 16814">I disagree, it's required in 5e.&nbsp; You cannot, in any RPG, ever actually provide full agency.&nbsp; It must be limited.&nbsp; And, in many ways, the maintenance of illusion is important (I mean, it's a pretend elf game!).&nbsp; I think that if you were very critical of your own play, you'd find lots of instances of illusion of choice being present, they're just usually lampshaded behind things you're vary familiar with and so don't examine.&nbsp; This leads to these kinds of assertions, which typically beg the question.Let's look at Quantum Ogres again.&nbsp; Let's say the GM has no planned encounter, and selects ogres after the choice is made because they decide that an encounter is necessary.&nbsp; We've utterly avoided the issue of moving prep around, now, but we're at the same result.&nbsp; And, in both cases, the reason ogres are on the table is because the GM decided that.&nbsp; Functionally, there's no difference.&nbsp; We pretend to ourselves that prep somehow makes this more real, when it's still the GM creating the fiction. We also pretend to ourselves that using a random roll makes a difference when the inputs to that roll are not accessible to the players.&nbsp; It doesn't.&nbsp; If we're going to have a serious discussion about what railroading is, and why it may be bad, honest examination of actual play is necessary, if only to prevent such blanket assertions as this that can't even survive a cursory examination of actual play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8336177, member: 16814"] I disagree, it's required in 5e. You cannot, in any RPG, ever actually provide full agency. It must be limited. And, in many ways, the maintenance of illusion is important (I mean, it's a pretend elf game!). I think that if you were very critical of your own play, you'd find lots of instances of illusion of choice being present, they're just usually lampshaded behind things you're vary familiar with and so don't examine. This leads to these kinds of assertions, which typically beg the question. Let's look at Quantum Ogres again. Let's say the GM has no planned encounter, and selects ogres after the choice is made because they decide that an encounter is necessary. We've utterly avoided the issue of moving prep around, now, but we're at the same result. And, in both cases, the reason ogres are on the table is because the GM decided that. Functionally, there's no difference. We pretend to ourselves that prep somehow makes this more real, when it's still the GM creating the fiction. We also pretend to ourselves that using a random roll makes a difference when the inputs to that roll are not accessible to the players. It doesn't. If we're going to have a serious discussion about what railroading is, and why it may be bad, honest examination of actual play is necessary, if only to prevent such blanket assertions as this that can't even survive a cursory examination of actual play. [/QUOTE]

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