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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8337162" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Given all this talk of simplifying and getting away from canned examples with too many assumptions and such...fine. Let's talk in the absolute simplest, non-specific-example means we possibly can.The DM offers a choice. This choice seems to matter to some degree. But the DM has decided in advance* that, absolutely without regard for whatever choice the players make, one and only one consequence will result. It is not possible, even in principle, for the players to get a different consequence, so long as they continue to play the game up to the point of that consequence occurring.Is this railroading? Is this good? Is this likely to produce fun? Will DMs try to hide this from their players? Would players have less fun if they realized this was being done?*If you truly do invent something on the spot, without ANY preconceived notion about what should be there, I might give that a pass....but that's still not great, as knowing that the world is simply ad-hoc invented on the spot with every choice rapidly drains away the consequences of choosing to go left or right, forward or back. The choice is still irrelevant, it's just irrelevant because the consequence is totally random rather than utterly deterministic--neither of which is good for making choices matter, because the result takes no (or absolute bare minimum) input from player choices. There are no consequences when everything is random Johnny-on-the-spot, just happenstances, and I've had players legit actually become frustrated by this, though not enough to criticize it at the table. (It came up during the one-on-one retrospectives of my adaptation of The Gardens of Ynn, and I've been keeping that feedback in mind going forward.) Going from a rigged game of craps to a truly random game of roulette doesn't make your choice of moves any more meaningful. A game of blackjack or poker, on the other hand, actually permits meaningful choice, even though it still includes randomness, because your moves really do affect the state of play. There's information unavailable to you, but you can take actions to minimize risk and maximize your possibility of return. Etc.</blockquote>

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