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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 6246629" data-attributes="member: 1210">Oh, absolutely!Well, the DM has removed it by "fating" him to do something in the first place.That is absolutely the opposite of what I want out of an RPG. To me, that DM ought to go write a story, because that's what he's doing- he is telling the story he has in mind, with an outcome in mind, rather than playing a game in which he responds to the choices of the pcs.Clearly, we have very different styles of gaming. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> And that's fine!If you 'decree' that a PC has a terminal illness arbitrarily, capriciously, with no rolling or reason behind it- well, that's not exactly railroading, so long as you don't force the pc to react a certain way, and as long as you allow him or her to act in the way that he or she sees fit. But that's a circumstance, not a set of actions or outcomes. The outcome isn't even necessarily "the pc dies of the disease"- maybe instead it's "the pc gets the diseased cured/dies in a fire/gives his life in defense of the party" or whatever. It's only when your decree includes "and this is how it ends" that you've crossed onto the (my) railroad line. Your other example is more troubling to me. If the pc's destiny is to live among the fey, doesn't that mean his destiny is to NOT die while adventuring? Doesn't it mean that he is predestined to make it through the toughest fights, even acting extremely recklessly? If I was playing a pc with a "special destiny", I certainly wouldn't think twice about taking on ridiculous tasks and frontal-assaulting that uberdragon. That part is fine- but how many strings do you, as the DM, pull to keep me "on track" towards that destiny? Moreover, do you do the same for the other pcs? I find games like that profoundly dissatisfying. Certain outcomes being outside of the pcs' control is fine- that's the point of the game. What I object to is when the DM makes decisions for the pcs or capriciously and without regard to fairness. The terminal disease guy? If he caught the disease fair and square, I'm totally cool with it. If you arbitrarily gave it to him for a giggle, less so. Sure. But in that example, I would never handwave "you guys win the fight and save the village!" if the pcs showed no interest in fighting and were busy spending their time naval-gazing. IMHO- and in my playstyle- the outcome should emerge from the actions and choices of the pcs, not from the dm's predetermined story.I agree that DMing and railroading aren't the same. To me, the line is very stark and bright: it's when the DM makes choices for the pcs or enforces a desired outcome regardless of what they do. In other words, railroading is when the DM disregards the players' control over the way their pcs act. As to playstyle, I'd call mine "sandbox with millions of hooks". There's not generally a "BBEG for the campaign" anywhere, though there are many of BBEGs in the world. The pcs choose their adversaries (or stumble into them, or offend them and get them to choose the pcs, etc) and what to do. What may at first appear to be an adventure plot is, rather, the plot of the bad guys, which will continue if the pcs leave it alone. I expect that the pcs will miss things in my dungeons. I expect that they'll abandon some adventures midway through. I expect that they'll end up going places and doing things that I'd never considered. And generally, they do all of these things. By the way, even though we very clearly disagree on a lot of this stuff, thank you for the discussion- it's a good one, and I really appreciate the civil tone!</blockquote>

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