Playing dnd has taught me that “yes and” is always better than “wait but”. Just like the dm has to give the players a choice the players have to be willing to let the dm tell a story.
Guess it depends how one defines railroading, if only active negation of the agency the players have by the GM, then sure it would not be railroading. But I think there could be made a reasonable argument that railroading also is already happening when the GM is not presenting any meaningful choices or is not providing players with opportunities to make informed decisions, and in that definition it sounds like what happened can be described as railroading.
Yes, absolutely, since "official" definitions are lacking, each GM needs to judge it against their own perception of the issue. I, myself, define railroading as the negation of choice/agency in favor of the outcome/plot the GM deems most appropriate, despite the players' actions and decisions. Everything else I tend to consider more a matter of linear play than railroading. You make a very interesting argument concerning the illusion of choice. If unbeknown to the players, path A and path B will "magically" lead to room A, and the bifurcation between the two paths was just a way for the DM to make the players feel like they had a choice, is it a very loose case of linear design, or an active negation of choice, by ignoring what its illusion was pretending to portray?
@@TheFirstArcadianDnD I prefer transparency, and thus I would consider such illusion of choice to be railroading. I the GM simply openly tell the players that this is linear then I can live with that much better than such deception. So yes, if there are no choices then it is just linear, which can be fine, but this has also be clearly stated, especially if otherwise agency from the players is expected to impact the fiction. That is why I explicit say that players should be capable of making informed decisions. Like in a two path scenario, there should be indicators about what might lie in each path and thus not both simply lead to same destination.
The spell that deflected the ship could have been Wall of force, which is both invisible, unmoving and unbreakable. (almost) And I don't see how "Matt's plan" can be railroad. It's like saying that the party meeting Pretty was railroad. It's just a plan, and well, how Chet was able to get so close to Ludinus, it was evident that they could have done stuff instead of just being spectators, same with Imogen provoking doubts in her mother, instead of a "Sorry but actually there's a", "She is not listening..." or smth to avoid them from doing anything at all, they had their agency. But how I see it (own personal interpretation), their agency might be "little" on purpose, kind of like reminding them that they're still low level relative to the bad guy. Which probably can hurt if you're a player and the dm introduces random npcs that are better than the party and are solving the problem (Keyleth and Vax), but considering they're their old pcs, I doubt they felt that way. If anything I love how those old characters still move around in the world, it would make less sense if they didn't. Might have gone out the rails in this little comment, but whatever lol
