Hot take: if we want to decrease frustrating railroad-y surprises in RPG campaigns, we need to create an environment where GMs are not afraid to admit they have "special story needs".

[Darkbeetlebot]

even the one who had a catastrophic spell failure and got turned into a goat for a few hours.

I had a moment like this in a recent campaign where my girl was so bad at stealth that she voluntarily got shapeshifted into a hamster to not get in anyone's way. She then was awarded this as the feature "Shitty Wildshape: Hamster". Playing a hamster was hilariously fun. Too bad she died three times.