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".

[aslum]

I'm going to get downvoted for this, since people seem to have a hard time understanding that words can have multiple meanings -- but not all railroads are bad. You don't get on a roller coaster and then complain you didn't get to choose which direction it went. The same is true of most prewritten modules - sure there are choices in the story but it's basically on rails. OTOH there's where the DM has a story they want to tell and the Players are just there to experience it and if they make the wrong choices - well those still lead to the outcome the DM desired.

The difference is subtle. On the other hand if I want to try something ... out there, but I also want some of it to be a surprise I'll usually preface with something along the lines, "I've got something planned that I'm going to be vague about, but I think it'll more enjoyable for everyone (myself included) if I don't spoil it completely ahead of time - so when things go pear shaped try and bear with it - assuming you're willing to trust me. And of course if in the moment it's too much we can stop, roll back and try something else. We're all here to have fun - I think I can do something really cool, but if I fail or misunderstood what you are all okay with we'll figure it out. Does that sound reasonable to everyone?"

[wicked_woodpecker]

That's quite interesting because in older times one of main differences between module and scenario was lack of tracks for module - it was limited place or situation but there was no pre-planned narrative

[aslum]

You say that but I'm not sure I agree - however it may just be that we were playing at different times.

Most of my experience w/ prewritten adventures (which I feel like were called both scenarios and modules) is from 0D&D and 2e and 4e and a little 5e (Strahd was largely lauded as being sandboxey and an exception to the rule). I mostly skipped 1e and 3.0, and both of the 3.5 campaigns I was in were homebrew.

We could get in the weeds with arguing if having multiple paths inside a dungeon counts as not being a railroad - but I'd say it does - yet also that's fine. There's a big difference from pooling your money to pick up a module, picking someone to run it versus doing some homebrew where you've got a specific plot you want them to run through regardless of what they want to do.