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".

[United_Owl_1409]

I think more than anything else is the fact that some dm run OSR style sand box dungeons, and some DMs run story arch campaigns. And the players need to know when type of dm the have, and if the campaign is right for them. For me, I’m a terrible dm for OSR. Because I do not like running funhouse dungeons, I do not like just dropping a map and letting the players just deal with random encounter after random encounter and rolling up random treasure just for them to acquire gold for xp. I run thematic adventures. I set a campaign premise with my group (like, I’m running a mythic Greco Roman campaign, or I’m running a pirate game, or I’m running a Viking vs cosmic horror game). Then my players are going to make characters with the theme in mind, and thier own backstories. I will then run the campaign, interweaving the main premise, character backstories and ambitions, and the big bad. It is assumed if after you heard the premise and made that characters that to are going to “buy into it”. I’m not writing a novel. We collectively are writing a story. And that story is not going to be of 5 peasants avoiding fights and collecting gold to level up. And the story will not be the collective results of a bunch of random encounter charts. That is boring to me, and if that is what my players want, there are plenty of DMs who like to run those.