How to avoid railroading

I agree with the above points: this doesn’t feel too much like railroading, and talk to your players to find out if it’s bothering them before you try to “fix” it.

Gameplay styles are a sliding scale, you can tell a story at your players and have them go along with it (railroading), or you can go to the other extreme and have no plot planned at all when you start out. Most games fall somewhere between the two, where the GM guides the players through an expected route with a few diversions, and your game sounds like that.

One thing you could do to make it feel less forced is to focus more on directing players with motivation rather than hints, give them something they want to go after (like rescuing a beloved ally, or winning the favour of the king) rather than giving them prophetic dreams, but that’s a difference in method rather than style. If you want to make an extreme change, you could check out my post on how to run a sandbox game as an MC. It’s a very different style, but you might pick up a fews tricks.

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