Railroading is bad when you can see it and didn't consent to it. If there's a specific general flow to the whole campaign, the players should have some idea what they are making characters for. For more specific interpretations, there's the tool known as Schrodinger's Gun to get them on 'the right path' by whatever roundabout route they want to take, because it turns out the villain's lair was in whatever town the PCs happened to go to.

When i say railroading, i am assuming a situation where someone is trying to force someone else to do something despite clear and major resistance.

Sometimes this is more the fault of the players tbf.

Here's a list of the things I remember making me less than enthusiastic without rereading the two threads. I'll add (YMMV) for the things that were more a matter of taste than anything.

1. Grimdark tone (YMMV) with a side of self-congratulatory vibe. I got the feeling there was a celebration of the fact that characters may die and the campaign was expected to be very challenging in general as if that was a mark of superiority.
2. Introduction of mandatory crippling flaws, one per character. Didn't look particularly balanced either. (YMMV to a point)
3. Said flaws, overpowered boons (again, not incredibly balanced), and the entire ability sets being randomized (YMMV). Luckily I ended up with a boon/flaw combination that could support one of the concept I was interested in playing, but I don't love the kind of randomization that can cause wild power imbalance within the group. And miss me with the "roleplaying can make or break a character," in a campaign where half the setting sounds about to go for your throat bad ability rolls can doom you. Speaking of setting...
4. The setting looked homebrewed, but players had next to no information about it. I imagined we were about to play in a Faerun-type world, for example, and the first major NPC we encountered was a **** dino cyborg. I have nothing against heavy tech in fantasy worlds and my avatar kinda speaks for me about reptile humanoids, it's just to point out the wild divergence in expectations.
5. When a player showed confusion or ignorance about something the DM said in a single sentence in the setup post (NOT the actual campaign starter, to my memory) they made so everybody had to (6.) roll for their own memory of the first major NPC instead of just pointing out the relevant section of the post, or explaining the situation adding some more context to reduce confusion. In a game where every person involved was a stranger to 1 or 2 other participants minimum, mind you.

In short, the thing died out before there was an actual chance for railroading. My character had just met other two and was getting some practice roleplaying.

For those who want to follow along, our story begins here: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=26212
My big red flag was that it sounded very generic and kind of juvenile. I could live with heavy randomization, character flaws and character death, but the setting came across as both unoriginal and whacky, simplistic but hard to follow. I got a big "This is my first original campaign and as a 14 year old all I figure these things haven't been done before" vibe.
And yeah we just never had any idea what was going on.

Fair, though I've met a few experienced players that never got beyond that type of campaigns when they GMed. Also, I can't bring myself to judge too harshly edgy teens trying to GM for the first time if that was the case; my first campaign included awesome high-level NPCs doing nothing with debatable excuses and an ominous secret counter each player had to track on his character sheet, for example. Still weirdly proud of not starting in a tavern (it all began with a shipwreck), but still.

Me especially.

I think Huey got a lot of points right, particularly wrt divergence of expectations, from the setting to the character creation &c. I never particularly understood what the setting was supposed to be about, and my dumb ass felt crippled by the "ugly" flaw that I got, and given my unfamiliarity with 5e, I felt that I needed a lot more of a guiding hand which never came. I never even got to the starting point, it felt like, because the DM seemed to want me to get to the starting point and I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

Basically, I think the DM may have had expectations for how we were supposed to play, but never made it clear to us.

I want to DM a campaign one day. Probably just gonna find a pre written module that looks fun and leave it at that; bc I have zero illusions about my ability to balance anything from scratch.

Good way to approach it imo. I take to heart what a LoL content creator said about improving; he was talking about League in particular, but it goes for anything with many moving parts I think: when you start to work on improving, isolate variables and focus on each separately, "propping" the others as best as you can. Not confident in your ability to pace and/or communicate effectively with your players? Use a pre-made setting and/or campaign, and tweak something here and there when you feel you have a decent grip on things. Want to playtest a homebrew campaign/setting you're still working on? Put together a group of players you already know and trust.

Balancing thing from scratch is far from easy, there's always an unseen factor that can and will **** up everybody's plans, be it narrative, mechanic or dice - and for a mechanic-heavy game like D&D (which also ain't known for being very balanced on its own, tho 5e feels pretty decent on that side) that goes more than double. Which is one of the reasons why I think GMs should hide their rolls but "cheat" on very few of them.

And above all, if you ask me, communication and expectations are what makes or breaks a campaign, as goes for most team efforts. Rules can be patched, rolls can be played around, but as it has been said ttrpg is communal storytelling, even if asymmetric, and all storytellers have to be on the same page. If a player wants dungeon crawling and another craves for courtly intrigue there will be some tension no matter the end result, but if that issue comes up after you've already started a campaign about an epic crusade with white and black morality you're in for a bad time.

I will now stop volunteering unsolicited advice until prompted

Honestly, I just think that a brand new DM with no experience is statistically more likely to provide a better experience for players with a pre existing module. As stated, less moving parts; and I think learning how to troubleshoot on the fly is something I’d personally rather work on first.

You have to be prepared to do some troubleshooting no matter what, I think. Your players could always throw a curve ball.

But definitely do try. there is a big market for DM's right now. I'd be happy to be one of your players if there was a way to match up schedules.

Just wanted to say I'm thankful for all of you.

The Hyrulean Coalition Army is stupid. There has to be a better time to invade Ganon’s Castle than in the middle of a blood moon event. And no plot reasons have been given for why they couldn’t wait like 4 hours. But nooooooooo..... have to invade the enemy at the one time per cycle that their troops are effectively immortal. Then they go all surprised pikachu when the canned cutscene from BOTW plays and they’ve made absolutely no progress.

Likewise, my excellent dude.

I should make this my motto.

I had kind of hoped to motivate myself to post here more while Raven took his break, but I feel like I ended up being more selfish than anything, posting just here and in my own nonsense worldbuilding thread.

You've had a tough time of it lately, I think it's understandable

I want to extend an early apology to everyone whom I would normally send cards and things to around the holidays. I kind of only have so much brain space to think about things, and obviously this year has just completely taken up that space with other things. Sorry.

Considering the fact that pretty much everyone in the world ran out of spoons months ago (if you're familiar with the metaphor), I doubt anyone would hold that against you.

Yeah, no worries.

Spoons, sporks, and knives. I, for one, can no longer give a fork.

Hey, all. Thanks for indulging me in my month off. I've missed you folks. While my absence helped me focus more on work (I did not have this place as a temptation to procrastinate) I don't think being away from here helped me at all, mostly because you folks were never the problem.

Anyway, I'm back and things will likely be more or less normal going forward. I had hoped to try to do the whole 50,000 word November writing thing, but I gave up almost immediately. It turns out that, even without the social media distraction, November is basically the WORST POSSIBLE MONTH for me to do something like that. And this year is worse than ever, because of work. They gave us an incentive to get to work prepping next semester, paying for up to 40 extra hours, but because it was over and above our salaries, the 40 hours had to happen outside of normal hours. So, since I've had a sub-par year financially, I needed to take advantage of that, which left me little time to relax, which is what I was most hoping for. Oh, well.

Anyway, just a few weeks of school left and I can have an actual rest. I need it.

How have you folks been?