Last time I suggested that you talk with your GM if you're being railroaded and that you might need to compromise. This time some suggestions for compromises depending on what's causing the railroading. Before that, I have a word of caution for what NOT to do.

What NOT to do.

You might be thinking that talking to the GM seems hard. Maybe you could keep killing NPCs? Or catch the GM railroading and then throw it in their face? Or make a bunch of snide comments and derail the game? That would be much easier than having a conversation. I've seen lots of people try (and have done it). It's a bad idea.

1. It's passive-aggressive. Basically, the player version of railroading. You know, the thing you're upset about.
2. You're being a jerk which makes the game less fun for the everyone. Other people's fun is also important.
3. It won't work and often makes railroading worse or gets you kicked out.

If a GM is trying to send you on a quest and you respond by killing the quest giver, they can introduce more NPCs. If you insist on seeing the GM roll to make sure that they aren't changing the die results, remember they're also setting the target number and the bonuses added to the roll. If you demand the GM show you NPC character sheets to make sure that they aren't changing their stats and that they are rules "legal", the GM can generate a never ending stream of NPCs so stats don't really matter. If you shut down one track, they can switch to another. Railroading is a problem outside of the game, it should be fixed outside of the game. Be respectful and have the conversation.

Station-to-Station

Your GM may be railroading because they're not comfortable running a game that they haven't prepped for. The default format for a game is that the GM prepares something, puts out a plot hook at the beginning, the players follow it, and adventure is had. That order is stupid. If players aren't interested in what's prepared, the GM is overwhelmed and players are frustrated. Everyone loses.

Instead, move the plot hook to the end of the session. The GM can present a possible adventure (or several possible adventures) and the players can let them know how they plan to follow up on it or what they will be doing instead. Then the session ends. The players made a meaningful decision and the GM can be prepared. Win-win.

Warning Once you've got your GM on board with this, someone is going to show up to the game and announce that they are doing something different than the thing everyone agreed to. Look at that person and say, "Stop being a dick. The GM put in the work to prepare what we wanted. Respect their work and everyone else at the table. Play the game we agreed to."

Cut Scene

Frequently fiction hinges on someone doing stupid things to get themselves into trouble or doing something dangerous for very thin reasons. A lot of GMs build adventures that require this as well. They expect you to do the stupid things that kick off the adventure or guess the absurdly specific right combo to set up whatever they have planned.

This has two problems from my perspective. First, it's really unfun to play through. If you're like me, it's incredibly galling when people want you to go along with something stupid, but also want you to act like it is a good idea or something you want to do. Second, the GM is going to act like it's your fault your character is being torn apart, because you "decided" to go investigate screams at the abandoned mental hospital in the middle of the night while dressed in your pajamas. That's really infuriating, especially if this scenario isn't even one you wanted to play.

If you're experiencing this, suggest to the GM that if they want something to happen for the game to progress in a certain direction, they should talk to you Out of Character about it and ask if you are willing to go along. Then they'll do a cut-scene that covers all the set-up stuff and the game starts in media res. Why do this?

1. Getting your buy-in is a big part of the GM being respectful to you.
2. You don't have to play through a scripted scene where you have to do stupid things.
3. The crappy situation is not your fault, so you can complain about it how much it sucks and how stupid your characters were with relish. Then you can just focus on the game and enjoy yourself.

For your part you have to be willing to say yes to these cut scenes and give up a little control of your character. This might require pushing your comfort zone. On the other hand, know your limits and be willing to tell the GM that maybe tonight it's better that the group play board games or your character sit this one out. Fighting zombies with kitchen utensils in the mental hospital can be fun, but if you picked a military veteran that always has ten guns because you want to feel in control, it might not be the scenario for you.

Selective Railroading

Sometimes GMs are railroading because they don't want to upset players. Often this is done by fudging dice to keep things challenging but winnable. It's not malicious and some players want the GM to adjust things to maintain dramatic tension for the game. But you don't like it and want it to stop. The group can have it both ways.

Ask the GM to be selective in their fudging of dice and their dramatic tension management and not apply it to you. If a random encounter would kill your character, you want them to die. You also want to pulverize those pathetic goblins rather than finding that they all gained magic powers since last week to make this a challenging encounter.

Be aware that you're probably going to end up dying more than your teammates and being the target of more "random" bad stuff than anyone else if you ask for this. For me that's an okay price for not feeling like someone is holding my hand through the game. In fact, as a GM having players that are willing to take this role is really nice and makes it easier to to make adjustments for the players that want fudging.

Quid-Pro-Quo

This is the solution if a GM feels like you're wrecking all the stuff they worked so hard on. Maybe they didn't know your character had some cool power or hadn't thought of an obvious shortcut. To save their work, they'll try to negate that power or deny the shortcut exists, which sucks. It's understandable, if you have a spell that lets you skip immediately to the end of a dungeon rather than fighting through the seven levels that the GM spent hours carefully designing and drawing maps of they probably feel like they wasted a lot of time.

The quid-pro-quo compromise is an agreement that when that situation arises, the GM can offer you a reward in exchange for letting them salvage some of their work. The specific reward depends on the table and some games have this built in as a feature (ex. Fate Points). Maybe it's some additional XP or a reroll you can use at any time. Maybe it's just an acknowledgement by the GM that you did something awesome and the satisfaction of never having to run a game if you're nice to the GM.

So if you're about to cast Teleport to Final Treasure Room, the GM can say, "Oh, hey, I uh forgot that was a spell that you could get at fifth level. Can you not use that? I'll give you a Dragon Coin to say that the mystical forces aren't aligned for casting that spell right now." Or if you rolled max damage on a critical hit with a x4 weapon damage and are about to one-shot the Big Bad in their introduction scene, the GM can say, "So, uh, your epic badassery saves the day, you get 1000XP. Now his brother with identical stats and minions is going to try to finish this guy's plan, but with a special place for you since you killed his brother. Basically, Die Hard 3."

Again your part is to agree most of the time and take the Dragon Coin. This may end up with almost the exact outcome that you would get if they just railroaded through the situation and declared that the whole dungeon is warded against teleport spells or that the villain has a resurrection stone that instantly triggers, but psychologically the difference is huge. It's nice to have your awesome acknowledged.

Parallel Stories

So you're playing with an Author GM and they have this amazing super-ultra-cool story that they want you to follow. But you don't want to follow their script. It seems like what each of you wants from the game is completely at odds. You want to create your own story, not play theirs. But key here is that the GM probably actually wants an audience, not puppets.

Give both sides what they want and have two stories. One story is about your group and their cool adventurers and the second is the one that the GM planned. The stories cross paths regularly and are intertwined. The GM gets an audience and you don't have to play their boring story.

You do your thing for most of the session and the GM gets to sprinkle in hints or references to their story as you go. Maybe you meet up with this other team of adventurers and you trade stories of how they fought a dragon while you were taming werewolves. Or they get sent on the "super-cool" mission to sabotage the shield generator on the moon while your group is having an epic space-fighter battle against the super star cruiser in the sky above. The important thing to make this work is that you listen to the GM's story for a small portion of the game.

I know what you're thinking, "Ugh, I came to play damn it, not hear crappy fan fiction!" It's just like sharing the spot light with another player at the table, sometimes you have to sacrifice a little of your own fun. If done well, this can even make the game better. It adds depth (which in my experience author GMs lack), because there are things going on behind the scenes and you don't need to fix every single problem.

To make this work, make it clear that the screen time of their cast is limited and don't try to sabotage the GM's story (ex. dropping a bomb to destroy that shield generator).

Closing thought

A big part of proposing a compromise is to let the GM know you're on the same side and are willing to work with them. It might not have occurred to the GM that if they respected you and asked you to cut them a break you would. Often GMs think that the key to earning a player's respect is to look perfectly prepared and in control at all times, so they feel like getting your consent is a sign they've failed. If there's a problem, they often think it's in the game or how it's being played. They don't realize that the in game results of railroading aren't usually what's frustrating players, but the behaviors they're using to achieve those results. You can do a lot to change the dynamic at the table just by letting your GM know that you prefer out-of-character transparency and collaboration.