It wasn't my first campaign, but it was a game I ran for a group that hasn't played before, and it was funny how unintuitive a lot of "player actions" can be if you're not used to it. Like, they didn't know what they could do?

I had an NPC slip something under the door, and when the players opened the door they could just barely see the NPC nip around a corner at the end of the hall. This was "meant" to be a chase. Instead they were basically like "huh... I wonder who that was. Guess we'll never know" 😛

Or when one of them talked to a witness of a crime and I described the witness as "eyeing you suspiciously and only barely nodding in response to your greeting" they were like "I don't think he likes me, I don't want to disturb him, I'll leave him alone" 😅

It was all fully my fault, of course, but I was used to playing with much more active and plugged-in players, and fully dropped the ball with players that were a lot more passive, either from lack of experience or just mismatch between players and game genre.

So for them, I think a few railroads would have actually helped them quite a bit. Or if not railroads, at least maybe some bumpers or training wheels until they start to figure out what it means to have agency in a genre story.