A great example of what your talking about is a podcast called drunks and dragons. I just recently started playing d&d and critical role wasn't really up my alley to start with. Drunks and dragons got me to kinda realize the same.

d&d isn't a game with set paths that you can't deviate from. Every choice influences the games evolution and the choices you can make later.

Early in the podcast, maybe episode 3 or so, the party is interrogating someone who took them captive, while messing around one of them jokingly says we should cut his head off and without thinking one of the others says I do that, I chop his head off and there ended an interrogation that could have given them a lot of much needed information. And that one decision shaped all the others they had to make afterwards.

D&D is awesome, and I'm sad I never got into it sooner then I have.