I can't spell things out exactly since I don't personally know all the triggers and I don't want to accidentally send you down the wrong path and get you stuck with bad directions. It took me a lot of experimentation to figure it all out.
But as I said previously, whom you talk to in the Asylum yard triggers the start a path.
If you watch Dani drive away then you're doing the normal path and/or the extended normal path depending how you play it out
If you enter the asylum with someone else you've started the occult path.
If you enter the asylum to steal/get shrooms you've started the vampire path.
Setting the path is not permanent. If you do what I mentioned above I *believe* you are locked in for act 1, but if you mess up future act you'll get sent back down the normal path. Which is why I mentioned the secret previously. You definitely want to find it as it will keep you sane trying to figure out what to do. Before I found it I was trying to figure out what to do in Act3 without realizing I had messed up Act1(for example).
You can find the secret in act 1(not in the underground area) and it will give you further hints of how to keep on the path you want. It will also tell you at the start of subsequent acts which path you are on so you will know if you played the previous act correctly.
I'm reluctant to spell everything out as I think Angler put the game together pretty well and don't want to just spell everything out here. If you do get super stuck you can message me under the same username on deviant art.