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I don’t think that we have established that the DM wants the characters to do anything at all, all we know is that they won’t get it by getting the guy drunk (or bribe that one guard, not sure what you are responding to), that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to achieve it

they can know that the guy follows his religion very strictly and part of it is to not drink alcohol, and that he never drinks alcohol even in situations where it is around. If they know that, or could have learned it if they bothered, is that sufficient to mean it is not a railroad?

were the companions of the ring railroaded when they failed on the mountain pass and had to go through Moria? When would you consider this an acceptable (non-railroad) outcome? If it weren’t gelatinous cubes but a cave-in?

the why is not really the relevant part, the fact that one NPC being ‘immune’ to being persuaded of one thing has no bearing on it being a railroad, yet to you it makes it one I am not seeing the relevance of this. So it is a railroad if you disagree that something is possible / impossible, but...

I am agreeing that a DM just acting on their fancy is a problem, I am disagreeing that unless there is a procedure to prevent this at all times, the DM will end up doing so. The DM can restrain themselves. This is not to say that there should be no rules, only that they do not need to...

I believe this line from a post of yours started this sidetrack If the DM deciding does not mean unpredictability, then the players still can make informed choices and affect the sandbox in an intentional and goal-oriented way, so I am not sure why it switched over to a living novel then. I...

you had the following reply to a post To me that sounds like what is referenced below

that is exactly what the original post was, my question was how to find out the disposition of the current guard though, not how to find one that you have a good chance of bribing

so tell them / show them. I am not disagreeing with that

without it they would have closed their doors years earlier, so I do not see it as a bad decision. Their problem was bad management, not the release of 2e no it isn’t, but without sales your other decisions do not really matter eh, TSR bankrupted TSR, it just happened during 2e. If they had...

I am disagreeing that the DM deciding this has to mean that we get a series of unpredictable, unforeseeable, chaotic results because the DM acts on their whim with no consistency, logic, or rationale. I am not playing with a crazy person, so I am not that concerned with putting them in a...

could work, but is not really the same thing, ie you did not learn about this particular guard unless he happens to be McBribe

probably because this can lead to a never-ending stream of ‘but what ifs’, see the discussion around the criminal background

at least theoretically, yes, how would you figure out how corruptible a guard is without trying to bribe them?

since you quoted me there, I consider a good GM to be better at dealing with situations than some static rules text, that is all I wrote. I rather have the DM do what makes sense in the situation than to always follow the rules to the letter no matter what, just so they cannot be accused of...

nvm

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation”

I would expect a level of consistency / predictability rather than the DM just doing whatever random thing he thinks of in the moment. I as a player also have an idea of what I consider a likely / reasonable / possible outcome, if what DM decides frequently is between highly improbable and next...

I am not saying they cannot, to me that ability in and of itself is not a problem however, abuse is the problem. If the game tries to prevent that possibility by basically making anything possible if the character just rolls well enough, then I consider that at least as much of a problem...

one stubborn character does not make it a railroad, not even slightly. If this is your threshold for it, we will never see eye to eye on this or what is required to prevent one