Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dave Turner" data-source="post: 2671388" data-attributes="member: 12329">What qualifies as a meaningful player choice?  I would suggest that they are making a meaningful choice.  I'll go back to my Lich-King example.  Fears about railroading are metagame fears, so we'll look at the example from a metagame point of view.The chain of clues has been interpreted by the players so that they believe that the Lich-King is near Waterdeep.  How does this look from the player's metagame point of view?  The players believe that the DM has prearranged a storyline for them to follow.  If they've been following the clues in the storyline, they've already agreed to some extent that they're going to subject themselves to the DM's railroading.  The traditional role of a DM in an RPG is to prepare a storyline for the players to gradually uncover and interact with.  In our example, the players have willingly participated in previous events in the storyline which are building to a climactic encounter with the Lich-King.  The players, in the Lich-King example, want to find the Lich-King and so does the DM.If both the players and the DM want to find the Lich-King, then is it really railroading to make sure that the players get to the Lich-King's dungeon?  The players have made the only meaningful choice they can make.  They have decided that the clue chain leads to Waterdeep rather than to Shadowdale.  What kind of meaningful choices do you think the players are missing out on?  Should the DM narrate their trip to Waterdeep and their subsequent failure to find the Lich-King?  How many sessions should the DM let the players waste fruitlessly searching for the Lich-King's lair which is on the other side of the world?  What if the DM gives the PCs a hint that the Lich-King's lair is back in Shadowdale?  That's railroading!  That's the DM leading the players by the nose along the prearranged story track that he established at the start of the game.If the DM and the players both want to go to the Lich-King's lair, why waste all those sessions in between, especially when moving the dungeon to Waterdeep would never be noticed by the players?</blockquote>

Verification