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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8697086" data-attributes="member: 6790260">If you aren't willing to communicate, you shouldn't be DMing. Full stop. Communication is absolutely essential to be a DM. It does not matter what style you favor, whether you like lots of DM force or no force at all or anything in-between. In order to do the task of DMing, you have to communicate what is going on to your players. It is not possible to DM in a way that does not involve communication to some extent.This is like saying a person wants to perform Shakespeare, but doesn't want to memorize. You cannot do the former without doing the latter. It's not physically possible.Well, now that the topic has been broached, don't you think it is generally better to have a conversation about it, rather than to coast on presumptions, hoping that those presumptions are correct?That's very good to hear. But, being perfectly honest, I still think it behooves you to communicate clearly and effectively with people you're very familiar with. Many, many, many, many, many problems in human relationships arise because people think that familiarity and/or past history (e.g. "it was never a problem before") obviate the need for communication.Thomas Shey already covered this, but here's my two bits: "Anyone who responds to concerns about presentation of false pretenses with 'just trust me!' is making things worse, not better."I may not agree with Max about much, but he has the right of it. Deception is generically wrong. This is not an argument. This is a moral axiom.You do not need to be deceptive to create surprise. Others, like [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER], have shown examples. Further, as I have repeatedly said, there is a difference between fooling the characters (which results in players being surprised due to incongruity in their understanding of the fictional context) and fooling the players (which results in players believing things about the kind of game they're playing which are not true.)I am 110% in favor of reasonable situations where you fool the characters. I am fully opposed to situations where you fool the players.Coercing someone into believing something false, so that they will be happier than they would be if they knew the true state of affairs. That is what is universally negative. Again, all that is required to avoid this is to tell people, at the outset, that you do this stuff. Something like:"Hey, some of the time, I may fudge rolls or present you with choices that seem to make a difference and seem to put you in control of the story, even though they won't or don't. I won't tell you when I'm doing this, but it's going to happen now and then, and you should basically never be able to tell that I've done it. I genuinely believe that doing this is going to produce a better, fuller, more enjoyable experience than if I chose not to do this. I won't do it very often, because I understand that people value consistent rules and the feeling that the story responds to them. As long as you're okay with me doing that with the purpose of improving the overall experience, we should all have a good time."And no, "Just trust me, I'm the DM!" does not cut it for covering the above.Because, in order for it to be "railroading," you must have intentionally NOT said the paragraph above. You must intentionally be using invisible rails. It's not railroading if you tell your players you're running a premade module or AP, because they know the rails are there. It's not railroading if you tell your players in advance that you may, sometimes, give them situations that LOOK like choices that really matter and really give them control, but in practice don't at all, merely giving the illusion of agency and control. There, they can't see the rails directly, but they know there are rails and they will be kept to those rails without comment.Passing off a pre-written module as though it were an organic campaign, on the other hand, is railroading--and quite clearly wrong (particularly because you add in a lovely dash of plagiarism, passing off the module author's work as your own.)For my part, it's the "explicitly" that's at issue. I can't trust someone explicitly unless they've been explicit with me. They need to get me on board with what they're doing. That requires telling me that they will tacitly ignore the rules (which, for me, is an instant disqualifier for a serious game) or that they will tacitly subvert player choice (which is not quite an instant disqualifier, but it's pretty close.) A DM that is honest enough to tell me they do this will absolutely have my respect, but I either definitely (for tacit rule-breaking) or probably (for tacit DM force) will not actually play with them unless it's a completely casual, usually humorous game. I won't raise a stink, I'll just depart, because the game being offered isn't one I'm interested in playing, no different from connecting up with a group to play a "sci-fi" game and finding out that that means "xenomorph body horror"--I'm not interested in playing that, so I won't stick around.This is an excellent way of phrasing it, thank you! Exactly on point: with all the myriad choices we already know to be irrelevant most of the time (such as the color of one's clothes or the town in which you were born etc.), when a choice is specifically called out for us to make, that automatically elevates it. If it didn't matter, it would either be handwaved or wouldn't be brought up in the first place, because game time is precious and wasting it on irrelevancies is...well, wasteful. Hence why a blanket statement in advance is so important; it allows the DM to preserve the in-the-moment tension (by not calling attention to their sleight-of-hand) while still respecting the players' agency because they have already consented to such situations.</blockquote>

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