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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 4734022" data-attributes="member: 54710">I really disagree with your implicit definition of "real" choice.  To me, a "real" choice is one where different reasonable people could come to different decisions.  Perhaps an example is in order...If I tell my players, "There are two passes to city of Hiyal.  The northern pass is guarded by a tribe of ogres.  They are fierce fighters and know the land well but are stupid and have no magic.  The southern pass is held by a vicious necromancer.  His wight army is even more deadly, but you have a cleric, an invoker and two paladins.  Which way do you choose?"That sounds like a "real" choice to me.  The PCs can consider their strengths and decide whether they want to try their luck with ogres or wights.Similarly, if I tell my PCs that the evil Vizier of Hiyal has begun to summon an army of efreetim, but it takes him several hours to summon each one.  If you work your way through his dungeons in a single day, he may be guarded by only two or three efreetim.  But, if you take your time, he may have a dozen or so to guard his many chambers.How is that less of a real choice?  Presumably they will try to work their way through the dungeon being sparing with their non-renewal resources in the hope of an easier fight at the end.  But if they get a little too hosed, they can choose a harder fight with the benefit of regaining their strength.  It is similar to them having the option of fighter a harder wight army, but figuring that it plays to their strengths.  ...and either way it seems real to me.Plot choices can also be real choices.  I had an adventure in which the PCs came into a city to discover that (A) an evil sorceress had wormed her way into the royal harem and was trying to replace the princess with a zombie puppet, (B) cultists to the evil sun god were sacrificing lepers in the slums and (C) the great general of the enemy giant kingdom wasn't dead, but had been spending the past few years in a very large opium den.  Time was ticking.  The PCs chose to focus on the  sorceress and the cultists, so the giant's orc allies were able to rescue him and escort him out of the city.  Had they been more clever or time efficient, they could have resolved all three plots.  Now, a genius fire giant general (as opposed to a doped-out fire giant) and an orcish demon summoner are at large in the kingdom.  This is a clear penalty for failure - the PCs would absolutely rather not deal with these two on their terms.  But it hardly ended the campaign...  Indeed, it was a perfectly reasonable choice for the PCs to say that the sorceress was the biggest immediate threat and that they had a real personal hatred for the cultists, so they were the priorities.  (Another of these cultists defeated the PCs in their first major adventure, and left them for dead.  They was a lucky stabilization roll...)Again, reasonable people could come to different decisions.  The PCs came to a result through deliberate strategic and character choice.  Those are real plot decisions.  Their decision to effectively skip one of the three missions made them more likely to complete the other two.  It wasn't optimal play, but I find it hard to see how it wasn't a real choice.-KS</blockquote>

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