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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6419932" data-attributes="member: 5143">I won't draw the line somewhere in the middle.  Since I started playing D&D back in the day, I've been taught that the DM is in charge.  It is their world, you just live in it briefly.  They decide 100% of these things.  You can take whatever actions you want but if the DM says there is no boxes there...well, there's no boxes there.  Deal with it.  Don't argue, just get on with the game.Honestly, it never even occurred to me that facts in the game world would suddenly change because a player asked about it until this thread.  It is completely foreign to me.  That's the DM's job.  I understand that there are some story telling games where this kind of power is given to the players, but my attempts to play them have always left me feeling a huge sense of...WRONG.  Like I'm breaking the rules.  I really WANT the DM to come up with these things so I don't have to.I'm the player who wouldn't even come up with the boxes idea.  I'd use the DMs description and say "Hmm, what resources do we have?  A wall, a window, I'm carrying some rope and I have a grappling hook.  Well, this seems fairly straightforward."  Boxes wouldn't enter into it since they were never described by the DM.I think boredom is way too strong a word.  If someone said "alright, we sit in the bar waiting for a guy to show up."  I'd likely spent a minute describing how they were sitting there, people came and went.  They finished a couple of drinks.  Someone in the corner started yelling at their wife and made a scene before storming out.  A dart tournament happened and an elf won by 3 points in the final throw.  They saw some people come and go on the street.  They ate lunch and dinner.  A couple of men came up to you and asked for some coins for drinks.  What did you tell them?  No?  Alright.  They left very disappointed.  It became dark.  A whole new crowd entered the bar during the evening and the place became loud and boisterous and then, nearly 8 hours after they started waiting, the man they were waiting for walks in.The whole thing likely takes a minute to say.  And for the last 30 seconds of it the players are likely thinking "Yeah, yeah, yeah...I don't care about that...does the guy we are waiting for show up or what?"  Which is perfect.  I've managed to add a little bit of atmosphere to the game while simultaneously adding just a little bit of impatience to the players, which is likely what their characters are feeling about now.I've found that the roleplaying that comes out of this is much better than if I just say "You wait 8 hours and the guy walks in."It's slightly more exciting because it has a chance of failure and someone falling and taking damage.  The other way just requires someone saying "I get boxes and stack them."  No real chance of failure.  But you're right, it's only minorly more exciting.  It's definitely a case of a difference between player expectations and GM expectations, I'll give you that.Yeah, it could be that I have no issue at all with railroading.  I don't consider it a bad thing and never understood the bile and venom thrown around at the mere hint of it happening.  I've posted about that many times, but I believe EVERY game has railroading.  Without it, there wouldn't be a game at all.  It's a matter of your tolerance level for the AMOUNT of railroading.The rules are a guideline.  Not ever kobold has the same Int stat.  It's possible this one was dumber than the rest.  It's also possible it was more a language barrier.  Though, I don't know the details.  The DM doesn't have to roll morale if he doesn't want to or doesn't feel it is appropriate for his game or the current situation.  The DM gets to decide these things in order to make the game more fun.  Often the DM knows way more details about what is going on than the players do and sometimes they understand that for the health of the game certain options need to be "restricted" in order to make the story turn out better in the long term.  If that means that one kobold happens to not know the answer you're looking for in order for the adventure to proceed a certain way that is more fun, I say trust the DM to make that happen.But I'm extremely open as a player.  I don't care exactly what DMing style is being used as long as the end result is a fun game.  I certainly wouldn't get angry over something I can't control(in this case, whether or not the kobold had an extremely low IQ for one of its kind and whether it knew what we wanted to know).I've played games where the DM played in reactionary mode, only reacting to what the playersAs for why the players show up...presumably because they enjoy playing the game, they want to see what happens next in the story, they want to have fun acting and roleplaying their character and their decisions, they enjoy solving puzzles and trying to figure out the answers to the problems the DM throws at them, or they want to use their cool abilities in combat and get a power trip over being better than they are in real life.  Plus they still get to make decisions at various points in the game.  Just not 100% of all decisions are open to them 100% of the time.Depends what you consider the GM having fiat over the effects of combat resolution.  I played a game earlier today where the DM flat out said "The monster has 2 hitpoints left, but I'm going to say that kills him because I think it'll be more fun not to drag this combat out longer than it needs to."  I've had DMs say "This battle is starting to drag on, and I'd like to get to the more interesting parts of this adventure.  I'm going to say you win.  Let's say everyone takes...1d6 more points of damage and the battle is over."  I've had DMs say that based on specific circumstances that certain abilities won't work...like casting a fire spell while underwater without a clear rule for what happens.  I've definitely had DMs give random +2 bonuses to people based on circumstances narrated that had no basis in the rules at all.None of us complained any of those times.  We trusted the DM.  Most of the time they did it in circumstances that really DID make the game more fun or at least made sense within the context of the story as it was being told.  Sometimes they abused it and we complained about it.  But in the end we accepted the DMs ruling and moved onward.Framing situations the players are interested in is sometimes a really bad idea.  Players rarely know what they ACTUALLY want.  I've had players who REALLY wanted to be king and to rule over a country.  If you give it to them, suddenly the game is boring because they now have to deal with the things kings need to actually deal with.  Either that or the rest of the players get angry at you because the game is now suddenly all about the player who wanted to be king when the rest of them didn't really want to.Part of being a DM is arbitrating what each of the players wants and the stuff you made up before the game started with the needs of the story as it has progressed so far.  This almost always involves a sacrifice of some sort.  It's a group based game.  Sometimes that means saying "Sorry, you can't attack the kobolds because you have no idea how powerful they are.  They are well organized and deadly and performing a raid on them is going to get the entire party killed.  I don't want the party to die because the game will end.  So, in an effort to prevent the players from leaping to their deaths, I'm going to use a rather heavy handed method to prevent them from doing it.  In the end, the game will be more fun for it."</blockquote>

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