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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3916850" data-attributes="member: 42582">The former.In most D&D adventures, the challenges and the person (either NPCs or monsters) overlap pretty tightly, so I'll focus on them.The GM writes or buys an adventure. The adventure contains a number of detailed encounters, in which the PCs can earn XP by defeating/overcoming/thwarting a number of persons. If the PCs instead drink tea with those persons, or ally with them, or otherwise fail to defeat or overcome them, they do not earn XP.Therefore, bog-standard D&D creates a strong (XP-driven) pressure on players to treat as enemies, rather than allies, all the people that the GM (or module writer) has statted up as enemies. Is this railroading?If it's not, then why is it any different when the GM writes up an adventure which creates pressur for the players to take the same attitude towards the Archbishop as the GM does? Conversely, if the reward system should be able to tolerate the players having their PCs not do as the Archbishop asks, then shouldn't it be able to cope with the players making friends with the tribes of the Caves of Chaos, rather than massacring them?It doesn't just create an incentive to face challenges. It creates an incentive to treat as challenges the situations that the GM has written up - that is, it creates an incentive for the players to adopt the same perspective on the gameworld (who is an ally, who an enemy) as the GM does. Is this railroading? If not, what is wrong with the Archbishop Quest?It is possible to have an XP system which doesn't create incentives for the players to adopt the same outlook on the gameworld and story elements as the GM. One is the RQ/RM style one, where XP are earned simply for using abilities successfully (whether or not any challenge is overcome or plot resolved). Another is one where the players are themselves able to introduce the story elements or plots which they must resolve if they are to earn XP (in 4e terms, these would be player-generated Quests).</blockquote>

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