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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4972386" data-attributes="member: 40961">That's why these are always tough.  Barring an absolute railroad, the players and the DM both did something that led to the final situation.  Its particularly hard to recreate these things on the internet, especially with one sided self reporting from one party in the scenario.  But there are quite a lot of ways for the player to end up in a situation where the player "chooses" to engage the scenario, but the DM was really responsible.  Maybe the DM didn't clearly communicate the player's alternatives.  Maybe the DM didn't clearly communicate the risk.  Maybe the DM created a situation where the player had to choose between betraying the character's personality and risking the character's death.  This just begins to cover the possibilities.Of course, maybe the players engaged in a long term, eyes open, considered course of action that inevitably led to this outcome.  Hard to ever know from the internet.But my general assumption is that players don't want their characters to die, and will act to the best of their ability to avoid situations where one toss of a die will decide their character's fate, unless the alternative is even worse for them as a player (being untrue to a character can fall into that category).  My general assumption about DMs is that they do their best as well, but that as they are the primary source of information and the ones holding the most power to determine the degree to which player expectations are satisfied, that they have a more difficult, tougher task, and that failures in communication usually start with them since they're both the source of most of the communication and the arbiter of whether they themselves did a good job.  Its easy to start excusing yourself because you were completely clear in your own mind, and because you, with your god-vision, knew of the ways the unpleasant gaming scenario could have been avoided.  But that's a bad road to travel.My general assumption that players try their best with what they have, and that DMs should carefully watch themselves for what is essentially a conflict of interest, tends to color my reading of threads on these topics.  Other people have other assumptions, as you'll see even in this thread.  Other people approach these threads looking for players with a "sense of entitlement" who... whatever.  Its not an opinion I share and I don't think highly of it.  But it does explain some of how these threads go.  Different outlooks on RPGs, and on people.</blockquote>

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