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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 4691767" data-attributes="member: 3887">Some observations...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There's nothing wrong with the drain pipe being a dead end.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">However, there is something wrong with spending a lot of table time on a dead end (if that happened).</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If I were the DM, I probably would have whipped up an improvised encounter for inside the pipe.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Or I would have fast-forwarded over not finding anything useful while exploring it ("It takes 6 hours to climb up and then back down the drain. You find no entrance into the citadel").</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">As for the top of the drain pipe being a potential death trap if the player's monkey with it... that's just bad form. How are the players supposed to know they couldn't survive the Big Flush, maybe hang on and then somehow gain entrance?</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Surviving the drain pipe is no more ridiculous --or heroic/creative-- than any one of a number of commonplace D&D occurrences, for instance, the jumping off of high places and not dying of one's injuries at the bottom (assuming one is mid-level or above), or surviving the frequent exposure to explosive fire.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">So it's often hard to tell the fatally ridiculous from the strategically sublime, without the DM's help.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">(This is largely the product of D&D simulating the frequently ridiculous and almost always contrived worlds of adventure stories, in which logically absurd actions are often effective -- see Indiana Jones and Co. jumping out of plane using an inflatable raft as a parachute/wing.)</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Which leads to another issue: tedium is never a smart outcome in a game that's supposed to be about adventure. If player choices lead to nothing exciting happening, there's no need to play it out in detail. Move on. Lingering over dead-ends for the sake of verisimilitude is probably something called the mimetic fallacy (I think).</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">One last thought (finally). Simulation in an RPG a laudable, even enjoyable, thing. But it's a means to an end. At the point it becomes the end itself, the DM needs to start rethinking his priorities.</li> </ul>And by 'some' observations I obviously meant 'a lot'<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.</blockquote>

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