Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8396293" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I don't disagree, but many DMs want the illusion of choice, because the players will chafe under being told exactly what is going to happen to their characters. I actually encountered this where a DM placed my character under a "curse". I'm not going to go into full details, but an evil NPC wanted us to do a quest, and I got in a confrontation with guards that my allies abandoned me to, so I was beaten unconcious, arrested, and then cursed. The curse could be removed by the NPC. The NPC was demigod level strong, so likely we could not remove it ourselves. If we left the area of these two kingdoms, my character permanently died and only a wish could restore them (we were level 8 or 9, and our main goal was getting out of this area)If we took more than 20 days to complete his quest and return, my character permanently died and only a wish could restore them. He would only remove the curse if we traveled to the citadel of his enemy (of equal godlike power), retrieved an object of power, and brought it back to him. The Journey would take more than 20 days one way. So, the NPC was going to provide transport to the citadel of their enemy, so we could arrive before I died, and then provide me with a single person teleport so I could return alone to give him the artifact, restoring him to even greater power, and then he would send me away from these kingdoms... while I left my friends and companions behind to rot. There were other details that made my character a burden on the party and a drain on resources as well. And the guy was insistent that he wasn't railroading, that I still had choices, and that because I had been in that conflict with the guards within the first hour of us being in this city, it was a natural consequence of my actions, and I should be grateful he didn't just kill my character off. And he wanted to stage an execution of my character, that the other PCs would try and stop, but have me signal to them to not stop it, because trying to stop it would get them killed, and they were supposed to just do something else rather than try and rescue me, so we could go on this quest. Because he didn't want to take away our ability to choose, because railroading is bad. So, yeah. We can change up the labels, but I can see the tools being used horrifically badly, and that makes me quite hesitant to lionize DMs. Because if you get it in your head that it's okay to do things to make the story happen in the way you want, it can get out of hand.</blockquote>

Verification