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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lyxen" data-source="post: 8396901" data-attributes="member: 7032025">No, this is not what you did. You took a specific statement of mine and just straight up said that I was wrong about my own experience. Very different.The thing is that I am very open about my experiences because it avoids bad faith arguments and prevents people making generalisations and using ridiculous examples that never happen in real life (like a DM using weighted dice). Why don't you try it, basing your examples and demonstrations on actual examples ?And for you, if it's only "miscommunication and mismatched expectations", where do the horror stories come from ?And again, you are mistaken. My reason for quitting that game was because what they expected in terms of playstyle did not match what I expect in terms of fun. They wanted an extremely technical game that was only about fighting, I did not. Nothing wrong about their style, it's just not what I like to play.Which you did, here is the sentence: "In fact, I think [USER=7032025]@Lyxen[/USER] is about the only person I've seen on these forums who has seemed to not have had expeirenced a truly bad DM. And that is probably wrong, they probably have."Please explain to me how this is not calling me a liar.See above.Yes, of course, railroading is a capital offense, right. Anyone doing it in their game is a really bad DM, who should be banned from DMing and should be put on a list to be monitored so that players can avoid playing with him ever again.Factually, a lot of published adventures contain a fair bit of railroading, some more than others, but I've also head players complain about areas which feel too much like a sandbox. It's again just a question of playstyle (and, by the way, when designing our LARPs, we ask each player what he expects to find, a more guided adventure or a more sandboxy one). It's just a question of preference so yes, complaining about railroading and calling a DM "a truly bad DM" because of that is very probably truly bad in itself. Nothing forces you to stay and support abuse in TTRPGs. This is not a life choice, It's at worst one evening of entertainment that you choose to participate in. If you don't like it, just walk out.See above. Believe me, for a number of reasons which will, in that case, remain private, I am truly horrified by abuse, whether it's (usual examples) familial or work-related. But equating that to abuse that you could get at a TTRPG table that is only entertainment and that you can get out of at any time with no more consequence than losing one evening of potential fun is for me totally unjustified. Moreover, if some of the people there are really friends, and the abuse is real, these friends should support you.It's impossible for most people to go through life without family and a job, but D&D is only light entertainment and the guiding principle should be "No D&D is better than bad D&D" because D&D is not a necessity of life.That being said, I'm also really sorry if you received real abuse, because that is bad. But where I stop following you is calling railroading abuse.Bu they can, it's the principle of the game. The players know only the world through the DM's description of it anyway, so whether the DM makes changes or not could be totally transparent to them, they will never know. This is why the most important thing at a table is trusting your DM. It's totally pointless to do otherwise. He is, literally, the master of the world.And if, as in the OP's example, the DM has described what your character saw, then it's fine to make assumptions, but that is what the character saw, nothing more and nothing less. The player has zero entitlement to drill the DM for ten times as long because he wants to gain a purely technical advantage.I'm not justifying the DM (there is no need here, because the example is absurd), just pointing out that it would still not be cheating, by the definitions of the word.No-one said that asking questions now and then is forbidden but coming back to a real example, re-read the OP's post. It's not even his character...Ah but it's not. Not at all. I just tell them "you can turn in any animal no larger than a bear", and that is a sufficient explanation. As a DM, I handle all the technical details and limitations, and if some limitations are thrown out of the window now and then (local rulings), who cares as long as everyone is having fun ?And please don't start on the "if you're not using (all) the rules, it's not D&D", these same rules actually point out extremely precisely that it IS playing D&D, and that is is exactly what the spirit of at least this edition is about (I agree that it was not the same with 3e and in particular 4e, although house ruling was covered in both cases).And they still have not read any single word of the rules.I have seen nothing of the kind.Absurdly so, and confrontational.You mean, like a DM using weighted dice ?As I see it, the problem is that you are confounding the objective and the means. My objective is for my players to have fun. If, to reach that goal, I use means that you don't like (e.g. railroading, fudging), etc. you have ZERO right to call that cheating or abuse, which is exactly what you are doing in this thread. So stop it, it's badwrongfun all over the place.Play your game the way you like it with your own enforced limitations, but don't call other DMs cheaters or abusers because they use different tools now and then.By the way, for me, what potentially makes a DM bad is not the means he employs, it's when his intent on running the game is not directly linked to his players having fun (like being on a power trip), but once more "no D&D is better than bad D&D" and if simple mature out of the game discussion to clarify it does not give you what you expect, just walk away, there is zero reason to suffer abuse.And kicking a player from the table (which I've never done on my own, just done I think twice because all the players agreed that playing with a specific person was just not feasible) is not malicious either. It's just a parting of ways because people have different expectations of what makes a simple game fun.So if a player annoys the table and does nothing to change his behaviour, is just a realisation that maybe, they are not meant to game together, not a personal insult. Just as with different playstyles.And if a DM annoys you with too much railroading, but it's his style and you prefer a more open style, which do you think is better ? A simple parting of way because you don't have the same expectations of calling him a really bad DM and saying that he abused your entitled player's agency ? This is why, in these cases, I really like to hear all sides of the story...I played tennis with my cousin once, and we were having fun just playing exchanges. Then he insisted on playing a match, which I easily won 6-0 because I (used to) have a killer service. We never played tennis together again, because for him it's all about competitive play and winning. He is still my cousin, I see him regularly and we have fun together, we just don't play tennis together.</blockquote>

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