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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clockworkjoe" data-source="post: 1592631" data-attributes="member: 1321">Giving the PCs any form of plot immunity stills breaks the suspension of disbelief that I think is important to a game like D&D. It's like seeing the boom mic at the top of the screen for a few seconds in a movie. It reminds you that you're watching a movie and distracts you from the story. I have played several games of that type in the past, which is why I don't like them anymore. In my experience, they tend to take the structure of a 'choose your own adventure'  where the players are given a limited set of options and must choose among them, if they are even given real options. Players that make a 'wrong' choice are punished (lose reputation/items etc.) but are never killed since that would break the GM's plot apart. The GM basically writes a story about them and they are more or less along for the ride. This type of GM tends to be pretty inflexible about sudden changes of pace (PC 1: Forget about the elves. I want to see the Mountains of Zondar! PC 2: Yeah, the elves suck. PC 3-5: ok. GM: The elves bar you from leaving and the mountains of Zondar fall off the face of the earth) and may railroad the players pretty frequently.To me, roleplaying is a game about telling a story that no one knows before it happens in the game. More importantly, the best stories happen in a consisent world mediated by the GM that the player characters inhabit. Generally speaking, the less a GM does in terms of metagaming or plot management PERIOD the better. Let the players play the game. The story of every single campaign should be whatever the players do.So, the more I think about it, the more I oppose basically every form of GM plot management. Let the PCs do whatever they want, and let the dice fall where they may. If the players are so neurotic that a PC death affects them more emotionally than say losing a game of pickup basketball, that player probably has bigger problems than worrying about playing a game. Obviously, this has just been my own experience, but I relish games where the dice are honest. It's more interesting and more fun than games run by GM fiat (and any game where a player can never ever die is run by GM fiat, period).</blockquote>

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