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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tar Markvar" data-source="post: 211107" data-attributes="member: 2859">I've spoken with him and with others in the group about where I was considering taking the game, and most agree that it's a good idea. It's just a matter of specific instances. He's generally been vocally pro-role-playing and yet actively pro-munchkinry as far back as I've known him. He's one of those gamers who look for loopholes and use them to get power for his character. Which is fine if that's how he wants to play, but don't get all indignant about role-playing purity when you do that.The thing is, the capt. of the ship they were using to travel from adventure to adventure never liked them, and only tolerated them because he saw them bringing tons of loot onto his ship. Now he has his own stuff to do, and he decided to let them go. They never asked him if they could come aboard; they were placed there by conditions outside of their or the cap'n's control, and now he wants them gone. He's an important fixture in the dwarven resistance in the Dragon Empire, and he has things to do.So the reaction was, "We need a ship." My adventure that night was made specifically to provide them with one, after a gripping siege of a formian hive. This player decided that he needed to buy or capture the cap'n's ship, though, and I suddenly had a player that didn't want to take "no" for an answer."We offer to buy the ship from him." No, it's his ship, and it's his way of life, and his crew, and he says it's not for sale. "We make a deal for him to continue being taxi-pet." No, that's what he's been doing all along, and he doesn't want to do that anymore. "We threaten him." Well, fine, but then you end up stranded on THIS planet, instead of your home planet, where the ship had planned to drop you off. And if you kill him, his crew hates you, and you'll be crewless and in possession of a mid-sized freighter. And since you're Kalamar natives, you have no mechanist, piloting, or navigation skill, so you're screwed.But, "I don't like being railroaded."To me, these things made sense. The grizzled veteran ship captain doesn't want to sell his ship, or play taxi-fool for you anymore, and threatening him leaves you crewless. Is that railroading?Besides, at the end of the evening's adventure, the group had routed a formian colony, unearthed a decades-lost wreckage that the formians had restored to a working starship (which the PCs now own), and they had met Fharlanghan, who had given them hints to the location of the wreckage, met them in the slave quarters when they got there, and offered to help them in their travels as long as they help the other natives of Tellene eventually toward space-travel themselves. I thought it was great, but to him it was hack-n-slash, and he seemed like he was watching his mother die when the god of travel showed up.He's a great friend, and honestly, I game there to hang out with him. I just want to find a way to get him involved without having to dangle carrots in his face whenever he gets out the headphones.</blockquote>

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