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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6986535" data-attributes="member: 2656">I think the problem may be conflating "Fairy tale logic" with "placing the players in a particular fairy tale". If a situation is presented where PCs are placed in the roles of famous fairy tale characters, at least some players will feel constrained to recreate the familiar story "correctly" and at least some DMs will be tempted to railroad the players into the familiar narrative, in a mutable fairy tale setting where shifting scenery facilitates such railroading (from some perspectives).If you mean "Fairy tale logic" and an entirely original situation with no obligation to be recognisable as a recreation of a particular story or narrative, it's different from the PCs visiting Wonderland, or Cinderella, which is a particular story.And back to confusion. PCs who get "cast" as particular familiar characters can definitely be subject to railroading by "fairy tale logic". PCs finding out they can't leave a location till a narrative is resolved is railroading, right?This is what I meant by my reference to "handles", sorry if I was obscure. Players need to know how they can affect the gameworld, and be willing to use the presented mechanics. Possibly I've been burned often enough by old-school dming to automatically associate "fairy tale logic" with "none of your standard mechanics work".The more peculiar and non-naturalistic the setting the harder it can be to get a handle on, IMO. I do think at an atomic procedural level it's easier to take small steps in a naturalistic setting, but conversely there's no guarantee that those steps will even lead to the desired goal, let alone achieve it. Whereas in a "fairy tale logic game" there may be no oxygen as the world doesn't work on science, and reaching for naturalistic explanations can fail. This can bother some players, I certainly have been tripped up before in RPGs in similar situations.In various media and stories, when protagonists stumble into fairy tales, they are often heavily railroaded so the story works out as intended.I feel you are skipping a step, that in your particular usage the fairy tale logic is constrained to allow player agency via the mechanics and excludes the stuff I'm concerned about. Hidden assumptions can be just as deadly as hidden backstory.</blockquote>

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