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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7742581" data-attributes="member: 16814">Now that I have a bit more time, I'll expound on my short answer.The job of the DM is to present the world and narrate results.  The job of the players is to make choices and declare actions.  This is pretty much true of all games that feature a GM/player split.  The problem is when the lines get crossed.  If the DM is making choices for the players, it's less than good.  This can happen by using geas to force actions by the PCs or by framing a situation that the King is making a demand on your life and you, as a player, made no choices to be there.  A good game develops when the choices that are made by the player unfold into the game. If the situation is that the players make choices that result in gaining an audience with the king, and, at that point, surrounded by the guard and the court, a player chooses to spit in the king's face, I, as DM, am going to certainly honor that player's choice and narrate the brief altercation, arrest, imprisonment, and beheading the next morning.  Consequences for actions that are fairly presented with known stakes are very kosher and the root of the game.  Using DM force to make decisions for the players (ie, the King rolled a 35 on his Diplomacy, you have to take his quest now!) is bad.  The reason for this is because the DM already controls the scene -- he presents it to the players, they have no choice here.  The DM also built the king, and can do so in a way that's abusive.  The DM is also choosing to push the King's build in the scene he set onto the players for the purpose of forcing a course of action from the players.  In effect, the DM is just narrating what the characters do and only pretending to give the players an option.  There isn't one, this is a pure railroad.For the record, when I say railroad I mean that the outcomes are predetermined by the DM and forced to occur.  Framing a scene that fronts a specific challenge is not a railroad, even if it removes some choices, so long as the outcome of the scene is up to the players -- ie, the outcome rests on the player's actions and the mechanics resolving the players actions (not DMNPCs).On a side note, I used to be in the camp that let NPCs roll against players.  I'm not anymore, because I realized that's me, as DM, forcing things onto to the players.  I now prefer the play concept that I describe scenes, players describe actions, then I narrate results and use mechanics to resolve uncertainties.  Wash, repeat.  There's no room for the DM to roll against the players in this concept.  Any agenda by NPCs is part of the framing of the scene and the implicit and explicit stakes bet by the players as part of their action declarations.  So, if the Prince wants to convince to players to rescue his daughter, he has to bring actual stakes to the table rather than a high diplomacy check.  NPC skills are used to set DCs or for contested rolls when applicable against player action declarations.Combat is a special case of the above, where rolls are made against the players.  This is because the explicit stakes of the combat sub-game are randomized to, ostensibly, increase tension and dramatic impacts.  And, my players like combats, so I'm not going to make major changes around things they like.</blockquote>

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