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<blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 9467569" data-attributes="member: 58416">I'll need to think about this more. Generally, I am against fudging and railroading.However, judging by only only your description, it sounds as though there are multiple degrees to it in this adventure, so it is difficult to make one blanket statement. I'm not entirely against planned encounters. But giving the players an item that they need to kill the villain while also making sure to fudge so that the players automatically fail at using the item? That strikes me as bad design and something that would bother me as birth a player and a DM.I think there are a lot of good lessons to be learned from older design, and some of those lessons should still be used. At the same time, bad design should be left in the past.Without being familiar with the specifics of the adventure, my default opinion is that a lot of the things on the list could be done differently-without extreme fudging and railroading- and the adventure could still achieve the same result. For example, if the desire is to avoid killing the BBEG in one shot, why not require 2 MacGuffins? One could be required to debuff the target so that the other can deliver the killing blow. Without the debuff, the item used for the killing blow has no (or a much lesser) effect.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Argyle King, post: 9467569, member: 58416"] I'll need to think about this more. Generally, I am against fudging and railroading. However, judging by only only your description, it sounds as though there are multiple degrees to it in this adventure, so it is difficult to make one blanket statement. I'm not entirely against planned encounters. But giving the players an item that they need to kill the villain while also making sure to fudge so that the players automatically fail at using the item? That strikes me as bad design and something that would bother me as birth a player and a DM. I think there are a lot of good lessons to be learned from older design, and some of those lessons should still be used. At the same time, bad design should be left in the past. Without being familiar with the specifics of the adventure, my default opinion is that a lot of the things on the list could be done differently-without extreme fudging and railroading- and the adventure could still achieve the same result. For example, if the desire is to avoid killing the BBEG in one shot, why not require 2 MacGuffins? One could be required to debuff the target so that the other can deliver the killing blow. Without the debuff, the item used for the killing blow has no (or a much lesser) effect. [/QUOTE]

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