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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5793412" data-attributes="member: 8835">I had appropriated "choice" vs. "Choice" years ago from a business article.the lesson being that life has lots of "choices" and small-minded people will snark at you that you always had a choice.  You'll often hear the quote "you chose to do that...." from these type of people.But the reality is, in most situations, a rational person has a high probability of choosing one path, and most other choices, while technically possible are not probable.  Consider waking up in the morning.  You could:go back to sleepplay hookiego to workkill yourself for no apparent reasongo on a crime-spreeMost rational, employed people will go to work.  At least 2 of those possible choices are not palatable to the decider.Whereas, a real "Choice" is a meaningful fork in the road.  There are multiple viable paths and there are not social expectations and norms that force the decider down one of those paths.The adaptation of that point in D&D is that just having a bunch of choices is not enough.  The kind of person the player is rules out a number of those choices such that they are not really options.  A player who prefers to play good, heroic characters is not going to choose to do evil things.  So claiming he had the option to kill the princess instead of saving her is disingenuous.The point then, to make the game interesting, is to present your players with Choices that actually matter.  Paths that are both appealing and viable to the player/NPC.  The case in the OP's example of the portals seems pretty obvious.  Hero types will drill in deeper to kill the bad guy/save the day.  it is a non-choice unless there is another viable way to stop the bad guy, especially if he outclasses them.This actually forms the inverse strategy that Problems and Opportunities base on.Once you know what kinds of things appeal to their goals, you make Opportunities and Problems that fulfill that goal.  Mentally, the player has no "choice" but to pursue it.Once you've gotten your Opportunities/Problems aligned to that, the trick to not being abusive is to make sure there is variety so the player has some Choices to make.</blockquote>

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