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Message: <blockquote data-quote="UltimaGabe" data-source="post: 5179978" data-attributes="member: 16019">While I agree that railroading is never fun, I believe that the opposite is also not fun. True, it's unfair to throw an encounter at the players for the sole purpose of screwing them over, but what fun is a game where every encounter the PCs come across is beatable? What's the point in trying to establish a working, breathing game world when the DM is forbidden from letting the PCs encounter anyone more powerful than they can defeat?I don't like the idea of railroading one bit (particularly because when I first started playing D&D, it's all I knew how to do, and I have been trying to prove to myself for the last ten years that I'm no longer such a terrible DM). However, I also like telling a compelling story, and I know that the most compelling story is NOT one where the heroes always win. Some of my most memorably D&D experiences were with one of my previous DMs, where several encounters he ran were ultimately lost by the players- but the reason those encounters were memorable is because when he DMed, the consequences for failure were rarely death. The consequences were often far, far worse.Player characters in 4e, in my experience, are very difficult to kill. As such, any big bad that I introduce is going to be seen (at least this is what I'm afraid the players will see) as a challenge, but ultimately a push-over, because 4e is about balance and teamwork and making the players very difficult to take down. Not that I don't like that aspect of 4e- I love it. I love feeling invincible as a player. But because of this, as a DM, it gets hard writing NPCs with realistic plans and expectations when I know that their ultimate goal is to be taken down by the PCs.Long story short, I'm trying to write a compelling story, and part of that story involves the (temporary) loss of a plot-related artifact, and by forcing the loss of an NPC or two at this point in the story allows me to bring about a sideplot later on. (If I end up running an encounter and the players ultimately win, I can always refrain from kidnapping the NPCs and discard that plotline, though I'd prefer not to have to. Stealing the McGuffin, however, will be necessary.) While I realize that this is a game involving several other potential writers, rather than a single work of fiction, I'd rather not have to sacrifice the quality of a story because of how durable the player characters are. The PCs are not the most powerful characters in this fictional world, and therefore I don't want to treat them as such.</blockquote>

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