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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5341646" data-attributes="member: 996">Players sometimes - no, often - come up with things you never thought of that derail your plot train.&nbsp; That's just part of DMing, learning how to deal with that without making your game suck.&nbsp; It's not easy, but it's not entirely unrewarding, either.You can just go the 'sandbox' route and not worry about your plot being derailed because you have no plot and no rails... but, then, you're really depending on your players being pretty self-directing, which not all of 'em are.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, you're lucky to get one player in any given group who can /really/ consistently handle a completely undirected campaign... and they usually end up 'dominating' it.So, sure, railroading is often seen as 'bad,' but some direction can be good.&nbsp; As a DM, you learn to work with your players, there's some plot-derailing but it's in a good cause, because the players did do something clever or cool or unexpected.&nbsp; Powers that blow your plot train's rails, just because they're badly worded, though, they're not your players doing something cool or clever or unexpected - they're just bad rules.&nbsp; The DM has to deal with bad rules, but doing so doesn't make his game any better, it just (hopefully) saves it from being wrecked.&nbsp; The system should try to /minimize/ the bad rules, so the DM can concentrate on all the cool/clever/unexpected curve balls the players throw his way, because those are the things that turn the plot train into a plot ATV and actually add to the fun of the game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 5341646, member: 996"] Players sometimes - no, often - come up with things you never thought of that derail your plot train. That's just part of DMing, learning how to deal with that without making your game suck. It's not easy, but it's not entirely unrewarding, either. You can just go the 'sandbox' route and not worry about your plot being derailed because you have no plot and no rails... but, then, you're really depending on your players being pretty self-directing, which not all of 'em are. As a matter of fact, you're lucky to get one player in any given group who can /really/ consistently handle a completely undirected campaign... and they usually end up 'dominating' it. So, sure, railroading is often seen as 'bad,' but some direction can be good. As a DM, you learn to work with your players, there's some plot-derailing but it's in a good cause, because the players did do something clever or cool or unexpected. Powers that blow your plot train's rails, just because they're badly worded, though, they're not your players doing something cool or clever or unexpected - they're just bad rules. The DM has to deal with bad rules, but doing so doesn't make his game any better, it just (hopefully) saves it from being wrecked. The system should try to /minimize/ the bad rules, so the DM can concentrate on all the cool/clever/unexpected curve balls the players throw his way, because those are the things that turn the plot train into a plot ATV and actually add to the fun of the game. [/QUOTE]

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