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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5640876" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think that's a very good excuse for running a crappy game.The PCs are in drow society because they got kidnapped by drow NPCs placed by the GM. The PCs escaped from jail into the main drow town because the GM (i) had his NPCs put the PCs in a jail that (ii) decided that the jail is falling apart. The PCs were ignorant of drow pass laws because the players were ignorant of them, and the players were ignorant because the GM apparently hadn't told them (perhaps it's common knowledge) or let them roll a History check (perhaps it know to the learned) or had them stumble across a person carrying a pass (a pretty blatant clue, peppered throughout Gygax's D-modules) or had them stumble across a person being arrested for not carrrying a pass (a very blatant clue).That's what I call (i) framing a scene that the players aren't really interested in, (ii) framing a scene that they can't really engage with, via their PCs, in a way that they will enjoy, and (iii) using GM force to resolve the scene rather than letting the players resolve it in the way that they want to.From my point of view, being captured by drow because you were in a dwarven mine which you had fled into to escape from Frost Giants doesn't look very sandboxy. It looks like an A-grade railroad.A few hours of denouement in which the players are given the false hope of escape, then beat around the head with drow pass laws, and then listen as the GM explains how they are carried off by the drow and executed, sounds like a very slow but otherwise A-grade railroad.I'm not seeing any sandbox, and I'm not seeing any game I would want to be involved in.</blockquote>

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