Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 6212745" data-attributes="member: 9789">This is exactly the sort of thing I never want to do.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I do hear you on the railroading and the lack of player agency across the board.  I think it's really more of a semantics issue.  When players are forced to do something that they feel their characters wouldn't or shouldn't do, or that the characters should have had a better chance to avoid doing ("uh, my elf is trained in spotting traps - why did the trap door suddenly open underneath her?"), I would call that railroading.  Railroading is frustrating because it takes away from player engagement in the story.  However, I agree that not all plot twists and random nastiness is railroading, and the word has been used too broadly and too often.  Sometimes plot twists or swords breaking or whatever heightens drama - and that can be good, or interesting, or fun.  But sometimes it just feels like the universe is picking on you, and that's not so fun.  That's the sort of thing I want to avoid doing, because I dislike it so much when it happens to me.This is all a huge side discussion, though:  what is or is not railroading and whether it can be good or bad are really not the point.  The point is/was:  how can GMs use intrusions to better enhance their game without making the players feel like the universe is picking on them?  And for me, the answer was:  don't use GM intrusions because that's just not something I'm comfortable with as a GM.  Maybe if I were more flexible or a better GM I could just take it all in stride, but that's not where I am, so I am just working around it.</blockquote>

Verification