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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5409074" data-attributes="member: 4937">Not necessarily.  That is only true for certain expectations about the game world, namely, that we are playing a narrative game where the DM will throw bangs at the players to heighten tension.   For most players, on selecting a phobia of snakes, there is definately not the realization or belief that in doing so they are committing to addressing a theme at all.  So we really can't say from the fact that there is a phobia on the character sheet what the player's preference was when they selected it.The player deciding to play a character that is afraid of snakes may have reasoned any of the following:1) I would like to have benefit X.  Taking a phobia of snakes would let my character have benefit X and doesn't sound too crippling, because in my past experience snakes aren't a very common opponent and so the disadvantage might come up only a few times over the entire course of the campaign.  If I know that this going to be a campaign against a snake cult, I'd chose something else.2) A phobia of snakes makes my otherwise well-rounded character seem less like a perfect Mary Jane, and makes my character more interesting and believable even if it doesn't play an actual important role in the story.   My expectation is that it in fact will serve only as a sort of local color and not interfere with or be important to the main story arc (much like for example Indiana Jones fear of snakes).3) I will take a phobia of snakes because I think it might be fun to play out every so often when I find a snake and it will help make my character memorable, but my expectation is that the DM will not use his knowledge of my phobia of snakes against me but instead only place snakes at such times that he would place snakes even if I didn't have a phobia.4) I'm taking a phobia of snakes in the expectation that my players fear of them will be an important part of the upcoming narrative.  Indeed my expectation is that my fear of snakes will play a critical role in not just my character development, but the development of the narrative as well.In the case of players #1-#3, if you place snakes in responce to the fact that they have taken a phobia of them, they will yell "Railroad" and IMO they will have every right to do so unless you made it clear to them ahead of time that the sort of game you would be running was not the one that they were imagining.  (Player #1 is imagining a 'Gamist' game.   Player #2 is imagining probably something like a High Drama adventure path.   Player #3 is probably imagining some sort of exploratory sandbox.)Are you sure we are talking about player preference and not your preference?</blockquote>

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