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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5572950" data-attributes="member: 42582">The GM determining that necromancy is legal is not per se railroading. The GM determining that necromancy is not judged evil by some NPC or other is not per se railroading. Clearly, this is all just setting up the gameworld. In some circumstances, in combination with other elements of the gameworld, it could turn into or contribute to a railroad - for example, if one player has made it clear that his/her PC's main raison d'etre is to fight necromancy, and the player has been accepted into the game on that basis, and the GM then presents a world where the PC has no practical option but to tolerate necromancy. But those sorts of circumstances aren't all that common (although the repeated threads on these forums about player vs GM choice in respect of PC build, shared world creation, etc etc show that they aren't unheard of either).In my view, however, the GM determining that necromancy is not evil, in a game where a significant motivation for playing, on the part of one or more players, is to engage with the thematic question of how we should regard acts of necromancy, in my view is railroading, or at least a serious potential prelude to railroading. Because the GM is purporting to settle in advance the very issue which the player was hoping to address by playing the game.Alignment mechanics are the bluntest version of this sort of thing, but not the only form it can take. For example, even without alignment mechanics a GM can establish a world which, in virtue of its political and theological/metaphsysical setup, in effect precludes the players from addressing key thematic questions, by already settling the answers to them.You're right that I didn't talk about this sort of pure exploration game, because I was focusing on D&D and in particular the transition from 1st ed to 2nd ed play.As I said above, by setting up the social and political arrangements in a certain way the GM can still foreclose particular moral or thematic issues. This won't be a concern, though,  if the players merely want to explore the GM's gameworld, and aren't interested in addressing those evaulative issues.I'm sure your GM did what she thought was the best thing in the circumstances, given the expectations and established practices for your group.</blockquote>

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