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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5583730" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Where you're getting disagreement from multiple people (as far as I can tell) is that negative in-game consequences for player actions are not a bad thing. If you do something in-game that makes all clerics mad at you, you should have no reasonable expectation that they still heal you of their own accord. You could force them to with threats, or bribe them to, or lie to them, or atone, or any number of other actions. If those actions are available, you are not being railroaded. You made the decision yourself, you can deal with the consequences yourself.If you were stopped from taking the action, then now you're getting into railroad territory. If all NPCs inexplicably hate unless you're following a plot (not necessarily a specific course of action), then you're getting into railroad territory. If you can take the actions you want, and those actions might make certain NPCs think less of you or act against you, it's not a railroad.The three examples you gave should, in my mind, be expected in an average game. If you side with the elementals, expect their enemies (the angels) to retaliate. They may not, but it's unreasonable not to expect it, as you've clearly exposed yourself as an enemy. Just like if all your friends and allies turn on you because you've betrayed the cause they believe in, you should not be surprised either. Leaving the game is your call (and I've always been against "time travel" in a fantasy setting... when it's used, it's always been an illusion). However, "all the work" you and the other players had done with their characters should not be for nothing. My players had quite a few "time skips" where they had literally a decade or more of downtime. The political landscape changed during this time. Past a certain point, the players began to deal with things they no longer had deep investments in (other than things like "the multiverse"). However, they had deep, deep investment in the individual characters they were playing. They were seeing new situations to deal with from their individually and immensely developed personal point of view. It made for some interesting play.Now, connecting is with a setting is something I strongly promote. However, being ripped away from a setting should not mean you no longer have any connection to the character, in my opinion. If I was playing, and my character was captured and taken across "the Great Wastes" to an unrecognizable desert area, I wouldn't think "well, he means nothing now, since everything I cared about is at home." I'd play the character, and how he responds to such an ordeal.When playing, my interest is in connecting with a character, not in writing the setting or story around me. If everything I've "worked on" suddenly disappears, it will still influence who my character is. I'm much more opposed to something like "you have amnesia" unless it's stated as a campaign idea (which I've played in and had fun with). That might kill my connection to a character, but honestly, I'd probably have a lot of fun re-exploring everything with him again, and seeing how it winds up this time around.Your connections meant nothing, yes, but it seems as if your character is defined by the way you can shape the setting. That's the wrong approach to take as a player in one of my games (as it likely won't work). Of course, a fun playstyle is subjective, so don't think I'm knocking your style. In D&D, however (or more accurately, in fantasy games), I expect the GM to control the setting, and for the players to explore it.I totally disagree with this. If you were affecting things when making decisions, than it's not true. Just because all of your decisions on the setting were no applicable, it does not make all past decisions meaningless. And, realistically, I'm guessing that if you did affect the setting in any significant way (which I don't know if you did) before the time leap, then there would be some residual effects for you to find. I don't know if you found any, or if you stayed long enough for them to probably surface.Setting decisions aren't a railroad, as a general rule. It does not force decisions on behalf of the players. It might encourage them, yes. It might prohibit things (no guns in this setting), yes. But unless the setting itself literally forces the players to follow a plot, it's not a railroad. And, as a general rule, I don't think this is the case.Now, some setting might be. But for the most part, setting is something that GMs insert to help define the gameworld, and to limit possible interactions within the gameworld. This is not to kill player choices, but to set up a consistent world where players have a better idea of what their interactions will mean.You may have been railroaded by a setting change, but setting decisions are not generally for railroads.If the players want to get healing, yes. But if they have the choice on how to deal with it, then it's not being railroaded. Sure, GMs can attempt to railroad via healing, but then again, they can also play favorites amongst the players, so we probably shouldn't have those either.It's important -in my mind- to think of these things in terms of how they're used with decent to good GMs. And to that end, it's completely reasonable to accept "I pissed off the clerics, and they don't want to heal me now." If you're talking about "I didn't agree to fight the dragon when the hermit in Nation A asked me to, and now clerics in all nations won't heal me" then it's a bad-GM issue, not any other issue.Well, maybe that's where you and I differ (I'm not, nor have I been, trying to speak for other people, though I have been trying to expand upon what I've taken some to mean). When someone mentions being from a dwarven military, I have a concept in my mind of how that is. Now, I may not have thought in-depth about it, but as soon as it gets brought up, I can pretty much answer questions about it.So, if someone brought a detailed backstory to me that included serving in the dwarven military service in Kalamane where their unit got into a skirmish with the elves of Nissalli, I'd tell them that it didn't happen. Because that never happened. That's writing something into a setting that isn't there. There was no skirmish between those two nations. There was no hard feelings between those two nations. Likewise, if the player told me his unit got into a skirmish with the trolls of Salik, I'd say "that makes sense" and inquire about details, if I was curious.At least in my experience as a player and GM, the backgrounds of players are subject to the setting of the GM. If I said "my character was raised by dragons" I would not expect most people I play with to roll with it at face value. Now, maybe something could be worked out, but if I was told "no, it's not how the setting works, since dragons in this setting have an Intelligence of 4" or "because all dragons eat people compulsively" then I'd accept it and move on.To that end, players do not often write the setting in my experience, though I've seen great leniency in GMs working with players to have a particular background come to fruition within the internal consistency of the game world.Now, I think a GM should only play the type of game the players are interested in. My players like fights (one is meh about them, but enjoys them), they like intrigue, they love NPC interaction, they like exploring the setting, they like interaction with forces or learning about history. One loves politics, while the rest don't. Now, I have no plans to run a politically-based game, even though I like politics as well, because of this.Where we differ, however, is the meta-reasoning behind setting or NPC decisions. I make decisions based on what I believe the NPC would do, while you actively seek to move the game towards interesting places and situations. I react more, and you guide more, it seems to me. I make no attempt to make the game particularly interesting, though the players often attempt to (which works wonders). My players think I have a very interesting setting and game, and their proactive interaction with it has driven many interesting events to happen.I think you can accomplish this just as easily in a game like D&D by saying "all elementals are Evil" but then letting the players choose how they feel about them. I had an NPC monk who was Lawful Evil who mercilessly killed Evil creatures, but refused to believe when magic told him he was Evil. He was a cold-blooded murderer and torturer to Evil creatures, and pretty normal to most everyone else. Though, if you tried to stop him from carrying out his "justice" then he'd label you Evil, and you're fair game.Was he Evil? Yep, he sure was. Did he believe it? Nope, not one bit. He thought he was a good person. The absolute statement of "all elementals are Evil" does not prevent players nor NPCs from disagreeing with that statement in the least, as they have no such meta knowledge. Does tradition state so? Yeah. Does magic? Yep. Do they believe it? It's up to them. People have many beliefs founded on faith, especially in a D&D universe.This, to me, is the module commenting on the extreme natures of such beings. Angels are depicted as being pure, and an admittedly crazy individual might have snapped in such a way that he is not going to negotiate, under any circumstances (like the insanity many PCs suffer from). If the module was commenting the mentality of certain important NPCs, it's not railroading. Saying "the paladin in the module will never negotiate with demons, even for the greater Good, as he sees all such attempts to be trickery at best" is a comment on his personality. To that end, it's not a railroad.Now, if the module forced a particular plot point, it's being railroady. If you can't steal the item from the crazy guy, or put him to sleep and take it, or otherwise take it without beating the crap out of him... yeah, that's railroady.That sounds cool. I like that take on it. I see this as just another take on NPC mentality, though. It's no more or less railroady to me.I agree with this. In the game I developed and run, there's no such thing as alignment, and I think play is better for it in "grey" areas. However, in a game like D&D where Good and Evil are real things in the setting, then having "black" and "white" being more prominent makes sense to me.To this end, in my game, I find it important that the players make characters where inter-party conflict is at a minimum. I've played many games where players made characters independent of how they'd interact with the party, and it nearly always results in PCs being banished from the party. Player violence has luckily been rare, but when PCs are about ready to fight in-game, players become annoyed at the situation out-of-game (not at one another, luckily for me).So, my advice for others is different than yours, but mine is ultimately very subjective. I'd just advise people to make characters that don't have mentalities that will divide the party. Differences, to be sure, as that's very interesting. But I've seen more than one PC disappear to NPCville because their mentality was poorly thought out.In my mind, these things can happen regardless of absolutes like "all elementals are Evil."Yeah, like I said, we differ here, but it's playstyle. Play what you like <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=":)" />Yeah, I agree. Sitting down and deciding as a group "we want to be treasure hunters" is a lot different from "we want to fight goblins for the town guard" and I think discussing even the very basic premise of a party is important. I'd advocate players picking an overall goal for their PCs that cannot be accomplished, such as "rid the world of Evil" or "protect the nation" or something along those lines.I do think there should be more core support for this sort of thing, but like I said, I think even just a bare-bones sketchy goal goes such a long way for party cohesion and player happiness.As always, these are just my views, my preferences, etc. Take them with a grain of salt. Additionally, I'm not advocating you stop playing your way in the least. Play what you like <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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