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<blockquote data-quote="Badwe" data-source="post: 4537370" data-attributes="member: 61762">Great suggestions in here.Tallaran, you hit the nail on the head.&nbsp; The DM is trying very hard not to make us feel railroaded.&nbsp; Prior to this campaign, I was the DM, and while I provided a lot of situations divergent from your standard dungeon, it all progressed very linearly.&nbsp; I suggested after the game that night that the guards should say something like &quot;the only way you're getting passed us is with the right keyword or over our dead body&quot;, but we both realized that was essentially constraining the choices to only 2 paths.Some background on our DM.&nbsp; He is what I like to call an &quot;in-character DM&quot;, he is very particular about not doing things that might temporarily suspend the illusion of D&amp;D.&nbsp; To give an example, when I DMd I would use glass beads in place of actual miniatures in order to symbolize minions.&nbsp; We have a only a hodge-podge of miniatures so this was an easy way for me to quickly signify that these are homogenous, and clearly the weakest of the bunch.&nbsp; He will just use all regular miniatures.&nbsp; Similarly, to borrow an idea from the Legend of Zelda, even if there was a &quot;Big key hole&quot; that needed a &quot;Big key&quot;, he would never actually refer to that situation as such, perhaps he considers it metagaming.&nbsp; More likely, he would describe the features, shapes, and general size of a keyhole, and leave it to us to conclude that it needs a large key.&nbsp; I am wondering if his commitment to a cohesive and consistent fantasy world is also making it hard to drop &quot;gamist&quot; clues about solving the overall &quot;puzzle&quot; of &quot;what is going on in this castle?&quot;, or if we as PCs are simply too dependant on said gamist clues from me, a very symbolic and loose DM.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Badwe, post: 4537370, member: 61762"] Great suggestions in here. Tallaran, you hit the nail on the head. The DM is trying very hard not to make us feel railroaded. Prior to this campaign, I was the DM, and while I provided a lot of situations divergent from your standard dungeon, it all progressed very linearly. I suggested after the game that night that the guards should say something like "the only way you're getting passed us is with the right keyword or over our dead body", but we both realized that was essentially constraining the choices to only 2 paths. Some background on our DM. He is what I like to call an "in-character DM", he is very particular about not doing things that might temporarily suspend the illusion of D&D. To give an example, when I DMd I would use glass beads in place of actual miniatures in order to symbolize minions. We have a only a hodge-podge of miniatures so this was an easy way for me to quickly signify that these are homogenous, and clearly the weakest of the bunch. He will just use all regular miniatures. Similarly, to borrow an idea from the Legend of Zelda, even if there was a "Big key hole" that needed a "Big key", he would never actually refer to that situation as such, perhaps he considers it metagaming. More likely, he would describe the features, shapes, and general size of a keyhole, and leave it to us to conclude that it needs a large key. I am wondering if his commitment to a cohesive and consistent fantasy world is also making it hard to drop "gamist" clues about solving the overall "puzzle" of "what is going on in this castle?", or if we as PCs are simply too dependant on said gamist clues from me, a very symbolic and loose DM. [/QUOTE]

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