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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haffrung Helleyes" data-source="post: 2964692" data-attributes="member: 1068">This may be true, but it's still a bad situation.  Players like to make choices that affect the world and the story.  If they think they can't do that, then your game has problems, whether or not they in fact cannot.I think that the way the DM handles these things is very important.For example, in a published adventure I was running recently, a situation that looked very railroady to my players came up.A group of doppelgangers was framing the party for a crime.  One of the PCs, who can cast charm person as a spell like ability 3x/day, (IE, without gestures, etc) tried to charm the accuser, not knowing he was a doppelganger.   He used all three charm attempts, and on the third, the doppelganger failed his save.But here's the thing:  Doppelgangers are immune to charm effects.  And none of the PCs (or the players, for that matter) knew that the NPC in question was a doppelganger.So I said to the player, "you feel your magic overcome his resistance, but for some reason his demeanor doesn't change.  I then gave him a high-dc knowledge arcana check (which he failed -- if he'd passed I would have mentioned that he recalled reading about some creatures whom charm was ineffective against who could look like humans).  At that point I simply said, "it seems that there's more to this merchant than meets the eye".It came down to opposed diplomacy checks when the guards showed up.  The PCs lost, and were arrested.It helped that the true situation resolved itself in the same game session.  Once the PCs knew they were dealing with doppelgangers, everything made sense.  I don't like to leave situations that might be perceived as 'railroady' hanging past one play session.I think I have a fair bit of trust with my players, because in general I work very hard to run a very non-railroady game.  So when the odd situation comes up that feels railroady, they work with it.Ken</blockquote>

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