D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[zarionofarabel]

I recently read something online that said that a D&D GM is not really bound by any rules: for instance, they're not bound in any meaningful way by AC rules, or hp rules, because they can specify whatever numbers they like as the attack bonus and damage dice of NPCs/creatures who attack the PCs.

That's railroading!

It always surprises me how people can think that this isn't cheating. "Oh, sure, there are numbers and rules, I just break them whenever I feel like it."

Yeah...this is why I always have a good conversation with the GM of a game about these kinds of things before agreeing to join a campaign. If the answer includes things like "it's okay to fudge rolls/hp" or "the GM doesn't have to abide by the rules" then I know I won't have any discernible agency in their game. Especially the dice fudging thing, my most hated of GM cheating techniques. I love to ask GMs that are proponents of dice fudging if it's okay for the players to fudge dice too. For some strange reason, most of them simply refuse to answer the question, which tells me everything I need to know.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah...this is why I always have a good conversation with the GM of a game about these kinds of things before agreeing to join a campaign. If the answer includes things like "it's okay to fudge rolls/hp" or "the GM doesn't have to abide by the rules" then I know I won't have any discernible agency in their game. Especially the dice fudging thing, my most hated of GM cheating techniques. I love to ask GMs that are proponents of dice fudging if it's okay for the players to fudge dice too. For some strange reason, most of them simply refuse to answer the question, which tells me everything I need to know.

The example I gave wasn't fudging dice: rather, making choices like "If the PC has AC 20, then give the NPC a +15 attack bonus" or "If the PC has 100 hp, then give the NPC 6d12 damage dice" or "If the PC has +15 Stealth, then give the NPC Passive Perception of 30".

Stuff like that, where the numbers that establish the opposition are not set in any principled fashion other than to generate the desired outcome regardless of the numbers on the players' sheets.

The contrast, for me - and sticking to the context of D&D - would be:

(A) Classic D&D, where the GM populates dungeons in advance and the players get to make reasoned choices about which dungeon level to explore;

(B) 4e D&D, where there is a tight (if intricate) correlation and feedback process between NPC levels, encounter levels, XP accrued, treasure parcels gained, milestones reached, etc; as well as a system of monster knowledge checks which can enable the players to identify what sort of situation the PCs find themselves in.