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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9732964" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I don't see how that applies. If the action is reasonable, warranted, and within the scope of the rules, how could it "ruin a game for everyone"? I genuinely don't understand how this could apply.No. You are inserting something I never said. I did not say "clueless". I said information hidden from the players.Consider, for example, the possibility that the King is a doppelganger, and the true King is imprisoned elsewhere. One of the players decides to use a divination spell which would let them spy on the King because he's in a meeting and they want to hear what he says behind closed doors--not knowing that this spell would actually fail, because the true king is outside its range.The GM knows that the action isn't something the players can do, but the players don't. They literally can't. So the GM has to fix this. The clumsy GM just heavy-handedly says "no". The less-clumsy but still not great GM invents, on the spot, an explanation that the royal chambers are warded against divination magic, even though that wasn't true yesterday when the party was sneaking around inside the castle. Naturally, the "good" GM would have had to think about this well in advance and specifically make sure players knew this plan would never work from the beginning--but I find that there are far more GMs who railroad than there are GMs who have that much foresight.Right. "Writing" is a bit of a catch-all as I used it there. Writing for a GMing context is going to be different from novel-writing.Doesn't mean it isn't railroading.I don't. If a "Casual" GM makes it clear that that is their stance, then the players know this and can make their own decisions about it. It's only bad GMing if a "casual" GM makes it seem like they aren't being that casual about it.Unless "casual" here means something more specific? I'm not always able to follow your meanings when you use capitalized words like this.No. Because, again, troll weakness to fire. Where is that in real life? It isn't. It's exclusively within the game. It isn't within this specific campaign yet, but it is within the game. Yet "knowing trolls are weak to fire even though your character couldn't" is pretty much THE go-to example of metagame knowledge. Or, consider, a player who knows that a cheese.This is not true for all playstyles. For myself, as a general rule, I do ask that the players choose to play characters that are going to get along with the rest of the team 90%+ of the time.That is a form of metagaming. It is not the only form of metagaming. Again, I point out Is it? Sometimes some clues just should be easy to find. For example, if it's a murder mystery...clues that are on the body of the victim shouldn't be that hard to spot. Some might require careful thought (e.g., I once had a body allegedly found just after being stabbed, but the wound only oozed blood, not gushing it, indicating the body had been dead for hours--but only to people who know what the various stages of death are like. Two of my players at the time did know this, so that wasn't an issue.)Events/situations, not "plots", is more or less my argument here. Calling them "plots" usually makes GMs think they need a rigidly-defined beginning, middle, and end, which is extremely likely to lead to problems.More importantly, I cannot accept that good writing is enough to turn 100% of railroading from bad to good. That's simply not true. You can write supremely well, and still be ramming your players through stuff. Likewise, just because there's some weak writing doesn't mean it's automatically railroading.I don't see how this has any intersection whatsoever with game design. There are no rules being invoked here. It's purely in the art of description and development, which are not game design.A player who does this is being a jerk. They're straight-up lying when they say they're okay with something, because they aren't actually okay with it. I have no tolerance for such behavior. It's okay to complain--once, so long as it then becomes a conversation for how we can fix the issue. After that (since everyone should be allowed to voice complaints!), the first unjustified complaint, it's a warning: "If you aren't actually okay with this, you need to tell me so we can try to work it out." Second time, I'm going to tell them directly, "You need to improve your behavior, now, or I'm going to ask you to leave the table."Third strike, the player clearly doesn't care to actually fix the problem, and simply wants to complain so they can complain. They will be politely but firmly told they are no longer welcome in this campaign. If their behavior changes later, and they apologize and actually show how their behavior will improve going forward, I would genuinely consider inviting them back in. But without an apology and corrected behavior, they simply won't be welcome at any table I run in the future.I hold GMs to a high standard of conduct. I hold players to a lower, but still meaningful, standard of conduct. It's hard for players to get on my bad side, but I won't tolerate it if they genuinely do cross a line. I'll give them chances to change--everyone deserves that--but they have to actually change.That's more or less what I was trying to say, yes. Either offer things you know will get them excited right off the bat, or This is one of the reasons why it's useful to ask your players what kinds of stuff they like. Because, as long as they answer honestly, it gives you useful information. It will be a lot easier to make good inciting incidents when you have a good idea what kinds of things get these players to jump on it willingly.Yes, this is generally a good rule of thumb. It's not always enough (no plan survives contact with the enemy), but if something is really really important to be seen/learned/done, giving multiple chances is a very good idea. I'd say three is the minimum if it's important. More if you want to be very, very sure it doesn't somehow slip through the cracks.</blockquote>

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