Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9760677" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I would not, personally, call that a form of railroading--if the GM is open about their actions. "Guys, I understand you'd like to do that, but <explanation>". For example, let's say they want to destroy the Red Wizards of Thay. That's...a really, really big task. Even if the players fail, that's kinda reorienting the entire experience around just this one thing, which is going to be a LOT of Wizards, and going to involve a lot of pretty icky scenarios because the Thayans love them some slaves. If I, as GM, were running an FR sandbox campaign out of Waterdeep and the players said "We want to go destroy Thay!", I would level with them: "I'm deeply, deeply uncomfortable with the kind of society Thay is. I find its leadership almost universally repulsive, and I find its practices barbaric in the best of cases. I don't think I could run a game focused on Thay, even if I really wanted to...which I don't. I absolutely understand and appreciate your desire to destroy Thay, because it's absolutely monstrous, but I just...don't believe I could make that a fun, thrilling, worthwhile experience. I would be miserable running it and I'm pretty sure you'd eventually notice. Is it okay if we look for something else to do instead? The Zhentarim also practice slavery, would that work for you?"Again, the core difference is that this is genuinely engaging in a dialogue. It's letting the players actually make informed decisions. Railroading doesn't allow that, either because it's just ham-fisted denial, or because it's more subtle manipulation (or coercion).Well, at least for myself, the issue lies in whether those odds are determined in a legitimate, fair way. Again, the example of "sure you can do it, but only if you get three nat 20s" is something I use as a very obvious bait-and-switch "yes". That is, the GM who does that is saying they "allow" something, but then ensuring it actually or functionally cannot happen, which is...just the same as saying "no" but with more steps. Three consecutive nat 20s is a 1 in 8000 chance, meaning functionally never going to happen, certainly not on command exactly in that moment.This doesn't mean that all possible difficulty assignments cash out as railroading. Perhaps the players are genuinely trying to do something difficult; that's not unusual in the slightest. But the GM needs to set reasonable, context-appropriate difficulty, even if it's an action or effort that isn't particularly to their taste. Some of the time, the only reasonable answer is "I'm sorry, you can't do that", too, to be clear--but the GM should always explain why, and should be patient and understanding and genuinely listen to player input, because it's always, always, always possible to be wrong even when you're very sure you're right. God in Heaven, do I know that feel.</blockquote>

Verification