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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9764173" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Seems to me that this is an agenda.Now, we can't just be making a point about approaches and their flaws. We have to be identifying a horrible existential threat that must be stamped out.Now, we can't just be critiquing a known, oft-discussed, and fairly likely behavior from inexperienced, poorly-skilled, or bull-headed GMs, we have to be fighting a "crisis" that is poised to destroy D&D.Now, we cannot note practices or designs which tend to encourage problem behaviors, and thus backstops or better-practice approaches. We now have to prove that your experience was badwrongfun.This is a pretty low rhetorical trick, an attempt to reframe the discussion such that all the lines are defined by you and you alone. I refuse to surrender this ground to you; I dispute your framing and deny that any of this catastrophizing is remotely warranted or relevant. The discussion is worth having, and I won't just let you declare what we are allowed to discuss, nor arbitrary standards of proof for being allowed to participate.Railroading occurs. It is common enough that you can, with trivial effort, find allegedly well-regarded sources of education or advice for new GMs which explicitly tells GMs to use various railroading techniques. I find that the structure of D&D encourages such things, in part because it places so much on the GM, and 5e has leaned into this even more, while simultaneously providing painfully little in terms of actual guidance or best practices. I am far from the only person who thinks this.I don't need to prove that your game was badwrongfun to talk about the problems of railroading. I don't need to prove that the game is in crisis to note that hyper dependence on, and exultation of, a singular absolute authority has a tendency to let that power go to someone's head, and that when that happens, it is likely to cause bad outcomes sooner or later. I don't need to jump through your impossible hoops just to point out the faults in a practice I know is common because people talk about it.I can just...do that. And if you really do think this conversation is beneath you, why do you choose to continue? Because if that's actually what you believe, I don't understand what you get out of participating.</blockquote>

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