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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9764716" data-attributes="member: 42582">As I've posted upthread,So how can I tell if this is happening? Because the GM decides, without regard to player concerns, the significant content of the presented scenes; the GM decides what is at stakes in those scenes; and the GM decides what happens next, without a meaningful degree of regard to player concerns.Typical examples include:*The GM using a "quest-giver" or similar sort of hook to tell the players what the scenario is and what the goal for their PCs is; *The GM ignoring or eliding action resolution outcomes to make sure that events in the fiction unfold as the GM wants (eg if the players, in playing their PCs, miss a clue here, the GM inserts the clue i]there[/i]; or, if the PCs defeat the villain "early", the GM introduces a lieutenant or whatever to keep things moving as planned); *The GM determining outcomes or consequences by extensive reference to backstory considerations that the players aren't aware of, which means that the players didn't know what was really at stake in their action declarations (the quest-giver who betrays the PCs, or who is really a baddie though having been presented to the players as a goodie, seems to be a very popular example of this, but it's extremely common in all sorts of ways).If a person's orientation towards the RPG play is to (i) have the GM slowly reveal "the plot" to them, or (ii) to have the GM gradually reveal "the world" to them, then the things I've described won't bother them: they are, in fact, the standard tools a GM uses to reveal their plot or their world.Right!OK so we seem to be in agreement. The sort of gameplay you describe here is too railroad-y for me.Luckily for me, it's not the only possible approach to RPGing, and not the only possible approach to the play of D&D.</blockquote>

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