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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bloodtide" data-source="post: 9775709" data-attributes="member: 6684958">12. You are a player. Your group has been told that there's a haunted, abandoned house with a fabulous treasure in the town the characters are located. Your party goes to the house and starts poking around. Nobody wants to take the front door since it might be a trap, so they check out the back door. It's locked. But no matter how many lockpick checks your rogue makes, your DM says they can't open it. Ok, fine, you use a crowbar to remove some of the boards blocking the windows. The DM declares that the nails are wedged too deeply and the boards can't be removed. Ok, you try climbing up to the second story to see if you can get one of those windows open. Your DM declares that you can't get a grip to climb (even though you have climbing equipment and are a Tabaxi). There's literally no way into this house except through the front door (which yes, did in fact turn out to be trapped).Another classic Railroading example. It seems simple enough to say don’t do this.With something like a building, unless it is something like a vault or fortified military structure, there should always be a couple of relatively easy ways inside. Anytime the characters want to get into a buildings, the DM should always let them at least try some of the other ways.Other then the vaults and such places, many buildings should be somewhat easy for characters to get into most of the time. While most places will be locked or otherwise protected with fairly common sense such things. They should not be all that hard for the average character to over come, roughly half the time.The front door trap is very obvious, even if the players and characters don’t know there is a trap there. As a DM when you place a trap in such an obvious place, you should expect it to be bypassed. A spot like a front door is not a good place for a trap you really want to spring on the players. Nearly any building has dozens of other far better spots. Most buildings have structures like hallways or staircases that lead to locations. The typical basement, is a good example.Remember a trap, or even more general an encounter, can be anywhere. There really is no reason to Railroad characters to a specific spot you have marked X.</blockquote>

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