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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7483253" data-attributes="member: 29398">In a campaign setting with any depth whatsoever you'll never hit "On failure, the story [i.e. campaign] is over" as there's always going to be another story out there somewhere."On failure, the mission is over" or "On failure, the adventure is over" is seen by some as a problem, but usually not by me.  I look at it more as if they fail, they fail; and depending on the overarching situation that failure may or may not have any long-reaching consequences.Example: if their mission is to loot the tomb of Happuset because of the mighty treasures they've heard are in there and they flat out fail to get in to said tomb, then they can't get in and the tomb remains undisturbed.  End of adventure, no lasting consequences, party finds something else to do.Which is odd, given that a long-running campaign would in theory provide more alternatives for other adventures and missions.Where a choke point can become a serious headache is if you're trying to run a hard-wired adventure path from start to end with no side treks, and that's on the AP author to provide options.This is all gettable-aroundable.But this is the crux of the problem, right here: player entitlement.  And it's not quite as gettable-aroundable as mechanical issues are, at least not without some arguments and head-butting and occasional use of the DM smackdown hammer.Not necessarily.  Optimizing is one thing, always expecting to immediately get what you want is another; and while the twain sometimes meet they're not hard-wired together by any means.Put another way: I've known I-want-it-now players who whine about every failure but who couldn't optimize their way out of a shoe, and I've known hard-core optimizers who are perfectly willing to accept failure as a part of the game even after trying to minimize the odds of such happening.True, though sometimes the most innocent of traps or the seemingly simplest of combats can lead to a TPK if things really go wrong.The first three of these might mean some short-term frustrations for both the PCs in the fiction and the players at the table, but eventually they'll realize they're hooped for this adventure and might as well try something else.The fourth one - if they go left rather than right they find nothing interesting - is kinda hogwash, as in theory they're eventually going to explore both ways, aren't they?Same here, with the caveat that you sometimes need to at least go through the motions of looking for story before you'll find any.  If you all meet in a tavern and decide you're just going to sit there until an adventure comes to you, all that's probably going to happen is you'll drink until you run out of beer money. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lanefan</blockquote>

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