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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 6987509" data-attributes="member: 6785785">That's fine. I don't really see it as a railroad. They are free to choose how they want to react. Because there is a more optimal choice does not mean there is no choice. The DM is free to adjudicate the results of any other choice as needed. And just because one moment of an adventure presents such an instance does not make the adventure a railroad. Barring some kind of mythical true open sandbox type of game, there are always going to be such moments. If I understand you correctly, you would simply "cut scene" such moments rather than treat them as an instance of player choice. That's fine....I just prefer to do it the other way. Yes. I am always talking about my game. Hence why I said "To me, this is out of hand". I am not telling you that your decision to have your PCs face a large force of enemies and win is wrong, jut that I prefer not to have such things happen in my game due to the tone we are going for, which is more akin to something like Game of Thrones or the First Law Trilogy or the Black Company. I want my PCs to be heroes that are capable of great things....but I don't want them to be so far above the norm that they can slay enemies by the dozens. This is an example where the tone of the game, the fiction I am going for, trumps the mechanics that may say such a feat is possible. I limited this to your 4E because I am not concerned with other games and how they are done. As I've said before, my knowledge of 4E is limited, and has become fuzzy now that I haven't played it in about 6 or 7 years.....the chart you are referencing: does it simply say "this is an appropriate DC for a PC of level X"? Or does the DM have to consider environmental factors from within the game world? The way you've described it makes it sound like any level PC is going to see climbing a cliff as equally difficult, no? DC by level seems odd to me. Not really. Personally, I'd factor all those kinds of things into the DC which is set prior to the roll. Then based on the results of the roll, I'd let the player know what happened. Mechanically, they failed. In the fiction, they slipped due to the sea spray and couldn't progress. To me, it's front loaded into the DC calculation. This means that I prefer for teh fiction to matter more than the mechanics. Like in the example above, I don't care if the game mechanics would allow a group of 5 level 10 PCs to defeat 300 orcs. In such a case, the "reality" of the fictional world we are creating is more important to me than the mechanics, and I would have the PCs fail. However, I don't think that this would be necessary because my players would likely never try to accomplish that. Sure there is. They could charge Demogorgon and die, which would end the fiction. Or the DM could determine that Demogorgon simply smashes them with his tentacle and leaves them for dead because he is not in any way concerned about them. Perhaps this opens up an opportunity for the PCs to interact with other survivors of the demon's attack. If they had fled, they may not have met the survivors. I don't really see the need to stop the game and then describe the scene like a video game cut scene and then resume at some point. I don't see how that preserves player choice any more than the alternative. I would absolutely put some amount of foreshadowing into the game to give the PCs some info so that they can make an informed decision. But I have no problem with their being hidden information as long as I allow a chance for the players to discover it. To run with the example, I'd probably have rumors of a dangerous band of orcs and describe some of their exploits, and I've have a survivor of one of their attacks describe them; I'd maybe have a formidable seeming group of elven hunters meet the PCs while they are out searching for the orcs...I'd have hte elves behave very haughty and stress how they consider the orcs a very minor threat. Then when those elves are found dead or when one survivor returns to town, it will be clear to the PCs that the threat is significant, and these are no ordinary orcs. There are any number of ways I would foreshadow something like this. If the PCs do or don't follow up on the info....if the don't heed the warnings...then that is their choice.</blockquote>

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