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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9854640" data-attributes="member: 18">1) He's not wrong that that's railroading, imo.Because to me one of the most classic forms of railroading is "DM changes the rules/way the universe works to force a specific course". It's not outrageous railroading because it's not totally inconceivable that someone would come up with a spell specifically to target the components of the Plane Shift spell, but, it's not a good look, and it frankly opens the door to a lot of spell shenanigans that isn't attractive. I also disagree that this is merely "setting up the premise of the adventure", because there's no option to say "no thanks" and there was no warning beforehand, the already-existing characters are already in the situation.D&D makes this issue come up a lot because D&D has a lot of spells that, if you designed it from scratch, wouldn't exist, because they're so good at just blowing up situations. Plane Shift being a good example. Like, if you designed D&D from scratch now, unless you were intentionally aping D&D or trying to be "compatible", you'd probably make all "planar travel" be via portals or complex, conditional rituals (which likely weren't part of any "standardized" magic system) and which couldn't just be dropped as solutions or "get out of jail free" cards.Other RPGs tend to have much less that feels like railroading in this fashion, because they have more flexible views of the world and magic, and tend to have less in the way of "get of jail free" magic (or "go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" magic, for that matter). And where they do it's often worked into the world a lot better than it is in D&D, so players may well expect it and thus be sanguine when it happens.As for Wish, I mean, did they think of that and disregard it, or did they assume that because you'd blocked one route you'd have blocked all routes? Or just forgot they had it? Or one or more PCs control the Wishes and don't want to spend them?That's how it read to me here. This isn't the start of an adventure, it's something the PCs were already doing, and now suddenly their spell components have been nicked by unstoppable, novel magic of a kind that's primarily PC-targeting.Yup. You should always be super-extra-careful with anything that involves trapping or kidnapping/black-bag'ing the PCs, because players not only absolutely hate being trapped, they're gnaw-your-own-arm-off aggressive about breaking out of traps, and also tend to be willing to expend extreme resources to do so, which leads to my questions re: Wish above.Also this particular one stinks of PC-targeting because most beings that can Plane Shift don't use the spell and/or don't use the material component. Only PCs always do. Which makes it a lot less plausible unless the entire goal of the people who set up the spell was to trap planar travellers specifically.2) Railroading exists on a spectrum rather than being an absolute, and different people have different tolerances for it. Different things trigger people too.Basically when the DM says "This is what you have to do and I'm not allowing for anything else", that's almost always going to be railroading. But it's often a matter of degree and buy in - like if the players have agreed to steal back the sceptre of Throknar, then they can't call "railroading" when they find it's at the bottom of a dungeon they're going to have to fight through or w/e.Some DMs railroad simply through lack of preparation/interest - i.e. they only prepare one path and if you don't take it just try to herd you back on to it. That can be extremely irritating if the path is at odds with what makes sense or has big plot holes, and it probably does.Some DMs railroad by trying to set up situations like this one, or more aggressive ones like having overpowered people ambush the PCs and capture them. You kind of need some kind of buy in or real plausible sense of "It's our own fault" to get away with that imo. Or, and this can work too - immediately come to the PCs with some sort of offer that looks good - i.e. an NPC comes to the PCs asking for help and offering a good deal, like good enough that it makes more sense to take that than, say, blow a Wish to avoid doing so. Like you could have just made some kind of "magical resonance" temporarily disable Plane Shift long enough for this guy to talk to them and do a "whilst you're here" deal. If the PCs are racing to rescue a friend or something I don't think they're likely to be that into messing around with Fae Court bollocks anyway. Combining trapping PCs with the elves who are the most annoying wind-up artists and biggest whiners and drama queens in the D&D universe does not seem like a great plan to me unless you really want drama lol.</blockquote>

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