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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8337308" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Just once in six months, and otherwise never, not even a little? Nah. I would call it moment of real weakness, though. Something to regret and learn from. My players have explicitly said they value that I prioritize their agency, that I take pains to accommodate their choices, and that if they make a decision, it has real consequences that may extend far beyond that single moment.But what if we turn this around? What happens if a campaign is built out of this sort of thing? E.g., a session without such is rare. Isn't that what an illusionism-based game is? One where a sizable plurality, if not a strong majority, of the choices are illusory in this way. Is that a railroad? Is it good? Would DMs try to hide it? Would players be upset if they found out?Agreed on the pointlessness. I haven't heard of the Stygian Library. My experience was with content (that I extended) that you randomly rolled each room before entering. Does the Library work the same way? It would have similar issues if it did. The main criticism was that the rooms genuinely didn't exist until they were rolled, so we weren't so much "exploring" as producing the world, whereas (even if it's still random-gen), "pre-rolling" the map would have meant there WAS a map to be explored.Then my key argument is, no DM can guarantee their players never figure this out forever. They'll catch on eventually. I'm not a dumb guy by any means, but my players regularly make me sweat that I've made too simple a story, too obvious a result. They'd eventually know what was up, even if I weren't bad at keeping secrets.I tie all of my magic items (even the very first ones discovered by the party) into very specific narrative and world-built things. With very few exceptions, you basically couldn't find them elsewhere, because...that wouldn't make any narrative sense. If there's something important enough that I don't want the players to miss it, I have PLENTY of tools to make sure they don't. As an example, recently the party had searched through a tower left behind by the ancient pre-elf civilization, and failed to search the bottom floor (probably because they'd entered it at the end of the previous session and just forgot). As they were leaving, I told the half-elf in the party that he could feel that there was something he was missing, the barest inkling of his magical senses (because, being the only "mundane" party member, he hasn't developed his magical senses normally--but this is something very specific to his lineage and story).There's no need to make quantum treasure. Just...make the hidden stuff they're supposed to find really easy to find. Make it want to be found. Problem solved, no choices invalidated. Had the player wished to, he could have ignored the feeling and the party could just leave. They aren't required to take a hook if they don't want to. I'd be a bit sad, but I'd roll with it.And what of the idea that no DM is sufficiently skilled to keep this song and dance up, perfectly, forever?Sure it did.And when there are no such other reasonable places it could be found? Because, as I said, I make my treasures actually tied to the world and lore. I don't hand out yawn-inducing +1 swords. I make magic items magical, and treasures wondrous.Did you do the work to justify an NPC that communicates by projected image? Were the players at least potentially able to figure out that it was a projected image, even if they failed to take the chance to do so? If yes to both, then it's not railroading. Some restriction of options is not the same as "event X definitely happens, regardless of any player choices." If you failed to actually justify an NPC doing that, then honestly that's a pretty crappy move on your part as DM, not much better than a schoolyard game of "let's pretend" where a child asserts they have an infinity+1 shield, so the other child's infinity sword bounces off. If you did that, but prevented even the possibility of the players discovering it in advance regardless of the level of effort they put in to discover it, then you're basically bait-and-switching your players (which is VERY DIFFERENT from bait-and-switching their characters, I should note!), and that really doesn't look good either.Allowing your players to make assumptions and later revealing those assumptions false is not a bad thing; it's key to having revelations at all, most of the time. But ensuring that your players do have false assumptions, and taking whatever means necessary to make sure those assumptions never falter until the moment you permit them to see the truth, is just...bad practice.Agreed. I'm completely convinced it's not possible to keep up that charade forever, no matter how much extra work you do.Further, this is why the "but random encounters!" objection doesn't hold water. That is, the random encounter table still represents something in the world: what creatures are present there. A smart adventuring party researches this sort of thing in advance, to the extent that they're able, meaning it is entirely possible for the players to know ahead of time what they might encounter. This enables informed decision-making: the place they go to "exists" in some stable form, and is open to player investigation and preparation (the DM does not radically and arbitrarily modify it on the fly; any modification is always with cause, and discoverable by the players.)Completely agreed, though I prefer the method you noted later (that there is worldbuilding behind why this sword is present in this location outside this city and guarded by these cultists.)A significant number of people do--rather a lot, in fact. If you do not care, but others do, what is the reasonable response? Should it be telling us, "stop caring about that!"? Or should it be, "Alright, well, I don't really get why that's a problem, but if it is, we can address it."?If a world exists around the PCs, such things must happen. I absolutely agree that it's not railroading, because the players always have the opportunity to simply ignore a hook if it's not interesting to them. My players, for example, had largely ignored the black dragon trying to take over the city--they had bigger fish to fry, more or less--but doing so allowed that black dragon to flex more, entrench more, take over more of the city's underworld. By ignoring this danger, it becomes more complex, more interesting, and more able to threaten things they care about. This is not railroading, at least as far as I'm concerned, because it specifically IS a matter of respecting the players' choices. Bad things that go unaddressed often get worse. I won't be a huge dick and make these problems unsolvable, but solving them will become harder as a result of neglect.What do you mean by "always forcing things on your players"? Furnishing opportunities is not at all the same as "forcing," at least as I would use the word. For me, the source of the challenge matters enormously because being able to make informed decisions and learn from them is core to the "D&D-like" TTRPG experience: in order to make informed decisions, I have to have actual information (aka, stuff that can't just be changed whenever the DM feels like it, justification be damned), and in order to learn from those decisions, the consequences thereof must actually follow from what I did, not gated by "the DM feels like letting these consequences through" or any other such interference. If the world changes under my feet without any way for me to know or learn, then I'm just a rat running in a wheel, not a valued participant, at which point I might as well go play in a Skinner box MMO.And...fundamentally, I don't see how this ISN'T that. You're making the encounter happen, in the same way at the same time of the same thing, in two distinct places, despite those places being presented as a real choice.I absolutely do not do this! The players choose to go to places that they find out about, so of course interesting things happen there. But the world rolls on without them. They have returned to town several times only to find out that Serious Business happened while they were away. (Most of the time, it's the Sultana receiving another extravagant gift from her mysterious Secret Admirer, but sometimes it's other stuff, e.g. the black dragon gang as mentioned above.) The world is not exclusively centered on the PCs. But they are movers and shakers now--they've earned the right to be!--so, in general, things are either already happening in the places they go to, or are about to happen. But things also happen elsewhere, too.I did actually cover this already upthread. Long story short, it's fine. Maybe the ogre starts at B (left) and goes to A (right), so players meet him quick going one way and way later the other. Maybe the ogre is in neither place, but the ogre's scouts spot the party at wherever they go, so the ogre comes to them from elsewhere. Maybe this is Ogre Country (or similar before-the-fact justification) so a well-informed party expects some ogres might show up anywhere.The rumors thing is...complicated. Incomplete info is part of a well-grounded world--few are omniscient. But unless there were really, really good well-grounded reasons why that info should be incomplete, I would feel really bad about the party fundamentally basing a decision (one that sounds important to them!) on incomplete info that turned out to be dead wrong. That would feel much more like coercing my players than like giving them a mystery to solve or a puzzle to piece together.As an example in my own game, there's an NPC who is secretly one of the BBEGs. The party super dislikes him, but they work with him because he's useful, and they have a good idea what moves he'll make....based on his fictional public persona. This is a well-grounded "incomplete information" bit, because the NPC in question has taken great pains to conceal this identity. The players could figure it out, but he's made it tough for good reason. I don't see this as invalidating choices. The "avoid the ogre" example, on the other hand, is at least perilously close to railroading, and thus in need of a lot more effort on my part to keep it above-board....why not?</blockquote>

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