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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8337582" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I don't see this as an application of force, but perhaps I am not using the word the same way you are.I don't ad-hoc invent obstacles simply so that there are obstacles. When I run a game, I present a world to my players--one that I work to give them reason to invest into, to care about. That world also includes things that would, logically, threaten the things the players are invested in or care about. Sometimes, the threats take actions that the players will want to stop, if I have successfully gotten them invested in and caring about things in the world. Sometimes, the players will actively seek out these threats, to prevent them from trying to do something. Sometimes, neutral events occur or neutral opportunities appear, that the players might be interested in due to relating to their other interests.I do not see any of the above as "forcing" anything. As I see it, I can only woo and threaten. If the players chose one day to pull up sticks and just leave, never looking back....I'd roll with it. I'd be saddened (and probably a little angry), but I'd roll with it as long as I felt I could.Would you be willing to give an example of "forcing obstacles in the way of their goals"? Perhaps that will be useful.I mean, they may not be absolutely incontrovertible assumptions, but I think we agree that all but the most ardent, die-hard pro-illusionism DMs would agree that nearly all groups have at least one player that would feel rather disheartened by finding out that the game relied on illusionism regularly. I mean, literally every pro-illusionism discussion I've ever seen emphasizes the need to keep it a secret from the players. Nearly every person advising how to use it well makes extremely clear that, even if you don't think it would upset your players, you should avoid letting them find out, because it might and that would be very bad if it happened.And that's really what completes my anti-illusionism argument. In the long-term, you can't maintain it, so you probably shouldn't. And in the short term, if everyone who advocates for it admits that you should take any means necessary to keep it a secret....maybe you should just not do it? It's one thing to preserve a mystery or create suspense--that's deceiving the characters. It's quite another to present false "choices" (not merely fictional, but outright false ones) and deceptive "consequences" (not merely made-up, but outright deceptive). I do tons of the former, there are several ongoing mysteries that the party is slowly working to uncover, and we semi-recently had an actual murder mystery situation.That I have personally witnessed? No. But I've brought players back to the hobby (if you allow Dungeon World to count) who experienced stuff like this, yes. And I've had at least one player who feared that I was going to do this to them, enough that they went out of their way to take precautions against it, and needed an awful lot of encouragement to relax about it. After a couple sessions they realized such fears were unnecessary, thankfully. As I've said, I heavily prioritize making my players' vision a reality.Neither of these are railroading, and I don't really see why you think they're such edge cases. Using a monster the way it's written in the book, as long as it was at least possible to find out about it, isn't railroading. There are plenty of ways to learn about a rakshasa that don't involve targeting the rakshasa itself with spells of 6th level or lower, unless the DM is simply killing every other means of investigating....which would be railroading. Liches being phylactery-based is pretty much a meme at this point, even people who don't play D&D know about that sort of thing....but if you somehow have a group that doesn't know the first thing about liches, it is on you as DM to furnish the opportunity to investigate (and at least some open hints that investigation is worthwhile), even if the players don't take it.Hell, we don't even have to go all that deep for this. The lich and the rakshasa are just more complicated trolls. Puzzle creatures can be 100% fine, if the players were furnished with the opportunity to learn about them (whether or not they took it) and a reason to think that learning would be a good idea (even if they dismissed it). This isn't some crazy edge case.Edit: Maybe a better way to present the lich thing. Destroying the phylactery is a goal. You OPENLY tell the players that's what has to happen to make this thing die and stay dead. It's on them to figure out HOW to make that happen. That's not railroading; that's telling the players the condition they need to meet in order to win, and letting them figure out how to get there. If handled correctly, it is in fact almost the opposite of a railroad: you support whatever means the players might take, within their characters' abilities, that would reasonbly get them to that destination. Having a destination does not a railroad make; it's a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.</blockquote>

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