Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3476401" data-attributes="member: 2067">I really don't buy that a particular race is necessarily breaking of an entire genre. Elves have been fleet-footed nomads, undead-worshiping near-necromancers, and immortal Fair Folk, depending on the context of the world. Whereas TMNT and Greyhawk are obviously trying for different ends, "elf" doesn't imply any particular world context.But even laying that aside, it's still saying "you must run on these tracks and you are forbidden to go where I do not allow you." It's saying it at character generation rather than in actual play, but it's the same limiting of options to run down a small selection of possible tracks. Again, not that that's a necessarily negative thing.As for Thorpton, I probably didn't go far enough in the description. If the DM won't let you cross the Ocean of Sessler (whatever the PC's try to do), he's wearing a conductor's hat. He's saying "stay on track, don't jump away to another continent." If he lets you cross the ocean with ADVENTURE, then you're right, it's probably not railroading. <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=":)" />Not that it would be, just that it could be, depending on the usual factors (namely, DM and player preference for it). In the same way that massive detailed info-worship is fun for some DM's and players, the opposite (I don't know until I make it up, my only rule is that I can't contradict myself) is fun for others. I've seen it work. I've worked it myself. You don't need to know anything about the setting. Indeed, it can even work when the players know *more* about the setting than the DM. Tell them to develop their homeland, their village, their nation, why they are the race and class that they are, tell them to think of a reason to work together, to meet, and just get used to saying "yes" and pushing the buttons the players made with the problem-causing ways of every DM out there. Might not be your style, o'course, but that's okay. It's just showing that preliminary DM setting detail is not always a requisite component for a good game of D&D.</blockquote>

Verification