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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 5686902" data-attributes="member: 7006">I would have no problems playing this game as stated.  I'm one of the types of player who couldn't give a rat's ass what the numbers on my sheet look like, since all I care about is the improvisation and interaction that comes with roleplay.That being said, Kzach... you are right in that the odds of finding enough players like S'Mon and myself are probably a bit long.  So if you were to really attempt to run a game like this, here are the places where I, as DM, might go a bit differently that what you stated in the original post.As far as character generation / leveling:*  If you make pregens, that's fine.  I would, however, give each pregen a male and female name to choose from, so that the player can play the gender they are more comfortable with.  Unless the gender of each of these characters is super-important and integral to the PLOT of your story... being male or female shouldn't matter, and it probably would affect the quality of the roleplay unnecessarily if the player was forced into a less-comfortable choice.*  When it comes to level-up... you seem to have a firm grasp of what feats/powers you think would make for optimized selection, so that no characters become too over or under-powered compared to his compatriots.  You obviously then realize that each level has actually has several valid choices which are all relatively equal to your goals.  So rather than tell your players "you are taking X power or feat"... create a list of like 3 of them to choose from at each leveling point, any of which you feel would be good choices.  You thus get the best of both worlds... you can be assured that the selections to be made are all within the set power-level of optimization you want... which the players still get to make choices at level up.  This is no different than telling players that you're only running a PH1 game for example, where the PCs don't get the entire breadth of the D&D Character Builder to select stuff... just a small selection suited for this particular campaign.* You hamstring yourself by referring your storyline as a 'Railroad'.  That word has negative connotations that have only gotten larger over time so that people use it or think of it in ways that were never meant to be intended (like how the word 'broken' has lost all of its meaning at this point.)  As a result, they'll respond negatively to your words without even considering what you actual mean.Railroading was traditionally about stopping a player's MICRO choices... not MACRO choices.  The DM set up a building with a trapped front door... but any time the player wanted to try to get into said building by any way other than that door (like through the roof or upstairs window)... the DM found some excuse for it not to work and to not allow the PC to do it (because the DM didn't want the PC to avoid dealing with his 'ingenious trap encounter'.)  THAT's railroading.  Throwing up imaginary roadblocks on small PC decisions and curtailing inventive play.But having an actual storyline in place that the PCs are meant to follow, rather than just wandering off the map because "hey, the world's a sandbox and if I want to ignore the King's pleas to find his daughter and instead go hiking up that mountain range with the cool name I heard about for absolutely no particular reason, and you should let me do it because otherwise you're 'railroading' me?"  Eh... not so much.  To many of us, having a plot is what's called an 'Adventure Path', not a Railroad.  And there are quite a number of companies making good money selling these 'plots' to us, that we as DM expect our players to follow on a macro scale.*****So if you do decide to try and pull this off... best of luck to you.  It certainly won't be easy to find enough like-minded individuals willing to go along with what you want to set up... but you can certainly help yourself by being a bit more flexible in places where stringent adherence is not absolutely required for your game to be effective.  If it works, bravo!</blockquote>

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