Oh, I totally understand your feelings. Why, just the other day, I was forced to correct one of our wayward brothers. Unbelievably, he was actually WRITING UP KEYED LOCATIONS. Oh my god. Talk about railroading. Doesn't he know that we must never script anything? All encounters must be 100% ad libbed with no preparation whatsoever.
Horror of horrors, he even had a TIMELINE of events that would occur unless the PC's intervened. Choo choo. All aboard this railroad. I mean, what a terrible DM he was to actually spend the time making sure that his campaign had logical flow and coherency. For shame.
Worst of all, he took the time to plan out chained events. If the guards in one room rang the alarm, then other guards would come to their aid! Imagine my shock. A logical flow of events, pre-determined before play?!?!?! I was stunned. After all, one should never, ever script anything. To do otherwise is to shackle the poor players to a particular chain of events.
Needless to say, I spent much time correcting him. He won't do that again in a hurry.
Fail.
Really? In what way? I suppose it's perfectly fine to sit there and claim that any scripting is akin to railroading, but, injecting things like, oh, I dunno, what actually happens at the table is a fail?
I think that's the best analogy yet.Has anyone compared DM's to cat-herders yet?
"You must spread some Experience Points around . . . "It's a fail because you are so anxious to continue a fight from some other thread, that you don't even notice you've jumped off on a tangent and completely misunderstood the post you are trying to flame. No one claimed that any scripting is railroading. Not every fight is over your pet peeves.
That's actually the goal of a sandbox campaign.
In my experience and all that.
I consider "The players did WHAT?!!" to be the ultimate sign of a successful game.Sure, but there's a difference between the players could do anything and the players did WHAT?!!![]()
I consider "The players did WHAT?!!" to be the ultimate sign of a successful game.
It's a fail because you are so anxious to continue a fight from some other thread, that you don't even notice you've jumped off on a tangent and completely misunderstood the post you are trying to flame. No one claimed that any scripting is railroading. Not every fight is over your pet peeves.