The Other Railroading Thread

[RandomCasualty]

1144014023[/unixtime]]Um, in that case, "Killing off the orc hordes" is a viable strategy. Easily as effective as "tossing the ring into a volcano", since the ring thing doesn't actually kill off the orc hordes.

Oh definitely, assuming you actually have the resources to do it. But pretty much the assumption in an LotR based campaign is that the forces of good just don't have the manpower to defeat the orc hordes.

What makes it not a viable strategy in this particular instance is simply that it's beyond your means numerically.

[Neeek]

1144014776[/unixtime]]

Oh definitely, assuming you actually have the resources to do it. But pretty much the assumption in an LotR based campaign is that the forces of good just don't have the manpower to defeat the orc hordes.

What makes it not a viable strategy in this particular instance is simply that it's beyond your means numerically.

Only if the DM doesn't bother to keep track of how many orcs there were to begin with. If the DM plays fair, trying to kill off the threat that way will work just fine.

[Crissa]

1144014776[/unixtime]]

1144014023[/unixtime]]Um, in that case, "Killing off the orc hordes" is a viable strategy. Easily as effective as "tossing the ring into a volcano", since the ring thing doesn't actually kill off the orc hordes.

Oh definitely, assuming you actually have the resources to do it. But pretty much the assumption in an LotR based campaign is that the forces of good just don't have the manpower to defeat the orc hordes.

Actually, the One Ring was a cursed artifact - which Gandalf knew of, but could not duplicate. (I know of supercomputers, maybe even use them, but I certainly can't make one with my own two hands). This artifact was key to Sauron getting his Hordes together in some sort of semblance of order - a lynchpin, perhaps.

Destroying the ring did destroy the orc hordes. Gandalf is all about 'how do I save the most number of people, keep the ring out of Sauron's hands, and manage not to be ownzored by Sauron myself via the damn ring?' And he manages to get caught by his buddy in a trap, and then sacrifices himself to the Balrog, etc, etc. He totally makes lots of choices.

And lastly, I choose the campaign I'm in by choosing a GM. If the GM says, 'I want to do X' and I don't want to do that - I don't play with him. This is your first option on railroading. If you're playing 'an epic campaign where you have to defeat the greatest evil by hook or crook' (LotR) and decide not to play along, who's railroading who, now?

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1144020577[/unixtime]]
Only if the DM doesn't bother to keep track of how many orcs there were to begin with. If the DM plays fair, trying to kill off the threat that way will work just fine.

Well sure... but generally the DM will set it up so such an endeavor probably fails.

Also, killing tens of thousands of orcs kinda sucks as far as a quest goes... Even assuming your heroes were powerful enough, D&D isn't really built to handle large scale wars. So while technically you could play an attrition game and kill off all the orcs, on a practical scale, it'd be boring as hell for the PCs and DM.

[PhoneLobster]

I gotta say one thing, any thread where Phonelobster posts is guaranteed to deliver.

Is that all you ever say anymore?

You need to find your inner crayfish.

[dbb]

1144013846[/unixtime]]Similarly you can't "kill" the corporation because there is nothing tangible to kill beyond followers.

Whoa, what? Sure, you can't kill a corporation in the sense of pounding it with a waraxe until it expires, but you can certainly permanently remove it from play; corporations are dissolved, bought out by other corporations, or just plain run out of assets all the time. If we were playing D20 Modern, any of these three, hypothetically, would be a totally legitimate way to "kill" a corporation: catch it in or frame it for some offense that warrants dissolution by the controlling authority, get rich enough to buy it, or blow its assets up until it just hasn't got any more. True, not all of these are "permanent" permanent, but they're about as permanent as killing someone in D&D ever is.

Now, I think it's totally legitimate to have a religion be the BBEG in a campaign, and I think that's the better comparison to a corporation; but having a religion be the BBEG isn't quite the same thing as having a god. Having the High Priest of Set taunt the characters in their dreams, murder their loved ones, and destroy their homes is kind of like having Set do the same things, but it's enough of a difference to matter.

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

1144076089[/unixtime]]
Now, I think it's totally legitimate to have a religion be the BBEG in a campaign, and I think that's the better comparison to a corporation; but having a religion be the BBEG isn't quite the same thing as having a god. Having the High Priest of Set taunt the characters in their dreams, murder their loved ones, and destroy their homes is kind of like having Set do the same things, but it's enough of a difference to matter.

Well, I agree, it's deifnitely important to develop the servants of the god, so that the PCs can relate to them as being important. This was done to some degree in LotR, though not to the degree that it could have been. Still we have advanced champions of darkness. The witch king, the nazgul and Saruman, though we could really have used some named orcs somewhere along the line there.

Though, really I think that was pretty much what LotR was like. Granted Frodo had some was taunted by the dark lord, but this was more the effects of the One Ring as opposed to any power Sauron had himself. And I think it's ok for a cursed artifact to do stuff like that.

But when you're talking about homes getting destroyed or people getting killed, it was all Sauron's servants. Saruman, the orcs, the Nazgul, etc. And ultimately if you wipe out those guys, then you eliminate the Sauron problem.

Of course, killing any one individual servant means that someone else probably replaces him. So taking down the witch king probably means that one of the other nazgul is going to get promoted, and that's real similar to fighting a corporation. You can shoot down the CEO or director of special projects, but ultimately they're just going to appoint a new one.

The problem with a killable god is that it's not like a corporation, but more like the king in chess. Once you take out the god, it's game over. Everyone loses their powers and things just end. Now if it's a minor religion that might be ok, but if you're talking about a world spanning faith, then you're going to get all sorts of enemies all trying to achieve that crucial checkmate and take out their rivals in one blow. Because once the god is down, you can't replace him. It's not the second in command taking over, it's every cleric, follower and otherwise packing up their bags and going home permanently.

[dbb]

The problem with a killable god is that it's not like a corporation, but more like the king in chess. Once you take out the god, it's game over. Everyone loses their powers and things just end.

That's true, but if the goal of the campaign is "Destroy the evil that is Sauron", then having the game end once you accomplish that goal is actually OK.

It's really really hard to really eliminate cults, especially if the god is still around, because there's no way to be sure that somewhere on the other side of the planet there isn't a temple full of guys merrily continuing to worship Set regardless of how many High Priests you kill. But if the goal of your campaign is to wipe out the Cult of Set, and you kill all the priests of Set in the Kingdom of Zamora, destroy the secret underground temple, and burn the sacred writings of Set, that's good enough for most people.

The only way it won't be good enough is if the DM insists on showing the players cutscenes from somewhere else on the planet where Set's power rises anew, and that's really not any different from the DM having the Black Knight brought back to life after the PCs have hunted him down and killed him. When the PCs win the campaign, they should just win the campaign, and the DM shouldn't insist on raining on their parade by having all their struggles be for nothing; even if the game is set in a grim world where everything is ultimately hopeless, that's a far cry from saying "Oh, and by the way, you actually didn't accomplish squat."

--d.

[Maj]

The problem with a killable god is that it's not like a corporation, but more like the king in chess. Once you take out the god, it's game over. Everyone loses their powers and things just end.

I don't understand the take on worshippers portrayed in this thread. In D&D, you are allowed to believe in and gain power from an ideal. If you don't worship your god because you're chummy, and you don't worship out of fear, you can worship your god because you believe the ideals your god epitomizes.

If the latter is the case, then why would a cleric lose their power when the god dies? If the idea brings power, then I see absolutely no reason why a cleric who believes in that idea would lose faith just because a deity is dead.

[erik]

Destroying deities or organizations never has to be the end.

There is always the angle with the small but powerful cult gunning to bring back some evil god.

There can always be bigger bad guys sleeping in the world. Ancient evil deities who make the last god they whacked seem like an alright guy. Heck, perhaps the last BBEG was all that was keeping the worse deities at bay. Perhaps the PCs have to resurrect the last god they killed in order to have help in killing the new evil deity.

For organizations, when the heads of the organization are toppled, the lower tiers who showed promise but were held back for whatever reason can advance and become as much of a threat as the previous bad guys (Admiral Thrawn Syndrome).

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1144062462[/unixtime]]

I gotta say one thing, any thread where Phonelobster posts is guaranteed to deliver.

Is that all you ever say anymore?

You need to find your inner crayfish.

It's hard to find an opinion worht fighting over when pretty much everything is either over your head, or so minor to be inconsequential to me.

And one thing I've learned about this forum is that if you aren't prepared to fight tooth and nail over the most benign opinion, don't bother sharing it.

[Crissa]

1144093533[/unixtime]]If the latter is the case, then why would a cleric lose their power when the god dies? If the idea brings power, then I see absolutely no reason why a cleric who believes in that idea would lose faith just because a deity is dead.

Because in D&D the powers spring from the diety. The Cleric says 'I need one of X, two of Y, and then some Z.' If the diety can't answer that morning phonecall... No powers get delivered, no matter how close to the ideal you are.

That's just how D&D does it.

-Crissa

[Maj]

Because in D&D the powers spring from the diety. The Cleric says 'I need one of X, two of Y, and then some Z.' If the diety can't answer that morning phonecall... No powers get delivered, no matter how close to the ideal you are.

No. Powers spring from a deity or an ideology. Clerics of goodness and lawfulness still manage to get their spells everyday - no hassle, no fuss, no god required.

If a cleric follows a god because they agree with the ideals of that god, there is absolutely no way to determine whether or not the powers granted to the cleric come from the god, or from the ideology the cleric believes in. And should the god die, there is absolutely no reason that a cleric - who still believes in the same ideal that led him to worship the god in the first place - should stop receiving spells.

[Username17]

D&D divine magic works just like Arcane Magic - you select a "deck" of prepared effects and then use them one at a time until they are all gone. It works great in a battlefield wargame, which is where the idea comes from, but the translation to a role playing game has always been pretty lame.

Wizards and Clerics "prepare" spells ahead of time in 3rd edition, which is nicely vague enough that it could be plausible. But in previous editions Wizards "memorized" every spell - because they found a book reference in Jack Vance where spells worked kind of like that. The translation to clerics was much clumsier - clerics prayed for spells and they got little decks of cards they could sunsequently play.

And that's dumb. But it's legacy and there was a reason for it at the time. As is, people no longer know what clerics are supposed to be or what they are supposed to do. And if people don't know what clerics are, how are people supposed to comprehend the gods?

Different authors try to have it both ways. Gods are the ultimate sources of Truth and Righteousness (like Allah or Jehova), and they're a capricious lot of trumped up concepts (like the Olympians). They're omnipotent and omniscient and also subject to getting their ass handed to them in a sword fight.

In short, since people use the word "god" in D&D to describe everything from a Kami to the Holy Trinity, the descriptions are contradictory at the best of times.

Before you can even have an argument about what gods can do, you need to get on the same page about what gods are. And I mean "page" in the literal sense where different pages of D&D source material are written with objectively incompatible preconceptions.

-Username17

[Crissa]

But I thought you didn't want to be on the Sage page?

-Crissa

[Oberoni]

I'm not normally one to dwell on typos, but that is one of the most hilarious ones I've ever seen.

Frank Trollman Urges Others to get on the Sage Page! Details at 11!

[Username17]

Hate... you... guys... so... much....

-Username17