BwV said: How do you feel about railroding, do you use it and if you do when or would you prefer more sandbox experience? If you prepared some event in town that players are currently visiting, however they would decide to leave before event started would you attempt to stop them, if so how far would go to ensure they participate in it. How do you determine if roll succeeded or failed and what are the effects of it? Do you consider 1 to always fail attempted task no matter how undemanding it is and do you consider 20 sufficient for player to cause desired effect even if it seemed impossible or you consider certain tasks impossible to fail or succeed(result in desired effect)? For example: Player rolled 1 when searching dead body, would it miss apple sized object in front pocket or would he find it anyways(perhaps missing some other items). Low level fighter tries to scare dragon that just landed in front of him by intimidating it and rolls 20. Would dragon fly away or perhaps react in some other way since player wouldn’t be considered dangerous. Would you consider description of the action that player provides important when determining success chance of it ? For example: Player tries to convince villagers to leave their home as it is too dangerous. Would it require the same persuasion roll to convince those peasant by simply saying “You need to leave this place because it’s dangerous.”, as it would when doing high effort speech about dangers of this land how likely they are to die if they stay, bringing up previous event, etc. What do you do when player is asked difficult question by NPC and is taking long time to come up with answer? Do you let player think until they come up with answer or do you act out as if his character was silent. For example player is confronted by sheriff regarding murder of certain noble that was killed by that player. 1. I prefer more of a sandbox experience, however there are a few general milestones in mind for thee cult in general, but how they are reached or exactly what happens at them isn't really something I want to pre-determine; just that they will happen hopefully. The most railroading I intend to do surrounds character creation. All of your characters should not be reluctant members of the cult. All characters should be evil aligned, however be warned that evil of any alignment should not mean they are "evil stupid". Even the often somewhat insane Chaotic Evil need to act mostly rationally, maybe given to fits of homicidal rage or something. Chaotic alignments usually mean you're a true free spirit, want to bow to no authority other than your own, and feel that everyone should or does have their own self interest at heart at all times. If you want to play Chaotic Evil for this campaign you need to actually play well in a group, though you can still do things that are more aligned with your self interest. An example of this is taking advantage of situations the party in in to further your advancement in the cult ranks above other party members. 2. Given that you will be playing as the members of a generally evil cult, you'll be more that likely the ones causing events to happen at towns rather than appearing and having some sort of "quest" pop up. At times you may be given specific tasks from those in the upper echelons of the cult until you become that upper echelon, such as "Go steal this staff, it could be used against us" or "Kidnap this wizard. We need his spellbook and/or knowledge for a certain task." or "We need these items/people for a sacrifice/ritual.", and you will be expected to report to the cult on activities. There will generally not be events that you're waiting on unknowingly. 3. I usually follow the rule that a 1 is an automatic failure only for saves and rolls to hit, and 20s an auto-success on saves and roles to hit. If the situation has been set up well enough for it, I may consider a 20 on a skill roll to be an auto success, or if someone has been completely lax in preparation or is lacking a tool/prop I see as crucial to a test, then a 1 could be an auto fail. That being said in most cases skill checks don't have an auto fail or auto succeed, I go with the roll plus modifier. there are cases, like the searching a corpse, where if you just say I search the corpse, and you were just having a fight nearby where it could have been overheard by reinforcements, that you did it in such a hurried manner that a 1 would automatically fail to find anything other than the weapon the person dropped, or armor/clothes they're wearing openly. 4. I consider the description to be useful in letting me give you advantage or giving you disadvantage on a roll. In some cases I may increase the DC if I feel a bland "Leave, it's dangerous." or something similar, has little chance of succeeding no matter how convincingly you say those specific words. I won't always enforce something like that, but I will certainly try and make it clear through my descriptions or NPC actions when embellishment would be useful for you. I generally find those embellishments make things more fun all the time, but they won't always have an effect on the outcome of a roll. 5. That is situational. The example you gave is a good one of where I would give a player some time to be fair, but I wouldn't wait 5 minutes to hear a well thought out response.
