Quote Originally Posted by Adoendithas View Post
I've read DM of the Rings, but I don't think Tolkein would railroad it too much. He would probably have maps of every city and area in the camppaign setting written out beforehand, so the encounters could just be transposed if we got off the rails.

Of course, he would probably also write up grammars and vocabularies for all the languages, and I doubt if I could learn three per level, so the Linguist feat would be right out.
I see Tolkein as more of a DM that wouldn't so much as railroad the players as just not care they are there. He'd would have been so engrossed in his own work that it wouldn't matter if there were PCs at the table... After the game was over he would probably turn it into a book too.

Have you ever had a DM that has done that? It is a form of railroading I guess but it is like the DM almost doesn't want players to mess up his story. I've had and heard of many tales of DMs like that...It really sucks cause you are essentially sitting somewhere while a guy is reading you a story....

Could you imagine if he was running his Lord of the Rings setting and the guys playing said "yo let's just take these birds (that totally owe us) all the way there so we don't have to deal with all that crap between here and the volcano, plus it will take a day to get there!". I see rocks falling haha. Actually if he had players I think his writings would have been better at least.

Of course Dante would be that harsh type of DM that if you was playing a Cleric or Paladin and stepped out of line just a tiny bit... You god would come down and tell you about it. Hahaha