I was just asking this because I had an idea for an encounter that was way over what the characters could handle for story reasons, where they would basically have a guaranteed TPK if the enemies didn't spare them (which I plan to do). Would this be considered railroading or would it feel unfair to the players? And if so, what can I do to fix that but still be able to continue the story point? Thanks for the advice!
Other people may have better descriptions/ideas, but to me railroading is when the DM doesn't allow the players any agency. If you force the players to act in a certain manner or only allow them to follow a single thread you've given them, and they have no real choice, then you're in trouble. I have often had my players run into far more powerful monsters than they could handle for any number of reasons, but I made sure that they had options: run away, attempt to bargain, lay a trap, trickery, etc. even when I knew the monster wasn't going to fight until the end. There are any number of reasons that you could have the big bad suddenly stop fighting (and/or disappear) just make sure that your players have choices about what they do when the Tarrasque suddenly shows up.
How specific is the outcome, and what's the point of the encounter?
I mean, are they going to end up captured no matter what because the story you have in mind needs them to be captured, or is it a fight they simply can't win but whether they try to fight to the death, surrender or get away is up them (in which case, what's this supposed to accomplish?) or is it going to be something else?
Most players seem to see "railroad" as a spectrum - you can leave them absolutely no option but the one you want, or you can repeatedly nudge them in the 'right' direction or prevent only the outcomes you really don't want, and anything in between. The former is typically no fun for the players, the latter can be just fine.
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I'll sidestep the conversation on whether this meets the technical definition of railroading or not. In my experience it's hard to pull off making an unwinnable fight fun and/or fulfilling for the players, especially if you're going for this being an inescapable encounter with a foregone conclusion.
Without details I can't be sure about the motivation for having the adversaries beat the player characters, but there are a couple general alternate approaches I'd take. If the objective is to show the party how much more powerful the villains are I'd go one of two ways:
A.) Show the villains take down a person or group that the players see as a worthy rival or an outright threat. It's a reliable way to establish that "oh crap, we're out of our league" feeling without having the villains roll over the party just to inexplicably leave them alive.
2.) Have the villains use social/economic/political power to turn the city watch or whatever the local reasonable authority figure/agency is against the players. An entire barracks full of the local constabulary show up to detain the characters on Lord So-and-so's orders and the players have reason to suspect the villains are behind it. Suddenly the villains are more intimidating because they can turn the town/city/whatever against the players.
I'll sidestep the conversation on whether this meets the technical definition of railroading or not. In my experience it's hard to pull off making an unwinnable fight fun and/or fulfilling for the players, especially if you're going for this being an inescapable encounter with a foregone
100% agree to this.
If the outcome of the encounter is set, and the players cannot change it in any way, is it an encounter? Nothing is on stakes, the players cannot do anything to change what happens - my experience is that players don’t enjoy such «encounters».
But, that doesn’t mean your idea is hopeless. You just have to make sure that the players actually can make a difference, that what they do actually matters.
Or, it can work if it is a pure thriller where their only hope is to get away. Then victory=escape, which is something the players can try actively do, and not only be passive observers of.
However, it would be railroading if somehow your players come up with a brilliant plan that can defeat the enemies, or otherwise thwart their objective, and you hand wave and say their plan doesn't work.
Also, it could be considered sporting to allow some possibility for them to see the encounter coming and avoid it, if they ask the right questions and succeed on some Investigation / Insight / Perception rolls.
If you put them up against an unwinnable battle, yes, it WILL seem unfair to the players. There is no way around that.
Right now, my party is in a massive shrine full of several hundred weak enemies (Kuo-Toa). They were warned by the Deep Gnomes that there are hundreds of them in there, and the Deep Gnomes expressed extreme skepticism with the party's intention to go in there and get some of the treasure back that was stole from the Roman temples. The gnomes told them the place was well guarded, and that the K-Ts can even sense invisible creatures that get close. The party did some exploring and saw some (but nowhere near all) of the K-Ts in the shrine complex.
They then entered the shrine, attempting stealth, but once detected, threw caution to the wind, ignoring their own plan, and started blasting fireballs all over the place. They have now alerted much of the complex (not all, yet, but much) and although they have killed 40 or so K-Ts, there are dozens more coming at them and they have (again, against their own plan) gotten themselves now trapped between two groups, with more coming in the distance.
They were warned by NPCs. They scouted the area. I carefully described things like K-Ts with horns to sound alarms, and guards watching carefully down hallways. They knew it was dangerous, enough that they made a stealth-based plan. And a little ways in, they threw their plan out the window and started blowing things up. If they lose a member or even TPK, in my opinion, this is 100% their own darn fault. They knew what the deal was going in.
And yet... If they do wipe, I am sure all of them will feel that the shrine complex was set up "unfairly" because they lost. Even though the loss, by any objective analysis, is their own fault. Because players hate to lose.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
OK, thanks for the advice everyone! And yes, my plan was for enemies of the 2 different groups that were fighting to offer the party to join, so they do have a choice between whos offer to accept or just run away.
It's very difficult to make a scripted fight actually stay on script without overwhelming force, and fights that are both unwinnable and unavoidable, and not a clear consequence of earlier bad decisions, will justifiably annoy players.
I'll sidestep the conversation on whether this meets the technical definition of railroading or not. In my experience it's hard to pull off making an unwinnable fight fun and/or fulfilling for the players, especially if you're going for this being an inescapable encounter with a foregone conclusion.
Without details I can't be sure about the motivation for having the adversaries beat the player characters, but there are a couple general alternate approaches I'd take. If the objective is to show the party how much more powerful the villains are I'd go one of two ways:
A.) Show the villains take down a person or group that the players see as a worthy rival or an outright threat. It's a reliable way to establish that "oh crap, we're out of our league" feeling without having the villains roll over the party just to inexplicably leave them alive.
2.) Have the villains use social/economic/political power to turn the city watch or whatever the local reasonable authority figure/agency is against the players. An entire barracks full of the local constabulary show up to detain the characters on Lord So-and-so's orders and the players have reason to suspect the villains are behind it. Suddenly the villains are more intimidating because they can turn the town/city/whatever against the players.
^ This. Unless encountering unwinnable battles is the norm, most players interpret rolling initiative as an indication that the challenge is winnable.
I tend to like the A) approach where you demonstrate how powerful the enemy is, but then also when we would roll initiative I'll just straight up tell my players, "This fight is almost surely out of your league. Do you want to play it out anyway?" Some groups still enjoy roleplaying their characters' determination and moxie in a losing battle, but others prefer that I just narrate the scene for the cutscene that it really is. Either way, it helps to set expectations ahead of time.
Are you forcing PCs to move and say things they wouldn't want to say? That would be railroading.
Putting PCs up against unwinnable odds and then whisking them away to a social encounter where they can then resume their independence again is borderline, but could be a story telling device. You simply want them to cross paths with this quest giver and give the party a chance to hear the quest. I imagine this like the Elves capturing the Fellowship in Fangorn Forest.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I've found that the best way to run an unwinnable situation is to give the party a goal that they actually can win. Make it clear that they're going to get beaten and captured, but by doing so they buy time for NPCs to escape, rally a counterattack, or otherwise accomplish something important.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Keeping players on-track is part of the DM process. The trick is orchestrate it so the players don't feel like they're being corralled.
Some of the best railroading is convincing the players that it was the players' idea.
Another option is impressing the importance of the intended task either IC or OOC if necessary.
Another option (and not one that is often well-received) is stating that it's the story and the players will adhere to the story without question.
Another option is accepting that players will be unpredictable and will Dinkledork their way through the game. This makes the DM's job extremely difficult, though.
D&D is cooperative. Trying to find the right balance between players (DM included) is something the table will have to figure out.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Are cutscenes in video games "Railroading"? I mean, the player has no chance to modify anything that happens in a cutscene (well, rarely)... but if there were no moments to show the world around the player in cutscenes, how terrible would a LOT of videogames be?
Even if you have an encounter that you want your players to go through that they will not win, that doesn't mean they don't learn anything by fighting the encounter. They will see what the opponent is doing and can learn what tactics and abilities they have. In doing so, they can prepare for the future when they meet again. Just because you know they are going to be captured or defeated and left to live another day, does not mean that there is no value in having a predetermined outcome... unless it is your standard mode of operation. There are times and moments when this is a storytelling device. Use it as a tool... and put it back in the toolbox... because you certainly don't need to use it more than once per campaign. You will want to foreshadow this event. You also want the players to have a chance to learn as much as they can (don't just immediately down them). And have a backup plan because they can still surprise you in what you figured was an unbeatable fight.
If the conclusion is forgone then it would seem unsporting to have the players invest their time and energy, and their characters resources, to try and win a battle that has already been scripted as a loss. I would not like to blow high-level spell slots and then find out that I might as well have been throwing toothpicks for all the effect it could have on the outcome.
Railroading is putting the fight in their way, and giving them no option but to fight - the enemies are hostile, and surrounding the only exit to the tunnel. That's railroading.
Having the players act out a fight that you've already decided they will lose is a different thing entirely, and is (in my opinion) worse. You can make a fight almost impossible to win and have a plan for how to prevent all the players dying, but also plan for if they manage to pull off a win. If you decide what is going to happen ahead of time, you're trying to shoehorn people into roleplaying a story you've already written. Trying to make the players follow a script is like trying to play tetris using wild ferrets as the shapes. It'll end in disappointment, failure, and possibly needing a rabies shot. I recommend not doing it.
So in answer, no, it's not railroading if you give the players a seemingly unwinnable encounter, if thy have options for how to deal with it and you let it play out without expectations on the outcome - planning to spare them is a fine plot point, and isn't removing player agency. However, if you decide before the fight that they will lose, then it will either need to be a seriously short fight (so they don't waste time on it) or it is going to be a feel-bad moment. If they do what they need to to win, then let them win!
One way to give an encounter like this some meaning might be to have the objective not be to 'win' but to 'not lose' long enough for something else to be achieved.
Say you're holding off the baddies while some civilians evacuate a town, and every round you survive means more people survive. Or the further a mcguffin is able to be taken away from the BBEG's reach before they can get past you. Or taking down as many enemy soldiers as you can to weaken their forces. Or your party is playing the diversion while some other objective is being carried out by others. Like Aragorn facing down Sauron's forces at the black gate to make it easier for Frodo and Sam to destroy the ring, except in a situation where they're eventually overwhelmed and captured.
Something like that, where the objective isn't to 'win' but to stall or bleed the enemy's resources could make your characters actions and strategy still have an impact, while still having them in a situation where they cannot 'win' in the conventional sense.
If it's just 'the BBEG shows up and casts meteor swarm, the party is KOd and captured' you might as well not even do a proper encounter and just narrate their defeat and capture instead.
Say that the players recklessly antagonize a powerful being for example, and find out they've bitten off more than they could chew, and get their asses beat. The players ended up in this situation because of their own agency. That's fine.
Where it would be an issue is if the DM contrived this encounter to happen regardless of the choices the players make, with no way around it, and no way to find creative solutions. The difference being organic consequences vs hamfisted 'you lose here' moment being forced in for the sake of it.
I always say, if for narrative reasons you need the party to lose -- say, the adventure "starts" with them captured -- then just NARRATE it. Do not make them play it out. Nothing is more frustrating for the players than to be put into a situation in which the DM has already scripted a loss. DMs will say "but I needed them to lose because the rest of the adventure is about escaping from capture." Then fine, narrate it. "You all went to sleep in the inn last night and thought something smelled funny. You wake up in the basement, in your smallclothes, no weapons or armor, tied up, with goblin guards surrounding you and that funny smell in your nose. In modern times, we'd describe the smell as "chloroform", though of course your characters have never heard of it. You seem to have been captured by an evil innkeeper and his goblin servants. What do you do?"
Players might be a little annoyed at "not being able to make rolls to prevent it" or even argue, "What about my this skill or that trait? Why didn't that work?" But most players will recognize that this is the hook for a story and go with it.
Compared that to making rolls that are doomed to fail and fighting a 45 minute battle that ends up in an auto-loss anyway? That is not fun at all, and most players don't like when what they do does not matter. If it doesn't matter, then just narrate the result. Don't give them the illusion of agency when there really isn't any, and it is blatant that there isn't any.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I always say, if for narrative reasons you need the party to lose -- say, the adventure "starts" with them captured -- then just NARRATE it. Do not make them play it out. Nothing is more frustrating for the players than to be put into a situation in which the DM has already scripted a loss.
That's usually the best way to deal with it. Spot on. However, it can sometimes be fun to let them play it out (with warning and foreknowledge), so they have have a better mind's-eye-view of how they got captured or whatever.
I was just asking this because I had an idea for an encounter that was way over what the characters could handle for story reasons, where they would basically have a guaranteed TPK if the enemies didn't spare them (which I plan to do). Would this be considered railroading or would it feel unfair to the players? And if so, what can I do to fix that but still be able to continue the story point? Thanks for the advice!
Other people may have better descriptions/ideas, but to me railroading is when the DM doesn't allow the players any agency. If you force the players to act in a certain manner or only allow them to follow a single thread you've given them, and they have no real choice, then you're in trouble. I have often had my players run into far more powerful monsters than they could handle for any number of reasons, but I made sure that they had options: run away, attempt to bargain, lay a trap, trickery, etc. even when I knew the monster wasn't going to fight until the end. There are any number of reasons that you could have the big bad suddenly stop fighting (and/or disappear) just make sure that your players have choices about what they do when the Tarrasque suddenly shows up.
How specific is the outcome, and what's the point of the encounter?
I mean, are they going to end up captured no matter what because the story you have in mind needs them to be captured, or is it a fight they simply can't win but whether they try to fight to the death, surrender or get away is up them (in which case, what's this supposed to accomplish?) or is it going to be something else?
Most players seem to see "railroad" as a spectrum - you can leave them absolutely no option but the one you want, or you can repeatedly nudge them in the 'right' direction or prevent only the outcomes you really don't want, and anything in between. The former is typically no fun for the players, the latter can be just fine.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I'll sidestep the conversation on whether this meets the technical definition of railroading or not. In my experience it's hard to pull off making an unwinnable fight fun and/or fulfilling for the players, especially if you're going for this being an inescapable encounter with a foregone conclusion.
Without details I can't be sure about the motivation for having the adversaries beat the player characters, but there are a couple general alternate approaches I'd take. If the objective is to show the party how much more powerful the villains are I'd go one of two ways:
A.) Show the villains take down a person or group that the players see as a worthy rival or an outright threat. It's a reliable way to establish that "oh crap, we're out of our league" feeling without having the villains roll over the party just to inexplicably leave them alive.
2.) Have the villains use social/economic/political power to turn the city watch or whatever the local reasonable authority figure/agency is against the players. An entire barracks full of the local constabulary show up to detain the characters on Lord So-and-so's orders and the players have reason to suspect the villains are behind it. Suddenly the villains are more intimidating because they can turn the town/city/whatever against the players.
100% agree to this.
If the outcome of the encounter is set, and the players cannot change it in any way, is it an encounter? Nothing is on stakes, the players cannot do anything to change what happens - my experience is that players don’t enjoy such «encounters».
But, that doesn’t mean your idea is hopeless. You just have to make sure that the players actually can make a difference, that what they do actually matters.
Or, it can work if it is a pure thriller where their only hope is to get away. Then victory=escape, which is something the players can try actively do, and not only be passive observers of.
Ludo ergo sum!
Not railroading.
However, it would be railroading if somehow your players come up with a brilliant plan that can defeat the enemies, or otherwise thwart their objective, and you hand wave and say their plan doesn't work.
Also, it could be considered sporting to allow some possibility for them to see the encounter coming and avoid it, if they ask the right questions and succeed on some Investigation / Insight / Perception rolls.
If you put them up against an unwinnable battle, yes, it WILL seem unfair to the players. There is no way around that.
Right now, my party is in a massive shrine full of several hundred weak enemies (Kuo-Toa). They were warned by the Deep Gnomes that there are hundreds of them in there, and the Deep Gnomes expressed extreme skepticism with the party's intention to go in there and get some of the treasure back that was stole from the Roman temples. The gnomes told them the place was well guarded, and that the K-Ts can even sense invisible creatures that get close. The party did some exploring and saw some (but nowhere near all) of the K-Ts in the shrine complex.
They then entered the shrine, attempting stealth, but once detected, threw caution to the wind, ignoring their own plan, and started blasting fireballs all over the place. They have now alerted much of the complex (not all, yet, but much) and although they have killed 40 or so K-Ts, there are dozens more coming at them and they have (again, against their own plan) gotten themselves now trapped between two groups, with more coming in the distance.
They were warned by NPCs. They scouted the area. I carefully described things like K-Ts with horns to sound alarms, and guards watching carefully down hallways. They knew it was dangerous, enough that they made a stealth-based plan. And a little ways in, they threw their plan out the window and started blowing things up. If they lose a member or even TPK, in my opinion, this is 100% their own darn fault. They knew what the deal was going in.
And yet... If they do wipe, I am sure all of them will feel that the shrine complex was set up "unfairly" because they lost. Even though the loss, by any objective analysis, is their own fault. Because players hate to lose.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
OK, thanks for the advice everyone! And yes, my plan was for enemies of the 2 different groups that were fighting to offer the party to join, so they do have a choice between whos offer to accept or just run away.
It's very difficult to make a scripted fight actually stay on script without overwhelming force, and fights that are both unwinnable and unavoidable, and not a clear consequence of earlier bad decisions, will justifiably annoy players.
^ This. Unless encountering unwinnable battles is the norm, most players interpret rolling initiative as an indication that the challenge is winnable.
I tend to like the A) approach where you demonstrate how powerful the enemy is, but then also when we would roll initiative I'll just straight up tell my players, "This fight is almost surely out of your league. Do you want to play it out anyway?" Some groups still enjoy roleplaying their characters' determination and moxie in a losing battle, but others prefer that I just narrate the scene for the cutscene that it really is. Either way, it helps to set expectations ahead of time.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Are you forcing PCs to move and say things they wouldn't want to say? That would be railroading.
Putting PCs up against unwinnable odds and then whisking them away to a social encounter where they can then resume their independence again is borderline, but could be a story telling device. You simply want them to cross paths with this quest giver and give the party a chance to hear the quest. I imagine this like the Elves capturing the Fellowship in Fangorn Forest.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I've found that the best way to run an unwinnable situation is to give the party a goal that they actually can win. Make it clear that they're going to get beaten and captured, but by doing so they buy time for NPCs to escape, rally a counterattack, or otherwise accomplish something important.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah, that's not going to happen.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Keeping players on-track is part of the DM process. The trick is orchestrate it so the players don't feel like they're being corralled.
Some of the best railroading is convincing the players that it was the players' idea.
Another option is impressing the importance of the intended task either IC or OOC if necessary.
Another option (and not one that is often well-received) is stating that it's the story and the players will adhere to the story without question.
Another option is accepting that players will be unpredictable and will Dinkledork their way through the game. This makes the DM's job extremely difficult, though.
D&D is cooperative. Trying to find the right balance between players (DM included) is something the table will have to figure out.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Are cutscenes in video games "Railroading"? I mean, the player has no chance to modify anything that happens in a cutscene (well, rarely)... but if there were no moments to show the world around the player in cutscenes, how terrible would a LOT of videogames be?
Even if you have an encounter that you want your players to go through that they will not win, that doesn't mean they don't learn anything by fighting the encounter. They will see what the opponent is doing and can learn what tactics and abilities they have. In doing so, they can prepare for the future when they meet again. Just because you know they are going to be captured or defeated and left to live another day, does not mean that there is no value in having a predetermined outcome... unless it is your standard mode of operation. There are times and moments when this is a storytelling device. Use it as a tool... and put it back in the toolbox... because you certainly don't need to use it more than once per campaign. You will want to foreshadow this event. You also want the players to have a chance to learn as much as they can (don't just immediately down them). And have a backup plan because they can still surprise you in what you figured was an unbeatable fight.
If the conclusion is forgone then it would seem unsporting to have the players invest their time and energy, and their characters resources, to try and win a battle that has already been scripted as a loss. I would not like to blow high-level spell slots and then find out that I might as well have been throwing toothpicks for all the effect it could have on the outcome.
Railroading is putting the fight in their way, and giving them no option but to fight - the enemies are hostile, and surrounding the only exit to the tunnel. That's railroading.
Having the players act out a fight that you've already decided they will lose is a different thing entirely, and is (in my opinion) worse. You can make a fight almost impossible to win and have a plan for how to prevent all the players dying, but also plan for if they manage to pull off a win. If you decide what is going to happen ahead of time, you're trying to shoehorn people into roleplaying a story you've already written. Trying to make the players follow a script is like trying to play tetris using wild ferrets as the shapes. It'll end in disappointment, failure, and possibly needing a rabies shot. I recommend not doing it.
So in answer, no, it's not railroading if you give the players a seemingly unwinnable encounter, if thy have options for how to deal with it and you let it play out without expectations on the outcome - planning to spare them is a fine plot point, and isn't removing player agency. However, if you decide before the fight that they will lose, then it will either need to be a seriously short fight (so they don't waste time on it) or it is going to be a feel-bad moment. If they do what they need to to win, then let them win!
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One way to give an encounter like this some meaning might be to have the objective not be to 'win' but to 'not lose' long enough for something else to be achieved.
Say you're holding off the baddies while some civilians evacuate a town, and every round you survive means more people survive. Or the further a mcguffin is able to be taken away from the BBEG's reach before they can get past you. Or taking down as many enemy soldiers as you can to weaken their forces. Or your party is playing the diversion while some other objective is being carried out by others. Like Aragorn facing down Sauron's forces at the black gate to make it easier for Frodo and Sam to destroy the ring, except in a situation where they're eventually overwhelmed and captured.
Something like that, where the objective isn't to 'win' but to stall or bleed the enemy's resources could make your characters actions and strategy still have an impact, while still having them in a situation where they cannot 'win' in the conventional sense.
If it's just 'the BBEG shows up and casts meteor swarm, the party is KOd and captured' you might as well not even do a proper encounter and just narrate their defeat and capture instead.
For me it largely depends on context.
Say that the players recklessly antagonize a powerful being for example, and find out they've bitten off more than they could chew, and get their asses beat. The players ended up in this situation because of their own agency. That's fine.
Where it would be an issue is if the DM contrived this encounter to happen regardless of the choices the players make, with no way around it, and no way to find creative solutions. The difference being organic consequences vs hamfisted 'you lose here' moment being forced in for the sake of it.
I always say, if for narrative reasons you need the party to lose -- say, the adventure "starts" with them captured -- then just NARRATE it. Do not make them play it out. Nothing is more frustrating for the players than to be put into a situation in which the DM has already scripted a loss. DMs will say "but I needed them to lose because the rest of the adventure is about escaping from capture." Then fine, narrate it. "You all went to sleep in the inn last night and thought something smelled funny. You wake up in the basement, in your smallclothes, no weapons or armor, tied up, with goblin guards surrounding you and that funny smell in your nose. In modern times, we'd describe the smell as "chloroform", though of course your characters have never heard of it. You seem to have been captured by an evil innkeeper and his goblin servants. What do you do?"
Players might be a little annoyed at "not being able to make rolls to prevent it" or even argue, "What about my this skill or that trait? Why didn't that work?" But most players will recognize that this is the hook for a story and go with it.
Compared that to making rolls that are doomed to fail and fighting a 45 minute battle that ends up in an auto-loss anyway? That is not fun at all, and most players don't like when what they do does not matter. If it doesn't matter, then just narrate the result. Don't give them the illusion of agency when there really isn't any, and it is blatant that there isn't any.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
That's usually the best way to deal with it. Spot on. However, it can sometimes be fun to let them play it out (with warning and foreknowledge), so they have have a better mind's-eye-view of how they got captured or whatever.