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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5928633" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I'm not sure that I agree, but maybe what I'm responding to is your suggestion for mechanical formalisation, rather than the underlying claim.</p><p></p><p>I think that for the players to drive the story, it has to be the priorities that <em>they</em> introduce into the game that matter. Who do <em>they</em> want to fight? To rescue? To ally with, or oppose?</p><p></p><p>For me, the first sign of a railroad is when the GM already knows, at the start of the campaign before the players have even built their PCs, who the BBEG will be.</p><p></p><p>But exactly how the players send the signals that establish their priorities can, I think, be pretty flexible. In my own case, I find that the signals they send during character building, plus the signals that they send in actual play, are pretty reliable. I don't feel a great <em>need</em> for better signalling machinery (which is not to say that I'd object to it either - I happen to play vanilla narrativist but have nothing against flavour). What I do want is mechanics that don't (i) obscure the signals, and (ii) make it hard for me, as GM, to respond to them.</p><p></p><p>In my own case, experience has taught me that the main way in which mechanics can get in the way is by shifting the focus of play, at the table, away from the stuff that speaks to story and theme and the players' concerns, and onto minutiae of setting-exploration for its own sake. Minute-by-minute timekeeping, wandering monsters, lots of searching for traps and treasure, etc have tended to be some of the main culprits here.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5928633, member: 42582"] I'm not sure that I agree, but maybe what I'm responding to is your suggestion for mechanical formalisation, rather than the underlying claim. I think that for the players to drive the story, it has to be the priorities that [I]they[/I] introduce into the game that matter. Who do [I]they[/I] want to fight? To rescue? To ally with, or oppose? For me, the first sign of a railroad is when the GM already knows, at the start of the campaign before the players have even built their PCs, who the BBEG will be. But exactly how the players send the signals that establish their priorities can, I think, be pretty flexible. In my own case, I find that the signals they send during character building, plus the signals that they send in actual play, are pretty reliable. I don't feel a great [I]need[/I] for better signalling machinery (which is not to say that I'd object to it either - I happen to play vanilla narrativist but have nothing against flavour). What I do want is mechanics that don't (i) obscure the signals, and (ii) make it hard for me, as GM, to respond to them. In my own case, experience has taught me that the main way in which mechanics can get in the way is by shifting the focus of play, at the table, away from the stuff that speaks to story and theme and the players' concerns, and onto minutiae of setting-exploration for its own sake. Minute-by-minute timekeeping, wandering monsters, lots of searching for traps and treasure, etc have tended to be some of the main culprits here. [/QUOTE]
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Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.
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