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Please Just Play the Adventure (One Shots)
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<blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8675156" data-attributes="member: 6670763"><p>The problem are not the players, or the GM.</p><p></p><p>The problem is the adventure format.</p><p></p><p>It's said that 90% of everything is crap, but for published adventures it's more like 99%. And most GMs seem to base their idea of how to plan an adventure on published adventures. And as the programmers like to say "garbage in = garbage out".</p><p></p><p>RPGs are a medium in which the players are given the ability to make choices about what their characters think and do, and those choices have consequences that determine the story that is playing out. Published adventures don't understand that and instead write a whole story in which all the choices have already been made for the players. Without telling the players about it. Players might make<strong> the wrong</strong> choices, and so adventure writers come up with all kinds of ways to make sure no ideas of the players can work, except the one that they are supposed to take. That's railroading!</p><p></p><p>Those players sound great. They seem to play an RPG like an RPG is supposed to be played. They make judgements about how things look to them, and then make decision based on their interpretation of the information available to them. Published adventures don't want them to do that. They are written to make players guess what the writer wants them to do. And if the players actually play the game instead of just playing along with the script, the adventure breaks. Because it's garbage.</p><p></p><p>Any decent adventure worth playing provides situations that players can interact with in ways that they think best, based on their understanding of what is going on. Such adventures can exist, but they are almost unheard of in the publishing world. It's a struggle that the entire industry has been fighting with for almost 40 years but never appears to have realized what the cause of the problem is.</p><p>Don't write scripts that the players are supposed to act out while not having any idea what the script is.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Yora, post: 8675156, member: 6670763"] The problem are not the players, or the GM. The problem is the adventure format. It's said that 90% of everything is crap, but for published adventures it's more like 99%. And most GMs seem to base their idea of how to plan an adventure on published adventures. And as the programmers like to say "garbage in = garbage out". RPGs are a medium in which the players are given the ability to make choices about what their characters think and do, and those choices have consequences that determine the story that is playing out. Published adventures don't understand that and instead write a whole story in which all the choices have already been made for the players. Without telling the players about it. Players might make[B] the wrong[/B] choices, and so adventure writers come up with all kinds of ways to make sure no ideas of the players can work, except the one that they are supposed to take. That's railroading! Those players sound great. They seem to play an RPG like an RPG is supposed to be played. They make judgements about how things look to them, and then make decision based on their interpretation of the information available to them. Published adventures don't want them to do that. They are written to make players guess what the writer wants them to do. And if the players actually play the game instead of just playing along with the script, the adventure breaks. Because it's garbage. Any decent adventure worth playing provides situations that players can interact with in ways that they think best, based on their understanding of what is going on. Such adventures can exist, but they are almost unheard of in the publishing world. It's a struggle that the entire industry has been fighting with for almost 40 years but never appears to have realized what the cause of the problem is. Don't write scripts that the players are supposed to act out while not having any idea what the script is. [/QUOTE]
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