What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm looking at it as if I were a player in it, and approaching it from that perspective. In a DM-centered game I could also just walk out; and in either type I could always later muse on "what might have happened had I stayed there?"

OK, I agree, in some sense you could. In Story Now that sense would be more like "what sort of tale would we have told in that room?" If you care to take a character perspective you could ask about what 'was in the room', but it isn't a very interesting question to the game participants.

I think I'd be a lousy story-now player as I'd constantly be asking for enough information to give me choices about what to do next, and constantly asking about what we just potentially missed out on between one framed scene and the next.

I think you'd do fine. You're going to go for something. I think exploration is a perfectly viable agenda, and one that might even benefit from a more detailed setting, perhaps. I don't think other agendas generally do. You'd ask about what you missed, and next time you'd look at a scene harder, or find out something cool about it.

I'm a chaotic player - sure I can set goals and beliefs for a character while rolling it up but that doesn't mean I'm going to want to stick to that story if something more interesting happens by; and I'm always going to be on the lookout for that 'something more interesting'.

You might get caught up in another character's story, or spend your time pushing for more exploration, or find things that you really want to engage with. I think this is also a reason to go on to new games every so often.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The railroading comes in when you as DM move the PC to spots of your choosing, even if the reason that you choose those spots is based on criteria the player came up with. You have made the determination about the PC moves and where the PC goes, which may be different than the player would have chosen based on his criteria. Even if the player can then have his PC leave to go somewhere else, the rails have already been installed. Being able to leave after the railroad trip just means that it isn't as hard of a railroad as it could have been.

I think this is another one of those spherical cow kind of things. You COULD in theory, perhaps, play a Story Now type of game where the GM frames a scene, something happens, and then without reference to anything else except his own judgment the GM could simply say "OK, now your at place X, and Y is happening" and frame another scene. It just never happens that way.

Reality is that the PCs do some stuff, and change the state of the fiction in a way that represents some sort of choices. They make a pact with the dwarves to go fight giants, instead of exploring the tunnel into the Underdark. The next scene MIGHT be 'fighting giants', but that can hardly be a railroad! Its MUCH MUCH more likely there will be some scenes in between as well. Maybe less important ones where some relationships are established, some gear is procured, further assistance sought, whatever. A whole other agenda could be interjected at that point and unrelated activities centered on being in a dwarf fortress might happen (IE maybe another character had a goal to find out how to make an indestructible breast plate, so he goes and tries to make a deal with the dwarf weapon smiths).

The trajectory of the game will be in the direction which the player's signal they want to go, but the actual path can be leisurely and even a little wandering at times. Remember, setbacks and failures happen too, and those will tend to deflect the characters from their long-term goals. They may have immediate blowback which requires handling, possibly creating new subsidiary goals along the way.

I think when [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talked about the PCs leading the villagers out of danger from the giants there was some of that going on.

 

[ccs]

I'm a bit late to this thread, but....

World-building on whatever the scale - Dungeon, wilderness, town, social interaction, etc. - it's really all the same. As the DM I have to pre-determine various information. Then the players have to discover what I've written & use that + their characters abilities to figure out how to achieve their objectives.

 

[Lanefan]

See, I don't imagine that I can create an 'internally consistent world'. I don't even know what that means exactly. I tend to set things in this one setting FOR MY AMUSEMENT, not that of the players (I mean, maybe some of them actually are amused when they encounter a 1970's pre-1E PC, [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION] would be the one to ask...). Now, I don't think its making it a bad game, but it isn't really needed for Story Now, and I frankly don't think there's a ton of original ideas or truly creative stuff in my world.

Nor in mine, most likely, but I try to make it that if something works in a certain way 'here and now' it's also going to work that same way 'there and then'. Which is also why I go to a new world for each campaign, as there's often sweeping rules changes going along with the world change.

That said, I think were I to stay with the same world through multiple rule-sets like you seem to be doing, I'd make all changes retroactive to the dawn of time just to keep some here-and-now consistency. Thus your 5e PCs would never meet a "pre-1e PC" in its original mechanics form as it would have been converted on the fly to the current system.

And I'm not sure I care about 'psycho analyzing' anything, but what you describe TO ME involves knowing the character's motives, goals, thoughts, ideals, whatever is at least central to their character.

As do I. However...

What I need, in order to explore that, is some sort of tension. You understand people in crisis.

I don't necessarily need the tension or crisis in order to do this. Sometimes, in fact, the tension and-or crisis just gets in the way, and delays me exploring what I might be trying to explore at the time with a particular character.

This is assuming I'm playing an explorable character, mind you. Some of mine are really only there for the comedic / entertainment value, as I see entertainment as the main underlying reason for doing all this.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

OK, I agree, in some sense you could. In Story Now that sense would be more like "what sort of tale would we have told in that room?" If you care to take a character perspective you could ask about what 'was in the room', but it isn't a very interesting question to the game participants.

Finding out after the fact all of what we missed in a given adventure can be hilarious, if embarrassing sometimes.

You might get caught up in another character's story, or spend your time pushing for more exploration, or find things that you really want to engage with. I think this is also a reason to go on to new games every so often.

Why not do it all in the same game, though? It's a big world...

 

[Lanefan]

I think this is another one of those spherical cow kind of things. You COULD in theory, perhaps, play a Story Now type of game where the GM frames a scene, something happens, and then without reference to anything else except his own judgment the GM could simply say "OK, now your at place X, and Y is happening" and frame another scene. It just never happens that way.

I'll have to take your word for this as regards your own game. In my eyes pemerton's example of talking to the angels and then jumping straight to the reliquary scene is exactly this.

Reality is that the PCs do some stuff, and change the state of the fiction in a way that represents some sort of choices. They make a pact with the dwarves to go fight giants, instead of exploring the tunnel into the Underdark. The next scene MIGHT be 'fighting giants', but that can hardly be a railroad! Its MUCH MUCH more likely there will be some scenes in between as well. Maybe less important ones where some relationships are established, some gear is procured, further assistance sought, whatever. A whole other agenda could be interjected at that point and unrelated activities centered on being in a dwarf fortress might happen (IE maybe another character had a goal to find out how to make an indestructible breast plate, so he goes and tries to make a deal with the dwarf weapon smiths).

This all sounds just fine, as long as the players can choose the level of detail.

The trajectory of the game will be in the direction which the player's signal they want to go, but the actual path can be leisurely and even a little wandering at times.

This can also be the case in DM-driven games.

Remember, setbacks and failures happen too, and those will tend to deflect the characters from their long-term goals. They may have immediate blowback which requires handling, possibly creating new subsidiary goals along the way.

I think when [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talked about the PCs leading the villagers out of danger from the giants there was some of that going on.

Yeah, I've some different issues with that one regarding how he's handling time and distance in the fiction; but the sequence of play sounds cool.

Lanefan

 

[Sunseeker]

A question is slowly beginning to occur to me...let's see if I can phrase it at all clearly.

If the game, here somewhat paraphrased, proceeds thusly:

1. Player during char-gen specifies goals, beliefs etc. for her character, at least one of which includes a specific end point or problem to solve (e.g. free my brother from possession by a balrog).

2. Player during play can set the success condition for an action declaraction to be a step toward solving that problem (I check the feather to see if it'll help against balrogs)

3. Player can in effect repeat this as necessary, with variants, until the action declaration succeeds (PC has moved one step closer to freeing her brother)

4. Player can repeat 2 and 3 above, each time getting another step closer to solving the problem provided the dice co-operate, until the fiction reaches a climax point

5. At that climax point, player can specify the success condition being that the problem is solved (e.g. no more balrog in my brother).

My question then is, particularly if the dice rolls go well for this player isn't this all just a slow-motion violation of Czege? In step 1 the player sets the problem, in steps 2-5 the player also sets the solutions and if the dice go her way she cannot be stopped from achieving them. Even if the dice don't go her way she can only truly be stopped at 5, with an outright fail on her roll in that climactic situation.

Lan-"Czegemate?"-efan

No, because they're not setting the specific challenges they have to overcome, they're only saying that "there are challenges". When a player (or an IRL person) sets a goal they're always setting the problem (my boss is a jerk) and defining the solution (getting a sweet new job). What they don't get to set is the challenges between point A and C. If a player has to investigate every Interesting Item to see if there's a connection, then they're clearly not violating Czege. All they know is that they need to figure out how to get from A to C, but they don't know what B will look like.

Point 5 is unnecessary, the resolution was specified in point 1. "Free my Brother from the Balrog." The challenge is unspecified, "How do I free Brother?"

The violation occurs when the player specifies challenge and resolution. The violation is particularly egregious when the challenge is unsatisfactory to the resolution. IE: Freeing my Brother from the Balrog means I have to eat nothing but kale for 5 days. Few people will complain about a Czege violation that presents a satisfactory challenge to achieve the resolution, IE: Freeing my Brother from the Balrog means I have to defeat the powerful high-level sorcerer who summoned the Balrog's spirit into my Brother. We now have a challenge that actually is well, challenging for the player.

It's unrealistic to say that the player determining the challenge and the solution is always a violation, or worse that it is always un-fun.

The risk a violation runs is essentially the player excluding others from participating or creating a situation that is boring. The Czege Principle basically assumes (rightly or wrongly) that most people suck at writing and creating challenges for themselves.

 

[Maxperson]

I think this is another one of those spherical cow kind of things. You COULD in theory, perhaps, play a Story Now type of game where the GM frames a scene, something happens, and then without reference to anything else except his own judgment the GM could simply say "OK, now your at place X, and Y is happening" and frame another scene. It just never happens that way.

Reality is that the PCs do some stuff, and change the state of the fiction in a way that represents some sort of choices. They make a pact with the dwarves to go fight giants, instead of exploring the tunnel into the Underdark. The next scene MIGHT be 'fighting giants', but that can hardly be a railroad! Its MUCH MUCH more likely there will be some scenes in between as well. Maybe less important ones where some relationships are established, some gear is procured, further assistance sought, whatever. A whole other agenda could be interjected at that point and unrelated activities centered on being in a dwarf fortress might happen (IE maybe another character had a goal to find out how to make an indestructible breast plate, so he goes and tries to make a deal with the dwarf weapon smiths).

The trajectory of the game will be in the direction which the player's signal they want to go, but the actual path can be leisurely and even a little wandering at times. Remember, setbacks and failures happen too, and those will tend to deflect the characters from their long-term goals. They may have immediate blowback which requires handling, possibly creating new subsidiary goals along the way.

I think when [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talked about the PCs leading the villagers out of danger from the giants there was some of that going on.

I get that. It doesn't change the railroad aspect of the playstyle, though. Let's go with your giants example. After the players make the pact with the dwarves, if the DM places them anywhere, he's railroading. Even if he can use their choice as a reference. If he puts them in a fight in the next scene, it's not only a railroad, but a blatant one. The players didn't make the decision to go there. That was the DM. The players may have wanted to engage in one of those intermediary scenes you describe. Perhaps they want to acquire a giant slaying sword. Even then, if the DM just pops them into a bazaar or to a wizard, that's also railroading, since it removes their choice on how to go about getting that sword and forces the decision to go to the bazaar or wizard upon them. The DM is in effect playing their characters and making decisions that only the players are entitled to make.

The only way to avoid the railroad is for the DM to be completely reactionary to to the desires of the players. Once they make the pact with the dwarves, he waits for them to decide what they want to do next. If they say that they want to go to the city of Roaring Squirrel to find a wizard to enchant one of their swords, he can put them there in response or ask for a roll. It's when the DM gets proactive with trying to meet the goals of the players that he is likely to engage in railroading. The rails are thin, but they are there.

 

[pemerton]

The DM would pre-author a potential failure, such as the feather being cursed, but since the DM can't predict what the player will do with that knowledge, can't pre-author something like Jabal. Pre-authoring is a limited exercise in high probabilities that don't always occur.

Why would the GM pre-author the feather being cursed? The existence of the feather in the fiction was established after the player's build their PCs, as part of the opening scene of the campaign. The feather was only introduced into that scene, by me as GM, because I was following the lead of the player who decided that one of his PC's Beliefs was that he would acquire an item useful for confronting a balrog. And how would I know that the player is going to decide to have his PC read the aura (as opposed to, say, just buy it? or try and steal it? or ask the peddler more about it?). Pre-authorship of outcomes is not consistent with the idea that the players have genuine choice in action declaration, with that action declaration yielding genuine answers to the questions it poses about the fiction.

Usually, I will start the opening scenes, but I don't put them into a place that of high import like you did. If a player is seeking an item, I will start that PC off in a neutral place and allow the player to determine the best course of action for his PC. If I were to put the PC in one such place, I am telling that player that this is the best way by that very act. It's the clue hammer upside the head that was mentioned earlier. It very strongly implies to the player that this is the way to do things, which is railroady.

By treating this as a "clue hammer" or "the best course of action" you are building in assumptions that the GM is authoring all the fiction!

There's no clue. There's no best. There are choices that tell us something about the PC - This is what I'm willing to do - and that, as they are resolved, will tell us something about the situation - This feather is useful for confronting balrogs or this feather is cursed or this peddler knows very little about the wares he is selling or any of a hundred other possibilities depending on what actions are declared.

If Tolkien had written only about Gandalf showing up to talk to Frodo about the ring, then skipped ahead and written about only the encounter with the Nazgul in the flight from the Shire, then skipped ahead to the barrow wights and Tom, etc., leaving out everything in-between that tied them together, we wouldn't know his name. That isn't really a story The stuff the ties the major points together, and which you skip in your style

Whether novel or film is a better model for RPGing is an open question. But even focusing on a novel, in fact LotR does not describe every detail. How many flagstones are in the hallway of Bag End?

I would suggest that in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game, if the GM mentions an uneven flagstone then it is de rigeur to search for traps or secret doors. Does that mean that, by not mentioning every flagstone in the tavern, Lanefan is railroading the players?

Or to put it in the form of direct assertion rather than rhetorical question: there is a finite amount of time available in which the GM tells the players stuff. To spend most of that time telling them stuff that speaks to PCs' dramatic needs, rather than stuff that invites them simply to get the GM to tell them more stuff ("You're at an intersection - which way do you go?" "You notice an uneven flagstone on the floor between your table and the bar - what do you do?") doesn't lessen the players' contributions to the content of the shared fiction. It increases it.

The railroading comes in when you as DM move the PC to spots of your choosing, even if the reason that you choose those spots is based on criteria the player came up with. You have made the determination about the PC moves and where the PC goes, which may be different than the player would have chosen based on his criteria. Even if the player can then have his PC leave to go somewhere else, the rails have already been installed. Being able to leave after the railroad trip just means that it isn't as hard of a railroad as it could have been.

This all rests on an illusion, namely, that the gameworld is real. But it's not. In the approach you are advocating, it's authored by the GM.

When you narrate that the PC is in a "neutral place", you have determined where the PC is. If the PC says "I look for a sage - is there a library nearby" you, as GM, tell the player what the PCs sees, and establish the parameters within which the player can make choices. The whole fiction here is GM-authored, and the player choices are all confined within GM-established parameters. As soon as the GM has one of the NPCs s/he is narrating do stuff (eg decides that someone at the library lies about where a sage might be found), the GM is also starting to drive events on some GM-desired course.

The idea that it is more railroad-y to say to the player "OK, you said you wanted to find items - here's a prospective item, now tell us what you think about it!" is bizarre!

 

[pemerton]

The in-my-eyes awful risk you run here is that you could end up with unrealistic travel times and distances. Geography is important. Time is important. The two put together - which you're doing here - can become vitally important; and thus need to be carefully tracked.

Travel times and distances don't matter in this game. In John Boorman's Excalibur, how far did the knights ride on the Grail Quest? It doesn't matter. How long did it take Arthur to ride from Camelot to his final confrontation with Mordred? It doesn't matter.

What matters is that Snow is All About, that The Giants are Almost Upon Us!, and that there are Frightened Villagers. That's why these are called out as scene distinctions.

In both The Hobbit and LotR Tolkein puts a lot of effort and a lot of words into describing the settings through which the parties travel. He also introduces elements of the greater world, particularly from the historical side, and repeatedly makes it very clear that there's a world out there beyond what the protagonists see or even know of (the Southrons are one example of such). Unless you skip all these bits when you read the books, you can't help but become immersed in the world of Middle Earth and end up knowing a lot more about it (and wanting to know more yet, most likely) than just what the protagonists saw on their journeys.

As best I recall, everything that is learned about the history of the Ring comes out either through Gandalf telling Frodo, or through various speakers at the Council of Elrond. Unlike the film version, there is no abstracted narrator who tells us this stuff.

But notice that we never learn (for instance) the history of the mayors of the Shire, nor the history of the rulers of the Southrons, nor the nature of agriculture near Laketown and Dale, nor exactly how hobbits get their cheese. There is an indefinite amount of stuff about the world which is not part of the story. And in game play, all the stuff that anyone cares about can come out in play, by focusing on the actual concerns of play. Mechanics that can produce it of course vary from system to system, but plenty of systems have mechanics of the right sort: whether those are Lore mechanics, or contacts mechanics, or mechanics for influencing NPCs, or perception/search mechanics, or whatever.

Here is an actual play post (sblocked for length):

[sblock]

In our last session, the PCs had escaped into the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, which had been warded with a Hallowed Temple ritual. Because she is a lich, and hence undead, Jenna Osterneth could not follow them in. Which was good for them, because they were out of encounter powers and had 3 surges across the party, and multiple bloodied PCs including the fighter/cleric on 4 hp.

Their reason for being there was that the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen - like other lost things - had ended up on The Barrens in the Abyss. And Osterneth, as an agent of Vecna, had gone there to try and learn the Raven Queen's true name from her dead (mortal) body. The PCs were there to stop her - but with various degrees of enthusiasm, because they don't all exactly approve of her and her growing divine power. (Even though nearly everything they do seems to increase this!)

The Mausoleum had three areas: an entrance room, with a large statue and modest altar; a set of stairs with slightly elevated ramps on either side leading down to the principal room - very large (about 90' x 50') with a huge statue and two pools of water, corrupted by the Abyss; and then a smaller set of stairs leading down to the burial room, with a large altar and five statues and 4 side rooms (the sarcophagus room, the room with canopic jars, the grave goods room and the treasure room).

The PCs started in the entrance, where they took a short rest. This let them regain encounter powers, allowed the paladin to heal up to full from his ring, and then allowed some healing involving sharing the surges around the party (the ranger-cleric has the Shared Healing feat; our table convention for short rests and healing powers is to allow spending regained encounter healing at the end of the rest). They studied the murals and reliefs in the entrance chamber, which showed the Raven Queen's victories during her life, becoming the most powerful ruler in the world (crushing her enemies, being adulated by her subjects, etc - I told the players to think of Egyptian tomb paintings, Mesopotamian reliefs, and similar).

The invoker/wizard and ranger-cleric (having the best Perception in the party) then heard a slithering sound on the ramp. With his ring that grants darkvision the invoker/wizard could see a guardian naga. And the sphinx then came out, and told them that they must answer a riddle before they could pass further into the Mausoleum. I had mixed together abilities from a MM and MM2 sphinx, so they could either choose between accepting the challenge but suffering a debuff until answering it; or rejecting the challenge but granting the sphinx a power up. They chose to accept.

I wrote the riddle a few weeks ago on the train:

In the green garden, a sapling grows,
In time the tree dies, a seed remains.
In the grim garden shall that seed be sown,
Among the black poplars a new tree, a new name:

Shade shall it cast,
Frost endure,
Dooms outlast,
Pride cure.​

Appropriately enough, it was the player of the ridiculously zealous paladin of the Raven Queen who first conjectured that the subject of the riddle was the Raven Queen herself - first her mortal life, than her life after death in which she took on a new name ("the Raven Queen") and took control of the Shadowfell and death, of winter, and of fate.

When the players had reached agreement on this, they offered their answer. The sphinx accepted it, but insisted that they also tell him whose pride will be cured. After generic answers ("everyone dies"), which did not really satisfy the sphinx, the fighter/cleric answered "Us". The sphinx replied "Well, yes, you," and this was the clue for the player of the invoker/wizard, who answered "The gods" - because the fighter/cleric is now God of Jailing, Pain and Torture (having taken up Torog's portfolio). The sphinx then allowed them to pass down the stairs to the principal room, to venerate the dead queen.

In the principal room, they identified the Abyssal corruptions in the pools, and used a Tide of the First Storm (to summon cleansing water) enhanced by other water-quelling magic (sucked out of a Floating Shield) to purify one, so that they could safely pass it to get to the doorway to the burial room. The mural in the principal room - also a magical hazard if they got too close, which they made sure not to - depicted the mortal queen's magical achievements - including defeating a glabrezu on the Feywild, and travelling to the land of the dead (at that time, a land of black poplars ruled by Nerull).

The paladin looked in the cleansed pool to see what he could see, and saw episodes from the past depicting the Raven Queen's accretion of domains (fate from Lolth, in return for helping Corellon against her; winter from Khala, in return for sending her into death at the behest of the other gods); and then also the future, of a perfect world reborn following the destruction of the Dusk War, with her as ruler.

I also decided a further complication was needed: so I explained to the player of the fighter/cleric (who is now the god of imprisonment, and also has a theme that gives him a connection to primordial earth) that he could sense the Elemental Chaos surging up through the earth of the mortal world (because (i) Torog can no longer hold it back, and (ii) the Abyss, having been sealed, is no longer sucking it down the other way); and as a result, an ancient abomination sealed in the earth had been awakened from its slumber and would soon makes it way up to the surface of the world. I then filled them in on my version of the Tarrasque (the MM version with MM3 damage and a few tweaks to help it with action economy). This created suitable consternation, and was taken as another sign of the impending Dusk War.

At this point there was much debate: at least an hour at the table, I would say. They couldn't agree on what they wanted to do - destroy the body (mabye by bringing in the sphere of annihilation, which had been left outside when they fled into the Mausoleum); perhaps destroy the whole Mausoleum; or, as the fighter/cleric advocated, learn her name first so they could use that to bargain with her and compel cooperation without her getting to acquire new domains.

The guardians - who could understand all this, given their Supernal tongue, and could follow it, given their high INT and WIS and Arcana and Religion and Insight - insisted that no Sphere of Annihilation might be brought into the Mausoleum, and that the remains of the dead queen, and her burial goods, not be disturbed. The PCs weren't wanting to start any conflict at this point, and at least three of them (paladin, ranger-cleric and invoker/wizard) were happy with this in any event. So they with the guardian's permission they went down the last set of stairs to the burial room.

This room had a statue in each of four corners - the Raven Queen mortal, ruling death, ruling fate and ruling winter. The fifth statute faced a large altar, and showed her in her future state, as universal ruler. The murals and reliefs here showed the future (continuing the theme of the rooms: the entry room showed her mortal life; the principal room her magical life, including her passage into death; this room her future as a god). I made up some salient images, based on important events of the campaign: an image of the Wolf-Spider; an image of the a great staff or rod with six dividing lines on it (ie the completed Rod of 7 Parts, which is to be the trigger for the Dusk War); an image of an earthmote eclipsing the sun (the players don't know what this one is yet, though in principle they should, so I'll leave it unexplained for now); an image of a bridge with an armoured knight on it, or perhaps astride it - this was not clear given the "flat-ness" of the perspective, and the presence of horns on the knight was also hard to discern (the players immediately recognised this as the paladin taking charge of The Bridge That Can Be Traversed But Once); and an image of the tarrasque wreaking havoc.

More discussion and debate ensued. Closer inspection showed that where it was possible the queen's name had once been written on the walls, this had been erased. The invoker/wizard decided to test whether this could be undone, by using a Make Whole ritual: he made a DC 52 Arcana check, and was able to do so (though losing a third of his (less than max) hp in the process, from forcing through the wards of the Mausoleum). Which resulted in him learning the name of the Raven Queen. And becoming more concerned than ever that it is vulnerable to others learning it to.

Asking the guardians confirmed that they also know her name, though will not speak it, as that would be an insult to the dead.

The new plan arrived at - now that it seemed that sequestering or destroying the body wouldn't be enough, and would require fighting the guardians also - was to surround the whole thing in a Magic Circle vs "all" while the collapse of the Abyss takes the whole thing. They thought the Circle would have a good chance of keeping out level 40 or so beings (given the invoker/wizard's high Arcana bonus). But this takes 1 minute per square, and a quick calculation showed the circle would need to be about 30 squares radius, for around 3000 squares area, or 50 hours. (I think during the session someone might have mucked up by a factor of 10, because 20 days was bandied about as the time required - either way too long to do without first dealing with Osterneth.)

So the discussion then shifted to defeating Osterneth. The player of the sorcerer had been very keen on the possibility of a magical chariot among the grave goods, and so I decided that there was a gilt-and-bronze Chariot of Sustarre (fly speed 8, 1x/enc cl burst 3 fire attack). They persuaded the guardians to let them borrow it, as the necessary cost of preventing Osterneth coming in and defiling the body.

The sorcerer then powered up the Chariot with a quickened version of his Enhance Vessel ritual, making it speed 10 (he spent extra residuum after a successful DC 32 Arcana check). And they pushed open the doors and launched an assault on Osterneth, who was still waiting outside.

Because the PCs all have slightly different goals, I keep waiting for the blow-up to come. And because it hasn't, yet, I keep piling on more-and-more. There has been a lot of discussion over the course of the campaign, especially in this final half of the epic tier, about the Raven Queen's aspiration to dominate the world. But this session was the first where I made that an overt fact of the gameworld (with the story and statutes in the Mausoleum).

Afterwords, the player of the paladin told me that he had passed a note to the player of the ranger-cleric (also a Raven Queen worshipper, but not quite as zealous) that stated that he was getting ready to use the Sword of Kas on the (somewhat anti-Raven Queen) fighter/cleric. But then the fighter/cleric gave up on his idea of trying to get the Raven Queen's name themselves so they could use it to force her to help the other gods without demanding more portfolios as payment.

And so the blow-up was avoided for another session, which means the stakes will be getting higher and higher on all sides if (when) it finally comes.

[/sblock]I don't think that is lacking in depth or colour. But it did not depend upon the GM introducing random details of intersections and beaten slaves.

The Hobbit crew have Bilbo leave the party on more than one occasion; they then get diverted by the Wood Elves, which then leads them to Laketown and into another diversion. The LotR crew get diverted all over the place - Old Man Willow leads to Tom Bombadil; they get back on track just in time to be diverted by the barrow wights, after which they stay on course for a while and gather the fellowship...which then splits into three different groups only one of which carries on with the original goal. And this is while trying to ignore as many diversions as they can.

You are assuming that, in RPGing, this sort of dynamism can only be the result of GM-driven play. But there is simply no evidence that that is the case!

The PCs in my Cortex+ Heroic game set off to find out why the Northern Lights were behaving strangely, but have not yet got very far north. They arrived at a dungeon and entered it, but learned nothing of relevance to their mission. Instead, after getting teleported to the depths by a Crypt Thing, they ended up in dark elf caverns and one of them tricked the drow out of their gold while the others had to fight their way out and trudge home. Since then, they have been caught up trying to save the villagers whose village was destroyed by Ragnarok cultists that the PCs could not defeat.

Your analysis and assumptions completely ignores the significance of player choice (eg a player chooses to go for the gold rather than continue with the quest) and of failed action resolution (the PCs fail to save the village, and so now - if they want to rescue the captured villagers - have to postpone their quest).

In the more open-ended situation of an RPG where there's options for players to follow up on whatever diversions they want, the only way to keep them on story is to never present or offer any diversions.

This is all assuming a GM-driven game. It shows a complete failure to grasp how player-driven RPGing actually works.

You may have read these blogs, but I don't think you actually processed what they are saying:

The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​

There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s).​

Frame situations that will provoke choices (and not just requests for more setting download), let the players make choices, establish consequences (which may be what the players want, if checks succeed; or not what they want, if checks fail), and then frame something new in light of that. It's pretty simple. And it will produce a story that no one new in advance was going to come. Without the GM having to provide a menu of setting elements for the players to choose from.