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No, I don’t follow the AP’s timeline. That said, the NPCs in an Adventure Path typically have goals, plans, and motivations, and good AP authors structure events to follow logically from those elements. So if the players don’t interfere, things might unfold similarly to how the author...

The issue isn’t the source of the content but how that content is used. Sandbox campaigns and published adventures both need characters, locations, and underlying events. In most cases, NPC goals produce a larger chain of events. However, in Adventure Paths, the playstyle assumes players will...

My thoughts on the matter. Debates about what the OSR is have been going on since at least the late 2000s. What sets the OSR apart, from the beginning, is that, unlike most corners of the hobby, it hasn’t been driven by a single author, company, or creative vision. While it grew from interest...

This trilemma only applies if the referee’s primary role is to prompt, to steer players toward specific options through suggestion. If, instead, the referee reports the world as it stands, like a battlefield scout relaying conditions, the trilemma becomes irrelevant. Players aren’t choosing from...

I think this reveals a fundamental difference in how we each manage our campaigns. Earlier in the thread, I explained how influential my experience running LARP events was on my tabletop refereeing. Reading your post clarified what might be a core difference in how we approach player autonomy...

I am not; people are not generally good at stating or expressing their assumptions. And when you get two or more individuals with different assumptions talking about something, like tabletop roleplaying games, that has considerable overlap and sharing of techniques, it can lead to frustrations...

@CreamCloud0 can correct me but he is basically saying is not a problem of the play style it is your referee (GM) making an arbitrary call because they didn't like how you were trashing their setting. To put it plainly, you were a victim of a bad referee, regardless of what play style was being...

On this specific point, this is precisely why, when I referee, when I roleplay the NPCs, I will do so in the first person, so that the players have a better sense of what is going on with an NPC character. It's not a perfect emulation, but it's often good enough that it becomes a non-issue...

Same here, although I am neutral on the drain resources part. It may drain resources or it may not, depending on the circumstances and choices made. The only difference is that combat is adjudicated through a formal wargame-like set of procedures. While social encounters are adjudicated through...

It’s similar to a plan of battle, and in play it should be treated as such. When drafting a plan of battle, a commander plans for what could happen and what they would like to see happen, but they understand that’s not what will happen. So the plan includes contingencies to prepare for the...

So, a serious question: are exploration games an accurate label? To me, it feels similar to how dungeons function in Dungeons & Dragons, yes, dungeons are a common type of adventure in campaigns using D&D, but they’re not the only thing going on, nor are they always the primary focus of a D&D...