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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8151133" data-attributes="member: 29398">Even a campaign that's a total railroad still contains that - to use your term - baseline level of agency; and for some players that's enough.Personally, I greatly prefer a situation where that baseline is augmented by the players-as-PCs also having the agency to decide what to do/where to go within the setting, i.e. fewer or even no rails; but this can vary situationally even within the same campaign.&nbsp; For example in the game I play in we have four (count 'em!) different parties on the hop; and without much pre-planning on anyone's part all four of them have just come in form the field at the same time and to the same home base*.&nbsp; So now we, as a great big collective of characters, get to decide who does what next, and in what groups; and as at least a dozen of those characters have individual goals they want to pursue in the meantime I suspect the next several sessions at least are going to consist of what would often be thought of as downtime activity.* - and if having that many disparate PCs all in one place - some of whom actively dislike each other - ain't a recipe for fireworks, nothing is!Either I'm missing something, or you're saying something I agree with: the GM provides the setting and the players then do what they will with it.I'm fine with the first of these - if the PC doesn't want to fight Strahd it's 100% the PC's choice to make; and let the in-game consequences of that decision fall where they may. (I haven't been following that thread so if there's further nuances I'm unaware of such)As for the second: given that a) without a GM there isn't a game and b) IMO things like &quot;no Elves&quot; are entirely the GM's call to make, I'm largely on the GM's side on that one.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 8151133, member: 29398"] Even a campaign that's a total railroad still contains that - to use your term - baseline level of agency; and for some players that's enough. Personally, I greatly prefer a situation where that baseline is augmented by the players-as-PCs also having the agency to decide what to do/where to go within the setting, i.e. fewer or even no rails; but this can vary situationally even within the same campaign. For example in the game I play in we have four (count 'em!) different parties on the hop; and without much pre-planning on anyone's part all four of them have just come in form the field at the same time and to the same home base*. So now we, as a great big collective of characters, get to decide who does what next, and in what groups; and as at least a dozen of those characters have individual goals they want to pursue in the meantime I suspect the next several sessions at least are going to consist of what would often be thought of as downtime activity. * - and if having that many disparate PCs all in one place - some of whom actively dislike each other - ain't a recipe for fireworks, nothing is! Either I'm missing something, or you're saying something I agree with: the GM provides the setting and the players then do what they will with it. I'm fine with the first of these - if the PC doesn't want to fight Strahd it's 100% the PC's choice to make; and let the in-game consequences of that decision fall where they may. (I haven't been following that thread so if there's further nuances I'm unaware of such) As for the second: given that a) without a GM there isn't a game and b) IMO things like "no Elves" are entirely the GM's call to make, I'm largely on the GM's side on that one. [/QUOTE]

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