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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest 7034872" data-source="post: 8543036">Thanks. This is very helpful, especially because I think you're clearly right that linear/non-linear ≠ • ⇹ railroad/sandbox. I had thought of them in those terms, but I think you're right that that's confused. Storm King's Thunder is a pretty linear module, but no way would I call it a railroad.The writing style issue in literature I knew about and worked to overcome, but for some reason the kids just were not having it with any of the classical epics even when I gave them modernized versions. As best I can make out, they just weren't having it with stories that go onto long tangents that do not feed into the overarching plot. LoTR I totally could sell them on (with many, they were already sold before I said a word), but not Virgil, not Dante, and never, ever Homer. Writing style certainly didn't help my case, but that alone doesn't seem to capture their <s>antipathy</s> boredom. "It just seems to wander around a lot," was a common complaint. It's funny to me, because in console/computer games they seem absolutely fine with that, but not with literature (and even with television these days--you're right that serial seems preferred over episodic now).I guess this is what it comes to: the players who don't like the more episodic games/modules want what they'd call "a story," by which they mean a unifying, linear story arc.Of course, all these insights of yours, while extremely helpful, also make my life a lot harder. I'm fighting like a cornered dog to finish up this adventure I've written, and I was worrying that too much of it was too <s>railroad-y</s> linear, but now what I have is that linearity is fine so long as it offers more than just an illusion of agency. So long as I maximize player agency, the players might even enjoy the linearity. But the more I enhance player agency, the trickier that linearity is to maintain without something somewhere becoming artificial and ad hoc.I've got a lot more thinking and writing to do...</blockquote>

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