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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8694335" data-attributes="member: 6790260">As was said by others above, I don't see "there are ongoing events, which your characters plausibly care about," as being the same thing as "railroading." And I'm also quite aware that Mr. Hayes (a lovely Youtuber, I've burned through almost all of his content already!) very specifically favors gaming where the main story exists, but the players do not have to follow it. They can choose to go off and do other things, and come back to the main story later if they want to. That doesn't at all sound like railroading. Instead, it sounds like there's an adventure line for those who want one, and a world to explore for those who really don't want an adventure line.One of the (very) few exceptions to this preference is Final Fantasy XIV, which I know he enjoys mightily, where it does pretty heavily restrict your non-MSQ choices until you advance the MSQ. And he has specifically commented on how he doesn't really care for how restrictive FFXIV can be with its content outside of advancing the MSQ. He believes the adventure line is worthwhile enough to forgive this fault, but it is something that needs forgiveness, as it were. (I, personally, expect most video game stories to be fixed things, so it never really bothered me, but I get why it bothers him.)For my own game, there are plots (plural, there's various things going on in the world.) These are events, which will happen, unless the players interpose themselves, at which point it becomes unclear exactly what will result--we must play to find out what happens. This is the essence of the Dungeon World "fronts" concept, as I understand it. The world is full of threats. Those threats will do bad things if allowed to operate unhindered. The players, as Heroic Adventurers, are naturally-gifted hinderers and meddlers. And you'd better One-damned believe their opponents would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />More seriously: there's stuff going on. There's things to discover and track down. But the PCs also have their own stuff going on, and sometimes those personal matters carry more weight. Sometimes the party is hungry for a direction, and I'll throw them a bone. That's not railroading, that's greasing the wheels of play when they've gotten stuck and no one knows quite what to do. Much of the time, however, I'm quite happy to follow the players' lead. The current adventure blossomed out of a player wanting to speak to a particular person about information she'd uncovered regarding a lost ancient heirloom of his people. We've already gotten three sessions and at least one Perilous Journey out of that (completely personal) inquiry. I am quite excited to see what else comes of it.</blockquote>

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