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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 7374870" data-attributes="member: 2629">An RPG is a joint storytelling device.  The DM leads the storytelling, but all players contribute to it.  The problem here is that the non-DMs have very different ways to contribute to that storytelling and no single approach in the books will serve all groups well.If you provide narrowly tailored adventures that forcefully guide the PCs from encounter to encounter, some groups will resent the railroading.If you provide a more open structure where PCs can shape the story, some groups will get lost in the options and wander off course from the intended adventure.You can't win as an adventure designer... The best thing to do is to provide the broad and open ended experience and add sidebards to help pull PCs "back on track" if they venture too far from the printed material.  Personally, this is why I do not use adventure paths as written.  I steal from them, but when I run a world, I drop several story hooks out there for the PCs to encounter and let them pick which hook they want to explore. Each hook leads to a story idea and usually the first night's worth of encounters appropriate for the PCs at their current level, I wait to really build the whole adventure until after the PCs have started to play through it.  This allows me to adapt to what interests them, and to make sure it is well tailored to their abilities.  I stay just enough ahead of the PCs that I can plan where I expect them to go and wing what they do unexpectedly.</blockquote>

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