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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9254615" data-attributes="member: 86653">Only if they involve railroading.Not necessarily. If the referee is being an honest collaborator and giving the players agency, there's no guarantee that anything in that adventure path will actually happen at the table except whatever the starting scene is. The referee does the prep and presents the opening scene to the players. The players then get to choose what they do next. Unless the players have the choice to opt out, they don't really have a choice. If you put the PCs at a crossroads and the $50 AP you bought is on the right, but the players go left...you as a referee have a choice to make. Honor the players' agency or deny it. You're not being an honest collaborator if you deny the players' agency. RPGs are collaborative storytelling. Railroading undermines that collaboration.An example from my table. I generally don't run modules, but when I do they're DCC modules. I've run them from start to finish without railroading the players. I've also prepped a module and the players turned left when the module was to the right...so I simply ditched the module and followed the players. The players at the table are the game...what their characters do is the story. Not the module.A lot more people mind the rails than people seem to think. It's an incredibly contentious topic and always is.You're conflating two distinct things. Sandbox is one thing. Emergent story is another. Sandboxes involve emergent story, but emergent story also exists outside of sandbox play.Imagine this. You prep a module and offer to run it. Your players agree and you run the thing. If the players follow the beats of the module without you putting your thumb on the scales, moving things around to match the players' choices, etc...that's still emergent story. Again, emergent story is shorthand for lack of railroading. You can run a module without railroading. And when you do, that's emergent play. It simply requires the players to follow the breadcrumbs the module provides...without the referee forcing things.Right. Thank you for saying the quiet part loud. That's part of the problem. People are quietly adding modifiers to how they define story. Good, long, epic, grandiose, etc. Nothing guarantees any story that comes out of RPG play will be a good, long, epic, grandiose, etc one. Forcing the players to jump through hoops also doesn't guarantee those in a story. People are quietly assuming it does and arguing from that position. But that's simply not the case. That sounds really close to my ideal.And that's the crux of the question. What makes for a compelling story? You can't have story without conflict, at least in the western view. I'm aware of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu" target="_blank">Kishōtenketsu</a> but we'll ignore that for now to save everyone the headache. You also need main characters and side characters. A setting. Etc. Okay, so then you also need something akin to story structure, raising tension, denouement, plot points, acts, scenes, action, reaction, try-fail cycles, etc. It's important to note that none of that requires the referee to predetermine the outcome of anything. You can have all that without the referee putting their thumb on the scale. Robin Laws has done a lot of work translating story structure into game speak. His stuff is really incredible and well worth the read.As we talked about up thread, even 6-word flash fiction is still a story. Length doesn't make it a story. Having the elements of a story make it a story. It's those quiet parts that aren't being said aloud that is causing trouble. Yes, a one-shot game is still a story. It might not be satisfying to some of the posters here because they wanted a sweeping, grandiose decades-long epic...but it's still a story.But, and this is really, really important...RPGs are a unique collaborative storytelling medium. They're not like other storytelling mediums. RPGs are not video games, not novels, not short stories, not movies, not TV shows. Etc. In other mediums the audience is passive to varying degrees. In RPGs the players are active. And, importantly, the table as a whole is the audience. The players are not the audience; the referee is not the storyteller. The table as a whole is the audience; the table as a whole is the storyteller.</blockquote>

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