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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oryzarius" data-source="post: 9566791" data-attributes="member: 61736">My wife and I were talking about RPG campaigns over lunch today, and a thought came up.Eleanor Roosevelt is reputed to have said that "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."  I'm not sure that campaign plots don't go in the other direction.One of my favorite campaign books of all time is The Traveller Adventure.  Using only mild spoilers, I can say that it's a sci-fi campaign sandbox travelogue with lots of vivid personalities and worlds to explore... but the motivating idea behind the plot is just a bit of local corporate skulduggery.  Players have lots of freedom to wander and create their own connections, and there's no preordained climax.Contrast that with the near-rage I've felt in reading Mongoose Traveller's more recent Mysteries of the Ancients.  There are some sandboxy elements, it's true: worlds and people are presented, with some background and incidental rumors, events, and ideas... but there's a very strong railroad built in, steering the PCs from one location another, ensuring that Great Events Will Happen, and NPCs Will Explain Them, before the Characters Are Sent Elsewhere.I remember old-school dungeons for their "people" (okay, monsters) and their "events" (well, really more the shape of the dungeon complex itself).  Steading of the Hill Giant Chief was one of the first adventures I ever purchased, and the G/D/Q sequence is still famous in the hobby today for its locations... not any sort of intentional resolution.  Even linear convention scenarios like The Tomb of Horrors or The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan were more about interesting situations for the PCs to encounter rather than prewritten experiences for them to have.Basically, a lot of modern campaign books seem to be written by frustrated novelists.  They want to tell a world-altering, grand epic, rather than sketching out a place in which the players can create their own story.  I'm sure there are valid commercial reasons for the shift (Big Events sell, grand ad copy is more likely to motivate) and potential social/cultural explanations involving style of play and desired amount of direction by casual players.  But that doesn't mean I like the result.And, of course, I'm sure there are notable exceptions (and I'd love to hear about them).</blockquote>

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