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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6888989" data-attributes="member: 42582">If you mean The Alexandrian's blog on node-based design, then yes, it is a form of railroading. "Scene-framed" RPGing, in these conventional sense of that term, has nothing in common with  node-based design or APs.This seems to be confusing the ingame situation and the out-of-game situation. In the real world, the players make choices. In the fiction, those choices express their destiny.For this to be interesting - ie for the destiny to actual matter in play and emerge as some sort of theme - the choices have to pertain, in some salient way, to something the PC (and hence the player) cares about. If you play ToH or Keep on the Borderlands more-or-less as written, you probably won't achieve this. But I posted an example not far upthread in my reply to [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] showing an actual play example of how this can be done.What has any of this got to do with the example I gave? Who said that the PC had secured his mother? Who said that the mother was a substitute for the nephew (or vice versa)?Yes, if the GM frames scenes which negate the thematic and practical significance of what the PCs have done previously in the game, that will negate meaningful choice. But why would a GM do that?If the game has come to an end, then yes, it has come to an end. If the game is going to keep going, though, then the PCs have to end up in some situation or other that poses a challenge to them. I don't understand this. What is "the path of least resistance"? And why does the fact that the game goes on mean that nothing mattered?To give a concrete example: after the PCs trapped Ygorl, they defeated Lolth and sealed the Abyss. How did trapping Ygorl become meaningless because this other task presented itself?Having sealed the Abyss (and, earlier, killed Torog), the Elemental Chaos has increased its rate of seepage into the mortal world. This has released the tarrasque. How does the emergence of this compelling situation make their choice to seal the Abyss, or to kill Torog, meaningless? For that matter, how does the fact that one of the PCs was faced with a "compelling situation" - namely, the opportunity to take up the mantle of god of imprisonment, punishment, pain and torture - make the killing of Torog meaningless. At least prima facie, it seems to affirm it as having had rather a meaningful impact.</blockquote>

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