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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8083320" data-attributes="member: 29398">Most APs don't work very well if the players/PCs decide not to get on the train, as they're usually rather railroad-y.  And this works fine at times, don't get me wrong, but if the players are the sort to whom railroads are bad things then a hard-line AP probably isn't the best place to put them. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Sure, but what of it?  Even though a DM can more or less predict how the players/PCs will react to something, if the DM intentionally doesn't use that prediction to inform what comes next in the game and instead presents it neutrally, does it matter?First off, even a random encounter table, when looked at in hindsight, will inevitably generate an A to B to C story of some sort.  This is why talking about what's seen in hindsight is pointless.But ahead of time and-or during the run of play, there's a rather massive amount of middle ground between 'the DM creates the story' and 'a random encounter table', most of which involves the players taking over and driving the story - in effect, forcing the DM to react to what they do rather than the more common situation where the players/PCs react to what the DM throws at them.This can be as simple as the players/PCs deciding to turn their nose up at whatever hooks-foreshadowing-bread crumbs they've seen and instead going off and doing something unexpected - e.g. out of the blue they decide "Hell, we're fed up with working for this pair of ungrateful monarchs - we're going to buy a ship, hire a crew, and sail off into the sunset.  Mr. DM, as we're in a harbour town we look to see if there's any ships for sale or, as a plan B, charter."And yes, when looked at two years later in hindsight the party's decision to jump on a boat and sail away by default becomes 'B' to whatever 'A' just preceded it (with 'C' of course being whatever happens once they get to wherever they end up); but that has nothing whatsoever to do with either DM pre-planning or DM-placed random encounters.  The players/party put themselves on that ship and forced the DM to react to their doing so.</blockquote>

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