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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6784537" data-attributes="member: 177">This has already been discussed some, but to remind folks:1) The GM's best laid plans do not survive contact with players.  You can't account for everything they may try beforehand, and you can't keep them from painting themselves into a corner.2) Any plan that requires perfection on the GM's part is a bad plan.  GM's are human, and make mistakes.  There *will* be flaws in your adventure designs.  The GM should have tools to deal with design flaws in situ.3) As I mentioned upthread - this is often used in systems where what a D&D-only player would call a "well designed session" does not exist.  There may be no detailed map down to the 5' square level, with every secret door labelled and every trap with a well-known CR and method of deactivation, monster and NPC detailed out in full stat blocks, and powers and spells carefully chosen, and placed on aforementioned map.  Rules engines like FATE and Cortex+ take as a base posit that some of the content of the adventure will be built out of these complication bits.  In a more improvisational adventure, you can't design out bottlenecks before play - instead, you use rules systems that disperse bottlenecks as they develop.  And we are talkign about bottlenecks to *action*, not necessarily to a prescripted goal.You have missed the several times over where we have mentioned that it isn't really a predestined end we are aiming at in general.  You're resurrecting a boogeyman.  The *players* have a goal.  You see, that last bit, about it being enjoyable, isn't generally true, or in any way ensured by the D&D rules, or many other systems.  The issue at hand isn't even the failure, it is the result of failure - stalling without meaningful choices to make.  Failing forward is, in essence, making sure the player has meaningful choices after failing.  Nobody is assuming that a particular encounter should happen.  Get the railroad boogeyman out of your head, *please*.  Also note that, if your party has Inigo Montoya in it, going off to another dungeon instead of chasing Count Rugen is *not* going to be an option.  Sorry, just not happening.  So, as a GM, are you going to leave Inigo frustrated that he can't get through the locked door, or are you going to make it that Fezzik is just near enough to hear Inigo's calls for aid - and let Rugen set up an ambush as the complication?</blockquote>

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