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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bastoche" data-source="post: 2758139" data-attributes="member: 306">Again lots of stuff!From my point of view, there's no distinction between the two. In both cases the players says *out of game prior to play* "We want to do X next". Wheter it's from the background or between session, it assumes the feedback given out of game from the players will allow the DM to prepare an "environment" in which the PCs may or may not "stumble" on the "adventure" (assuming no railroad here). <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /> What is failure? It can be many things. If "failure" is "not accomplishing what you had in mind" you are right. But if "failure" means "not accomplishing it the easy way"? Or "accomplishing it while losing a great deal in the end?". But since you introduce the Forge vocabulary I'll dive in. As far as I understand, there's no notion of "challenge" in simulationist play. Basically in a too broad categorization, simulationism is about enjoying how much the "world feels real". It might include instances of play where your PC goes to the bathroom. The character's motivations are more or less irrelevant. The player's motivation is to "play them right". Challenge is reserved for gamist play. Let's put "hybrids" aside for the moment.Ok so "success" and "failure" in simulationist play is not on the action level but on the resolution vs the imagined reality. In gamist mode "sucess" is on the action level itself: beating the monster or not. Staying alive, saving the princess, etc. Openness to me would relate to the level of force. If there's no force, it's open. If there is, it's closed. Ok now I believe that gamist play as implicitly implied by 3E D&D requires at least a little force. You can't go "force free". Because then you fall in pseudo sim play where an entire session may revolve around *nothing* (in other words, no challenge faced). If you're into sim play, no prob. But a gamist will wait for the "challenge" to happen. If he has a hard time identifying the challenge, he'll become frustrated. "hidden" challenges falls in the illusionism category where the DM consiously or not let the players play illusionism on himself by pretending that they found the plot/challenge by choice rather than by running around in circle searching a challenge just for the sake of finding the challenge (rather then, say, for "roleplaying reasons" in the sense of "that's what my guy would do").Yes. The argument I'm making however is that exploring character personality is one way to facilitate open gaming. And yes, it's a specific style of play.Yes. And again I say it facilitate open gaming. I think at this point the notion of "open" vs "closed" as I envisionned it in my first post self destruct right here. The point being: open or close, it doesn't matter as long as your take on open vs close facilitate the player's (DM included) shared style of play.My point is that versimilitude is on par with the close vs open issue. It's irrelevant unless it "get's in the way" of the expectations of the players vs the game (in other words "what they find fun"). If the players don't think it's fun to face a too big challenge or a too small, something is incoherent in the play. In other words somebody's not having fun.I never said I desired to have openness. I was saying that we are currently running a campaign that pretended to be open and ends up frustrating because the technique used to introduce "openness" does not address my desires (or the player's) vs the game! In fact I wish our DM were railroading us instead of having him "wishing we get *it*". He creates "plausible" situations and hope a "challenge" emerge from it. If we figure out something to "get things done" that avoid a challenge, he gets frustrated and when we reach dead ends because of the lack of clues (ie. minor railroad via hints). I get frustrated as a player on mainly 2 levels. The first one is that I was expecting "open" gaming and I saw through the DM's veil that either we *magically* follow his lead (he wants us to be 100% free so no railroad) and once I've realized that and faced the game with a new axis (the gamist one ie. Where's the challenge that I can take it?) it still did not work because of the sim emphasis that crept in. So I came with the conclusion that the plots are flawed by design due to a desire to address many styles of play at the same time that are incompatible. Anyway, I never intended to adress MY issues with MY current gaming experience but rather tell what, from my point of view, may lead to incoherent open ended gaming. (in other words not fun open gaming).I must point out at this point that I do not pretend to understand all the Forge mumbo jumbo neither does I think I understand how a gamists open game should be run. I'm just trying to point out that the aforementionned suggested "open gaming" by you barsoomcore would not adress my expectation of "open gaming". I'm not saying I wouldn't find them fun. I'm just saying that to find them fun, I would have to approach them from a certain way that exclude my personnal definition of "open gaming". Wow I think we're getting somewhere fast here!I wanted to keep it general and failed miserably. But I think my point remains. Focusing on "openness" rather than having it as a feature requires (IMHO) a narrativist agenda.I'm saying that the way the DM prepares implies that the "prepared turns of event" WILL be encountered. An example: A NPC come up to a PC and say "X" where X prompt a choice from the player because that's what he expect to do during the game. Therefore your blue room example will not be addressed because it's not an encounter that the DM should prepare for such a game. And if ever a player says "I open the door to see the color of the room" if it's not prepared, it's irrelevant. That's texture. On the fly, the DM says "hum.... It's... hum... Blue!" Then it's recorded on paper that the room was decided to be blue and so should remain as such for sake of credibility. What is relevant and to be prepared by the DM is why the room is there and how does the presence of that room generate opportunities for the players to make choices (And I'll even further extend the definition of "significant" further away from "inner conflicts".) So to wrap it up, from your point of view a room or NPC is there "hopefully" to provide adventure but they are also there because it makes sense in a sorta "inner imagined universe logic". From my "different type of game" point of view, the NPC is there to prompt choice from the players. And the imagined universe makes sense afterwards, not before.I assume you mean "What would you say if you DM'ed your proposed way to play?". Well, in such a play style, never will a player say such a thing. They will be there on purpose right from the start. So the question will be more precise than that. Always.Let's also assume it's the very first game play session and the start of the campaign. It is assumed there is an agreement on the purpose of the presence of the PCs. The "introduction" to the game is done "So you guys met (as decided during character creation) and now are at this town to address what you where to address (let's suppose it was to investigate a murder that may very well be linked to the backgrounds of the characters). The question will then be "I ask around about the murder" And it may be even more precise than that "I try to find out who's in charge of the murder investigation". Now you'll tell me that you would need to prepare ahead of time who's in charge in case they ask or prepare the familiy of the victims, witnesses, etc. Yes. During preparation, you will plot (pun unintended) a web of "contact" among the citizens and leave out the irrelevant ones (they can be improvised on the spot and don't need stats). Once this web is plotted, you will determine what in the relation between these characters helps or hinder the players to reach their goal and more importantly how each encounter with these characters prompt "choices". There should be conflict. It may be inner or not, but the charcters must be built in order to be involved/motivated to face the choices. If I stick to my example of inner conflicts, the PCs may discover that The PCs themselves are responsible for it either because of, let's suppose amnesia. The "amnesia" thing (as overdone as it may be <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) was introduced by the players during character creation and it must generate "conflict". This is what will get the story going and "force" the players to follow a path the DM can efficiently predict without railroading them.I'll admit it might be considered as "built-in" railroading but for which the outcome is unpredictable because there never is an obvious choice to make. And at each "choice" stage, the outcome is unpredictable, therefore you can't prepare too much ahead because you would have too many "plot lines" to draw. From that diagramatic point of view, I'll also agree that there's no distinction between your way and my way. The distinction comes from the fact that in your way, the various plot lines are pre-written wereas in my way, they write themselves "live" during play because the encounters are designe to provoke it. It generally requires a mechanic that encourage that sort of play and we are now REALLY far from D&D 3E <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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