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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 4842172" data-attributes="member: 3192">A module must be completed before play.  It's an unknown to what will or will not affect gameplay before the players directly interact with any particular element.  So every relevant element must be available to inform the DM as he responds to the players.  It doesn't matter if any particular element (person, place, thing, knowledge, etc.) is interacted with directly or indirectly when it comes to maintaining a fixed challenge.  For example, a dungeon room may switch ownership a dozen times before the players finally learn of its existence.  That doesn't mean its' existence didn't inform the game indirectly prior to their arrival.  Heck, they may never even arrive to explore it.  Smart players may have already figured out its existence, size, shape, contents, previous history, etc.  All of these things affect the game and can be learned without ever entering the room.  Maybe the challenge is not to enter the room at all?This sounds like what campaign settings are for.  They give the situation a broader context both spatially and in many other respects.  Just like playing a wargame on an army base changes slightly if the setting is present day Bosnia rather than Indo-china in 1944, a RPG module is changed slightly too by the setting it is in.  But the roleplayng challenge is still primarily about the module. So yes, if the players decide to quit a module during a one-shot and that's all the DM has prepped, that particular game is over. I don't think this is unusual as almost every RPG is designed this same way.  Elements that aren't designed are by definition irrelevant to play.  So they were either never expected to be used to succeed or they cannot be used to do so.  I think this is why RPGs tend to default to reality, so answers can be given honestly and objectively.Storygames are roleplaying games, they just don't relate to the vast majority of games created and played in the hobby.  They use a different definition of roleplaying and I would never suspect them of being guessing games or using that design.  They are primarily like games of Catch or Look What I Can Do!  They aren't games in the sense that players need certain skills to win.  This is getting award points in RPGs.  I do understand many storygames incorprate many other non-role-related games exterior to their roleplaying.  And, yeah, those games require some degree of skill and have measures of success or failure.  But the playing of storygames in general are a whole different category of game and game design than what the roleplaying hobby is.  Just looking at them makes this pretty obvious.  I've played a few too and it seemed pretty clear each time success, "playing smart" as some call it, wasn't relevant to playing the game.Do you think everyone wasn't roleplaying before White Wolf came along and made up storyteller games?  Or that RPGs in the 70's and 80's were simply misnamed?  Honestly, guessing and performing proper behavior is the very definition of roleplaying.  At least of the two definition used in the real world outside the hobby.  So I don't believe "RPGs before were not about roleplaying" or D&D before 4E was "objectively bad game design" because all those games use a very different definition of roleplaying than the one storygames use.  As this is a D&D board, I think most players here would prefer a game of Zork to round robin campfire tales.</blockquote>

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