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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 9352893" data-attributes="member: 7028554">There's a same-y quality to a lot of published adventures that cuts across a lot of games and genres, where the PCs are basically stepping into an amusement park-style haunted house, complete with animatronic jump scares and maybe the illusion of free movement, but really there's just one path.I don't just mean railroading issues, which are sort of inherent to the whole project of writing and publishing an adventure. I mean that sense that the adventure has no bearing on the PCs, and that it's often quite the zany coincidence that they show up at just the right moment in some factional standoff. Sure, there's almost always some backstory to convince yourself as a player that you should care about (even though, again, you just showed up, you're just some guy/gal), but it's hard to shake the sense that the haunted house was powered down until the moment you set foot inside, and now the attraction springs to life.Then it's on to the usual, recurring business of solving the puzzle—poking around until you find the safest route through, or in an adventure where you can talk to anyone, finding out which faction/NPC wants what, who they're beefing with, basically immersing yourself in someone else's story, rather than developing your own. And then, by nature, when the adventure is over, you're generally on your way, ride's over, time for a change of scenery, maybe with some shadow of a lingering plot hook or thread, but it's time to hit the next haunted house attraction where no one knows your character and everything is in a state of suspended animation until you show up.I know there are lots of exceptions, and that some published adventures are more adaptable—or simply better written—than others. And if you're playing a full-on investigation game, working without any sort of published material can be hard to the point of impossible. But the default qualities of most published adventures, imo, kind of shine a light on how boring and repetitive RPGs can be when everything is scripted, and the GM's sole job becomes punishing you for doing the "dumb" thing, and rewarding you for the "smart" thing. Meanwhile, great narratives in other mediums don't care about what's dumb, smart, incorrect, or correct, just what's most interesting.</blockquote>

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