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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 3246545" data-attributes="member: 151">But that has nothing to do with the edition at all, which was Hussar's point.  Compare "White Plume Mountain" with "Flood Season", for example.  Both are large dungeons with multiple goals (retrieve weapons, wands) with multiple big challenges, both lack a single 'boss' (one never faces Keraptis).  Unlike WPM, Flood Season actually provides for the motivations of the villians and what they'll do if they realize that adventurers are in the complex....whereas WPM is more of an elaborate deathtrap from a taunting wizard.  An exercise to the reader would be to compare the differences between the original White Plume Mountain and the <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051207a" target="_blank">free Revised Edition from WotC</a> and it's associated web enhancement, "Outside the Mountain".  In many ways, that sums up the differences in presentation and narrative flow, right there.  I disagree entirely.  The examples given are classic examples of railroading.  If you choose to enhance the printed page, that's outside the scope of the module itself.  The players don't get into a situation where the slavers capture them...they are told purely as a matter of record that what has happened has happened, regardless of any input they might have.  If I start the module in media res and force motivations and choices on the players, that is railroading.  Whether or not that was necessarily a problem depended on the individual group.  One could easily argue that the beginning of the Tomb of Horrors is perfectly within the realm of accepted and expected player setup.  The issue was more relevant when you tell a player he's just suddenly lost all of his equipment and wealth, regardless of how powerful, paranoid, clever or well-defended he might have been prior to the start of the adventure.  In the context of an ongoing campaign, as opposed to a tournament (the source of many earlier modules), this comes across as ham-fisted and inelegant, at the least.I agree that in the context of an adventure, the players are moderately limited in their options...but compare and contrast an adventure like 'Speaker in Dreams' or 'The Standing Stones' (neither of which I actually think that highly of) where the players actually have a fair degree of freedom in the order they investigate the core mysteries.  SiD features a flowchart, and TSS features a timeline of sorts.  A greater emphasis on verisimilitude is present.A module like Tamoachan, one expects to walk in, possibly be trapped and have to fight your way out.  That's part of the biz.  But in one like "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil", the party expects that this won't happen every time they foray into the dungeon...in fact, throughout most of the Crater Ridge Mines, the players will swiftly notice the change in direct reaction to their continued assualts.The core dungeons haven't changed nearly so much as the framing of those dungeons, the expanded motivations provided around it and then audience to which it's offered.</blockquote>

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