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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8600227" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can't comment on Tomb of Annihilation. But in the case of LotR not every option funnels the protagonists to Mordor. The Hobbits went to Bree, and then to Rivendell, and (initially) hoped to stop there. The Fellowship went to Lothlorien by chance (they were forced into Moria, and then Gandalf's death which resulted, in part, from Pippin's foolishness, left Aragorn in charge; he led them to Lorien). Frodo tried to head off without Sam. Aragorn found himself obliged to travel the Paths of the Dead. Etc.I have a lot of travel in my RPGing - in Classic Traveller the PCs travel from world to world; in Prince Valiant, having started in Britain, the PCs are now in Cyprus; in Torchbearer, the first session started at the entrance to the "dungeon" and the second session finished in Stoink, to which the PCs journeyed after the dungeon had got the better of them; my PC in the Burning Wheel game I posted about upthread has travelled the Ulek-Pomarj border; in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/middle-earth-lotr-rpging-using-cortex-heroic.670013/" target="_blank">my Cortex+ LotR game</a> the PCs travelled to Angmar, and then to Ost-in-Edhil and entered Moria; etc.In the context of this discussion, about players embedding their PCs in the gameworld, and declaring actions based around their friends and family, there are a host of relevant questions: if a player declares I want to meet Gandalf at the Prancing Pony", how is that resolved? How do we resolve the journey? Assuming that the PCs get there, how do we know if Gandalf is there? And if he is, how do we know if he's able to provide the PCs with any advice or assistance?D&D has one way of resolving these questions: we resolve the travel via map-and-key plus wilderness encounter charts; the GM decides if Gandalf is there, perhaps informed by a random chart; the GM decides what help Gandalf might be able to offer.If someone is using those methods, and finding that they don't prompt players to embed their PCs into the fiction, maybe they might want to consider different ones? 25 years ago alternatives might have been radical; now they're well-known.And suppose the GM decides that Gandalf isn't there - the PCs will have to go and find Radagast at Rhosgobel. Is the journey from Bree across the mountains to Southern Mirkwood guaranteed to provide a more interesting play experience than whatever might have happened had the PCs encountered Gandalf?If the answer is Well, I've prepared the Radagast element of the adventure, so it's that or nothing!" again I say Fair enough, but you will get what you play for.</blockquote>

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