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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2853028" data-attributes="member: 7240">But so is agreeing to play D&D instead of Burning Wheel. So is choosing to play a wizard and not a fighter. There are all kinds of things that channel player choices in a particular direction.When I set up a game, there is usually a quest, a big, world-altering quest in the premise. If people agree to play the game, they agree that achieving the quest's objective will be important to their character and something that will inform (as opposed to define) his priorities. I don't see this as any more of an imposition than setting what game system my campaign will be using or what the setting will be. In my view, a fundamental agreement on party objectives is no different than a fundamental agreement on the setting and the system.For me, setting, system and meta-structure are all one big decision. In the kinds of worlds I build, they mutually entail eachother. Well, given that you have read my post, I think it should be pretty clear to you that my games are anything but.No. It doesn't. That's the point I was making. Just because you can't figure out how to allow for free will and random events without harming your campaign's meta-plot is no reason for you to assert that doing so is impossible. My big problem with this thread is that people who have had trouble with railroading either as GMs or players are arguing that their experience is universal and absolute. Some of us can enhance story elements while simultaneously enhancing players' free will. Maybe instead of asserting that what we are doing is impossible, it might be worthwhile to examine how we are doing it.Yes. "I think Sauron should be overthrown," "I think the Holy Grail should be recovered," "I think the war should be stopped," "I think the Princess should be rescued," "I think the Ancient League should be restored," are the kinds of things I would like my players to agree on from the outset. If you want to define having an incredibly basic shared objective as an excessive limitation on free will, my gaming style is probably too authoritarian for you. But there are no preset scenes, no preset events, no Sense Motive checks that have to fail; this initial agreement is all I need to move forward. Whatever means the characters choose to achieve this general goal will profoundly shape the events that comprise the story. But the story will still be of the PCs' attempt to find the grail, stop the war, rescure the princess, restore the ancient league or whatever. They may succeed or fail; they may get sidetracked from their quest for a long time; they may succeed in their quest by means I could not possibly have predicted at the start of the campaign, all through the exercise of free will. No. It's not. Look at the many modules Gary has written in his 30+ year career and get back to me. What Gary is talking about in this quote are the events comprising the story. The events that comprise my stories are not predetermined or even predictable. How they fit together is only explicable in hindsight, as Gary suggests.You can only argue this if you relegate everything that does not involve rolling dice to the realm of "story." In my view, figuring out what the villain is doing and why he is doing it is part of the very essence of gaming; figuring out the big mystery in the world is an activity that is clearly both story and gaming. To argue that things have to be one or the other sets up the kind of unhelpful dichotemy that is leading to this debate.I never restrict my PCs' choices once there is a basic agreement on the campaign premise and setting. Even if they want to turn aside from their quest at the last minute, as happened in one of my games, I do nothing to curtail their choices.Well, as I am explaining, to assume that these constraints are a necessary feature of prioritizing story is incorrect. It is a clearly incorrect description of my games and those of friends of mine.So maybe this dichotemous reading is doing more damange by confusing issues and prevent creative solutions than it contributes in helping to understand, explain or anatomize play styles and campaigns.This doesn't really happen in my games. NPCs with secret and important knowledge can be identified and thoroughly interrogated but only a party that has completely figured out what is going on could possibly know all the right questions to ask. And if they know all the right questions, it's about time to wind down the campaign because the mystery is now gone and we're just in cleanup. I guess that's like (3) but your description of (3) implies that the additional complexity has to be added at the time of the interrogation and is not, as in the case of my games, built in from the very outset.Here you're just using "story-heavy" as a synonym for GMs limiting free will. It is very easy to argue against story-oriented games if that's your assumption. My point is that there does not need to be a positive correlation between an orientation towards story and a limitation on PCs' free will.My characters have scried-on the main villain, know what he looks like, know what kind of magic he is using and what people call him. But this information is of only limited utility because they haven't pieced together the whole puzzle. Making puzzles where there are shortcuts -- where complete understanding can be achieved from the outset is bad puzzle making. A puzzle has been improperly designed if there exists a wrong way to solve it. Whenever my players figure out what's really going on, that'll be time to wind the campaign down. If that happens too soon for a GM's liking he should just suck it up and get to work on a new and better campaign.In one city my characters reached, they did 8 episodes worth of work in one and a half. It was breathtaking and I was really impressed. And the story benefited from these events. They still vanquished the rulers of the Peaked City. To my surprise, they managed to do all this and, due to some good rolling on the part of an NPC, failed to get the part of the grail they had travelled there for. The point is that the parameters I had set for my story were in no way injured by the characters (a) cutting through all the intrigue and strangeness and attacking the main local bad guy and destroying his tower pretty much immediately (b) failing to get the portion of the grail I had anticipated them getting from the bad guy. Did this harm my grail quest metaplot? Not one iota. It just filled in more details and more sharply defined the situations they would face in future.But humans are smarter than Pentium chips so hopefully we need not be constrained by this unhelpful zero-sum idea of the relationhip between story and game.My problem with what you are saying here is that you are making the false assumption that to be story-focused is identical with requiring a preset sequence of events to take place. I understand that this is the received wisdom in our hobby. But I don't believe it is the case. I do not believe we are dealing with a zero-sum equation. For goodness sake, look at Ron Edwards' concept of "story now." Now that's not a theory of story I have much interest in running but I know how it works. And it is premised on the idea that games are story-focused to the extent to which you create mechanics to allow players other than the GM to operate directly on story unmediated or only partly mediated by their own character. By defining "story" as railroading or something close to it, rather than looking at all the ways people have developed (be it my way of working or The Forge's way of working) for enhancing story while simultaneously enhancing PC free will, you are railroading the debate in an unhelpful direction. There are lots of ways to define and prioritize story that only enhance the "game" aspects of the game. Let's examine what those are and how they work rather than seeking to refute their existence."Story heavy" <> railroading. Now, if you want to talk the original poster into making this a poll about railroading, you can probably get the discussion you want. But, at the moment, "story" is defined in a sufficiently nebulous fashion that these assertions are really unhelpful.RPGs are storytelling games we play; the idea that game and story are things that exist in opposition to eachother has repeatedly hurt out hobby.That's why I like the Holy Grail as a story inspiration. It's built to withstand this and kind of expects it.There's no such thing as the main villain being killed too early. That's a design flaw in a particular game, not an inherent flaw.My games are full of clues. I assume 90% of them will be overlooked. (My current group is overlooking about 85% and so are doing awesome). The problem is games with few clues requiring that over half of the clues must be found. But that's a general problem with defining story as being equal to requiring a predetermined set of events to unfold in a specific order.How is that a problem. One of the favourite NPCs in one of my campaigns was the spirit of a farmed salmon in a grocery store that ended up in a PC's body. What makes a character inappropriate? Either they are possible in the world and, thereby, an informative extension of it. Or they're not, in which case, it's the GM's fault that they exist at all.No. A bad, inflexible story structure says another. A good, flexible story structure says, "Oh goody! What does that change?"Your complaint seems not to be against a thing but against it being done badly, perhaps because you have never seen it done well.You're sort of ignoring a key constraint you would characterize as "story" here: the characters are all adventuring together. How is that less of a constraint than them sharing an objective or worldview? In my view, imposing a shared objective, background or worldview (or set thereof) on characters actually erases the nasty question of what they're all doing together. I would certainly feel the options, and indeed the coherence of my character would be tested by the requirement that I have to always adventure with a Lawful Evil Cha 3 Thri-Kreen. I'll choose wanting to rescue the princess over having to adventure with that guy any day as the option less likely to tax my suspension of disbelief.I've never heard of alignment as being born of "story"; alignment is just a crappy cluster of rules that need to be expunged from the game.</blockquote>

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