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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7053380" data-attributes="member: 42582">Definitely this.The session I talked about in the OP opened with the PCs and the NPC mage whose tower they were in bursting into the bedroom just as the assassin decapited the unconscious, recuperating mage. This was established from the close of the previous session.So we all knew that the session would, in some fashion, involve this confrontation in the tower. But the stuff that actually happened: the collecting of the blood; the escape of the two PCs from the tower, carrying the decapitated body and also the body of the unconscious assassin (who collapsed from the strain of trying to cast a spell to escape); the apprehension of the PCs by the night watch as they fled across town with their bodies and blood; the details of their (unsuccessful) attempts to talk their way out of that apprehension ("It's OK! I've got the head!"); none of these was known or even knowable before we actually played the game.Next session I expect we will learn some things, like what happens to the bodies, the head and the blood. But no doubt new things will happen which take the game in a direction that was not known, and not knowable. (By definition, as it were, I can't usefully speculate about them in advavnce.)Well this is pretty much the crux of it, isn't it?If the only two ways to do RPGing were sandbox or railroad, then what you say would be correct. But they're not. We know they're not because we have actual, concrete examples of RPGs that are intended to be played in neither of those ways. I have further additional evidence, in that I've actually GMed RPGs (both the "modern" ones I just alluded to, and more "trad" ones drifted) in ways that are neither sandbox nor illusion/force/railroading, and the result has been cool (if cliched) story.(The possible exception being denouement. Like other forms of serial fiction, I tend to find episodic RPGs a bit light in the denouement department. I think you have to depart more radically from traditional models than I have ever done to get that. I have done denouement via campaign-wrap-up-narration, having been inspired by the Nicotine Girls idea of the PC getting her dream, but that's not really RPGing - it's free storytelling between GM and players.)To elaborate: if we unpack your examples, we see an implicit assumption that "by the book" with dice in full view means poor (or no) dramatic pacing, dead ends and random protagonist death. But none of thes assumptions need hold true. Consider the dramatic pacing inherent in a game like MHRP or 4e, with their scene-based resolution and in the first case the Doom Pool, in the second the "comeback" narrative ensured by the combat mechanics. Consider "fail forward" resolution in the context of "say 'yes' or roll the dice"-type approaches to calling for checks; consider various devices, from fate points to stake-setting practices, for modulating the risk of PC death and correlating it with dramatic stakes.Again, this seems to assume that all systems are, more-or-less, process sim, modelling the ingame causal processes ("truth") and hence that to get story (ie "fiction") we need the GM to use force at various points to suspend or override the mechanics.But that apparent premise about system is just false. It's now 25 years since the first publication of Over the Edge, and nearly 35 years since the James Bond game was published.Which takes me back to . . .A lot of discussion about railroading and the like focuses on what the GM will or will not permit in terms of action declarations. But that's to focus on only one small part of the overall picture, which I tried to get at upthread with my reference to the negation of player choices.If the stuff a player has to say is going to matter, then it helps if there are devices that support that: eg mechanics that allows players to try harder when the stuff that really matters is at stake; and principles around the finality of results, such that if a player succeeds on some check, the GM is not just at liberty to undo that outcome by free narration, or to introduce into the shared fiction some other story element that defeats the player's success.(On the issue of trying harder/I]: one reason wizards are so popular among experienced players of classic D&D is not just their power, but the fact that they have a built-in mechanic that allows the player to try harder - by using spells, which are handily scaled in a way that roughly correlates difficulty of using to significance of impact on the ingame situation. If not much is at stake, a 1st level magic-user doesn't cast at all, and a high level one uses a low level spell or a charge from a wand. If the stakes are high, however, then the 1st level MU unleashes the Sleep spell, or Charm Person, or similar; and the high level one lets fly with 10 dice fireballs, Death Spells and the like. A big part of what distinguishes 4e from other versions of D&D is that all PCs have mechanics that enable the player to try harder when the stakes are higher.)</blockquote>

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