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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7056782" data-attributes="member: 42582">For some definitions of "easier", maybe.Your account of the players needing a "Plan B" reinforces, to me at least, that essentially here we're talking about a puzzle. Attempted solution A failed, so we try solution B instead.But for some definitions of easier, not so much: if your overall goal, in character, is to redeem your brother from balrog posession; and then you discover that he was probably evil before he got possessed, so that evil cause possession rather than vice versa; then I don't think going on is especially easy. If you're immersed in your character - which the relevant player in my game certainly was/is - then that's actually pretty hard.Well, the sort of surprise you describe catches the players unawares and undermines or in some other undesired way reframes the experiences of the PCs. In the sort of approach to GMing, and to RPGing, that I am describing, that is a type of failure. The PC's intentions in action have not been realised. That is an appropriate consequence of failure. It's not just something for the GM to impose on the situation. No! No! No!I - the GM - did not know either. The likelihood of the brother having been evil all along was not established as an element of the fiction until I narrated the failure of the attempt to find the mace in the ruin.This is what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and I are trying to get at in talking about a game in which everyone, even the GM, plays to find out what happened.And this is why I have been asking [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] what exactly he takes the connection to be between prior planning and depth of the shared fiction. And why I reacted so strongly to your suggestion that a player-driven game, in which the GM does not adjudicate by reference to secret backstory, cannot involve surprises.Because my experience with this sort of example gives me the opinion that the sorts of connections or dependence the two of your are positing is not true as a general matter - although it may be the way, at some tables, that certain sorts of events are introduced into the fiction.Because this is moslty focusing on the content of the fiction, not on the way it is generated. But railroading is all about who generates content, and how. Which is why, merely from content, we can't tell.For instance, vis-a-vis the brother: for all we know, his conduct towards his brother (which up to that point had occurred only in backstory, and mostly involved teaching him magic) was motivated by evil. Maybe he was preparing his brother to be a worthy sacrifice to the balrog!I think I've already quoted <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1361" target="_blank">this passage from Paul Czege</a> in this thread:I frame the character into the middle of conflicts I think will push and pull in ways that are interesting to me and to the player. I keep NPC personalities somewhat unfixed in my mind, allowing me to retroactively justify their behaviors in support of this.If it turns out, in play, that the brother was evil all along, well that throws some new light on all his past dealings. But clearly those past dealings don't preclude him having been evil all along (because, if they did, then finding the cursed black arrows would not be a tenable failure, because it would contradict backstory that has already been established at the table).But the claim that this sort of thing can't be done unless the GM works it all out in advance is simply not true.Your example of the taxed townsfolk is another one where, until we know how that was established at the table, and what its significance is to the participants, we can't say anything about it from the point of view of GM authority, player influence over the shared fiction, railroading, etc.For instance, if the PCs return to town and the GM frames them into a scene of sullen townsfolk, with the idea in mind that the sullen-ness is due to raised taxes, is that railroading? If the adventure the PCs have just returned from is one in which they won a social conflict with the baron over the level of taxation, then probably yes - it's just fiating a failure over the top of the players' success.If the state of the village and the wellbeing of the villagers is something the players (via their PCs) have a clear commitment to, then it doesn't look like railroading but rather framing: it's setting up the situation with which, presumably, the PCs are going to engage. (By pushing the baron to lower taxes.)If the village is just somewhere the PCs are passing through, then it seems to be simply colour, and nothing of any significance is going to turn on it.I'm not sure what you mean by "valid" here - that just seems to be a marker of your preference.As for realism - it's realistic that the PCs not know everything. There's nothing realistic or unrealistic that the GM not know everything, as the GM doesn't exist within the fictional world and so has no ingame cognitive relationship to elements of that world.That's a different thing altogether. Speaking purely for myself, I find that Robin Laws gives good advice in this respect in Over the Edge: the game generally becomes more fun when the players are in on the secret even if their PCs are not.</blockquote>

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