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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7061212" data-attributes="member: 42582">With respect to the first of the two quoted passags: here seems to be some confusion here.I replied to this somewhere upthread - the issue with "saying 'yes'" rather than calling for die roll, in the context of looking for a vessel, is not to do with railroading. In fact, in the OP I try to articulate why I think that setting a DC, rather than just "saying 'yes'", is not railroading.The reason for calling for a dice roll is drama and pacing. As I've already posted a couple of times (in reply to you, and to [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]), by setting even low DCs at key moments a certain sort of tone is established (grittiness); over the life of the game it allows for moments of failure (perhaps black comedy) even when the risk of failure is low; it reinforces a certain "ritual" element to the game (this matters, and we're going to stop in play and acknowledge that, by setting a DC and calling for a check and picking up the dice); etc.This relates to the second of the quoted passages: what makes this a moment that is worth emphasising in the course of play is because the PC - having lost the opportunity to take the living mage to his dark naga master - has determined to take the blood instead. So the availability of a vessel is the "crunch" moment for that goal.See my reply above to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] for "player reframing".Divination and similar abilities: if these are adjudicated in the traditional way, they require the GM to already have backstory authored (so that s/he can report it to the player using the divination magic). This tends to push againt generating backstory as part of framing and narrating consequences. (In terms of the history of the game, this sort of divination is a legacy as a game aimed at "beating the dungeon" - [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s "free kriegspiel".)Mechanics that drag attention away from the action, and push towards an ingame-causal-logic-driven continuous narration, can include rest and healing mechanics; resource mechanics; etc. If a PC needs to spend X ingame days or weeks healing, then how is the GM going to go to the action? If the archer PC runs out of arrows, X miles from town, how is the GM going to go to the action?There are alternative approaches: divination can be handled like the old UA Portent spell, where the player rolls a die to see if the omens are good or bad - and so the casting of the spell shapes the narration of the backstory, rather than vice versa - but that is often controversial. Likewise one can use somewhat abstract resource attrition and resource recovery mechancis (BW has these) but D&D doesn't tend to have these. (Rather, it tends to use magic and magic items - LTH, Quiver of Ehlonna, etc.)Well, that is a device for doing it - a method or system.The additional rule that BW adds (for one of its systems, around Belief) is that the GM is entitled to delay a change by a player if s/he thinks that the player is trying to duck a difficult choice by rewriting the Belief. The player has to resolve the situation with the existing Belief before being allowed to change it. It's an anti-squib rule.To the extent that bounded accuracy tends to make PC build and player resource expenditure less important, because they get swamped by the die roll, it can potentially reduce the responsive of resolution to player choice and commitment.I'm not saying it's an insuperable obstacle. But I don't think that it supports player-driven play. As I've posted a couple of times, I think the use of inspiration and hence having advantage as a player resource might be enough of a "solution" to the issue, because spending inspiration to gain advantge is a player resource choice that will tend to dominate over the vagaries of the dice.If the main way to get XP is fighting monsters, but one wants the game to be all about following the players' leads into action that engages their PCs' beliefs, ideals, goals, etc, then I think a tension in player motivation can emerge pretty easily.I'm not assuming anything.I've stated the conditions under which I would regard a game as railroad-y: if at (1) [ie framing] and/or at (3) [ie resolution], the GM introduces fiction in accordance with his/her priorities and/or pre-authored conception of the situation.Of course those are not the only ways one might do (1) and (3). I've explained how I approach it; I've also sketched my conception of how classic dungeon-crawling or Traveller-style world discovery can approach it. Neither of those is railroading as I conceive of it.Whether any other poster in this thread runs a game that is railroading in my sense is not something I'm in a position to know.</blockquote>

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