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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7086099" data-attributes="member: 16814">I don't know that, though, because, as seems to be your wont, instead of providing clearly articulated points, you've provided play examples from your own games where there's 'always more to the story' than what you've chosen to present.  So, I can't tell if the Advisor/tapestry story actually does or does not have secret backstory as part of the resolution of any challenges because all you did was present the secret backstory, not the challenges.  This differs from your other examples because those present the added fiction as a direct consequence of failure, and that's what I've been assuming you do, but the Advisor story reads and seems entirely different.  As I read it, the Advisor conflict is set as (and here I feel I have to delve into overly precise language to avoid a pedantic response) the DM, to support the authored goals of the Advisor NPC, is authoring fiction that establishes the entire premise of the conflict.  This premise isn't just framing, as you claim, because it persists through multiple conflicts -- whatever the players did in regards to the goblin attack gave them information about yellow robed wizards; whatever the players did in the tunnel under the fortress, they found more yellow wizard information; this all fed into the pinnacle scene described of trying to force the Advisor (the yellow robed wizard, I'm assuming) to out himself.  The 'framing' here, the secret information you determined in advance, actually does impact the result of the challenges because it doesn't matter what the result of the challenge is, the next breadcrumb drops.  This is exactly the kind of play you are decrying as railroading, and I'm not seen any real difference in kind between your presentation of 'framing' and what Lanefan describes as his method.The problem with this assumption, of course, is that I fully expect the response to be some additional detail not originally presented will clearly show something different.  This, again, is my issue with the presentation of play examples from personal games for discussion:  they're never complete and the presenter is guaranteed to take offense to any sharp questioning (or sometimes any questioning at all).</blockquote>

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