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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 7728211" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!Ok, perhaps the computer RPG comparison is/was a bit weak...maybe. A bit. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I think a cinema/movies comparison is equally as weak. The reason I say this, is that in a movie, the "movie" is written first. The characters are developed. The scenes are meticulously laid out. In a TTRPG, this isn't...or shouldn't be...the case. It's like when I hear people trying to justify a DM keeping PC's alive because otherwise the story "gets messed up". Arguments like "Han has to live because he saves Luke's bacon when Darth Vader has him in his sights in the death star trench"...not realizing that if Han died earlier on (or was otherwise 'not there'), then something else would have taken his place as the deus ex machina pawn. It would have been another x-wing pilot, or maybe a random piece of debris acts as a shield just in the nick of time, or something else...or Luke dies. In that case, the story doesn't "end", it would have just been completely different. (Or, in the case of a Star Wars D6 campaign we never got to start, I had a write up wherein Luke misses and the death star destroys yavin IV; the campaign premise is that the Rebels have been almost completely destroyed and it is up to the PC's to save the galaxy from the tyranny of the Empire; there is no Luke, there is no Han, there is no Leia).The point is that a movie (or novel, or virtually any other form of storytelling) is "pre-determined". With TTRPG's, the unique thing about them is that the story is NOT pre-determined. It unfolds naturally, organically, and yes, randomly, based on the players choices, the DM's reactions, and the results of the die rolls.If an adventure is written like a story, IMHO, it isn't a 'true' TTRPG adventure in the sense that the story is already determined and the only thing to find out is how the PC's make that story happen. If, however, an adventure is written the way I write them (my "site based" method), the overall story is the loose guideline, but the actual story is almost entierly decided on by the players choices, my reactions, and the results that come up on the dice.Lastly, imho, the most successful adventures are the ones that have been talked about and played and re-played over and over. The more "old skool" adventures fit this definition (and are closer to my site based style). You are always hearing DM's talking about how they played The Village of Homlet, The Forbidden City, Keep on the Borderlands, White Plume Mountain, etc...often how they played it again. I don't think I've ever heard of someone "re-playing" Out of the Abyss, The Savage Tide, Second Darkness, etc unless it was never finished in the first place. This attests that writing a TTRPG adventure with a more "loop based" or "movie-style" is FAR less effective at creating unique, lasting, and re-playable "site based" adventures of old.^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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