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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5297801" data-attributes="member: 42582">Nameless1 has said a lot of sensible stuff in response to this. But I'll add a bit.Suppose that a player, in designing his mage PC, specifies as part of his backstory that (i) he has a mentor, (ii) that that mentor lives in a tree in a forest, and (iii) that the reason for this is that the mentor is hiding from shadowy enemies who are trying to hunt him down. (Shades of Obi-Wan Kenobi.)Suppose, then, that I, as GM, start an encounter this way: The PCs are all sitting in the village, having returned home from a bit of orcslaying. Suddenly the wizard PC sees his mentor's raven familiar, covered in blood, flying towards him. (Shades of the Wizard of Earthsea. No one said that situation-based RPG play has to be great or original literature.)In any group I've ever gamed with, the player of that wizard will infer that his PC's mentor is in trouble, and will try and find out about it - whether by going to the tree, or talking to the familiar, or using a magic ritual, or whatever. Where is the railroad? I can't see one. I as GM have not determined that anyone has to go through anything. I've responded to a hook that the player presented to me in his character build. He has, in effect, determined that I as GM provide him with something - namely, an attack upon his mentor to which his PC has to respond. Although there is no railroad, the amount of preparation I have to engage in is nevertheless reasonably slight - I need to know something about who attacked the mentor, and why, and something about what the wizard will learn is he uses magic or talks to the familiar, and that's about it. There's always a chance that things will take a different direction, but to me at least this looks nothing like sandboxing.Like I said upthread, I suspect the way I play is a bit more traditional than you. I still use geographic maps, for example (but using skill challenges to resolve movement across them makes it play more like an indie game and less like Traveller or 1st ed AD&D).I also still play within a traditional ongoing 1st to 30th campaign framework, which means the pace of story evolution is much slower than it would tend to be in an indie game.Which is to say, the situations in my game overall are probably not as tight as in yours.But that to one side, I agree entirely with what you're saying. My players, when they build their PCs, locate them in the gameworld by reference to communities, and/or religions, and/or mentors, etc. And the play is based on me setting up situations that engage the players by reference to those relationships. Often not in any very sophisticated fashion - if several players are from a village that was destroyed by goblins, for example, then they're likely to respond when they come across a homestead under attack by goblins - or a paladin of the Raven Queen is likely to investigate cursed souls who can't escape to the Shadowfell - but in my experience you don't need much more than a few simple relationships intersecting to produce an overall situation that is quite complex and engaging for both players and GM. Especially if you play in a party-focused game, and some of the intersections play on, or generate, tensions within the party.As for encounters that are a surprise, definitely yes. In my experience, the surprises occur not at the stage of "what is an encounter" - because these are built based on the evolving PC hooks - but rather in the context of encounter resolution. Like I said in the previous paragraph, the paladin of the Raven Queen can be predicted to take an interest in the cursed souls. But will he blast them or talk to them? The PCs on a mission to rescue villagers from slavery aren't just going to ignore the duergar slavers, but will they fight them or talk to them? (In my game they talked to them, and arranged to purchase the slaves back at close to cost price. As a result they now have to meet the duergar in a neutral city to make the exchange.) What will the mage who hates goblinoids do with the hobgoblin raiders whom he's knocked unconscious when they attacked the village? (In my game he beheaded them all, to the horror of his fellow PCs but the delight of the villagers.)To me, this is almost the mirror image of a traditional AD&D or Basic D&D game, where the question of "what is an encounter" is up for grabs - because the PCs may or may not show any interest in any particular room, or cavern, or rumour, or treasure map - but the question of "how will it be resolved" is very often known in advance, because the reward system and the alignment system dicate so much of the answer to those questions.</blockquote>

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