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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6264182" data-attributes="member: 22424">Perhaps unintentionally, you've just captured the thing that is wrong with so many modern published adventures. Because of the need of the story, players can't be allowed to choose, because if they are then they might make the 'wrong' choice. So, they get railroaded into the 'right' choice. (Here, it's done by auto-killing them if they go the 'wrong' way. In "King of the Trollhaunt Warrens", it's done simply by not giving any alternate paths - you just follow the sequence from one encounter to the next. Other adventures offer 'choices' that all end up in the same place. And many Paizo Adventure Path volumes, for all that I actually quite like them, tend not to offer a choice of which option to take, but rather which option to take first.)The better way to structure this is to provide a good story if the player flanks right (he gets the epic helicopter shootout and the comrade-death scene), and a different good story if the player flanks left (perhaps his own right wing collapses and his love interest is captured, or some such). That way you get a good story either way, but you still get meaningful choice.Of course, it's impossible for a video game (or published adventure) to support every possible choice. And therein lies the big advantage of the TT RPG - the presence of a human GM who is capable of reacting to player actions and dealing with the unexpected means that they can.(And, incidentally, published adventures can help the GM in this regard - there's no reason an adventure can't consider the most likely course of PC action and then discuss some likely PC deviations from that course. And, indeed, present the various NPC factions in a more-or-less standalone fashion so that if the PCs go well off the beaten track the GM is equipped to improvise. But, alas, all that takes space, and limits what a 64-page adventure can contain.)</blockquote>

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