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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 5186496" data-attributes="member: 54846">I do want to reply to Weem and Barastrondo's posts, because they are getting at what I'm trying to say. But first I want to address a big misconception I think is still hanging around.Because it's not a railroad. A railroad presumes certain responses. Let me try to explain this one last time, because some people are still assuming I'm talking about response trees and pre-scripted choices/solutions. I poorly presented my initial OP.Boiling it down to its essence, there are two things involved with what I'm talking about, the Question and the Answer. The Question could be anything. Basically "What do you do to get your goal?" "Here's an obstacle. How do you overcome it?" "Here's a moral situation. What do you do?" The Answer is the players' response. It's their decision and their action to the Question. It could be anything. The Answer is not scripted; the players could come up with a completely unique solution, and that is still an Answer to the Question. There is no "failure" or "success" in the Answer they choose (they could fail in their attempt, but their decision to make the attempt in the first place isn't a failure). So far, when I say "How do you make the Question and Answer meaningful to the players", the response has been "Make the Answer have consequences". Which I'm not discounting. Of course it needs consequences.But what about the Question? Because if the PCs do not attach any sort of meaning to the Question, then even if the Answer has consequences, it does not have as much meaning as if the Question and the Answer both had meaning. Case in point, "An orphan stops you on the street and begs for a coin." To most players I would presume this is not a meaningful decision to give the kid a coin or not. The Answer though could have meaning: the kid could be a prince posing as a pauper, and reward the PCs. It could be a trick. It could later turn out that it was a test by a God of humility or generosity, or that the PCs run into the orphan later on and the orphan remembers the PCs. Those are consequences to the PC's actions. But the PC didn't care about the Question at all. In some cases the Question is not tied to goals. It could be something like the Orphan situation - it's not Related to the Plot, it's purely a Question that would reflect on an individual's moral, ethical, or in essence who they are as a character. And it certainly can have consequences. If the PCs are rulers, and they are presented with the King Solomon "Split the baby in half" situation, the PCs answer could have consequences of how the public views them as a ruler, even if that doesn't impact any plot going on. But the question of the Baby must be given meaning so that it matters and is taken seriously by the players. What I want to talk about is how do you come up with Questions, and how do you get the players to care about those Questions? How do you get the players to care about them? Where do you put them? Do you just use those related to Goals, or should you use the non-goal, moral/RP ones? Where do you put them? How do you tie them into your adventures successfully?And then we get to the Answer, and how you make those consequences matter, and you bring them up. Should non-goal related Answers cross paths with Plot or effect the PC's Goals, or should they stay RP/attitude wise? How much impact should a consequence have, Goal or non-Goal oriented? So far, some have suggested that to make the Question meaningful, you have to present Answers that have consequences. So that eventually, when players learn that an Answer has consequences, then they will pay more attention to the Question. But I would assume that some Questions should be able to have meaning before you have to condition your players to pay attention to the Questions.</blockquote>

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