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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5403582" data-attributes="member: 4937">I use "plot" to mean, "Those actions which have been taken by the NPC's in the past, together with the goals and schemes that they have for the future."  "Plot" to me refers to that first section of my prep - what has happened or has been happening before the PC's began interacting with these NPC's.  It's a description of past events, ultimate goals, and steps that they are most likely to take from here.   To me its almost synonymous with "Background", and its the part of my preperation that most distinguishes a story based adventure from a location based adventure.   When prepping a location like a wilderness or a cavern complex, I'll probably pay very little attention to the current inhabitants recent history.   When prepping a story based adventure I'll probably spend a couple of pages outlining the story thus far and into which the PC's will be inserted by 'chance events'.  To me, in an RPG, the term 'plot' even more greatly emphasises its primary sense of "a secret plan or scheme to accomplish some purpose, esp. a hostile, unlawful, or evil purpose: a plot to overthrow the government." alongside that of its secondary literary sense of, "the plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story." so that the word has a particularly attractive double meaning.From the plot I can get some vague idea of how future events will unfold, but I generally don't script out alot of future events and certainly not more than a session in advance.  Too much can occur in a session that invalidates any far off event.   However, I can generally plan "plots" out retrospectively based on what the PC's have been doing, and what the NPC must have been doing (in my estimation of course) based on what the NPC could have known, accomplished, and intends to do.   So each week I might arrive with a new "plot" that summarizes what else has been going on in the world 'offstage' as it were, and how these events are likely to impact or eventually come to the attention of the PC's.  The summation of these plots and the events that occur in the game is the campaign's story."Railroading" refers to the practice of using illusionism to achieve particularly desirable plot, for example, insuring the success of the players when failure would not be deemed desirable or in insuring the failure of the players (and hense the success of 'the plot' in both senses of the word) when failure is not deemed dramatically desirable or insuring that a series of events occurs in what is deemed a dramaticly desirable order or simply for more pragmatic reasons such as insuring that the majority of the time the players stay somewhere in the area the DM has had time to sufficiently prepare and detail.  Some DMs are of course better at it than others, some need to rely on it less than others by virtue of better prep, and others use a lighter hand than others.  But I've yet to see the DM that doesn't use some techniques that amount to railroading.</blockquote>

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