NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5414916" data-attributes="member: 80487">I don't understand your question. Please try asking it in another way.Riiiiiight ... We're level 9 to 14, bubelah; we can easily come up with other alternatives ... and in a campaign, being able to act on those is basic to the game. In a tournament or similar scenario, that back-story is just "fluff"; of course we are going to do whatever the scenario is!Why do you make a big deal of GDQ "not being considered a railroad"? I don't consider it a railroad because it's not a railroad in my experience! If there is some quality of "adventure paths" that is of railroad nature, then you're talking about something that has nothing to do with what "classic gaming fans" -- or whatever you called us -- actually dig, or why we presumably don't dig some things you call "adventure paths". You are just arbitrarily conflating different things.It was what it was, and nobody ever claimed that it did not "exclude a non-trivial portion" of other instances of playing the game. For heaven's sake, I very recently posted in this very thread a quote to that effect from the foreword written in November of 1973. Naturally the denotation excludes things other than what it denotes; that is what makes it useful in communication!When it became confusing, because people were calling utterly different things "D&D campaigns" (with a pretty narrow set of assumptions, too), we used the term "sandbox" instead for the old denotation.What I'm saying is that you may be -- now, I will say probably are -- confusing different things.In that post, I gave quite a number of illustrations, so maybe you could try reading it again.For now, suffice that there are different phenomena:(A) There is a scenario that is, "you are going to attack the hill giants". That's the game, one of sharply limited scope.(B) There is a linear sequence of scenarios. In the tournament, the winners are definitely going on to play the next round, and the losers are not, regardless of any other considerations. There is no real causality to it other than that; any "in the imagined world" rationale is just tacked on (and nifty when it turns out to be at least plausible).(C) There is the plot-coherent linear sequence of scenarios, such as the Dragonlance Saga. In this, the DM is supposed to rig things so that there is apparent causality and continuity to the sequence -- but not to let it get aborted. The players are not allowed to "fail" to go through scenarios 1,2,3 ... 11, 12, 13 (or whatever).(D) There is the campaign as described by Gygax, Arneson and others, in keeping with prior art and usage in the wargames hobby. In this, the steading, glacial rift, hall, deep fastnesses of the drow and the kuo-toa people, and so on, are all parts of an encompassing environment. Players decide for themselves where to go and what to do, and when.</blockquote>

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