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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8010623" data-attributes="member: 42582">You're not disagreeing. I said the same thing!I went further and said that in paradigmatically maps-and-notes-based play (ie classic D&D, OSR-ish RPGIng) I don't even think the idea of "railroading" is really apposite. The flaws of those games are boring dungeons, killer dungeons, Monty Haul dungeons etc.In a different sort of RPGIng maps don't have to be railroading either - in my Classic Traveller game I used floorpans of the Annic Nova when <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/classic-traveller-actual-play-annic-nova-meets-alien.669484/" target="_blank">I adapted that old module to run a Alien-type scenario</a>. That wasn't a railroad because the players' didn't have goals about what they would find in the vessel or how to make it through the vessel. So the particular geographic layout was essentially neutral vis-a-vis the players' goals.But in examples like entering the castle or making it into the tower via the catacombs or finding one's way out of the dungeon after being teleported away by a crypt thing then the geography is fundamental to the players' goals. And at that point it absolutely can give rise to railroading.The same thing becomes true in relation to NPCs and NPC reactions. Deciding in advance that the NPC likes donuts and doesn't drink wine seems like most of the time it will be harmless: if the players want their PCs to get on the NPC's good side by giving a gift, they're going to have to take a stab or ask a friend of the NPC what s/he likes. Provided it doesn't become too tedious that all seems like harmless, maybe even fun, colour.But if one of the PCs is a baker, or is a vintner, then the GM's choice there takes on a whole new significance and runs a very signficiant risk of being a railroad, or a shutdown of that PC, or something similar in that neighbourhood. Because the baker PC presumably uses the provision of baked goods to make friends; likewise the vintner PC presuably likes to engage others with his/her love of fine wines.In saying all this I thik I'm mostly just elaborating on what [USER=6785785]@hawkeyefan[/USER] has been saying. But I think I'm also adding a gloss that we can't say, in the abstract, that some techncque (eg maps-and-notes) is or isn't railroading. It depends on the particular context of play. But I think we can say that some techniques are not well-suited to some fairly common approaches to play: eg NPC-as-puzzle (ie the analogue of maps-and-notes in social resolution) may not be well-suited to a game that wants vibraint, verisimilitudinous, rich and engaging social encounters. With the OP as Exhibit A as to why.Well I don't know much about how you run D&D because I don't think I've seen you post much actual play.When I think of maps-and-notes I think paradigmatically of Keep on the Borderlands, or Steading of the Hil Giant Chief, or the 4e module Thunderspire Labyrinth. All these modules invite action declarations like "We walk 60' down the corridor."As I said in the post you quoted and have reiterated, I don't think there is any necessary tension between maps-and-notes and finding out what happens, but there can be. I've explained there and reiterated just above what the sources of tension can be. I think we see them at work in the OP.To finish this post: if your maps and notes are not to resolve action declarations, what are they for? I can tell you what mine are fore - eg as in the example of the Annic Nova. They're to support framing. The same thing happened when we played Wuthering Heights: we needed to know how long it would take to carry a body from Soho to the Thames and so I Googled up a map of London. From that we could get a time range, which then interacted with the rule that a ghost (ie the ghost of the PC's body which was to be dumped in the Thames) manifests a certain number of minutes after death.But I know from this and other threads that [USER=29398]@Lanefan[/USER] and [USER=23751]@Maxperson[/USER] are using maps-and-notes to resolve action declarations. This comes through absolutely clearly in the most recent discussion of the castle to be entered.What do you use maps and notes for?</blockquote>

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