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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5125709" data-attributes="member: 80487">I am not sure it means the same thing as what I meant, and "story-based games" can cover a lot of territory if it doesn't mean "railroads".I am sure that I did not mean "a step in design". When I wrote of "a design that asks the question", I meant it as in that is what the final textual product effectively does, just as (from what I have read and played) recent WotC scenarios in particular work on the basis of "and then the PCs fight these bad guys in this place" (or whatever)."There are some guys, and they're bad, and they're (at least sometimes) in this place, and they will fight for X or against Y." That does not presume any particular course of action on the players' part.There can even be sequences of events, some of them repeated routines and others going from stage to stage of an NPC's plan -- if the players do not interfere with them.(In a campaign matching the original advice that "the referee to player ratio should be 1:20 or thereabouts", a group of players might run into consequences of other players' actions.)The first widely published RPG scenario (as far as I know) -- "The Temple of the Frog" in D&D Supplement II (1975) -- sketched a portrait of a place and its inhabitants in terms of their normal (well, as 'normal' as giant killer frogs and "simply an  interstellar radio") living arrangements and commerce.It can also, in my experience, work well when players know they've boarded a "commuter express" into an interesting environment (e.g., The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror).I think one problem (not the only one certainly) with the capture in the penultimate Slavers module is that many players cannot in any case abide having their characters captured. The final module's introduction for the referee warns of the further psychological difficulty some players face when deprived of the gadgetry (weapons, armor, spells, etc.) that too often is their substitute not only for skill in play but for actual persona development. Take away the stuff, and they have no 'role' to play; their pawns lack character and identity.</blockquote>

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