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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6593846" data-attributes="member: 42582">&quot;It&quot; here is freeze-frame rooms (or similar situations).In your game, I assume that sometimes the PCs come across NPCs. And you describe those NPCs as doing something - standing around, hoeing the fields, fighting a battle, or whatever else. How do you determine what the NPCs are doing?Freeze-frame is a decision to have the NPCs doing something that is likely to be interesting/engaging and provoke a response from the players. So instead of just describing the peasants hoeing, you describe one of the peasants complaining that her hoe has just broken on something solid buried in the ground - the thought being that the players (and their PCs) might be curious whether the peasant has just discovered a chest, or a body, or . . .If it is not railroading to describe the peasant hoeing, why is it railroading to describe the peasant striking something solid in the ground with her hoe?if it is railroading to describe the peasant hoeing, then how do you introduce NPCs into your game and determine what actions you describe them as performing at the moment the PCs encounter them?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6593846, member: 42582"] "It" here is freeze-frame rooms (or similar situations). In your game, I assume that sometimes the PCs come across NPCs. And you describe those NPCs as doing something - standing around, hoeing the fields, fighting a battle, or whatever else. How do you determine what the NPCs are doing? Freeze-frame is a decision to have the NPCs doing something that is likely to be interesting/engaging and provoke a response from the players. So instead of just describing the peasants hoeing, you describe one of the peasants complaining that her hoe has just broken on something solid buried in the ground - the thought being that the players (and their PCs) might be curious whether the peasant has just discovered a chest, or a body, or . . . If it is not railroading to describe the peasant hoeing, why is it railroading to describe the peasant striking something solid in the ground with her hoe? if it [I]is[/I] railroading to describe the peasant hoeing, then how do you introduce NPCs into your game and determine what actions you describe them as performing at the moment the PCs encounter them? [/QUOTE]

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