Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 9735237" data-attributes="member: 7025508">Yes, but given that you probably do not run the same scenario for thousand tables, thus we do not have this information, it is moot.No I didn't. So it is true that sometimes the situation the GM present is such, that the GM can with high accuracy predict what the players will do. And some of this is both inevitable and perfectly fine. But if your game is wholly or even mostly composed of such scenes, then we are getting into railroady territory. Because if situations are constantly presented in such way that there is only one course of action that can reasonably be taken, what agency the players have?And you must ask yourself, why it is that I can see and predict for most situations the course the players take? It is because you, as the GM, built the situations so that there is little real choice! But do not worry, as the solution is near! As you can see these likely choices, and you built the reasons that make the choices obvious, you can also easily alter the situation so that there is no obvious "correct" choice. Increase the tactical complexity and/or moral ambiguity, add nuance until you are no longer sure what the players would do. Then you have constructed an interesting situation that gives them real agency!And I believe this is more fun for players, but at least to me, it is more fun for the GM too. I've been doing this for a long time, and I usually play with people I know well. So if I wanted the game to take a form of specific story I have predetermined, I could present things such a way, manipulate and illusionise,  that it will with high degree of certainty come to pass. But what's fun in that? The point of RPGs is that the players get to make choices that impact the story, it is not just the GM telling a story to the players! And as GM I want to be surprised too! I don't want to know how the story will go before the play has even begun.</blockquote>

Verification