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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7731771" data-attributes="member: 29398">Players as a collective party: "We check some places where adventuring opportunities might be found.  Joe checks with the Mercenaries' Guild, and also keeps his ears open in the dockside taverns.  Sybil asks if the Thieves' Company know of anything.  Valiente looks in with the MU's Guild - they've always got something on the boil, those guys.  And Terrence can check with his temple, see what they might know of...and then keep an open ear in the market.  We'll all regather at our inn at sunset and each report our findings."From this description, and past experience, the DM knows she can probably skip over all the info-gathering roleplay and jump straight to narrating their findings when they meet again that night:DM: "So, one at a time.  Joe - nothing at all in the taverns but you did see someone had put up a notice in the Merc's Guildhall recruiting for help in a Yeti-hunting expedition in the mountains.  Sybil - the Thieves mentioned a ship in port; seems for some contractual reason they can't touch it but they dropped hints that they're very curious about what - or who - it's carrying.  Valiente - yeah, the mages have some things they want doing: seems one of 'em will pay big if someone will bring in some legitimate and verifyable Beholder parts (and says he knows where to find some, only they're still attached to their owners), while another is looking to hire a crew to go and clean out Tavistock Tower so she can move in.  Terrence - looks like you came up dry this time but the temple are still really pleased with you after your success last time out!"So, options abound - lots of hooks there, whether the party decides to run with any of 'em or not.  But no framing, just prompted narration now that leads later to whatever happens next when-if the party follow up on one or more of these hooks...or seek out others.Same is true in reverse; if a PC proactively approaches an NPC and is ignored the rules allow the PC to do - or try - any number of things.  No news here.The first is a potential hook, unexplained as yet.  The second is the same thing only with the explanation already included.  They both somewhat expect a reaction of some sort from the PCs.And the DM hasn't resolved the situation, she's just presented it in the second option and kinda waved at it in the first.  It doesn't resolve until the PCs say yes to the mission, or no to the mission, or start haggling about reward/price, or talk to the old man about something different, or roll him for his pocket change, or just tell him to get lost.It forces the interaction into much more minute (and time-consuming) detail...which may be good at some tables that like going into these minutae and not so good at other tables where this is in theory no more than a scene-set for the coming adventure.  In an ideal world perhaps this level of detail would be sustainable; but in reality this level of detail all the time would make my already-long campaign take forever.Railroading is when the PCs have no choice.  Above I list 6 obvious choices that they have, without even going into any deep thought; hardly a railroad.Lacklustre fiction, on the other hand...hey, nobody's perfect.  But oftentimes the DM is also expected to provide the story at least to some extent, and so we do what we can. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lanefan</blockquote>

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