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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7731898" data-attributes="member: 42582">If I am looking for a movie to see in the cinema, there are only so many options: movies cost money to make, cinemas cost money to build and operate, and so I'm dependent on the commercial decisions of others that affect what films are available for me to watch.But if I want to imagine something, or write my own story, the only limit on options are the ones I bring with me - my imaginative and creative limits.RPGing seems to me more like the second than the first.I think what you are describing as a departure from the norm - the spontaneity that takes work and a good poker face - is more-or-less how I have been refereeing since about 1987.For a bit of elaboration, here (spoiler blocked for length) are three actual play reports of how three of my more recent campaigns started:[sblock]4e D&DCortex+ HeroicClassic Traveller[/sblock]There is no "story" or "adventure" in advance of play - we generate PCs (using different methods, depending on system and inclination), establish some backstory, and then start playing! Which means that, as GM, I establish an initial scene/encounter (or, in the case of the Dark Sun game, elaborate on one established by the players) - the arena in Dark Sun, the steading in Cortex+ Vikings, Lt Li's approach in Classic Traveller - and then the players start declaring actions for their PCs.I don't doubt that adventure paths are popular. Despite it often being assumed that railroading is bad, there's actually no evidence that RPGers, in general, dislike railroading. 2nd ed AD&D, Vampire and allied games, Call of Cthulhu, 3E/PF and 5e adventure paths - these are all very popular RPGs, and for all of them the default adventure is a largely pre-scripted railroad, where the function of the players is to provide some colour and characterisation via their PCs, and to make a few choices that have purely local significance ("Do we take the bus or the ferry?" "Do we interrogate the barkeep or the watch captain?") but that make little or no difference to the overall arc of events (eg if the players don't have their PCs interrogate anyone, then the GM makes sure the clue is found in the form of a note on the next dead body, or whatever).Besides this post and this thread, I have dozens of actual play threads on these boards that are illustrative.The short version: the GM does not pre-author ingame events. The GM does not rely on secret backstory to inform adjudication. The basic driver of play is the GM's description of an ingame situation which (because of the way it presses the PCs'/players' buttons) generates action declarations from the players, which - when resolved - lead to a new situation that generates new decisions etc.Eero Tuovinen describes it <a href="https://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">here</a> as "the standard narrativistic model". <a href="https://inky.org/rpg/no-myth.html" target="_blank">This blog</a> talks about the related idea of "no myth" roleplaying.Note that the essence of "no myth" is not "no prep" but rather "no secret backstory as a factor in resolution". The GM might have stuff prepared (NPCs, other beings, worlds, maps, etc), and might have ideas (this NPC knows that person, hates this other person, etc); but it is only in the course of actual play that "the truth" of the gameworld is established. Which means that there is no role for "the truth" of the gameworld to be a constraint that the GM keeps secret from the players and applies in resolution and framing. That doesn't mean that backstory is unimportant - it's crucial, because it establishes the infiction logic/rationale/context of the events the GM is describing. But the backstory that plays this role isn't secret from the players. In fact, it is able to play this role excatly because it is known to the players!In this context, an "adventure" is not relevantly different from an "adventure path" - it's a prescripted series of events (involving yetis, or beholders or whatever).As I said, having the GM read you a story, with the bits that s/he reads being prompted by the choices you make (so a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure), is having the GM read you a story. That's not how I prefer to run or play RPGs.Hence I don't find the culinary analogy very helpful. When I GM, I am not (metaphorically) the cook of a meal that the players consume, nor (literally) the author of a story that I then recite to them. I describe situations (eg in our last session, at one point - following a random encouner check - I told them that, when they returned to their ship's boat from a local market, it was surrounded by a group of armed and surly-looking individuals) and then they declare actions (eg in response to that description, the PCs waited until nightfall and then attacked the NPCs taking advantague of their superior technology).There is no pre-authored story. There is situation, action, resolution, new situation. The new situations are established by a mixture of mechanical procedure (eg the encounter check I mentioned) and other guidelines. Some of those guidelines are implicit in the system (eg Traveller is a game about sci-fi adventure, so situations should be ones apt to lead to sci-fi adevnture, like using your superior tech to rout some tech level 3 locals). Others I have picked up over the years from a mixture of reading and experience (eg "always go where the action is" - so when a later encounter check indicated that the PCs encountered a pirate vessel while leaving orbit around the world they had been on, I decided that the "pirates" were connected to a bioweapons conpspiracy that is connected to that world, and that has been the main focus of the campaign so far).To relate this back to the thread topic: for me, the 4e XP system works fine (as the game is played, the PCs advance in both mechanical and fictional terms, and the dramatic scope of the campaign grows larger and  becomes more cosmologically significant); so does the Cortex+ Heroic system (as the game is played, the players explore and develop their PCs, and those PCs grow gradually in power). So does Traveller, for that matter - ie there is no XP and mechanical development of PCs is pretty minimal.But the 2nd ed AD&D and 3E/5e systems - especially in default "XP for fights" mode - really contribute nothing at all.I've never said that they are universal truths; nor that anything is "inherently" inferior.But I do stick to my claim that the point of XP in 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e is opaque to me: they don't plausibly simulate anything (contrast advancement in Runequest, or even Rolemaster's default XP system); they aren't a pacing device (contrast 4e XP; or the somewhat similar but more GM-centric "milestone" idea found as a variant in 4e and 5e); and they aren't really a measure of skill in the manner of Gygaxian D&D, unless the game is just about winning combat encounters (some 3E seems to be played that way, but I don't think that is the typical approach to play even for 3E, let alone 2nd ed AD&D or 5e).A related claim: a recurrent consideration in 3E adventure design is ensuring that there are enough encounters to progress the PCs to meet the challenges at the culmination of the adventure. To me, this is a clear-cut case of the tail wagging the dog. Instead of adjusting the advancement mechanism to suit the sorts of adventures we want to write, we write adventures full of encounters that are pure filler, and pointless from the overall perspective of the adventure, so as to fit with our advancement system which is a sheer legacy of (quite different) Gygaxian RPGing. (Also: this claim is independent of the fact that, personally, I don't care for pre-written adventures at all.)</blockquote>

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