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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732456" data-attributes="member: 42582">Just to pick up on this (not to contradict it, but to point out that it's actually quite an understatement):Gygax's DMG (1979), p 90 (under the heading "Territory Development by Player Characters":Assume that the player in question decides that he will set up a stronghold about 100 miles from a border town, choosing an area of wooded hills as the general site. He then asks you if there is a place where he can build a small concentric castle on a high bluff overlooking a river. Unless this is totally foreign to the area, you inform him that you can do so.That is a pretty banal example of "saying 'yes'" to a player suggestion/request about the geography of the gameworld. Classic Traveller (1977) also recognises that players will contribute to making sense of the geography of the gameworld (and in the first session of my current Traveller campaign, after I rolled the starting world it was a player who suggested that (given its stats) it was obviously a gas giant moon).Games with "fate point"-type mechanics were published in the 1980s (the James Bond 007 RPG is one example).Over the Edge was published in 1992. It has inconsistent tendencies within it (nicely discussed by Ron Edwards <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">here</a>), but while the main text is by Jonathan Tweet the game includes an essay by Robin Laws that explains that "GMs will find it fruitful to approach decisions as an artist creating a collaborative work with players." And the PC design system is based on free descriptors, similar to many later "indie" and "indie"-style RPGs.Maelstron Storytelling was published in 1997, and is the first example I'm aware of of descriptor-based PC sheets supporting closed scene-resolution mechanics. That's at least a few years before HeroWars and then HeroQuest as an example of the same approach, and more than 10 years before 4e's skill challenges.So what I'm trying to say is that "modern" ideas have been part of the RPGing hobby more-or-less from the get-go; and while 2nd-ed and White Wolf-sytle gaming may have become dominant in the 80s and 90s, it has never been exhaustive of what RPGing has been taken to include.I agree with the first sentence. The second also seems fair. Although I don't have a really good sense of what might be done by pushing backgrounds and inspiration hard, the lack of serious non-combat resolution mechanics does seem to create limitations.As far as technological tropes are concerned, D&D is rather weak for anything where heavy armour is not on the table, because fighters as a class lose access to an important class feature (ie decent AC) without access to heavy armour (including its magic versions).As far as story tropes are concerned, D&D (outside of 4e) cannot even do something like Conan especially well: in Conan nearly every person is killed or knocked unconscious with a single blow (Conan being an obvious exception) - eg when Conan is attacked by were-hyenas, he dispatches them one blow per hyena. But in D&D (outside of 4e) were-hyenas would have 4 or so HD and hence double-digit hit points and hence not be able to be punched to death. 4e is an exception, because it has minion rules which allow for one-blow kills of beings other than rats and kobolds.That's not to assert that D&D is especially focused; rather, that it is not as malleable as you assert. I don't think that Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy Hack or Rolemaster is narrower in any significant fashion.I ran a GH Rolemaster campaign that lasted for 8 years, and an OA Rolemaster campaign that lasted for 9 years. My first 4e game went for 6+ solid years, but is now played only intermittently as we have an understanding that we won't play it unless everyone can make it.Over the past couple of years we've run multiple games concurrently, so all but Burning Wheel is in single digits of sessions.There is no correlation between approach to RPGing and length of campaign, in my experience. It's much more about the mechanical capacity of the system to support developments in the story: Rolemaster breaks down between 20th and 30th level; 4e has a cap at 30th level (which is where our game currently is); etc.I think I've got more actual play posts than anyone else on ENworld. My 4e actual play posts go back to <a href="https://www.google.com.au/search?q=enworld+pemerton+experiment+last+sunday&oq=enworld+pemerton+experiment+last+sunday&aqs=chrome..69i57.8037j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" target="_blank">Jan 2011</a>. I guess it's possible I just made all those events up. . . .So the players may fail to find the adventure at all; or fail to rescue the elves.I hope it's fairly clear why I call that a railroad.The LotR is a novel, not an actual play report. Nothing can be inferred about the actual play of a RPG simply from a post-hoc description of the story.But consider this: a GM first plots out some backstory about a ring etc. Then writes an episode about a trip to Bree and an escape from the inn there. Then write an episode about travelling to Rivendell, and an attack on Weathertop. Then an episode about a trip through Moria. (This could be thought of as analogous to a DL module, or a short AP.)At that point, the basic outline of events is already established. No choices or suggestions that the players make is going to alter it. Maybe the GM notes include the following sidebar "If the players try to have their PCs avoid Moria by taking the pass, it becomes impassable due to weather." And "If the players try to backtrack through Moria, they find their way blocked by an undefeatable balrog". Etc. But we don't need those little bits of icing to discern the railroad in the cake.We don't know, in advance, whether the PCs will make it through all the episodes or not (maybe there is a TPK in Bree; maybe the players can't solve the riddle at the entrance to Moria - although the GM's notes might then allow for an INT check, with a note that the GM should fudge it to make sure the players get the information they need; or perhaps a friendly talking swallow sent by Radagast gives them the answer if the GM thinks they've puzzled about it for long enough). What we do know is that, if the game is to occur, it will have this basic shape with this sequence of events, and it will all be focused on this fiction that the GM has already written.Having control over what I wish for my PC is no control at all, in the context of gameplay. In your model, the players have no ability to actually change the ingame situation. Everything is up to the GM.Nor do they in any of the game I'm GMing. If you don't understand that, I strongly encourage you to reread my account of how action resolution works, and who has what sort of authority and responsibility for establishing the shared fiction.A player can say "I look for handholds" in my game, just as in yours. The difference is that, in my game, the players' desire for the wall to have handholds is actually relevant to determining whether, in the ficiton, it does or doesn't. (The method I use, to repeat again, is "say 'yes' or roll the dice").No one in this thread has said nothing really exists. I have made the obvious point that imaginary things don't really exist - that's inherent in them being imaginary. Only young children think otherwise.</blockquote>

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