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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732512" data-attributes="member: 42582">Replying to three things:1. Amount of content in a settingBecause after a certain amount of play, the tropes and themes of Dark Sun will be exhausted. There'll be nothing new to do with the setting. (It's the same reason that serial fiction, after a certain point, tends to either begin recycling stories, or jumps the shark.)2. Use of maps in RPGingI just reread the post. Here is every reference to a map, or to terrain and geography more generally.The actual maps referenced are a poster map of a temple (used twice); a map of Moria-like stairs and landings, used for the bodak encounter; a map that I drew based on a picture, with tunnels and a chasm, used for the beholder encounter; and a map of the volcanic chasm with the river running through it, used for the final encounter.Those are all encounter maps. Two describe adjacent areas (the temple, and the staircase behind its altar), but there is no map of the underground tunnels and passages that connect them, which the PCs travelled through.I also refer to two pictures - the one I based the beholder map on, and the one from Into the Unknown which I used to illustrate the general flavour of their descent down stairs into the vast underdark caverns.Finally, I refer to one imaginary map, the one from the ancient minotaur kingdom. The PCs were in possession of that map, and using it to guide them on their journey through the underdark; but it did not and does not actually exist. It's only real-world represenation was an entry on a characer shet equipment list.The geography of the underdark - the relationship between caverns, the abandoned duergar farm, the underground river, etc - was not mapped out in advance (nor was much of it mapped out after the event). Likewise when the PCs went to <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?332755-PCs-bring-destruction-down-upon-the-duergar" target="_blank">the cavern of the duergar stronghold</a>, or - some time later on - travelled down the river to the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?350416-Mayhem-in-the-Shrine-of-the-Kuo-Toa" target="_blank">Shrine of the Kuo-toa</a>.As I think I posted upthead, quite a bit of the action in my BW game has taken place in the tower of Jabal the Red, mage of Hardby. We've had descriptions of his laboratory/library (near the top), the entrance hall (near the ground), the dining hall (above the entrance hall), and a floor with living quarters (above the dining hall, and having an internal wall separating rooms). That has not been mapped out. It's not necessary. Nor were all the rooms established in advance - the tower itself, and its entry level and laboratory level, were established in the first session; the other rooms I mentioned were established some time later, after the PCs had returned to Hardby (having travelled to the Bright Desert, then the Abor-Alz, then a keep on the borderlands between the hills and Hardby).In the same game, travel through the sewers and catacombs of Hardby has been resolved via Catacombs-wise checks and other appropriate checks (eg Speed checks, I think, when the PCs in the catacombs were trying to arrive at Jabal's tower in advance of an assassin travelling through the streets above them).Even with your example of a castle, in my experience it's not generally necessary to map out the whole thing if the PCs are arriving there to talk to people and see what they can learn, rather than take an architectural survey and rip up every block of stone. In our 4e game, the PCs visited <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?342615-PCs-defeat-Miska-but-relinquish-the-Crystal-of-the-Ebon-Flame" target="_blank">the bastion of Mal Arundak</a> on the Abyss. No map was needed until they actually entered the reliquary within the fortress, because it was a complex encounter and 4e depends upon encounter maps to help with the resolution of complex encounters. (I used another poster map from a 4e module.)In my Cortex+ Heroic game, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?530990-Into-the-North-Cortex-Plus-Heroic-Fantasy-actual-play" target="_blank">the PCs entered a giant steading</a> (some through the front door, one by stealth) and did a bit of fighting before everyone settled down and made friends. I described walls, and a gate, and a dining hall with dire wolves (inspired by G1), but there was no map, and no need of one, as Cortex+ does not use maps or tactical distances as part of its resolution mechanics. When the PCs later ended up in a dungeon, where they made there way through some tunnels, and a secret door, before being teleported into unknown depths by a crypt thing and then finding their way out through the faerie caverns of the dark elves, no map was necessary.Maps play a very important role in one style of RPGing (broadly, the sort that Gygax advocates in the last section of his PHB before the appendices, and which Moldvay Basic is all about) - but the use of maps in RPGs that aren't aimed at that style of maze-mapping, puzzle-solving play is in my view mostly a result of cargo-cult-like fetishisation of the techniques of Gygaxian play. It doesn't actually serve much of a useful purpose.3. GM advance planning for success or failureI don't think I fully understand what you're saying, but to the extent that I can work it out, it seems exactly like railroading.Here's the actual situation: at the end of session 4, the PCs have recovered from previous misadventures, have had some work done on their ship (including adding a turret with double pulse lasers), have equipped themselves, and are ready to head off to Olyx - the research base for the bioweapons conspirators - as they have been retained to do by a (somewhat mysterious) Imperial official, notionally as agents of the branch of the Scout Servicek known as the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate.Olyx is two jumps away, and between Byron (where the PCs have been since the end of session 1) and Olyx lies Enlil (the source of the pathogen that is at the core of the conspiratorial bioweapons program). The PCs also know (as a result of information provided by one of the bioweapons researchers they spoke to on Byron, and have since recruited as a computer expert) that the DNA of the Enlilians is not fully human, but includes traces of alien origin. One of the PCs has a doctorate in xeno-archaeology and is wanting to travel the universe looking for examples of alien life and artefacts, and was therefore quite intrigued by this information.Session 5 begins with the PCs making the jump to Enlil in their ship. I know why they're there - it's on the way to Olyx. I don't know if they're going to visit it or not. As GM, I've deliberately set things up so that some PCs (and hence some players) have a reason to want to visit Enlil; while others (especially the owner of the ship, whose mortgage payments fall due every month, and who therefore doesn't want to spend time hanging out on Enlil earning no money) have a reason to push on straight to Olyx. The players (as their characters) debated their options and in the end a compromise was reached: the group would spend a day in orbit about Enlil, and those who wanted to go down to the world would do so; but those who were going down would also collecively pay the ship owner 8,000 credits - ie the amount of morgage repayment that accrues in a day.Now, I know that the PCs who travel to Enlil are hoping to find out about the alien origins of its inhabitants. But how are they going to do that? I have no idea. It was already established that Enlil is a low tech world (TL 3, ie pre-industrial 18th/early 19th century) but with a starport (which I had therefore established was an Imperial facility in orbit above the world) and having some contact with other worlds. The players (and their PCs) knew this, and so they decided to get the standard tourist information from the starport, which included information about local markets, and to go and visit one of those markets to see if any of the items on sale exhibited signs of alien origin (eg designs, writing, etc). I can't remember how we established that the Enlilian markets would be a tourist attraction; but I know it didn't come from me, and equally that it seemed a very natural thing to be the case (think about the number of European and North American tourists who like to go to markets in less industrialised countries and buy trinkets there).There was no prospect of planning in advance for the publications of the Enlil Imperial Tourist Board (or whatever other organisation is providing the tourist information at the orbiting starport), or for anticipating what it might say about Enlilian markets and the trinkets they sell there.And when they did find a distinctive trinket (which I made up on the spot - it's metallurgy was clearly not from a TL 3 world), and learned about its origins (which I made up on the spot - it had been sold some time ago by the local bishop to raise funds for the bishopric) the next step couldn't be anticipated either. They decided to go and talk to the bishop. And so I made up some more stuff on the spot - the trinket had been a gift to the bishopric from co-religionist on the world of Ashar. (Which was a world I had rolled up as part of my prep, and which also had a religious government - Traveller world generation turns up surprisingly many of these - and which I now made part of the shared fiction.)You say (in the part of your post that I've quoted above) that "you can anticipate this and  determine ahead of time what relevant info might be there to be gathered, assuming any reasonable success. . . . [and] can also reasonably guess what'll happen should their info gathering succeed". But that's just not true. I couldn't have anticpated all this stuff about markets and trinkets and metallurgy and bishops and gifts from the planet Ashar. What if the PCs had instead sought out ancient ruins on Enlil? Or had tried to take their own biological samples from the locals for analysis?And nore can I anticpate what the PCs will do now. I think they're going to go on to Olyx (because that's what they've been paid to do). But are they going to go to Ashar? If so, when? And what will they try and do there? (I think one PC will try and find a branch of the Psionics Institute, but how will she do that?)Unless the players are following rails (or a trail of breadcrumbs, or whatever) that has been laid by the GM, this stuff can't be predicted, and - especially in a game like Traveller, where the whole of a universe is the backdrop, but even when the BW PCs are doing their thing in the city of Hardby - the details can't all be known in advance.In a game in which the players have any real agency - to choose what their PCs do, to choose what is going to be salient in the campaign, etc - the prep you describe here - designing those smuggler bases, for instance - is a pointless waste of time. It's only worthwhile if the whole sequence of events is more-or-less certain to happen - first the players follow the GM's lead and do the Enlil bit; then they follow the breadcrumbs to Fraka and/or Gurda; etc. And that is exactly a railroad!If the players actually have input into the game, then they could choose to go to any other planet that is known to be part of the world, and the GM's write up of the smugglers on Fraka and Gurda is useless. And more subtly, if the GM knows that the players have that degree of agency, then s/he won't prepare a storyboard of the sort you describe which makes sense only on the assumption that there is a set of tracks that the players are likely to proceed along. To go back to my actual play example, here are the things that were of obvous potential salience at the end of session 4: the starport on Enlil; Enlil itself (a whole planet with millions of inhabitants); Olyx (a small planet with a complex and well-equipped research base crewed by dozens of people); the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate (and Imperial agencies, and the Scout Service, more generally); the naval base on the not-too-distant world of Shelley (the bioweapons conspirators have been established to have strong links to that base); and probably other stuff I'm forgetting at the moment.It's absurd to suppose that all that could be detailed. But it would also be pointless for another reason, because it would already pre-author the fiction instead of allowing it to emerge out of play. (Eg are the conspirators working for or agaisnt the Imperium? What is the role of the PRSI in relation to the conspiracy? etc) In your storyboard example, what if the players want to play a game in which they work with the trade federation to break up smuggling rings? You seem to have already ruled that out (by way of secret backstory). What is that but pre-determining outcomes in the fiction, ie, railroading?As for this suggestion that I might use some filler encounters while the players "blunder around blind", I have no idea what the point of that would be. It can't get more of a railroad than having the players work through some "seemingly random encounters" until they stumble back onto the breadcrumbs that (for whatever reason) the GM has been keeping secret from them.This, in particular, has nothing in common with how I GM a game.</blockquote>

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