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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732638" data-attributes="member: 42582">Two things:(1) It's always true that, had I done X instead of Y I might have had more fun. Maybe your group would have had a better time RPGing if you'd spent all your efforts on D&D playing Over the Edge instead!But to the extent that you're fairly confident that the stuff you did was more enjoyable, to you, then the stuff you didn't do - so likewise for me and my group. I don't think anyone thinks it would have been more interesting to map out some catacombs rather than find out what happens to the balrog-possess brother. (Spoiler: the assassin cut his head off before the PC brother could save him; but another PC did manage to catch a whole lot of his blood in a nearby ewer, and carried his head out of the tower in a chamberpot.)(2) You write as if there was actual stuff to be discovered in the corridors leading from the PCs' chambers in Mal Arundak to the reliquary. But it's all a fantasy; it exists only in the imagination. The players can only "learn" about such stuff if someone goes to the trouble of making it up, and then telling it to them (at around 100 words per minute for spoken delivery of written text). Which takes us back to (1) - I guess it's possible that that would have been a more fun way to spend our time, but I don't see any actual evidence for that. After all, I've got quite a bit of evidence as to what the players will find interesting, and I've made sure that plenty of that sort of stuff is part of the framing and unfolding resolution of the reliquary scene!And note this happened in mid-adventure, when the stakes were in theory rather high.  Low-stakes or no-stakes stuff like this:The players say (speaking as their PCs) "Can we see the reliquary?" I, speaking as the angels, say "OK, we'll take you to it." I then start describing the reliquary entrance. That's not railroading. That's framing the scene the players have asked for!Huh? That's like saying, to the inventor of Five Hundred, "But you have to have a dummy in an auction card game - that's just how it works!" Let's put aside the fact that that's not how it works at every RPGing table - we could still ask, why should it work that way?</blockquote>

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