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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732827" data-attributes="member: 42582">Sure. But this is not true of Cortex+ Heroic, not true of Burning Wheel, not true of Classic Traveller outside of combat (eg you can resolve all of an interstellar trading exercise without need to know anything but world stats and jump distances - I know because I've done it), and not true of 4e outside of combat (eg skill challenges in 4e don't depend upon that sort of information for their resolution).But upthread you said that, if this hasn't already been established in play, the the GM can change it (from X to Q).If the GM is prepared to change those materials if s/he thinks it woudl be more interesting, but equally sticks to them when s/he prefers them, how would you describe it?That may be true - I'm not talking about what a GM is obliged or not obliged to do.But if the GM is permitted to do that, and does so when s/he thinks it would be fun, but doesn't do so when s/he prefers what s/he already wrote, then isn't it the GM who's deciding how the situation resolves?But you already said that s/he's allowed to change it if s/he wants to.Again, if what you're saying is that the GM's opinion about the integrity of his/her world takes priority over player action declarations, how would you distinguish that from a railroad?That's an open question.One form of difficulty is guessing what the GM wrote in his/her notes. Another form of difficulty is having to engage the fiction from the perspective of your PC and declare actions. I think many players would find 2nd ed AD&D less demanding than Burning Wheel.There are two main reasons something "doesn't work" - ie an action delcaration (eg "I look for the map in the study") might fail. One is because the check is framed, the player rolls the dice, and they come up unluckily for the player. THe other is because the GM decides, by reference to fiction that has not yet been established (eg his/her notes state that the map is hidden in the kitchen), that the PC cannot find the map in the study.If the GM is obliged to write everything down in his/her notes, and stick to those notes, so that the aim of play for the players is (more-or-less) to "crack" the GM's notes, then it is not a railroad - it's a type of complex maze/puzzle game. This is what Gygax advocates in his PHB and DMG.But if the GM is permitted to make stuff up on the way through (which is, in practical terms, inevitable once the imaginary scope of the game extends beyond the rather artificial dungeon environment), and/or is permitted to rewrite his/her notes during play, based on what s/he thinks might be good for the game, then it's not a puzzle game anymore - because there's nothing for the players to crack. In this latter case, it seems that what happens depends very heavily on what the GM likes eg does s/he want to stick to X in his/her notes, or change it to Q (maybe the map is in the study) depending on what s/he thinks is better/more fun.To me, that appears to be a railroad, because it is the GM who decides the important outcomes in the game. (The fact that the players can choose to have their PCs look for the map in the study seems not very signficiant - that won't actually change the outcomes, given that they only have a chance of finding it if the GM decides that Q would be more fun than the X that s/he wrote in his/her notes.)</blockquote>

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