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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 7372424" data-attributes="member: 23751">But in your example there was no finality of resolution.  You told me that failure meant the feather was cursed, and that even if he succeeded, he still needed to get the feather enchanted and more.  If if the player's roll had succeeded in your example, there wouldn't have been any final resolution.  I don't remember seeing his example, but in your description here, the player didn't go backwards.  The goal was civic order and the charm would seem(hard to tell without the original example) to have achieved or helped move that forward.  The duke as an enemy would a new, but separate issueThere are a number of things here.  First, with your example (1), outside of the very first moment of a campaign, you would be railroading the player if you did that.  I don't know if during gameplay you just put PCs into places and tell them what they are doing, but if you do, that would be railroading.  It removes the option from the player to go anywhere else.  Second, with option 2, there will usually be more to it than "you're in the town.  What do you do?"  Were that my game and I knew the player was going into the town to try and find an item to free his brother, I would address that in my question.  It would more likely be "You walk through the gates of Waterdeep to find something that will help you free your brother.  This place is well known for having just about everything somewhere, so it's seems certain that you can succeed."  I'm not going to ask him what he wants to do most of the time, since it's pretty obvious that he is going to tell me what he wants to do.  I may not railroad him into the bazaar and stick him in front of an object, but I am addressing his goal.  It's also more than just 5 minutes of play getting to the action, and but that I don't mean that it necessarily takes longer.  I am allowing him more player agency by not forcing him into the bazaar.  He can try to seek the bazaar, a wizard, a sage, looking for a merchant guild, look for an old merchant buddy(depending on circumstances) that might have a contact, and many more options.  HE gets to decide how best to try and further his goal.I also do not agree that calling for checks, etc. when trying to find an item shifts the focus of play away.  The goal is still the focus, even if there are intermediate steps and sometime setbacks through failed rolls, just like in your game with the failed roll making the feather cursed.  When I decide to walk around the block to the store instead of driving, deciding to cut through an alley instead of going to the corner doesn't alter the focus of my journey or change my goal.  If I walk past someone who says hi to me(rare in Los Angeles, but it does happen), pausing to say hi delays me(setback), but also doesn't shift my goal or the focus of my journey.  So in your style of game the players just pop around from place to place only ever doing something relevant to the story?  There's never any interaction where the fiction won't change?  That's very railroady.  The player shows up at a bazaar, because you determined that his chance to change his fiction would be there, not because the player through his agency decided to go to the bazaar instead of a sage or wizard guild.  In my style, the players have more agency to affect their goals. They determine which way to pursue things and they do change the fiction in meaningful ways.  It's just not an instant gratification process.  It may take 5 scenes to complete the change in fiction that they are initiating.  It's often slower(and often not), but allows them greater agency over the fiction by giving them far more options in how they go about enacting that change. As I've already acknowledged in prior posts, your method does allow for some small amount of depth by going back to things previously authored in the campaign.  When the game world is fleshed out, you have much more depth of world to draw upon as both the DM and the player to add to the story.  There is still a great deal of improvisation involved with my style of play, though.  Even the Forgotten Realms, with all the pre-authored material it has, has only pre-authored less than 5% of the world and its inhabitants.  That little bit of pre-authorship is an aid that enhances the story being woven by the DM and players. How do I establish if a shop or whatever has a useful item?  Generally with a roll of some sort.  Sometimes, depending on circumstance there won't be a roll involved.  As 5e mentions, you only roll when the outcome is in doubt.  If the player is looking for a useful item in a flower pot store, the answer will be that there is no useful item there.  If the player has gone to someone the game has already determined would have items of the sort sought, the answer will be yes.  For the rest I determine the chances or DC, depending on the type of roll, and I leave it to chance.  The type of check will vary.  As for what counts as a useful item, I don't really understand that question.  Useful is useful.  If an item is useful, it will count as a useful item.  If not, not.  I don't get how that's clear to you.  I've said more than once that to the PC, there is no difference between coming from notes and authored on the spot.  To the player, there also isn't much of a difference, except that stuff drawn from the world adds to depth and often, because so much is improvised anyway, the players don't know what is notes and what isn't.  Writing down that the innkeeper's name is Darmak and that he's a half-orc fighter with one arm is no different that coming up with it on the spot as far as the players are concerned.  In either case the innkeeper will be a one-armed half-orc named Darmak.  In neither case has their agency been infringed by his creation.You also seem to be under the mistaken impression that if I write something down in my notes, that it can't change.  Written things are not final.  Player/PC actions will quite often affect how written down notes work.  I'll give you an example from my last game using the 3e rules.The players arrived in a town after using an ability to go seeking an adventure where they would be able to help people and increase their fame.  I grabbed a scenario from an old dungeon magazine that involved a small town being afflicted by a disease that was turning the inhabitants into humanoid ooze creatures.  As I mentioned up thread, I will use scenarios and build dungeons in response to the players' goals.The scenario was written with specific ways to identify people who were afflicted and what sorts of actions those under the effects would react to the PCs.   As it happens, though, one of the PCs had the scent ability, which completely upended that portion of the scenario. Rather than sticking to what was written and railroading things as you indicate my style likes to do, I tossed out the written notes and improvised.  The PC was able to smell the differences between those townsfolk and use that knowledge to cause that portion of the scenario played out very differently than what was written.  What I write down is nothing more than an idea of how things might play out.  How things usually play out is very often different.</blockquote>

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