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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7377684" data-attributes="member: 82106">But you still aren't grasping the fundamental point. There are no 'intersections'. What makes you insist that there must be these fascinating side alleys to the story that are so compelling that not inventing them all the time is taking away people's choice to..... follow the story line they helped invent and continue to show interest in!? I mean, how many 'intersections' per scene is the GM obliged to present before the game transitions to 'not a railroad' by your theory? Why must there be some special number of details that must exist in the world which are unrelated to anything the players have asked about? It just seems like a completely arbitrary standard that you have developed, which could apply to ANY game using ANY techniques, and then you've decided by some process which I admit I find impenetrable, to assign it as a principle attribute of one style of play. Honestly, I'm mystified. I mean, in my games there's obviously some sort of understood 'backdrop' that usually provides color and mood. So maybe if you go to the slum you see people are poor and living in shacks and suffering, but if you're there to make a deal with Vim the Weasel, notorious tiefling fence, that stuff is really not specifically relevant. It was invented by the GM to paint a scene. Now, its established as fact, and maybe later the player could use that information. If one of the PCs decides to talk to the beggars on the corner, then so be it, but I'm not going to constantly describe every alley and every beggar and every shack every time the PCs happen to cross through that part of town going from hither to yon. I'm not depriving anyone of anything. I'm just getting on with the game. Its, IMHO, ridiculous to imagine it as a total stream-of-consciousness play where no detail is ever left out. I mean, the logical place for the bad guys to jump you is the crapper, but do we constantly describe and discuss and deal with all the bodily function activity of the PCs? No, and by convention it almost never plays a part in anything, its just not that interesting or heroic. Frankly, the world rarely has the level of detail which provides the location of all the privvies.</blockquote>

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