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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7388544" data-attributes="member: 42582">I thought you didn't like railroads? But now you're asserting that there must be railroading lest things be boring!Of course there is no guarantee that, when you sit down to play, any particular set of events will occur.  when he said "There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point". (The bolding is mine, the italics are his.)But because the players will fail checks (unless their dice are loaded or the maths and system of the game are broken) things will happen. Why would it be boring for the Fellowship to reach Rohan unopposed? It wasn't boring for them to reach the Misty Mountains unopposed, because then exciting things happened. Well, exciting things might happen in Rohan too.As Tolkien writes it, there is a lot of success in Rohan: Aragorn, Legolas and Gimili succeed in tracking the orcs, and succeed in finding a brooch (therefore ensuring that it is true, in the fiction, that the hobbits were still alive at that point), and succeed in befriend Eomer and getting horses from him, and succeed in finding signs of the hobbits where the orcs were burned, and succeed in meeting Gandalf. Gandalf and the hobbits succeed in activating the Ents. Gandalf then succeeds in activating Theoden and the Rohirrim, succceeds again in bringing Erkenbrand to Helm's Deep, and succeeds in besting Saruman on the steps of Isengard.Failure at any of those points would produce exciting fiction. It would be different from what JRRT wrote. But that's the point of "story now" RPGing - to play to find out, rather than to be railroaded through the GM"s preconceived exciting story.I'll repost for what I think is the fourth time:The players had ample chance to say they wanted to be stealthy. When they mentioned the making of potions before they left. When the <stuff> happened. When the GM described them arriving at the entrance to a massive cavern.I think I asked  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] whether players at his table need permission to speak. I can tell you that my players, if they were intending to be stealthy upon arriving at the cavern entrance, would let me know. We might then frame a check in which they try to (say) create a Wizard's Screen before the fire giant sentries notice them.I don't understand. Earning XP in Cortex+ Heroic has nothing in particular to do with gp, or wealth. XP get spent to change the PC sheet (eg change distinctions, change affiliations) or to add new abilities or to step up existing ones.No. If an ability has the Gear limit then it can be shut down (at the instigation of the player or the GM). That could be narrrated as running out of ammunition.Yet some people made those trips and - whatever rigours they suffered along the way - arrived in relatively good health. There's nothing unrealistic about the PCs doing the same.That their arrival in good health is a matter of narrative stipulation is not especially shocking. Most fiction is the result of stipulation, even when RPGing.</blockquote>

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