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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7391249" data-attributes="member: 82106">No, because you aren't describing an actual feasible course of play! How would the GM in your "no formal agenda" play KNOW to offer the PC the chance to meet Denethor? For there to be an opening to swear fealty to Denethor and join the Tower Guard? It is entirely implausible to imagine that the GM would JUST HAPPEN to establish the entire list of 5 necessary narrative links which must be made in order for this drama to play out. This kind of thing virtually NEVER happens in 'classic' D&D play, not unless the players deliberately consult with each other and the GM and essentially don't play classic D&D! Even then, the GM's existing pre-established backstory is unlikely to be a positive asset in this process. Again, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s reference to a 'hard railroad' is apropos. The GM would have to have invented this story arc ahead of time himself and established all these points, AND THEN moved the PC through the narrative, either hoping the player takes the bait at every step, OR simply disallowing any alternatives (the hard railroad). Again, without the player having initiated and explicitly signaled this agenda it is very unlikely the player is going to just happen to go along, unprompted, with all the narrative choices that would be required. So, in some totally theoretical sense it isn't IMPOSSIBLE that you could produce this narrative by your methods without an explicit agenda, it is just vanishingly unlikely. Now, you could argue that you will produce SOME SORT of narrative, and that whatever narrative it is, it is objectively unlikely apriori to have been predicted. It is equally unlikely to have been the one specifically chosen by the players, although they certainly may well reject many narrative possibilities they are UNINTERESTED in. Thus your method is sort of the 'negative-image' of what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s method is. His produces the narrative the players WANT, your's weeds out some narratives that they DON'T want.</blockquote>

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