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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7391384" data-attributes="member: 29398">I disagree that it breaks down the paradigm.  It just means the DM has to be better at either preparing her world-setting or making it up on the fly (or both at once).Having it be hard for the GM to anticipate what happens next is just fine.  Again, it simply points to her having to be well-versed in her setting and - as I often put it - ready willing and able to hit the curveballs thrown her way by the players.Yeah, 2e swung this pendulum too far the other way; though I'm not entirely sure whether the impetus came from below (player demand) or above (designer preference).It was in many ways also the first hard-core railroad series (or proto-AP) to be published, and has been rightly condemned for that over time...though nowhere near as hard-core a railroad as DL, which came a few years later.No...and no.  Sorry. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Remember what the A-series was to begin with - a series of tournament modules.  Those modules weren't really intended to tell a character-arc story at all, just for one to lead to the next enough that as players advanced to the next level of the tournament they could keep the same characters and with a minimum of exposition pick up the story as they'd already played through it.  And if anything the A-series in campaign use is more constraining to play than less, as the players/PCs have to follow the trail...and have no choice whatsoever at the A3-A4 jump.Dragonlance is the series that started the whole story-first business; and people IME either loved it or despised it.  This one was all about character development through a story arc...though unless you inserted your own characters into the books' story somehow you were developing pre-gen characters someone else had designed.  But, extremely constraining in play. Perhaps, but I don't think it was the death of the dungeon maze.  It offered - in a still-dungeon-mazy sort of way - an alternative; which DL fully fleshed out later.  Dungeon-based adventures still kept on coming, even into 3e.A2 in fact is extremely linear in its design - particularly the upper level - when you look at it closely; it's designed to funnel the party into each encounter in a specific order no matter what they do, other than there's one branch they can take that dead-ends.  When I ran it I stuck some extra doors and connections in there to make it a bit less predictable for me as DM and provide a few more choice points for the players/PCs.Exactly.If you read 2e's "declared narrative agenda" to mean that it wants to give the DM a better avenue to in effect narrate her story and run the players/PCs through it (in other words, Dragonlance without the intervening novels breaking up the played-at-the-table story), then it suits itself very well.  If you want to read more things into the idea of a narrative agenda, such as player control over the fiction or play-to-find-out virtual-world-design sorts of things, then no; you won't find them, because they aren't there.2e as launched pretty much invites the DM to run a railroad game.  Later came the pushback of players seeking more control, leading to the various splatbooks which - while still not getting them off the train - gave them much more by way of mechanical options for their PCs.That's where 3e with its "Back to the dungeon" mantra really took root: it by extension meant "Get off the train"!Would that be Story Some Other Time? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Where I think it's a rather brilliant boil-down of what's always been there: that there's other aspects to play than just combat, and here's what they are, explained.The only aspect of play it doesn't encompass well is downtime, which I would add as a fourth pillar.  Otherwise, what's it missing?I think you're being a bit pessimistic here.  That said, sooner or later you'll inevitably get to ten and where do you go from there?  These amps don't go to 11.I don't see the pillars as mechanical constructs so much as I see them as focus points for play at the table.Look at it this way: what is there that ever happens in play that isn't encompassed by one or more of:CombatDowntimeExplorationInteraction (or Socializing, or whatever term goes towards the talky bits with other PCs and with NPCs)The story grows out of the sum of what all these activities, repeated as necessary, lead to within the fiction.But, note the sequence: activities first, story later - the story grows out of the activities; and even if the DM has a pre-authored story in mind these activities might send it in a totally different direction.What you want to do is have the activities grow out of the story; the players set the story parameters via their beliefs and goals and then the activities become simply means to an end.Combat is an activity.  Social interaction with others in the fiction is an activity.  Downtime, or what you do during it, is an activity.  None of these are beliefs or end goals, and that's the point: they're the things you do en route to achieving (or not) your end goals.  Because of this, the game has to provide opportunities - and time! - for all of these to occur.You could frame that scene, but you'd be doing no justice to the actual activity of exploring...you know, the mappy searchy cautious tense stuff that takes time at the table.  Then at some point there might be a pit trap into which the brother-in-law, having failed various game-mechanics to avoid it, falls and dies.Now the exploration probably turns to a) finding a safe way out with the corpse, and-or then b) finding someone who can revive it.  Failing that, the focus turns to the Interaction activity if he goes home and tells them the bad news...which might quickly lead to the Combat activity if they don't take it well! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lanefan</blockquote>

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