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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rogueattorney" data-source="post: 5042807" data-attributes="member: 17551">I'll use published examples, not because I assume everybody uses them, but because I think they're examples of how TSR thought the game was being run at the time, and are indicative of the "received wisdom" gamers were getting from the company.There were a number of published adventures starting in the mid-80's that were little more than guided tours when run as written.  DL7 Dragons of Light and the first adventure in the OP1 Tales of the Outer Planes both spring to mind as paradigmatic examples.Now, with DL7, the tools were there to run it as something else.  For example, there was a wilderness map such that if the players "went off the rails" there was enough information for the DM to tell the players what they found there, with most of the encounters found designed to funnel the players back to the pre-ordained path.  However, the assumption of the written module was that the players would be shipwrecked on an island, would be captured by hostile elves, would be rescued/re-captured by slightly less hostile elves, would be again rescued by a mysterious npc, would follow said mysterious npc without really knowing where they were going, and would eventually allow said mysterious npc to reveal the great macguffin that had Grand Campaign Significance.In a sandbox campaign, the characters would be given the information of the existence of the great macguffin and a general idea of the location and if they so chose, could go quest to find it.  If they instead chose to do something else, the campaign would move on.  Perhaps they'd eventually learn that they should have gone after the great macguffin.The first adventure in OP1 was even more egregious.  No maps.  Instead, the pcs are gated from plane to plane to have a brief rp'ing encounter with an assumed result, culminating in the Big Reveal at the end, where they fight the Level Boss who, of course, was their original employer in disguise.  Nowhere in the adventure are the pcs given a chance to effect the outcome of the adventure until the end where they either win or lose the combat.  The DM isn't given any tools to broaden the adventure for when the characters "go off the rail."  Simply put, if you take away the pre-ordained events, there wouldn't be anything to it.The commonalities of the adventures were that both were event focused rather than locale focused, both featured npc protagonists and assumed passive pcs, both operated on the assumption of pc ignorance rather than pc knowledge.  Both pushed the pcs to take the path of least resistance to earn the reward at the end, which stood on its head the "high risk, high reward" assumption of 1e AD&D.  To me, the big change I've seen over the last 25 years - and maybe I'm completely off base and my experience isn't typical - when people talk about session prep is that they tend to frame things in terms of what events will occur at the next session rather than what locations need to be prepped for the next session.  It's a subtle difference, since both require much the same sort of work to be done (statting up potential combatants, mapping relevant areas, etc.).  But I think it's a significant difference in mind set...  the former narrows the possible events that may occur during the session by proscribing the general outline of possibilities, while the other broadens the possible events of the next session and the future campaign by creating more world to explore.</blockquote>

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