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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kahuna Burger" data-source="post: 1341598" data-attributes="member: 8439">I think there is an error here where people are conflating having a story with railroading. having a story just means that there is a greater context to the little episodes of game, a context which will continue to evolve whether the characters do anything about it or not, but which they are going to have the oppertunity to effect. Railroading in when players have no real choice but to take on the challange presented, in a specific way, right now... I hate railroading, but a game with no story would bore the hell out of me (and a character who is totally uneffected by their expereince except fora steady progression of stats might as well be a videogame, but thats another issue).the last major game I ran had a story. The river that the characters lived on (literaly ON, Fallstown was a fun concept) had disapeared. The two sides just pulled together like a hidden zipper on each bank had been closed. There was a reason, and a story behind it, but the characters were 1st level and it would be a LONG time before that story would be of direct interest to them. Still, they started up the path of where the river had been, hoping to find some clue. They had a lot of "encounters", and they had a lot of choices about what to do and where to go, but there were big changes happening in the world whether they were involved in them or not, and the disapearance of a river is a major story. They chose to become involved in that story, marking out the former boundry between testy neighbors, rescuing stranded travelers, following what had been the river, delivering some mail for small change... They didn't have to and I would have followed the characters where they went rather than forcing them to follow any specific plot, but I can't say anyone's eyes "glazed over" when they realized that they wouldn't be wandering aimlessly through unrelated fights, taking things' stuff and leveling up...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> I guess there's always a story even if its "A bunch of guys with adult ADD and big swords do whatever they think of at the moment and shenanigans ensue..." The question is if the story makes any sense in retrospect, if its a collection of unrelated eposodic stories, or if its a series of fights, wackiness, wachiness induced fights and lusty tavern wenches. Or, to put it another way, if you are running Babylon 5, Star Trek or Futurama?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />   I'm not so much for futurama, but I like to know that the "arc" for a bab5 game isn't set in stone as to how exactly it will be resolved.thats about it for me, I guess.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Kahuna Burger</blockquote>

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