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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8348535" data-attributes="member: 42582">The top quote, and the bolded bits in the second quote, give me the impression that the golem episode happened during "downtime".From your account of the episode, I can't tell how the fiction was established. Was there Spout Lore to find the library? Was there Parley to engage with the RA/librarian? And what was the significance of this golem creation? What conflicts did it play into? What front was at stake? Is the golem a NPC with its own goals/motivations, or is this a long process of creating an augment or a retainer?This all seems consistent with the "easiest version" or a nearby variant:(1) content => GM-authored plot moments (eg based on your front "clocks") => GM-framed situation => narration of who does what; or, (2) content => GM-framed situation (based most likely on where the PCs are on the map, and what the key says will be found there) => narration of who does what => plot moments.What you are very clearly telling me is that the content is contributed by players as well as the GM. But what you've not said anything about (or if you have I've missed it, sorry, and am very happy to have that brought to my attention) is where the conflict is coming from, and how that is feeding into the framing of situations. In one of the quotes above (bolded by me) you refer to the PCs returning from a mission. Where did that mission come from? What conflict did it pertain to? Who set that conflict in motion? And why is the wizard's construction of the golem not also a "mission"?EDIT to respond also to your more recent post:This all seems to describe GM-driven play. You the GM established the goal of play (by inventing a content-element, the artefact, and then tasking the PCs to recover it). You seem to have taken the lead in providing content - titbits and context.Now maybe the need for the mirror was the result of a 6-down on Spout Lore? I'm not sure, but that's not the impression I'm getting.It's also not clear who the man was, how he mattered to anything, and why the PCs cared about him.Who authored the stuff they learned? What conflicts or thematic trajectories did it pertain to?None of this is criticism. I mean, I'm the poster who in this thread has talked about defending railroading and in the Best Practices thread has been saying that there is utility in stating best practices for a wide range of approaches to RPGing.But I'm not seeing anything in your posts that suggests anything different from fairly traditional play beyond the players contributing some content to world-building. In particular, every time you point to a conflict or a trajectory of play it seems that it's coming from you as GM.</blockquote>

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