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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5654634" data-attributes="member: 42582">It might seem to be a minor point, but I think it is helpful to distinguish the GM's influence over situation - that is, events occurring with the idea that maybe the players will want to engage with them - and what, for lack of a better phrase, I'll call the GM's influence over plot - what happens as a result of the players' engagement with those situations.The reason I think it is helpful to distinguish these things is not for any sort of fundamental reason to do with literary theory, but a more practical reason to do with satisfactory RPGing: where they are not distinguished, the game can have a tendency to degenerate into GM-controlled railroading (in my view 2nd ed AD&D has a lot of rules text, and many modules, that tend in this direction).So "The PCs are struck by a landslide as they climb the Mountains of Doom" is, in this terminology, not plot, but situation. It gives rise to the question, "What do they do?" Answers might range from "Take shelter under an overhang and rope themselves together" to "Sacrifice a mule to the god of the earth in supplication!" In my experience, it is when GMs try to take control of the answer - or to thwart those groups of players who do not select the GM's preferred answer - that concerns about "pre-scripting" or railroading arise.Furthermore, once the GM allows the players to choose how to respond to the situation, then the parameters for framing the next scene change. Perhaps the PCs no longer have a mule. Or, having roped themselves together, perhaps they are all swept down the mountainside! Another cause of railroading is GMs not being prepared to deal with the (potentially wide-ranging) consequences of player choices in engaging situations. GMs who assert control over these consequences (eg by suspending or ignoring the action resolution mechanics), in order to maintain some pre-determined sequences of situations and their parameters, give rise to concerns about pre-scripted plotting.From my point of view, I want to ask: if the sequence of situations, and the general parameters of their outcomes, have been predetermined by the GM, then what are the players contributing to the fiction in the course of play? Not much more than a bit of colour and some details of narration ("I use my sword" or "I use my bow"), as far as I can see.I wonder, are you saying this based on play experience, or on the basis of theoretical speculation?My own view and experience is that there is a significant difference between a sandbox, in which the players exercise authority over the situation, and the style of play in which the GM exercises authority over the situation. To put it crudely, in a sandbox, players have to seek out trouble for their PCs (as [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION] points out with his example of the evil overlord's scheming going on independently of the PCs). In the approach that I described, the GM frames scenes so that trouble comes to the PCs.And the tools needed by each approach are quite different. A sandbox needs world-buidling, for example - whether in the literal sense, or random tables and charts that "encode" a world (like random landslide charts). [MENTION=26473]The Shaman[/MENTION] has lots of interesting ideas about how this can be done.Whereas the sort of approach that I am talking about doesn't need world building or random landslide charts. Whether or not a landslide takes place won't be determined by a random chart - it will occur either because the GM deliberately chooses to frame such a scene (for the reason that it will engage the players in some fashion), or as a consequence of action resolution, in which case it won't be determined by a random landslide chart, but rather by something more like failure on a skill check or skill challenge.</blockquote>

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