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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8656092" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=71235]@niklinna[/USER], [USER=177]@Umbran[/USER]Thanks for your replies.I'm still somewhat at a loss: Umbran says the framing is not relevant to an adventure being linear, but then I'm left with nothing but the text, which is inevitably linear (it begins at page 1, and finishes at page &lt;whatever&gt;).Reference is made to places/rooms being able to be visited only in order. I live in a house where that is largely true, but that doesn't mean every day of my life in my house is the same! Because different things happen, occasionally different people are in one or the other room, etc. It seemed to me that two different groups could play the little 6 room dungeon and have different experiences, depending on choices made, whether or not they have a Halfling who sneaks ahead, etc.In this example, the player's lack of choice seems to consist in, or be the result of, at least the following factors: (i) a commitment to obtaining an objective; (ii) a decision taken by the GM (following the instructions of the adventure writer?) that a necessary condition of obtaining that objective is performing some particular action (or maybe one of a small group of fairly similar actions); (iii) a decision taken by the GM (again, following instructions?) that other actions which, to the players, look relevant to obtaining the objective in fact will fizzle in that respect.So it might be the case that we could keep &quot;the adventure&quot; largely intact but change the instructions, and now it wouldn't be linear anymore.This is causing me confusion. How do the players find, or engage with, the path of the adventure? How does it manifest itself, given that typically the players aren't reading the adventure book?This brings me back to the &quot;cannot&quot;. Who imposes the cannot?It seems like the cannot is what entails the linearity, rather than vice versa. But where does this &quot;cannot&quot; come from?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8656092, member: 42582"] [USER=71235]@niklinna[/USER], [USER=177]@Umbran[/USER] Thanks for your replies. I'm still somewhat at a loss: Umbran says the framing is not relevant to an adventure being linear, but then I'm left with nothing but the text, which is inevitably linear (it begins at page 1, and finishes at page <whatever>). Reference is made to places/rooms being able to be visited only in order. I live in a house where that is largely true, but that doesn't mean every day of my life in my house is the same! Because different things happen, occasionally different people are in one or the other room, etc. It seemed to me that two different groups could play the little 6 room dungeon and have different experiences, depending on choices made, whether or not they have a Halfling who sneaks ahead, etc. In this example, the player's lack of choice seems to consist in, or be the result of, at least the following factors: (i) a commitment to obtaining an objective; (ii) a decision taken by the GM (following the instructions of the adventure writer?) that a necessary condition of obtaining that objective is performing some particular action (or maybe one of a small group of fairly similar actions); (iii) a decision taken by the GM (again, following instructions?) that other actions which, to the players, look relevant to obtaining the objective in fact will fizzle in that respect. So it might be the case that we could keep "the adventure" largely intact but change the instructions, and now it wouldn't be linear anymore. This is causing me confusion. How do the players find, or engage with, the path of the adventure? How does it manifest itself, given that typically the players aren't reading the adventure book? This brings me back to the "cannot". Who imposes the cannot? It seems like the [i]cannot[/i] is what entails the linearity, rather than vice versa. But where does this "cannot" come from? [/QUOTE]

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