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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 8657030" data-attributes="member: 86653">Locking clues behind dice rolls is monumentally terrible design. If the only way for the adventure to continue is to gain a clue, it's automatically gained. Simple as.That's on the players. But thankfully, they're never locked into only visiting the nodes and there's the Three Clue Rule. They can still go wherever they want. It's just that the clues for the mystery are at the nodes. The Alexandrian talks about this at length in the rest of the series you linked to.The thing about node-based design that's being left out is the Three Clue Rule. The short version is that for any conclusion the referee wants the PCs to make, there should be three clues pointing to that conclusion. You want the PCs to eventually go to location C, there should be three clues pointing to it. That's what the notation is below the nodes in the link you provided. The zero node (blue) gives you three clues, pointing to A, B, and C. Whichever node you go to also provides three clues, the other two middle nodes and D. The PCs can go wherever they want, even from A to B or A to C, or vice versa. The referee is advised to create or move clues if the PCs go "off the map" to point them back to the nodes. This is what Hickman calls soft bumpers. Gently pointing the PCs back to the adventure without preventing them from going where they want. A hard bumper would be something like an impassible mountain or other impenetrable barrier meant to keep the PCs at the right locations.Justin's node-based design is basically what Hickman's been doing for decades, most famously in the Dragonlance modules. He calls it a closed matrix or narrative bumper pool. It's a good mix of linear and open-world design. There is an event that the PCs need to deal with, but instead of it being strictly linear or an impossible to manage perfectly open world, you use node-based design to get the best of both worlds. The freedom of choice akin to an open world but the structure of a more linear adventure.Absolutely.</blockquote>

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