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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8657060" data-attributes="member: 42582">Just to make clear what page I'm on, which I think is the same page that you're on: I'm thinking White Plume Mountain, Tomb of Horrors, the Caves of Chaos and the like.I don't see this as railroading, because there are no &quot;dependencies between scenes&quot;, &quot;key witnesses&quot;, &quot;necessary clues&quot;, and in general the players set their own agenda. There is no GM-authored objective that the players have to pursue. (Torchbearer formalises this by getting players to set their goals; though it also pushes a bit towards GM curation by having the GM offer a list of goals!)I see this as the classic paradigm of straight-up exploratory play, often with a side-helping of gamism (can we beat the dungeon?).Going back to the six-room dungeon we were talking about upthread, that's perhaps not the most gripping dungeon of all time (though I am thinking of stealing it for Torchbearer!) but I don't see it as a railroad. The players have choices to make, including how to respond to the Bugbears and Goblins, and I don't see that the GM is the one dictating what they should be doing.I see these as borderline cases. In principle, it can be just like the dungeon: the PCs just poke around and explore and take what wins they can get. But because the &quot;environment&quot; of interpersonal interactions is so much more charged than the environment of &quot;Trap in room 3 that Halflings are too light to trigger&quot;, I think it is pretty hard to treat the social &quot;dungeon&quot; as a thing to be explored in the same way.In practice I think the sort of thing described is likely to involve a lot of players seeing the GM set out their social situation and then when the PCs intervene in it, the GM making decisions that reflect their conception of how the social dramas &quot;should&quot; play out.It makes some sense, although - and as per my other new thread - I think this focus on the geography of the fiction as a source of constraint could do with further scrutiny.And I think we're absolutely in the territory of who has what sort of authority. For instance, in the node-based adventure, the GM has authority to decide what the PCs care about. Which is expressed via phrases like &quot;key witness&quot;, &quot;necessary clue&quot;, etc.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8657060, member: 42582"] Just to make clear what page I'm on, which I think is the same page that you're on: I'm thinking White Plume Mountain, Tomb of Horrors, the Caves of Chaos and the like. I don't see this as railroading, because there are no "dependencies between scenes", "key witnesses", "necessary clues", and in general the players set their own agenda. There is no GM-authored objective that the players have to pursue. (Torchbearer formalises this by getting players to set their goals; though it also pushes a bit towards GM curation by having the GM offer a list of goals!) I see this as the classic paradigm of straight-up exploratory play, often with a side-helping of gamism (can we beat the dungeon?). Going back to the six-room dungeon we were talking about upthread, that's perhaps not the most gripping dungeon of all time (though I am thinking of stealing it for Torchbearer!) but I don't see it as a railroad. The players have choices to make, including how to respond to the Bugbears and Goblins, and I don't see that the GM is the one dictating what they should be doing. I see these as borderline cases. In principle, it can be just like the dungeon: the PCs just poke around and explore and take what wins they can get. But because the "environment" of interpersonal interactions is so much more charged than the environment of "Trap in room 3 that Halflings are too light to trigger", I think it is pretty hard to treat the social "dungeon" as a thing to be explored in the same way. In practice I think the sort of thing described is likely to involve a lot of [i]players seeing the GM set out their social situation[/i] and then when the PCs intervene in it, [i]the GM making decisions that reflect their conception of how the social dramas "should" play out[/i]. It makes some sense, although - and as per my other new thread - I think this focus on the [i]geography[/i] of the fiction as a source of constraint could do with further scrutiny. And I think we're absolutely in the territory of [i]who has what sort of authority[/i]. For instance, in the node-based adventure, the GM has authority to decide what the PCs care about. Which is expressed via phrases like "key witness", "necessary clue", etc. [/QUOTE]

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