This was a good piece about adventures that leave space for GMs to make their own creative decisions: https://bluemountain.bearblog.dev/chew-your-own-damn-food/
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@kichae To each their own bud
My games tend to be quite socially-anchored and there's a lot of 'what would make sense in this situation?' where it's partly me making rulings, partly players explaining their thinking, and partly the group negotiating stuff.Moreau Vazh Indeed. And thatās great at the table level. I run my games very similarly. The issue is moreā¦ āout thereā, you know? Like, when ārulings, not rulesā becomes a mantra that translates to āthe GM has spoken, so sit the fuck downā.
Iāve seen the moden/OSR divide spoken of as āhigh trustā vs ālow trustā, and the bulk of the OSR community has kind of shown itself to be individuals you probably shouldnāt trust demanding to be in high trust environments.
Meanwhile, the modern game landscape seems to be split between people who refuse to read, and people who refuse to think for themselves.
Everywhere you look, itās kind of a hellscape.
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@Taskerland For me as a player ... I expect the GM to protect our table from all externally-imposed outcomes of any kind, from any source.
Which, fortunately, is a trivial matter for a GM to do, since they're the GM.
"You insist that I do WHAT, module? You may fuck directly off."
@SJohnRoss @Taskerland The thing is, the target demo of people who consume canned adventures are either fans of railroading or people who don't mind them. High-trust GMs using canned goods are the exception, not the norm.
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There was a similar problem in the 80s and 90s when designers took it upon themselves to second-guess GMs and impose outcomes through the use of narrative guardrails.
Nowadays the same instinct has returned but the guardrails are generally procedural (in the case of the OSR) or structural (in the case of storygames).
@Taskerland History moves in cycles and gaming is not the exception (hell, someone recently re-invented Marauder 2107).
