A bizarre thought I had which I thought might bear a little discussion. We all know the "bass line" metaphor, but (IMHO at least) that's a little tricky to actually act on.

So, is a GM a little like an Olympic committee? He/she creates a set of events to challenge the players. Note - that's "event" in the Olympic sense (*not* the "occurrence" synonym); challenge the *players*, not the PCs; "challenge" doesn't necessarily mean competition; and the events aren't necessarily encountered in a fixed order.

The classic dungeon crawl is an example of this kind of design, but is IMHO a rather bad example because the events are too similar and many don't challenge the players (they challenge the PCs without challenging the players - which is, in general, rather dull, as trying to get higher than 10 on the dice is really no more exciting or challenging - or entertaining - than trying to get higher that 5).

But also, for example, there's an Unknown Armies prefab adventure (in Weep, I think) which throws the players into a series of bizarre situations about which their PCs can't really do much - the challenge being, presumably, that of playing out their character's reactions to these situations (given UA's heavy Simulation of the properties of each character)

Both of these may involve railroading. But is it possible to do this sort of thing without railroading? I'd have to fall back on the word of those that know more about the more modern GMing styles than I do. But it seems that a "creative solution" type of event (qv) is valid, or a "creative story progression" event (qv), and it also seems that there's no reason why all the events (is 'qv' actually right?) need to be made up in advance of the game or indeed in advance of the player's actions.

So, for those who know more than I: is it viable for the GM to think of challenges this way in a Narrativist context, with them just being different forms of challenge? Is a "creative story progression" challenge a cop-out or dangerous (running the risk of a breakdown if nobody manages it)? Is this a reasonable way of representing GMing at all, and are there styles that can't possibly be fitted in, or are my fit-ins above too tenuous? (If it ever reaches the point where an entire game can only be represented as a single event I'd consider that too tenuous...)

Sorry if this is all old material, by the way.