Over in a thread I started on the G/N/S forum the question was asked, Which is central to the experience, the game or the roleplaying?

Neither. What's central to the experience is the adventure. Without the adventure you have naught but an empty shell. The RPG has no purpose and so becomes an empty exercise in die rolling and emoting.

It is adventure that gives any RPG meaning, imparting to it a life beyond rule book or setting. Beyond the dramatics, well or ill done.

This is why I am an adventurist. All, game, narrative, and simulation come together in the adventure. Without the adventure there is no reason to play.

Alan

I'm tempted to say that this is not a meaningful question, or at least that in many cases it is - that what makes gaming interesting for players is precisely the combination of elements.

You can extract any subset of them and get something different, after all. Pull out some pieces and you get tactical wargaming, a well-established field. Pull out others and you get simming and shared fanfic. Pull out others and you get traditional storytelling. And so forth and so on. Gaming is a hybrid art form. There are people who really really strongly prefer some parts of it over others - heck, including me - but gaming "as such" is precisely about the amalgamation.

Any question about specific priorities can make sense only when referring to individuals. The diversity of games exists because folks want various mixtures and priorities.

Greetings Mr. Baugh,

Isn't it great to take a break from all that writing for Gamma World and just shoot the breeze?

Bruce Baugh wrote: I'm tempted to say that this is not a meaningful question, or at least that in many cases it is - that what makes gaming interesting for players is precisely the combination of elements.

You can extract any subset of them and get something different, after all. Pull out some pieces and you get tactical wargaming, a well-established field. Pull out others and you get simming and shared fanfic. Pull out others and you get traditional storytelling. And so forth and so on. Gaming is a hybrid art form. There are people who really really strongly prefer some parts of it over others - heck, including me - but gaming "as such" is precisely about the amalgamation.

Bruce Baugh wrote: Any question about specific priorities can make sense only when referring to individuals. The diversity of games exists because folks want various mixtures and priorities.

mythusmage wrote: Without the adventure you have naught but an empty shell.

Kester Pelagius wrote: Greetings Mr. Baugh,

Isn't it great to take a break from all that writing for Gamma World and just shoot the breeze?

Howdy,

Bruce Baugh wrote:

Kester Pelagius wrote: Greetings Mr. Baugh,

Isn't it great to take a break from all that writing for Gamma World and just shoot the breeze?

Man, you have no idea. I really ought to be at work right now, but my allergies are acting up and my thinking's a little slow. What a time to theorize! :)

I think it's safe to say that we're looking for a little clarification on what the issue is, here, Alan.

BTW, good to hear from you.

Mike

mythusmage wrote: Over in a thread I started on the G/N/S forum the question was asked, Which is central to the experience, the game or the roleplaying?

Neither. What's central to the experience is the adventure. Without the adventure you have naught but an empty shell. The RPG has no purpose and so becomes an empty exercise in die rolling and emoting.

It is adventure that gives any RPG meaning, imparting to it a life beyond rule book or setting. Beyond the dramatics, well or ill done.

This is why I am an adventurist. All, game, narrative, and simulation come together in the adventure. Without the adventure there is no reason to play.

Alan

Hi Alan,

I confused as to what you're saying here. The question as to what is more
"central", I think you're going to get a lot of answers that are very close to your own, just in different words. That is, you can't have a roleplaying game without some form of roleplaying, and system working in combo.

This is why I am an adventurist. All, game, narrative, and simulation come together in the adventure. Without the adventure there is no reason to play.

Adventure: Something dangerous you do because you're bored to tears.

Seriously, in RPGs an adventure is what the party goes on to see what they can see. Might be strange lands, to find a treasure, rescue somebody or something from some bad guy, or any number of reasons. Any good adventure has places to see, villains to defeat, and goodies to collect. Without an adventure to go on, why play?

Why do you think they're called adventurers?

Story has nothing to do with it. Story is what comes out of an adventure. The fixation on story leads to plotting out an adventure to a ludicrous degree, and so to blatant railroading and great player dissatisfaction.

Look at it this way. The goal is to prepare for the adventure. Whatever you do as GM or player is geared towards getting ready to adventure. Whether it's a whole world, or a starting character, preparing for the adventure is the goal.

The trick is not to plot out an adventure, the trick is to prepare for the adventure.

Prepare?

Get things ready. What is most likely to happen if the PCs don't show up? How are people going to react should the PCs do this? (Whatever 'this' happens to be.) Who all is involved in the adventure? What are their most likely reactions to the PCs' actions? What are they most likely to do with a change in circumstances?

As Bruce Baught stated in an earlier post, an RPG is an amalgamation of many things. Fiction is one part, but an RPG is not fiction in the traditional sense. Yes, what happens in an adventure is imaginary, but it does not, indeed it cannot, happen as it would in a story. No, events happen more as in real life. In that sense an RPG models reality in a way it never could otherwise.

In other words, anything can, and often does, happen in an RPG, given the limits placed on the possibilities by the rules.

This places a great burden on the GM. He must be able to adapt to a change in circumstances. The Darklord gets his brains blown out by the party archer in the first encounter. Who's his second in command? Would there be a power struggle with the DL's death. How could this affect the immediate area? People tend not to think about stuff like this because they're thinking 'story'. Darklords don't get killed in the first scene because it would 'ruin' the 'story'.

But in real life (assuming there were any Dark Lords in real life) it is very possible for the main villain to 'buy the farm' at most any moment.

My point? Forget story. Story has no part in actual play. Story comes after the adventure, when the participants recount what happened. The goal is to be prepared enough, adaptable enough to adjust to most any eventuality. A fixation on 'story' can make that rather hard.

What do I mean by 'adventure'? What you run every time you hold an RPG session. What you have when you, as your character, go off to rescue, rob, set right, overturn whatever the goal happens to be. It's why you play.

Amalgam? Bruce is mostly right, the RPG is a blend of disparate elements, but I would have to call it more a 'fusion', though that is inadequate itself to describe what the RPG is. The RPG is unique in that nothing like it has ever existed before. It is new. It is made up of elements that have been around for every long times, but the RPG is the first time those elements have been combined in this manner. By concentrating on those elements we ignore the whole, and to understand RPGs we must consider the whole.

This is a paradigm shift folks. How the world is viewed is changing. When I am done how you see RPGs, how you handle roleplaying in game and out will change, I hope for the better.

Alan

mythusmage wrote: Adventure: Something dangerous you do because you're bored to tears.

Seriously, in RPGs an adventure is what the party goes on to see what they can see. Might be strange lands, to find a treasure, rescue somebody or something from some bad guy, or any number of reasons. Any good adventure has places to see, villains to defeat, and goodies to collect. Without an adventure to go on, why play?

Why do you think they're called adventurers?

Bankuei wrote: Hi Alan,

I confused as to what you're saying here. The question as to what is more
"central", I think you're going to get a lot of answers that are very close to your own, just in different words. That is, you can't have a roleplaying game without some form of roleplaying, and system working in combo.

Chris

Hi Alan,

Thanks for some level of clarification, although I think you'll find a lot of people have been saying similar, if not identical things to what you are saying now. Your enthusiasm is great, but a lot of what you are saying doesn't contradict, nor shed light on too much of what folks have been, or are saying.

Story=Railroading?

Nope. Sorry. That's just one possible way of doing things, and its definitely NOT what Narrativism is about. Narrativism is very much against railroading, and, in fact, advocates the flexible GM game plan that you're talking about.

Adventure?

We've got a word for this: Situation. Situation is "What's going on that's interesting?" Is a demon king taking over the land? Has your wife turned into a vampire? Situation.

This is a paradigm shift folks. How the world is viewed is changing. When I am done how you see RPGs, how you handle roleplaying in game and out will change, I hope for the better

Heather Manley wrote:

I think I'd have to disagree with this definition as what RPGs are all about. This is actually something I had serious problems with when I began GMing because I tend to avoid things which are obviously 'adventures'. My most successful sessions involved working out personal relationships and my least successful were the ones where, in order to appease certain players, I put in some sort of 'bad guy' or 'villain to defeat'. The best session I ever ran had three people sitting in a car talking about why they'd done what they did; they didn't go any place, they didn't defeat anyone, and they certainly didn't collect goodies.

Hello,

Alan, I'm afraid I'm going to be harsher than I would to most people. You are patronizing the people reading this thread.

Preparing a reactive situation, rather than a fixed plotline, is the oldest form of role-playing and thus is well-known to many of us.

In terms of my theorizing, this is a "technique" which may be practiced throughout the three GNS modes. It's not specific to any particular one of them, nor prohibited to any one of them.

You've paraphrased the GNS modes most clearly in your latest post ... and thereby demonstrated a pretty common initial-reading misunderstanding of them. Chris has identified your "story" misapprehension already; my Simulationist essay has a whole section about the verb "to simulate" and how it relates, or doesn't, to the mode of play termed from it.

Anyway. Thanks for your input. But the target is oh, about 94 degrees to your right, and canted a fair angle upwards from the horizontal plane you're looking at.

Best,
Ron

Bankuei wrote: Hi Alan,

Thanks for some level of clarification, although I think you'll find a lot of people have been saying similar, if not identical things to what you are saying now. Your enthusiasm is great, but a lot of what you are saying doesn't contradict, nor shed light on too much of what folks have been, or are saying.

Story=Railroading?

Nope. Sorry. That's just one possible way of doing things, and its definitely NOT what Narrativism is about. Narrativism is very much against railroading, and, in fact, advocates the flexible GM game plan that you're talking about.

Adventure?

We've got a word for this: Situation. Situation is "What's going on that's interesting?" Is a demon king taking over the land? Has your wife turned into a vampire? Situation.

This is a paradigm shift folks. How the world is viewed is changing. When I am done how you see RPGs, how you handle roleplaying in game and out will change, I hope for the better

I really hope that this does occur. But...Alan, not to burst your bubble, but you haven't said anything that is "new" for folks here. Please, please, and please, take a second and digest the GNS essay. Yes, it is written like Ron had to explain the concepts to a lawyeristic Satan with his soul in the balance, yes, it is dry as hell. But, everything you've said, so far, has been stated in that. Really.

Looking forward to the paradigm shift,

Chris

mythusmage wrote:
No, focusing on 'story' to the exclusion of all else leads to railroading.

Hi Alan,

In order for us to have some sort of meaningful discourse here, we're going to have to agree to utilize some common terminology, at least for this discussion.

You don't have to agree with the terms chosen, but clearly you haven't even taken the time to digest the concepts behind them before discussing it. You're shooting at words, not points or concepts, and that's empty discourse. I could likewise say that "adventure" in any sense of the word doesn't refer to sitting around a table, rolling dice and talking, which is a meaningless point given what you're talking about. I'm going to ask that you give me, and other folks here the same courtesy of trying to meet them halfway in regards to what they're saying, and not viewing it as a giant debate of nitpicking and pissing contests.

So far, you've shot at GNS for things its not saying, and put forth "Adventure" as a substitute, which I can only read as, "Interesting stuff happens", which, to my knowledge, is Exploration, + Situation as defined in the essay, regardless of what the dictionary says(otherwise, see my adventure comment above).

I'd like to hear your ideas, but I'd like to hear them free of the patronizing tone, reactionalism, emotional baiting, and shooting at things that folks aren't saying.

So, to put in very clear terms, I'd like for you to lay out:

How does your adventure focus perspective negate, differ, or improve from Exploration?

Chris

Hi Allan,

Your posts are becoming increasingly weird. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but... well, there it is.

Everything you are describing is how I ran adventures twenty years ago. I have no idea of what this paradigm shift is you're talking about. And yes, I really have "considered it before." I've considered it. I ran this way. I wrote modules for game companies this way. I got very frustrated with this model. And then I stopped gaming. Then I bumped into someone here in L.A. who pointed me to the Forge. I considered the points on the Forge. And now I'm gaming again. (In fact, I'm earning my money as a game designer again.)

So let's recap. You're saying nothing new. I've done and considered everything you're suggesting I consider and do. And I've decided to pass on it.

Now what?

Well, let's try this. While I don't think I'll be able to knock a dent in your firm conviction that you're going to save all us "theoretical" people by teaching us how to do what many already have done and passed on, I'll at least try to offer up something to you about how people use Narrative around here. (Yes, yes, other people use it differently "outside" of this community. Fine. Please, for the purpose of this post, consider the definitions and concepts I'm offering, and don't pay too much attention to the box that holds them. I had to put them in something, after all, and the word Narrative is what we've got at hand.)

So, two things.

1) If a GM tries to "write" the story beforehand (which, I think, is how you're defining "story at the exclusion of all else,") then yes, there will be railroading. But no one here is suggesting that.

This is a trick point, because most people, when they think of stories think of movies and books and think of them in terms of being delivered to an audience or a reader. That is, when I go to the movies or read a book, the work is all done. Thus, narrative seems to suggest complete. And so some people confuse a focus on story in RPGs with railroading, or the GM having the "story" and the players are the characters or whatnot. But around here, this isn't the process at all.

An RPG during play is a work in process. It is, in fact, if we use the "writing" analogy, not a finished project delivered to the players. It is, in fact, the active process of creation. So: just as the writer makes out outline or stumbles through several scenes just to get them down on paper; or just as the cast and crew gather to make a film and, to a degree, discover the scene in the act of making it, so a group of people sitting around a table in Narrativist play are hammering out the 'first draft' of the tale. It's not "done" before play begins. It's created in play.

Now, you suggest as much when you point out that it's the telling of the tale after playing that story is created. But that doesn’t change the fact that one can focus on "story" during play as well.

So, how does one focus on story in play without railroading?

There are many ways. Here are some things to consider:

2) You write: "Your wife turning into a vampire is a situation. Learning what you need to do to deal with the situation, and doing it, that is the adventure."

No. You are wrong.

Learning what you need to do to deal with the situation is railroading. Learning what your character chooses to do with the situation is an adventure.

In the first case, the GM, one must assume, already knows what the player must do to deal with the situation. (Who else would know?) Even with the elastic qualities you attribute to the GM's planning truth is, one way or the other, the players are on that road to doing what they need to do to deal with the situation.

Now, in the second case, the GM doesn't know what the players are going to do. And neither do the players. This is active creation of the story in the moment. It's fun. And it works. And it is not, simply not based on the players knowing what they need to do to deal with the situation. It is based on the PCs (via the players) making choices to how they will deal with the situation.

(I’m going to use some examples from movies here. For some reason, this flips some people out, because, as noted above, movies are already "done," while RPGs are created in the moment. Please allow me, for the sake of sanity and to revel in the power of the human imagination, that in the instances I'm about to refer to from films, the characters don't know all their choices are already made, the characters don't now the end of the movie. For the characters in a movie, we suspend disbelief and pretend they are actually making decisions at the moment they are making them. Narrativist RPG play is like that – like any given instant within the fictional context of a movie where neither the audience nor the characters know where things are going.)

Now. Choices in how to deal with the situation.

In the movie the Godfather, Michael's father is gunned down by a rival family. That's the situation. What does Michael have to do? Do you know? Do you know at that instant when Michael sees the newspaper recounting his father's attack what Michael must do to deal with the situation? Did you say he had to wipe out the heads of the other families? If you said, "I don't know," you would be right. If you said, "He has to wipe out the heads of the other families," you would be wrong. Because Michael doesn't do that for another hour.

Between hearing about the attacking and wiping out the heads of the other families, this is what Michael, the war hero and "good" member of his family who has assured his girlfriend he is not like his father, does: he goes to his father's bedside and protects him from another hit; he volunteers to assassinate police captain and a gangster in a crowded restaurant; he carries out the assassinations; he starts running the family "business" when Sonny (the heir apparent) is assassinated; he orders the assassinations of his sister's husband when he discovers he set Sonny up; he order the death of a lifelong friend when he discovers they were plotting to take Michael out; he threatens the life of Mo Greene when the man refuses to sell him his casino; once he's figured out who put the hit on his father, he kills Mo Greene and all the heads of the other families. An hour ago he was just protecting his father. Now he is his father.

Now if this were an RPG, would we have to go this way? No. Not if we were playing a narrativist style game. Michael could try to ignore what was happening with his family. He could move to another state. Gangsters, suspicious of what he was up to, might come to kill him. He might be injured. His wife might die. Anything could happen. The GM would keep prodding the player based on the players actions. But for all we know, Michael might end up meeting some kids heading for a life of crime in a small town and get them to change their ways. It could go a million different directions.

The situation tells us the first thing the player must deal with. How he chooses to deal with it makes it a story. Knowing what he has to do makes it a railroaded event.

Take care,
Christopher

Gee, Alan, you've been busy stirring up all kinds of trouble. I hope you've already read my points on your other thread, Understanding Roleplaying Games.

You recognize that this site is a home for "academic discussion". I'm a theologian and a philosopher and a lawyer, and so I know quite a bit about academic discussion. It always uses its own terms of art, its own jargon, if you like. That means that within the academic community, if someone says "narrativism" it means something very specific that others in that academic community understand it to mean. If you come along and say, "narrativism doesn't mean that, because the dictionary says it means this; and by this meaning, it has nothing to do with games", then you've missed the point entirely. You might as well walk into court and say that it isn't civil court because the plaintiff is not being at all civil in filing suit against you. You've missed the meaning of the words. You're talking French in a Greek restaurant.

I think you'll have seen in that other thread that even if your word "adventure" is accepted as a term for what is done in a game, there are still "narrativist" adventures, "gamist" adventures, and "simulationist" adventures. But you'll only see this if you take the time to understand what those words mean when used in academic discussion. As long as you keep trying to tell us that they mean something other than what we mean when we use them, you're on the wrong page. Tell an equestrian that a bit is a piece of information instead of a piece of steel. Tell a priest that mass is not a holy ritual but a property of matter. Tell a pig farmer that a pen is something with which you write, not a fenced containment. If you want to discuss this with us, stop trying to tell us that you're using our words wrong and start using them right. Once you understand what gamism, narrativism, and simulationism are (something of which you have in several threads demonstrated complete ignorance) then you can start to explain to us why they're irrelevant. As long as you're telling us "Narrativism means apple pie, and apple pie is irrelevant to role playing games", all we can say is, "Narrativism doesn't mean apple pie, so what are you trying to say?"

You're a smart guy. This isn't genetic engineering (I was going to say rocket science, but that hasn't been cutting edge since I was in grade school, so I'd be dating myself). It's game theory. You can certainly understand what it's saying if you take the time.

If you find Ron's excellent articles too academic, let me humbly suggest that you take a stab at my own Applied Theory, which while it doesn't go into as much detail in defining gamism, narrativism, and simulationism, may provide some practical examples of what they are.

--M. J. Young

mythusmage wrote: Methinks you're using too narrow a definition of adventure. (So was I, so thanks for the opportunity to expand.)

Adventure: What occurs when interesting things happen to people, and those people take steps to correct the consequeces of said interesting things, forestall their occurence in the first place, and/or work out things.

By this description of adventure you do run them. Not the traditional adventure where a villain gets his, but adventures.

Young mother to small child at a closed down Heathrow Airport (bad weather): Dear, we're having an adventure.

mythusmage wrote:
No, focusing on 'story' to the exclusion of all else leads to railroading.

Nope. Sorry. That's just one possible way of doing things, and its definitely NOT what Narrativism is about. Narrativism is very much against railroading, and, in fact, advocates the flexible GM game plan that you're talking about.

Unfortunately, that is not what narrative means outside of RPGs. Matter of fact, that's not what narrative means outside of the RPG 'academic' community. Narrative, a recounting of events or a presentation of information in a coherent form. In other words, story. Frankly, a far better term would be, 'story elements'. That is, the elements that make up a story.

The theatre -- RPG analogy has often been made in RPG texts

The nearest equivalent outside the world of roleplaying is spontaneous theatre, in which there is no pre-concieved script, but rather the dialogue is created spontaneously by the participating actors.

Hmm, I just thought the whole idea of role-playing, as with any game was to have fun. In any manner necessary for the individual, just have fun.

Hi everyone, by the way!

Hi DK,

I agree with you in principle 100%, but if you ask around a good deal of gamers, everyone has "horror stories". You'll notice that these sort of stories don't crop up with the same frequency or level of dysfunction in other hobbies, say, sports, sewing, music, etc.

Much of the GNS theory is about being able to communicate about "what you, personally, think is fun" and matching it up with what other people think is fun at the same time. That is, if one person's playing basketball, and someone else is playing soccer, and a third person playing hockey, at the same time, and not able to understand WHY they're not having fun, you need to have a means of communicating and getting on the same page.

Chris

epweissengruber wrote: The theatre -- RPG analogy has often been made in RPG texts

The nearest equivalent outside the world of roleplaying is spontaneous theatre, in which there is no pre-concieved script, but rather the dialogue is created spontaneously by the participating actors.

It's too bad that specific examples from improv theatre have not been used in the past. It was assumed that RPGing would generate a polished script like radio theatre. But there has been a 50 year tradition of story- creating games for the theatre.

I would encourage anyone who wanted to draw on improv theatre to look at books by:

- Viola Spolin
- Keith Johnstone
- Paul Sils

Greg Costikyan made a preliminary attempt to create a premised-based improv theatre game that should be checked out.
http://www.costik.com/brecht.html

pete_darby wrote:

epweissengruber wrote: This is the point where I make my annual promise to write the definitve article on using IMPRO for RPG's...

Write it, and I'll read it and refer to it regularly.

Hey Pete,

... but then , i thought Dogme gaming was a joke till I saw nicotine girls.

I would call Nicotine Girls mainstream.

Paul

Bankuei wrote: I agree with you in principle 100%, but if you ask around a good deal of gamers, everyone has "horror stories". You'll notice that these sort of stories don't crop up with the same frequency or level of dysfunction in other hobbies, say, sports, sewing, music, etc.

I agree with Ivan. I don't think RPGing is *more* dysfunctional than other hobbies that involve personal interaction (there's plenty of rivaly rand petty dysfunction in *professional* sports ... not even going to fist-fights over parkinglot basketball games).

-Marco

Bruce Baugh wrote:

pete_darby wrote: This is the point where I make my annual promise to write the definitve article on using IMPRO for RPG's...

Write it, and I'll read it and refer to it regularly.

So write it next weekend. I'm busy this weekend anyway.

Hello,

Back to the discussion, please. Or is the discussion over?

Best,
Ron

One last kick at the can.

Improv theatre demonstrates that roleplaying is perfectly compatible with rule bound behaviour that requires a participant to meet a "step on up"challenge (AKA Gamism).

For example: On improv game presents players with several physical objects and a starting situation. The players have to play out the situation and, in the course of behaving in a reasonably realistic fashion, incorporate all of the objects. The ref will call out a team that makes an unconvincing use of the object. Just meeting the ref's step on up challenge is hard enough -- expert improvisers will be able to carry out the challenge in an amazingly short period of time while pikers will take forever.

No dice are involved, but this improv exericse is still a game. You either do it well or blow it. BUT the challenge also requires the participants to simulate or enact plausible but fictional patterns of behaviour -- isn't that roleplaying?

Now, to RPGS

Suppose the GM of a detail-heavy martial arts game told the players up front: "I have 4 carefully mapped out locations for fights: an abandoned mine shaft, a foundry full of molten metal, a gangster's mansion, and the wing of a biplane used by a stunt pilot. Also, someone will have to seduce a femme fatale. I'm gonna start you at the Dragon Boat races in Hong Kong harbour, where you are trying to prevent the assasination of a politician friend of yours. The challenge is this: I want you guys to incorporate all of these locales, and the seduction scene, into a convincing sequence. If you stick to your characters, and you maintian at least a John Woo level of plausibility, I will give you 1 [insert combat-assisting token] for every scene you incorporate.

I don't think that this is attempting the "impossible thing" of melding N, S and G: the token is fully Gamist -- you can use it in game to meet in-game challenges. However, it is generated by meeting a meta-game challenge: stepping up to the GM's proposal. Wit, intelligence, acting ability are what you draw on to meet this meta-game challenge.

Is it "deep immersion." Will the players loose themselves in their characters. Probably not. But they will have an intensely focused creative experience -- and anyone who has participated in good improv sessions will tell you that playing these games to the hilt, consciously going out there to bust the cleverest/funniest/most original moves, is an immensely rewarding enterprise.

epweissengruber wrote: Suppose the GM of a detail-heavy martial arts game told the players up front: "I have 4 carefully mapped out locations for fights: an abandoned mine shaft, a foundry full of molten metal, a gangster's mansion, and the wing of a biplane used by a stunt pilot. Also, someone will have to seduce a femme fatale. I'm gonna start you at the Dragon Boat races in Hong Kong harbour, where you are trying to prevent the assasination of a politician friend of yours. The challenge is this: I want you guys to incorporate all of these locales, and the seduction scene, into a convincing sequence. If you stick to your characters, and you maintian at least a John Woo level of plausibility, I will give you 1 [insert combat-assisting token] for every scene you incorporate.

Yeah, I tried it about 3 years ago and it worked fairly well.

But you should make it clear that the players are "railroading" themselves.
In other words, they have to take Director stance.

GM: Alright the sniper is out, thanks to your shuriken toss. Now, what
do the bad guys do. Take over ....

Jon: OK, when they see that they're buddy is down, the Thai drug dealers peel out in their high-powered SUVs. They are headed downtown, to the well-appointed mansion of their paymaster.

Helen: Yeah, and we hop on the motor bikes!

GM: I think I see where this is going. Car chase!
[GM knew nothing about Thai drug dealers until now]

But players really have to feel that they can invent details like this.

This thread has reached 3 pages, and no definition for Adventure has been decided upon yet? That's kind of odd, seeing as at least half a page of posts in it are about what Adventure is and isn't. Hmm...

Adventure: A series of risks taken by the characters in order to reach a goal.

Let's look at that again, piece by piece.

A series of risks...
This means that in order to have Adventure, there must be something that the character's are risking. So there's a new politician in town. Big deal. So there's a new politician in town who knows about your shadey past and how you covered it up, and that shady past involves offing his brother. Now there's risk involved with this new politician, and it can spark an Adventure.

...taken by the characters...
So it's got to be a risk for the characters. Not the players. A risk for the player might be that Stan will get the last cheetoe. That doesn't make for adventure (unless cheetoes are a central theme to the game and figure into it some how).

...in order to reach a goal.
There has to be a reason to do something, otherwise it's either a 'random encounter' or just plain a waste of time to play through. Neither of those makes for Adventure. Say you're going to get tylonal, because your running low, and might need it some time. That's not Adventure. That's inconsequential. But say you need tylonal, because it's the last ingredient to the Elixer of Life, and you need it NOW, because you have to finish making the Elixer before The Other Guys do. Then getting some caugh syrup becomes an Adventure, because it's a Goal.

Oh, and epweiss...awesome. ;)

EDIT: grammar

I agree, "adventure" without risk is like a movie without plot. "Risk," however, is individual with each character. If you make the risk that a character's wife will be kidnapped and murdered by thugs, this may not make much "adventure" for the rest of the characters, except by helping out their friend, but where's their "risk?"

"Adventure" in this case can be accomplished by providing a separate risk for each character. Maybe one has a bounty on his head, another has a brother working with the thugs who is also seeking revenge on his sibling, and yet another is being chased because of owed debts.

Remember to interweave each character so that their risk is present throughout the game. Each having a separate risk from different outlets makes it even more exciting, and provides more for the characters to deal with.

One alternative to "risk" for the characters is the element of fear, but it takes a worthy GM to pull this off successfully. I guess "fear" does coincide with being a risk to one's life.