Stop beating the Quantum Ogre

Been thinking about the quantum ogre. Something that started out as a nuanced point that has evolved into a take-down phrase for railroaded games which negate player choices. No matter which way players choose to leave a village, the GM is putting an ogre on the road out (so it's "quantum", in both places at once, unavoidable. In other words, Strahd). Quantum ogres get fat when the GM is using the players to tell a story, and nothing they do matters because the GM is going to overturn their choices by changing the world. Blorb is an alternative to quantum ogres. A blorby GM creates the world facts (or fact-generation procedures) beforehand as much as possible, and never changes pre-determined world facts for players. Elmcat, current president pro-tem of the Blorb Congress, can tell you about it, and for many folks, blorb is a fun way to create an emergent story at the table. As Elmcat eloquently puts it, "You don't decide important facts after seeing what the players chose...Blorb is…