Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
I'm not sure that your definition of Force is useful, and I think this example shows it. You've focused your definition on some long term goal -- the creation of a "choreographed novel" -- and that's fine, but that makes it only useful in the macro and blurs the lines between content introduction, as @FrogReaver presents, and actual direction of play. I think, applied fairly, it says nothing at all about the Gygax example* of choosing to ignore mechanically mandated content introduction. That's too small to be caught by the definition.I think I already posted that, to me, the dungeon example is like Gygax's secret door example except less likely to be illusionistic (because as @FrogReaver presents it there is no pretend/ignored check). (EDIT: apparently I didn't actually post that post - see further below).
Upthread I said of the secret door example:
I haven't changed my mind on that since posting it. The GM making something salient in this way is a type of guiding but (as I elaborate upon below) is barely so.
The dungeon parallel to wandering monsters chasing the PCs through the secret door would be the (first?) DL module where the dragon armies chase the PCs to Pax Tharsis (sp? right name?). That is force, and more than barely so. Depending on context and details it may or not be illusionism.
I say more than barely so because it is clear manipulation, with the intention of driving particular action declarations ("We go this way"). I will leave it up to @Manbearcat to explain how it counts as force under his description of that phenomenon (I'm pretty confident that he will characterise it as force).
That's not what is intended. Force comes in degrees, both for literal physical forces and more metaphoric/analogous GM decision-making forces.
When I say barely force I mean that the degree of guidance or manipulation is very small. The discussion just above illustrates the point: saying "Here's a thing you're welcome to check out" is not really manipulation, and is about the smallest amount of guidance that can be given while giving any at all. Whereas "Here comes the dragon army - the only escape route is that way!" is strong guidance, and manipulation also: it is intended to allow room for only one viable action declaration, namely, We go that way.
I don't think this is the right analysis of what Gygax describes.
Wandering monsters aren't an element of action resolution. They're what @Manbearcat has called a "clock", which is (as best I know) a piece of PbtA terminology.
In Gygax's D&D the function of the clock is to punish poor decision-making (ie unskilled play) - wasting time or making noise - by extra pointless encounters which either suck rations or treasure or spells to avoid, or suck hit points and/or spells to defeat. If the players play well and don't dither, and the passage of time is purely due to their efficient travel from the dungeon entrance to the part of the dungeon they have prepared to tackle next (and this is exactly the scenario that Gygax describes on p 9 of his DMG) then the clock isn't doing its job if the party gets hit unrelentingly by wandering monsters. That becomes arbitrary punishment.
In Apocalypse World, Vincent Baker says the following about managing clocks (p 143):
Countdown clocks are both descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive: when something you’ve listed happens, advance the clock to that point. Prescriptive: when you advance the clock otherwise, it causes the things you’ve listed. Furthermore, countdown clocks can be derailed: when something happens that changes circumstances so that the countdown no longer makes sense, just scribble it out.
Gygax's advice about wandering monsters is about keeping the descriptive and prescriptive aspects of the "clock" in synch. I don't think it's presented as clearly - either in the core mechanic or in this advice around it - as Baker does for AW, but I think we can still make reasonable sense of what Gygax is saying
Now if Gygax had a "say 'yes'" element to his game, he wouldn't need this workaround for his wandering monster rules, because you wouldn't start rolling for them until the PCs have gone through the already-mapped-and-explored bits of the dungeon to the new bit they want to check out. But he doesn't (and to some extent didn't want to - see @Manbearcat's comments about the secondary, simulationst role of wandering monsters as dungeon ecology).
This goes to @Manbearcat's point about making the game better - sure, that's good advice, but sometimes the product just needs to be shipped! So we get 4e's skill challenge rules which need a few extra bells-and-whistles to really work (some are in the DMG2, some in the Rules Compendium). We get the MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic Doom Pool, which is pacing, GM resource for action resolution, and the opposition for otherwise unopposed checks (including most healing/recovery actions) all in one, and the wonkiness that can produce which produces the advice that the GM should sometimes not optimise his/her doom pool rolls.
Done in accordance with the relevant principles and these workarounds won't stop being clunky, but I don't think they count as force - they're not manipulating or guiding towards a predetermined outcome.
EDIT: Here's the post I wrote earlier about the dungeon example - apparently it didn't go live:
This seems very similar to Gygax's example of the secret door that I posted and commented on upthread.
If one takes the view that it's force (if so, it's very weak as the guidance/manipulation is pretty minimal) in the case you mention it's not illusionism: the players know exactly what the GM is doing! (Gygax's example may be illusionism if the players don't realise that the detect-secret-doors-roll was toyed with by the GM.)
But, that's really the problem I have with it -- what counts as a "choreographed novel?" In this thread, you seem to be taking the tack that any presentation of material with an expectation that it will feature in play fits, but I think that's not a very good definition of "choreographed novel". It may fit the "choreographed" part, but not the "novel" part. The novel part says, to me, that the story and outcomes are authored. If I introduce a dungeon, and even make that the only option for play, I may have choreographed play into that dungeon, but if I let that dungeon play out as per the player inputs, and don't put my thumb on the scale for outcomes, then there's no way that's authored.
So, if we can separate "choreographed" from "novel" in the definition, and apply the terms independently to evaluate play, does this severing save the construction? I'd say no, because there's no clear line between how much authoring rises to the level of "novel." If I ignore a wandering monster check that's mechanically required by the rules, but only occasionally, does this level of authoring no encounter rise to the level of "novel?" I think you answer this above with no, or barely. That's fair. But, how many things do I need to author like this to achieve a substantial level? Unclear, and, ultimately, subjective. This makes the definition subjective, and, alongside already having to consider both choreography and authorship, I think not a very useful heuristic for judging play except at the "pornography" level, which is "I know it when I see it." At that point, as another poster presented, it's not any different from just saying "railroading."
I think a definition, like @Manbearcat's, that evaluates moments in play is more useful. We can still consider if such use is good or not, but it clearly categorizes the moment in play as Force or not Force. We can still even reach your heuristic as sustained Force for the purpose of creating the GM's preferred story outcomes, rather than the in the moment resolution.
* As an aside, I don't understand why you've made the argument that the Gygax wandering monster example may be exempt from consideration of Force because it's not part of an action resolution. Firstly, because your definition makes no differentiation between action resolution and any other facet of the game, merely alluding to guidance, but also because I do see the wandering monster check as part of resolution, at a larger scale than an individual action. Wandering monster checks mechanically occur when the play has passed a trigger point, which only occurs according to player input -- ie, if they take to long, they get a wandering monster check. If the party takes too long, but you forgo a check because it seems unfair to you in the moment due to the party condition, then you're ignoring the mechanical resolution of a player input of taking too long. I don't see how you sever wandering monster checks at set trigger points from the input of the players choosing to cross that trigger point through play.