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Not quite. An encounter is also a thing that will occur unless steps are taken to prevent it from occurring. I see you coming toward me along the street, but you haven't seen me yet. I could keep walking and talk to you (encounter) or I could slip into a store until you've gone by (avoided...

Take out "planned" and replace with "foreseeable or foreseen". And - sigh - I suppose I have to note that when I say foreseeable or foreseen I mean by the players and-or PCs, not the DM.

I'd define it as a foreseeable or foreseen encounter that was intentionally avoided by the PCs. That takes the planning piece out of it and also speaks to player/PC intentions.

Did you ever position a gang of toughs in front of the PCs as a challenge or obstacle and if yes, did the PCs successfully take steps to avoid them? If yes again, then boom: they bypassed that encounter (and in 1e D&D, would get xp as if they had defeated the toughs in combat). I don't know of...

In sequence: 1. That a large amount of information is hidden is in itself fine, provided the next few pieces are done with integrity. 2. Hidden info can be changed or tweaked or amended until and unless it has in any way come into, affected, or influenced actual play, at which point it has to...

Easy, says he from long experience. If I prep a dungeon now but don't get to use it now, I've still got the bulk of that prep for later: if I suddenly need a dungeon two years hence I can just haul out this one and, if necessary, quickly repopulate it with occupants that make more sense for the...

I think, when talking about bypassed encounters, we're more meaning situations in which a conscious choice was made to take steps in order to bypass something known about rather than simply missing something due to forgetfulness, tardiness, or never knowing it existed. You see the guards on the...

OK, how about bypassing a challenge?

Ideally I can wing it well enough that they don't even realize it's all just random encounters. Ideally I can make it look like everything is well in hand no matter what curveballs they throw at me. Or - and IME far more likely - the players are just a chaotic bunch playing chaotic characters...

That there's five guards on the drawbridge may have become established only when the PCs first saw said drawbridge; or it may have become established earlier through the PCs' info-gathering and scouting (they're allowed to do that, right?) that there's usually between 4 and 6 guards there at any...

Why? If they want to go somewhere else then IMO it's on you-as-DM to run that, even if you have to cover with random encounters until you can more fully prep something for next week. Even if it's as simple as you've started them at the dungeon entrance expecting them to go right in but they...

rant Who gives a flippety-flop about the specifics of the conversation at the table? You keep dragging things back to this dry analysis over and over again, and for the (my guess is vast) majority of us it just doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what happens in the fiction: by...

To be perhaps overly fussy, I'd call it a bypassed encounter situation if they successfully found a way to go east without meeting or fighting any Orcs.

Mine was also high school theatre and a bit of out-of-school stuff; and unlike your groups ours tended to collaborate in silos - the actors helped out the other actors (well, as much as can be expected in high school where people didn't always get along) while the stage crew helped each other...

Indeed; and the risk inherent to D&D commercially capsizing is that it drags the entire hobby down with it, taking it out of any sort of mainstream view and plunking it back in the niche closet from which it emerged. Some might not mind this. I, though, wouldn't want to see it happen.

What is the "purple site"?

In fairness, I think Ezekiel thought I was introducing the Goblin in an area known to be Goblin-free due to a cross-over of examples, hence his objection. 'Twas my mistake for using the same creature. Change it to Kobold instead. :)

Question: is your theatre experience mostly onstage as an actor or backstage as crew? I ask because what little theatre experience I have was all on-stage, and as an actor I never even thought to try to have any say in what the set looked like or how to paint the backdrops; that's what the crew...

Ah. I wasn't thinking in this instance of this specifically being the forest with no Goblins, so probably a bad example. Replace Goblin with Kobold, perhaps, and my point remains: there's no "menu" of possible player responses to a Kobold stepping into the firelight, no "railroad" to follow or...

It's hard to maintain an illusion successfully for any length of time. Sooner or later either the illusion is a) exposed or b) disproved.