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the town and the guards potentially (*) are still there, even if the party would never go to that location, but since the party is not going there, why would the DM describe this in the game? *depends on the DM and how fleshed out the world already is / whether that location was previously...

yes, we are talking degrees, and since meaningful is a matter of taste, the degrees required for someone also are a matter of taste. For you it is presumably not meaningful, at least I would be very surprised if it were given everything you posted in this thread. For others it is. I don’t...

if the rule gives the GM the option to do that at basically any time (the starting point of ‘say yes or roll the dice’, ie every time the player asks something of declares an action, very much sounds like that to me) then it is pretty arbitrary, rule or no rule.

but what that filter is letting through is influenced by the characters actions (or potentially even the players). If the party goes north, something else filters through than if they go south. If they engage with some random NPC, that NPC comes into focus while the other 50 going about their...

there is a lot of authority, I don’t think anyone is disputing that. The dispute is about whether it allows for meaningful input / control by the players or not. A DM can absolutely railroad a game that way, but that is a choice, not the logical consequence

how is the DM asking ‘where do you want to go next’ / ‘what do you want to do next’ the DM initiating? Let’s assume the DM brought up 10 rumors and the players pick among those rather than deciding on their own based on what happened so far. You consider these 10 options to be the players...

apart from the player initiating what they want to do, I see no difference to the tasks @pemerton described here and rejected

the DM is reacting to player input, it is a loop because each ‘side’ influences the other. If the DM reacted to DM narration, they would be telling a story to an audience

generally speaking, yes, maybe 1-4, 5-7, 8-10, 11-12 no point going beyond that

@pemerton posted this before but never got a reply, I assume it got lost in the flood of new messages ;) ok, I’ll bite… so it looks like Thoth tries to create an undead, so they are kinda like Frankenstein, at least that is my take-away from the scenario you describe. So I can see how your...

I remember them saying that they did not do some things that got a high enough rating anyway. Not subclass harmonization specifically though. In any case, it looks like they got cold feet / decided to go with compatibility uber alles, even if the poll results did not warrant it, which further...

and my point, and from how I understand that of the post I replied to, is that saying ‘yes’ can be as much a railroad as saying ‘no’. Neither have to be, but both have the potential

agree on what, which style you prefer? Why would you. On which one gives the player more freedom / input / control? There seems to be a clear answer

I am sure there were many people surprised by it, there probably are people who never even heard of it too. Snarf was not talking about all 7B people on the planet, not even about everyone at TSR, but about the ‘management team’. At least that is how I understand it

technically that could be high stakes, the characters just do not know it yet ;) Can you define high stakes? A while ago you had the character haggling with a merchant about an angel’s feather or looking for a ship in the harbor. I consider both of these relatively low stakes and did expect you...

I understand the ‘attempt to overcome’ as a die roll should have been used to determine this, but the DM just let it succeed because it was in the DM’s interest that it does, because it succeeding keeps the players on the rails. If there was no challenge then it succeeding is not railroading...

Gary was helping with the bankrupting himself quite a bit too, but yes, he came back and got some hardcovers out to avoid the impending demise of TSR

ok, I’ll bite… so it looks like Thoth tries to create an undead, so they are kinda like Frankenstein, at least that is my take-away from the scenario you describe. So I can see how your example scenario might work out for this, but you also say that this is not how it would work in BW. I assume...

no idea, Cynthia Williams in 2022 said something about having hired 350 people (not all for Sigil but the theory back then was that many were), which to me would mean employees, not contractors. In any case, if you reduce staff from 30 to 3, you are not going to keep around many more...

I’d say keeping a company afloat another 5 years or so is a success this can be true without 2e being a failure too. According to your logic all editions except for 5e should be a failure because they all tanked, some sooner, some later - and the jury on 5e is still out from that perspective