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The answer is YES!

It's definitely not the strategy of new "editions", at least as that has been explained!

How old the hobbyists were who made up something that they and their fellow hobbyists enjoyed did indeed have something to do with the nature of the thing and its ability to attract other people from that demographic -- because they intentionally made it so. It was no accident that Fred Rogers'...

Yes, language is just so lacking in options. For instance, in that quote you used the word "as" twice (which is required to execute the Exemplary Comparison) and "to" twice as well (but prepositions are At Will). Of course, all 27 other words were unique. Moreover, when one considers the bigger...

Well, the fact is that we were finding traps (and reading and climbing and sneaking and hiding) without the Thief class -- just as our characters were not falling off their horses for want of the Cavalier! It was not something that "required significant adjustment" for us. The fact is also that...

About ten minutes versus an hour or more, for a start! As The Man said, If your tastes are different, then that is fine. Why must D&D attract the perverse "It's not fun because it's not my rules-set with the D&D trademark on the cover" types? Can't they go pick on someone else's hobby? The...

Killing monsters hasn't seriously been "an unsolved problem" in game design since the Pharaohs ruled Egypt, or some time prior. The Fantasy Supplements for Chainmail and WRG (4th?) were just popular rules sets -- not groundbreaking discoveries in mathematics or something. As for D&D, what's...

The suggestion (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/298770-wizards-coasts-recent-insanity-i-think-ive-figured-out.html#post5413160 ) that "to stay relevant" D&D has to be played mostly by adolescents seems to me unfounded. The notion that it has to be traded in for something like...

Stormonu, if you are breaking the informal rules of the game to "fix" it, then you are -- at that moment -- "railroading" your fellow participants. (A third party might call a "fix" a "railroad" regardless of your table rules, but that should be moot unless you have lied to them about the...

That simply makes no sense at all from a "sandbox" perspective. Locations are, well ... locations. They are there, and you can go to them whenever. It is pure nonsense to say that Milwaukee (or Glasgow, or wherever) is "the final location". There is no special, privileged time sequence to...

If your game is openly billed as a scenario -- "The Musgrave Ritual" or "Battle of the Five Armies" or what have you -- then anyone who pejoratively calls it on that account "a railroad" simply has no business signing up for it and then complaining about its being just what was advertised. If...

I don't understand your question. Please try asking it in another way. Riiiiiight ... We're level 9 to 14, bubelah; we can easily come up with other alternatives ... and in a campaign, being able to act on those is basic to the game. In a tournament or similar scenario, that back-story is just...

Of course, what's "good" or "bad" depends upon the value system. Ardent players of the actual arcade machine might call an easier imitation of Defender something pejorative. People who find the real thing so difficult as to be "unplayable" might have just the opposite opinion!

Riffing on the computer-game analogy: The Dungeon Master is in great part a game designer. That it was (in early releases) impossible to finish Jet Set Willy was what we call a "bug" -- an inadvertent flaw in the coding, rather than an intentional part of the design. It was not supposed to be...

I'll call it a railroad if, when we try to high-tail it somewhere other than the hill giants' settlement, it's like trying to get out of Hobb's End (In the Mouth of Madness) -- but not due to any such supernatural feature of the world with which we can actually deal. I'll call it a railroad if...

I think the cited quip was -- intentionally or not -- a telling comment on the class of play with which the wag was acquainted. Able players get things done without needing a "Black Sox" scandal every game! You've got that backwards! The games simply were what they were, as described in the...

That is one way to set up an interesting game even if the "destination" in one sense is preordained. That factor is simply not an outcome that is actually at stake -- but there are stakes at risk, and better and worse strategies.

That is merely an example of the general case of deciding beforehand on a limited scenario. If I show up for a D&D event at DunDraCon, then I usually -- or always in the case of a tournament elimination round -- will expect a limited scenario due to circumstances. If I go to a Call of...

What lack? Either (A) You open the closet and see the skeleton in it, or you don't and so you don't. or (B) There's a chance you might find something, so the DM rolls a dice. If that doesn't suit you, then change it; you are, after all, the Dungeon Master! However, to claim that it does not...

Then you might be "doing it wrong" according to the ideology that insists that "an adventure" is a story line that the players must be made to follow. Like intentionally moving your king into position to get put in check? That may "be acceptable" in a peculiar circumstance, but it is hardly what...