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Not necessarily, if the players stay there voluntarily and thus don't need to be forced. But it remains a railroad notwithstanding. It's the same principle as DM authority: something you'll use only if-when you need to.

Agreed, it's not degenerate. Constraining, yes, even boring if the specific rails you're on at the moment aren't to one's taste, but not degenerate in itself.

Another reason for disparate levels in 1e was the occasional appearance of level draining foes. Me, I take mixed levels within a party for granted. Hell, the crew I ran last night ranged from 8th to 11th, except for the hench who's merely 6th. It's also a question of the steepness of the...

So the Gauntlets set the strength of your hands and arms to a fixed value (18.00), and... ...a Girdle sets the strength of the rest of your body to a fixed value (19 to 24 depending on the specific Girdle), so... ...how in the nine hells did Gygax come up with the idea that these two things...

If it's an inexperienced DM then sure, I'll stick to the track. If it's an experienced DM, however, I'd expect her to be able to hit that curveball and wing it at least for the rest of the session. Though it may be there somewhere, I can't recall seeing a DMG giving much advice on how to hit...

In fairness to @Faolyn though, while the issue did in fact take care of itself the end-result solution wasn't exactly perfect; if nothing else it left her disappointed in that she had a good idea for a character and didn't get to play it.

I'm one for whom the bolded were and still are features rather than bugs. That said, I'm not sure what you mean by "reverse bell curve stats". Did you mean reverse bell curve bonuses instead?

They could have started and stopped with just "The events of the story shouldn't be predetermined; the actions of the players' characters have to matter." and it would be great advice. Adding that preamble about the players being co-authors doesn't help anyone IMO.

To a point. In a truly linear adventure, designed as one unavoidable room after the next like a string of beads*, there's only ever three exploration choices for the PCs: go ahead, go back, or stay put where they are. In that respect it's the same as a railroad, as the driver of a train on a...

Well, at a small-to-medium scale you in fact can force characters down a particular path in how you pre-establish the fiction; simply by how you design/write your adventures. For example, they might go into an adventure where you-as-DM have set it up such that if-when they reach area 23 on the...

When I (as in, Lanefan the character) built my stronghold I put it in an area of wilderness we'd already adventured in, thus the major terrain features were already set. I-as-player just had to design what he wanted to build and then in-character find a way to get it built that wouldn't take 20...

Thing is too, in a long campaign like mine there might be a run of an adventure or two where I end up leading them by the nose, either because that's how the module(s) are designed or because it just seems to make sense to do so; then a run where I don't have to do any nose-pulling whatsoever...

Oh, sure - and as with everything, if done in moderation a bit of railroading (or as I call it, "lead 'em by the nose" play) isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The bolded parts are to me counterintuitive definitions of what it means to be an actor, in this sense. There's a missing term, that would be defined as: [xxxxx] Stance: The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that...

How so? An actor doesn't get to describe the stage set (or, these days, program what later goes on the green screen they're acting in front of). An author does. Same is true of other people in the setting. An author gets to describe them. An actor only gets to interact with them.

Side note: IMO a player's character belongs to that player even if said player is no longer in the game. It's more that in some of the examples we've beenn given, all the players are expected to be co-DMs whether they want to or not.

On this, I agree. It's possible to winnow some of this out, but maybe not always desirable. That's not author, it's actor; as it's simply what the characters - knowing they have limited resources - would do. The exception, of course and as always, being hit points. :)

No you're not. Part of being an actor is that someone else sets the stage and you don't have any control over what the other actors look like when made-up and costumed. The same extends here: you have no control over what anyone else on stage - which means the other PCs, the NPCs, etc. - looks...

Oh, I grasp it alright. I also have underlying thoughts and opinions about some of it that would earn me some red text were I to post them.

This is probably where you're losing your audience, because within that person's mind what's being imagined does exist. Otherwise, what would be the point of imagining it? And because it exists in that person's mind (and, ideally, in a similar fashion in the minds of others at the table as a...