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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9468175" data-attributes="member: 42582">No. Players can map. They can listen at doors. They can use the myriad detection and scrying devices that are part of the game. They can collect clues in the dungeon in other ways too (eg speaking to monsters; drawing inferences from what they encounter about what might be next - eg Gnolls keep hyenas; Hobgoblins keep carnivorous apes; etc).This is why it is skilled play, not roulette.And my preceding paragraph shows why it is not GM-driven. The players can collect that information, make their plans, etc. Once the GM has written their map and key, following the game's advice, the players then have access to these techniques for obliging the GM to reveal elements of the map, and elements of the key, and thereby to make decisions about how they approach play. The GM does not control pacing, and does not even control scene-framing.In a classic dungeon crawl, the outcome of action resolution is not decided by the GM. Either there is a rule - eg the rule for listening at doors - or there is extrapolation from a very austere fiction (eg this is how breaking down a door with an axe is resolved).But AD&amp;D has no rules for resolving most non-dungeon-delving actions. And as soon as the fiction becomes less austere than the (highly artificial) dungeon, extrapolation turns into just making stuff up.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 9468175, member: 42582"] No. Players can map. They can listen at doors. They can use the myriad detection and scrying devices that are part of the game. They can collect clues in the dungeon in other ways too (eg speaking to monsters; drawing inferences from what they encounter about what might be next - eg Gnolls keep hyenas; Hobgoblins keep carnivorous apes; etc). This is why it is skilled play, not roulette. And my preceding paragraph shows why it is not GM-driven. The players can collect that information, make their plans, etc. Once the GM has written their map and key, following the game's advice, the players then have access to these techniques for obliging the GM to reveal elements of the map, and elements of the key, and thereby to make decisions about how they approach play. The GM does not control pacing, and does not even control scene-framing. In a classic dungeon crawl, the outcome of action resolution is not decided by the GM. Either there is a rule - eg the rule for listening at doors - or there is extrapolation from a very austere fiction (eg this is how breaking down a door with an axe is resolved). But AD&D has no rules for resolving most non-dungeon-delving actions. And as soon as the fiction becomes less austere than the (highly artificial) dungeon, [I]extrapolation[/I] turns into just making stuff up. [/QUOTE]

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