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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6307991" data-attributes="member: 4937">I believe that you did.  You knew the player wanted to know what was above him, so you told him not only, "You can find out by climbing up a pipe." but that he did in fact climb up a pipe (and back down again to say what's he's seen).  That's two choices you are making for the player without player prompts.   And while it might have low harm in this case if its the thing the player would have done himself and the question of, "Can I squeeze up the pipe safely?" is, "Yes.", it's I think a bad habit to get into as a DM because it tends to lead to players that expect you to provide their actions and DMs that gloss over opportunities for player input without thinking about it.   For example, I've one player in the party whose character would almost certainly look around, loot, and then come back down.I think you ran too far with it without passing it back.  In fact, I'm not sure that on the whole you should have caught the ball in the first place.  Yes, it's when you skip ahead to a meaningful choice or scenario.  It's not a bad idea and everyone does it to some extent for the sake of, as you say, pacing, but in scene frame that is non-continuous and not explicitly authorized by player intent risks glossing over player choice.  It's almost always in a DM's interest to wait for clear consent, stopping and saying, "The corridor continues forward without feature as far as your light allows.  Do you want to follow it until you find something?" and even, "Four hundred yards later, the corridor is as straight as ever, about how far do you want to walk before considering turning back?Ideally yes, but all too often the same technique is used to consciously or unconsciously steer the players into making the choice the GM wants.If the situation is linear, I suppose so.  But if there are 6 or 60 different approaches, opening one door means leaving the other 5 or 59 closed (and often invisibly closed).  I don't use explicit bangs very often for that reason.  But, sometimes its appropriate.  For example, if the PC's propose to undertake long distance travel, anything that potentially breaks up the monotony of that journey before they reach the destination is basically a hard scene frame and a bang.  "Your ship is attacked by Pirates!  Now what?"   If the players propose to walk across town, and they run into a brawl between members of the masons guild and the teamsters guild, that's a bang.  Everyone uses them when the group has agreed to a handwave, but you as GM know or discover that something happens before the completion of the handwave.I try to avoid it and play with more continuous framing otherwise.I think you misunderstand.  I think your opening a door out of the scene and/or shoving them through it is most appropriate with newbies, but perversely most likely to go wrong if you make a pattern of it.  With experienced players, I wouldn't advice as much hand holding as you are suggesting.   And in any event, I wouldn't handwave a player action without explicit permission.Again, I agree.  If you are going to prompt players to take action, it's newbs that most justify you doing so.  I said that back in the original post that started this subthread.  But I don't agree that there is no potential harm.I believe you risk linearity and false choices by pushing solutions on the players in the guise of informing them.If you'd read the thread I linked to above, you would have discovered that I advocated judicious use of railroading techniques 4 years ago and with abundant discussion of my reasoning and how to do it artfully, precisely for the reason you are bringing up here.Whenever you hint to the player what they should do, or push the player to do a particular thing, or narrate to the player what they did without the player actually proposing to do it, you risk seizing player agency.</blockquote>

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