Are you really incapable of understanding that not everyone plays RPGs the same as you do?Geography matters is to me so obvious a statement that I'm surprised it even warrants a mention.
Without geography there's no exploration, as there's nothing to explore; thus negating what 5e has (quite rightly IMO) defined as one of the three core pillars of the game.
Where's the exploration piece in any of this? Where's the part where the PCs/players get to choose when and-or by what means and-or by what route they travel from scene to scene? Where's the point at which, having decided to go from scene A to scene B, something seen or encountered during the journey can prompt a detour or a change of mind on the part of the PCs/players?
As I posted upthread (post 267), whether to care about geography, or not, is a choice.
When my friends and I are playing Prince Valiant - for example - we don't want or need to "explore" 8th century Europe. We already have a map in front of us, that I photocopied from a Penguin historical atlas. Whether or not the PCs encounter the Huns is not something that is at stake. What is at stake is whether or not the PCs can lead their warband to victory against the Huns, and also whether or not the defeated Huns can be converted.
Your assessment of B as lying rests on some premises that may be unremarkable in many episodes of RPGing, but that I think are worth bringing to the fore.I think there is a difference between ...
A) The GM presents the party with one way forward, whether that's a door or a teleportation circle or a tunnel or whatever. The party can go forward or backward. There's not a lot of choice, but there's no deception.
... and ...
B) The GM presents the party with several ways forward, which all go to the same place. There appears to be choice, here, but that's because the GM is lying.
When the GM presents the party with several ways forward, that is a moment of narration. But what is it's significance at the table? If the players believe they are being presented with a choice as to which bit of backstory to "activate" - eg because they believe they are playing a hexcrawl or other sandbox - but the GM is intending to frame the same scene regardless of the choice the PCs make, then I agree that we have lying.
But there may be other understandings at the table. Perhaps the players believe, correctly, that the choice of whether to travel by plane or by boat is just colour. Or perhaps by choosing the travel route some other significant possibility opens up - maybe the players make a different check if the travel is overland or by boat, and the result of that check contributes a bonus or penalty to the ensuing encounter (in 4e D&D, this could be part of a skill challenge).
My response to this is similar to my response to @prabe: it depends on additional premises.Here's a more blatant example: There are 2 doors, the players decide, forget this, we're going back to town. As they turn around - an Ogre charges them from the entrance (even though there was no indication of any kind that there was an ogre anywhere along the way so far). Is that fair?
You're describing a moment of scene-framing - An Ogre charges you from the dungeon entrance. Is that a good exercise of GM authority over scene-framing? So much depends on what the framework of play is understood as being. If the game is a classic dungeon crawl, and the GM has made up an Ogre with no reference to their notes, then it's not fair - it's cheating.
If the game is different in its framework - eg for some reason Ogres are highly salient as opposition, and it's understood that the GM is expected to present opposition even when the players try and squib (eg by saying "forget this" and turning around) - then maybe the Ogre is fair game.
As RPGers, we can choose how to allocate the authority to author different bits of the fiction - backstory, scenes/situations, outcomes of different sorts of action declarations - and we can choose what principles to use to direct and constrain that authority - eg constancy of prep to support skilled Gygaxian exploration; or narrating the PCs into conflict even when the players try and back away; or any of a host of others.
Recognising that range of possibilities does no one any harm, and opens up the conversations to being constructive rather than combative.