TheSword
Legend
I’m not going to get into a point by point rebuttal with you. As i said a choice that isn’t meaningful isn’t invalidated by something unrelated to that choice. Your method: deciding a specific location for the ogre is impractical outside a bounded dungeon and the only way it works in the big wide world is by artificially restricting choices I.e north, south… which is itself railroading. By placing your ogre in the ‘North’ you’re invalidating the players choice of going NW, NNW, N, NNE and NE. How dare you!You can't have one without the other unless there's only one way in or out...and then once outside...you can go any direction you want, provided the terrain isn't impassible.
Yes. Exactly that. Because I want the world to feel like it's a real place where the choice the players make matter. If they go north that's a completely different choice than going south...because different things exist to the north than to the south.
Absolutely. If there's a village to the north and the farmers are coming to your town from there...they're going to be on the north road...not the south road. If the ogre is staking out the south road to waylay people...he's going to be on the south road...not the north road.
Not every choice made is informed.
Space-time. They're connected. You cannot have space without time, nor time without space. Disconnecting an encounter from one or the other give you a quantum ogre problem. If you as the DM decide that the players will encounter an ogre regardless of which door they open (space) or regardless of when they open the door (time)...you're still deciding to use illusionism. Their choice doesn't matter, this encounter is predetermined. Period. It's a bad tool to use.
So what? DMs do it all the time. Players do it all the time. Real people in real life do it all the time.
If you want your world to feel real, yes, they should. Sometimes the PCs will miss things. That's okay. The farmers had important info about some thing and the PCs will find out when they get back to town...if they get back to town.
Yes, they can. But that's still illusionism.
The truth is, it is perfectly possible to have adventures that proceed from series of events branching following player decisions over time without having that based on location. I suspect as you use the method of writing your adventures as you go along you are freed from the expectations of having to plan ahead beyond a few steps. It’s an option many people don’t have… least of all someone writing a campaign for other people to run.