Not until now with your link.
From a quick read, I think I agree with and already do most of it.
I agree with the concept that PC actions x with prepared materials x dice rolls is the way to go as a DM.
I also agree that illusion of choice (“one of these doors has a demon behind it, ooh, you picked left, that has the demon”) is not fun to me as DM or a player.
Predetermined outcomes or plots that cannot be deviated from are not fun to me.
But this approach does require a lot of prep (or randomization).
To give you an example of prep … for my since 1998 email D&D game, they took literally over 6 years to do the Temple of Elemental Evil (even with the 1st and 2nd level already cleared based on the results of my own TOEE computer game, including a TPK of all but one character, who became the PC’s guide).
About two years ago, based on politics I had heavily foreshadowed (including a letter from the Viscount to the local rulers calling for the PC’s arrest and the rulers surrender by a certain date - they warned the PC’s based on the relationship the PC’s and the threat to themselves) and that were related to later-than-my-campaign in the official timeline developments in this area of Greyhawk published in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, I decided on a plot the Viscount would attempt. I decided he would hire the mercenary company the hobgoblins of the Mailed Fist (a product I discovered) to enforce his will against the village of Hommlet - basecamp for expeditions into the TOEE.
I decided to resolve that offscreen, so when/if the PC’s ever escaped from the Elemental Nodes, I’d be ready with what they’d find.
I resolved it by asking one former player what the “good guys” of Hommlet would do about a looming threat from the Viscount.
Then I asked another former player to command the Mailed Fist. The latter was about a 4 hour conversation, with no dice, about how he’d roleplaying the invading forces. It was a ton of fun, and gave me the answers for the situation the PC’s eventually found when they returned.
Not improv, not random, but also not DM deciding the world to block or support whatever the PC’s try to do.
I’m going for a simulationist world around the PC’s.
