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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9856527" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yeah, that's the Schrodinger's Map technique, and it's occasionally useful.  A good example of where I would use it is the crossroads in I3 Pyramid, the first road the PC's take should always lead to the cave of the Efreeti, because the story just makes more sense if the PCs have a chance to be the one that released the BBEG.However, in general there are a ton of very vocal luminaries in the hobby and especially online whose solution to all problems is rampant illusionism and railroading the heck out of their players.  This doesn't bother me that much if you would be honest about your approach, but so many of these same influencers aren't remotely honest about their own methods even with themselves,  I have several times listened to prominent influencers discuss their prep and how they are sandbox and non-linear and validate player agency and leave it up to players to decide how to solve problems, only for them when discussing how they ran to session to reveal that they used a whole bunch of illusionism and railroading techniques to ensure that no matter how the players approached the scenario the exact same thing would have happened.  All choices get functionally invalidated in order to ensure the big climax goes off as desired and the big climatic set piece always goes off in the same way.  And I can see the value in having your plans as a GM come to fruition, but please don't pretend to others or yourself that you're doing anything but running a railroad if the important thing is to get your plans as a GM to succeed.</blockquote>

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