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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8339184" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that the situation you describe can very easily be railroading. Of course it depends a bit on the details.But if you read Gygax's advice on dungeoneering in his PHB - especially his advice about having a plan which is based on scouting out the dungeon so as to identify objectives (eg the troll with the large horde in such-and-such a room on the 4th level) - you will see that it depends upon a premise that the dungeon is relatively static between expeditions. Without that premise holding, the sort of scouting and planning that he suggests becomes impossible.If you then read Gygax's advice to GMs in his DMG - written later - you can see he talks about &quot;living, breathing&quot; dungeons which are not static between expeditions. It seems fairly obvious that this advice is driven by concerns for verisimilitude, and perhaps also as a veneer of realism to overlay &quot;restocking&quot; between expeditions; but he doesn't give any advice on how that sort of approach is to be reconciled with his advice to players.I don't hold the contradiction in his two rulebooks against him - D&amp;D play was developing very quickly in that late 70s period - but the contradiction drives home how easily principles of &quot;reasonable&quot; or &quot;realistic&quot; extrapolation of the fiction by the GM can collide with principles of player agency.There are games that reconcile Gygax's contradiction, but they're mostly non-D&amp;D games (eg Burning Wheel, PbtA) and 4e D&amp;D approached a certain way (ignoring the advice on adventure design; following the advice on player-authored quests and on skill challenge resolution).But a game where the GM has overwhelming control over what happens next, based on extrapolation by him/her about fiction that only s/he is aware of or able to invent, whether or not a railroad in the strictest sense, is going to be GM-driven in most cases, I think.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8339184, member: 42582"] I think that the situation you describe can very easily be railroading. Of course it depends a bit on the details. But if you read Gygax's advice on dungeoneering in his PHB - especially his advice about [I]having a plan[/I] which is based on [I]scouting out the dungeon so as to identify objectives[/I] (eg the troll with the large horde in such-and-such a room on the 4th level) - you will see that it depends upon a premise that [I]the dungeon is relatively static between expeditions[/I]. Without that premise holding, the sort of scouting and planning that he suggests becomes impossible. If you then read Gygax's advice to GMs in his DMG - written later - you can see he talks about "living, breathing" dungeons which are not static between expeditions. It seems fairly obvious that this advice is driven by concerns for verisimilitude, and perhaps also as a veneer of realism to overlay "restocking" between expeditions; but he doesn't give any advice on how that sort of approach is to be reconciled with his advice to players. I don't hold the contradiction in his two rulebooks against him - D&D play was developing very quickly in that late 70s period - but the contradiction drives home how easily principles of "reasonable" or "realistic" extrapolation of the fiction by the GM can collide with principles of player agency. There are games that reconcile Gygax's contradiction, but they're mostly non-D&D games (eg Burning Wheel, PbtA) and 4e D&D approached a certain way (ignoring the advice on adventure design; following the advice on player-authored quests and on skill challenge resolution). But a game where the GM has overwhelming control over [I]what happens next[/I], based on extrapolation by him/her about fiction that only s/he is aware of or able to invent, whether or not a railroad in the strictest sense, is going to be GM-driven in most cases, I think. [/QUOTE]

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