Good video. There are a lot of players out there who have never GM’d but definitely know everything about it and feel free to share their wisdom.

This is just another tool in the GM’s tool belt. For clues, important NPCs, and even important locations, this is perfectly fine to employ when needed. For encounters, well, planning a session can take a lot of time and it’s a waste if you throw it away. I agree with his conclusions.

The bigger problem is ruining the pacing of the game by making the players do the equivalent of a pixel hunt. Better to put whatever they’re looking for in a place that makes sense to maintain the flow of the game.

Zooming out further, I also occasionally funnel players through narrative chokepoints in order to set up the remainder of an arc or campaign. In Mass Effect you always need to encounter the Prothean artifact and the villain, but then you can solve problems any number of ways before your options constrict again for the endgame. A judicious amount of railroading is not a bad thing, provided you don’t tell players how their character acts or feels. The reality is an aimless game is a boring game, and a little bit of drama or foreshadowing via a limited number of scripted story events can greatly enhance the arc or campaign.

Bottom line, every tool has its use.