[Fred Brackin]

A plus side to dungeons is that it removes questions in the PC's minds about what to do next.

As a contrast, in our last couple of city adventures we've apparently "missed" pretty much all of the "real opportunities". The DM explained post-session that if we had dived into that portal the city mortuary was using to dispose of corpses through it wouldn't have taken us to some random location in the Plane of Elemental Fire as we supposed but rather it would have taken us right to the City of Brass where large treasures and much xp awaited.

If you are confident in both your ability to present all the information the PCs need and in your player's ability to pick up those important clues then you can let plausability and logic rule.

If not, you need to show your PCs a railroad train _and_ make it truly obvious that it is going the way they want to go. Players only complain about railroading when riding the train makes no sense.