Choose your own adventure campaign

[Railak]

So my friend is a relatively new DM, like this is his fourth campaign ever even running. the issue is I've noticed that the campaign is basically just a choose your own adventure book. What I mean is that our characters were on a mission, oh yeah it's modem military based campaign, and instead of letting us go around and explore normally he gave us options of what of 4 buildings we could "explore" (in a city mind you). If we chose a building he'd go into details about everything inside the building, like explaining how the stove and shower worked. This was even true about a building we entered that had a child we saw inside and went in to find said child. Our characters were only interested in finding the child, but he basically made it out that we were intrigued by how the stove worked. Another thing was as we were leaving, this part of the campaign happened twice, because he restarted it for a new player, no matter how "on the lookout" or hell even having a scout up ahead, the party got ambushed. There wasn't even a chance of us not getting ambushed, and I learned that no matter what we said the second time through the NPCs had completely scripted responses.

Like I like that he put so much thought and detail into it, but how do I talk to him about this? I know the other players also find it a bit boring/annoying that we don't really get to make the decisions about what we investigate and do, and things happen exactly as he has written regardless of what we do. I don't want him to stop having the details, but let us explore that stuff for ourselves..

[Segev]

I’d more or less tell him what you put here. Start by emphasizing that you love the detail, and that you want to explore the environments he has set up, but that you want to be doing h the exploration. You want to pick what you’re going to look at.

As a suggestion for him, given the style he seems comfortable with, he might break down the choose-your-one-adventure bit into finer detail. Make it like a point-and-click adventure. When you choose the building to go into, he can give the description and then list the items of potential interest to investigate further. You, the players, then could say, “I go on to the next room, looking for the kid,” or could say, “what’s up with that stove; I check it out.”

He then gives the description for the next room or the stove, as appropriate.

I suggest this because expanding on the way he already gives freedom to explore may be much easier than switching to biting his tongue until you ask about precisely the right thing. Which I can all but guarantee a new DM who is running things as you describe will feel if he tries to emulate a fully “describe and then ask for actions” approach.

[Yahzi Coyote]

he gave us options of what of 4 buildings we could "explore" (in a city mind you)
All DMs do this. I wrote a program to generate an entire continent full of kingdoms and monsters (Sandbox World Generator) and I still tell my players what things they can explore in a session. If they want to explore other stuff I need a chance to look at it first.

Your DM can't prepare everything in a city. Give him a break and roll with the interesting stuff.

The difference between your new DM and a good DM is that good DMs learn how to conceal the limited options and make you think you've got more choices than you really do. He just needs the confidence to wait until you ask for a clue before telling you there's something fishy about the stove.