You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[sheadunne]

Given what you say here, if a player provides you (as GM) with an "out" by conjuring a huge centipede to traverse the wasteland, why would you not gratefully accept the offer?

Huge centipede wouldn't work without handwaving the conjuration spell since the duration is more than likely less than what's required to traverse the wasteland and without the ability to communicate with the creature, you cannot control its actions. Overland Flight would be a better choice and I would have no problem with it. I don't dictate the player's course of action, but I don't handwave rules (rules fixes happen outside the course of play, not in the middle of it). My issue is the spell itself and "fixing" the results of the spell is putting a bandaid on the problem. My post wasn't about the effects, but about the spell itself. I'm not choosing to get involved in this discussion about play style. I've said my peace about it several posts ago. I'm only talking about a single spell and the issues I have with it and spells like it.

In the experience Hussar related, his concern is not that the GM found the resolution difficult. It's that the players offered a clear solution to the problem and the GM insisted on not taking it.

As I mentioned above, if the DM is playing by the rules, their solution probably wouldn't work (I don't know all the details). They need different spells and from what I gathered, they didn't have them. Again, I wasn't there, I don't know all the details.

 

[pemerton]

Okay, so you're going through the desert on the way to the city. Ahead, you see a large group of city people being led by nomads, with various bits of stuff they've got bundled in arms or in makeshift sacks. They're heading your way. Some are asking for help, or directions, since they've had to flee their city (the players don't know it, but the city has been attacked, or ransacked, or is under siege, or whatever). With them is a couple groups of mercenaries.

If the players shake their heads and keep walking, it's okay; if they stop to ask "where are you from" or "what happened" or whatever, they know this. If they don't, it won't surprise them when they get there; after all, now those refugees make sense. If they want to, they can even hire the mercenaries away from the refugees. They can ask the nomads questions. Whatever.

This, however, is not acceptable.

Says who?

What you've described here is the siege in another guise. What does it have to do with making Use Rope checks for a desert crossing on a centipede? Or with meeting some nomads and then rescuing someone they've taken prisoner and then discovering that that prisoner has information about the goal in City B?

I don't want to accuse people of not wanting to budge just for the sake of argument, but the desert is being judged regardless of content (and continually assumed its irrelevant), while the siege is continually put into a light where it is relevant.

Well, the relevance of the siege is entirely in the hands of the GM.

The siege is of the city we are wanting to explore/interact with/loot/etc. It's therefore per se relevant - like [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s police tape around the barber shop that we're going to.

You can set the nomads up in that way, sure - in chaochou's example, as we're walking down the street to the barbershop we see the police leading the barber away in handcuffs, or perhaps the barber's body being wheeled on a gurney to the ambulance.

But we're no longer talking about a desert crossing being relevant. We're talking about bringing the city into the desert. This has no resemblance to the episode of play that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] described, which was insisting on playing out a desert crossing when the players had zero interest in the desert and wanted to get to the city.

 

[pemerton]

Well, I guess it's possible that a GM could set up and run the wilderness in such a way that it ends up having no bearing on the PC's goals

Which is what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s GM did. Which is what led Hussar to criticise the GMing in this thread.

Are you now agreeing that Hussar's criticism was warranted? I'm a bit lost.

 

[pemerton]

Huge centipede wouldn't work without handwaving the conjuration spell since the duration is more than likely less than what's required to traverse the wasteland and without the ability to communicate with the creature, you cannot control its actions.

<snip>

As I mentioned above, if the DM is playing by the rules, their solution probably wouldn't work (I don't know all the details). They need different spells and from what I gathered, they didn't have them. Again, I wasn't there, I don't know all the details.

I don't know 3E or the Binder very well. I'm relying on [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s account that the centipede could be summoned at will and controlled.

As best I understand it, Hussar's GM wasn't disputing that Hussar's PC had the capabilities either.

 

[N'raac]

Of course you might do this if the grell battle was just a grind. But we've already establish that the players were invested in it. Given that, why would we skip over the bit the players are interested in? The whole point Hussar and I are trying to make is that we want a game where the focus of play is on the stuff that the players are invested in.

I am to assume the players are invested in the battle against the Grell when I have been told they are invested in revenge against the Grell? "You arrive at the dungeon choke point with your mercenary team. Seeing your great strength in numbers, the Grell's morale is shattered. It offers you free passage through its choke point. When you point to the body of your fallen friend, the Grell seems startled, suddenly ecognizing you. It grovels at your feet, begging you to spare its life and promising its unending servitude."

The players can kill the Grell with no meaningful resistance, take it as a servant (for however long that may last), mercifully let it go or do as they wish. They can take their vengeance as they see fit. They achieved their goal. Just like they can achieve the goal of hiring helpful mercenaries with an expenditure of gold or a much more detailed Hire Mercenaries challenge. I would also note the "hire mercenaries" goal, I would add, which was set entirely by them, not by the fact that they came across a Grell blocking the path to the goal, much like a desert between them and a city, and played out that more or less irrelevant encounter. As such, it seems more player centric than the Grell Goal.

At least in my case, because the tasks in question are narratively trivial ones the detailed resolution of which would add nothing of interest to play. It's not as if, because we skip over them, we won't have anything to do in our game! We'll do the interesting stuff, like getting vengeance on the grell![\quote]

If hiring the mercenaries is critical to achieving vengeance on the Grell, then they are not narratively trivial. If they are narratively trivial, then why are we bothering to go all the way back to the city to hire them at all? Just go kill the Grell yourselves.

Suppose we look at it this way. The players can make the siege relevant to their goals in the city just by engaging with it - @Hussarmentioned some possibilities upthread, like using the disruption caused by the siege to cover up or facilitate their own skullduggery in the city.

Whereas the players can't make the desert relevant to their goals. Only the GM can do that. Which is what Hussar was getting at with reference to "bread crumbs" upthread, I think.

Again, the difference to me at least is night and day. The relevance of the siege is self-evident - our goal is under siege! - and there is a situation that the players can, proactively, leverage in pursuit of their goal.

Whereas the relevance of the nomads is entirely in the hands of the GM.

Can't the encounter with the nomads in the desert be set up this way? Like, the nomads can be hired to cause a distraction in the city while they try to make their way to the goal inside? Again, this is all decided by context.

Well, the relevance of the siege is entirely in the hands of the GM. He can make them completely hostile to the players, willing to work with them, immune to being distracted, or whatever. Or, he can work with their plans. Why can't the same be applied when the GM frames the desert encounter? I think it definitely can be.

Exactly. If the relevance of the nomads is entirely up to the GM, so is the relevance of the siege. Just as the players might be able to negiotiate with the besieging force, or in some other way use it to their ends, could they not fire up the nomads, in some way persuading them to besiege the city? If the relevance of a siege is self-evident, then the fact the nomads could be used to lay such a siege is as well. Randoml encountered scorpions? Hey, maybe we can rile them up and herd them towards the siege - while the army deals with the scorpions, perhaps we can get past them and into the city. That is, use this very relevant desert to achieve the goal of bypassing this narratively trivial siege.

BTW, I don't recall indicating you or Hussar were acting in bad faith, but if that is the way my comments were taken, then I apologize for the lack of clarity and the insinuation it caused.

It's one thing for a poster to say that, for them, they wouldn't care which complication the GM used. But it continues to baffle me that some posters can't see why, for others (eg you
and me) there would be a pretty obvious and important difference.

I think the difference you perceive baffles many of us. Were I your GM, that would be frustrating as, without unerstanding why you perceive a difference, I am shooting in the dark selecting complications going forward.

@N'raacwas not just descrbing a game in which details of setting are present before play. He was describing a game in which the GM knows what is relevant and what is not before play. It's the second element that (i) distinguishes what he described from a sandbox, and that (ii) led me to characterise it as a railroad.

I don't agree. I can know full well that the lady selling flowers in the town square is the illegitimate daughter of the Duke, and the heir to the Dukedom is aware of this and has a soft spot for his sister, but cannot reveal his father's indiscretions without causing him considerable political embarassment, so he cannot be very overt in making her life easier. Yet he would be very grateful to the party for doing so without compromising their secret, or the Duke could be blackmailed if the PC's knew this secret, or any of a hundred other possibilities. This is significant relevance, to me, for the flower girl. But, in a sandbox game, that relevance may remain only potential, and never be actualized, because the players don't pursue any agenda involving interacting with the Duke, the heir or the flower girl, so it never comes into play.

That one's iffy, depending on the player(s). A big problem with trying to make the desert encounters relevant to the city is that it's not usually going to be immediately visible what changes have gone on. The siege though? They can directly and immediately observe the changes it's causing in the city. For players who prefer things to have more of an immediate (or at least known ahead of time) impact like Hussar seems to, that's going to make things a bit limiting. Granted, some of the most interesting stuff comes out of being limited, but it's possible it'll take a bit more work to keep things going.

I disagree (surprised, anyone? ). The players cannot see into the city past the siege to directly observe its impact. Perhaps the people have starved (including that fellow we want to contact) as all resources went to keep the military healthy, and only a skeleton guard with no remaining supplies is still in there. Maybe they have gardens and wells, and are patiently waiting for the invaders to give up and go home - just like the last three sieges of this generation alone. And if they happen to see the Chain of Office of the mayor of the city hanging from the neck of the Nomad Chief, still stained with blood, that may be a clue of something that has gone on in the city in which these nomads were involved.
[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] - love the "five wandering monsters" example.
[MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] - agree 100%. The problem is that the desert is assumed to contain nothing but a slog through irrelevant encounters, and the siege assumed to be designed as directly linked to the goals of the players. For some reason, we assume a GM who is completely horrible designing the desert travel will become a genius when turning his attention to a siege instead. That seems the least likely of every possibility presented on this thread.

 

[N'raac]

Says who?

What you've described here is the siege in another guise. What does it have to do with making Use Rope checks for a desert crossing on a centipede? Or with meeting some nomads and then rescuing someone they've taken prisoner and then discovering that that prisoner has information about the goal in City B?

The siege is of the city we are wanting to explore/interact with/loot/etc. It's therefore per se relevant - like @chaochou's police tape around the barber shop that we're going to.

Both the desert and the besieging force surround the city we are wanting to explore/interact with/loot/etc. and to get to our goal, we must get past them. Both of them are equally per se relevant.

You can set the nomads up in that way, sure - in chaochou's example, as we're walking down the street to the barbershop we see the police leading the barber away in handcuffs, or perhaps the barber's body being wheeled on a gurney to the ambulance.

The desert is the barrier between us and the city. Nomads in the desert could be a relevant aspect to resolving that barrier, or irrelevant. Just like division 2 of the besieging army could be a relevant encounter we must get past, or backdrop scenery as we negotiate with their General or slip by the siege in its entirety. Our entry to the city is an essential preequisite to achieving our goals in the city. The desert and the siege are obstacles to our entry to the city - we need to somehow get past them to achieve that prerequisite. The nomads and the Division are elements of those obstacles which may be scenery, impediments to overcome the obstacle or resources we can leverage to overcome the obstacle. Neither is inherently - much less self-evidently - superior to the other.

This has no resemblance to the episode of play that @Hussar described, which was insisting on playing out a desert crossing when the players had zero interest in the desert and wanted to get to the city.

HISTORY LESSON: We do not know how the desert crossing would have played out in @Hussar's game. The GM accepted the centipede solution. The party did not interact with the desert. Only when other GM's suggested that this may not have been a bulletproof solution with 100% success [eg. Celebrim's comment that "I expect none of these issues to present insurrmountable problems to a party, but I do expect the journey to go less than smoothly - however much it may beat walking. I'd also expect that this is a perfect time for intraparty characterization and role play. If you really want to impress me, stay in character as you play out these difficulties." To which Hussar replied:

See, I tend to get a bit... shirty when DM's start doing this.

As an aside in this regard, I believe it is that statement that creates a perception of a whiny player.

hmmm...lost my edit. See below.

 

[pemerton]

I am to assume the players are invested in the battle against the Grell when I have been told they are invested in revenge against the Grell? "You arrive at the dungeon choke point with your mercenary team. Seeing your great strength in numbers, the Grell's morale is shattered. It offers you free passage through its choke point. When you point to the body of your fallen friend, the Grell seems startled, suddenly ecognizing you. It grovels at your feet, begging you to spare its life and promising its unending servitude."

Sounds cool! Of course Hussar has to speak for himself, but if the GM had run this scene instead of the hiring scene I doubt he'd be posting any criticisms of that GM on this thread.

If hiring the mercenaries is critical to achieving vengeance on the Grell, then they are not narratively trivial.

I think we clearly have different notions of narrative triviality. In LotR, for instance, Gimli wouldn't have survived to the end of the book (and Appendix B) without eating, and so in that sense his eating is not narratively trivial, yet we hear nearly nothing of it in the book. Whereas we hear much more about the hobbits' eating, because that's part of their character.

The presence of the mercenaries matters, but - given what the players are invested in - their life stories and personal motivations don't. Of course they can be made relevant - one is a grell lover, or a grell hater - but as I think I've made clear I have views on how a GM can bring that out in a way that doesn't make the players engage in a 90 minute hiring scene in which they have no interest.

I think the difference you perceive baffles many of us. Were I your GM, that would be frustrating as, without unerstanding why you perceive a difference, I am shooting in the dark selecting complications going forward.

I actually think it would be pretty simple. If we're revved to get to City B, set up complications that self-evidently hook onto our interest in City B. If we're revved up to get revenge on the grell, set up complications that self-evidently hook onto the grell and our revenge upon it.

Conversely, taking the game away from what we're interested in - a desert trek instead of doing stuff in and about City B, or a series of job interviews instead of finding out what happens with the grell - and you'll see our revs per minute drop pretty quickly.

 

[N'raac]

I actually think it would be pretty simple. If we're revved to get to City B, set up complications that self-evidently hook onto our interest in City B. If we're revved up to get revenge on the grell, set up complications that self-evidently hook onto the grell and our revenge upon it.

Conversely, taking the game away from what we're interested in - a desert trek instead of doing stuff in and about City B, or a series of job interviews instead of finding out what happens with the grell - and you'll see our revs per minute drop pretty quickly.

And therein lies the issue. Many of us perceive the desert surrounding City B as a valid and relevant complication directly linked to the things the players want to do in City B. Equally relevant to, say, a siege, or having to investigate, once in the city, to locate the person, place or thing we came here to interact with. We perceive the hiring of mercenaries as being directly relevant to revenge on the Grell - that has been set exclusively by the players - and so we perceive the relevance of challenges in such hiring being self-evident.

 

[N'raac]

hmmm...lost my edit.

Which is what @Hussar's GM did. Which is what led Hussar to criticise the GMing in this thread.

Are you now agreeing that Hussar's criticism was warranted? I'm a bit lost.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s GM ruled in faviour of the centipede solution. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s criticisms have been directed against any GM who would proceed with the Desert Crossing scenario, as adjusted to take into account the Centipede Mount, or who would have the gall to suggest we follow the rules for riding beasts in resolving the failure or success of his approach.

This may have been the right answer. It certainly was if the challenge presented was simply "get through the wasteland to the city". To me, the GM style that would merit criticism would be a series of Ride checks that serve only to determine how dusty each PC is on arrival at the city, and/or meticulous tracking of time and use of supplies only to discover the time of crossing makes no difference on the other side, and there is no danger of supplies running out.

I don't know 3E or the Binder very well. I'm relying on @Hussar's account that the centipede could be summoned at will and controlled.

As best I understand it, Hussar's GM wasn't disputing that Hussar's PC had the capabilities either.

Seems the best approach for the issues under discusssion. The rules issue has been discussed and, I think, put to rest.

 

[JamesonCourage]

[SNIP some good stuff]

Sounds good to me

Sorry for the rant, but I felt I needed to say some stuff. I can't imagine not taking the players into account, and the fact that there will be different players than the ones I'm used to means that I need to be flexible both within and without certain comfort zones.

That makes sense to me, as well. Thanks for the reply. As always, play what you like

Says who?

The guy who wants to skip the desert because "it's not relevant" and "has nothing to do with his goals." In this thread, that would be Hussar.

What you've described here is the siege in another guise. What does it have to do with making Use Rope checks for a desert crossing on a centipede? Or with meeting some nomads and then rescuing someone they've taken prisoner and then discovering that that prisoner has information about the goal in City B?

It has absolutely nothing to do with those things, and everything to do with what I've been discussing these last few pages.

The siege is of the city we are wanting to explore/interact with/loot/etc. It's therefore per se relevant - like @chaochou 's police tape around the barber shop that we're going to.

See, you've changed my "goal in the city" to "goal is the city" again. I can't respond to this without pointing you back to my post where I explicitly explained that the goal is inside the city, and thus a siege at the city can be just as much an irrelevant roadblock as the desert, or just as relevant as you make it.

If you change it back to "the goal is the city" again, I can't stop you, but I sure can't discuss things with you, either.

You can set the nomads up in that way, sure - in chaochou's example, as we're walking down the street to the barbershop we see the police leading the barber away in handcuffs, or perhaps the barber's body being wheeled on a gurney to the ambulance.

But we're no longer talking about a desert crossing being relevant. We're talking about bringing the city into the desert. This has no resemblance to the episode of play that @Hussar described, which was insisting on playing out a desert crossing when the players had zero interest in the desert and wanted to get to the city.

Hussar wanted to skip the desert. That was his goal. The fact that the GM mentioned Ride checks, etc. was just following the rules. However, Hussar wanted to skip the desert before those bits came up. He wanted to skip the desert because "the desert isn't relevant to his goals." That is the entire reason that he summoned the centipede.

My point is that, barring context, you cannot make that claim, nor can you logically state the a siege is always related the his goals inside the city, no matter what (as he has claimed). I'm not seeing the inherent difference, yet. As always, play what you like