Only a problem if you presume that players will abuse this option. The only reason to hand wave the situation is because someone at the table hates it. It's not, "I will always hate going into the desert", it's "I hate the road blocking that you are doing, can we skip it". The next desert scenario - exploring the desert - is perfectly fine. Again, not a problem.
Instead, we get to guess which scene any given player may randomly hate. “We want to go to the city.” “You need to travel through the desert to get there.” That seems a petty common sequence, so predicting one of the players will “hate it” so much they will “go nuclear” and need to skip that “one scene in thousands” seems pretty unlikely.
Poor planning by who? By the players or by the DM for trying to force a scenario that one of the players hates? Again, this is a style of sim play that I don't do. I simply don't care. Skipping ahead to the stuff that everyone at the table enjoys is far, far more important than tracking the realities of the scene. To me.
Maybe it’s great planning by most of the players because they want to play out long distance travel as a challenge, and an opportunity to interact with the game world. As such, they specifically shy away from Teleport and Overland Flight spells. Then along comes some guy with a centipede summoning schtick who wants to ruin everyone else’s fun by handwaving all the travel scenes because he’s only interested in the destination and hates playing out the journey.
Why? Why would the players become proactive about the desert? They DON'T WANT TO INTERACT WITH THE DESERT. OTOH, they want to interact with the city. Can you really not see the difference here?
We were told they CAN take proactive action to address the siege and they CANNOT take proactive action to address the desert. That “fact” was presented as the reason they want to interact with the siege and do not want to interact with the desert, despite the fact that both are obstacles delaying or impeding their ability to interact with the city. I do not find that logic correct – they can be proactive regarding siege or desert, so the stated reason for favouring one over the other is invalid.
Yup, the DM has to actively work to make the siege irrelevant. But the desert is irrelevant by the application of one spell. And you don't mind if I make the desert irrelevant by casting Teleport. So, just how important is the desert?
Both can be relevant or irrelevant. In a previous post, I set out how the exact same complications you attribute to the siege can be attributed to the desert. These would make a person who could Teleport just as valuable in the absence of the siege. You ignored those comments.
I don't know about your game, but, if one of my players came away from a session frustrated and bored, I'd certainly consider that a failure on my part as a DM. You are right, the game isn't the problem. It's a single scene. You think that it's perfectly fine for a player to not enjoy the game and should shut up and sit back while the scene plays out, so long as someone at the table is enjoying the scene. I do not. If any of my players are bored enough to actually voice a complaint and try to bypass the scene, that's good enough for me. Because I know that my players will only actually speak up when it's gotten to a certain point. They will certainly give things a chance. But, on the rare occasion when someone steps up and says, "Let's skip this", I have zero problems with it.
Once again, I call shenanigans. You tell us the players will always give the scene a chance, but you decided to skip the desert immediately, without giving it a chance. You also wanted the GM to specifically skip any attention to the hirelings’ backstories or personalities, not give it a chance.
Yup it would. But now you're inside a city under siege. Now, presuming that the siege has some effect on the city, since, if it didn't and it was life as usual inside the city, why is the city under siege in the first place - that effect is still going to be felt throughout the scenario. Time pressure, possible danger from falling siege stones, shortages, every person in the city who finds out that you can teleport out is going to treat you VERY differently, that sort of thing.
The fact you are in a city in the middle of the desert should also mean that life is different from cities in other areas. Time pressure? You are assuming the siege will be resolved soon, and not in the city’s favour. Other possibilities exist. Danger from sandstorms, desert nomads (who lay sieges), desert creatures, shortages because supply lines are dicy, every person in the city who finds out that you can teleport out or even create water is going to treat you VERY differently, that sort of thing.
Yes, you could make the siege irrelevant, but, you actually have to work to do that. You have to deliberately make the siege not relevant. The desert, OTOH, has no relevance once we're in the city. Why would it? The desert around Las Vegas in no way impacts my ability to gamble in the casino. You would actually have to add stuff to the desert to make it relevant.
The siege does not impact your ability to gamble either, or it need not. We can make the desert or the siege relevant or irrelevant with limited effort.
Plus, no one cares if we make the desert irrelevant by teleporting into the city. That tells me just how important the desert actually is. It's not important at all. No one cares, not one single person in this thread has raised the slightest complaint about the group skipping the desert if they have the rules sanctioned means to do so. IOW, it's not the desert that's actually relevant. It's the resources of the characters. After all, if it was skipping scenes that was the problem, then teleport would be problematic as well.
As has been repeatedly pointed out, you can also skip the siege by teleporting past it. So, again, how are they different? BTW, Teleport has a limited range - 100 miles per level. More than enough to get past the siege; probably the desert as well since you need to be at least 9
th level. It has limited capacity – caster plus one person per 3 levels. How many in your party (including mounts, animal companions, etc.)? And it has that NASTY failure possibility, but we’ll just handwave that too, right, just like we handwave the Plane Shift automatic distance issue.
So, since it's perfectly acceptable to skip the desert if I have the in-game resources to do so, what is it about the desert that actually matters? I would argue that the desert actually doesn't matter.
Then neither does the siege. And a competent GM would consider your resources, wouldn’t he? If the siege or desert is important, then bypassing it presumably will not resolve its importance. Unless the purpose of either is for the Wizard to show his stuff by easily passing by the Deadly Desert or the Siege of the City.
JC provides further discussion of how the desert can be relevant and the siege irrelevant.
I'm the kind of GM that wouldn't care if the PCs went the opposite direction of the city, provided they had reasoning to do so. So, that means that the city isn't relevant, right? I mean, I don't object to them turning around and walking away and making something else relevant. Or, heck, even teleporting there, and skipping stuff along the way.
Really, our goal – what we want to play out – is the blessing from the Pope. The desert, the siege, the city, his secretary - these are just impediments to us playing out the ONE SCENE we are interested in. So handwave them, and put us in our audience with the Pope so he can get on with the blessing.
No, to me, your "skipping scenes" is problematic in that you're probably denying other players in my game fun, and you're doing so for (so far) incomprehensible logic (I only get "it's boring", not the "why" of it). When I've asked if you want to skip it because you don't want to "explore just for the setting's sake" you've said that's not it. When I asked if it was "just backdrop", I've been unanswered. I've been told that the "relevance" is the key, and (seemingly) if it affects how you interact with your goal. But, the desert isn't that (no matter what, unless it's contrived), and the siege is always that (unless you work, which is bad?).
Further, there seems to be the assumption that there are only two possibilities. Either we are playing out the ONE SCENE you are actually interested in at this time (GrellKill; City) or you are bored to tears/hate the entire game. I find a continuum rather than a binary “perfect” or “completely unacceptable” choice.
This isn't even a main issue to me. Umbran has voiced the "living with consequences" stance, but a few of us aren't saying "play boring stuff because you didn't have [Resource X]," we're saying "play interesting stuff because you didn't have [Resource X]" and it sounds like we're being told "it's impossible" or "it's too contrived" or the like. And that's really throwing this conversation off. As always, play what you like
What we seem to be told, IMO, is that Hussar has selected one thing – just one – which is interesting to him. Anything else will bore him to tears. So we have to play out his one scene or he will get shirty. I doubt that’s how he plays (evidence: he has a group he plays with), or the impression he is trying to convey, but it’s the message I find he is sending.
You've house-ruled out strategic travel as a player consideration.
Now there are two ways you could have done this: explicitly with a formal declaration to the group or implicitly through player experience.
I'm much more in favour of the explicit declaration since there is less chance a player will run afoul of/ get his toes stepped on by the rule change.
As an aside, I’m reminded of the GM who plays out all NPC interaction, determining success and failure based solely on his interpretation of the persuasiveness and guile demonstrated by the players, then wonders why the players always dump CHA and never take interaction skills.
