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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8141490" data-attributes="member: 29398">Because I don't want to end up with a situation where the players game me (and they would; and I'd find it hard to blame them) by waiting for me to move them forward when I know something's trivial and then suddenly taking it more seriously when I let them stew.  Neutrality says every similar situation should be treated in a similar manner; and as they'd quite rightly complain if I rushed them forward every time and thus sometimes got them hurt or killed, the default becomes to let them stew.You're mostly right on the second part but wrong on the first.  We're not usually bored by anything that has to do with our own characters but recognize that others quite likely (and IMO quite reasonably) will be.Doing it in advance has another nice benefit: it makes the game a bit more likely to in effect run itself during the session.  The more stuff I can put on autopilot ahead of time the better I like it, as I can then enjoy the moment and wile busy reacting to things that come up in the moment I'm less likely to forget something relevant.They weren't aware of any of it...which makes in-game sense given that they were in the field when all of this arose.  And while they knew their goal was in theory to find a particular book they had no real idea what the book did or what its powers were/are (and didn't put much effort into asking) other than the Necromancer PC's own guild was very keen on getting it.  The PCs did know the guild wasn't exactly hiding its eagerness but never gave it any real thought beyond that.On the meta level, I-as-DM didn't know any of this was coming until when the party were ready to head back to town it occurred to me just how long they'd taken, and I started thinking about what if any ramifications this might have produced.  I used my dice as a guide for whether word had spread (yes) and whether there'd be any reaction from other guilds (again, yes); then for timing and for how rough/violent (ouch!*) this reaction would be.* - I usually use d% for this sort of thing, and '00' is not anyone's friend. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />So, instead of walking back to a peaceful town they found themselves standing into a storm.  Fortunately, they have all sorts of friends and allies in town as well.  Even more fortunately, on finding the book they stuck it in a Bag of Holding (where it remains still), meaning no-one could scry its location and try to steal it and thus unintentionally saving themselves a world o' scry-buff-teleport trouble during their two-week trip back to town.Ahead of time, not at all.  Had they been more paranoid and thought things through in that light they may have got to it, but this group just isn't the paranoid sort.Now, they've been told more than enough to piece together how this all came to happen.  Next session will be when we'll see what they do with that info, and with the book.Easy: it doesn't match what was made up in another moment. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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