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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 2842310" data-attributes="member: 30001">So how would you create a "city of mystery" with this technique?  Seems to me like you're changing the "City of Mystery" to "Unknown City".  I see those as being different.  It's hard to create a sense of drama about a villain (or city, or item) that no one knows exists - especially in the way it's done in many "typical" adventure stories.  Sure, there might have been a way to write LotR so that no one ever knew about Sauron or the Ring until the last minute, but I have the feeling that this technique would restrict you to a narrow set of adventure themes all resembling the X-Files.  "Here's a box, take it to the place marked on this map.  I can't tell you why or who I am.  Good luck."I read the OP to be a situation where the DM wanted an exploration scenario in order to find the city, and was frustrated that the exploration was made trivial by spells.  IMO not telling the PCs about the city in the first place does not solve the problem.  I think this is a good point.  I'm not sure what sort of divination spells were used in the OP.  Spells like Commune are limited by the knowledge of the deity (maybe that sounds uncomfortably to me like DM fiat unless the DM prepares ahead of time.)  Commune (in the 3.5 SRD) gives you two degrees of freedom - you get to decide who is contact (deity or agents) and then what they would know.  I guess it's worth asking whether the DM in the OP handled the divination spells properly.  IMO the DM had plenty of leeway to restrict information give about a "City of Mystery" based on the wording of the spell descriptions.</blockquote>

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