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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9471850" data-attributes="member: 29398">Which, while fine in some instances, takes away the GM's ability to plan ahead; and while this may be your intended outcome (that GMs can't plan ahead) as a GM I'd far rather have more control over my NPCs than that, and be able to make plans for them farther in advance than the immediate here-and-now.In this case, their mentor or patron might have a hidden reason for wanting the PCs out of the way for a month and so sends them on a mission that'll involve lots of travel time.&nbsp; Or the mentor-patron wants them out of the way permanently and so sends them on (what was supposed to be) a suicide mission*.&nbsp; Or the mentor-patron for some reason can't do something and gets the stooges...er, PCs, to do it for him then scoops the spoils on their return**.&nbsp; Or etc.EDIT to add: Further, if I-as-GM am unable to know ahead of time whether the mentor will betray them and instead have to wait until the point of failure that sparks the 'failure narration' you mention, how can I possibly foreshadow or telegraph any of it?* - I've done this one and it worked out great - the supposed mentor was shocked to see them return from the first suicide mission and so sent them on another one, and part-way through that there was a &quot;Wa-a-ait a minute&quot; moment for the players/PCs as they slowly awakened to the fact they were being had over; this set off about a 15-adventure chain of events as the PCs decided to abandon the mentor and do other things until they were powerful enough to face him, meanwhile the mentor and associates continued with their Evil Plan to overthrow the monarchy, etc. etc.** - I've done this one too and it didn't work out so well; but I'll cut myself some slack as it was only the second adventure I'd ever run. <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&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 9471850, member: 29398"] Which, while fine in some instances, takes away the GM's ability to plan ahead; and while this may be your intended outcome (that GMs can't plan ahead) as a GM I'd far rather have more control over my NPCs than that, and be able to make plans for them farther in advance than the immediate here-and-now. In this case, their mentor or patron might have a hidden reason for wanting the PCs out of the way for a month and so sends them on a mission that'll involve lots of travel time. Or the mentor-patron wants them out of the way permanently and so sends them on (what was supposed to be) a suicide mission*. Or the mentor-patron for some reason can't do something and gets the stooges...er, PCs, to do it for him then scoops the spoils on their return**. Or etc. EDIT to add: Further, if I-as-GM am unable to know ahead of time whether the mentor will betray them and instead have to wait until the point of failure that sparks the 'failure narration' you mention, how can I possibly foreshadow or telegraph any of it? * - I've done this one and it worked out great - the supposed mentor was shocked to see them return from the first suicide mission and so sent them on another one, and part-way through that there was a "Wa-a-ait a minute" moment for the players/PCs as they slowly awakened to the fact they were being had over; this set off about a 15-adventure chain of events as the PCs decided to abandon the mentor and do other things until they were powerful enough to face him, meanwhile the mentor and associates continued with their Evil Plan to overthrow the monarchy, etc. etc. ** - I've done this one too and it didn't work out so well; but I'll cut myself some slack as it was only the second adventure I'd ever run. :) [/QUOTE]

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