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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 6724223" data-attributes="member: 6801286">How? How would they notice? They don't know where the wizards tower is. Only I do. And the truth of the matter is, that as a storyteller it can be anywhere I want it to be.Sure I can. In fact, I do that all the time. The trick is to make up logical narrative connections. For example:The players were in a city, and were wandering the streets at random. I figured that something interesting should happen. I rolled a random encounter, and it landed on an angry mob. So I told them how they encountered an angry mob that was blocking their way. According to the main plot that I had written out, the local dwarven pirates had lost one of their ships recently. I reasoned that perhaps they suspected that the royal navy had been responsible, thus explaining the angry mob of dwarves in the street, demanding justice. It totally made sense, and the players were completely immersed. They immediately tried to use diplomacy to get the dwarves to settle down, and the party leader promised the dwarves that he would speak with the local ruler on their behalf.This then cascaded into a new series of interconnected events. The dwarven pirate captain who was responsible for getting them so riled up, was now in prison, and his ship had been seized. The only way to calm the dwarves down, would be to get their captain out of prison. But in the meantime his ship had been sold to one of the villains in my campaign. Getting the pirate captain out of prison was going to be difficult, because the captain of the guards was a notorious hard-ass. So the players contacted the thieves guild, who knew a contact that may be able to help them. They met with the mysterious contact, and only later they figured out that, plot twist, the contact of the thieves guild WAS the captain of the guards. And this all eventually lead to a massive battle at the old shipyard, to kill the villain, and take back the dwarven ship. So how much of this was planned? What was dropped in their path, what was scripted, and what was made up on the spot? The players couldn't tell, it all seemed to be part of the intricate plot.You can drop anything you want in the path of the players, as long as you can find a good narrative reason for it to be there. If you can intertwine it with other plot points, even better. I don't believe for a second that any of my players realized that I was making most of it up on the spot, and was also dropping things in their path. They know that wherever they go, they will encounter things of interest. My campaign tends to be like a theme park. There are things to see everywhere. And a wizards tower in a desert is not going to stand out in the slightest, among all the haunted forests, enchanted swamps and magical gateways to the nether world.</blockquote>

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