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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6116138" data-attributes="member: 4937">As with Nagol, I don't think that there is an objectively correct way to handle this.  For me, to wave a 500 mile (5-10 day?) ocean journey implies: a) the DM didn't really think he could make such a journey interesting to the players, b) the DM knew that the dig site investigation would already consume a lot of play time and wanted to speed it up, c) there is no particular need to foreshadow any locations along the way because you don't anticipate them being relevant, and d) the journey is normally just an ordinary hardship regularly undertaken by non-heroes and usually only featuring the normal obstacles associated with sea journeys.   The latter is important only in so much as it prevents you from later changing the character of this part of the world easily.  You can't handwave passage through part of your world and then later easily establish that the ocean between City A and City D is so notorious for dragon turtles that no sailor dares travel it.   I say 'easily' because you could always establish that dragon turtles are migratory and only during a certain season of the year is ocean travel impossible, though you'd probably want to foreshadow that complication if you were wanting to introduce it.What would make me think you hadn't handled the journey well?  Well, obviously the opposite situation.a) One of the characters has something in their backstory related to ocean travel - descended from a selkie, mother was a mermaid, Nauti the Storm Lord hates them, true love was murdered by pirates, etc. - and this is a good opportunity to bring that aspect of the character into play.b) One of the characters has exploration as a schtick, and this is an opportunity to spot light a character that is usually out of the spot light.c) One of the players has strongly signaled that they have Exploration as an agenda.d) One of the ports of call between City A and City D is Important to the campaign and likely to be reoccuring, and this is a good oppurtunity to introduce Ptolus, Waterdeep, Greyhawk, Sigal or whatever by having a minor complication related to one of the story lines occur while in port.e) The journey between City A and City D has some important heroic color and must be undertaken therefore heroicly in full knowledge of the legendary hazards thereof.In general though, I don't think there is an issue of 'surprising the DM' here unless you had never anticipated that they'd stop everything to do something that you hadn't thought particularly important for 3 in game week.   Since your other two plot hooks appear to have time pressure, that could be what you mean by 'surprising the DM'.Your bigger problem doesn't to me look like it relates to scene framing or surprising the DM at all.  It sounds to me like you have a table bully, where one of the player's with a forceful personality is using his OOC personality to make the game revolve around his needs.   This is going to be very hard to deal with, especially if some of the other players are shy or have a personality prone to conflict avoidance.   Some of the things I'm concerned about:a) PC's most obvious conflict is with his missing friend and colleague.  Instead of following this up, he decides to take a 3 week trip 500 miles away.  This is potentially wildly out of character if the PC has any sort of tags signalling loyalty or valuing life.  Basically the character has just signalled the personality - things of academic interest or more important than people.   That might be correct for the character, but I feel it demands a serious complication.  Further, by overruling the rest of the parties concerns, the player has potentially created a serious complication for any other member of the party that is described as 'loyal' or 'valuing people over things'.   If this conflict wasn't highlighted IC, something is wrong.b) This is doubly true because player #3 has just recieved a complication and has been signaled that he has recieved a quest with time pressure.   If PC #1 knows IC that PC #3 is being actually endangered by his plans to travel 500 miles away to go to a dig site, that's a major conflict.   If this conflict wasn't highlighted IC, something is seriously wrong.  You mention, 'much deliberation'.   Was that deliberation IC or OOC?  Because if the deliberation was OOC, then you are dealing with a serious problem of table bullying.   I don't see any evidence that Player #3 acquiesed because he believed 'that is what my character would do'.   I believe this was done to avoid OOC conflict with Player #1, and not to avoid IC conflict with Character #1.   Putting myself in the head of Character #3, I can't imagine agreeing to go with Character #1.  "Have fun.  I've got more important things to do than make mud pies somewhere.   I've got you know, adult responcibilities.", seems like the natural response.  Character #3 needs to have something in his character that makes him think the dig site is Important, or this is probably wildly out of line with his character's stated beliefs and goals.One of the reasons I try to enforce IC talk at the table is players and characters can have such radically different roles.   I have a player with major self-confidence issues.   Thier character on the other hand has by far the highest social standing of anyone in the party and is the in game official leader of the group, being at this point both a Captain and a Knight with several of the other characters being perceived socially as being that character's henchmen.  Yet, out of character, some of the player's of those characters can be rather forceful in their personality.   Making the players be IC reminds the generally self-doubting PLAYER, that in game his opinion really does matter and is important and therefore he should feel free to speak up and be heard.One other concern is that while I've no concerns with handwaving the trip, by handwaving the process of preparing for the trip, you've basically ruled in Player #1's favor.  If the process of preparing for the trip involved hours or days of time to find a boat going the right way at the right time, then you had oppurtunity to start playing out some of the other threads  and see if the party _really_ had agreed that plot #1 was all important and plot #2 and plot #3 could be happily ignored.</blockquote>

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