Yes. Also some posters assume #1 and #2 are mutually exclusive, and #1 and #2 are congruent and some posters make assumptions about how congruent #1 and #2 ought to be and not merely how they are.
Or at least, assumptions about that. The example of choice is being used mostly as an abstract marker, with little relationship to the original example. 'Hussar' is now a generic player, the 'city' is a generic relevant goal, the 'desert' is a generic obstacle... etc. People feel in the details to support their position as needed.
I suppose it has to do with how the desert is presented. If the players arrived in the center of the nomad encampment at the end of the plane shift, then they could have immediately received the needed information while not wasting time wandering around the desert. Poof, you appear in the middle of nomad camp. The nomads are sitting around the fire talking about this siege around the city. After the surprise wears off, the players and nomads chat and learn about "x" and how to quickly and efficiently navigate through the desert to reach the city.
More or less, yes. Or the players could have arrive not knowing where the 'city' is, but knowing the the desert wastes are inhabited by fiendish intelligent ape creatures that do know where the 'city' is, and sure enough a tribe of these turns up in the first day of exploration/getting your bearings and the players now much recruit a guide (charm monster, diplomacy, intimidation, bribery, trickery, etc.).
The DM's plot is affirmed and the players goals are supported.[/quotes]
There are literally 100's of ways of doing this.
I'm also seeing that when the players first arrive on the plane, there is no description to interact with. You're in the desert, there's red sand and it smells like sulfur. There's nothing for the players to leverage or additional information to move the scene forward. In those events players usually fall back to goal achievement, which is perfectly understandable. What else do they have to do?
This is an essential point, and brings me back to my linked post defining what a 'railroad' is. In that post I argued that 'railroads' can be used sparingly to empower players, and that this was a functional use of railroads quite apart from heavy handedly making sure your plot works out. The case of a party with limited knowledge is a case that just calls out for a railroad, and in particular for 'Shrondinger's Map'. Used correctly and sparingly, 'Shrodinger's Map' allows you to avoid a big trap in sandbox play. In sandbox play, there is a danger that in attempting to not force the players to do anything, what you actually do is force the player to make random meaningless choices - random because they don't have enough information to know what ends their choices will lead to. A choice between 'left' and 'right' is a meaningless choice.
To describe this situation, I coined the turn 'rowboat world' to represent the opposite spectrum from a railroad. If a railroad was a disfunctional adventure path, then a the rowboat world was the equally disfunctional sandbox. The iconic 'rowboat world' would be a campaign that begins with the 'bang' (or whimper), "You are adrift in a rowboat in the middle of a warm tropical ocean. There is no land in sight in any direction.", and then uses process simulation from there. In theory, the players are empowered. They can go in any direction they like. There is no GM force operative once the game begins. But the players have no information for making meaningful choices, nor do they have the power to get any where very fast. In theory, if the game goes long enough, interesting developments may occur. They may eventually discover islands, develop a map of the world, learn where resources and adventures are to be had, and so forth. But chances are, this won't happen without some sort of forced encounter early on that gives the players enough information to start making meaningful choices. The solution is, no matter what the players do, after the first day of rowing something interesting happens that puts things on the map. If you do pure process simulation, the players could wander around on the ocean for weeks or months without ever encountering more than a juvenile sea turtle or a float of jellyfish. The worst case example, and I've been in this in real life, is not only is the GM dropping you in a row boat world, but he is an improvisational DM that expects you (sitting in your rowboat) to add via process all the interesting details to the world. There is nothing worse than being in a rowboat in an infinite empty 'ocean'. I'll take the most pathetically hamfisted railroad over that.
The 'rowboat world' version of Hussar's example would be, "Ok, you've arrived randomly 5d100 miles from your destination. You don't know which direction it is in and you don't even have an accurate description. It's a city of some sort." and then from that basis assumes that the players will need to do an exhaustive mile by mile hex by hex search of the entire 3 million square miles that the city could potentially be in in order to find their goal and that all the hexes will be filled in by random encounters and that this constitutes a great campaign. I suppose for some purposes it might - the group in 'Knights of the Dinner Table' seems to prefer this sort of loose disconnected exploration (much to the frustration of the DM who wants to tell stories and 'get to the good stuff'). It's certainly got a very good ratio of prep to play time - less than 1 hour prep involves potentially thousands of hours of play time. But when Hussar speaks of 'the desert' it seems to me that it is more or less exactly this that he believed was 'supposed' to happen and that he was opting out of, albiet on a smaller scale.
Lot's of campaigns end up creating 'rowboat worlds' by accident. One common example every noob GM seems to fall into would be running a maze or labyrinth as process simulation, when really isn't nothing more than a very lengthy series of meaningless choices. Pretty much anything that requires 'exhaustive' processes is a potential 'rowboat world'. A campaign which is something like, "There is a 40 level megadungeon. Hidden inside is a dingus. Go.", will have a hard time escaping being a 'rowboat world' if the dungeon is basicaly a massive randomly constructed maze. At some point, all these 'rowboat worlds' can become fun, some quicker than others. But if you are looking for story to evolve organicly out of a rowboat world, you have a mismatch between your goals and your methods of preparation. When I was 10 or 12 with my red and blue box sets, I created campaigns that were inevitably rowboat worlds because my 12 year old self thought 'big is better' and 'throwing in the kitchen sink is the same as creativity'. Enormous continents lost to history containing massive dungeons with repetitive rooms where I could key a dozen locations to the same description (2d6 orc guards, for example) were the norm. I suppose that's ok when even the act of fighting a monster is novel and you are 12.
Hmmm, I don't know how I feel about this. Nothing? No shaping at all? No culling interesting tidbits from a character's backstory, then inserting elements into the fiction that directly address that backstory? See, for me, this brings up an interesting question---does the mere act of inserting elements into the fiction regarding a character's backstory, necessarily alter that backstory? With or without a player's permission?
/snip for all sorts of goodness
What you are proposing here is a bit different though. You're saying that you use the character's established backstory to further elements in the game. I got zero problems with that. The reason we use group templates is precisely so that you have all sorts of these kinds of things.
No, what I'm objecting to is the DM outright changing someone's backstory. The player has said that his father is dead but, the DM decides that no, the father is, in fact, alive, and is now the PC's nemesis, without any consultation with the player first.
I got zero problems with the DM working backstory into the campaign. In campaigns that I most enjoy, the campaign is based on the PC's backstories. That's not the problem. My problem would be with the DM invalidating part of a player's PC's backstory without asking first.
If he asks? Not a problem. Note, if the player says, "no", that should also not be a problem.
But, a DM who feels that it's his prerogative to change a PC's backstory without notice? No thanks. I will not do that to a player, nor will I accept it from a DM.
I (and I think [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]) are talking about a playstyle in which their isn't a "DM's plot".
There are PCs, who have goals. There are players with goals that are intimately connected to their PCs' goals, but not identical (eg the PCs want to achieve stuff effortlessly; the players want to have a fun session, which probably means, among other things, having to put in effort to have their PCs achieve their goals).
And there is a GM, who is managing the backstory, the NPCs etc so as to frame situations in which the PCs can try and achieve their goals (within the fiction) and the playes can actually achieve their goals (at the table, by playing a fun game).
If the GM thinks a desert romp would make for a fun session, but the players disagree, that is already a breakdown in the playstyle I am trying to describe. Communication between participants has failed. Hussar's "nuclear option" is a way of radically correcting for this; but in a well-managed game it shouldn't come to that, because (for instance) the GM will never try to turn the desert into an extended piece of play when s/he knows that the players are gunning for the city, and they are having their PCs generate resources (like giant centipedes) that establish a sufficient veneer of verisimilitude within the fiction to make it possible to free-narrate the desert crossing.
This also relates to the siege. Multiple posters have said that the interest of the siege depends upon the GM. But in the sort of approach I'm talking about that's not so. The players don't need the GM's permission to engage a piece of the shared fiction via their PCs. They can just start declaring PC actions that use the siege in various ways, which in various ways will allow them to pursue their goals in the city. The desert and the nomads don't have the same character (eg in D&D, if the GM tells the players "You see some nomads approaching" the player can't just declare "OK, I offer to ransom their capatives from the city" because in the typical D&D game the player doesn't have the authority to make it true in the shared fiction that the nomads have any hostages, let alone hostages from the city.)
I think everyone has agreed that, IF the PC’s have a resource which enables them to teleport to the city (I do not – I think they lack that resource, and that their lack of familiarity with the city makes that approach dangerous to impossible if they had it), they could get to the city without passing through the desert and would not encounter anything in the desert before arriving at the city.
I don’t think we agree that “what goes on in the city does not change one iota”.
<snip>
The ability to circumvent the desert does not render it irrelevant. It renders it “skipped”. I seem to recall saying, more than once, that PC’s with the ability to Teleport directly to the city might still discover that what they seek requires going out into the desert.
<snip>
Skipping the desert in these examples doesn’t mean foregoing an advantage, it means you get to go back.
<snip>
I agree that, if you possess a resource which allows you to immediately transport to your desired destination, you can skip the desert. That does not mean this will not cause problems later. It does not mean the resources, information, NPC contacts or what have you would not have been helpful later, or even that you can accomplish your goals without those, or similar, resources being acquired.
This very strongly reinforces our differences in playstyle.
In my game, if the players had no interest in the desert I would not set up situations in which the PCs "have to go back" in order to achieve their goals. There are endless ways to introduce challenges and complications that don't require the players having to take their PCs into the desert.
This approach relates to the use of "No Myth" techniques that were discussed upthread. One aspect of that, also discussed upthread, is the use of NPCs. If I have an NPC I think might be interesting/engaging for the PCs (Kas, the niece, whatever) I won't wait for the PCs to go to the predetermined "home" of that NPC. Nor will I contrive a situation in which the PCs are "required" to go to that home. I'll drop the NPC in the PCs' path.
In the desert/city case, suppose the module, as written, has some interesting hermit hanging out in the desert, with a backstory and information that interact nicely with the PCs' goals. Suppose also that, like Hussar, the players want to pass through the desert with no more than a few minutes free narration. Does that mean that we all miss the hermit, and that interesting stuff? It needn't. For instance, the hermit can be sitting outside the city walls. Or, if there's a siege on, the hermit sits on a hill watching the siege. Why is the hermit there? Why has the hermit come out of the desert to wait for the PCs, or to wait upon the outcome of the siege? Answering those questions - either in GM prep, or in the course of roleplaying out the PCs' encounter with the hermit (and the latter is often my preferred approach) - just adds to the significance of the hermit to the overall ingame situation and the PCs' goals within it.
In the situation you describe, I would ask the player. Then I would know what s/he has in mind.
On messing with backstory, I am (I think) a little more liberal than Hussar. For instance, in my current game, one of the PCs is from a ruined city, sacked and looted by humanoid hordes. Without the players' permission I introduced his long-lost mother into an episode of play, as a prisoner of goblins. (The PCs faffed around inside the goblin hold, and she ended up being killed.)
In the same game, one of the PCs is a dwarf, and the player had made various notes about dwarven culture, including military culture. Without the player's permission I introduced into the backstory a piece of history that is not widely known among the dwarves, namely, that after getting their freedom from the giants they lived under the tutelage of the minotaurs, learning many arts of delving and crafting. This was a surpise to the dwarven PC (and to his player), but helped frame some nice moments of play where the player (playing his PC) had to reconcile dwarven pride with the truths of dwarven history.
On messing with backstory, I am (I think) a little more liberal than Hussar. For instance, in my current game, one of the PCs is from a ruined city, sacked and looted by humanoid hordes. Without the players' permission I introduced his long-lost mother into an episode of play, as a prisoner of goblins. (The PCs faffed around inside the goblin hold, and she ended up being killed.)
In the same game, one of the PCs is a dwarf, and the player had made various notes about dwarven culture, including military culture. Without the player's permission I introduced into the backstory a piece of history that is not widely known among the dwarves, namely, that after getting their freedom from the giants they lived under the tutelage of the minotaurs, learning many arts of delving and crafting. This was a surpise to the dwarven PC (and to his player), but helped frame some nice moments of play where the player (playing his PC) had to reconcile dwarven pride with the truths of dwarven history.
This I would likely have a problem with. I wouldn't mind if you suggested it to me first and asked. It's a cool idea and no problem. Heck, most often, the default answer is yes anyway. But, springing surprises on the player is asking for trouble IMO.
Now, if the player had complained about this, what would you have done? If the player hated the idea of minotaurs teaching dwarves, for whatever reason, what would you do?
This I would likely have a problem with. I wouldn't mind if you suggested it to me first and asked. It's a cool idea and no problem. Heck, most often, the default answer is yes anyway. But, springing surprises on the player is asking for trouble IMO.
That's fair enough. In my own case, I'm relying on the fact that I've been friends with this particular player for over 15 years, and been GMing for him for 10 or so.
Another factor was that his PC backstory had a comic element of failure to it - in the dwarven culture he described, you don't get to graduate as an "adult" dwarf until you're killed your first goblin, but Derrik - his PC - had never got to kill a goblin despite years of military service, because every time the goblins attacked he was somewhere else (cleaning the latrines, running an errand for a more senior dwarf, etc). Hence Derrik had left the dwarfhold and set off into the world to try and kill his first goblin (this was also how the player satisfied my requirement at the start of the campaign that the PC be ready to fight goblins).
With that backstory, I knew that the player was happy to have a bit of fun poked at his PC, and that contributed to my willingness to introduce a weakness/flaw into the history of the dwarves - also one thta his PC was in a special position to do something about (because the PCs' adventures have taken them deep into the backstory and history of the minotaurs in the land).
Now, if the player had complained about this, what would you have done? If the player hated the idea of minotaurs teaching dwarves, for whatever reason, what would you do?
Dunno. It would depend a lot on context and the nature of the objection. It can be a myth - it was revealed as a "truth" in the game by an NPC talking to the PCs, and that NPC could have turned out be wrong. It can be the reverse - that the dwarves taught the minotaurs, but then suffered in some way (perhaps at the hands of the goblins) and had to relearn their culture from their former pupils.
There are a lot of ways of digging out of this sort of hole, if one has to! The reason for doing it the way I did, though, is because it can serve as a dramatic reveal. Whereas asking for the players' permission ahead of time tends to blunt the force of that.
Anyway, I think this is another illustration of the fact that there are many viable approaches to RPGing. (For instance, I could imagine a lot of people reading my post and not having your response, but rather taking the view that the history and culture of the dwarves is not an element of player-author backstory at all, but rather a setting element completely under the GM's control.)
And, this would be in direct contrast to at least one player's stated wishes for the game. One of the players has flat out stated that he wants nothing to do with exploring the desert. But, now he's being thrown under the bus because the DM feels it will be more interesting to explore the desert. Everyone in the group is interested in achieving the group goals, but, that doesn't matter, because, come anything, the desert MUST be explored.
I find your approach limited. You decide "We wish to seek the blessing of the High Priest". The GM tells you the High Priest resides some distance away. Your response is that you must immediatey be fast forwarded to your audience with the High Priest. Now, you are going to say no, some elements of getting to see the High Priest are fun, so we should play those out, but others are just mind-numbing exploratory time and should be skipped. So JamesonCourage and I are left scratching our heads wondering which elements of achieving your goal to secure the blessing of the High Priest are, in your view, worthy of play and which are not. If the goal is to secure the blessing of the High Priest who resides in a temple in a city across the desert, achievement of your goal seems to require achieving several smaller objectives, including crossing the desert, entering the city, locating the temple, securing an audience with the High Priest and persuading him to give you his blessing.
At any stage of these proceedings, complications could arise. There are dangers in the desert, walls around the city, wining streets through which to get to the temple, temple functionaries to persuade you are worthy of an audience, and the High Priest himself to convince. To me, all of those complications flow organically from your set goal of securing the blessing of the high priest. By setting that overall goal, you have opened up all of these complications. But you are only willing to consider some as valid, with the diferentiating factor being unclear.
Yes, well, nothing can save games from crap DMing, so, what's your point. If the DM sets up the siege in such a way that it has zero relevance, then that's just poor DMing. If the DM is solely using the siege to roadblock then, sure, that's crap DMing, same as forcing the players to explore the desert.
By the same token, If the GM sets up the desert in such a way that it has zero relevance, then that's just poor GMing. If the GM is solely using the desert to roadblock then, sure, that's crap GMing, same as forcing the players to interact with the siege.
But, exploring the desert where the city is, is not essential to the goal. Yes, we must cross the desert, but, no, we do not have to interact with the desert. You must cross a desert to drive to Las Vegas. But, even if your goal in Las Vegas isn't really specific to Las Vegas itself, you can still pro-actively do all sorts of interesting things in Las Vegas.
Exploring the deset is not essential. But you are rejecting my explicit statement that I do not want to discuss "exploring the desert", aren't you? You must cross the desert. You don't have to interact with it? Maybe, maybe not. If your car breaks down (a complication) you must now walk - you interact with the desert. If the highway is unergoing repairs, you must take another route - an interaction with the desert. Now, it is more reasonable to say you interact with things in the desert, just as it is more reasonable to say you interact with things in the city.
To get to the city, you must pass through the desert. You could choose to go a different city - but you will not fin the Las Vegas strip in a different city. It is in Las Vegas.
If nothing of note will happen in the desert, then narrate away the trip through the desert. If the only thing of interest in the city is the temple, then narrate that the party arrives, finds an inn and in the morning goes to the temple. If there is a Djinn-Efreet skirmish in the desert, then that is where we move out of narration.
It seems like there are two different issues here. The first is whether, and to what extent, it is OK to put extraneous encounters in the players' path. Here, I think we simply prefer a different play style. You want to get straight to the persuasion of the High Priest, where I'm good with having other matters come up along the way. Simple enough - we play different games. While I do not agree that your way is to be preferred, or that you have any right to call a GM who prefers a different approach a "bad GM" due to having a different preference, at the core I can at least understand you want the game to progress in a straight line to the next step of your goal, with no interruptions or delays along the way.
But then we got the siege. The siege strikes me as an interruption or delay along the way. You said "I want to get to the city and pursue my goals right now". Dropping a siege in your way, or locked gates and an officious guard, or what have you, is not, to me, bad GMing, any more than nomads or refugees in the desert, or anything else in the desert, are. But, for some reason, the siege is viewed as an acceptable interruption or delay along the way, unlike every other possibility.
What if it's not a siege? Its a blockade - the force is not surrounding the city walls in close range - they are 50 miles out, in a series of encampments, blocking all travellers from going to (or departing from) the city. 50 miles puts them in the desert, so now they are a desert encounter. Their actions seem akin to the siege. Good encounter or bad encounter? I don't know because I cannot fathom what differentiates it from any other desert encounter (which cannot possibly be relevant, you tell me) or from the siege (which is highly relevant, and at least an acceptable encounter). So here we sit, me and Schrodinger's army, waiting to see if Hussar "gets shirty" when his desert journey is interrupted by this blockading force.
But, you still have not shown how an encounter that may be skipped with impunity can be anything other than irrelevant. All you've done is move the goal back into the desert and then claimed that the desert is relevant.
You can skip the whole goal if you want to. Now the city and the temple are irrelevant. "Screw this" says my character "I will cease this endless journey and take a wife amongst the nomads, living out my days in peace and harmony in the desert". Oh look - city, siege, temple and test all irrelevant. But, if I want to take this test, dealing with the consequences of setting that goal becomes relevant - test, temple, city, siege, desert and all.
I also want to write the grell and the city off as colour. Is that also OK? We're not debating whether something that is just colour should be written off as colour. I'm not telling you that the GM should insist on playing out weeks of desert travel in painful detail. I am saying that you have no way of knowing, at the outset, that the encounters in the desert are irrelevant, that they are boring (or at least more boring than the city/temple encounters - maybe you are bored by fantasy gaming in general, or by social interaction, or by puzzles, or by tactical combat) or that drudgery is your fate if you cannot escape the GM's next words by cutting the desert out.
That is, you do not know, at the outset of the travel, that the desert is "just colour". If it is, the GM should treat it as such without needing your instructions or permission to do so. If it is not, he should not.
Yes, we must always assume the worst of the GM and the best of the players. Let's say you have the option presented of taking this Test at the Temple or just going straight back home. A Fiendish being defeated in combat bows, and says "Spare my life, oh mighty one, and I shall return you whence you came - you need not stay on these blasted plains, nor undergo this dangerous test - here, Mighty One, take this scroll of Plane Shift, return to your home, and spare my life and leave me in mine!" So, since your goal was to get out of this wasteland you take the scroll (kill or free the fiend) and Plane Shift back home. Should you now demand that, since you skipped the test, you should have all the benefits and/or detriments of completing the test, or did you forego those benefits in deciding to forego the test? I say the latter.
I also say subsequent encounters have not become more difficult - you have become less prepared. If you lose a PC or two, and don't go back to base to recruit more party members, then I suspect subsequent encounters will pose a greater challenge. That result flows directly from your decisions - that the encounters are "more difficult" is on you. Making them easier to compensate for your choices robs those choices of any meaning.
Now, if the intent is that you will have certain resources gained in the desert when you arrive at the city, and I rely on you digging 10' down in the sand throughout your journey to find the buried treasure, I find that "bad GMing". If, on the other hand, a band of nomads or refugees crosses your path, and calls out to you, but you choose to ignore them, then I do not think it is bad GMing that you lack any resources they may have shared. You chose not to encounter them.
Since the players don't actually know about what they skipped, why would they care? The question has always been, "Why can you skip things sight unseen?" Well, since I won't see them, I don't care. The first time I meet Mr. NPC will be the first time.
Why do you assume you won't just skip it again? Once you meet your goal at the city, now you will suddenly be interested in interacting with other NPC's? Don't you have any new goals to pursue? And the question has been how you can judge the desert as boring and irrelevant sight unseen, and demand the GM just ignore the rules and let you skip it with resources you don't have since, after all, if you had the resources you could just skip it. While we're at it, if I were 25th level with a Spell of Omniscience, I could easily know what the Test of the Smoking Eye entails and easily accomplish it, so how about we just take that as given as well.
Well, fair enough. I would never, ever pull a Darth Vader moment on a player without clearing it with him or her first. There's just no way. Heck, I'd walk away from a table where the DM did that to another player.
OK, let's slap down a real gaming example. This is a Supers game. For several months, the players have had an NPC on the team. One of the PC's is depressed - he accidentally hospitalized a fellow (and he's one of those boy scout Supers - he's playing out a real sense of guilt). For some reason, that NPC super approaches him and tries to talk him out of his depression and guilt. We're handing a note book back and forth, the player is chatting in a side conversation when he looks at the book and goes dead silent, his eyes wide.
The NPC has just unmasked, and it is his brother, an NPC who has appeared as a non-Super on many prior occasions.
Complete surprise to the player (not to another player, actually, who had ferreted out the secret some time ago). Should he have walked out?
And, this is why I see players who come from tables like this who's character backstories are iron clad with no ambiguity. Their families are all reliably dead, the character is a drifter with no connections to anyone or anything and the PC comes to the table largely a cypher. It's because DM's cannot keep their hands off of their player's characters. So, players respond by making sure that their characters have absolutely nothing the DM can leverage.
If the GM uses the backstory to screw with the player, expect them to work to remove those elements. But, as Celebrim points out, if the GM uses those elements to enrich the game, adding challenges and rewards, benefits and detriments, then these become positive, rather than negative, aspects. For myself, I often write elements in that I expect will work to the character's detriment. That is part of the enjoyment. A Scottish berserker, for example, from a remote location, believes every possible old wives' tale, normally mixing them up. "Och, 'tis a pixie - let's pull his wings off and make him take us to his pot of gold". I believe I note earlier his encounter with an Umber Hulk. "How am I attacking it? I look it straight in the eyes, as any TRUE warrior would, so he can see I have no fear of him!"
I would probably have been disappointed if he made the saving throw I was expecting would not be offered (he played true and rolled a 1). I would have been equally disappointed if the GM had simply killed off the character (or the group as a whole) because the PC had a personality which included strengths and weaknesses, and adhered to it when it disadvantaged him, not just when it suited him. The GM did not disappoint. Funny thing, as I consider - he also plays that Super noted above.
I've seen this way, way too many times to think that it's a fluke. Player after player that comes to my table acts this way. And, after a brief conversation, the reason is almost always the same - to keep the DM from screwing around with the player's character without the player's explicit permission.
I have very few absolutes at my table. Very, very few. But, this one is iron clad. I will not, under any circumstance, make any changes to a player's character in any way, shape or form, without clearing with that player first.
I would call killing off a character "screwing with it". It sure changes the character. Do you force the players' survival and success, or is there risk in combat?
Agreed - and this applies to most of this thread. I trust the GM not to screw over my character when he messes with my character. I trust him to present interesting, entertaining challenges. I trust that the game is going somewhere, even if I can't see it right now. And, as I think about it, if that trust is lost, I'm not interested in playing with that GM any more.
This isn't possible. In D&D, there is nothing that is 'reliably dead' for example. This is a classic comic book complication. Pa Kent is reliably dead in your backstory, Superman, then who is this guy that looks just like your Dad and claims to be your Dad and why is Pa Kent's grave now empty?
Another Supers example. The PC was a legacy character. When I read the background, I noted, regarding his father, "so you didn't actually see the body". The player acknowledged that his character had, in fact, not seen the body. Never got around to bringing back Dear Old Dad - the player's schedule got erratic later.
I'm largely in agreement with you on this, but I'm not quite so hands off of the empty spaces in the background. If you leave part of your background open, I consider it implicit permission to mess with you at least a little. Just because you don't mention a family, doesn't mean you don't have one. The mess with it value of having the quest giver be your sister and the lost kid being your nephew is in my opinion 'low', especially if the players have already agreed to 'Adventure Path' style play. I'll freely adapt modules so that the NPC's - even the monsters sometimes - are prior friends and relatives. In general, if I think that I might be adding something someone might find really objectional (like deciding that the character has the 'Innsmouth look'), I'll ask, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how much can I mess with you?" without necessarily specifying how I'm planning to do it. If I get a '10' as an answer, don't be surprised if all heck breaks lose in the unexplored spaces. If I get some low value, I'll play it entirely hands off but don't expect then to have interesting connections to the world. Generally people who write long backstories expect them to matter. Those with short backstories don't expect or want this, and I'll stay off them. Over time, I find people decide that they want the treatment the player with the longer backstory is getting, because backstory complexities generally equal both screen time and potential rewards as well as dangers. The stakes are higher, so the rewards are higher too. Even enemies are resources. An enemy is just someone whom you are allowed or expected to kill and take their stuff. Often not having a backstory relegates you in the eyes of society to being the follower of someone else in the party who has one. If you are largely a cypher then you'll tend to remain that unless you are really proactive in making yourself a hero (or villian!) in the eyes of the game world.
Last anecdote for the post - a Pulp game, in Hero system. My character is a sort of Tarzan riff. He is recently returned to civilization and has an uncle. The character sheet notes him as a complication "DNPC or Hunted". Why? As I told the GM, he looks like the classic helpful relative, or the classic relative pretending to be helpful but really looking to take over your inheritance. You decide. I'm not sure what, or even whether, he has decided, but the game is young.
I (and I think @Hussar) are talking about a playstyle in which their isn't a "DM's plot".
There are PCs, who have goals. There are players with goals that are intimately connected to their PCs' goals, but not identical (eg the PCs want to achieve stuff effortlessly; the players want to have a fun session, which probably means, among other things, having to put in effort to have their PCs achieve their goals).
And there is a GM, who is managing the backstory, the NPCs etc so as to frame situations in which the PCs can try and achieve their goals (within the fiction) and the playes can actually achieve their goals (at the table, by playing a fun game).
This also relates to the siege. Multiple posters have said that the interest of the siege depends upon the GM. But in the sort of approach I'm talking about that's not so. The players don't need the GM's permission to engage a piece of the shared fiction via their PCs. They can just start declaring PC actions that use the siege in various ways, which in various ways will allow them to pursue their goals in the city. The desert and the nomads don't have the same character (eg in D&D, if the GM tells the players "You see some nomads approaching" the player can't just declare "OK, I offer to ransom their capatives from the city" because in the typical D&D game the player doesn't have the authority to make it true in the shared fiction that the nomads have any hostages, let alone hostages from the city.)
Can a single player say "skip the siege - not into a siege tonight and I know it will just be mind numbing", so you will immediately retract the siege and the PC's walk through the open city gates on to their goal?
In the desert/city case, suppose the module, as written, has some interesting hermit hanging out in the desert, with a backstory and information that interact nicely with the PCs' goals. Suppose also that, like Hussar, the players want to pass through the desert with no more than a few minutes free narration. Does that mean that we all miss the hermit, and that interesting stuff? It needn't. For instance, the hermit can be sitting outside the city walls. Or, if there's a siege on, the hermit sits on a hill watching the siege. Why is the hermit there? Why has the hermit come out of the desert to wait for the PCs, or to wait upon the outcome of the siege? Answering those questions - either in GM prep, or in the course of roleplaying out the PCs' encounter with the hermit (and the latter is often my preferred approach) - just adds to the significance of the hermit to the overall ingame situation and the PCs' goals within it.
Ignore him in the desert, at the city gates or on the hill. He's just another GM Marty Stu NPC distraction. Quit shoving this guy in everywhere we go and let us get on with our goals. It is impossible for a hermit to be in any way relevant to our goals because I have said I have no interest in interacting with this particular hermit.
On messing with backstory, I am (I think) a little more liberal than Hussar. For instance, in my current game, one of the PCs is from a ruined city, sacked and looted by humanoid hordes. Without the players' permission I introduced his long-lost mother into an episode of play, as a prisoner of goblins. (The PCs faffed around inside the goblin hold, and she ended up being killed.)
What if the player is unhappy with the mother being killed? Does he get veto power over her being removed from his backstory? While it should not matter much, let's assume she was alive in the backstory, and perhaps that he was searching for her.
When did any of this happen? Hussar expressed interest in his PC's goals, not "let's mess around with the city."
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Well, to his goals. They happen to be inside a city, but they also happen to be in a desert.
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Unfortunately, we don't have this to work on in the example. We just have what Hussar said his goal was. I think this means that I'm only working with this, and you're adding these other tells (that are yet unstated) to the hypothetical.
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Hussar seems to want to get to his goal inside the city; why are we wasting time with a desert encounter or a siege encounter? That's not what he seemed excited about.
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But, the city isn't the goal itself. Something inside the city is. It is not the siege; it is a roadblock. It is literally in the way of the city, which is setting. Even if it is a "situation", Hussar explicitly wants to work on furthering his goals, not dealing with complications along the way. You have not convinced me that the siege is somehow different from a relevant desert encounter.
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If it's not just wording (it's all these things, plus more... character build, stated preferences, etc.), how can you tell, from Hussar's statement that he wants to go to the city, that he'd like a siege? Especially when he's explicitly said he doesn't like complications along the way, and you know by "way" he means his PC's goal in the city. This is what I'm trying to ask you.
When the siege was first mentioned, I predicted that, given Hussar's goal was the city, he would not object to the siege as complication. That predication turned out to be correct.
I have tried to explain what underlay my prediction. You are replying that you don't understand the inference. That's fine, but from my point of view your inability to follow it is not affecting my confidence in my reasoning. Rather, it's suggesting that there is a relevant factor that is highly salient for me and Hussar that does not stand out to you with the same prominence.
As best I can tell, that factor is something around the role of the GM in directing play, and the capacity of the players to engage the fiction directly in pursuit of their goals. A siege at the city (i) follows the players' direction of play ("We want to get through this desert to the city") and (ii) empowers the players to engage the fiction to realise their goal immediately ("Cool, a siege - how does that change our plans for doing stuff in the city?"). Whereas nomads in the desert (i) follows the GM's directioin of play ("As you are crossing the desert you see some nomads") and (ii) does not empower the players to engage the fiction to realise their goal immediately (eg the players can't learn about the city from, or act upon the city via, the nomads unless they have extracted more backstory from the GM - simple geographic proximity to the nomads doesn't give the PCs fictional positioning in relation to the city in the same was as does geographic proximity to the siege).
For Hussar (I think) and for me, asking the GM about the nomads to try and find out if they have some connection to the city and telling the GM that, the next time the siege engines hurl a bombardment of rocks the PCs are going to enter the city under cover of the chaso and confusion are nothing like one another, as far as leveraging the fiction to realise player goals is concerned. One is essentially reactive - in Hussar's words, "following the GM's trail of breacrumbs". The other is proactive - the players, rather than the GM, taking the lead in shaping the shared fiction.
What I am trying to figure out is Hussar's preferences for getting to the city and universally ruling all desert encounters one way, but the siege in another way. I want his reasoning on this part, because that logic will make running a game for this of much easier.
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I'm done with the seemingly nonsensical reasoning that I've acquired after this many pages.
You may find the distinctions I'm drawing above nonsensical. For me, though, they're utterly crucial distinctions in RPGing, distinguishing the games I want to run or play in from the games I wouldn't touch these days with a 10' pole.
If, on the other hand, you accept the significance to others (if not necessarily to yourself) of these distinctions, then you have the full explanation for Hussar's preferences. Because it was precisely on the basis of those distinctions that I was correctly able to predict that he would not have the same hostile response to the siege as to the desert and its contents.
