Celebrim
Legend
Does that make the difference clearer?
No, because everything you've said is based on assumptions. With different assumptions, you obtain different results of 'relevance'. Personally, I think you aren't being fully honest with your self or really analyzing your feelings here. I think boiled down it comes to this - you've played lots of travel in the wilderness scenarios and no longer have a lot of interest in them, but you probably haven't played a lot of siege or mass combat scenarios and those sound exciting. I think we've already established that your agenda is 'fast pacing' (lets get to the conclusion), 'regular emotional payout' (you want to do things you are emotionally invested in and resolve them quickly) and to a certain extent 'new and exciting experiences' (you've got lots of experience and not all of its positive). I think you are letting your argument getting side tracked into defending completely different agendas of play.
Consider that you've stated that the siege scenario is exciting and therefore 'relevant' (strictly speaking I don't think you really care for 'relevant', only that it emotionally engages you). But the location of the siege in time and space is irrelevant. You could while travelling through the desert to Los Vegas discover that there is a huge horde of zombies coming from every direction on their way to the city. Thus, your relationship to the siege is you must convince the inhabitants of Los Vegas of the danger and possibly help prepare for it. This depends on the same assumptions you previously made for the siege scenario, "If the city is beseiged, I care."
Likewise, suppose you come to the seiged city in the Abyss. Your goal is to acquire the particular tone required to tune the tuning fork that is the component of the plane shift spell that is needed to reach a particular secret demiplane. You know this tone is hidden in a cathedral to a dark god in the city, and you find the city besieged. You decide to fly over the seige, avoiding it and its series of planned combat encounters altogether, quickly make your way to the temple, find the clue and plane shift off to your next location. This is fundamentally identical to the way you wanted to play out the wilderness travel scene, and relies on the same assumption - the siege really has no relevance to our interest in the city. The seige is only relevant if you interact with it, and only if actually relates to your goals in the city.
Which is the 'correct' obstacle or complication? It depends entirely on the implementation of the scene. As it is, we both agree that in the particular case of the example that started this discussion, the implementation of scene wasn't well done. But I completely disagree that the reason it wasn't well done was 'desert'.
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