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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6096354" data-attributes="member: 6681948">So what were the rest of the players doing?  Was everyone at the table distracted and paying little or no attention to the interaction with these NPC spear carriers, or were other players engaged by the change of focus and role playing their interaction with these NPC’s with some interest? It seems to me the DM is responding to the players’ desire to change the structure of the game.  He could have said “no one in town is interested” or “you can’t find anyone more combatworthy than a Level 2 Peasant”.  He could have rolled to see what calibre of assistance was available, and how many days it would take you to find and recruit them (days that, it appears, you didn't have)/   He didn’t.  He allowed your alternative approach, and even facilitated it, bending the rules in your favour to enable you to find the resources you desired in the limited time you had available.  He invested time and energy creating combat useful (or I assume so) NPC’s to enable the plan you envisioned to come to fruition, and making them more than cardboard cut-outs, investing them with personalities.  It seems to me he enhanced the interest and engagement opportunities for your plan.  And, apparently, doing so is "screwing over the players". What it seems he did not do was say “Glory Be to Hussar and Praise His Brilliant Planning – you hire NPC spearcarriers, return to the battle and emerge triumphant.  Let me heap gold, magic and experience points at your feet.”  Would it have been OK for the GM to simply state that your new recruits turned the tide and the Grell is slain, rather than "wasting time" playing out the same basic tactical situation? I don’t know the status of the Grell.  Did it handily clean the PC’s clocks, then chuckle as they fled (rather than give chase, or hunt them as they returned to town)?  If so, fleeing seems odd.  But then, why not follow this easy prey back to its own lair?  Or was it wounded and endangered?  In that case, why would it not slink off to a hiding place to lick its wounds and, perhaps, plot its own revenge?  It probably doesn’t heal entirely in the few hours you spent recruiting spearcarriers, so why would it sit and wait for you?Let's put the shoe on the other foot.  The GM and the players want to get the game rolling, so it begins with "You have been hired by the local Duke to seek out the foul beast which has been preying on the local livestock.  His promises of 100 pieces of gold for its destruction have enticed you, and you are now patrolling the local area looking for signs of the beast."So, we've cropped out playing the backstory.  Except one player wants to play out the interaction which lead to the PC's recruitment, another wants to haggle over the price and a third wants to question the locals about the events leading up to their being hired.  So, do we make the "get to the combat" guys happy, or play out the backstory?  It seems like your goal is "let's handwave what I don't feel like spending time on and play out what I want."   Only if the game ends there.  “the Grell has fled, so the heroes and their spearcarriers returned to the village to celebrate and there was much rejoicing.   Then they parted company and the spearcarriers were never seen again.” Seems pretty anticlimatic to me.  But then, so does just dismissing the faceless nobodies after the Grell is defeated.  No “brothers in arms” friendships?  No thought of continuing to work together to accomplish great deeds we cannot accomplish alone (the same reasons, I expect, that the PC’s work together – why do they have an “important enough to interact with” halo surrounding them)?  Just “thanks for the assist – now get lost!If the Grell is so important that your characters are now emotionally invested, and it has left, we now have the opportunity for some role playing.  Do we continue our very time-sensitive quest, now that the Grell no longer blocks our path and we have these new allies to aid us in its achievement?  Do we abandon (or delay) that quest in favour of seeking vengeance for our fallen brother, and drive the Grell to ground?  Or do we continue the quest, then seek out the vile Grell?   If the Grell were not challenging in combat, would the players be so invested in its defeat?  Adding a further challenge of hunting it down, rather than having it sit in its lair waiting to play out the exact same encounter again (and how many more times, should this battle also go poorly) seems to make the challenge greater, and the satisfaction of resolving it successfully greater. And if it departs, the need to get past that grell has been satisfied.  Now the characters face a further challenge – which is of greater importance, the quest or revenge?   If the GM wants to screw over the players, that’s easy.  Give the Grell some allies.  Make it more powerful so the PC’s plus their newly recruited helpers once again are soundly defeated.  Pretend like the challenge can be beaten, but don’t actually permit it to be defeated.  THAT is screwing over the players.   The grell assessing its options and not just sitting there to allow the same encounter to be played out repeatedly until the PC’s finally win would, for me (as a player or a GM), make for a very boring game.Hrm, I'm in my nice lair. A bunch of squishy humans just delivered a pizza to me and ran away. Yup, time to run away too.  How is that worse than the badwrongfun of having the creatures in the game world react to actions of the PC’s, and not allowing the players (or a single player) to simply narrate the actions of the PC’s and NPC’s and their success or failure at each stage of the scenario?</blockquote>

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