Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6108583" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Can I agree that at least two of us might be – and you aren’t the one I’m most certain of? Again, I come back to the dual possibilities that something not directly relevant can still add to the game, and that it may not be immediately obvious when something has relevance. If there is some time pressure involved in the desired activity in the city, then any delay in the desert also places the PC goals at risk, does it not?  That makes a “desert distraction” equally relevant if we accept that reasoning.  “Dealing with these nomads will slow us down, so just Fireball them out of the way!”  “But they are just trying to survive in this desert – what gives us the right to slaughter them for our own convenience?  We should negotiate safe passage past their oasis.”  Or the GM uses it as a roadblock.  I don’t see either one as inherently superior.  The use of the encounters by the GM can make them relevant or irrelevant, interesting or boring, etc.  Why is the only possible reaction to the nomads fighting them, but other alternatives exist for dealing with the besieging force?  Why can’t the encounter with the nomads be a peaceful negotiation to allowing access to “their” oasis to replenish our water supplies?  Why is it impossible that the only resolution the GM will consider to the siege is defeating the enemy forces?  You are choosing to set one above the other because you want to assert one is more relevant than the other, but it ain’t necessarily so.  And yet it is impossible that the siege results in the destruction of the city (or the death of the occupant you wanted to find, or the owner of the object you seek fleeing – I’m sure whatever your goal, it could plausibly become unattainable due to the siege)?  The players can’t choose not to interact with he invaders, or interact for a while then give up, or just attack a clearly superior force and get wiped out?  Blasted GM – he knew we wanted to get into City B to do whatever we wanted to do that was hugely important to me as a player but that I can’t even recall, so he put that siege there KNOWING we would tell the commander he’s just a no-account NPC and get out of our way, so he could pretend killing off the PC’s was justified. So is the besieging force.  The difference is that you assume you can easily go around the nomads, but not the besieging force.</blockquote>

Verification