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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6113522" data-attributes="member: 6681948">As I stated above, I would consider the characters’ capabilities in my adventure design.  If the desert will be meaningless drudgery, then you can easily skip it through flight or teleport or whatever.  And if you don’t have those resources, as a party, then perhaps I need to add those resources somewhere so they will be available to the players.  Or perhaps this is as simple as “ZAP – you materialize within the center of the city.  What do you do next?” becoming “After three weeks of hot, sandy, arduous desert travel, you arrive at the city.  What do you do next?” If my expectation is that the players will travel through the desert, wherein relevant encounters will occur, then I look again to the available resources.  They’re 5th level?  They don’t have the spells to circumvent the desert?  Great – they will have to travel by conventional means.  They have Overland Flight?  Any encounters must then be meaningful from the air or they will be missed.  That needs to be factored in.  They can Teleport?  Well, they’ve never been to the city, so a teleport error is a possibility.  But they can just keep trying (assuming “false location” does not enter into the picture).  Greater teleport?  As long as you “have some clear idea of the location and layout of the destination or a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting”, its failsafe.  So now I need to provide some reason for the players to hike through the desert.  That may be ham-handed (you can’t get a good enough vision of the city to teleport; there’s an anti-magic field) but ideally would be more subtle (an indication of something you want or need that can be obtained, or advanced, through something in the desert). Here again, the goalposts move.  None of the players like Scene X?  That’s a significant problem.  One of the players doesn’t like Scene X, and the others do?  That is a very different problem.  And “skip the scene” is a much better answer for the former than the latter. Sure, why  not…although other responses have covered this as well as I will, I am sure. Assuming you possess the in-game resources, both desert and siege can be circumvented, yes.  The GM should be assessing those in-game resources and, if interaction with desert or siege is an expected part of the adventure, ensuring that the players will logically do so.  Lots of options, as discussed above.  Once we have bypassed the siege, any and all encounters within are rendered completely irrelevant irrelevant unless the DM adds in additional information to send us back out into the siege, rather than bypassing it on the way out just as we did on the way in.  And without additional information, there is no reason for the players to choose to interact with the siege.  If you know there are nomads and scorpions in the desert, that in no way motivates you to interact with them, so knowing there are soldiers and leaders in the siege is not a major differentiator to me. They can walk back out into the desert, too.  Why should they interact with the siege without a reason to do so?  Maybe that reason becomes some concern for the well-being of the city and its occupants.  But that same concern could see the players leading a caravan of food, medicine and other supplies across the desert (and no, Teleport won’t transport a ton of supplies, or a few dozen camels). To the last, first – all the GM has to do to make the siege completely irrelevant to the events in the city is to factor no implications of the siege into the encounters.  Just as the impact of the desert can be ignored – everyone rides horses, water is plentiful, the weather is temperate, and there are no shortages of goods or supplies despite being in the middle of a nigh-impassible desert.  Neither is a shining example of great GMing.  Both reduce a major element to mere backdrop description.  Both are easily possible. What prevents them making an educated guess?  Sure, someone is calling the local shots at the siege.  What makes you believe “bring people to me for a friendly chat” rather than “slay all those seeking to enter or leave the city in a slow, painful and gruesome manner as an example to others”?  What reason do you have to believe the field commander has any real authority?  He’s following his orders.  Why would you think he would be inclined to listen to your motley crew anyway?   You are making guesses about the siege, just as you might make guesses about the desert.  If you have the resources to avoid either, I would expect you would do so.  If not, then you will have the opportunity to react to what the GM throws in your path.  Neither seems so different, in that regard, from where I sit.  Like difficulties getting goods, water shortages, that sort of thing which is likely day to day life in the middle of a desert?  Assuming they choose to interact with you – and, if they do, on terms you find acceptable.  What do you think the typical reaction of the leader of a siege to “Oh great General, six motley adventurers riding a monstrous centipede wish to speak with you” might logically be?  Like dangerous beasts in the desert, and the possibility your target will move on in time?Oh, a SIEGE.  There must be a central courtyard.  Teleport in.  Walk to the temple.  Meet with the High Priest.  Get the MacGuffin.  Teleport home.  Orcs irrelevant.  Note that they didn’t have the in game resources to bypass the siege in LoTR, so their GM did not have to plan around those resources.  They also lacked the in game resources to avoid travel, but unless the GM had an encounter to throw in their path, that travel was relegated to brief flavour text. Say, there’s my answer!  “If you use powerful travel magicks like Teleport, lo the Dark Lord shall sense this, and send his forces, far more vast than you can even imagine, upon you!”  There, no teleports.Nagol says the same thing, but far more concisely.</blockquote>

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