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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6113535" data-attributes="member: 6681948">OK, as a simplistic exercise, it turns out that the besieging army is from a foreign land.  They seem not to understand your words, and neither do you understand theirs.  They immediately attack to subdue you.  Their War Priests cast Dispels routinely on this small force, expecting any such group must possess mystic powers to dare challenge their siege. The PC’s are disarmed, disrobed, and staked out in the hot sun to perish as an example of what will become of all the city’s inhabitants if they do not surrender by nightfall three days hence. Sure, some leaders speak other languages, but you never get close enough to them to even parlay – and they too have their orders.  By the way, how do you think parlay at Helm’s Deep would have worked out? A good point, and one that demonstrates an actual difference between the siege and the desert.  The siege is an encounter within the desert – an event that occurs while the players are attempting to meet their goal of getting from where they started to the city.  “The desert” is not the encounter.  No one will describe three weeks’ travel in real time detail.  There are encounters in the desert.  Near the end of the travel, the siege is encountered.Like JC, I do  not see the siege as being, by default, more “player empowering” than the desert, or any other encounter within the desert. Which is why the GM would expect you would use those resources you have to cross the desert as effectively and efficiently as possible.  If you cannot teleport, he expects you to walk.  But hey, the centipede riding will work.  You still pass physically through the desert, though.  You still see that line of refugees from the city.  Now you are empowered to choose how you will interact.  Just like you would have been on foot. You Teleported in?  Well, perhaps that fellow you were to meet is with those refugees in the desert (or someone who took your MacGuffin is).  You can now “choose” to interact with that aspect of the desert, or you can “choose” to give up your objective.  Meaningful?  I suggest it is just as meaningful as your choice to pursue the Mystery Goal to the city in the first place – which is to say, I have no idea. Or they get staked out in the hot sun for their troubles.  Meaningful? Or there just happens to be a siege, or there just happens to be someone in the siege willing to listen to you, or there just happens to be a city in the middle of the desert where your goal just happens to be. The siege is part and parcel to the city. It is right there. It's inherently linked to the city. The DM doesn't have to "interrupt" anything. It's an element of the city, no different than walls or anything else. It's framing the city. This isn't just a city in a desert. It's a city under siege. That's part of the framing of the city.It's contrived in that it's a bit unlikely that we happen to arrive just as the siege is going on, but, meh, I'm more than willing to allow for that. But, the only way to make the desert actually relevant is by adding things to the desert which aren't actually part of the desert but are actually part of the city - either there are prisoners with the nomads, or city people with the nomads or whatever. The nomads themselves are actually completely unimportant as far as the player's goals go. I am perfectly fine with the fact that you can use the resources you have.  Whether you do or don’t have them is an issue I should have factored in when I designed the desert and planned the adventure. Are you perfectly fine if you possess and use the resources to completely skip the desert, and your investigations in the city develop in such a manner that you have to go back out into the desert to find the nomads who can tell you how to get to the Pyramid of Pyroptohep, the location the fellow you were trying to find in the city vanished while seeking, all the time carrying your MacGuffin?  Is that inherently superior to encountering the same nomads while walking through the desert you lacked the resources to skip, discovering the fellow you were travelling to the city to find also passed by here six months back seeking that Pyramid, and never returned? Agreed, JC.  My assumption is that the players will use the resources available to them to most efficiently cross the desert.  If they can teleport, they will logically do so.  If they can ride a giant centipede (Is that what the young folks are calling it these days?) they’ll probably do so.  If they have no other resources, they will ride camels or walk in as direct a manner as possible to their target location. Does that resolve the expectation you will “interact with the desert”?What I don’t expect is that a player will look across the table and say “Look, I have no idea what you have in store in the desert, and I know our characters have no way of avoiding the crossing, but I just know before we even begin that this will just be a whole session of suck – that’s the kind of faith I have in your adventure design and GMing skills – so how about just handwaving the whole desert crossing, sight unseen?  I know this is the only time in the whole campaign you will ever plan anything so mind-numbingly boring, so don’t be offended.” With the expectation I will just say “oh, sure, no problem – you guys arrive at the city gates, carried by the Wind Sprites of the Desert who just happen to, in a completely non-contrived manner, take a liking to you.  They fly off never to be seen again.”</blockquote>

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