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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6113609" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yes, though its not such a wonder to me.  The problem is that you are always filling in details based on your assumptions.  Actually, it goes even further than that.  Not only are you filling in details based on your assumptions, you are actually filling out the mechanisms you would use to resolve the two in your head.  Then, having created these two completely different things in your mind, you are saying, "I don't see how you don't understand these things are different.  You must be obstinate and stupid."But your assumptions are all flawed, and simply that assumptions.  Returning to the original example again that provoked all this discussion, there never was a 'city' in the 'desert'.  The location in the desert was a crumbling Cathedral.  And the goal there was literally, "Walk into the temple (literally).  Meet with the High Priest (a Greater Mummy).  Get the MacGuffin (a magical latern, recieved from the high priest after defeating a trial he sets for you).  Get to the next location in the desert with minimal trouble."  A seige would have been irrelevant.  It would have presented an conceptually identical problem to the desert.  And it wouldn't have been a usuable resource either.  The beseigers couldn't have helped with the Cathedral even if they had wanted to, because it was a trope of setting that the inhabitants of the 'desert' were magically prevented (by epic level magic) from entering the Cathedral.  Once evaded by rushing past them on a centipede, the besiegers become irrelevant.The problem you are failing to understand is that the seige is only intrinsically more than the desert if you present the seige in certain ways and make the goals in the city particular sorts of things.  If the seige is just a stand alone location in a linear series of temporal/spatial events, and the goals in the 'city' unrelated to the seige - as in fact they would have been in the original example - simply having a seige is just another obstacle, just another random complication, in between the character's and their goal.  It is in fact, just a narrow ledge crossing on the way to get into the tomb, calling for a test only because well getting into the tomb is relevant and we've arbitarily decided this is the point we start keeping count.   In order to make the seige meaningful, we have to make it intrinsicly applicable to the player goals.   But in every sense we can do that, we can make the 'desert' crossing intrinsically applicable to player goals.  Indeed, as I've indicated, I don't think the scenario designer did a great job of making the 'desert' relevant, but the 'desert' was more relevant (because he made it so) if only for weak reasons than a random seige would have been.  A seige would have been just another irrelevant bit of combat in a scenario already too reliant on irrelevant random combat - just another grind in a scenario that had too much redundant grind.  There was at the end of it all a really strong idea, but the scenario designer did I think a poor job of world building and scene framing, and relied a bit too much on railroad to obtain the result he wanted even without considering the module does after a certain point a poor job of handling train derailments.  That being said, fixing the scenario doesn't necessarily mean, "Seige good, desert bad", as if the problem of the scenario was one of poor color.So sure, in the abstract when you are allowed to imagine whatever you want, you can make a seige intensely interesting and irrelevant.  I've little doubt of your GMing ability.  But in factuality, we when bring up a counter example, your response has always been, "Well, I refuse to admit that possibility.  That would be bad DMing, therefore it can't or at least ought not exist."   And likewise, any counter examples of relevance presented about the desert, your response has always been, "A priori, the desert is bad DMing, because Hussar refused it.  Therefore, the desert is always bad Dming.  But not this wonderful seige I've prepared."   When it comes to the seige, you defend it by freely inventing a good scenario unrelated to the discussion at hand.   When it comes to the desert, you denounce it by restricting the discussion to the particular 'desert' (that you know nothing about) under discussion. And you wonder why we can't 'appreciate' the double standards of your argument?Really, this is very similar in one respect to an earlier argument we were having regardling the centipede.  As long as we kept the details vague, it was easy to argue that the GM was just 'having a snit' and trying to throw up roadblocks in the face of Hussar's 'creative solution'.   However, once you actually focus on the details about Hussar's binder, the particular power he was calling on, the exact mechanics of Monster Summoning, and so forth, then the discussion takes on a completely different character.  Suddenly the fact that Hussar was flagrantly in violation of the established rules is something we want to handwave past, and its all about how that doesn't really matter because the GM should let players get to the scenes that they want if they are 'doing it right'.  But, once we actually stop looking at that claim in the abstract case, and actually focus on concrete details, the discussion takes on a completely different character yet again.Right from the start there has been a double standard in this thread, with GMs judged by different standards than players.   There have been examples offered of bad GMing.  But there have also been examples offered where the player offered up outcome rather than proposition, and then dared the GM to differ with their - implicitly or explicitly threatening the GM with (at the least) verbal assault and emotional abuse if he dared disagree with the outcome they demanded.  Since I really don't want to pick on Hussar, consider Greenfield's example of the tournament play.  Admittedly, there was a lot of GMing that sounds very questionable or outright bad going on in the story, but some of what Greenfield narrated is more like player's bullying a GM than GM's bullying players.   In particular, I recall the scene where Greenfield chooses to crash through the door on the back of a Rhino, and tells the GM, "We don't have to open the door.  We've got a Rhinocerus.  We can do these things."   But, if you actually examine that claim in the terms of the rules - which a tournament judge absolutely MUST do - it turns out to not only be questionable that they can do it, but actually wildly improbable under the official rules.  Had the judge said, "Ok, fine, make a bend/break bars test using your natural strength score, either way you smash into the door headfirst in Rhino form and take 3 damage.  The door seems undamaged, but it may pop open depending on the results of your test.", I'm willing to bet we'd be hearing about that as part of how unfair the judge was (and granted, some of his rulings seemed questionable), but putting myself in the judges shoes and trying to deal with Greenfield's proposition as a rules proposition and not as unquestionable outcome (that Greenfield believes it in his excitement with 'discovering' the creative solution to be), the 1e rules say characters using polymorph self to change into rhinos can't batter down doors and the above resolution is just about the most charitable one allowable within the rules.</blockquote>

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