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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6114279" data-attributes="member: 42582">The PCs' goal is in the city.The players' goal is to have a fun game - which includes complications - while pursing their PCs' goals.For the PCs, a siege of the city is (perhaps, even probably) a pain in the arse - it's another obstacle.But for the players, the siege is not a pain in the arse - it's part of the situation they are hoping to engage, a resource they can leverage, and in short promises an interesting session of trying to realise their PCs' goal.*************Let me come at it in a slightly different way.Suppose a PC's goal is to recover an ancient heirloom. Having heard that it might be buried in an ancient cache at place X, the PC travels to X and starts digging.There are at least three ways this story can unfold. (1) The rumours were false, and digging reveals nothing. (2) The rumours were true, and digging reveals the heirloom. The PC acquires it, his/her quest successful. (3) The rumours were true, but they didn't mention that this ancient cache is also Vecna's burial place - now the PC can only recover the heirloom by entering into conflict with the ancient lichking.From the point of view of the PC, it seems to me that (2) is the most prefereable option. After that it is hard to rank - if the PC is very strong, perhaps (3) > (1), because the PC can beat Vecna. If the PC is weaker, perhaps (1) > (3), because the PC has a better chance of finding the heirloom elsewhere than of taking it from Vecna.lFrom the point of view of the player, however, it seems to me that in most cases (3) > (2) > (1). The player wants to play an interesting game, and conflict and compliation in pursuit of your goals is more interesting than unhindered success.But the player (or, at least, my players, and it seems  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]) want conflicts and complications that address or pertain to their goals. Struggling with Vecna to recover my heirloom seems like a fine heirloom quest campaign; whereas, a version of (2) in which getting to X is preceded by an aduous sea voyage or desert crossing wouldn't really be an heirloom quest campaign at all - it's a voyaging campaign which Hussar has indicated he's happy to play, but doesn't want to do when he's revved up for the heirloom quest campaign.This is also why I had a strong (if brief) response to your post upthread about teleporting past the siege into the central town square and recovering the MacGuffin. If that's all that's happening in the city - if it's just a procedural puzzle which I can solve with one or two teleport spells plus a charm spell, to cross the desert, enter the city and inveigle some NPC out of the MacGuffin - then for me at least the desert crossing is the least of my complaints. The whole game seems to have no point, no dynamism, nothing happening. It's starting to looke like nothing more than joining the dots.I've been taking it for granted that doing whatever has to be done in the city will itself be an interesting episode of play, with choices to be made, complications to be dealt with, and player resources (including perhaps the siege or the sandstorm) being leveraged.</blockquote>

Verification