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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 6114291" data-attributes="member: 6668292">I appreciate the patience.This makes sense to me. This is what I've been talking about when I say "relevance" (to PC goals).Which, if the city is the goal of the PC (and thus has to do with Hussar's goal as a player to interact with his PC goals), then I'd consider that relevant. If the siege or sandstorm isn't relevant to his goals (as PC or player), then it's just a "roadblock" or irrelevant complication. It does not meet the "story" portion of the tagline. We on the same page?Ah! Exactly! This is exactly what I've been saying.Okay, so, Hussar wants the PCs to cross the desert. He wants to skip it, because "big featureless sand" is about all he knows about it, and he says "that's not relevant to my PC's goals, and as a player, I want to deal with those goals. So, let's skip the desert, and get to the temple in the city."However, this would also mean skipping the siege. He doesn't know about it as a player, and can't say he wants to interact with it (or "leverage" it?). However, since there can be an affect on his goals (as a player and PC) by using the siege, it is acceptable for it to be introduced into the game ("story" and "now").What I've been saying, is that by him having absolute power to skip the desert, he is skipping the the "story now" scenes involving that nomad / refugee encounter. As a player, he says "there's nothing relevant in the desert", because he does not know of the siege or nomad / refugee encounter yet. However, as the GM, I know that there is a relevant encounter in the desert in the siege or nomad / refugee encounter ("story" and "now").That is, Hussar is using metagame reasoning to skip the scene (no judgment; that's fine for many groups). However, I'm pointing out the metagame reasoning is faulty. While Hussar's reasoning can be true, it can easily be false. His reasoning of "there's nothing in the desert that's relevant ("story now") to my goals" is based on his conception of the desert, which is not what he'll be encountering if he plays through it, rather than skipping it.Mind you, I'm not saying that he needs to sit through minutes of descriptions before going into the desert, much less hours or sessions. I'm not saying he needs to explore it, or wander around in it. I'm saying that, along the way, I go from "okay, you're go into the desert on the way to the city. You're prepared and have your spells, so you're cool and fed along the way. Three days in, however, you run across [nomads / refugees / mercenaries]."I'm not demanding that he play through stuff he doesn't want to. I've been trying to point out that what he wants (in "story now" or "relevance") depends on context. I get that he doesn't want to fiddle around with "boring" stuff like weight or food supplies or appropriate clothing. That's fine, it's a play style thing, and context doesn't matter as much, there. But the "relevance" of the desert encounters that Hussar wanted to skip cannot be determined by him until he interacts with them, or they are described to him (perhaps from a meta context prior to encountering them).Does all of this make sense? I'm not saying that the featureless desert of sand is relevant, and I never have. That's why I introduced the sandstorm, the refugees / nomads, the irrelevant quarantine siege, etc. I'm showing that relevance ("story now") is dependent on context, and premature judgments of relevance (judgments without context) is no way to determine if something is relevant or not.Anyways, hopefully this clears things up a bit. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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