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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6115674" data-attributes="member: 42582">Neither Hussar or I have said anything about approaches to play being mandatory. But you seem to be saying that we don't know what is best for ourselves in gaming."I do not like this challenge so please move on so we can get to something interesting" is in my own view an excellent way to run a game that I will enjoy. It's not as if there's any shortage of interesting challenges so that I have to play through dull ones too in order to fill my quota.I don't agree. The centipede has the carrying capacity. And can be summoned at will. And has the mobility. The centipede on its own could therefore carry the party through the desert. The only issue is the ride checks; and it is clear that the GM has flexibility in how to call for these.But it's perfectly obvious that the rules don't say that - hence the whole point of   [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s plan.You seem to have a very different conception from me, here, of why and how a player might relate to the siege's presence in the fiction.You are framing it in terms of "interesting interactions"; for me the issue is player resources, and hence the ability, of the player, to add to the shared fiction. If the encounters with the siege permit the player to change the fiction so as to bring it about that his/her PC is in the city, that's fundamentally different from playing through the desert exploration, where the power to change the fiction lies primarily with the GM, not the player.Sure. The PCs can then attack them, or try to Intimidate them, or persuade them, or charm them, or otherwise engage the action resolution mechanics.No. The players chose to have their PCs explore an area they had passed through before in an episode of free narration, and which I had foreshadowed with clues related to the niece's presence in the area, in anticipation of doing something with it later on. (I think the idea that she'd disappeared came to me later, but it's a while ago now.) When they did their exploration, they followed up on some of those clues.I don't see any such reason either. Nevertheless, Hussar's GM did not do this. That's part of the point of the complaint.Had Hussar's GM opted for free narration of the centipede crossing, and then cut to the PCs' encounter with some person or place or event or clue that related in some way to the city, or to the players' goal in the city, I'm pretty sure Hussar would not have posted his irritation at his GM in this thread.Suppose that to be so. How is that remotely a defence of Hussar's GM - given that the primary complaint against Hussar's GM is that he did not respond to the wishes of his players?There is no evidence that any such events, relating back to the players' goals for their PCs, or the rationale for being in the desert, were being put forward by the GM. That's the problem.You can conjure up,in imagination, completely different play experiences from what Hussar has described, in which the game is wonderful, the GM frames clearly relevant scenes, free narrates through irrelevant and/or transition scenes, etc. None of that is a defence of Hussar's GM who didn't do any of those things.If the players don't take steps to gain political clout for their PCs, then their PCs won't have it. Which means, for instance, that the attempt to persuade the Baron to hold his niece to account for her necromancy might play out differently - both in resolution (perhaps less Diplomacy, more Intimidate) and in narratin of consequences. (The Baron might end up a bullied victim rather than a reluctant partner.)But I didn't "drop the niece in their path". The players had their own reasons for having their PCs deal with the Baron, and the existence and disappearance of the niece came up in the context of those dealings. There was no point where the players had their PCs simply wandering through the fiction, without context or connection, waiting for me as GM to drop in something for them to act on or to point them in some desired direction.No. It consists in the players reacting to a GM-authored consequence of their own decision to have the niece detained, which also forces the players to sharpen their attitude towards the niece. How much do they (and their PCs) care about her necromancy? Answer: enough to kill her, even though this jeopardises their PCs' relationship with the Baron.That's not just the players reacting to something the GM drops in their path.By whom? The PCs? - they were dealing with the Baron. The Baron? - he posted guards, whom the niece killed. Had the players decided to try and prevent her escape, the action resolution mechanics would have come into play. They didn't, though.Because they're fun. In what way is the GM introducing something into the fiction because it's fun a "critical goal"? It's no one's goal, and it's not critical to anything.There are no such inevitable roles. Kas ended up an ally, and indeed someone to whom the PCs swore an oath. The niece, the granddaughter of someone the PCs befriended in the past, ended up being killed by them. It could easily have played out the other way, or in some differen way again.The language of "inevitable roles" may have some currency in Adventure Path play - it has no relationship to the episode of play that I described.As to the question of whether there is anything "revolutionary" about my game: I have never asserted that; it's a claim foisted on me by you and Celebrim. I have said that my game is different from the one Hussar described, and my description bears that out - you yourself note that my game is responsive to my players, and it is precisely the absence of that that has led to Hussar's complaint.But there are other things that make me think my game may be different from yours - that you impute "critical goals" and "inevitable roles" in relation to a game which, as I have described it, lacked either such thing.</blockquote>

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