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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 6117476" data-attributes="member: 6668292">I hope you don't mind me jumping in, for clarification's sake.I'm curious why the communication has been so bad, yes. I have a question about this at the end of this post.I'm not trying to defend Hussar's GM in any real depth, honestly. He might be a bad GM. The GM that pemerton replaced might've been a bad GM. I don't know. And, I don't play 3.X. It has a lot of flaws (for my style, in my opinion), and I have no investment in making 3.X look good.I might, however, be defending a rather abstract GM, since I don't think it's clear what the difference is between the nomads / refugees / mercenaries and the siege, other than backdrop. Calls to "relevance" and "interest" and "leverage" all seem like they apply to both, potentially. And that makes it hard for a GM to frame interesting scenes, since the differences expressed haven't been clear to me, yet. More on this below.You're right that I'm not engaging this. This isn't a question of whether or not groups can play this way. Of course they can. And it's not bad to do so. I'm just wondering how the GM knows which scenes are viewed as "interesting" or "relevant" when the reasoning doesn't seem consistent to me.Yeah. Again, I have no problem with groups having an agreement to skip scenes. Hussar wanting to skip the weight restrictions and food or water tracking and random encounters that aren't tied to anything doesn't bug me. I get that part. I just don't understand his statement that "nothing in the desert can be too terribly relevant", since it can potentially be skipped with a Teleport. Perhaps you can express it in a way that helps clarify it in a way that hasn't clicked with me yet?I understand that groups have different agendas or play styles. That doesn't bug me (see my signature). But, I think that pemeton agreeing with Hussar confuses me, since Hussar seems to disagree with pemerton on a lot of issues. I don't understand how Hussar can say that "nothing in the desert can be too terribly relevant" without gaining context of what they encounter in the desert. In this conversation, pemerton seems to say it has something to do with the players' ability to "leverage" things, but the players can't explore the siege to leverage it before the GM introduces it. To me, it looks something like this:Siege(1) Players Planeshift and are 110 miles from the city they want to go, with a desert between them.(2) Players decide to cross the desert (centipede optional) to get to the city. There is nothing they'd rather explore (if they even know of it), so they don't mind getting to the city as quickly as possible. (3) Players encounter a complication -a siege is at the city, which was not known about prior to the GM introducing it (thus the players could not try to interact with it up to this point). The siege is framed by the GM in such a way that the players can engage with it, "leverage" it towards their goals, and that it relates to player/PC goals inside the city (time pressure, etc.).(4) Players enjoy the complication as relevant to their goals, even if the PCs see it as bad (this makes sense to me).Desert(1) Players Planeshift and are 110 miles from the city they want to go, with a desert between them.(2) Players decide to cross the desert (centipede optional) to get to the city. There is nothing they'd rather explore (if they even know of it), so they don't mind getting to the city as quickly as possible. (3) Players encounter a complication -there are nomads guiding city refugees through the desert who are being escorted by mercenaries, which was not known about prior to the GM introducing it (thus the players could not try to interact with it up to this point). The desert encounter is framed by the GM in such a way that the players can engage with it, "leverage" it towards their goals, and that it relates to player/PC goals inside the city (warning that their goal inside the city is under siege allowing spell preparation, advice, equipment, mercenaries to hire, etc.).(4) Players enjoy the complication as relevant to their goals, even if the PCs see it as bad (this makes sense to me).However, while sometimes it seems like pemerton accepts that the nomads / refugees / mercenaries might be relevant (bringing the city to the desert), Hussar seems to outright reject the "Desert" encounter, while accepting the "Siege" encounter. I cannot understand the difference in "relevance" yet. Both have things that the players can proactively interact with, both tie into player and PC goals (fun for players, ties directly to PC goals inside the city).While I can accept people telling me there is a difference, I can't spot it yet. You said "the city is more important to the narrative of the game than the desert..." but, doesn't this depend entirely on the context of the city / desert encounters? That's what I've been trying to say, and so far, I don't feel like there's been agreement from pemerton or Hussar yet. Disagreement is fine on a message board, but I cannot understand the difference yet. Why is the city always more important to the narrative of the game? Why isn't this decided by the context of the city / desert? Maybe that'll help me understand. 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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