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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6117840" data-attributes="member: 42582">What Jackinthegreen says here certainly resonates with me.If it is already established that we, as a table, are not going to do "desert exploration" as part of this game, at least at this point in time, then why is the GM introducing an NPC whose only role (at least as described) is to send the PCs off to explore the desert. This is precisely the sort of "follow the GM's breacrumbs" play that   [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] was criticising upthread. (I believe the technical term among MMO players is "fetch quest". This is pretty much the opposite approach to GMing and RPGing from that which Hussar has said that he is interested in.)  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] tackled this quite a way upthread with his street-and-shop example (in his case I think it was a barber shop rather than an ice cream shop).And I tried to tackle it too, in my post 989.As you note, the GM is able to exercise a high degree of control over introducing complications, "relevant" story elements, etc. Given this, why would the GM introduce the city-relevant story element in the desert, given that the players have made it clear they want to get to the city?As I said in my post 989, this is what I believe  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is getting at when he says that there can't be much of relevance in the desert - what he means is that there is nothing of relevance that must, story-wise, be located in the desert. To restate and amplify this point: you seem to be treating Hussar's use of "can't", as in "There can't be anything relevant in the desert" as expressing the impossibility of something relevant in the desert. But in this context the can't is operating differently: a more formal rendering of Hussar's assertion would be along the lines of "It can't be the case that there is something relevant which of necessity must be in the desert": the thing which is impossible is not that something relevant is in the desert but rather that there is some thing which is (i) relevant and (ii) must be in the desert.To cash out Hussar's contention with reference to a particular example: it can't be essential to the framing of the city that the PCs first encounter some nomads in the desert, because the GM is quite content with the possibility that the PCs might cut straight to the city via teleport therefore necessitating the city's framing without reference to anything (a fortiori, without reference to any nomads) in the desert. To generalise: given the possibility and permissibility of using teleport to cross the desert, it cannot be essential to framing the city that anything happen in the desert.Hussar's question then becomes "Why is the GM nevertheless insisting on some desert encounter?" Chaochou put it a little differently, along the lines of "You, the GM, had better know what you're doing here because the players may well just skip past the thing in the street that you are trying to frame as relevant and interesting and head straight to the shop." But the point in both cases is much the same - if the players want to get to the city, and if it is not essential to the framing of the city that anything happen in the desert, why is the GM nevertheless mucking around with the desert?I'm not 100% what you mean by "a matter of wording", but you are correct that if the players are gunning for the city then framing an encounter in the desert is not preferable. For the reasons chaochou stated in the abstract, and that Hussar is illustrating in the concrete, to do so would run the risk of derailing things, and needlessly sapping energy from the game.The temple example is the same, though more detail is obviously required. But if it makes sense that you can frame the temple without extensive reference to the city (much as you can frame the city without reference to the desert as anything more than colour), then you might cut straight there, correct.But there are other considerations, too. If the players are keen to get to the temple because they're anticipating an exciting dungeon there, all the more reason to treat both desert and city with a light touch, and forego the siege. If the players are keen to get to the temple because they're looking forward to the religous and political intrigue that is centred on the temple, then introducing such intrigue at an earlier point in the geographic narrative (eg a siege by religiously hostile forces) might well be giving the players what they want in a way that surprises and engages them, by raising the stakes that they were in any event invested in.</blockquote>

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