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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6118200" data-attributes="member: 22779">Because, as everyone here agrees, you can 100% skip the desert and it makes ZERO difference.  If we teleport across the desert, the city and what goes on in the city does not change one iota.  The desert cannot possibly matter more than tangentially, because, if it did, then we couldn't skip it with impunity.In your latter examples, the city encounters are all changed.  A city without those encounters will be very different than one with those encounters.  Just as the city with a siege will be different than one without a siege - even if the siege is nothing but a bunch of demons who want to plant flowers (although, that would not be to my personal taste <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> )Thus, the siege is always relevant.  You can try to ignore it as much as possible, but, it's still going to impact what goes on in the city.  Because I can skip the desert, nothing in the desert can impact what goes on in the city.  How can anything in the desert be relevant to the city when the desert encounters can be skipped with impunity?  If I can completely avoid these encounters, and no one has any problem with me doing so, so long as I have the proper in game resources, then how can these encounters matter to what's going on in the city?  If they mattered, then I couldn't skip them.Again, if the only relevance your desert encounters have is to foreshadow an encounter that I'm about to have in the next ten minutes, I'm thinking that you don't need a whole lot of foreshadowing.  Plus, that's pretty tenuous at best.  The only thing lost by skipping the desert is the roadsign that says, "There is a siege ahead".  Well, I'm at the siege now, so, I guess I didn't really need that siege.Now, if you skipped the siege as well?  Ok, fine.  It's not established in play beforehand, so, no problem.  But, if you put the siege there, that's also no problem.  It's linked to the goals.  It cannot be skipped with impunity since it will affect (or should affect at any rate) every encounter within the city.  If I can skip the city?  Then I guess the siege isn't terribly relevant either.  But, the example has always been that we need to get to this city.  There's something in the city that needs doing.  Now, if that something has nothing to do with the city itself?  Then sure, skip the city too.  Great.  Get to the point.Wow, number one there?  I'd immediately leave your table.  That's absolutely not kosher.  A DM who pulled this would be looking for a new player.  Your players actually accepted you doing this?  Wow.  I've never, ever seen a player who would accept that.  That time pressure can only be added if the players interact with the nomad/refugee/mercenary encounter.  There is no way that time pressure can be added otherwise.  The players do not need to interact with the siege at all in order for there to be a time pressure added.  IOW, the DM has to force the players into the encounter with the nomads/refugees/mercenaries in order to add the time pressure.  But the encounter may be skipped with impunity.  Therefore, the time pressure only exists if you force the players to play through encounters they have stated they don't want to play through.But... you added the temple, not me.  Why have you insisted that the city is not our goal when I've repeatedly stated that getting to the city was our goal?  Yes, we have something to do in the city, but, the city has always been part of that.  This rabbit hole of trying to separate city from goal is entirely of your own manufacture.  In the hypothetical, the city was always part and parcel to the goal.  The fact that the city has things that the players can pro-actively leverage in order to achieve that goal was referenced multiple times.  If you're going to start dumpster diving and pulling up quotes, at least try to read all of them.  Good grief, this separation of city from goal is something you've insisted on.  And I have no idea why.</blockquote>

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