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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 6118269" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Which is strange, since your stuff seems to not fit with his views, as far as I can tell. Like the "impossible" vs "essential" take on his "can't", for example.When did any of this happen? Hussar expressed interest in his PC's goals, not "let's mess around with the city." He wants progress towards those goals. He did not mention, as far as I know, ways to infiltrate the city, or mention speculating about whom they may meet in the city, or what they'd do if they met them. These were just added by you.Barring these additions, how do you know? If all they say is they're heading to the city because they want to get to the PCs' goal, how are you getting to "it's okay to use a siege but not a desert encounter"?Well, to his goals. They happen to be inside a city, but they also happen to be in a desert.Okay, this makes sense to me. This seems normal. Unfortunately, we don't have this to work on in the example. We just have what Hussar said his goal was. I think this means that I'm only working with this, and you're adding these other tells (that are yet unstated) to the hypothetical.Even if they only say "city", but they implicitly mean "to deal with our goals inside the city"? This is why I asked about wording. The player could have absolutely no interest in the city, but still say that they're heading there, since that's the next logical step in getting closer to their goal. Or, they could say "we travel through the desert to the city." In which case, they've now mentioned the desert. But, Hussar seems to want to get to his goal inside the city; why are we wasting time with a desert encounter or a siege encounter? That's not what he seemed excited about.Okay, but can I ask why he wouldn't enjoy it? Is it a mood thing? "I'm not in the mood for a desert encounter, no matter how much I normally like the type of encounter it is?" Is it predictable? This piece of knowledge seems like it should be known to some degree if you're running a game for a player that does this.I'm not. But good to know what you mean, at least. That'll help communication. So, thank you.To deal with his goal. It's not to wander around the city. The city seems like "setting" as described by Hussar; it's just the part of the game where "plot" takes place, and he wants to deal with plot.I think we object to the universal nature of the statement, but, more importantly, we think that the desert encounter can be a resource that the players might use to engage with their goal, or help realize it.I've answered this multiple times. I get only engaging with interesting stuff to players. My game is player-driven. So, no problems so far.What I am trying to figure out is Hussar's preferences for getting to the city and universally ruling all desert encounters one way, but the siege in another way. I want his reasoning on this part, because that logic will make running a game for this of much easier.The same for the desert encounter! I've said you can walk past the desert encounter. Or you can talk to the refugees, or nomads, or mercenaries, or potentially buy gear or supplies, hire mercenaries, prepare spells in advance because of knowledge gained, arrange for the nomads to guide you through a faster route, get blessings from the temple refugees, etc. The players can leverage the encounter if they want to, but they don't have to.Again, the desert encounter could be framed this way. Why is it different?But, the city isn't the goal itself. Something inside the city is. It is not the siege; it is a roadblock. It is literally in the way of the city, which is setting. Even if it is a "situation", Hussar explicitly wants to work on furthering his goals, not dealing with complications along the way. You have not convinced me that the siege is somehow different from a relevant desert encounter.Right, this is the "relevant to the goals" part. The part you told me wasn't about "proximity" in a geographical sense, but in a story sense. The thing is, the desert encounter can be exactly as relevant to the story, but it's somehow different, and I'm now seeing a reasonable explanation for that yet.Yes.Unless, of course, it does.Since Hussar's statements about setting lead me to believe he's not interesting in this city-as-situation, what does that matter?Enough with the "only foreshadowing" thing. I've gone over that four times or more this conversation, and once within the last page. I think I'm bailing from this part of the conversation; Hussar's "are you reading what I wrote" post is striking much closer to ironic than anything now.No, I'm trying to find out why they have these preferences, so that I can handle running the game in a way that keeps them from wanting to skip as few scenes as possible. I don't doubt they have these preferences, but I'm curious what the difference is, and I'm not seeing it. I mean, I see possibilities (geographical proximity to the goal), but you've told me that's not it, and in the interest of honest communication, I'm not going to say that I think you're wrong on your own preferences, here. I'm just not seeing another answer yet.Depending on the type of siege, yeah. It could be done very fast. Even faster than one minute, potentially; maybe even one sentence, if you wanted to hit them with a bang before expanding quickly.It'd take me less than a minute (for sure, no questions) to describe the scene of the nomads / refugees / mercenaries. Of course, if they engaged, then they'd find out more, but they'd be playing. The refugees explicitly look like city folk, though, holding a handful of belongings that aren't well-packed, and have the symbol of the church you're heading towards. It should be evident enough that something is up and it can easily be related to your goals. Any expansion comes from play and not from my simply conveying it to the players.I think it can very much wear its relevance on its sleeve.Whereas I don't see this as what it's adding, necessarily. My group would like the "being there" type of verisimilitude, but that's not the angle I'm approaching this conversation from. I've been approaching it trying to understand, from Hussar's expressed play style, how his logic works, and I'm still here, trying to understand its logic.Isn't it? More on this in a minute.Okay! So, even though you didn't explicitly answer the "is it just wording" question, I think you've answered well enough. If it's not just wording (it's all these things, plus more... character build, stated preferences, etc.), how can you tell, from Hussar's statement that he wants to go to the city, that he'd like a siege? Especially when he's explicitly said he doesn't like complications along the way, and you know by "way" he means his PC's goal in the city. This is what I'm trying to ask you.Hussar just said (post 1,106, page 102): "I'm not sure why N'raac wants to focus on the specific example, and not the presented hypothetical of starting in a desert and having a known goal."If we're sticking to the hypothetical of the desert, then the temple has been part of it for many, many pages. You can discard it, but I ask -as Hussar did- why?This whole thing depends on more than that, though! We'd need the personality of all the players, their goals, their character builds, their preferences of how they play their character, what kind of campaigns they enjoy (or say they do), etc. That's the thing. People are filling in blanks with what they want, and then saying "you don't get it?"Well, I'm good. I don't get it, but things keep getting shifted a little too much for me. I haven't made much headway, but I did enjoy  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] when he popped in from time to time. As far as the rest of this thread, I'll jump back in on other issues, but I'm done with the seemingly nonsensical reasoning that I've acquired after this many pages. Hussar, pemerton, feel free to get the last word or two in. It's the least I can offer after a thread this long. 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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