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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6118323" data-attributes="member: 6681948">I don’t know how you arrive at the belief that “everyone here agrees, you can 100% skip the desert and it makes ZERO difference”.  I think everyone has agreed that, IF the PC’s have a resource which enables them to teleport to the city (I do not – I think they lack that resource, and that their lack of familiarity with the city makes that approach dangerous to impossible if they had it), they could get to the city without passing through the desert and would not encounter anything in the desert before arriving at the city.  I don’t think we agree that “what goes on in the city does not change one iota”.  If you avoid the encounters in the desert (whether by teleporting to the city, barreling by on a magical Super Speed Centipede, or just sticking your fingers in your ears and walking by chanting LALALALALALAICAN’THEARYOULALALALALALA), then you do not have The ability to circumvent the desert does not render it irrelevant.  It renders it “skipped”.  I seem to recall saying, more than once, that PC’s with the ability to Teleport directly to the city might still discover that what they seek requires going out into the desert.  The fellow you seek, or the object, departed with a caravan of refugees 5 days ago (now the desert encounter would have been relevant to your goal, but the city has lost that relevance), or was lost seeking out the Lost Temple of Ixt in the desert. Or the temple stays relevant – but the fellow who can administer the Test of the Smoking Eye is the one who left with the refuges/was lost seeking the temple – you must find him and persuade him to return if you are to undergo the test.  Skipping the desert in these examples doesn’t mean foregoing an advantage, it means you get to go back.  Again, you assume nothing in the desert has relevance, and you assume nothing can prevent the relevance of the siege.  How about this?  The Slaad are besieging the city.  No one knows why.  They will allow no one in.  They will part ways to let people walk out.  They have been there for seven generations of Man.  However, the city has a magical Ward which prevents the Slaad entering, hurling rocks, or in any way imposing on the city, so all they do is prevent people coming in or going out.  But within the city is a Teleport Gate to another city, which they use for supplies.  The city functions perfectly normally, despite the Wall of Slaad outside.  The ONLY impact they have on the entire game is your need to get past them to enter the city.  Once you do, they have no further impact (unless you choose to fight through them again to come back after leaving).  If you can teleport, the fact you bypassed them has no impact at all on the city encounters.  They can truly be skipped with absolute impunity. Perhaps if you added the “something” you had to do in the city, it could replace the temple.  We have been using the temple as “the goal” for lack of a goal you stated, a fact noted repeatedly in the discussion.Going back to the source material, why was the temple important to the goal?  Because that is where the Test of the Smoking Eye could be undertaken, I believe.  If we move the test to a Wizard’s Academy, the bottom of a ruined tower, or the common room at your local inn, the Temple’s relevance goes away.  Move the goal, and all that surrounds it loses its relevance.  But, if the Test can be taken only in the Temple in the City in the Desert, then getting to the Test within the Temple is essential to the goal.  That means getting to the Temple in the City is essential to the goal.  For that reason, getting to the City in the Desert is essential to the goal.  As well, getting to the Plane where the Desert is located is essential to the goal.  None of them can be separated from the goal, but if we move the goal, we separate them all from the goal.  So none of them are essential to the goal, except to the extent the GM makes them essential to the goal by the placement of the goal. <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">You have spent much of this post, and other recent ones, disclaiming the original module.  We have, I believe, moved on from “the desert was a waste of time in the original module” to your contention that “in no case could the desert between us and the city have any merit or relevance”.  The GM in your original module allowed the centipede to work, did he not?  The original module is resolved.  I remain of the belief that your blanket statement that you can “know”, from the mere mention there is a desert between you and the city your goals demand you reach, that the desert will be a series of time-wasting irrelevant encounters that can serve only to bore you to tears is a fallacy.  I believe that is the topic of discussion for many pages.</li> </ol><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Back to the original scenario, though. I’m unsure how important that NPC met in the wasteland was to longer term goals, but if he is important, then skipping the desert and that NPC means that you could not skip the desert with impunity.  Assuming the desert is wholly irrelevant, and the table (not just [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] – there our views differ markedly – but the table) is not actively enjoying this aspect of the scenario, then I would be quite all right skipping it.  Maybe the centipede excuse gets used in that regard, but I see even that as inessential.  I can simply narrate that, “After many hot, dusty days spent wandering the wasteland, battling a host of fiendish creatures, the PC’s finally see a structure off in the distance.  Approaching closer, it seems to be a cathedral.”  Your centipede is superfluous.  Riding it through the desert is no more than colour – mere PC Ability Wank.</li> </ol> Emphasis added.  To be clear, I agree that, if you possess a resource which allows you to immediately transport to your desired destination, you can skip the desert.  That does not mean this will not cause problems later.  It does not mean the resources, information, NPC contacts or what have you would not have been helpful later, or even that you can accomplish your goals without those, or similar, resources being acquired.  It does not mean that recurring NPC will not have a later “first appearance”, where you will interact without the benefit (or detriment) that history in the desert could have provided.  In fact, you may no longer “first meet” him in the desert, earning his trust and gratitude by sharing provisions and battling side by side to escape the desert and the abyss.  Instead, you may encounter him in a situation where a means of earning his trust and friendship is much more difficult.  The players may never know they had an opportunity in the desert, of course.  But skipping the desert certainly has consequences, positive (eg. we still have all our resources other than that Teleport) and negative (eg. We no longer have that Teleport; we did not meet the NPC) Your Teleportation allowed you to skip the desert.  But it is not “Teleport with Impunity and Plot Invulnerability”.  It is merely “Teleport”. That seems like it’s not truly messing with the player’s backstory.  It is leveraging it.  The PC knew Dad wasn’t there when he was growing up, and he knew what his character had been told in that regard.  He did not know, nor could he know, the veracity of the stories he was told.  Just like SPOILER FOR ANYONE NOT REMOTELY FAMILIAR WITH STAR WARS AHEAD: Luke Skywalker was told his father was a Jedi, then later told his father was killed by Darth Vader, only to later learn that his father BECAME Darth Vader.  So was that leveraging the player’s backstory, or making an “absolutely not kosher” change? If the backstory simply said he grew up with no father, as he abandoned them when he was very young”, I’d say the player left Dad’s story an open canvas.  But I can see several possibilities the player is saying: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I do not want Dad to figure in the game at all;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I want my search for Dad to be a central character theme;<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dad was a bad guy and abandoned us;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dad was a good guy caught in bad circumstances;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dad was a hero and forced to abandon us;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dad was/was not powerful and influential</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I want the GM to define Dad in a manner which will fit with, and add to, the game</li> </ul></li> </ul>I don’t know which permutations or combinations the player has in mind.  In my games, I think many, if not all, of the above would be fair game.  The character’s assumptions were wrong.  That happens, in both fiction and reality.  The question is how good a game it ultimately makes.</blockquote>

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