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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6118612" data-attributes="member: 42582">I (and I think [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]) are talking about a playstyle in which their isn't a "DM's plot".There are PCs, who have goals. There are players with goals that are intimately connected to their PCs' goals, but not identical (eg the PCs want to achieve stuff effortlessly; the players want to have a fun session, which probably means, among other things, having to put in effort to have their PCs achieve their goals).And there is a GM, who is managing the backstory, the NPCs etc so as to frame situations in which the PCs can try and achieve their goals (within the fiction) and the playes can actually achieve their goals (at the table, by playing a fun game).If the GM thinks a desert romp would make for a fun session, but the players disagree, that is already a breakdown in the playstyle I am trying to describe. Communication between participants has failed. Hussar's "nuclear option" is a way of radically correcting for this; but in a well-managed game it shouldn't come to that, because (for instance) the GM will never try to turn the desert into an extended piece of play when s/he knows that the players are gunning for the city, and they are having their PCs generate resources (like giant centipedes) that establish a sufficient veneer of verisimilitude within the fiction to make it possible to free-narrate the desert crossing.This also relates to the siege. Multiple posters have said that the interest of the siege depends upon the GM. But in the sort of approach I'm talking about that's not so. The players don't need the GM's permission to engage a piece of the shared fiction via their PCs. They can just start declaring PC actions that use the siege in various ways, which in various ways will allow them to pursue their goals in the city. The desert and the nomads don't have the same character (eg in D&D, if the GM tells the players "You see some nomads approaching" the player can't just declare "OK, I offer to ransom their capatives from the city" because in the typical D&D game the player doesn't have the authority to make it true in the shared fiction that the nomads have any hostages, let alone hostages from the city.)This very strongly reinforces our differences in playstyle.In my game, if the players had no interest in the desert I would not set up situations in which the PCs "have to go back" in order to achieve their goals. There are endless ways to introduce challenges and complications that don't require the players having to take their PCs into the desert.This approach relates to the use of "No Myth" techniques that were discussed upthread. One aspect of that, also discussed upthread, is the use of NPCs. If I have an NPC I think might be interesting/engaging for the PCs (Kas, the niece, whatever) I won't wait for the PCs to go to the predetermined "home" of that NPC. Nor will I contrive a situation in which the PCs are "required" to go to that home. I'll drop the NPC in the PCs' path.In the desert/city case, suppose the module, as written, has some interesting hermit hanging out in the desert, with a backstory and information that interact nicely with the PCs' goals. Suppose also that, like Hussar, the players want to pass through the desert with no more than a few minutes free narration. Does that mean that we all miss the hermit, and that interesting stuff? It needn't. For instance, the hermit can be sitting outside the city walls. Or, if there's a siege on, the hermit sits on a hill watching the siege. Why is the hermit there? Why has the hermit come out of the desert to wait for the PCs, or to wait upon the outcome of the siege? Answering those questions - either in GM prep, or in the course of roleplaying out the PCs' encounter with the hermit (and the latter is often my preferred approach) - just adds to the significance of the hermit to the overall ingame situation and the PCs' goals within it.In the situation you describe, I would ask the player. Then I would know what s/he has in mind.On messing with backstory, I am (I think) a little more liberal than Hussar. For instance, in my current game, one of the PCs is from a ruined city, sacked and looted by humanoid hordes. Without the players' permission I introduced his long-lost mother into an episode of play, as a prisoner of goblins. (The PCs faffed around inside the goblin hold, and she ended up being killed.)In the same game, one of the PCs is a dwarf, and the player had made various notes about dwarven culture, including military culture. Without the player's permission I introduced into the backstory a piece of history that is not widely known among the dwarves, namely, that after getting their freedom from the giants they lived under the tutelage of the minotaurs, learning many arts of delving and crafting. This was a surpise to the dwarven PC (and to his player), but helped frame some nice moments of play where the player (playing his PC) had to reconcile dwarven pride with the truths of dwarven history.</blockquote>

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