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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6124018" data-attributes="member: 42582">Come on, you know that you do!N'raac, think about this. Are people sometimes - often, even - able to work out other things that they will do together - like going to movies, or cooking and eating dinner, or choosing a colour of carpet for the loungeroom? All the strategies that are used to achieve coordination, consensus and buy-in in those cases are available to a GM who wants to make sure that s/he presents scenarios that will enjoy player buy in.Hussar has already explained his technique - a group template. I have explained my techniques - at start up, a directive to the players to build a PC with (i) at least one important loyalty and (ii) a reason to be ready to fight goblins; and then as play unfolds, following both formal and informal cues from the players to maintain a sense of what they are invested in.Relative to this sort of evidence base, player preferences are not random. They can be (and, in my case I'm confident to say are) well-known to me as GM.If you don't take these sorts of steps in play - for instance, if at PC-gen you don't require anything on the PC sheet besides bare mechanics; or if during play you insist on only in-character conversation - then yes, you will be lacking the evidence that you need. But no one wanting to GM in the style that Hussar and I are talking about would approach the game in that sort of way.It need not be. As Hussar explained, simply by presenting the choice, and having the players (perhaps in character, perhaps out of character, perhaps a bit of both) debate it, can be a way of generating buy-in to whichever it is that the players opt for. Had they opted for the desert they might now have buy in.As with Hussar, I am a bit confused by the example. Has the GM already decided that these nomads will attack on sight? In that case it's a pointless roadblock. Or are the nomads just a variant on the siege already discussed at some length? In which case making them nomads makes no difference that I can see, unless the GM is hoping to use the nomad besiegers as a way to try and lure the players back into engaging with the desert (which is the sort of technique that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] discussed way upthread).It just baffles me that you say this. We've debated the siege at some length - that is unexpected by the players. Suppose the players find the leaders of the siege, hoping to bargain with them - and the leaders turn out to be XYZ from the characters' past - that was unexpected!I gave a series of examples of surprise from actual play from my game upthread - the woman the PCs rescued in the past turned out to be the grandmother of the Baron's niece; and turned out to be a Vecna cultist; and the Baron's niece turned out to be a Vecna cultist too; and both had Kas hunting them down. Those were all surprises.And they're just surprises from the GM's side - reveals, if you like. Surprises that have occured in my current campaign as outcomes of play include the PCs bargaining with and befriending the duergar; killing the Baron's niece; swearing (limited) allegiance to Kas; plus many other things I could list if you wanted me to.I've got not reason to think that the range of surprises at Hussar's table is any less.</blockquote>

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