Celebrim
Legend
[MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]: I don't know how meaningful this is, but I think it's interesting that I have a tendency to write long posts whereas you have a tendency to respond with bursts of shorter posts, which would seem to mirror or preferences in seem framing.
Sure, but suppose the PC's have gotten into the city, and let's suppose after they get in the city, you are given the player proposition given by the players who are familiar with the setting and who have characters that are reasonably well informed (for example, they've been given some directions to the Lucky Mountain Gambling Hall, or have been there before).
Player A: We all want to see Iron God Meng .
Now, if from where ever the players are at right now, you know there are no difficulties involved, you could decide to do something like the following.
"DM: Iron God Meng makes his headquarters at the Lucky Mountain Gambling Hall, and large building on one of the city's main streets. Since the hall is open to anyone who seems to have money, you easily make your way inside, across the gambling floor with its many raucous patrons, and up the wide ornately carved stairs to his office on the third floor, which is guarded by four burly men in blue uniforms."
So, same scene, just cuts to the chase with a little less conversation. This approach spends a few more words on the "Bang" to set the scene up compared to your shorter narrations, but the total amount of time and words I've used are less than your more conversational approach. If the players wanted to go to a tailor first, they could have still proposed, "Can we find a tailor in this city?" Or if they wanted to see a magistrate, they could have said, "We want to find the magistrate." And while you are correct that "handwave" techniques can be used to reduce player agency, in this case the players made clear what they want to do and you haven't handwaved past any important choices they could have made along the way. If you thought there was important choices, you could have stopped and banged a scene ahead of the choices to let them make them.
I suspect one objection you could make is that you aren't hand waving at all, that you are just continuously responding to player propositions. But as far as I can tell you aren't using true Process Simulation either. You don't deal really with any potential difficulty wandering around the city looking for the gambling house. You don't deal with the details of moving up the street from the gate to the gambling house. You didn't roll for a random encounter for street movement. You don't deal with the details of the gambling hall or describe any of the PC's in it. No one at any point on this stops the PC's and tries to interact with them - no hawkers, no beggars, no waitresses, no guards. The PC's move smoothly to their intended destination. You protest that, "I mention the things I think they would see, with the understanding they might try to explore those things.", but you certainly don't describe even a fraction of the things that they would see. You are sticking to just a few bits to set the place of the scene, and you are mostly avoiding any sort of hooks or distractions that might suggest there is anything to see but Iron God Meng. Once they suggest that is the intention, they ride the choo choo train to their chosen destination and you aren't doing anything to steer them off that path or to challenge it.
Now, at this point, I don't want you to understand that I'm saying any of what you are doing wrong. It's quite right. It seems a reasonable approach for the circumstances. What I'm trying to get at is more that there are a lot of different approaches to framing the scene in response to a proposition like, "Let's go find this Iron God Meng fellow.", and depending one what you are trying to achieve, what the players know, and what the players are trying to achieve you might use different ones.
I do want to call out one advantage of using establishing shots over cutting straight to the Bang, and that is that you much better create a sense of time and space with establishing shots. If you do nothing but cut straight to the Bang, there is a sense in my experience that a player can have of never actually moving, that they've actually stayed in the same place on the same stage, and that the stage dressing and not they have moved. You mention things like travel and survival checks and so forth, but some GMs tend to respond to propositions like, "Let's go to Tung-On and see Iron God Meng", by directly jumping to the Bang and skipping all the comparatively unimportant steps. Some theorist have even more or less asserted that that is the only right way to do things (often under headings like 'Story Now') something you might guess I don't agree with.
If anything I tend to default to Process Simulation, and only start cutting hard to the bang after further Process Simulation would be redundant. So for example, I do roll for wandering encounter checks when trying to travel across town, and the first time in a city I would harass the players with hawkers, touts, beggars, and so forth - or whatever it is that is unique to the experience of being in this particular city. Only after the players are really familiar with an area so that all of that would be, "Been there, done that.", would I start cutting hard to a bang. (Of course, for all I know your players are super familiar with Tung-On or cities like it by this point anyway.)
Sure, but suppose the PC's have gotten into the city, and let's suppose after they get in the city, you are given the player proposition given by the players who are familiar with the setting and who have characters that are reasonably well informed (for example, they've been given some directions to the Lucky Mountain Gambling Hall, or have been there before).
Player A: We all want to see Iron God Meng .
Now, if from where ever the players are at right now, you know there are no difficulties involved, you could decide to do something like the following.
"DM: Iron God Meng makes his headquarters at the Lucky Mountain Gambling Hall, and large building on one of the city's main streets. Since the hall is open to anyone who seems to have money, you easily make your way inside, across the gambling floor with its many raucous patrons, and up the wide ornately carved stairs to his office on the third floor, which is guarded by four burly men in blue uniforms."
So, same scene, just cuts to the chase with a little less conversation. This approach spends a few more words on the "Bang" to set the scene up compared to your shorter narrations, but the total amount of time and words I've used are less than your more conversational approach. If the players wanted to go to a tailor first, they could have still proposed, "Can we find a tailor in this city?" Or if they wanted to see a magistrate, they could have said, "We want to find the magistrate." And while you are correct that "handwave" techniques can be used to reduce player agency, in this case the players made clear what they want to do and you haven't handwaved past any important choices they could have made along the way. If you thought there was important choices, you could have stopped and banged a scene ahead of the choices to let them make them.
I suspect one objection you could make is that you aren't hand waving at all, that you are just continuously responding to player propositions. But as far as I can tell you aren't using true Process Simulation either. You don't deal really with any potential difficulty wandering around the city looking for the gambling house. You don't deal with the details of moving up the street from the gate to the gambling house. You didn't roll for a random encounter for street movement. You don't deal with the details of the gambling hall or describe any of the PC's in it. No one at any point on this stops the PC's and tries to interact with them - no hawkers, no beggars, no waitresses, no guards. The PC's move smoothly to their intended destination. You protest that, "I mention the things I think they would see, with the understanding they might try to explore those things.", but you certainly don't describe even a fraction of the things that they would see. You are sticking to just a few bits to set the place of the scene, and you are mostly avoiding any sort of hooks or distractions that might suggest there is anything to see but Iron God Meng. Once they suggest that is the intention, they ride the choo choo train to their chosen destination and you aren't doing anything to steer them off that path or to challenge it.
Now, at this point, I don't want you to understand that I'm saying any of what you are doing wrong. It's quite right. It seems a reasonable approach for the circumstances. What I'm trying to get at is more that there are a lot of different approaches to framing the scene in response to a proposition like, "Let's go find this Iron God Meng fellow.", and depending one what you are trying to achieve, what the players know, and what the players are trying to achieve you might use different ones.
I do want to call out one advantage of using establishing shots over cutting straight to the Bang, and that is that you much better create a sense of time and space with establishing shots. If you do nothing but cut straight to the Bang, there is a sense in my experience that a player can have of never actually moving, that they've actually stayed in the same place on the same stage, and that the stage dressing and not they have moved. You mention things like travel and survival checks and so forth, but some GMs tend to respond to propositions like, "Let's go to Tung-On and see Iron God Meng", by directly jumping to the Bang and skipping all the comparatively unimportant steps. Some theorist have even more or less asserted that that is the only right way to do things (often under headings like 'Story Now') something you might guess I don't agree with.
If anything I tend to default to Process Simulation, and only start cutting hard to the bang after further Process Simulation would be redundant. So for example, I do roll for wandering encounter checks when trying to travel across town, and the first time in a city I would harass the players with hawkers, touts, beggars, and so forth - or whatever it is that is unique to the experience of being in this particular city. Only after the players are really familiar with an area so that all of that would be, "Been there, done that.", would I start cutting hard to a bang. (Of course, for all I know your players are super familiar with Tung-On or cities like it by this point anyway.)
