You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Scott DeWar]

You seem to think we're talking about the basilisk's gaze save, yes? That wasn't what we were going on about. What we were discussing was whether the basilisk got a save against the Dust of Disappearance. I made my biggest contribution to that debate here if you want to look at it. And a few posts after that Justin has a rebuttal. The pages after that are a bit of back and forth which ended with Umbran stepping in and putting his foot down.

Hopefully that helps out a bit?

that is a spammer and I am getting ready to report her.

 

[pemerton]

What I see is that the PC’s want to get from point A to point B. There is a desert between point A and point B, so the PC’s need to cross the desert.

The bottom line is, why does this have to be resolved via the action resolution mechanics, as opposed to free narration?

One answer might be "Because deserts are hard to cross!". I'm not sure that's a very good answer on its own, but anyway the point of summoning the giant arthrod is to counter that answer "Not hard to cross anymore - all aboard the centipede!"

At that point a veneer of plausibility has been given to the narration "OK, it's sweaty and a little bit gross, but you succeed in your centipede crossing."

If, despite that narration being plausible, we still insist on breaking out the dice, I want to know why. If the answer is "Because that's how we do it in this group" then I know I'm in a simulationist group that I probably don't belong in.

Will your anger be soothed when the GM says:

“Well, had you played out the trip through the desert, you would have gotten a sense of the environment, so you would have been better able to avoid the penalties from the heat, you would have had the magical gear that would have negated some of the enemy’s advantages, you would have encountered various things that would have clued you in to the resources of the Big Bad so you could have better planned to deal with them, and you would have encountered the enemies of your enemy, who could have assisted you. But you told me you didn’t want to play that out and by golly you’re the boss. So, what will you roll up for your new characters?”

No. That's about the worst sort of GMing I could imagine experiencing, and I would almost certainly leave that game. (When something a bit like this happened in the second session of my first game with my old University club the players quit en masse and I took over as GM.)

It seems the issue is more one of impatience to leap immediately to the endgame than one of boredom and disinterest.

Impatience to leap to the endgame is the same thing, in this context, as boredom and lack of interest. As a GM, my goal for my sessions is All Awesome, All the Time. In principle, every scene should have the pressure or drama of the endgame.

In practice I'm not creative or energetic enough to realise my ideal, but that's what I'm shooting for.

I don't see anyone (certainly not [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]) saying that everyone should play like that. But it's plain to me that it's a reasonable way to play the game.

"Travel through Mordor? I don’t want to play out the travel – I want to face the final confrontation at Mount Doom NOW!”

That could be pretty good, if you ask me. In my session a few weeks ago I narrated four days travel through the underdark in about a minute at the table - the PCs arrived at their destination, where the interesting stuff was.

That sounds a lot like character fanfic to me, rather than playing the game and interacting with the setting.

Did you miss Hussar's post where he said he's not very interested in interacting with the setting? And for my part, I don't GM an RPG so the players can interact with the setting - I want them to engage the situation, and I try to achieve this by framing engaging situations.

Interacting with the setting is not the only way to play an RPG.

as soon as a GM says the 'e word', I'm pretty sure his approach as a GM won't appeal to me as a player.

Given this, I'm surprised that you're surprised that I characterised your GMing upthread as very different from the default Burning Wheel approach, which - among various other differences from your own approach - presupposes that the GM will frame scenes and generate complications on the fly, relying upon the PCs Beliefs, Traits, Relationships etc as providing the requisite guidance and structure.

Let's pretend for a moment that I have a desert and a player has previously acquired an item or a promise from a Djinn Lord called 'Shiek over All Deserts' that gives them a one time Wish. It's the sort of thing I would do, and I referenced the concept early on. So instead of the somewhat doubtful plan involving a giant arthropod, the players offer up the much more foolproof proposition: "Guys, I'm really not into this desert thing. Let's just sumon Shiek Over All Deserts and ask him to carry us across.", and the party all thinks this is good use of the wish, and that's the proposition that is offered. Well, after at most 5 minutes of narration to satisfy how cool and powerful this proposition was, they are now at City B, and I'm going to do nothing to stop that plan. Congradulations. You've made it to City B. Chances are you are now screwed

I think this is the sort of GMing approach that Hussar is describing as "railroading" - namely, exercising GM force (after all, it is the GM who decides what the challenges are that will be in City B, and how mechanically difficult they will be) with disregard, in a certain fashion, for player preferences as to the sorts of situations in which they find their PCs.

Whether or not one want to use the term "railroad" for that, the phenomenon is fairly clear. Of course, some players want the situation to be mechanically determined independently of their choices and preferences (eg Gygaxian dungeon crawling depends on this as part of the challenge - it's what scouting and scrying are for, after all). But many don't. They want a different sort of game, such as - in this particular case that we're discussing - a scene-framed game.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

Whether or not one want to use the term "railroad" for that, the phenomenon is fairly clear. Of course, some players want the situation to be mechanically determined independently of their choices and preferences (eg Gygaxian dungeon crawling depends on this as part of the challenge - it's what scouting and scrying are for, after all). But many don't. They want a different sort of game, such as - in this particular case that we're discussing - a scene-framed game.

But even in a scene-framed game, both the hiring interviews and the desert Hussar's character found himself facing were scenes! It wasn't presented as free narration and it certainly could have been. That means the scene had (or was expected to have) meaning to somebody at the table. Someone getting 'shirty' because the scene don't resonate with him becomes a problem separate from the issue if the scene resonates with no one.

Summoning additional assets to the scene doesn't signal a quick transition -- it signals an investment. In FATE terms, assigning an aspect to the group (riding on giant centipede) which is expected to likely impact the situations the groups finds itself in. In a crunchy game system with speciic rules for exotic mount riding and noted penalties for failure, it must also be expected there is a desire to work with those rules (otherwise why play that game and perform that action)

Wanting to skip the hiring interviews does signal a transition desire, but it also signals "Here is where complications should arise". "We'll take what we can get and deal with any issues later."

 

[pemerton]

But even in a scene-framed game, both the hiring interviews and the desert Hussar's character found himself facing were scenes!

In MHRP the hiring would be a transition scene (acquiring a resource), which wouldn't require action resolution mechanics. In BW it might be a Circles check, but "say yes or roll the dice" could apply.

And as I described upthread, I think the summoning of the centipede is best understood as creating a minimum genre plausibility for invocation of "say yes or roll the dice". (In MHRP, the analogue would be "OK, we fly from NY to the Savage Land in the X-Men Blackbird.)

"We'll take what we can get and deal with any issues later."

That would be fine - in a game like BW, expected even. But that's not the experience that Hussar is describing. It's also very different from "because you didn't grind the desert, you are now mechanically outclassed in City B".

It wasn't presented as free narration and it certainly could have been. That means the scene had (or was expected to have) meaning to somebody at the table.

By scene-framed game I don't have in mind just a formal constraint - someone frames a scene - but a substantive goal - the scenes framed speak to the table. Part of the point of the various PC-building features of a scene-framed game is to help achieve that goal, to give the scene-framer (in the simplest case, the GM) signals as to what is worthwhile.

D&D doesn't have many of those formal features, so getting it wrong is easier, and informal cues can be even more important.

In a BW game, a GM who frames a desert-crossing scene when no one has Beliefs about the desert, nor about anything they know to be in the desert, is making a mistake. And a GM who frames a hiring scene when no one has Beliefs about or Relationships to the hirees, nor know of any stakes in relation to them, is making a mistake. My very strong sense is that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] regards the GMing he has described as bad GMing in this sort of way.

 

[Nagol]

In MHRP the hiring would be a transition scene (acquiring a resource), which wouldn't require action resolution mechanics. In BW it might be a Circles check, but "say yes or roll the dice" could apply.

I see the hireling scene as an attempt at exploratory / mystery play. One or more of these options comes with consequences. Try to find out what -- or not and accept the eventual complications.

And as I described upthread, I think the summoning of the centipede is best understood as creating a minimum genre plausibility for invocation of "say yes or roll the dice". (In MHRP, the analogue would be "OK, we fly from NY to the Savage Land in the X-Men Blackbird.)

There are abilities in D&D that I would certainly interpret that way -- Teleport and Shadow Walk being chief among them. As a GM I would interpret acquiring and riding a giant centipede as a way to engage the desert rather than transition from the desert and try to find a reason to expand the interaction between the group and the desert . It is harder to try to run scene framing in D&D which is why I don't use the rule set when I want a narrative or player collaborative game.

Again the DM framed the scene for purpose -- either for exploratory play, in which case a player trying to signal using in-game resources is bound to fail -- or for another goal that moves the narrative forward, exposes a character attribute, tests a limit, or whatever. In which case a player univolved signaling would definitely be ignored by me. Thanks for you feedback, this isn't for you.

That would be fine - in a game like BW, expected even. But that's not the experience that Hussar is describing. It's also very different from "because you didn't grind the desert, you are now mechanically outclassed in City B".

Probably becase I never said the second. The second can be implied in the game and setting. I had one group of adventurers who heard stories of a lost city in the forest at level 4 and swore to find it then and there. The world was known to be status quo and they soon found themselves outclassed by the encounters as they penetrated the jungle. If they somehow skipped a few dozen miles forward, they woiuld have been encountering EL 14 challenges.

By scene-framed game I don't have in mind just a formal constraint - someone frames a scene - but a substantive goal - the scenes framed speak to the table. Part of the point of the various PC-building features of a scene-framed game is to help achieve that goal, to give the scene-framer (in the simplest case, the GM) signals as to what is worthwhile.

That means the scene had (or was expected to have) meaning to somebody at the table.

Here I think we saying the same thing with different words.

D&D doesn't have many of those formal features, so getting it wrong is easier, and informal cues can be even more important.

It also means if this is the preferred manner to run a table then the tale should look for a game that better expresses that desire. For cues to work at all well they need to be lifted outside the game world and become conversation between participants. The signal to noise ratio and possible underlying reasons point in too many directions for clarity to exist.

In a BW game, a GM who frames a desert-crossing scene when no one has Beliefs about the desert, nor about anything they know to be in the desert, is making a mistake. And a GM who frames a hiring scene when no one has Beliefs about or Relationships to the hirees, nor know of any stakes in relation to them, is making a mistake. My very strong sense is that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] regards the GMing he has described as bad GMing in this sort of way.

Maybe, maybe not. If a character has a a Relationship with a secret society and one or all the potential hirelings are in that society, I can see it playing out, for example. Or if there is a belief "women must be protected" and the egalitaion society brings half the potential recruits as female, you have a another reason. It's not so much if the characters has a link to the scene so much as how the scene can link to the characters.

D&D also comes with a huge amount of implied exploratory play. Unless the table has deliberately and purposfully excluded such play from the game, the DM is perfectly right to expect exploratory engagement. It's part of the package of the game system.

Think about how well BW would work if a player refused to engage the belief system.

 

[Celebrim]

Given this, I'm surprised that you're surprised that I characterised your GMing upthread as very different from the default Burning Wheel approach, which - among various other differences from your own approach - presupposes that the GM will frame scenes and generate complications on the fly, relying upon the PCs Beliefs, Traits, Relationships etc as providing the requisite guidance and structure.

Well, my approach is to frame scenes and generate complications before the session, relying on the PC's beliefs, traits, and established relationships as providing the requisite guidance and structure. Since the particular aspects of the BW approach that were under discussion overlap with my approach, I adopted a more comparison versus constrast approach. If on the other hand you want to emphasis the 'No Myth' and extemperaneous guidelines of the BW approach, then I'll adopt more of a contrast stance. As you can suppose, two of my problems with the default burning wheel guidelines are precisely the 'No Myth' stance and the advice to rely on improv entirely. My problems with both are numerous. 'No Myth' is a misnomer, as the whole character burning process proves. Huge amounts of myth are implied, and to change it would require a whole new character burning process. It's also either a misnomer or else part of the whole 'the GM isn't also playing the game' stance I sometimes see. To a certain extent, IMO the GM's character is the setting. It's the GM's oppurtunity to create and self-express. And good GMs of any game system always approach their relationship to the setting in the way BW advices players to approach their characters. And as for the 'all improv' approach, I'm not sure that it ever really works that way in practice, but even if it did there is nothing in an 'all improv' approach that is superior to good prep. If you prep well, not only can you always improv if you want, but you will likely improv better. In fact, you can prepare to improv just like you can train for any skillful task. But once you get to the table, it's too late to prepare and you are on your own.

I think this is the sort of GMing approach that Hussar is describing as "railroading" - namely, exercising GM force (after all, it is the GM who decides what the challenges are that will be in City B, and how mechanically difficult they will be) with disregard, in a certain fashion, for player preferences as to the sorts of situations in which they find their PCs.

That's probably true, but that's a very different usage of the word 'railroading' than its normal usage. It's implying - as I said earlier - that either you have a game which is 'No Myth' or else you have a railroad. That is not a statement that meets any concensus definition of railroad, as there have been lots of players for decades now that play games they wouldn't describe as railroads - including things which are understood to be on the opposite spectrum from a railroad like say a 'sandbox' - that are under his definition railroads. A game with a firm setting may not be the 'No Myth' game he prefers, but it isn't by any widely used definition a 'railroad'. Rather, it is simply a 'game I don't like'. If a DM says, "You find a dark and spooky cave", it's only a railroad if you have to go in. (Note of course that it can be a railroad without being bad, as many players will willingly ride rails from stop to stop. In fact, they can even argue for the existance of rails when they aren't provided.) Interestingly, in BW, not only are you expected to go in, but, if you don't have an Instinct like 'I never go into spooky places', arguably the GM has the systems blessing to begin the scene frame with you having already entered a spooky cave without having recieved player direction beyond what he sees in their goals/beliefs/instincts/etc. So the relationship between 'railroad' and 'No Myth' and 'improv' is actually complicated.

Whether or not one want to use the term "railroad" for that, the phenomenon is fairly clear. Of course, some players want the situation to be mechanically determined independently of their choices and preferences (eg Gygaxian dungeon crawling depends on this as part of the challenge - it's what scouting and scrying are for, after all). But many don't. They want a different sort of game, such as - in this particular case that we're discussing - a scene-framed game.

I'm aware of those facts, and fully support people playing what they like. But, if you are playing a Gygaxian dungeon crawling game using a system that supports and blesses that style of play, you probably aren't playing 'a scene-framed game' regardless of what you preferences may be, and you don't have a right to impose a new social contract on the table just because you are frustrated with the continuous framing. What you do at your table is your business, and if it works I'm behind it 100%. But if isn't your table, you abide by the system conventions and game expectations. And if you'd like to change them, you do not use force in any form to try to achieve that result because well, it's rude.

 

[N'raac]

QUOTE=Jackinthegreen;6098066]Perhaps making the desert the main goal instead of the city on the other side would be a better way to get the players engaged with the idea of exploring the desert. The desert can't be an implicit goal either, since it runs the risk of the players simply not getting it and then thinking "Going across the desert sucks!" And to be fair, going across a desert usually does suck because it requires a lot of preparations. Getting by in a city usually doesn't because there is assumed to be easily found shelter, food, and water.[/quote]

I think we’re confusing two possible approaches. There is “exploring the desert” and there is “crossing the desert”. I don’t think the players are setting out to explore the desert. They want to get to the city on the other side. But to get to the city, they need to cross the desert. So what’s the point of having a desert for them to cross if it just gets handwaved? ”Boy you guys are cool, you can cross a desert”? Maybe I want to give the wizard a chance to show off that new Teleport spell, or maybe I want them to use up that favour the Sheik of the Desert owes them, or maybe the very ability to cross the desert using that favour was the reason they encountered the Sheik three levels ago in the first place (ah – now we see why that scene was actually relevant when it seemed just a distraction and a grind at the time!).

Or maybe there is something(s) in the desert for them to encounter which have story relevance. The PC’s certainly don’t know. The players may or may not know, but likely suspect. Most groups I’ve gamed with would look at getting across the desert as one more challenge, and would have some faith that the GM isn’t putting it there for an opportunity to bore and frustrate the players. But then, my group generally trusts to the GM to make the game interesting. If, after some game play, the desert seems all about hunger and thirst checks and random, boring wandering monsters, we’ll probably have a chat, but simply assuming that the GM has designed a dull, boring, monotonous trek through the desert so he can waste three hours of game time for no good purpose begs the question why I would game with that GM in the first place, if that’s the approach I expect.

I can’t know whether the scene holds interest unless I give the scene an opportunity to unfold. If the desert is, in fact, just background scenery, then I would expect “After a bumpy, sweaty three days on centipedeback, you reach the other side of the desert – cue description of city”. But absent the centipede, I’d expect “after a hot and dry week of trekking through the night and sheltering from the hot sun in the day, you reach the other side of the desert – cue description of city”. If the travel has no bearing on the story, it won’t be a focus either way.

Even if the city is the goal, achieving the goal requires crossing the desert. If getting past the choke point of the dungeon requires defeating the Grell, I don’t expect the Grell to just step out of the way – I expect that the players will deal with the Grell. If the city is the goal, then crossing the desert is a challenge that must be met to get to the city. I don’t expect, as a player, to cut either one out.

If, in the crossing the desert scene, I had simply whipped out a scroll of Teleport and teleported to the other side of the desert, Celebrim and the rest of you would have zero issues. None. No complaints at all. So, I look at the summoning a mount things as pretty much exactly the same thing. There is no functional difference between a scroll of Teleport and redlining travel.

I think there is a significant difference. In two hours, a sandstorm can force me to consider whether we press on with our bold centipede mount, but if we teleported, I’m already in the city sipping a cool drink. If that sandstorm unearths an ancient ruin, then I won’t know that after Teleporting, but if we happen to have been close enough to now see this structure in the desert, I know have a choice to make – even if that choice is “move on – our goal is in the city”. And if, after several days of investigations in the city, we discover that the Holy Maguffin of Power was lost in an ancient temple which was swallowed by the Sea of Sand in an ancient disaster, having teleported means I have no idea where to go next, but the trip on centipedeback left me with more knowledge. These all seem examples of obvious functional differences from where I sit.

Same thing for the Grell example. We were in a city. If we had simply bought a scroll of Summon Monster IV (3e/3.5e game - take it as given that magic items are available for purchase) we would have had the exact same results as hiring 6 1st level warrior hirelings. No functional difference.

Unless we have an encounter on the way back to the Grell. Or it attempts to Sunder the scroll when the party wizard pulls it out. Or the Grell makes a tactical retreat when faced with superior numbers – the hirelings won’t fade away as their duration expires. There are lots of differences.

Throughout this thread, my position has been taken to ridiculous levels. Skipping 6 years of school to battle Voldemort? Why would I do that? That would spoil my fun.

So you assume playing out a trip through the desert (on centipedeback or otherwise) will be no fun but playing out six years of school will be fun. Either could be the focus of an entire campaign, or a quickly glossed over bit of scenery, depending on the writer/game.

I have suggested, and ALL that I'm suggesting is that a player can choose to opt out of a SINGLE scene. That's it. One scene that the player is not enjoying.

So you’re OK if the scene cut is “two hours of travel through the desert” and we cut not to the city, but to the sandstorm? Or is that the GM railroading you to spend time in the desert? And you keep coming back to a scene the player is not enjoying – if you have not let the scene develop, how have you concluded it is one you are not enjoying? The final question which has never been answered is the possibility that you are cutting a scene that the other players ARE enjoying, perhaps to get to one they will enjoy less, or not at all. How happy are you if ONE other player at the table says “Hey, GM, this whole Grell VengeanceQuest? Not feeling the love. Can we just cut scene past the choke point?”

I mean, look at all the stuff he's talked about for crossing the desert. If he spent that much time making the desert important, why not spend a fraction of that time making it matter to the players? As I said, we had no interest and no reason to explore the desert. We were simply crossing it to get to the place that we actually care about. Why not spend all that time preparing the place that he knows we are invested in?

And to me, that’s a key difference. You aren’t exploring the desert. You are crossing the desert. The GM has no reason to get upset if you decide to cross the desert in the most expedient manner possible. That temple revealed by a sandstorm? If the GM thinks you would show some interest and you didn`t, well and good. And if the players say “move on – our goal is in the city”, well and good – it`s up to me to motivate them to check out the temple, or just let in vanish. The Holy Maguffin could be anywhere. But if you just decide to say hey, I don`t want to bother playing out the desert crossing, and Player 2 doesn`t want to bother playing out the investigation and interaction to learn about the goal in the city (whatever that was) and player 3 finds fighting past the minions of the Big Bad Guy a boring grind, then what`s left? A BBG end battle with no context. So now player 4, the storyteller, is bored.

Just wanted to address a couple points
Option A and Option B in your examples don't give identical results and in fact could have vastly different outcomes.

But how do you reconcile that one player opting out of a scene may force another player to not have his fun also?

Full agreement

You seem to be doing the same thing you accuse Celebrim of - taking his position to an ridiculous extreme and then casting him in an unfavorable light. You accuse him of piling on roadblocks - but it is apparent that he (and we'll assume his players) like skill selections to be relevant - so they devise a solution and they play that out with the rule set they are using. He's also said that he addresses a player who isn't enjoying a mode of play by not staying in that mode of play too long.

One caveat – I think that all of our positions, Hussar`s included, are easily taken to a ridiculous extreme, and probably have been.

Everything he talked about probably could be played out in 20 minutes (except perhaps any random encounters) if there really wasn't anything important in the desert.

Exactly – without the scene being framed, how can its relevance be judged, or a conclusion be reached it`s just boring. I wonder how the cool centipede riding trick would have been taken if the GM had just said ”yeah, sure, whatever – I was just going to say `so after a few days you reach the other side of the desert` anyway, effectively robbing the scene of all its cool.

Plus, how is getting "shirty" (whatever that is) with the DM productive? How is it more productive than talking to him after the game or during the next break in the game?

Finally, if the DM is the type who gets in a snit, why were you gaming with him at all?

To add one further question, why is it acceptable for the player to get into a snit, but unacceptable for the DM to do so? Seems like a double standard.

Impatience to leap to the endgame is the same thing, in this context, as boredom and lack of interest. As a GM, my goal for my sessions is All Awesome, All the Time. In principle, every scene should have the pressure or drama of the endgame.

So same thing every game. Ho hum another trip out to save the world.

That could be pretty good, if you ask me. In my session a few weeks ago I narrated four days travel through the underdark in about a minute at the table - the PCs arrived at their destination, where the interesting stuff was.

Well and good. As a player, I get left wondering what the point of setting the interesting stuff four days of travel through the underdark away, rather than an hour on horseback out of town, if the four days of travel is of no interest anyway, but that may be because we`ve already done lots of underdark exploring, through which our characters have become pretty experienced and blasé about such travel.

Did you miss Hussar's post where he said he's not very interested in interacting with the setting? And for my part, I don't GM an RPG so the players can interact with the setting - I want them to engage the situation, and I try to achieve this by framing engaging situations.

To me, the setting is everything that is not the characters. It includes the NPC’s, the environment, the monsters/dungeons/what have you. If the setting is of no interest, then who cares whether it is the underdark, the desert, the forest, the plains or just down the street? And if a battle will be the same in each and every location, then let’s just call it a flat plain arena every time and we’ll grind through “I hit the monster and he hits me back” every combat.

But even in a scene-framed game, both the hiring interviews and the desert Hussar's character found himself facing were scenes! It wasn't presented as free narration and it certainly could have been. That means the scene had (or was expected to have) meaning to somebody at the table. Someone getting 'shirty' because the scene don't resonate with him becomes a problem separate from the issue if the scene resonates with no one.

Summoning additional assets to the scene doesn't signal a quick transition -- it signals an investment. In FATE terms, assigning an aspect to the group (riding on giant centipede) which is expected to likely impact the situations the groups finds itself in. In a crunchy game system with speciic rules for exotic mount riding and noted penalties for failure, it must also be expected there is a desire to work with those rules (otherwise why play that game and perform that action)

Wanting to skip the hiring interviews does signal a transition desire, but it also signals "Here is where complications should arise". "We'll take what we can get and deal with any issues later."

Agreed 100%. When my players are taking steps preparing to cross the desert, or sending out criers to advertise their need for hirelings, that’s a sign they are engaged in the challenge, or maybe even that they are changing the challenge. Hey, you’re doing all this planning to cross the desert – well, if you’re that interested in the challenges of crossing the desert, maybe I should not handwave the travel after all. Let’s move that ancient temple out of the city underpassages and into the desert so you find something for all that prep work. You want to hire some help? Well, let’s make the help interesting, and let you play out that aspect of the game (after all, a couple of you invested character resources in skills for interacting with NPC’s, so let’s give you a chance to shine). And if you show me I misread the situation – we’ll just take whoever shows up – that’s fine too. Let’s see what interesting results can come from that.

The players I game with, myself included, enjoy the flow of the story. Could we get to the end quicker and ignore everything along the way? Probably - but it's not that one encounter at the end that makes the game great. Much of the fun is in the journey, not the destination.

 

[Celebrim]

And as I described upthread, I think the summoning of the centipede is best understood as creating a minimum genre plausibility for invocation of "say yes or roll the dice". (In MHRP, the analogue would be "OK, we fly from NY to the Savage Land in the X-Men Blackbird.)

And, to be as honest as I can be, that is ridiculous (obviously IMO). That is only 'best understood' in that way if you are playing at a game or in a system that formerly establishes that approach. If the game you are playing at has not formerly worked in that way and the system you are playing in does not formally bless that approach to play, then there is no reason at all to assume that the act of summoning a monster is 'best understood' according to a paradigm that isn't a part of the game and may not even be part of GMs tool set. I can imagine a lot of GMs playing D&D have never even heard of 'scene framing' in a formal manner, aren't familiar with BW or DitV or MHRP or Forge in any fashion. And while Hussar is evidently well versed in such techniques, it's not at all clear that a player in general offering up the proposition is aware of such techniques and could clearly explain even to himself what his intentions were or that his intentions would necessarily be the same as Hussar's. Nor is it clear that Hussar (however clear his own understanding may have been) clearly explained his intention and desire to the DM, hense the resulting table conflict he describes over expectations. As I said, if I conjured up a monstrous centipede as a player it would be with the expectation of engaging with the desert, and not avoiding it. I happen to know this because as a player I once conjured a sand elemental to carry us across the desert in a very similar fashion. I spread a carpet on its back, put up a canopy, and set down and beginning playing my flute. It was a 'cool' way to travel, and part of my motivation clearly overlapped with Hussar's (the desire for fantasy empowerment). But I was offering with a very similar use of magical power a very different approach to play and had very different expections. Indeed, at the time I did it in the early 90's, I had no language for even discussing the issues in this thread.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

D&D also comes with a huge amount of implied exploratory play. Unless the table has deliberately and purposfully excluded such play from the game, the DM is perfectly right to expect exploratory engagement. It's part of the package of the game system.

Think about how well BW would work if a player refused to engage the belief system.

Why? There is absolutely nothing inherent in D&D which requires or even implies exploratory play. Even going back to 1e, you can look at things like Dragonlance and see that exploratory play can take a pretty far back seat thirty years ago.

It doesn't have to and there's nothing wrong with exploratory play. But, the presumption that D&D=exploratory play isn't something I take for granted.

Well and good. As a player, I get left wondering what the point of setting the interesting stuff four days of travel through the underdark away, rather than an hour on horseback out of town, if the four days of travel is of no interest anyway, but that may be because we`ve already done lots of underdark exploring, through which our characters have become pretty experienced and blasé about such travel.

And sure, you are not the right person for Pemerton's group. Fair enough. I've been pretty up front in saying that I would not fit into Celebrim's group.

But none of that means that Pemerton is wrong or a poor role player or a bad DM for doing so. It just means that he has a different playstyle.

 

[Hussar]

And, to be as honest as I can be, that is ridiculous (obviously IMO). That is only 'best understood' in that way if you are playing at a game or in a system that formerly establishes that approach. If the game you are playing at has not formerly worked in that way and the system you are playing in does not formally bless that approach to play, then there is no reason at all to assume that the act of summoning a monster is 'best understood' according to a paradigm that isn't a part of the game and may not even be part of GMs tool set. I can imagine a lot of GMs playing D&D have never even heard of 'scene framing' in a formal manner, aren't familiar with BW or DitV or MHRP or Forge in any fashion. And while Hussar is evidently well versed in such techniques, it's not at all clear that a player in general offering up the proposition is aware of such techniques and could clearly explain even to himself what his intentions were or that his intentions would necessarily be the same as Hussar's. Nor is it clear that Hussar (however clear his own understanding may have been) clearly explained his intention and desire to the DM, hense the resulting table conflict he describes over expectations. As I said, if I conjured up a monstrous centipede as a player it would be with the expectation of engaging with the desert, and not avoiding it. I happen to know this because as a player I once conjured a sand elemental to carry us across the desert in a very similar fashion. I spread a carpet on its back, put up a canopy, and set down and beginning playing my flute. It was a 'cool' way to travel, and part of my motivation clearly overlapped with Hussar's (the desire for fantasy empowerment). But I was offering with a very similar use of magical power a very different approach to play and had very different expections. Indeed, at the time I did it in the early 90's, I had no language for even discussing the issues in this thread.

And, had the DM skipped over your play and ignored your cues, he would be a bad DM right? Or at least, not a good DM for you. Would that be fair to say Celebrim?

So, why isn't the reverse true? The DM ignored my cues, forced me to play out a scene I had no interest in playing but, now I'm a bad player.

You cannot have it both ways.