Without dwelling on the pizza analogy, are there mushrooms on that deluxe pizza? A game with nothing but social interaction might be that mushroom pizza, and one with nothing but tactical combat a pepperoni pizza. The deluxe means throwing on some of everything, which means it includes your favorites – but also some things that are not your favorites. Do you pick off the mushrooms quietly so everyone else can enjoy them, or insist that the pizza have no mushrooms to best suit your tastes, regardless of anyone else’s tastes? Or do you order a different pizza entirely (find a new game)?
We had a player who was allergic to mushrooms, so that meant we worked within his needs. But the player who just doesn’t like green peppers was fine with picking them off.
Again, how does this make the slightest bit of difference? Are you actually content to explore your fun when you know the guy sitting next to you is bored out of his skull because of what you are doing?
Remember, we're not talking about a recurring problem that happens every five minutes. We're talking about skipping one scene out of hundreds over the course of a campaign.
I come back to the duration of scenes. You are telling us you want to skip just one – only one – of the hundreds of scenes that will occur in the campaign. If we assume that campaign runs for, say, a year of gaming 10 hours a month, that’s 120 hours At 15 minutes a scene, we get 480 scenes, so we’re up to those “hundreds of scenes” you describe. Becoming bored out of your skull in 15 minutes seems pretty quick to me.
But, I have no interest in playing with anyone who considers their fun to be more important than anyone else's at the table. Sorry, if I'm the DM and I know that Bob is not enjoying the scene, I'm going to wrap it up as fast as possible because Bob's my friend. It doesn't matter that Judy and David are happy. At least, it doesn't matter to me. I want everyone at the table happy.
You seem to be saying that it's perfectly okay to exclude one player, so long as everyone else is having a good time. I don't play that way.
I don’t think a player playing out those aspects of the game that are not at the top of his list is “excluding one player”. Let’s add a question to the mix. How often in the course of the campaign should a single player be able to request/force a skip scene – ie how many of those hundreds of scenes should a single player be able to override?
And therein lies the problem. Hussar wants everyone to be sensitive to the fact that one player may be disinterested. We then ask about the enjoyment of those players who are interested. If one player dislikes social interaction and another finds it the best, or only enjoyable, part of the game, then we have a problem – they cannot both be happy at the same time.
“I don’t want to engage in the desert crossing because I want the city encounter RIGHT NOW” can suggest one of two things to me. One is “I don’t want any scenes like this desert scene, ever, and too bad for the players who enjoy that aspect of the game.” The other is “I want my scene right now, so don’t foreshadow anything that might interest me unless you plan on getting there immediately.” Neither strikes me as a likely contributor to a great group game.
You seem to be saying it is perfectly okay to exclude everyone else, so long as one player is having a good time. Or rather, I know you aren't saying that any more than I'm saying what you just accused, but the only way to put your theory into practice is to actually play with players who all have the exact same preferences of play or at least who are willing to play in the way the most demonstrative one-way players prefer. As far as I can tell from your discussion of the many campaigns abandoned (including both of the ones which you've provided examples for), this is exactly what you've achieved in practice.
The assumptions drive the discussion. Does Judy have the right, throughout the battle with the Grell, to continually reference the lack of interaction with the spearcarriers, and how that scene would have been so great to play out? “I wish we’d asked about their skills with the Longspear in more depth – that’s the third time SC#4 missed”. “Oh, SC #5, alas, I wish we had taken the time to get to know you before you were so cruelly struck down!” “Gee, maybe if we’d gotten to know these guys better, we would not have included the two that snuck off with that big gemstone.” Or just “BOY this scene would be SO MUCH MORE ENGAGING AND EXCITING if these NPC’s had some personality instead of being cardboard stock characters. It would have made the game MUCH MORE FUN for me but instead I sit here BORED OUT OF MY SKULL watching cardboard figures duke it out.”
Is it worth some compromise so both players have fun? I’d say yes. But then I, and my players, tend to like variety in our games, and we’re not so focused on what comes next that we can’t engage with what is happening now. It seems like the “Hussar Model” requires one of the two players to find a new game. Which, to his credit, Hussar took it on himself to do.
Suppose it were 4 to 1 in favor of crossing the desert or playing out the hiring of the extra muscle. What's the player's alternative to going along with it? Leave the game? I would expect that he'd have to adjust his expectations if he wanted to retain his seat at the table.
If you feel differently, then I guess you have finally achieved the aims of this thread. You've surprised this DM.
But that seems to be exactly Hussar’s point. Enjoyment is binary – either this is exactly what he wants to play or he is bored out of his skull and we should move on, no matter how much everyone else is enjoying the game.
And there, Celebrim, exactly what I was talking about. There is no compromise. You are being obligated to follow what the table wants, regardless of what you want and the rest of the table does not care one whit about your preferences.
Either I go along or I get out of the game. The very notion of possibly skipping one scene is not even a consideration.
I think the piece of the puzzle not discussed is how many scenes get skipped. If, in that campaign I suggest above, we have each of five players reject one scene, that’s a bit over 1% of the scenes. However, if each of them rejects one scene a month, that’s 60 scenes, or 1/8 of the overall campaign. That seems like a lot. And if each of the only five scenes rejected over the course of the entire campaign is the one that would have defined one of the PC's for the entire campaign, then we’ve robbed each player of a significant measure of enjoyment of the game. Is that a good thing?
"But, I have no interest in playing with anyone who considers their fun to be more important than anyone else's at the table."
The latter, of course. Which has been my point all the way along. If I am always expected to compromise, then that's not a compromise, that's flat out beating me over the head. I always thought that compromise meant give and take. Not just take all the time and give nothing.
But you are insisting it is a bad DM who does not cut scene whenever you request it. That is, everyone else is always expected to compromise, and that too is not a compromise, but you beating everyone else over the head.
Skipping a scene that almost everyone enjoys to go to a scene that everyone enjoys is not a bad thing, IMO. I'd much rather everyone at the table was having fun than most of everyone. And, if I know that some of the players are not having fun, and yet, I figure that just because I like what's going on, it's okay, then I would consider my fun more important than yours.
You are assuming the players are so homogenous that we can build an entire campaign out of scenes that fully engage all the players. In many cases, that may be possible, but when I hear only two scenes, one of desert travel and one of NPC interaction, both cited as “unacceptable – bored out of my skull – move along”, then I see a significant chunk of game possibilities being eliminated, and I don’t think that the game which completely excludes any encounters to challenge or even surprise the players moving from point A to point B, and removes interaction with NPC’s, is going to be that great. We’ve dropped some significant aspects of the game, which means the remaining scenes becomes more similar, and thus more boring over time.
Ok, it got asked a while back how I would have things work. I think I can outline it clearly enough. I hope.
Hussar's Guide to Skipping Scenes
1. Basic presumption of good faith. That is required or this won't work. No one is trying to break the game and no one is being a dick.
2. When the player steps up and makes it known that this particular scene is not being enjoyed, the DM will make every possible attempt to end that scene and move on to the next scene.
3. The players, knowing that 2 is true, realize that this is a fairly nuclear option and will act accordingly. Everyone at the table will at least make the attempt to play through scenes, but, if they don't want to, there is no stigma attached.
Is this really all that contentious?
I'm unclear why #2 makes it an option of last resort. I wouldn't like it at my table.
Here's what I'd accept at a table I'm running or playing:
Keep #1.
Change #2 into the following:
#2a Player lets the table know that the scene is not enjoyable, why, and asks to skip ahead.
#2b Table decides whether to wind the scene down expeditiously.
And add the following:
#4 Table will decide if such scenes are appropriate for the current campaign in the future or to be avoided. If the Table thinks they are appropriate the original player may continue play without stigma, but will not to ask to skip such scenes in the future. If the table thinks they aren't the DM decides whether to continue or not if such play is seen as integral to the campaign.
I think the very vision that there is a need to set out guidelines for how we decide whether to skip a scene suggests that this is not expected to be a freak occurrence impacting only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of scenes that make up the campaign, but a fairly regular, recurring situation. I think what comes of either of these is the unwritten rule that a player who too often (and once every gaming session would be far too often, in my view) slows the game down to request a scene skip needs to seriously consider why they are in this game at all. If a scene every game is so mind-numbingly boring, or otherwise offensive, that Charlie simply cannot bear to play it out, this seems like a sign Charlie is a poor fit for the game.
