You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[N'raac]

Let's turn it around. We're going to start a new game and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] says "Hey, I'd like to run a Fighter." The GM says "Fighters are boring. No fighter." Just as you prejudge the desert to be of no interest, I have decided fighters are just dull. No fighters. Is it OK to just dismiss your character concept out of hand (or the feat you want to take, or the prestige class you planned on taking, or some other aspect of the character that you think would be really interesting to play)? Fast forward past that character and find one that interests me.

 

[D'karr]

Let's turn it around. We're going to start a new game and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] says "Hey, I'd like to run a Fighter." The GM says "Fighters are boring. No fighter." Just as you prejudge the desert to be of no interest, I have decided fighters are just dull. No fighters. Is it OK to just dismiss your character concept out of hand (or the feat you want to take, or the prestige class you planned on taking, or some other aspect of the character that you think would be really interesting to play)? Fast forward past that character and find one that interests me.

This is perfectly acceptable and it's no surprise that many campaigns have certain restrictions on what races, classes, feats, spells, etc., are available. I've run games with no druids, monks, halflings or gnomes. I've played in games with no elves, and with restrictions on equipment (armor & weapons). The Dark Sun campaign setting has no divine classes.

So yes, that is entirely acceptable and I'd say it is even common place.

 

[N'raac]

This is perfectly acceptable and it's no surprise that many campaigns have certain restrictions on what races, classes, feats, spells, etc., are available. I've run games with no druids, monks, halflings or gnomes. I've played in games with no elves, and with restrictions on equipment (armor & weapons). The Dark Sun campaign setting has no divine classes.

No, it's just a restriction for Hussar. I expect his fighter to be boring, so no fighter for Hussar. Any other time, I'd probably be OK with a fighter, but this one just looks boring.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

Same here. Nagol, am I correct that the session continues without the player, or would you be prepared to stop play on reaching the end of whatever the player didn't want to play out so the player can come back and not miss the parts he may have been more interested in?

Play continues without the player. If a player says "Thanks, but I'll leave early/I won't make next session because of X", the session runs for the available time. The absent player can catch up on what's happened in his absence and decide whether or not to attend the next session. I'm not going to put the game on hold to see if an absent player would like to participate now that the circumstance has changed. It wouldn't be fair to the players who have attended and are ready to play.

 

[Lwaxy]

Asking to skip the desert to the city (we don’t know about the siege yet) makes the assumption that the GM has designed a series of dull, boring, irrelevant desert encounters. Why do we jump, sight unseen, to that assumption? Does the GM have a history of running dull, boring sessions? If so, why do we think the city will be better?

This is the main question, yes. I have a group where 2 players groan and moan whenever the group is doing something that supposedly has nothing to do with their main quest. Both generally hate overland travel as well, although sometimes it is just a good thing for the story. Lots of time, they still have fun if they end up doing it but it seems complaining is so much part of their routine they do it anyway. We don't pay much attention anymore

I generally have the rule now that if we're doing a pre-made adventure/AP that they try to stick with the story. Sometimes some stuff is still skipped - like when my WotBS crew used the lantern archon to get them out of the city - but as long as no major part is skipped (as in essential to the story) that's fine by me.

So in the example with the desert, it being part of an AP, I would expect them to travel through and they would expect me to find a reason why they could not just summon something up. Sometimes, pre-made adventures forget about some subtle details like possible summoning or teleportation (or just can't take them into account) and then in my opinion the group and the GM need to have rules to allow for continuing the story. I might have just have the summoner suffering from the beginning of "summoner's fever" or any other magical malady to prevent it from happening, which to my group would mean I acknowledge their idea, but need a way for them to stick to the story and they'd be unlikely to have issues with it.

 

[D'karr]

No, it's just a restriction for Hussar. I expect his fighter to be boring, so no fighter for Hussar. Any other time, I'd probably be OK with a fighter, but this one just looks boring.

I don't understand what you're getting at or what it accomplishes, but it seems a lot like baiting. So I'll just step out. Good luck.

 

[N'raac]

I don't understand what you're getting at or what it accomplishes, but it seems a lot like baiting. So I'll just step out. Good luck.

Probably doesn't accomplish much, actually. However, what I'm hearing on the other side seems to be "without even starting this scene, I am so confident the GM has prepared a big, steaming pile of suck that I would rather go sit at home than play through a minute of this". The poor analogy I draw is that just seeing this preliminary description for your character is sufficient to persuade me that it will be dull and boring, so just tear it up and make a different character.

 

[Lwaxy]

Is it acceptable for a player to choose to not play, not for the whole campaign, but, just in the part that he or she has flat out said they don't want to do?

At our table, yes. If an endless roleplaying diplomacy session isn't for the gal who wants action, she usually prefers to not show. If we know the next session consists mainly of fighting, the guy who prefers lots of character interaction might be the one to sit it out. An FR campaign where we ended up in Waterdeep, a player just hated anything to do with Wasterdeep after the city being overused by a former GM and needed to take a break. One of our female players avoided a session where the story played mostly in the red light disctrict. Someone else, usually named by the player, takes their PCs for minimal action. No biggie. Not that that wouldn't happen every now and then, anyway, if someone can't make it.

Kicking someone out for not liking a scene at all isn't helpful in my eyes. If it is an online game, they can skip over the log later, otherwise, they get the notes. Issue solved. After all, it only means that one little part of the campaign wasn't fun for them to go through.

 

[JamesonCourage]

But, you cannot get to the goal without entering the city.

True. Or crossing the desert. Both can get in the way along the way to the goal, or stay out of the way.

The city is part of the goal.

Oh. Sounds like your goal changed. Then the siege is probably going to be more relevant. And the desert encounter should probably be tied to the city if it's to be relevant to you.

It's not a terrible stretch to think that there just must be a few things that the players can pro-actively interact with in a city. You keep trying to paint the city like the desert - but that's not really a fair comparison. The desert has absolutely NOTHING the players can pro-actively interact with. Until you add in things like nomads or desert storms, the desert has nothing for the players.

But you have to add the siege before the players can interact with it... it's the same in that respect... isn't it...?

A city, OTOH, does have tons of elements inherent to it for the players and their PC's. So, can we at least agree that the city where the goal is is relevant to the players?

"The city" is a bit too broad for me to say "yes" universally (it depends on context). You do need to enter the city to get to the goal, yes. But you also need to cross the desert. Beyond that, neither seems inherently more tied to the goal.

But, yes, I'll say that there's a lot more stuff you can probably proactively do in the city. Whether or not it's relevant to your goal in the city is another matter.

Now, if the city is relevant to the players because the goal is located within the city, isn't the fact that the city is under siege ALSO relevant to the players, by simple fact that the player's goals lie within the city?

Depends on the siege (see my quarantine siege example). But probably, yes. That's why I brought up relevant desert encounters (the sandstorm, the nomads / refugees / mercenaries, etc.).

Even if we skip the siege through teleport, we can still interact with it from within the city.

Same with the sandstorm.

Granted, if I'm playing N'raac's game and we go to talk to the siege leaders, we will be automatically killed (kinda how I've been pointing out throughout this thread that some DM's will automatically choose the worst possible interpretation), but, even without that, there's things like disease and whatnot inside the city, caused by the siege.

Very possible. Or damage caused by the sandstorm, or making people go inside and empty the streets, etc. That's the desert being relevant.

Which was my point. See my post for it all laid out (the one I think pemerton skipped). The siege can certainly be relevant, and probably is, yes. But my point is that the desert might be, and that my skipping it "because it's not relevant", you're judging it before you even know if it is relevant. And I was saying how that isn't a good way to judge things.

Say the Heirloom Quest campaign is all about this heirloom and the hijinks surrounding it. Getting the heirloom doesn't really matter, since the campaign is about who has the heirloom and what do they do with it. At least, that's how the campaign was pitched. Now we get to spend the next four sessions in a dungeon crawl. It's a bait and switch. The campaign that I signed up for was not Dungeon Crawling, it was With This Heirloom I Rule (or something to that effect) The Kingdom and all that that entails.

So, yeah, I do think it is very bad DMing to bait and switch campaigns.

So, do you think pemerton's preference as GM to complicate things by making it be a dungeon makes him a bad DM? I don't think he is one, I just think that it's probably a play style preference. But, in pemerton's, there's also no bait and switch, I think (his players want "relevant" complications). The thing, now, is to determine what is "relevant".

Because, for some of us, the DM is not the sole provider of entertainment at the table. But, in the desert, there is absolutely nothing for anyone to do until such time as the DM provides it. In the city, there's lots to do. As an added bonus, there's a siege at the city as well.

Right, true. Most of that city is probably irrelevant to your goals unless you make it relevant, which is admittedly harder to do for the players with the desert than the city. That is, the players can go get supplies, try to find people to hire, etc. rather easily, while in the featureless and not-yet-described desert, it'd be harder to proactively do things.

One last thought. How about a compromise?

I'd prefer understanding your position, but I'll settle for compromise.

I'm playing at your table. Whatever the scenario is, I'm not interested in it for whatever reason. The rest of the group is interested however, and they have over ruled me skipping over it. Ok, fair enough. Can I take a break from the table for a while?

Probably not, but depending on just how emotionally pressing it is for you to take a break, then yes.

Would it be possible for me to say something like, "Ok, look, I have no interest in that tower. I just don't. My fighter wants to go back home to deal with the stuff that we've been talking about and this bit is not hooking me at all. Can we just NPC my fighter for the duration, I'll go do some other stuff, and give me a call when you're ready to take the party home"?

I'd have no problem with the Fighter not going, unless it was out of character for him. This might bring up how well he fits into the party, and I have a rule about requiring party cohesion. But, my players have their characters split up all the time, and they have also had people bow out of specific things from time to time, and I have no problem with that being an exception (and actually quite like it).

As for you as a player bowing out... again, probably not okay with you taking off, unless you're really emotionally stressed over it. If you're getting really visibly irritated or frustrated, then yeah, I'd be okay with it. If it's mild boredom, then no, I'd say you'd need to stick around. I'll get to that below.

Is it acceptable for a player to choose to not play, not for the whole campaign, but, just in the part that he or she has flat out said they don't want to do?

This is a different question, in that it's more broad. If it's out of boredom, then no, it's not okay. If it's out of some charged emotions, or because they find the content strikes a nerve too close to home, or whatever, then yeah, man. Sure. If the emotions are too bad and this type of thing is a rare event, we can even skip it. We're all friends here. But, if it's out of boredom? Not so much. More on that below.

The last time I brought this up, several posters flat out told me that such a player would be ejected from the game. I'm wondering if the obligation to play through whatever the DM has brought to the table really extends that far.

I wouldn't eject you from the game, but I would make you play through it. Again, I might very well speed things along, now, but I'm not going to skip it (four other people want to play through it).

But, on to my reasoning for this. The simple answer is, really, that I want you to stay and interact, and I don't want to pause my game so that you can be filled in later. I don't like pausing my game for that, as it can kill the feel of whole scenes, slow momentum, let emotions cool, or whatever. And, I'd probably hope (and half expect) that you kick in some stuff while you're around the place that bores you (which, again, I'd likely speed up). Even out-of-game, kicking in suggestions to other players. That's fine. I'd hope for some level of engagement, but it wouldn't be mandatory unless you needed to act or react.

But, that's my table. I don't want to slow it down for your boredom, and, based on my experience, my players don't get that disengaged. They'll pipe in. They'll act, if they're around. So, I'd half expect that to be the case. But, no, there's going to be no phone games at my table, no ducking out until you're less bored. If the table isn't a good fit, and you're bored, you can leave, and I'm okay with it. It has never happened to me, but I'm okay with that, since people are different, and like different things. As always, play what you like

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Regardless, I would find it pretty strange for someone to stop in the middle of the game and just say I don't want to do this and I'm going home. I just can't imagine, short of having some sort of personal events that are distracting from the game regardless of scenario, any event that would be so boring that I couldn't deal with it for a session. Regardless of what's going on at the table I am still interacting with my friends - and that's the real fun of RPGs to me. I also really don't understand not letting things play out for a at least a little while before telling the DM - hey this just isn't doing it for me today, is there anything we can do to move things along.

As DM I have had players use character abilities to out right short circuit what I thought was going to happen - I'm fine with that. I have also learned my player's preferences for what they find fun in the game and I work very hard to have a mix of things so everyone gets their favorite bits - they are fine with that.

((Bold Mine))

A session? Yeah, I'd probably just ignore it as well. But, in the Fighter/Cleric/Wizard/Thief and the Tower example, it was several sessions.