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Difficulty Playing D&D: Player Still Waiting Off Screen After 3+ Hours
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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6672927" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>If I had to make a guess, I'd say the DM might not have had any idea of how long "mass combat" was going to take. I know the once or twice I've done city sieges and the like... any thoughts of how long the battle was going to go were grossly incorrect. So the DM might not have originally thought the battle was going to take as long as it did. Yeah, you ended up sitting on the sidelines for longer than you expected, but it was probably longer than the DM expected as well. But once the fight was on... retconning your arrival might not have made sense?</p><p></p><p>Does it suck to have to sit there while the others fight? Sure. But you *did* get to do all of the stuff you wanted to do first, so it's not like you just showed up to the session and sat on your hands. Could the DM have perhaps gone back and forth between your stuff and the battle itself, thereby keeping both sides active throughout the course of the night? Maybe. But depending on what/when you were doing stuff in the timeline, maybe not?</p><p></p><p>But I can't necessarily fault the DM for trying to service both groups as much as possible. And as you say in your last post, the random encounter rolls seem to be what triggered the orc invasion so it's not like he was even purposely trying to screw you over to have the attack exactly when you weren't there. Part of DMing is having to make split-second improvisations that we did not plan for... so we have no way of knowing what the consequences of those improvised actions are going to be. In this case... it was that a fight that might not have been planned to have occurred, took longer than what was originally expected, without a party participant that was unknown to be missing from the battle at the start of the session. It's only now with hindsight can we see that the improvisations he did to create the encounter the dice set up for him were going to result in the dissatisfaction that it did. And that's the thing about improvisation-- 10% of the time will be the greatest scene you've ever seen... 80% will be completely fine and adequate... and 10% will really suck. This was that 1 out of 10 times for you that it was the latter.</p><p></p><p>Now that being said... if you want to quit the game because this is just one of many things you have a problem with... you do what you feel is best. But speaking as a DM, I'd see this whole thing as mainly just a learning experience for both the DM and for you, and put it in the rear-view mirror. The odds of something like this happening again seem small (because you will probably think twice about putting yourself in this kind of solo situation again, and the DM will think twice about going forth with a big "set piece" encounter when not everyone at the table is prepared to participate.)</p><p></p><p>Live and learn is what I'd take from this night.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 6672927, member: 7006"] If I had to make a guess, I'd say the DM might not have had any idea of how long "mass combat" was going to take. I know the once or twice I've done city sieges and the like... any thoughts of how long the battle was going to go were grossly incorrect. So the DM might not have originally thought the battle was going to take as long as it did. Yeah, you ended up sitting on the sidelines for longer than you expected, but it was probably longer than the DM expected as well. But once the fight was on... retconning your arrival might not have made sense? Does it suck to have to sit there while the others fight? Sure. But you *did* get to do all of the stuff you wanted to do first, so it's not like you just showed up to the session and sat on your hands. Could the DM have perhaps gone back and forth between your stuff and the battle itself, thereby keeping both sides active throughout the course of the night? Maybe. But depending on what/when you were doing stuff in the timeline, maybe not? But I can't necessarily fault the DM for trying to service both groups as much as possible. And as you say in your last post, the random encounter rolls seem to be what triggered the orc invasion so it's not like he was even purposely trying to screw you over to have the attack exactly when you weren't there. Part of DMing is having to make split-second improvisations that we did not plan for... so we have no way of knowing what the consequences of those improvised actions are going to be. In this case... it was that a fight that might not have been planned to have occurred, took longer than what was originally expected, without a party participant that was unknown to be missing from the battle at the start of the session. It's only now with hindsight can we see that the improvisations he did to create the encounter the dice set up for him were going to result in the dissatisfaction that it did. And that's the thing about improvisation-- 10% of the time will be the greatest scene you've ever seen... 80% will be completely fine and adequate... and 10% will really suck. This was that 1 out of 10 times for you that it was the latter. Now that being said... if you want to quit the game because this is just one of many things you have a problem with... you do what you feel is best. But speaking as a DM, I'd see this whole thing as mainly just a learning experience for both the DM and for you, and put it in the rear-view mirror. The odds of something like this happening again seem small (because you will probably think twice about putting yourself in this kind of solo situation again, and the DM will think twice about going forth with a big "set piece" encounter when not everyone at the table is prepared to participate.) Live and learn is what I'd take from this night. [/QUOTE]
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