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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jbear" data-source="post: 4691024" data-attributes="member: 75065">Tricky. I can see both sides of the story. I really value gametime too as it's a titanic struggle to coordinate gamenights with all my players (myself included) sometimes. I can understand the disappointment of not having done anything cool. I can also see the DM's stance that the drainpipe wasn't a weak point that the players were able to sneak in through when conceived. What would I have done? Not sure. Having the benefit of hindsight and the differing opinions/experiences, I think I would have not made it a challenge at all (as there could be no successful outcome for the adventurers) and moved thoses 5 hours of wasted time along very swiftly or even let the PC's know that very early on they realise its going to be 5 hours of tiring climing spent fruitlessly.  Then give the others a chance to prepare/do something til the climbers get back with the bad news. 2 minutes of game time later everyone is back together and putting their heads together for a new course of action. Having thrown in an ooze against 2 PC's in tricky conditions to fight in might be fun for those 2 players (or not, if they die) but its tough on the other 3 that have to sit around twiddling thumbs because they decided (correctly in this case) that the pipe was a dead end. Hand waving what you know about the pipe to lead to something interesting and fun might be cool (if you can think of something and pull it off) if everyone went into the pipe. I'm not against that kind of DMing at all. But when a party splits its a bit of a no win situation as far as keeping everybody happy and involved in the game is concerned.  Some situations are easier like exploring a city, social encounters and everyone taking 'short turns' to describe what they do etc to get information more quickly. It seems a bit different if what you propose is an improvised side-trek adventure for two. Again, I think it was a tricky situation for a DM to handle. If it's a dead end then fine. Best option for me, get the party back on track or at least together asap.</blockquote>

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