If you become completely disengaged when your character isn't or can't be involved, as opposed to staying engaged and entertained by what's happening even though you're not actively participating, that's entirely your choice. It's not the fault of the game designers.
Ahh, victim-blaming. A classic. "It's
your fault for getting bored when you literally cannot participate with the game!"
TV shows are randomly interrupted for two-minute intervals all the time. We're just used to it as ad breaks have been a thing since forever, but they're still interruptions.
And notice, I said
twenty-minute intervals. Not two-minute ones. It's almost like that's an enormous difference!
In other words, music on youtube.
Er...no? Like literally not, even if you
don't use an adblocker. Which the vast majority of people do. That's why YT keeps trying to find ways to prevent adblocking.
Side note: that would be a cool bit of interactive theater, where different parts of the audience somewhat randomly got to see different parts of the play (maybe even simultaneously on different stages) until the last act where everyone came together and it all suddenly made sense.
But note that here - as with the D&D game - the audience's expectations would have to be set ahead of time so they know what they're signing up for.
Point me to the place in the rules of 5th edition D&D where it says that this sort of thing is going to happen, where your character is completely locked out of participation in the game, and thus your presence at the table is
at best irrelevant, and at worst, actively hindering.
There's a significant difference between "not being involved" and "completely excluded". "Completely excluded" implies that when your character gets paralyzed or goes down you-as-player get kicked out of the room and can't interact with your friends at the table until-unless your character snaps out of it or gets revived/healed, nor can you watch and learn the fate of the rest of the party. This is not the case in reality at any table I've ever heard of.
You are completely excluded from gameplay. You cannot play the game. That's what these things do. It's happened at
every table I've attended where these sorts of mechanics are used extensively. You yourself spoke of a player breaking out their phone! That's quite literally them searching for something to do because they have been excluded from participation in play.
If I'm a hockey player I'm not involved in the play at every moment; in fact if it's an organized league game, odds are I'll spend more time sitting on the bench watching (and catching my breath!) than skating around on the ice playing.
But does this analogy actually apply to a D&D game? Does a D&D game have a "bench" where half the players sit, doing
literally nothing to participate? Does a D&D game involve significant physical exertion and even risk of injury, such that a nice long breather is quite helpful?
The answer to all of these questions is the same: No.
The
actual analogy for these things is not the bench where players go to rest. It's the
penalty box, where they are forced to witness, but unable to act.
I'd rather it be the result of randomness than the result of a pattern, but that's just me I guess.
But patterns are literally what the game is? You even spoke of standard operating procedures previously. That
is a pattern. Rolling initiative is a pattern. Taking turns is a pattern. Patterns, and breaking them, is an integral part of play.
The GM is doing the job outright correctly if, when playing one or more intelligent party foes, she gives said foes the best chance to win - or at least survive to fight another day. Often, that best-chance option means taking out the opponents (the PCs, in this case) one at a time when possible in descending order of real or perceived threat, which inevitably means that if the foes are doing at all well then someone's character is going down early and, ideally, staying down for at least the rest of the fight.
Remember: this is war, not sport.
It is neither war nor sport. It is a game. Pretending that either of these things directly maps to what is going on leads to incorrect conclusions.
Or would you rather GMs intentionally play their intelligent monsters and NPCs sub-optimally for metagame reasons?
I would rather that the game itself be properly designed so that the GM intentionally playing their part as effectively as they can directly creates good gameplay, and players playing
their part as effectively as they can directly leads to good gameplay.
The fact that you even need to have a choice between "play effectively" and "play entertainingly"
is a demonstration that something has gone wrong with the game design.
P1) Some mechanics can cause one or more players to (frequently?) be disengaged for extended periods.
P2) Some in-character roleplay decisions* can also cause one or more players to be disengaged for extended periods.
Q) Fact of life: sometimes that disengaged player is going to be you.
R) <irrelevant>
C) As part of playing the game, players must accept that periods of disengagement can and will occur.
* - examples: a character goes scouting alone (everyone else is disengaged while that scouting is played through); a character volunteers to stay behind while others go ahead and act (voluntary disengagement for that chaacter's player); a character gets kicked out of the party (involuntary change of engagement type while the player rolls up another one), etc.
Yes, those are perfectly valid moments where that occurs.
Not a single one of those justifies "yeah, you can be taken out by
hold person for the entirety of this half-hour-long combat because of a single failed roll. Enjoy!!!"
Why on earth should I ever stop or prevent players from role-playing a private conversation between two party members?
If doing so is disruptive to the situation overall. I thought that would be obvious. For example, if two players keep dragging out every scene with 20+ minutes of
just those two talking, with everyone else just sitting there waiting for them to finish yet another drawn-out conversation, that is being disruptive. It's treating the game space as their little personal playground for roleplaying their characters together. That is selfish and inappropriate, sapping the time of others solely to be an audience for them.
Having an aside convo in a session, even having multiple, isn't bad and, as you say below, is often good. But that doesn't mean it can't be disruptive--just as the stereotypical "murderhobo" player is disruptive, even though being the person willing to draw steel is not inherently disruptive and is, in fact, often a helpful thing for a group to have.
(though if the conversation is supposed to be secret, I'd suggest the players involved go to another room and just send me-as-DM a note afterwards with a summary of the outcome)
Because oftentimes those things can unexpectedly be or become an important part of play.
Certainly they can, and in general--nearly all the time--such things should be actively encouraged.
But repeatedly and extensively pausing the game for their personal benefit, to the exclusion of the rest of the group, is disruptive. That shouldn't be permitted any more than a single player monologuing at the party should be permitted.
A private conversation between two party members might lead to a complete change of plan or mission, a party split (or worse!), an in-character romance, or whatever.
A quiet prayer session might produce divine blessing or guidance - or maybe something less pleasant - which means if a player tells me their character is going to pray for a moment I-as-DM have to pay attention to that.
None of those things is a problem.
But none of those things is "you got hit with
hold person, congrats, you
literally can't contribute to the game for the next 20 minutes", either. That's precisely what I've been calling out here. You are conflating these things, which (within fairly generous limits) are good and constructive, with specific rule-based disengagement, and thus arguing that the rule-based disengagement must be good because the other things are good. The two are different. Conflating them is erroneous reasoning.
