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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9791690" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Ahh, victim-blaming. A classic. "It's your fault for getting bored when you literally cannot participate with the game!"And notice, I said twenty-minute intervals. Not two-minute ones. It's almost like that's an enormous difference!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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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!!!"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.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.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.</blockquote>

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