NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6088959" data-attributes="member: 7006">As far as "getting out" of a bad scene... the question that needs to be asked (by the player and the DM) is what is the Goal of the scene?  What does the PC want?  The easiest way to get out of it is for the DM to give the player what he wants.  Reach the Goal of the scene as quickly as possible.  If the scene is between the PC and the local sheriff and the player is looking for info about the gang of goblin cutpurses outside of town... if the DM finds that nobody else is Offering anything and the one player just keeps the scene going because the back-and-forth between him and the DM is fun and entertaining for each of them... the DM just has to recognize this and just jump to the Goal.  The sheriff tells the PC where the goblin hideout is rumored to be.  And this comes back to 'Yes, And'-- YES, give the info the player wants, where the goblins are... AND perhaps offer an additional detail to push the next scene forward-- the sheriff will offer the party a reward if they bring the goblins to justice.I know that tends to run counter to how a lot of DMs instinctually react-- their normal instinct is to make players "earn" their victories, otherwise there's no glory in it... but done too often, scenes just get bogged down as you say.  And those victories are for scenes that didn't necessarily require that much hard-fought wins.  Forward momentum is always gained by 'Yes, And'.  And all negation does (either by denying the existence that someone Offers, or just not reaching Goals of scenes) is slow things down.  If there's an obvious Goal... just get there.  Because once that Goal of the scene is reached, a new Offer of where the next scene should go gets made that much sooner, and can thus push the story forward.</blockquote>

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