Sorry I missed your post earlier!If the game is entertaining enough, "not playing" does not automatically mean "not enjoying" or "not having fun".
I have a hard time believing that 40% of responders wouldn't be okay with sidelining a player, even for just ten minutes, unless they had a backup plan in place to prevent the player from getting bored. It's kind of presented as an all-or-nothing question, though.I have a hard time believing that 60% of the folks answering the poll would be a-ok sidelining a player, possibly for hours.
Yes, my point is that the poll is poorly worded. The first option at 60% would imply that you're fine with forcing a player to simply spectate the game for who knows how long without any way to participate. Option two is apparently supposed to be the option where you'll allow the player to participate in other ways, such as taking over NPCs or other temporary characters, or something along those lines.I have a hard time believing that 40% of responders wouldn't be okay with sidelining a player, even for just ten minutes, unless they had a backup plan in place to prevent the player from getting bored. It's kind of presented as an all-or-nothing question, though.
The OP specified 'a significant period of time.'I have a hard time believing that 40% of responders wouldn't be okay with sidelining a player, even for just ten minutes, unless they had a backup plan in place to prevent the player from getting bored. It's kind of presented as an all-or-nothing question, though.
For purposes of this thread, and this poll, sidelining a player means that that the player's character is no longer available to play for a significant period of time.
As a personal preference that is totally cool. But I don't think it should be okay in a general sense to sideline a player from playing D&D (for an extended period of time) because they have other things they can do to occupy themselves that involve not playing D&D.Besides, nowadays there are more options of things to do while sidelined (smartphones would actually be good here, unlike every other time). Of course, I also prefer playing via VTT (Roll20), so you can do lots of other things while sidelined, since you're at your own house
Ten minutes is just about the minimum period of time that I would consider significant in this context, but it was never really defined. That's like one character getting dropped from a bugbear ambush, and the rest of the fight proceeding without incident while the one player looks on.The OP specified 'a significant period of time.'
Not just a mere 10 minutes.