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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5766085" data-attributes="member: 8835">See my just prior response to your other 1 liner for that answer.  Short of its, then keep doing it.I can't speak to Wyatt's actual mindset.  I ain't him.I suspect that he felt his approach was solid and right and most importantly, it worked for him.  Therefore, if you do it his way, you would get similar results.It's like my best practices for faster combat.  People whine about slow combat all the time.  I've collated a set of best practices (from a variety of sources).  They work.You can follow these best practices and get the results, or bitch about how you don't like them and that your game is still slow.As an advice giver, do I owe you something for the fact that you disagree with my advice and thus my advice is incompatible with your environment?Especially advice written without advance detail of your environment.Pay me to do Discovery on your group, and I'll write you advice that is directly applicable to your group's preferences.I suspect Wyatt assumed that most players do not enjoy wasting time.  And that he though he had identified good examples of wasting time.He could have worded it differently.But he was also trying to deliberately focus your mind on some specific activities that he found to be poorly run by GMs and thus were a waste of time.For a group that got great value out of those scenes, it's horrible advice.For a GM who put that in there as filler and didn't really think much on it, his choice of words made them REALLY consider taking it out.With my example of the travel session, I KNEW that I was only putting it in there as filler. I did not enjoy running it, as it wasn't particularly interesting to me.  Therefore, associating that content with "waste of time" was a valuable advice.Let me give a totally different example.  Cem Kaner, a leader in software quality assurance once personally taught me "Any test that doesn't find a bug, is a waste of time."Testers would sputter when I would tell them this.That statement was so outrageous that their mind rebelled at it.It then forces them to think, and debate.  And consider, of all the tests you want to run, and the limited time you have, what is the best use of your time?From Cem, the reasoning behind that statement is that any bug a customer sees is bad (of varying degrees).  Any bug you find and can fix or document is good.  Every complex software, regardless of how much you test, will have a bug.  There is no such thing as perfection.Therefore, if you only have time for 10 tests of 20 features, would you rather pick tests that will probably find a bug, or tests that will probably suceed?<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Any feature you do not test and it has a bug is a loss.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Any feature you do not test and it does not have a bug is a win.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Any feature you test and it works is a waste of time.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Any feature you test and it finds a bug is a win.</li> </ol>In a perfect world, you will hit type 4 every time.  Obviously, you cannot do that.  You want to avoid type 1, as that is the worst.And certainly, running a test that passes (type 3) is more valuable than not being 100% sure that an untested feature is OK (type 2).But you have limited resources (time), so you should aim for #4, knowing that you'll also get #3 as a side effect.  Rather than assuming all things are equal and getting a lower set of #4 and a lot of #3.Bind this concept back to D&D.Any scene that is not fun/valuable/desirable is a waste of time.As a GM, you cannot please every player on every scene.  But you can know each player's scene type prioritization preference.  And shoot for more of that.  Let's pretend D&D only consists of the following scenes:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Mundane Travel w/ encounters</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Mundane shopping</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Mundane NPC interactions (the boring gate guard)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Social Manipulation of NPCs</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Getting Information from NPCs</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Solving Problems</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Traps</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Combat</li> </ol>While many have indicated that their group likes scenes 1-3, do they really prefer them over the other types?</blockquote>

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