I would absolutely ADORE this DM. That's being 100% honest.
I wish you luck with your quest. Personally, I think it's going to be hard to find a DM with all the traits you are looking for. He cares so little for player input that he doesn't even wait to let them finish speaking, yet he's also so sensitive to player wants that he's willing to let them direct the course of his game? That's going to be a toughy.
I want a much, MUCH higher pace game than I think I would get at Celebrim's table. I know that I want a much higher paced game than I got at either the Crossing the Desert or Grell tables, which is why I excused myself from both tables some time after these particular events.
This is the answer to the question I have been posing right since the beginning of this discussion: "What was in the city that made you so anxious to get there." And the answer is evidently, "Nothing." Jumping to the city didn't end up making for the most awesome game of all time. No stories are going to be told among friends with pleasure about what happened there 10 or 20 years after they occurred. There was nothing at the destination. Killing the Grell didn't make the game thrilling and wonderful. One scene followed another. And then, that was that.
But in a goal oriented game, my advice is to get to the goals. In an exploration game? Fine, spend all the time you want on every scene and lavish on the details. But, in a more plotsy, goal oriented game? Full throttle and damn the torpedoes!
I don't really know how to respond to this except that it doesn't work in the movies; it doesn't work in books; it doesn't work in video games; and I've never seen it work in a PnP RPGs either. The problem with the advice 'cut to what's important', is that it makes for utterly soulless stories. There is so much more to a story than simply jumping from plot point to plot point. If you try to do that as an author, you end up with a story that loses much of its emotional impact. I grant you that RPGs do have one critical advantage in this regard over other literary mediums, and that is that the audience (the players) is often or at least can be invested in the characters right from the start, so there is less necessity to establish that.
Earlier, you criticized me for how I had framed the scene at the beginning of my campaign saying that I had just painted color and not established a scenario. I hadn't jumped to the 'Bang' properly. I had wasted time instead of cutting to what was important and fun. My pacing, you would seem to argue, was too slow.
I suppose your argument for the perfect pacing, would have been jumping to this scene:
The wave impacts the cities sea wall with a might crash that sends water perhaps 60’ into the air. The wave itself crashes onto the street in a hill of churning foam higher than the head of a giant. A few small boats, some containing terrified sailors crown it. Several large ships are picked up and slammed down again as if they were toys in the hands of an angry child. They shatter and come apart with a deceptive slowness before exploding. Great stone blocks at least 4’ across are blasted out of the sea wall and hurled like catapult stones across the broad harbor way.
And then shouted, "Ok, GO!"
But when is the last time you saw a disaster movie that started with the height of the disaster in the first frame? Or, when is the last time you saw a romance that began with both protagonists on screen and interacting at the same time? Or, a horror movie that began with us seeing the monster as it was killing someone in the first frame? Even Jaws spends almost full minute establishing that scene (and doesn't show us the monster).
One of the most important aspects of story telling is the concept of rising and falling action. The idea is that human experience has interia. It takes time to get it moving. If you want to reach a great height, you have to build up to it. This is why the novel is usually so much more effective and has generally been so much more popular than a short story, and perhaps why really good short stories are so much harder to craft.
Think about the opening of 'Up' which was amazingly elegant in its story telling. The purpose of all of that was to get the audience to really care for the characters, and that amount of time is just about the minimum time you can take to reach that goal.
I was watching 'Dragonslayer' last night, and thinking about why that movie - for all it gets right - doesn't really work. It's clearly trying to be the Fantasy Star Wars, but it never had nearly the success, and its really despite its reasonably fast pacing just.... dull. Boring. The reason I came to is it doesn't do what 'A New Hope' does so successfully, and that's get the audience to care about its characters by give the audience time to learn why the characters are worth caring about. All four major characters - Leia, Darth Vader, Luke, and Han - all get establishing scenes that make them interesting and make the audience care what. Leia is wise cracking, fearless, and warrior like. We know that by how she kills the Storm Trooper and her defiance of Darth Vader. Vader is ruthless and menacing. Luke is young, a bit whiny, imperfect, filled with youth's a desire for adventure and trying to escape from the well meaning confinement of his guardians. Han is shady, cocky, dangerous and sauve. He shoots first, and then apologizes to the bartender for the mess he's leaving. Even though the pacing through this part of the movie is very slow, we aren't bored by it. And when major plot points occur, like the death of Lars and Beru we know enough to understand that and place it. Indeed, arguably this movie suffers from too rushed of a pacing that leads to some incoherence later on (for example, the relationship to Biggs Darklighter still remains tragicly on the cutting room floor). But in Dragonslayer we cut right to the action. We are given no reason at all to care for the protagonists, who both recieve no introduction before the story begins in earnest. Two characters die in the first 10 minutes, and we don't really have any reason to care about either of them even though we are being asked by the scenes to do so. It renders both deaths mere plot points that advance the story. We don't have a reason to care for anyone in the story. The first character that really draws some attention to herself emotionally is the Princess, who is a minor character only met halfway into the movie.
We go about six episodes before the first major plot reveal that ratchet's up the tension in Avatar: The Last Airbender. We are probably 5-10 minutes of play, dialogue, cut scenes, and establishing shots into Mass Effect before we actually hit anything like a plot point. But those arent' mistakes. There are reasons for that.
Yes, it is possible to be too glacial in your pacing. I've complained in the past about 'rowboat worlds' where the players are expected to make or find stories but given no resources to do it. I had problems in the past with my pacing in adventures where I spent too much time establishing mundane things about the setting while all while sitting on my hands about the awesome things I had planned. I had a campaign fail after a half dozen sessions that everyone seemed to enjoy and which was highly influential on the groups play, I think mainly because I sat too long on my reveals and players basically voted for other games. Later I outlined my reveals to one of the players and they were like, "That would have been awesome." Yes, it would have been, but I didn't hook you early enough. You do have to grab players attention and whet their appetites for more right from the start. But if all you do is jump to 'the awesome' you'll end up with at best one of those b rate summer blockbusters filled with CGI eye candy but which nonetheless falls flat. There is value to drawing out your reveal. It's why so many movies wait until nearly the last scene to make the biggest reveals and use their biggest twist. All mystery stories depend on it. A story depends on the unrevealed hidden information. If you reveal it at the beginning, the audience has almost no reason to care about the information you gave them much less the remaining story.
I think I'm starting to get a grasp on how to do this in an RPG well (finally).
But consider the example 'module' for Burning Wheel. I don't know, I imagine for some new groups this was a lot of fun. I'm looking at the text though, and I'm finding I have a hard time caring about who gets the sword and even less (because of my rebellious nature) because the story teller tells you that that is what this scene is about. Now maybe if I struggled to get to the treasure, and then found it was indivisible, maybe I'd have an emotional investment in who gets it. But - and keep in mind how much I like to argue - I can't work up any passion over a sword that is just handed to me with a character that this is my first scene playing. My first instinct would be to suggest to the group we dice for it. If that didn't work, then you want it? Ok, you keep it. Dibs on the next item of value. So, what's next? There is no build up. There is no chance for me to become emotionally invested in 'winning' or in my character. I don't think that works. It sure doesn't sell me on the gameplay your game is offering.
I think it is quite the reverse. You want a successful 'plotsy' goal-oriented character driven game, spend some time building up your drama. You just want exploration based 'classic' D&D, go light on the scene building and cut right to what the characters care about - killing things and taking their stuff.
) : I summon an elemental to carry me across the desert and..
