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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6093528" data-attributes="member: 22779">But, Celebrim, when you look at a lot of theater plays, there are virtually no scene descriptions like you are referring to in Pulp Fiction.  I mean, this is the opening scene of Macbeth:There is absolutely no scene framing such as you refer to.  Well, other than, "a desert place".  The important bits are the witches and their interaction.---------I'll try to give another example and see where it goes.  I'm trying to give as much detail as I can, but, please, read this assuming everyone is trying to have a good time.  The DM is very good and the other players were also very much on the ball.  We were delving into a dungeon beneath a city when we stumbled across a Grell which proceeded to obliterate one of the PC's and beat the snot out of the rest of us.  We retreated back to the surface.  We decided that the monster likely wasn't going anywhere, and we needed some extra muscle.  So, we spent a couple of days hiring mooks.  Now, this was my idea, so, maybe I shouldn't have bothered, but, everyone thought it was a good idea at the time.So, we advertise and whatnot and get a dozen or so applicants.  We only had enough money for about 6, so, I said, "Well, we pick the best six and move on."  No go.  The DM insisted that we interview each and every NPC and decide for ourselves.  So, about a third of a session later, we finally have our six troopies and now I'm fuming because I'm so frustrated.  Next we have to equip them because none of them have weapons.  Fair enough, large city, I hand the DM a shopping list.  Again, no go.  We have to actually go to the weapons shop and buy stuff, complete with lengthy conversation with said shop owner.  Now we've blown through about half a session on things that I absolutely had no interest in.From my point of view, I wanted six hirelings, they would do this one thing and go away.  That was it.  I wouldn't begrudge a few minutes of get to know them, but, honestly, since we already had a goal (kill the grell and move forward), I simply wasn't interested in what the DM wanted.  But, since I completely lacked any means of moving things along, I couldn't reframe the scene in any fashion and had to go along with the DM.This sort of thing doesn't happen when I run games and I don't play with DM's like this anymore.  Celebrim, you asked how players can reframe scenes and this is how I would have done the above.  When the players have a clear goal, then if they indicate they are not interested in deviating from that, then I don't force the issue.  Instead of the "Get to know the local color and people" scene, I scrap that scene and move on.  Probably from the point of the shopping list to outside the Grell's lair.  That entire scenario would have taken me all of ten minutes instead of almost two hours.  All because one of the players indicated that he or she wasn't interested in what was going on.Now, OTOH, if the players were totally into the "Get to know the local color and people" scene, they wouldn't indicate that they wanted to move on and the scene would play out as I originally intended (if I was actually running this scene).  Conversely, if I, as DM, was going to skip past this scene but the players indicated that they actually wanted to get to know the hirelings, then I expand the scene to include that.IOW, the players through informal flags (thanks Pemerton for that term, it makes good sense) can reframe virtually any individual scene in any direction.  Considerations like, "How would this realistically work?" as in the centepede train example, simply aren't something I even think about any more.  If the players wanted to get into that consideration, they would raise flags by tying themselves to the centipede, crafting make shift saddles, talking about skills, whatever.  OTOH, since the player said, "I summon the centipede, it should take us three days to get to the city", that's a pretty clear flag that "Dive into the details of travel" is probably not on the menu at this time.</blockquote>

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