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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6096913" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Every time you have been presented with a resolution mechanic, rather than narrating the cool results of your proposal to cut scene, you have indicated that the DM is making the game poorer.  I have yet to see you provide an example of positive DMing which integrates the actions of the characters into the game setting to provide a better play experience. So should one of the players be able to say “we’ve already played out the tactical combat with the Grell. Doing it again is just boring.  Hey, Mr. DM, how about we just say the Grell moved on to recover from its wounds, or take as given that the party, with its new reinforcements, defeat the loathesome Grell and cut scene to something new and interesting.”  Maybe, for that player, the challenge was in recruiting the help to destroy the Grell – the very interaction challenges that you want to cut scene over.  Does this player have the right to get ‘shirty’ with the DM and/or you for your insistence at monotonously replaying the same tactical scene?What if the DM (and/or the other players) decides your character has become uninteresting, stale and boring.  “Hey, Hussar, this particular character sucks, can we move on?”  Should that be a major deal?  And what proportion of the players need to agree that the particular scene detracts from, rather than adding to, the game?   Here’s where I see the dichotomy. “Fighter leaps down on the sea dragon, grabs its horn and thrusts his two handed sword through its eye and into its brain, delivering a mortal wound”.  So what are the options?  “No, that’s impossible, take a by the book attack action”?  I don’t like that one – we want creative game play.  The giant centipede should be able to carry us through the desert.  “Fighter has slain the sea dragon – it writhes in its death throes.”  Hey, rule of cool, right?  Just like summoning a giant centipede eliminates any challenges of crossing the desert, the cool image of the fighter leaping on the sea dragon’s back and slaying it in a single blow carries the day and ends the challenge.  Players get to cut scene in any manner they may decide is cool.  Or “OK, that’s a Clinch combat maneuver; striking against its eye means avoiding its powerful hide, so I’ll reduce its AC and you get a +4 to confirm any critical threats.”  That seems like integrating a cool action into the game, with some rewards for success (and penalties for failure should you fall off the sea dragon).  That’s my preference – but that suggests it’s also not autosuccess that your characters can ride a giant centipede bareback across the desert without a hitch. ‘nuff said.  Now, I can say the player(s) deciding that the PC(s) are blinded to all else by their rage against the Grell who slew their teammate, and they are rushing to recruit and return to mete out their righteous vengeance.  But I as a player would accept, and likely point out, that this means we’re not going to take the time we should in vetting our recruits.  So maybe that means we end up with a Cleric of Chaos and a L2 commoner farmboy.  That’s what comes of rushing the hiring process. This may be the point where a player (and/or character) notes that, maybe, we should have recruited more carefully and found someone who could track this thing.  But we were blinded by our emotions, and didn’t think it through. Further to this, how am I to know that your “gather a posse” strategy isn’t a similar subtle hint that you want to opt out of the Grell chokepoint issue by coming back with an overwhelming force, so I should just cut scene to the door at the other end of the Grell hallway without playing out the rematch (whether by having the Grell move on in your absence, or simply narrating a crushing defeat for the Grell as it faces this superior force)?  One question we haven’t heard – how charismatic is the recruiter, and how much of his character resources went into interaction skills to make him a great recruiter and leader? If a player spent most of his time trying to avoid playing out any challenges in the game, I suspect my group wouldn’t wait for him to decide he was leaving.Trust in the GM is, in my view, a necessity.   The GM can stack the deck against the PC’s if he is so inclined.  If the GM cannot be trusted to run a fair game with challenges reasonable to the characters, then the game seems unlikely, at best, to succeed. Sure.  But the player gets to decide what his character attempts, not how it succeeds.  He can decide to converse, but not that the NPC is so charmed by his tales that he becomes loyal vassal.  He can certainly attempt to charm the NPC and recruit him, but resolution of that attempt is governed by the dice – the “fortune mechanic” – not by the player deciding it is so.  The likelihood of success or failure depends on factors the player may not be aware of (this guy is a hired gun who is trying to infiltrate the team?  He’s recruited!; or he is a loyal vassal of the Duke and it will be a DC 35 diplomacy check to get him to reconsider his career). Still waiting to hear about something he finds interesting and engaging, rather that the various activities he wants to cut-scene through.  The only activity he seems to want to engage in is combat. Has he not chosen to resolve it by recruiting more warriors?  Playing out the recruitment of those warriors is playing out his efforts to resolve the challenge.  Hussar himself has directly linked the recruitment activity to the resolution of the Grell encounter, but he doesn’t want to play out his own resolution methodology.  If we should just skip over the recruitment (“Cool idea – you recruit half a dozen town guardsmen and head back to the Grell”) then why should we not skip over the rest of the resolution (“With the aid of your new hirelings, you defeat the Grell, still wounded from your previous encounter, easily. They take their promised payment and depart.”) rather than play through the tactical combat grind and the subsequent celebration of victory and parting of ways? So if I, the player, find goblins boring, do I get to handwave the campaign and we move on to something else?  Guard duty? But my character’s background says he wants to FIGHT goblins – can’t we cut scene to an invasion of the goblin lair?  And why do I have to listen to some NPC talk about how he wants us to work for him as a guard? Cut scene to the combat!</blockquote>

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