Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6097935" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Explain what I have missed.  What I see is that the PC’s want to get from point A to point B.  There is a desert between point A and point B, so the PC’s need to cross the desert.  One character summons a bizarre mount to cross the desert.  The DM then says “Cool – OK, how are you saddling this beast up?  And what are your Ride skills.”  IOW, let’s figure out how the mechanics of this will work.  The player then says “No, I just want to be across the desert with no further gameplay”.  Why?  How has the journey across the desert been established to be something that will bore you to tears?  It seems the issue is more one of impatience to leap immediately to the endgame than one of boredom and disinterest. I would be far more irked if the DM spent half an hour going through our preparations to ride the giant centipede, then said “After four bumpy days riding a giant centipede you arrive at the other side of the desert” than if there were engaging encounters in the course of that travel.If I take your “What is the Goal” approach through source material, how much of the story do we skip?   “I don’t want to go through 6 years of education – I want to fight Lord Voldemort NOW!”   “Travel through Mordor? I don’t want to play out the travel – I want to face the final confrontation at Mount Doom NOW!”   “What’s this Death Star in our way?  I don’t care what the old guy senses.  You already wasted WAY too much of my valuable time with those stupid aliens, having to actually TALK to the pilot and copilot we wanted to recruit and listen to his descriptions of his spaceship.  We just want to hire him, pay him and have him disappear.”  In real life, the housepainter has a storefront, a business history and likely provides a quote up front.  And we still see lots of people at the Better Business Bureau reporting how they got ripped off.  Every one of these can later be turned around to say “The GM is punishing us for not crossing the desert HIS WAY!  Why does every action we take get interpreted to have the worst possible consequences?”  You were unhappy you even had to make ride checks on the centipede.  How are you going to react when the party is wiped out by a vastly superior enemy?  Will your anger be soothed when the GM says: “Well, had you played out the trip through the desert, you would have gotten a sense of the environment, so you would have been better able to avoid the penalties from the heat, you would have had the magical gear that would have negated some of the enemy’s advantages, you would have encountered various things that would have clued you in to the resources of the Big Bad so you could have better planned to deal with them, and you would have encountered the enemies of your enemy, who could have assisted you.  But you told me you didn’t want to play that out and by golly you’re the boss.  So, what will you roll up for your new characters?”You're accusing the GM of writing fanfic and forcing you to play through it, but you're also insisting on dictating the results of your character's actions and which scenes we will and will not play out for your character to shine in.  That sounds a lot like character fanfic to me, rather than playing the game and interacting with the setting.You'll make the centipede travel at a dead run, but it seems you'll moan at the villainy of the DM for suggesting that could impose a penalty on your ride checks.  You just want to quickluy hire the first six guys signing up to go out and kill something, but if they don't have the abilities or gear to do the job, or they trun out not to be loyal followers cheerfully accepting the pittance you dole out to the survivors, then the GM is out to get the players for not being "railroaded" into speaking with their potential employees and making a reasoned hiring decision.Now, if we've ground through 20 minutes of descriptions of desert dunes, or interviewed half a dozen potential hirelings with detailed family trees, then I think asking if this is actually going anywhere may be justified.  But cutting the scene off at the knees before it even gets rolling?  Not so much.</blockquote>

Verification