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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6100808" data-attributes="member: 4937">In the original scenario, the PC party has plane shifted on an unspecified outer plane in what is described as a 'wasteland/desert' but given this in fact the outer planes could just as easily be a layer of the Abyss.  They are 5d100 miles from their intended destination, an outer planar city, per the description of the plane shift spell.   So, lets say that they have a 250 mile journey to make.  The party average level is somewhere between 10th and 13th.   Hussar is playing a Binder, most likely binding Zceryll, a semi-cannonical online only Vestige that is considered to be far and away the most powerful Binder visage.  Most commenters believe that it single handedly raises the Binder class a tier in power.  The key Zceryll ability allows you to summon one any monster from the Monster Summoning I-V list (or I-VII at 14th level).   Hussar as a player has no interest in playing out the scenario of crossing the wasteland.  He wants to get to the city right now, ostencibly to advance the plot because of his frustration with campaigns that fizzle out without concluding.   Hussar however at this remote time can't recall the actual reason why they wanted to get to the city, so the plot up to that point can't have been too exciting.  This may explain Hussar's frustration at the table.  The DM appears to have expected this 250 mile planar crossing to be a significant challenge, and has planned as such.Hussar considers the situation and his character's ability and he announces to the DM that he's using his 'Summon Alien' ability to summon a Huge Monstrous Centipede.So far so good.What happened next?  It's hard to know.  Hussar has been very reticent about providing context.  I'm guessing that Hussar broke character to explain the plan he had concieved.  He probably said something like this: "I can cast Monster Summoning V and call one creature that will stay until it dies or I send it back.  I have the party mount on the giant centipede.  Because the centipede has a climb speed, any wasteland barrier is no longer a barrier as we could simply climb down and up any crevasses or things like that.  Because I can simply call another one when the first one dies, I am going to make it force march at run speed until it dies and then summon another one and repeat.  Since we'll be running the whole time, nothing can catch us, so there should be no encounters."This leads in Hussar's words to the DM "throwing a snit".Something has gone terribly wrong in this scene.  The question is, "Was it the DM getting suprised?", and if so, "What do we mean by that?"Actually, lots and lots of things have gone terribly wrong in this scene.   If you want to be a good DM and a good player, you have to work to avoid this situation:1) Hussar has an OOC problem that he's resolving IC:  Hussar is frustrated with the pace of the game.  By his own account he wants to skip a scene (or 3 or 5).  Maybe, though we have only Hussar's word for this, everyone else in the party also is frustrated with the pace of the game.  We know Hussar quits shortly after this scene.  It's not clear whether the game continued without him, but if it didn't its pretty good evidence that Hussar isn't the only frustrated player.  (I'm guessing the game didn't start at 1st level and Hussar at least didn't play his Binder from 1st level, or the game likely would have been a lot more resiliant than this.  It's not clear though how new Hussar is to the campaign.)  If on the other hand Hussar left the group and the game continued, then we'd probably assume the rest of the group wasn't as frustrated as Hussar was.  Hussar really needs to call an OOC table vote to discuss skipping this scene but instead decides to use "Player Force" via his in game narrative power to force the DM to skip the scene.   For whatever reason, Hussar doesn't do this, perhaps because at the time Hussar wasn't as clear on the concept as he is now.  In any event, this is fundamentally the same problem as a DM using "GM Force" to errect impassible cliffs or summoning giant rocs that consider monstrous centipedes the greatest snack ever.  Something has gone wrong OOC, and now we are fighting a proxy war for control of the narrative rather than talking through our problems openly and honestly (preferably, between sessions in the case of frustration with pacing).2) Hussar has just narrated an IC action OCC: This is the opposite problem.  Hussar hasn't really offered up a proposition.  Instead he's outlined a plan and asked the DM to rule on the plan as a whole rather than any of his individual actions.  This is almost certainly going to bewilder an inexperienced DM, especially one that is trying to grasp all the rules implications that Hussar has just thrown in his face and simultaneously deal with the unexpected issue that Hussar is asking for a ruling that could invalidate everything the DM had been anticipating about this session and likely forcing the DM into total improv mode.  What's going on here is similar to a GM fantacizing about how a scene is going to play out and the difficulties that will result, then getting frustated when it doesn't.  By focusing on his imagined outcome, Hussar is setting himself up for an emotional let down.  In both cases, the GM and player disappointment is likely to lead to table conflict.3) Hussar has just offered up outcome as proposition:  By explaining the results of his plan and the contingencies he has in place, he's not really telling the DM what his character is doing.  He's gone out of scene.  Instead if he actually explained something like the above, he's telling the DM what the DM should do in a inadvertantly passive aggressive manner (then again, given that Hussar is frustrated with the pacing, maybe not).   This is also likely to bewilder an inexperienced DM, and also is likely to cause an inexperienced DM to consciously or unconsciously feel like he his being attacked.   Inexperienced DM's are likely to respond to outcome as proposition by arguing over whether the outcome is reasonable and negotiating over the outcome.   The reverse issue, GM's offering up propositions as outcomes - say telling the players what the feel or should feel, or what they do or should do - will also lead to table conflicts.4a) Hussar has just thrown the game rules out the window:  Perhaps without knowing it at the time, perhaps because he's misrembering it at this distance, what Hussar has implied by his plan narration is most likely flagrant abuse of the rules.   Assuming the vestige is Zceryll, Hussar's PC's 'summon monster' power works nothing like he's described.  Since the Zceryll is a possibly obscure online only vestige, and the DM evidently not that experienced, it's highly likely that the DM at least had no clue how the power worked.  It's possible the Hussar also had no clue, either because he hadn't carefully read his own power or else because he'd not copied it down correctly - an experience lots of players on either side of the screen will probably recognize.   The first and biggest problem is that the text of Monster Summoning doesn't provide for Hussar's plan at all.   What actually happens if you summon a monster is it shows up and instantly begins attacking your enemies.  If you have no enemies, it does absolutely nothing.  Unless you have the ability to communicate with monster, you can't order it to do anything else - such as serve as a steed.  It's not at all clear that Hussar has the ability to communicate with vermin.  Even any Telepathy power he may have is of no help, because it requires the target to have a language - which vermin in most campaigns do not have.  The second issue is that the 'Summon Alien' power doesn't specify a duration (it's a web article don't expect great writing or thoughtfulness), but that doesn't mean that has unlimited duration (as Hussar has apparantly interpretted).  The most obvious interpretation is that it has the normal duration of a Summon Monster spell - or in Hussar's case 10-13 rounds.   This is hugely important, because if he can only keep a steed around for a minute of time he can't usefully ride it.   Because Hussar can cast the spell every five rounds he can keep a monstrous companion indefinately, but notably not the same one.  The one he's riding on disappears out from underneath him.  Each 5 rounds he needs to spend a full round action summoning a steed, then needs to dismount and mount steeds every minute or so.  As an NSS caver, I can tell you that if you have to climb up on to a table sized obstacle every minute, you'll be dead tired in an hour or two unless you are really fit in which case you'll be dead tired in three or four.  It's probably as exhausting as jogging continiously.  Hussar's confusion here with how the power works is understandable, because in the abstract he can keep a monster with him at all times.  But in the details the ruling is wrong.  This replacement of the actual with the abstract is a common problem at tables which requires carefully consulting the rules to avoid it.  If Hussar needs to rig up a saddle, it's now impossible.  By the time you've tied the knots on the monster, it's disappeared.   Hense, riding the monster up a vertical slope is going to be tricky to say the least.   Moreover, even the notion that the run speed of the centipede renders most encounters impossible or trivially easy to avoid is a problem.  The run speed of a centipede (even if we assume it isn't encumbered by the party) is 160' - or roughly 18 mph.  That's a bit slower than an olympic spinter and not even a gallop for a horse.  Hussar has accepted, and the GM has believed, that "160'/round is fast", which it is at strategic speed, without really working out in their heads 'how fast' which matters for its tactical implications.  Most things encountered at a short distance can probably overrun or harass the mount and its riders.   Most of this however probably didn't come up, because the DM appears to have taken it for granted that Hussar can do what he says he can do and gone from there. 4b) House rules?:  Of course, the other option is that Hussar has some obscure and little known vestige and various communication powers with vermin that allow him to do exactly what he says he does.  Maybe they deliberately rewrote the visage thinking the new wording would make it more balanced or interesting.  It's not clear whether Hussar brought the vestige to the table or whether the DM provided it as an option, but in either case the real issue here could be that we have poorly play tested rules where the DM simply never thought out the implication of what he was doing.  Any time you are bringing house rules to a table, and some might argue that a web document consitutes that, it needs to be understood by all parties that the actual wording is tentative.  Applying "Player Force" using hitherto untested or little tested house rules - particularly those dragged from obscure sources - is something players should expect to be poorly recieved.5) The DM threw a snit:  We only have Hussar's word for this, but it's certainly believable that the DM expressed frustration or anger.  DM's really have to keep control of their emotions, because even if you don't mean to convey anger at the player poorly phrased wording or subsconscious indicators like tone of voice or body language can end up provoking player anger in responce and then all rationality goes out the window in an escalating sea of conflict.  It's also likely that the DM was emotionally invested in the wrong things, which is an easy trap to fall into as a DM.  Equally like, DM bewilderment at the complexity of the ruling before him and how to recover from the unexpected turn of events can easilly be wrongly interpretted as anger or turn into anger.  Consider how easy it is on the boards to misinterpret people as being insulting, and quickly get into an escalating war of snide comments.  6) It's likely Hussar got 'Shirty':  Faced with an angry or confused DM, and in conflict over how to resolve the scene (the DM evidently tried his best to play it out), Hussar likely responded right back at him - getting rules lawyerly and frustrated right back at him - even if he wasn't from the beginning because of his frustration with the pacing.One thing it seems that it is fairly clear did not go wrong here is that despite his 'snit', the DM did not metagame against Hussar.  Hussar ultimately is given or at least gets his way.  He gets to the city quickly and without signficant encounters.   The DM didn't force Hussar to play out anything but the most basic parts of the travel.  Whether this is because the DM was bewildered and unable to recover, whether he gave in willingly, or gave in unwillingly, or ultimately just decided it wasn't worth continuing the argument over isn't clear.  Despite this, Hussar still leaves the game shortly after this scene, and still persists in this thread of raising this accusation of DM misconduct and misuse of their authority in responce to anyone questioning the scene.All this talk about 'scene framing' and 'narrative versus simulationist play' is IMO really irrevelant and its moving goal posts.   It's clear that player driven scene framing, however desirable it may or may not be, wasn't the operative mode at this table, and its equally clear from the original post that Hussar failed to communicate his desire to 'scene frame' clearly.   This is retroactive mental justification for what actually happened.   It's also not at all clear that saying players should have the power to frame scenes or that GM's should frame scenes that are interesting to the players in any fashion readily addresses the issues that this particular surprise raised - or any issues from any other case of "surprising the DM" brought up in this thread.  The problem with using that as a blanket panacea for all table conflicts is that it doesn't explain how to deal with conflicts over player priorities and goals, conflicts between GM and player priorities and goals, or really anything else.  "The GM gives in" or "the Player frames the scene he wants" don't even explain in general how to run a narrative centered game well, much less address how to run a game of D&D well.  It's not even remotely clear that if Hussar had got his way completely that Hussar would have stayed with the game, much less dealth with the issue of conflicting player agendas.  "Let's just skip this scene" in general solves nothing.   Consider the case of "The Sword" example of play from BW.  "I'm not into this, let's just skip this scene", resolves absolutely nothing.  "Who gets the sword?" is unresolved.  We still need the players to tell the GM who has the sword so he can frame the next scene, or whether contrary to their beliefs, they just abandon the sword and are implicitly or explicitly expressing the desire to forgo any story line with the sword.  In which case, we must abandon both scenario and characters and ask the players to explain what the do want.   The GM must then take this player input and begin narrating or at least judging a wholly new scanario.  But even this misses the point, because if we do ask the players what they want there ends up being a space of negotiation or often lack of negotiation between the players over what the game should be.  This can be every bit as fierce and problimatic as negotiation between a GM and player over the scene, because ultimately everyone is just playing the game together and everyone can't have exactly their way.  In my experience, one of the main reasons that most RPGs have authoritative GM's is that this exists as a way to resolve conflicts about narrative scope.   Players know instinctively that they want and need a GM precisely as a way to avoid conflict.  Someone is deliberately invested with authority by the table - "the DM is God" - because having one person who can always decide minimizes the amount of time the table wastes arguing.   The DM didn't take that authority by force like some sort of tyrant.   The DM has that authority because most of the players at the table don't really care to hear about negotiations over what the story is or should be about.   They'd rather spend as little time in that sort of metagame as possible because it wastes time at the table that could be otherwise used doing things they want to do.   In other words, it's not at all clear to me that 'cutting to the scenes the players are interested in', means in practice anything different than what is going on at a table by default or that discussing what scenes we want to have above and beyond IC choices, "do you turn left and seek out the goblins, or go right and search for the druid" really leads to more content per session.   It's also completely clear to me that disagreement over the GM's authority will disentigrate a campaign, and this disagreement over the GM's authority is not a simple 'GM vs. the Players' situation.  Then again, it's not even clear to me that GM authority was the real issue in the Hussar example that's dominated discussion so far.  Hussar's fundamental issues seems to be less a matter of who gets to frame scenes, than it is "Pick up the pace" regardless of who is framing scenes.</blockquote>

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