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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6104060" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Agreed - we end up discussing extremes."Democratic" and "we must scene shift when I demand a scene shift" strike me as dissimilar. Your examples focus on yourself and the GM, and despite repeated hints that we should scene shift to the views of the other players, I still have no insights in that regard. Were they engaged? Were they asleep? Despite claiming you prioritize their fun, you have not provided any indication you were aware of their enjoyment of th scenes you demanded to skip.Where I would see "OK, it happens, now what?" as a dismissal of a creative suggestion. If I say "we kill the Grell", the GM does not respond "OK, the Grell is dead. What now?" We roll for initiative, we roll to hit and damage, the Grell actively opposes us and eventually, we either succeed or fail in killing the Grell. We play it out. Again, I suspect you would not be happy if, after recruiting your hirelings, the GM said "OK, you return to the Grell's location and slay it. What now?" I rather suspect you wanted to play out the combat. Even if it "wasted" table time.Once again, you are assuming that the GM wanted to run hours of boring, irrelevant desert exploration, and there will be something useful, relevant and/or engaging in the desert only if you choose to skip the desert. Is it unfair of the GM to make it harder to assassinate the Duke if you decide on a frontal assault on his stronghold rather than investigating to determine a means to get inside the stronghold without facing its defenses full on?To me, a lot of the reason we game is enjoyment of, and desire to emulate, the fiction.  We want our characters to do cool things, like they do in the movies or in the novels.Why have the desert there at all? As a player, I want it to be gentle rolling hills with the occasional peaceful stream. Change it - there's no magic that says a desert must be there.That sounds a lot more like changing the desert to a rolling field than proceeding with the implications of the desert's existence, to me. The biggest difference is that you liked the current setting, rather than detesting it, when the GM pulled the rug out from underneath you. It comes down to verisimilitude.  The Horse Lord has abilities and background that make it far less likely he would select that lame horse.  Having it fobbed off on a character who has made it clear he just wants to get a horse ASAP and isn’t spending a lot of time seems far more reasonable. However, I come back to which approach you prefer – the players get the choice of putting some effort into locating good horses, or they each scratch off 25 gold and the GM rolls to see which one of them got the lame horse?  This assumes none of the characters have any special horse-related abilities – again, I can’t see that Horse Lord being so readily fooled. Again, I see two issues.  The first is the broader table – do all the players want to skip the desert, or does just Hussar want to skip the desert?  In the former case, there is a disconnect between what the GM wants to run and what the players want to play.  In the latter, there is a disconnect between what Hussar wants and what the rest of the table wants.  Who mentioned a preference for a “more democratic table”?   Second is whether the means selected actually resolves the challenge.  If I tell you I want to sneak into the Duke’s stronghold, and I will use a Potion of Invisibility to slip past anything and everything to get to the Duke’s chambers, will that get me through a locked portcullis, past bloodhounds in the courtyard and let me find the Duke’s specific chamber, with a guarantee he waits helplessly within, or does the fact that Invisibility may not override every challenge to get to the Duke, and has a time limit, get considered?  Hey, I’m not engaged by this infiltration scene – I want to cut to the chase and assassinate the Duke. You assume that the horse becomes lame because the players decided to fast track the horse purchase, and don’t even consider the possibility there was a lame horse for sale from the outset.  You keep telling us that the cut scene option you favour is reasonable as long as we don’t assume the players are dicks, but every comment you make on a GM’s action presumes he’s a dick.  Weren’t you mentioning double standards a while back? Why is it impossible a check would have revealed a lame horse?  Again, you are assuming not only an adversarial GM, but one happily cheating on even the most mundane matters.  Why would anyone continue to play with such a GM? Where did I say there is no chance the player gets lucky?  That said, I find it a lot more likely that the typical merchant fobs off inferior goods on the unknowing and hasty purchaser than that he sells him a premium product without obtaining a premium price, so I doubt the odds of “lame horse” and “amazing horse” are equal. So, again, all the players are assumed to act in the utmost good faith, but the GM is a jerk looking for any excuse to screw over the players.  Is that how you GM?  It’s not how you tell us you GM, but I find it hard to believe that your own style is unique amongst the gaming world. Yup. I’d play that scene out as a player in some instances.  I’m in a rush to get out of town (for whatever reason), my character is trying to get that horse ASAP, and I may even say “so he’s not being too careful about what horse he gets”.  I would expect characters who are not rushed for some reason would be less time-sensitive and more careful checking the quality of the product, but if you're telling me "I just want to get a new horse ASAP so we don't waste any time before we go back and get revenge on that Grell", it sounds to me like you're not focused on assessing the quality of the horse. But then, I’m the guy who, in the first session running a new berserker warrior, when asked “How are you facing down the Umber Hulk” responded “Looking it square in the eye, as any proper warrior would”.  I’m still amazed he gave me the saving throw (and somewhat satisfied it came up ‘1’).</blockquote>

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