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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6106992" data-attributes="member: 4937">First, because I don't think anyone has ever argued that a scene should be played out "regardless of player interests and story momentum" except those building strawmen so that they can amuse themselves torching positions held by no one.  I think there is pretty much universal agreement that if the scene serves no purpose, it shouldn't be run.  Likewise, there is pretty much universal agreement that things that are boring shouldn't be a part of your game.  If you think that the disagreement is over that despite the thread being nearly 500 posts deep at this point, then there really isn't much point arguing with you.Likewise, if you don't think that the position of those who say that at times they'd play through the desert or make the recruitment of NPCs to be more challenging, complicated, or involved, is that they are trying to deliver story now, then there isn't much point arguing with you.   If you don't get it by now, you really aren't going to.   You can keep on believing that you are a special snow flake and everyone else is playing out cutting down 750 willow trees and making camp fires to generate the XP to level up and mutter something about "to each their own" as if you were being really understanding here.I've already stated what I would have done in the particular situation.  If you still want to toss out slanders about me forcing you to play out "hours" of desert travel for no purpose despite having clear evidence to the contrary, I can't really stop you.   You can believe whatever you want to believe.   I still don't have enough context to say what I would have done in the Grell case, but I have I think provided plenty of examples about why it could be relevant to play out the NPC's depending on the circumstance and further I've provided an easy example of how anyone could with me as DM get themselves back to the Grell in five minutes of play regardless if that was there preference.   And reading between the lines, I think it ought to be clear that there are some circumstances were recruiting a posse to fight the Grell would take 5 minutes and produce no real complications.As for me describing the details of my campaign, therer weren't attempting primarily (or really even at all) to "extrapolate the way you play to other people".   I was attempting to show that you can't make assumptions about "how easy is it to recruit 6 1st level warriors" from table to table.  It's exactly as hard to do that as the DM thinks it should be, and its kinda incumbant on the player to roll with the setting assumptions if he wants to fit in at the table.  If this particular world for some reason has a Barsoom like culture where panthans are just waiting around to be recruited in every plaza, then I'd expect it to be easy to find mercenaries.  If the world was 11th century France, I would expect it to be very difficult unless you were something like the Duke of Burgundy.  I was also attempting to show that the details of how difficult it is to buy mercenaries involve the creation of story.  My sort of details are, for lack of a better word, 'writerly'.  I try to run games that are novelizable more or less directly from the events in play.   To not put too fine of a point on it, the reason I wouldn't do mercenaries your way is it would make for a lousy story in the telling.  Now it might be a false assumption that this is a good form for making RPG stories and we could argue over that and I might even sympathize to some extent, and of course it might be a matter of taste whether you want your RPG to play like a novel reads.   But don't try to tell me that your games are prioritizing story and mine clearly aren't unless you can show me that the story of your game makes for good literature.  And don't try to tell me that your quite different way is the one true way to a good story or that those tricks you are using are some sort of esoteric knowledge or that an RPG story device because it can be a good story telling technique is always a good story telling technique.  Or you can try to tell me, just don't expect me to agree about it.</blockquote>

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