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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6113786" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm pretty sure that I've made it clear I don't have a problem with a table veto either.  I've just stated that it has to be uniamous, done without threat of acrimony, and negotiated politely out of character.  I've made it clear that if Hussar's real intention was to handwave past travel, then my only objection was the way he tried to do it.I've no complaints.  You didn't need to justify yourself unless you just wanted to.That's a lot of 'ifs'.   In general, as I've said, there would be situations where if the players asked for a handwave, I would vote with them.   Many times though, I'm looking to handwave travel any way, and so if I'm not doing so I have a reason.   As a point of fact, I more often ask the players if we can handwave than they ask me.Again, no real complaint, save that I personally feel the style you outline feels too artificial.  That's purely subjective though, and as I said, I might feel differently actually being there.No, I don't think we do.Good.  I'm glad we agree on that.  It's been a point of contention with other posters.  Now, my point, is that when the player sets out on any sort of transit or travel scene, he can't really know whether he's about to get an action scene or a simple transition scene.  This is especially true of the first time a transit is attempted.   And in point of fact, in the central example of this thread, this wasn't a transition scene but an action scene.  Now, we've agreed that action scenes can also be handwaved by a table vote, but I think we'll also agree that there are more 'ifs' involved.  You outlined your list in one case; in other cases, we might have a different list.Well, except when it is charged with conflict.  And I disagree that in a serial exploration game, you always deal with gate gaurds the first time.  The PC's went to and from Amalteen many times, and I never framed a scene with the gate gaurds as Action Scene.  Why?  Because there was no action, no conflict, and no purpose to doing so.   Yet I seem to be in the 'serial exploration category' or at least lean that way.  I did in fact do one 'gate gaurd' scene without Action but played out as an Action Scene, but here the purpose of the scene was 'Extended Transition Scene', where I needed to do an info dump and I wanted to break that info dump up into a series of interactive scenes rather than hit them with a single wall of exposition and color.  This ended up being roughly 7 hours of RP without 'Action', which was I think a record for this campaign but was needed after 3 years of gaming and a major transition in game focus.  Even so, I apologized OOC for the info dump, but in my defense - they thought the gate gaurd scene was hilarious.   Whether or not that is something that you'd do in a more hard scene framed game I'm not certain, but it was also somewhat extraordinary for my game.   Exactly how it could have been skipped I'm not sure, but I'd welcome suggestions.  It wasn't my favorite framing I've ever done.In short, I think I am on the same page with regards your terminology and so forth, and I'm not sure that we are so very far apart on this.I've read the module.  It's not a transition scene posing as an action scene.  It's an action scene.  It may not be the most interestingly staged or most artfully staged action scene of all time, but it is relevant to the conflict ("We need to get this obscure gizmo the dying man in scene 23 told us about, and its somewhere in the Abyss."), contains obstacles ("Surviving the horrors of the Abysmal plain"), and is critical to the rising action ("We are building the ally relationship with this knowledgable NPC who is helping us obtain our goal; little do we know at this time how critical this is to obtaining the gizmo, whatever it is").And I'm saying, I've read the module and you are falsely flagging the desert as 'transition' scene rather than action scene.  I'm using it very correctly, but you aren't understanding what I said.  I didn't, in the quoted text at least, accuse you of a logical fallacy at all.  Nor did I accuse you of a strawman.  I said, "I'm very unclear about what you mean here.  It sounds ridiculous to me.  Surely you don't mean what it sounds like you mean.  I'm going to refrain from responding to it until you clarify, because if I do respond to it I think it all to likely I'll be making a strawman of your argument."Sorry if that was unclear.Yep.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm not terribly interested in reopening old wounds, but I disagree.  There has been a lot of ignoring people's actual position on a subject and then distorting, exaggerating, or misrepresenting their position so as to defeat that distorted, willfully, wrongly atributed argument in this thread.   I could probably cite two dozen instances if I was into finger pointing, and in at least one case I very willfully responded to a straw man ad hominem attack on me by throwing a straw man ad hominem post back at the poster (not necessarily proud of that, just saying).  Let's just say that while I'm open to the possibility of players more extreme than what I've experience, I think the absolute poles are unobtainable.  The absolute pole of process simulation for example would involve second by second granular resolution of every player action - rolling for how long a bathroom break took, taking actions like 'I adjust my fly', and having a described penalty for what happens if you enter a fight with your zipper not properly adjusted.  Find me the player who only plays at that extreme, and I'll concede your point.   On the other hand, I can imagine a wandering encounter during a bathroom break, while preparing breakfast, or other odd moment as a change of pace scene frame even in a process heavy game, or in a hard framed scene game.  But I don't think anyone tries to create such scenes as a 'natural process'.   The reverse - no natural process, all hard framed action - would perhaps be something like a game of Toon or other potentially total free form game, but even then, I'm not sure that by the strictest definition every scene could be qualified as Action Scene by the definitions you are applying here.In any event, while I can imagine players with a very strong preference for one or the other, the style itself isn't why they play RPGs.   The style is a means to an end and not the end itself. The player may prefer a particular style but only because they believe that the process fulfills their actual goals of play.</blockquote>

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