I think there is another issue here: if I’m playing an RPG I have signed up to participate, not to be a passive observer. So whereas I am quite capable of sitting passively and watching a 3 hour movie, my boredom and/or frustration and/or indignation threshold is much, much shorter in an RPG.
So I heartily echo the sentiment of brevity. Even the most hilarious hijinks gets dull when you are not allowed to join in the fun. For instance:
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The Vampire game where a PC inadvertently insulted the Prince and ended up having to flee for his life. It was fantastically entertaining for about 10 minutes. At 30 minutes in, I asked the GM if there was any chance the rest of us could get to play, because sitting in a sweltering hot room doing nothing was not my idea of fun.
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The paranormal investigators game where our half of the party was sneaking in the back of a building and the other half was causing a distraction by pretending to be door to door salesmen at the front. Again it was hilarious for the first 10 minutes as they changed the plan at the last minute, improvised with much scenery chewing, then cocked up utterly. But it just went on, and on, and on. So the two of us who were not involved stopped listening and chatted in character. Then chatted out of character. Then went downstairs to the bar to order more drinks. Then came back upstairs and listened to the others for another interminable period (they’d gotten into a fight by then).
It was made much worse by the GM not letting our characters make Listen rolls to hear the raised voices, crash of breaking things, etc, etc. And when he finally gave us “our turn” it lasted about 2 minutes and one dice roll and he went back to the other characters.
The time where I have least tolerance for other people having fun without me, is where the thing they are doing is my character’s schtick. If I’m the party hamster trainer and they are off at the Hamster Circus trying to get hamsters to jump through burning hoops, I don’t care how witty or dramatic they are being - they are stealing my chance to be awesome!