2) The GM would also be perfectly justified in compelling your "circle of ketchup" to make the spell go all pear shaped, whereas your "perfect ritual circle" would not give him the same opportunity. This would likely not depend on your table, I can see most GMs going "Trying to summon a demon within a ketchup circle sounds less than bright."
So, how much risk am I trading for the much faster circle of ketchup? What about a less half-assed circle of chalk instead? If the balance of risks is only evaluated in the GMs head, and not a shared head space between me and the GM, I have no way of making real judgements about how much risk I'm willing to trade off vs time. And leaving the rules as 'whatever' means that any shared head space about risk vs time has to be created by discussion with the GM right then and there.
If I start with my circle of ketchup (5 minutes) and the GM says "that's not a good idea", "well duh" I respond, but it only takes 5 minutes to do.
So I ask him, how much risk am I trading off between:
circle of ketchup (5 minutes)
circle of chalk (15 minutes)
prefect ritual circle (30 minutes)
And even the amount of time it takes me to do those different things it jsut a number I made up. And if we have a discussion and come to agreement about exactly how those risk/time options compare, it doesn't really help at all when:
Green Play-doh
vs
A paste made of finely ground black acorns to which a small quantity of my blood had been added
Comes up for evaluation.
Or maybe I have the black acorn powder, but don't want to bleed into it, what are the risk trade offs for that?
----------------
Things that are fantasic need even more background/rules work because there is no shared consensus between to players when they first come to the game.
----------------
And here's an example of something that the players probably already have some shared consensus about, by comparison:
Bob wants to drive from New York to LA, how long does it take him to do it?
How much faster if he avoids sleep, and uses little yellow pills to stay awake?
How much faster if he goes a little over the speed limit?
...a lot over the speed limit?
What if he doesn't eat anything, and pees into empty Mountain Dew bottles, so he only really ever stops to get gas?
Players who all live in the US can probably have a reasonable idea of how such a trip would happen.
--------------
But what about whether black acorn paste or green play-doh would be a better component for this spell? The 'true' answer might very well be, "green play-doh, because it's
green". But it might not. And we have no way of answering that.