“Game time is of utmost importance. Failure to keep careful track of time expenditure by player characters will result in many anomalies in the game. The stricture of time is what makes recovery of hit points meaningful. Likewise, the time spent adventuring in wilderness areas removes concerned characters from their bases of operations – be they rented chambers or battlemented strongholds. Certainly the most important time strictures pertains to the manufacturing of magic items, for during the period of such activity no adventuring can be done. Time is also considered in gaining levels and learning new languages and more. All of these demands upon game time force choices upon player characters and likewise number their days of game life…YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.”
Per Gary Gygax Page 37 of the 1E DMG.
Now this is stated in rather extreme terms, because Gygax. But, it is still true to my experience of D&D, and how the game is designed in the strict use of the rules. The resource game relies on this, and if you don't use the rules as intended then it won't work as intended. And that can be fun, but it doesn't mean the rules don't work as intended when used as intended.
Just a couple things here. Understand that I don't take offense to the above. I just want to make sure you have context for what I write so neither of us waste the other's time with unhelpful responses.
1) Gygax's DMG and the redbox were what got me started playing this game. I ran AD&D and BECMI/RC from 1984 through 1999 (so 15 years) to something of the tune of 5000 + hours Gamesmastering. Just an absurd amount of time. Further still, in the years since, I've run plenty of Basic, plenty of Beyond the Wall, plenty of Torchbearer, and some more AD&D for dungeon crawl spurts.
As such, I couldn't be more familiar with orthodox hexcrawl and dungeon crawl procedures for content generation, game management, and objective refereeing. So I'm very familiar with the type of granular accounting (spatial units and temporal units) required (which is why I invoked it). I just don't enjoy that mental overhead anymore. You can appreciate the relevance of something without enjoying it (as is the case here).
2) You've related a few times about how you feel either scenario or adjudication favored the Diviner. In the particular situation I cited, the home GM of that game (whose rules and procedures I would respectfully abide by when I would stand in for him) runs 30 minute Short Rests (rather than 1 hour or the 5 optional in the DMG). Tongues was cast somewhere in the vicinity of 5ish minutes before the beginning of our session (my best guess as the parlay failed and combat ensued and resolved). They took a Short Rest (so
30 minutes is a hard number I know). They investigated the Hoverpods, got one working for their efforts, and flew up to the mother ship; perhaps 10 + 2 for flight or 12ish minutes. Air combat was resolved inside of a minute as was the significant combat inside of the ship. Lets just call that 2ish minutes together. The puzzle to get into the ship? That is the most difficult one to account for (and what we haggled over at the table). We're at 49 minutes total right now. Was it 5 minutes? Was it 8 minutes? Was it 11 minutes? Was it 15. I definitely don't think it was the 1st or the last, so somewhere in the middle. I'm not going to belabor over it too long at the table and bring the game to a screeching halt. I'm going to come up with an equittable ruling and move along (even though they disagreed); Tongues through the encounter but no longer.
What are you advocating for (procedurally or conversation at the table)?
3) This isn't the post I quoted above, but somewhere else you noted that you tried to run D&D 4e in a traditional way and were disappointed. That makes sense because 4e is a game where the locus of play is the conflict-charged scene (like Fate, Cortex+, Dogs in the Vineyard, Blades in the Dark). If you try to run a game that features discrete scenes (and expressly directs you to "go to the action"; "skip the gate guards and get to the fun") as a game of serial (spatially and temporally) exploration, its going to push back against you (and in some places, quite hard).
If I transliterated the scenario I conveyed above into 4e, it would be SIGNIFICANTLY different. You
would have superheroic genre logic. You
would have Closed-Scene as the exclusive locus of play trajectory. You
wouldn't have serial accounting for time and space in the way. There
wouldn't be serial exploration, a keyed map, or Exploration Turns that are pressured by a Wandering Monster/Random Encounter Clock, and there wouldn't be any "win condition" spells. My guess is it would be:
Skill Challenge Level + 2 Complexity 1; parley
Level + 3 Combat (arising from failure above)
Skill Challenge Level + 0 Complexity 2; to get into the ship (including the air combat at the ship's hull as a nested combat for an accrued Success or Failure)
Level + 5 Combat
Skill Challenge Level + 2 Complexity 3; to locate The Time Reaper and disable it
Skill Challenge Level + 0 Complexity 1; parley with the engineer/commander
Level + 7 Combat with The Harvester
I could throw together a speculative series of action declarations, resolution, and scene evolution that I think may be instructive as to the differences if that would help you.
