Well, as I have said on multiple occasions, having a nice little time constraint is good once in a while. But if you start to rely on it to make the game work, then it becomes a burden.
Firstly no-one is saying 'Set time limits all the time for every adventuring day, ever'. No-one. Having every single AD comprising of 6-8 medium to hard enounters all the damn time would be boring and repetitive. Thats just the baseline that we work around and the point at which the game works. Not just on a macro level either. If thats your rough baseline, then shorter days work better and longer days are more of a surprise.
Again I work off a 50 percent ratio (roughly). The other 50 percent of my ADs are generally shorter or not time limited, or very rarely longer.
On topic with the thread, read the title. The whole damn point was to test a 6-8 encounter AD for a bit of fun.
I'm getting the feeling that I wasted several hours designing a fun and challenging adventure, and statting up encounters if all this thread 'is' turns out to be an exersize in how to fustrate the DMs efforts to create a fun and exciting adventure by using metagame 'we're all murder hobos and dont care if the world ends, and there isnt a hook in the world that will make me accept a quest SO THERE!' type of argument.
Its Dungeons and Dragons. The party (whom I have yet to see by the way other than a description of them being amoral mercenaries) have been approached by a NPC in a tavern to raid a dungeon, and slay a dragon. The King himself has promised a boatload of GP and titles if they pull it off. There are a series of obstacles that need to be overcome before the dragon encounter. There are magic items to be found along the way, and more treasure to come.
I mean come on. Does this really need to be discussed? What more would you as a DM do here?
This is absurd. This thread is nearly ruined for me, and it promised so much.
Im tempted just to post the damn encounters for review so it wasnt a total waste of my time and forget it ever happened.