Five-Minute Workday Article

[MarkB]

I think the problem people are having with the suggestion of "A living world is a useful tool to prevent the 15MWD" is that it has a (probably unintended) negative connotation to it - that it's something you employ specifically to discourage a playing style.

It conjures images of the DM saying to himself "Darnit, they've gone off for a rest again! Okay, what can I come up with for the monsters to do in eight hours that'll teach them a lesson?"

Whereas I think the intended usage is more along the lines of "Okay, they're out of the picture for the next eight hours. What's everyone else in the area likely to be doing in the meantime?"

Basically, it shouldn't be viewed as a tool to encourage or discourage certain types of behaviour - it should simply be an aspect of the underlying game world that needs to be taken into account.

 

[I'm A Banana]

That is _one_ of the problems. The other problem is that only _some_ of the members of that group actually benefit from this type of rest, in the sense that these members will have more imrpessive and more decisive abilties than the other members, making the others feel less required.

Well, that's kind of a bang-on problem with regards to some characters having daily resources and others not, but it's true 'nuff.

The point stands, though, that if it isn't a problem for a particular group, then it doesn't need to be "solved."

And if it IS a problem, then there are lots of solutions that one can use, depending on how one wants to solve the problem. From adjusting XP awards to reactive environments to fighter dailies to milestones.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I like the idea of adventurers as "making their own destiny" searching for treasure in lost places. But those adventures don't have time limits on them.

A lot of adventures do if you really look at them. Stop the cultists...before they open the portal of ultimate evil. Explore this ruin...before it floods completely.

Sometimes, you can win narratively, evn if you fail in your objective. Indiana Jones did not keep the Nazis from getting possession of the Ark of the Covenant, but he "won" because the Ark didn't behave the way the Nazis thought it would.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Whereas I think the intended usage is more along the lines of "Okay, they're out of the picture for the next eight hours. What's everyone else in the area likely to be doing in the meantime?"

Yep.

 

[billd91]

Basically, it shouldn't be viewed as a tool to encourage or discourage certain types of behaviour - it should simply be an aspect of the underlying game world that needs to be taken into account.

I'd say it does encourage a certain behavior, or at least a way of thinking. It gets the players taking into account the underlying game world as if it changes on its own and will react to them. I find that has a tendency to get players to not think in 15 minute adventuring days because they specifically can't expect the situation to remain static once they've interacted with it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

This is one of the major points to the 15MAD problem. Some of us (myself included) don't see a lot of 15MAD, because we don't run many adventures with this "lost treasure" style set up. I go years between games with an adventuring location where "rest and return" is a plausible tactic.

Even with the "lost treasure" setup, the "living world" tehnique has applications:

1) Any location has some kind of ecology: there are predators & prey who have to move around to survive. Even undead will factor into this if they are always looking for things to kill. Thus, just because you cleared an area yesterday, doesnt mean it is still empty today...or will be 3 days from now.

2) Just because a treasure is lost doesn't mean that the PCs are the only ones looking for it. In fact, the better the treasure, the more searchers you'd expect. Nothing wrong with the PCs encountering their opposite numbers. Added twist: perhaps, as in the first Indiana Jones movie, someone is using the party to do the hard work...

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The problem with tools and techniques that discourage 15 MAD is that all of them are limited and imperfect, and most of them are somewhat specialized and inapplicable in certain situations or playstyles.

My reaction to this state of affairs is that rather than give up, settle on a handful of tools or techniques that work for some people, or go full out on "education" on a few tools, or stick to playstyles where it doesn't matter, or pretend that 15 MAD is not an issue ... is more that we need as many tools and techniques as we can get along with clear instructions on when, how, and why to use them. That also includes when not to use them.

So, for example, the answer is not, "Ban Vancian magic" or "Set up an environment where the casters are afraid to Nova" or any other single answer. The answer is the more nuanced: We are keeping Vancian magic, at least for some classes as an option. In some games, with certain expectations, such magic can have certain consequences. If you don't like those consequences, here are some ways to deal with them. If you don't like those ways, then maybe don't use such magic.

Not least of all, individual changes their minds over time or even game to game how they want to play. Sometimes I've got the energy to juggle a living world consistently and believably, and sometimes I don't. When I do, I don't want the game burdening me with a bunch of hard-wired assumptions that assumes I need to deal with a more formulaic method, and when I don't have the energy, I want the game to have tools to help me.

Of all the difficult, even impossible, tasks in reconciling various D&D factions, this is not one of them. It's not something that can be dismissed or solved in a single concept, but it is solvable.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In addition, if your opponent is just "the environment," it is automagically always dangerous. Can't rest in the middle of a raging river, and if you retreat, it is still there in the morning!

The problem with tools and techniques that discourage 15 MAD is that all of them are limited and imperfect, and most of them are somewhat specialized and inapplicable in certain situations or playstyles.

I'm not so sure about that. I'm eager to dialogue with someone who has actually had this problem in 5e and for whom the Caves of Chaos adventure advice isn't relevant to their playstyle, but I haven't been able to find such an individual.

I'd even settle for someone who has had this problem in previous "e's," and talking about what solutions may or may not work for them and why, but even these folks are kind of tough to find. Not impossible -- it does happen -- but certainly rarer than I'd expect.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The problem with tools and techniques that discourage 15 MAD is that all of them are limited and imperfect, and most of them are somewhat specialized and inapplicable in certain situations or playstyles.

Which is why you use a variety of tools, and use them only when appropriate.

For instance, even though I'm (clearly) a proponent of the "living world", I don't use it all of the time- some adventures are simply so time neutral by design that there really isn't much point. (I find this to be a rare exception, but I've seen a couple.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm not so sure about that. I'm eager to dialogue with someone who has actually had this problem in 5e and for whom the Caves of Chaos adventure advice isn't relevant to their playstyle, but I haven't been able to find such an individual.

I'd even settle for someone who has had this problem in previous "e's," and talking about what solutions may or may not work for them and why, but even these folks are kind of tough to find. Not impossible -- it does happen -- but certainly rarer than I'd expect.

And I'll say again that the real problem of 15 MAD is not that it happens very often, but the unnecessary work that DMs and players go through to see that it doesn't.

I haven't had a 15 MAD problem personally since my first year of DMing at age 14--and even then it was kind of hard to complain because as a novice, killer DM the party that didn't run out and rest was often TPK'd.

I have had multiple instances since, some of which I've even mentioned in these topics, where I had to jump through hoops to see that it didn't happen and/or make the players feel like they had to jump through hoops that were not in their characters' best interests merely to keep things going.

I didn't have a 15 MAD problem in the 5E playtest because I've been doing this for 30 years now. As soon as I saw where it could rear its head, I promptly told the players not to worry about it, because it being a playtest, we were going to run with with where it took us, even if that was completely illogical in the kind of stories we would usually tell. So after they got beat up and camped in a (now) secluded location in the caves, I dutifully assigned a percentage to wandering monsters and patrols based on the stated behavior of the inhabitants, and then rolled, fully prepared to let it work out however it was going to. The party got really lucky, but it could just as easily have been a TPK.

That was something I brought to the playtest, not something the playtest explained how to handle.

This "it doesn't happen" thing is a bit of a strawman.