Five-Minute Workday Article

[Dannyalcatraz]

Not to mention the fact that goblins are usually accompanied by Hobgoblins and Bugbears.

Or act as the "cannon fodder" for such beinga.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Or act as the "cannon fodder" for such beinga.

Exactly!

 

[MarkB]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this before so I apologize if it's been said already. Hell, maybe it needs to be said more than once but I believe the whole "5-15 minute work day" is an internet forum problem and not one that happens at most tables.

I'm not at every table so I can't confirm this but it's what I believe.

I can't speak for every table, but I've seen it crop up a few times, both as GM and player. Not often, but it happens. I have no reason to believe that the groups I've played in were unique in that regard.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I can't speak for every table, but I've seen it crop up a few times, both as GM and player. Not often, but it happens. I have no reason to believe that the groups I've played in were unique in that regard.

I'm sure it does crop up but not enough to base an entire system around.

 

[Hussar]

The point is that, in a "living world", sentient beings like goblins will not simply sit there and wait for the PCs to hit & run attack them until they are all dead. At some point, they will act proactively, either by fight or by flight.

You ask how goblins might find out about the PCs? Well, depending on the goblins, they may have trackers (rogues, scouts, rangers, etc.) among their number- do your PCs take anti-tracking countermeasures?

Even if they don't find the PCs camp, they may track back to the township where they resupply, boiling out of their warrens like agitated Africanized bees, killing everything in sight...

If the humanoids were already powerful enough to wipe out an entire town, presumably fortified since they have humanoids for neighbours, how exactly were the PC's supposed to deal with them in the first place?

 

[Hussar]

I'm sure it does crop up but not enough to base an entire system around.

I would imagine, at a guess, that much of the 15 MAD issue has its roots in RPGA play. That's where a lot of the feedback for D&D has come from over the years. And, given RPGA adventures, it's not hard to see how 15 MAD could easily become an issue since the whole "living world" thing is very difficult to do when you only have such a very short time to run the entire adventure, and the DM likely doesn't have the knowledge of the area to be able to do it. He'd have to go way off script to start.

Honestly, I've always presumed that 15 MAD was just part and parcel for D&D play. It's a viable tactic and it makes sense in many cases. Games that don't have wildly varying power levels depending on pacing don't see this issue at all. But, since this has been part of my D&D experience since about day 1, I always just sort of shrugged and went with it. I can buy all sorts of D&Disms, so, why not this one?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm sure it does crop up but not enough to base an entire system around.

Remember the 'Gnome problem?' A problem that doesn't crop up for everyone is still a problem.

As far as basing a whole system around it, why base the system around encouraging the 15MWD? That's what the Vancian system /does/: it gives casters a huge incentive to re-memorize their spells as often as possible.

A system that is pacing-neutral (and even a different enough implementation of Vancian fire-and-forget memorization could be) wouldn't be 'base around' avoiding (or catering to) the 15MWD, it'd just let the DM and the group proceed at whatever pace made sense for the setting, situations, and characters.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If the humanoids were already powerful enough to wipe out an entire town, presumably fortified since they have humanoids for neighbours, how exactly were the PC's supposed to deal with them in the first place?

Apologies, didn't necessarily mean to imply they'd wipe the town out, just a reactionary rampage and cause significant damage. There could have been a "hot truce" that had some occasional raids & border skirmishes, with the PCs' actions upsetting the balance. (Possibly on purpose, depending on the campaign.*)

And the PCs mission might have been a surgical strike to take out key resources and/or leaders to soften up the goblins for a bigger strike, in which case timing REALLY mattered.









*

"...All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country."

~ Hermann Goering, on getting a nation to go to war.

(not Godwinning)

 

[pemerton]

The "15MAD" problem is a problem wherein the party becomes more effective by resting to recover all their resources before each encounter so that they never have a situation where they run low on resources.

There's one point I think is worth adding about the effect of the "living world" approach, which is that it's not really a punishment or an incentive to employ the 15 min tactic.

<sni[p>

It merely changes the costs and benefits so the 15MAD tactic is no longer almost always optimal. The PCs in a living world campaign may sometimes nova and retreat. That's a tactical decision, and it's fine.

In response to both these posts, I really want to reiterate what Mustrum_Ridcully has been saying:

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.

What is also bad is that the members with these significant resources also get the best ability to dictate or enable an extended rest.

The main issue with the 15-minute day isn't that it's inane (although sometimes it is) or that it makes encounters too easy (good GMs often have ways of varying encounter strength and running dynamic and responsive encounters). The main issue is that it overpowers PCs who can nova and underpowers PCs who can't.

And as Mustrum points out, this imbalance is compounded when those who can nova (ie casters) also have the best utility abilities (including those that determine the pacing of rests) while those who can't nova also often have only limited utility abilities (eg fighters, and some versions of the thief).

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

<snip>

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.

That is, it's a mechanical problem needing a mechanical solution. Telling people that the issue would just go away if they used wandering monsters and a "living, breathing world" (as if the rest of us only GM sterile, boring worlds) is not very helpful.

I'm eager to dialogue with someone who has actually had this problem

<snip>

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.

I think Mustrum_Ridcully have spoken pretty clearly about how we've solved the issue in 4e.

Besides the obvious thing, of putting all PCs on the same recharge recyle, 4e has other features too: because many dailies are somewhat situational in the benefits they confer, nova-ing is not as highly rewarded as in a system of pure Vancian (the comparitor would be making 3rd level spells more situational than the weaker 1st level spells); because a PC can't benefit from spending all his/her healing surges at once (there is a cap set by max hp), the single most important daily resource can't be nova-ed.

For my group, milestones also make a difference, but I think a lot of groups don't find them so significant.

So long as there is any resource management of significant impact, the 15MAD concept will still be possible.

I don't think this is true. If resource management is of non-rechargable abilities (some spells in Runequest, potions and scrolls in D&D, etc) then there is no incentive to rest because you won't recharge them.

Also, if resource management is of per-encounter resources (eg encounter powers in 4e) then there is no need to anything but short rests to recharge them; and PCs can't try and recharge them by resting during the encounter because while you're in an encounter things aren't very restful.

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.

<snip>

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?"

There's nothing wrong with that as such, but if the answer is "The gameworld has got much more boring", then why would I (as a GM trying to run a fun game) want to do that? Conversely, if the the answer is "The gameworld has got more interesting in this way", then how have I discouraged the players?

I'm not saying that running a living world is a bad idea - it's a bit like apple pie in that respect - but to use it to regulate pacing we need to talk in much more detail about the relationship between PC goals, player goals and the way they relate to various stakes and possibilities in the fiction.

In Burning Wheel, for example, a player has a reason to push hard before the goblins escape because the Belief "I must revenge myself against the goblins who slew my father" is a mechanical part of his/her PC's build. That means that fulfilling that Belief factors indirectly into action resolution; thus, the player isn't indifferent across the range of possible interesting states of the fiction.

Furthermore, the player also is playing a system which has explicit elements in its action resolution mechanics designed to make it unlikely that the PC will die even if s/he fails in confronting the goblins. And in fact improving your PC's skills becomes easier when you are wounded, because improvement is based on attempting (not necessarily succeeding at) a check with a given prospect of success. Being wounded makes checks harder, and so makes them worth more for advancement; and the fact that you probably won't succeed at them doesn't stop them counting for advancement purposes. (And because of the way the action resolution works, failing a check doesn't mean that you lose your PC, or the game.)

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.

Agreed. I think some sort of milestone/Action Point mechanic can be one important part of this - depleting resources (be they spells or hit points or other slow-recharge resources) causes a new resource to grow.

In order to stop it being boring, ideally that new resource would not just operate in the same dimension of play as the depleted resources, but allow something different. 4e Action Points are one example of this - you don't recharge Dailies, but you can get bonus actions on your turn - but more adventurous versions must be possible. You might start by looking at the range of special abilities associated with action points by variuos paragon paths.

As well as mechanics, advice can also help. D&D has never had good advice on how to adjudicate failure (beyond "roll up a new PC"). I think it's time for that to change.

 

[pemerton]

I once played in a game where the DM ran one adventure where we had to save the princess from some people attacking the castle. It was obvious that we were delaying much longer than he expected. The princess should have died, given how long we took to get there....but, the DM had planned for the next adventure to be us escaping the castle with the princess, and as the last surviving member of the royal family, using her as a plot device ot raise an army and take back the kingdom.

So, it didn't matter how long we took, because the time limit was artificial.

<snip>

When I ran that campaign against the cultists, they'd rest after nearly every encounter and I'd have to say, out of character, "You guys do remember that these cultists ARE trying to summon a god who will destroy the world, right? So, you guys are going to risk it by resting while you still have hitpoints left?"

I'm personally not a big fan of this style of play - I don't like to set up stakes on which I'm not prepared, as GM, to follow through - but I assume it must come up in a lot of adventure path play.

I mean, if the adventure path presupposes that so-and-so is alive to make the next episode work, than the GM can't kill off so-and-so no matter how dilatory the PCs.