D&D 5E Resting and the frikkin' Elephant in the Room

[Ilbranteloth]

Huh?

Early D&D featured players competing for treasure and XP. It featured tournament competitions in which teams of players competed to be the one who did the best job of beating the dungeon. The introduction to ToH has Gygax telling us that he built the dungeon to defeat certain hyper-competitive and over-confident players.

Early D&D was extremely competitive. The idea that it's not a competition, that there's no "winning" or "losing", and that the point of the game on the player side is simply to enjoy "being" the PC in the GM's gameworld, didn't become ubiquitous in the published texts until 2nd ed AD&D (though you can see it emerging in some modules and rulebooks from the early 80s).

It baffles me that some posters find [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION]'s approach to D&D strange, when it seems like pretty straightforward, relatively hardcore beat-the-dungeon D&D.

I've already pointed out tournament competitions, and from what I recall, there were articles and discussions about the difficulty of turning D&D into a competitive play, and that rules and scoring concepts among tables was not a natural fit for the game.

I'm not saying there isn't any competition in D&D. But it's quite different from a board game type "win" - especially back at the time D&D was developed.

From the beginning I recall articles specifically calling out the difference from its war-game roots. Instead of playing opposing armies, you are playing a party of individuals working together against the world sort of thing. And instead of a referee, or simply referencing the rulebook, for adjudication of a certain scenario as you would in a war-game, you had a new sort of player - the DM, who assumed the roles of dungeon creator, referee and rules interpreter and adjudicator, NPC and monster actor, etc.

You aren't playing "to win" and the DM isn't a competitor against the players.

I don't have ready access to my Dragon magazines nor OD&D materials right now. Perhaps I'm remembering articles and such from the early '80s.

 

[Lanefan]

Not seeing that gamers in general naturally eschew referees precludes you from being able to see WHY they don't - they don't like referees because they don't like someone (lets call him "Big DM") adjudicating their actions.

If someone doesn't like a DM adjudicating their actions they've probably signed up for the wrong game; as D&D since its inception (1974) has had as a fundamental part of itself a Dungeon Master whose job is, among other things, to adjudicate player/PC actions.

You narrowly see an RPG focused on improvisation and roleplaying (lets call this "Big Story"). You rope yourself off in RPG Label Land (ignoring most of D and D's history) using labels and rhetoric and call those trying to get the full traditional D and D experience out of the game (an experience that includes balance and a significant tactical challenge - aka "Big Challenge") as guys trying to "twist" D and D into a video/wargame.

Over the editions the focus has varied but there's always been the three pillars, more or less:

Combat - more emphasized in 0e and 4e (and this might be the only similarity between these two!)
Exploration - more emphasized in 1e (maybe that's why it's still my favourite!)
Roleplay - more emphasized in 2e

3e - well, I'm not quite sure what it was trying to emphasize other than system mastery.

And 5e finally took note of these three pillars, called them out, and tried to balance them. Jury's out (and will be for ages) on how successful it's been, but I'll give it credit for the attempt.

You lean really heavily (almost exclusively, perhaps) toward the combat pillar, which is fine, but to claim that D&D has always been this way is in error.

You use Big DM and Big Story's dominance in these forums as a bully club to stifle, trivialize, and belittle opposition to Big DM and Big Story

What I find interesting here is that from my perspective your DM is Bigger than mine*. To me Big DM means a DM who removes player agency in favour of - let's face it - a railroad, who doesn't just deny player choices but denies them even the opportunity to make choices, and who sees the PCs (and by extension, players) as adversarial enemies.

* - cue the bad jokes...

Lan-"with apologies to the Smiths: ...as Anthony said to Cleopatra, as he opened a crate of ale, ooh I have discovered: some DMs are bigger than others..."-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Huh?

Early D&D featured players competing for treasure and XP. It featured tournament competitions in which teams of players competed to be the one who did the best job of beating the dungeon.

Teams of players, though. You weren't trying to "win" against the others at your own table. In fact, a well-done tournament dungeon would reward those tables who worked best as a team, who pooled and then properly managed their resources, and who got on with it and didn't waste time.

All good lessons to take back to the home table.

That said, even then it was acknowledged that there was a vast difference between tournament play and campaign play, if for no more than tournaments had specified win conditions and campaigns did not; and that one should not be mistaken for the other.

The introduction to ToH has Gygax telling us that he built the dungeon to defeat certain hyper-competitive and over-confident players.

Not sure if the hyper-competitiveness was against each other or against him-as-DM, though, and if it was against him I can see it as he does tend to like adversarial DMing.

Early D&D was extremely competitive. The idea that it's not a competition, that there's no "winning" or "losing", and that the point of the game on the player side is simply to enjoy "being" the PC in the GM's gameworld, didn't become ubiquitous in the published texts until 2nd ed AD&D (though you can see it emerging in some modules and rulebooks from the early 80s).

Ignoring tournaments, I think the 'competitive' aspect diminished for each table once those players transitioning from a Diplomacy or Axis and Allies or similar background realized how greatly the parameters had changed, and that the other people around the table were (usually) your allies rather than your competitors.

All a DM had to do was tell their players to read Lord of the Rings, to see an adventuring party at its best (Caradhras) and worst (the split at Rauros).

And this is coming from someone who doesn't mind PvP at all. Boromir had his own agenda and lived - and died - by it.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

So here's a slightly different question related to the elephant:

Why didn't this seem to be a problem in AD&D and earlier? You always had spell casters who needed to rest. And yet I don't recall this becoming a problem until much later. Is it just because every class has some short and/or long rest abilities?

I'll posit a few possible reasons:

1. 1e and earlier didn't care nearly as much about encounter balance. It didn't look closely at the math or analytics. You just did what you did, and you lived or died doing it. Resting was part of this - it didn't matter much what you got back for resting, only that you lived long enough to do it.
2. Resting in 1e didn't give back nearly as much as it does now. Spell recharging was about it, really - you didn't get back much at all by way of h.p., for example - and so this often meant a party might be resting for more than just one night. An overnight rest to reload the healer, then a day of only curing and resting, then another overnight to reload the healer was and sill is fairly common IME. Which leads to...
3. The expected pace of play is different. In 1e it was no big deal if a party went into a dungeon, did what they could, then pulled back and rested for a week before trying again - bursts of in-game action interspersed with long periods of in-game quasi-downtime. But now the expectation has gone more towards more action more of the time, coupled with less downtime - which puts resting rules front and centre along with driving the game towards both giving more resources back on a rest and making resting easier via the short rest.

Lan-"time for a short rest"-efan

 

[Ilbranteloth]

And here is why it seems impossible to help you and many of you others on these forums understand why large segments of people have always and continue to play D and D in a fundamentally different way than you:

1) You steadfastly refuse such a fundamentally obvious point as people preferring to play games without referees:

Not seeing that gamers in general naturally eschew referees precludes you from being able to see WHY they don't - they don't like referees because they don't like someone (lets call him "Big DM") adjudicating their actions. Because you can't see THAT, you don't have an appreciation for the many D and D players who desire to minimize his in-game involvement (lets call this kind of DM "DM Light").

So you choose to perceive that people play games without referees because they have something against referees. I don't see the connection at all.

People don't play Monopoly or Life because there isn't a referee. They play them because they like the games. And the games just don't happen to have referees. You know what games more people play than any of these? Sports. Most of which have referees. They don't play them because they love referees any more than people play Monopoly because it doesn't. It's flawed logic. To me, that's fundamentally obvious.

So we'll have to agree to disagree.

2) You narrowly see an RPG focused on improvisation and roleplaying (lets call this "Big Story"). You rope yourself off in RPG Label Land (ignoring most of D and D's history) using labels and rhetoric and call those trying to get the full traditional D and D experience out of the game (an experience that includes balance and a significant tactical challenge - aka "Big Challenge") as guys trying to "twist" D and D into a video/wargame.

In my perception it's not ignoring D&D history because it's based not only on the design of the game, but also the writings of the very people that designed it.

3) You use Big DM and Big Story's dominance in these forums as a bully club to stifle, trivialize, and belittle opposition to Big DM and Big Story:

3) And then in the end you flip the whole thing around and say I am the one who is demeaning other playstyles...OK, then, if I'm gonna do the time, may as well have fun doing the crime, here goes:

"OMG that guy in the quote was just soooo ridiculous right ?!?!?"

"Balance, oh that's nothing to be worried about - Big DM can just wave his wand and change everything anyway. Besides, remember you are playing an RPG and that means you should be focused on Big Story not Big Challenge - if you want Big Challenge go play a wargame silly!"

I was wrong when I said you're not playing D&D, and much of that post. My point was intended to be that the hobby encompasses a lot of playstyles and games evolve from other games, and that your adventure sounds pretty amazing. Not my cup of tea to play all the time, but pretty amazing. I got way off my point, and that's my bad. I apologize. Based on what you had been describing in some of your other posts, it sounds very much like a video game to me. I'm not saying you try to "twist" it into one, nor do I view that as a negative thing. Just like I don't think that Dungeon World molding a play style of OD&D into a Story Now game is a bad thing. It was intended to be a compliment of how you've been able to take the base of D&D and turn it into something new and different that most of us can't do. If you take offense, that's not my intent. My post clearly didn't portray that.

I used the term board game as a description of your style of playing, because that's the term you used. I didn't know it was used as a derogatory term in the past, and don't know if you took offense. Since I wrote the post you're quoting, Tony recapped his understanding of what your play style is, and it's very different from what I understood.

At the time you were describing your game as one that you "liked to play like a board game" and that you didn't want the DM to make decisions during the course of the game, that they were all decided before the game. That sounds very much like board game and video game design to me. No offense is meant by that.

My point was never to stifle, trivialize, or belittle you or your play style. I can see that I missed that big time in this post.

I haven't said once that you needed to do something differently, or that you were wrong in how you play the game. My objections are entirely about statements like the one that started this post: "More people play games without referees, therefore people hate referees." I also object to the term "DM taint." That term in particular really bothers me.

I've acknowledged multiple times that I don't think my play style is a majority in any sense, and that the most common approach is most likely that of the casual gamer, that picks up an AP and plays it with the core rules, and a DM that assumes many roles. I don't think that approach is close to yours or mine, we're both outliers in a very broad hobby (from my perception). I'll work to do better.

 

[billd91]

Teams of players, though. You weren't trying to "win" against the others at your own table. In fact, a well-done tournament dungeon would reward those tables who worked best as a team, who pooled and then properly managed their resources, and who got on with it and didn't waste time.

All good lessons to take back to the home table.

That would describe most tournaments like the AD&D Open, advancing as a group up the draw. The game was, within the session, cooperative, not competitive. The RPGA tournaments, however, were more individually competitive since advancement was as an individual. The competition, however, was not tactical or mechanical at all. It was based on skill at role-playing and so it doesn't exactly fit the competition model of most competitive games.

So, yeah. I'd say describing D&D as a competitive game within the typical mode of competitive games is really a bad fit.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Not sure if the hyper-competitiveness was against each other or against him-as-DM, though, and if it was against him I can see it as he does tend to like adversarial DMing.


Lanefan

I've never considered Gygax as an adversarial DM. He certainly designed things specifically to target the things his players relied on. But I've always had the sense that their game was always sort of a one-upmanship. I guess that could be adversarial, but at this stage I see that term as a negative one. I think his players relished his schemes and trying to find a way around them and vice versa.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I'll posit a few possible reasons:

1. 1e and earlier didn't care nearly as much about encounter balance. It didn't look closely at the math or analytics. You just did what you did, and you lived or died doing it. Resting was part of this - it didn't matter much what you got back for resting, only that you lived long enough to do it.
2. Resting in 1e didn't give back nearly as much as it does now. Spell recharging was about it, really - you didn't get back much at all by way of h.p., for example - and so this often meant a party might be resting for more than just one night. An overnight rest to reload the healer, then a day of only curing and resting, then another overnight to reload the healer was and sill is fairly common IME. Which leads to...
3. The expected pace of play is different. In 1e it was no big deal if a party went into a dungeon, did what they could, then pulled back and rested for a week before trying again - bursts of in-game action interspersed with long periods of in-game quasi-downtime. But now the expectation has gone more towards more action more of the time, coupled with less downtime - which puts resting rules front and centre along with driving the game towards both giving more resources back on a rest and making resting easier via the short rest.

Lan-"time for a short rest"-efan

Interesting points. I figured it was because the rest of the party didn't feel like waiting for the wizard!

But since healing spells were such an important part of the game, I can't figure out why we didn't see this sort of problem earlier. Because survival was pretty much dependent upon replenishing your magical healing.

There are only a couple of paragraphs in the DMG on resting at all, and it says it "does not exempt them from occasional checks for wandering monsters, through the frequency may be moderated somewhat, depending on conditions. Too-frequent interruptions may make spell recovery impossible."

Although I also recall instructions in a few adventures (on of the A-series if I recall) specifically for foiling any attempt to rest, going so far as to sit back as the DM and let the rest take up real game time. This, of course, was a big issue for a 4-hour tournament adventure. This was because the adventure was designed to be a countdown type encounter, and speed was of the essence. I think. It's been a while and I'd have to dig it out.

 

[Lanefan]

Interesting points. I figured it was because the rest of the party didn't feel like waiting for the wizard!

But since healing spells were such an important part of the game, I can't figure out why we didn't see this sort of problem earlier. Because survival was pretty much dependent upon replenishing your magical healing.

There was also, at least in 1e, a bit more emphasis on avoiding or bypassing combat and danger. You don't need the healer if you don't get hurt.

There are only a couple of paragraphs in the DMG on resting at all, and it says it "does not exempt them from occasional checks for wandering monsters, through the frequency may be moderated somewhat, depending on conditions. Too-frequent interruptions may make spell recovery impossible."

Resting wasn't seen as that big a deal because, if you look through the 1e DMG, Gygax seems to lean toward a "weekend warrior" style where each session finishes with the party back in town or some other safe place - hence his suggestion that each real-world off day between sessions represent one day passing in the game world. This meant if nothing else that you'd always be at full pop to start each session.

I'm not sure how many DMs ever followed that particular suggestion. I know I sure didn't.

Lanefan

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I participated in Encounters from the second season on, through the playtest. It was almost all casual players and many of them new players. They both thrived on 4e. Players went from never having seen D&D before in one season, to running a table the next. I rarely saw a new player that didn't return for most of the rest of the season they started with. Many spun off home groups. Meetup drew a surprising number of folks in.

Thing is, the bulk of D&D players aren't the new players trying it each year, nor the causal ones playing now & then. There the one's who started playing anywhere in the preceding 30-40 years, and kept with it.

What I mean by casual players are the ones that pick up the latest adventure or AP when they get a chance and running through it. I think they outnumber the DMs writing their own campaigns, and folks like us that take obsessiveness to new heights. (Guilty on many levels).

The issue was never complexity, it was familiarity.
A game that's clear & consistent doesn't seem complex when you're learning it, the complexity becomes depth as you get into it.
A game that's unfamiliar, though, seems complex when you're un-learning & re-learning it, there's more to that than just learning it cold, and there's a frustration factor, because you've rolled revs before and it was never this hard...

Good point.

There's nothing vague about the issue with resting. The guideline is 6-8 encounters/2-3 short rests between long rests. Not vague. The time it takes to rest is 1 hr for short (no limit), 8 hours for long (1/day). Not vague. The balance and the balancing mechanism are positively 'rigid.'

I'll have to look at RAW again. I remember the 1 hour short, and 8 hours long (1/day). And I remember the short rest (no limit) but a recommendation of 2-3 between long. Vague, or at least not rigid. Is it no limit, or a limit of 2 to 3? That's what I was referring to. I also seem to remember a lot of suggestions in threads to limiting short rests to 2/day, 3/day, whatever. Which might be what's giving me the impression that the rules for frequency is vague.

I suppose what's vague about the kind of game you want is that if you want a balanced game, you're locked into the rigid formula, if you want a game of caster superiority, you go with more rests, if you want a grueling down-to-the-last-hp slog, you go 12+ encounters between rests.
If you don't care about balance, of course, you play at whatever pacing you want.

That's me - don't care about balance. Not entirely. I actually care more about disassociated mechanics, and rules that interfere within the setting. I didn't really care how frequently people took a short rest to regain abilities. But it really bothered me that they had to rest for an hour. So that was an easy fix, it's just part of the after-combat routine for 5-10 minutes, binding wounds, catching your breath, etc.

I do prefer to tie the recovery of abilities to time, fatigue, and rest/sleep. Magical abilities simply take time to recover and refocus magical energies. Mundane abilities I usually change. I hated the Battle Master mechanics, with maneuvers that could be used only a limited amount of time. I prefer a risk/reward design for the abilities themselves.

What's not so rigid and a lot more open to style & variation is the range of pacing options the DM might want to use /even within a in a single campaign/, and the options open to the party to rest when they want to, not when it aligns with the balance guidelines. That's the Elephant. A game meant to be flexible, intended that way, with fragile/rigid class balance turning on one mechanism, that, almost uniquely among 5e mechanisms, is not by default completely under the DM's control.

While I get the issues people have with regard resource management and such with abilities when you have fewer encounters than recommended, it just never occurred to me that it was a problem until I saw people complaining about it. My expectation is that they'll have their short rest abilities at pretty much every encounter. And the long rest ability once/day. Their management of them on a long journey for example is still something the players have to deal with, because they have no idea whether they'll have only one encounter or seven in that day. And for that matter, they have to deal with the night too. Also, as I've stated somewhere earlier in the thread, I tend to expect wilderness encounters to be more challenging in my campaign. Not always, but again, that leaves the PCs guessing.

It's just the 5MWD viewed from a slightly different perspective, it was absolutely an issue in AD&D.

Maybe it didn't 'seem' to be a problem because frequent resting at low level was necessary just for hps, and casters were at the low end of their curve then, so the boost they got just helped them keep up? At higher levels, casters ruled anyway, so there was no balance to maintain.

In my campaigns, people rest when you'd expect people to rest. Of course, I may have taken the "rule" in the DMG that people had to rest farther, recognizing that pushing horses too long is problematic, the need for food and water, and just trying to maintain a regular pace in the day of an adventurer. I've spelled that out a bit more for the new 5e players who might be familiar with this "problem" today.

No, that makes it slightly less of a problem. In 4e, every class had very nearly the same number/proportion of encounter & daily abilities, and it was a non-issue in terms of class balance, the 5MWD only mattered to encounter difficulty. In 5e, the fighter having two specific 1/short rest abilities isn't much compared to the versatility of spells or the number of slots caster get, but it's something he can nova with, even on a 5MWD. By the same token, full casters have scaling at-will cantrips, so in a very long day, they're not at a complete loss, even if they do start underperforming, eventually.

I remember there being something of a generation gap, back in the day. There were older guys (younger than I am now, but they sure seemed old) who played wargames but also D&D, and there were young kids who just started playing Basic D&D with no background in the hobby at all.

I was one of the kids, and that everyone else playing D&D with me didn't have to lose for me to 'win' did strike me as quite special - compared to the 'family' board games and chess I was used to.

That's my recollection as well. Combined with the many editorials by Gary and others. I ate up that stuff back in the day.