D&D 5E Allow the Long Rest Recharge to Honor Skilled Play or Disallow it to Ensure a Memorable Story

[prabe]

Well there's a reasonable amount of gray area about the resources at Strahd's disposal to the point that the GM can deploy any number of options. That's why I mentioned the "dial" being invisible. I could add or take away minions as needed to match the party's strength.

That's why I mentioned both the possibility of adding the minions, and of subtracting them.

Skilled play of the classic type would require a set amount of opposition ahead of time. And while an action such as a Long Rest would also allow the NPCs to prepare or marshal forces, there's no set number of creatures as there most likely would have been in one of the old modules. How many Vistani can Strahd have at his disposal? How many vampire brides? How many zombies? The book at best makes suggestions on these topics.

Given this, what would you say was my priority when it came to my group's showdown with Strahd?

I'd say your priority was to run the published adventure.

Yeah. That's snotty.

I'd say your priority was to run the published adventure in the way/s your players would find most enjoyable and satisfying, probably striking some balance between letting them "win" (so, Skilled Play) and conveying whatever story the adventure is trying to tell.

 

[billd91]

But this assumes that you're leaning hard enough into Skilled Play. Yes, I agree, if you're leaning hard into Skilled Play, this would be a GM risking their credibility. But 5e GM's don't have to do that. There are two other Styles of Play cited on page 34. One doesn't lean into Skilled Play. The other is halvsies.

I made my post to address all 5e GMs...not just the ones that are leaning hard enough into Skilled Play. I was curious about how the voting would turn out given how much leaning into the other two play styles cited on page 34 I see in 5e threads.

Why would you think the poll answers would reveal much about how people talk about the way they interact with the play styles on page 34 of the DMG? Honestly, the poll questions read more like whether or not a DM is going to impose a "My Precious Encounters" style of play on the players regardless of their input. And, honestly, I think that's something that could be done in either of the styles described on DMG 34.

 

[prabe]

This makes me think about all the times I have written about endings being overvalued in how people evaluate texts (using "texts" in the broad way academics use to mean not only books, but film and TV etc. .).

Beginnings are overvalued, too, I think; in both cases it's because the beginning and the end are both ... arbitrary.

 

[pemerton]

The first rule of fudging to make things more exciting is you do not let the players know when you're doing it. Even if they know, in a general sense, that you do it, you never ever want them to realize that it's happening in the moment. It's the difference between knowing that magicians use illusion and misdirection, and seeing the strings on stage. Instead of creating excitement, you kill it dead.

Intervening to deny a long rest, when the party has every reason to believe they can rest safely, fails that requirement hard.

To me, this reads as if you've misunderstood what @Manbearcat is envisaging. He's not thinking of a GM saying, flat out, Sorry, no rest allowed. He's imaging the players setting up their rest and then the GM using his/her control over the fiction to obviate that (eg they get woken up; a scout from the BBEG turns up and dispels their Rope Trick; or even, as has come out in some of the more recent posts, the GM lets the rest take place but adjusts the planned follow-up encounter to reflect the fact of the rest).

So, is having Strahd prepare while the PCs are resting negating the long rest? If they've done intelligence-gathering, is his ability to prepare previously established?

<snip>

Changing the facts out from under the players' feet is kinda dirty pool. Giving Strahd resources the players would have noticed (but didn't) seems like that.

<snip>

If you never undid any of their achievements, you were honoring skilled play, as well as the story.

one effect of taking a long rest in such a campaign would be "the bad guy also gets an extra 8 hours to prepare." It's a cost/risk of the long rest. This gives the dm a lot of room to adjust the final encounter to dial up the difficulty.

I think that notion of giving the GM a lot of room is pretty crucial. What use, by the GM, of that sort of room is fair? Conversely, what sort of use of it counts as "changing the facts out from under the players' feet" or "undoing players' achievements"?

I think 13th Age (p 171 of the rulebook) has a fairly elegant answer to this: if the players have done 4 encounters before their recharge, then the GM is not to do very much changing; whereas if the players have done 3 or fewer encounters, they have to suck up a "campaign loss" ie the GM can change quite a bit, and quite adversely to the players and their PCs!

My impression of 5e is that it deliberately eschews any rule of this sort, thus opening the way for exactly the question that @Manbearcat asks in the OP.

My recounting of this scenario (prompted by the mention of Strahd) was largely about the fact that in my mind, no matter what they did, this was going to be a difficult encounter. There was a dial, and I was willing and able to adjust it, and do so invisibly.

For example, they had the Sunsword. So Strahd had minions on hand not susceptible to the Sunsword's power, and they swarmed the fighter who wielded it, and tried to take it away from him. I did this to make the encounter more difficult. However, would I have added those minions if the players had not managed to find the Sunsword? Probably not.

Is that kind of encounter design consideration contradictory to anything suggested by the books?

<snip>

What rules would be broken by "doing what sees like it will be most exciting"?

I like your posts on this. As well as the actual play reportage, they also point out that the GM has multiple dimensions of decision-making about the fiction available to him/her - not just what happens while the PCs rest but (eg, and as in your example) who do the NPCs have as allies/minions?

If you don't mind me getting inspired by the direction of your thoughts, I'd like to tweak it a little to add a "third solution" that perhaps we should be considering. How does this play out if the DM simply says to the players, as one hobbiest to another, "I think this will be more fun if you push on".

I think I'd take that advice. Though I would be salty if we then died.

if I have a cool encounter that wouldn't work if the players have full resources, then I'll probably just ask them to not take a long rest.

When I was GMing a 1st to 30th 4e D&D campaign, I adopted a variant of this approach: if the players were thinking of taking an extended rest before their resources were really spent, I would make fun of them. Normally the shame would make them carry on! I would also use my control over the fiction to soft-force them to go on.

Because of the way 4e distributes resources across short and extended rest, the risk of the saltiness Blue mentions is less than in some other versions of D&D. For the same reason (ie much less player-side nova capacity), it's also easier (I think) to ensure that a 4e encounter is not anti-climactic by way of ad hoc adjustment to reflect the fact of an extended rest.

All of the above does mean that extended resting ceased to be part of "skilled play" in my approach to 4e, and became more about how the players and GM - each using their various powers over the fiction - would choose to shape the player resource pool for what comes next. The skilled play happened primarily within the framework of encounters. And this also helps make the "cooperative"/"consensus" approach to extended rests work - because the players feel so pleased with themselves when their in-encounter skill allows them to defeat an above level challenge while sitting on a small number of dailies and one healing surge per party member, they don't object to me as GM controlling the fiction so as to generate those sorts of situations!

My impression is that 5e is less often approached in this sort of "scene-framing" style, which again makes @Manbearcat's question come to the fore.

 

[prabe]

That is the 2nd one; Fun/story.

Respectfully, that's not clear, if they read your post before answering the poll.

When you unpack things in your post, your first answer talks about allowing the Long Rest to prioritize Skilled Play and your second answer talks about blocking the Long Rest to prioritize Story. Doing one for the other reason doesn't seem to exist in your philosophy, here.

I think that's what most of the people answering you who primarily run 5E are saying: You can honor Story either way; the priorities--if you're playing for both Skilled Play and Story--do not conflict.

 

[pemerton]

I don't see how the priorities can never conflict.

Skilled play (whether in resource management and resting, or more generally) is about optimising the prospect of victory at minimal risk.

Stories are almost always more interesting when victory took effort or required luck or came at some sort of cost.

If we think of stories in terms of war stories - eg the players recounting how their clever play let them beat up Strahd without even needing to use a healing spell during the fight - then I can see that there is no conflict, but I don't think @Manbearcat has those sorts of grognard let me tell you about the time we beat Tomb of Horrors stories in mind. He's talking about the actual story that unfolds via play - the rising action, climax, resolution of the fiction of the game as it unfolds.

 

[dave2008]

But it’s also not a great comparison because in D@D, the vampire is not invulnerable once the sun sets.

I don't think Dracula was either (in the book), but it is inconsistent. They definitely imply that if they don't get to Dracula before the sun sets they are in trouble (as he is fleeing back home); however, IIRC, they had previously cornered Dracula in a bedroom(?) in London and forced him to flee by turning into a swarm of rats (I think). It was basically that encounter that started Dracula's retreat to Transylvania.

Please note: I haven't read Dracula in about 30 years so my memory could be off (or conflated with other more recent representations).

 

[Bawylie]

I don't see how the priorities can never conflict.

Skilled play (whether in resource management and resting, or more generally) is about optimising the prospect of victory at minimal risk.

Stories are almost always more interesting when victory took effort or required luck or came at some sort of cost.

If we think of stories in terms of war stories - eg the players recounting how their clever play let them beat up Strahd without even needing to use a healing spell during the fight - then I can see that there is no conflict, but I don't think @Manbearcat has those sorts of grognard let me tell you about the time we beat Tomb of Horrors stories in mind. He's talking about the actual story that unfolds via play - the rising action, climax, resolution of the fiction of the game as it unfolds.

Pursuant to these definitions, how do these things even intersect, let alone conflict?

 

[dave2008]

Question for 5e GMs out there. I proposed this in another thread, and I'm curious about the community at larges' answer.

Consider the lead question (and the question in the poll).

5e (by design) possesses significant asymmetric power relationships and authority distribution disparity. It also possesses two play priorities that can sometimes be at tension: Skilled Play Imperative and Storyteller Imperative. The configuration of this (by my reckoning) is captured below:

1) Rulings Not Rules (not just action resolution mediation...this also includes following rules/ignoring rules/changing rules in the pursuit of a memorable story and a fun time) + GM as Lead Storyteller (a Role and the mandate afforded that role to ensure a memorable is told at the table and people have "fun.")

2) An admixture of table-facing and GM-facing aspects of play that can wax/wane/change as play unfolds.

3) (1) + (2) above is a mandate for the deployment of GM Force at the GM's discretion to facilitate their role and responsibility as lead storyteller/entertainer/fun-ensurer.

4) However, simultaneous to that is a Skilled Play imperative that undergirds all D&D play since time immemorial (eg defeat each individual obstacle and the continuum of obstacles skillfully and be rewarded).


So you've got the potential for competing priorities here. Since the late 80s (when the Storyteller Imperative "came online"), the typical way Traditional GMing has resolved this is by attempting to juggle both the Skilled Play Imperative ball and the Storyteller Imperative ball, keeping them in the air as best they can, only until one must be prioritized over the other. How GM-facing the game is, how asymmetric the power relationships/authority distribution is, how much the manipulation of offscreen/backstory items (particularly offscreen and backstory items that have yet to be established in play) matters... all collectively serve as cover for letting one of those two balls fall to the floor while the other remains suspended (with the GM prioritizing it as the most important imperative at this particular moment of play).


So consider the Rest/Recharge. The players have played Skillfully in a scenario (be it a dungeon crawl or a plane-hopping excursion or a wilderness trek or whatever). They've relatively dominated but they've expended enough resources that they want to attempt a Long Rest to Recharge.

* The Table-Facing aspects of play all say that the Wizard and the group's contingencies should allow this Long Rest to occur. They have defeated the obstacles skillfully, skillfully picked their builds to allow the recharge, carefully planned their contingencies to enable the recharge.

* The Skilled Play Imperative requires the Long Rest should occur.

HOWEVER...

* The Storyteller imperative is at tension with whether the Long Rest will occur. Its invariably (or at least almost assuredly) going to lead to unrewarding, anticlimax if it occurs.

* The GM-Facing and the asymmetric power relationship say that the GM can just deploy move x, y, or z (or all 3 if they wish) to ensure that the Long Rest Recharge doesn't occur. There is nothing systemitizing this (like, say, the way the table-facing Doom Pool grows in Cortex as a result of play and there are rules about when/how it grows and when/how the GM can deploy it to erect a "block" of a player move). The GM is just extrapolating from the fiction (and almost surely leveraging offscreen/backstory info that hasn't been established in play) in order to make this happen...but the important part here is that their first principles to justify this "block" are The Storyteller Imperative requires the Long Rest Recharge must be disabled.

So its entirely possible for the GM to extrapolate the situation naturalistically such that the Long Rest Recharge should be enabled and the GM can naturalistically extrapolate "the block" (disabling The Long Rest Recharge), because, realistically, almost any situation can possess enough intersecting variables such that a model would yield a dozen or more reasonably likely outcomes.

---

So the question in the poll is, in the above situation, do you prioritize Skilled Play (the players have defeated the obstacles before them and done all the things that would reasonably allow for a Long Rest Recharge...BUT...the story is going to suffer for it because the climax is going to be anticlimactic) OR do you prioritize your responsibility with the Storytelling Imperative (you execute the block by using move x, y, z, which you can always reasonably extrapolate because of your unilateral access to offscreen/backstory, and deny the Long Rest Recharge because you deem the Storyteller Imperative as the most important priority here)?

Which do you do 5e GMs?

PSA - Please don't drag this into "False Dichotomy" territory. There are going to be moments where the results of Skilled Play will absolutely lead to Anti-climax (negatively affecting the impact and "memorablnessitude" of a key story moment). At these moments the Skilled Play and Memorable Story priorities are entirely at tension (and as a 5e GM, it is your principal job to facilitate these aspects of play). D&D players/participants/magazine articles/forums have discussed this since time immemorial. Just consider any moment like that if you don't like the example above. As a 5e GM, as an expression of your 5e GM-liness and the mandate afforded you...how do you typically respond? Which ball stays on the air...which ball hits the ground?

I was interested in this poll; however, your explanation post was way to long for me to answer on my lunch break (possibly ever)! I will have to take a pass on this one!

 

[pemerton]

Pursuant to these definitions, how do these things even intersect, let alone conflict?

They conflict in this way: a game that places no limits on skilled play, and hence on risk-mitigation and resource-optimisation, is unlikely to evince the phenomena that typify satisfying stories (such as dramatic climaxes, hairs' breadth successes, and the like).

A limit case is the play of Tomb of Horrors. Once we move to more typical scenarios limits on skilled play typically set in. But the inverse correlation is still there.