I'm going to comment on this because it's central to the point I keep making that you keep completely ignoring in order to blame the GM for not doing better at one thing or another until the players choose to start caring.
Can I ask you a favor? Please stop putting words in my mouth. Thank you. I appreciate, and will in turn, try to do the same.
To respond to this, I have to state something, and I need you to hear it very clearly: It is not just the DMs job to care about story, it is also the players. In fact, the things I said before almost imply it is mostly a player problem, not a DM problem.
In the past the GM had mechanical reasons why the players feel like they need to care even if the GM is using those elements in service of exerting a light touch of "control" over the pacing. There were a lot of those elements& discussion pages back touched on some, but a couple of the big ones that were flatly removed by 5e were things like:
- There was a bar that the PCs needed to clear before they could realistically say "lets take a rest" without a second (or third+) player at the table stopping them from doing something that would be obviously harmful to the group or that second player's PC.
- The mechanics that led to that were quoted & discussed in 89, 92, 94 along with some of the posts between.
- The PCs themselves required regular infusions of gear ranging from consumables to better magic items.
With Those two broad categories removed in favor of "magic items are optional" & all or nothing explosive total restoration of resources it becomes possible for players to simply refuse to move at any pace until their rest interruptions are no longer standing in the way of their rest. No matter what you choose to call a doom clock or how narrowly you describe one, they all pretty much depend on the players caring about the consequences & the GM had the consequence lever removed unless the players choose to care because "story".
This is valid. I think previous editions did do a better job implementing levers for the DM to control the rest/recuperation of PCs. But 5e is a slightly different game, and the levers now sit in the hands of both the DM and players. That may be a terrible thing at your table, but for some tables, it helps them focus more on the story than the mechanics. I think on that point we can agree.
I would like to see alternate styles of rest. Personally, for your situation, I think this might be an option:
- Players are unable to long rest until they acquire enough experience to raise a level.
That would certainly push resource management to the forefront. It would also let the "slow burn" classes shine. You could adjust the experience points given from behind the screen to help the pacing of the story.
"Story" is good maybe even great, but my average table has around 4-5 players & the average campaign tends to run into low to mid teens. Over that span of weeks & months it would be absurd to suggest that the GM somehow weave a "story" that every single player can say "wow MyChArEcTeR really cares about this particular story element" 100% of the time across every session absent gm facing levers that control any mechanical hurdles or teeth. That level of "story" development would still be absurd even with a short lived campaign like "we are going to go through LMOP★"... yet you keep bringing up solutions relying on that level of transcendental "story" weaving from the GM in order to avoid admitting that 5e may have shifted the balance of power over the pacing & consequence of rests too far in favor of players.
This implies the characters do not care about one another? For a group risking death, that seems odd. For players invested in their characters, that seems odd too.
