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<blockquote data-quote="Rofel Wodring" data-source="post: 7405928" data-attributes="member: 6873189">As someone who has run quite a few 3E, Pathfinder, and 4E D&amp;D games and only a handful of 5E D&amp;D games, I have to say that running large numbers of encounters in a 'workday' is problematic for two reasons:1) A lot of players get very disengaged by their character going 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' repeatedly because they have to budget their abilities. There are a lot of players who legit don't mind describing how they're swinging their sword after taking the Attack action ten rounds in a row, but there are a lot of players who DO in fact mind, and I think it's both projectionist and unfair how the gaming community paints the former group as Proper Roleplayers Making The Best Use Of A Limited Toolkit and the latter group as Dirty Powergaming Munchkins Who Want To Show Off All The Time.2) If things go south and the players end up blowing a lot of their abilities in the first one or two encounters, they feel like you're picking on them as you drag their characters through the rest of the gauntlet. This is also true if the players are casual or new to the group and aren't in tune with how D&amp;D structures workdays. They aren't going to be sympathetic to your rejoinder of 'that's just bad luck/you not getting the rhythm of the game; better budget your abilities better next time', especially if it runs up against caveat one.I also think that 6-8 encounters does violence to the narrative of action-adventure fiction (since it's a D&amp;D-specific trope that doesn't have genre or metafictional justification) that can only be justified as a gameplay/story tradeoff but that's a separate discussion altogether. Just speaking from a gameplay perspective, it disengages certain kinds of players and I'm getting rather tired of boards like these treating such players as powergamers or n00bs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Rofel Wodring, post: 7405928, member: 6873189"] As someone who has run quite a few 3E, Pathfinder, and 4E D&D games and only a handful of 5E D&D games, I have to say that running large numbers of encounters in a 'workday' is problematic for two reasons: 1) A lot of players get very disengaged by their character going 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' 'I Fire Bolt it.' repeatedly because they have to budget their abilities. There are a lot of players who legit don't mind describing how they're swinging their sword after taking the Attack action ten rounds in a row, but there are a lot of players who DO in fact mind, and I think it's both projectionist and unfair how the gaming community paints the former group as Proper Roleplayers Making The Best Use Of A Limited Toolkit and the latter group as Dirty Powergaming Munchkins Who Want To Show Off All The Time. 2) If things go south and the players end up blowing a lot of their abilities in the first one or two encounters, they feel like you're picking on them as you drag their characters through the rest of the gauntlet. This is also true if the players are casual or new to the group and aren't in tune with how D&D structures workdays. They aren't going to be sympathetic to your rejoinder of 'that's just bad luck/you not getting the rhythm of the game; better budget your abilities better next time', especially if it runs up against caveat one. I also think that 6-8 encounters does violence to the narrative of action-adventure fiction (since it's a D&D-specific trope that doesn't have genre or metafictional justification) that can only be justified as a gameplay/story tradeoff but that's a separate discussion altogether. Just speaking from a gameplay perspective, it disengages certain kinds of players and I'm getting rather tired of boards like these treating such players as powergamers or n00bs. [/QUOTE]

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