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

[Ruin Explorer]

Whilst I agree that the priorities can conflict here, I've seen it happen, because 5E long rests are so powerful, I can't bring myself to trust the idea that "memorable stories" automatically emerge out of merely disallowing some fairly basic rules-element, particularly that the game will automatically be improved by this. So I'd say keep long rests if you're only getting rid of them in the hope of getting more "memorable stories" (which is certainly not guaranteed to happen). Over long years I've also noted that whilst the Venn diagram of "Memorable stories for players" and "Memorable stories for DMs" crosses over significantly, it's not a complete overlap or even close. I can tell the players stories of stuff they did 15 years ago that I found intensely memorable and they're like "Huh, cool I guess", barely remembering it. And they're still talking about adventures I wouldn't even believe I'd written if I didn't still have the notes lol.

 

[loverdrive]

Okay, long rest discussion is weird and most of the people seem to miss the point, so let's steer it a little.

So, it's the first session, 30 minutes in. The party develops some kind of brilliant plan that should let them dispose of the antagonist.

What ya gonna do?

What I personally would do, is "Yeah, that's pretty clever and it should work... Let's think, why it wouldn't?"

 

[Arilyn]

No, it isn't. Back in the TSR days, I can say quite certainly that a) I wanted my DMs to fudge things when necessary--because otherwise every campaign would come to an abrupt and bloody end whenever the DM misjudged encounter difficulty or the dice went bad--and b) I did not want to know specifically when they were doing it.

There is obviously a divide between players who are okay with DM fudging, and players who are not. If they're not, you shouldn't do it, and let the dice fall where they may. But among players who are okay with fudging, I have met very few--in fact, I'm not sure I've met any--who would want it to happen in the open.

Personally, I view fudging as a tool to compensate for the failures of the system; excessive randomness or badly balanced monsters (but not player tactics) causing encounters to be easier or deadlier than the DM intended. I don't think I ever once fudged when I was running 4E. I very seldom do so in 5E. In AD&D, though, it was standard operating procedure.

This is exactly my view. As systems have gotten better, fudging disappears.

 

[prabe]

Okay, long rest discussion is weird and most of the people seem to miss the point, so let's steer it a little.

So, it's the first session, 30 minutes in. The party develops some kind of brilliant plan that should let them dispose of the antagonist.

What ya gonna do?

What I personally would do, is "Yeah, that's pretty clever and it should work... Let's think, why it wouldn't?"

Let 'em try the plan. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't: In either case, that's clearly what the game's story is about, now.

 

[Imaro]

Okay, long rest discussion is weird and most of the people seem to miss the point, so let's steer it a little.

So, it's the first session, 30 minutes in. The party develops some kind of brilliant plan that should let them dispose of the antagonist.

What ya gonna do?

What I personally would do, is "Yeah, that's pretty clever and it should work... Let's think, why it wouldn't?"

Why would you do this? They spent the time, effort and energy to come up with a "perfect" plan, why not let it happen?

 

[Dausuul]

Okay, long rest discussion is weird and most of the people seem to miss the point, so let's steer it a little.

So, it's the first session, 30 minutes in. The party develops some kind of brilliant plan that should let them dispose of the antagonist.

What ya gonna do?

The first session? Sure. It works, no problem. The Eagles fly you straight from the Shire to Mount Doom and you drop the Ring in.

Then Gandalf--whose role was to oppose Sauron--departs. Aragorn has never had a chance to emerge from the shadows and take on the mantle of leadership. Denethor's mind is already poisoned from wrestling with Sauron through the palantir; proud and drunk on victory, he claims the throne of Gondor and lordship over all the West. Saruman quickly attaches himself to the new monarch, whispering in his ear. Without Gandalf to defeat it, the terror of the Balrog begins to spread beyond Moria. And meanwhile, who knows who is rising in the shadows to seize control of Sauron's crumbling empire?

Killing the villain in the first session is fine. You just turn what was to have been the endpoint of the story into the beginning of the next. The challenge is when you're closing in on the last session and the PCs find a way to shortcut things.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Okay, long rest discussion is weird and most of the people seem to miss the point, so let's steer it a little.

So, it's the first session, 30 minutes in. The party develops some kind of brilliant plan that should let them dispose of the antagonist.

What ya gonna do?

What I personally would do, is "Yeah, that's pretty clever and it should work... Let's think, why it wouldn't?"

For myself - facepalm, bow to the players, and suggest a board game, 'cause I just got beat in one move.

Although I gotta admit - I've never, in 35-ish years of playing a host of systems with a wide array of players,. seen anything vaguely like that happen. They might be able to skip an encounter, or even a dungeon, but never a whole campaign, with a simple plan that can't possibly go wrong.

 

[clearstream]

I don't see how that position is supported.

• You've got storyteller mandate.
• You've got find the fun mandate.
• You've got Rulings Not Rules.
• You've got change/ignore the rules in order to fit the needs of the table in several different places in the text (this is straight White Wolf Golden Rule).
• You've got GM-facing, GM-decides action resolution without encoded DCs or procedures to arrive at them.
• You've got Ignoring the Dice section canvassing that no GM is actually neutral and will be prone to cognitive bias.
• You've got the section on fudging dice rolls on 235 (why a GM should do it...when they would...how they should - through illusionism via GM-facing action resolution and doing it deftly and strategically).
• You've got the legacy of this stuff deeply embedded in the D&D zeitgeist from the late 80s onward of AD&D2e, 3.x, Adventure Paths (exactly the sort of players they were working to regain).
• You've got 5e Adventure Paths that don't just support it, but advocate for it in certain places.

I know you and a few others believe this. But I don't see how the totality of the evidence is on your side. Not in the text...not in the macro play culture...not in the testimonials. The evidence is robust. The Immersive Storytelling Style of Play on page 34 is basically cribbed whole hog from White Wolf and the game supports this from many different directions.

And players who play like this shouldn't feel ashamed. They should embrace it. Own it. Openly discuss how to be better at it. It is absolutely a part of D&D's legacy (probably the biggest part at this point) and its fundamentally wired into 5e.

Now 5e can be drifted to not have any of this stuff (everything is table-facing...Skilled Play is the apex priority of play...GMs have made the rules as explicit as possible and they're constantly following those rules to a T)...but its absolutely enabled at every level of design and implementation (from broad ethos, to GMing principles, to GM latitude, to action resolution, to the top down Adventuring Day design vs the Bottom Up balancing at the Encounter level which makes the game less sensitive to a Long Rest recharge).

In that regard I see the position I hold as future-facing. For now, flaws in marrying mechanics with fiction produce dissonances. That should not and will not always be true.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't see why the two need to be at odds with each other. 5e may have done everything it could to minimize the impact of "skilled" play & make thoughtless play good enough. but one of the skills a GM will learn over time as they gain experience is being able to mix story with skilled play as a necessity so they compliment each other.

 

[billd91]

Although I gotta admit - I've never, in 35-ish years of playing a host of systems with a wide array of players,. seen anything vaguely like that happen. They might be able to skip an encounter, or even a dungeon, but never a whole campaign, with a simple plan that can't possibly go wrong.

I agree. If a plan looks foolproof in the current session, it's usually because I haven't had time to analyze it thoroughly. Any perfect plan that comes up that fast is probably full of big (and possibly wrong) assumptions and has holes a mile wide if you think on it long enough. So if something like this comes up, I stall them on the night's session or end early and spend the week until the next session mulling it over to make sure I understand it and have a more thorough understanding of how it could work (or fail). I won't outright thwart - I just may need time to adjudicate and that might lead to realizing where the plan fails.