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

[loverdrive]

Ok well let me ask this question... can they circumvent 10% of the adventure through good planning and strategy? 30%? 50%? In other words how much of your adventure must they approach in the way you have deemed better and how much can they circumvent? Also why do you get to decide this?

I don't pre-plan adventures, so no percentages can be quantified.

I think at this point the GM would have to improvise or explain to the players that they didn't expect their plan and they may need sometime to come up with something if/when it is implemented. I don't think if I was a player I would want to spend the time, effort and energy coming up with a really good plan in order for the DM to say... NO, you can't succeed, because... reasons.

Doesn't improvising and pulling out some kind of new threat out of thin air invalidates the planning? In my book, it does. Oh, yeah, we killed the bad guy... But now there's a new bad guy and the only reason he's there is because we disposed of the old one too fast! Oh, yeah, our perfect plan worked flawlessly!

Isn't it like 10x times better to let them pull out a new villain out of thin air instead?

And I'm not telling them "no" because "reasons". I'm telling them "no, give me a reason why".

 

[jgsugden]

For those that think a moment when the hero outsmarts an enemy and in one bold stroke gains a major victory has to be boring and anticlimactic, might I submit a counterpoint demonstrating the iconic nature of such a moment?

Spoiler: Boom.

Little bit of trivia - the original plan for that scene was a lengthy battle between that swordsman and Indy. That scene likely would have been very exciting. However, the gunshot is perhaps the most iconic moment in a franchise filled with amazing moments.

When you, as a DM, decide your players need to be weakened before a battle, you're taking your players out of the game and just playing with yourself. They make decisions for their characters. If you decide to alter the situation to prevent resting, you're taking away their agency. You set up the Dominoes. They knock them down. If they start poking at areas where you have no Dominoes, you need to improvise - but it should be in service of the established work you've done by furthering the world, not changing it to preserve your plans for how the Dominoes fall. Let them fall as they will.

 

[el-remmen]

Even if you don't want to go through the trouble of thinking up what the BBEG will do with 8 extra hours of time, doesn't just always designing/beefing up that dude to be a medium or hard threat when the PCs are fully prepped and a hard or deadly threat when they are anything less than that fix the OP problem? It's what I usually do.

I also not understanding how the DM in this position knows ahead of time how it will work out whether the PCs are fully-rested or not. All else being about equal, how PCs use their powers and react to the unexpected should almost always trump just having those powers. I guess I think randomness and an appropriate degree of "swinginess" should keep everyone on their toes.

 

[Manbearcat]

Even if you don't want to go through the trouble of thinking up what the BBEG will do with 8 extra hours of time, doesn't just always designing/beefing up that dude to be a medium or hard threat when the PCs are fully prepped and a hard or deadly threat when they are anything less than that fix the OP problem? It's what I usually do.

I also not understanding how the DM in this position knows ahead of time how it will work out whether the PCs are fully-rested or not. All else being about equal, how PCs use their powers and react to the unexpected should almost always trump just having those powers. I guess I think randomness and an appropriate degree of "swinginess" should keep everyone on their toes.

The concern here would be action negation not via "block" (of the Long Rest), but in the other direction.

Instead of negating the players having all of their toys, you've negated their gamestate advantage by bumping up their opposition.

 

[loverdrive]

For those that think a moment when the hero outsmarts an enemy and in one bold stroke gains a major victory has to be boring and anticlimactic, might I submit a counterpoint demonstrating the iconic nature of such a moment?

Well, the swordsman isn't an important foreshadowed adversary, so there's no expected climax for this scene to be anticlimactic. He doesn't even have a name!

So, while this scene is certainly interesting, it isn't an example of the characters defeating their sworn enemy in one shot.

The only instance of the Big Bad being an easy fight that works well I know of is Dark Souls 1.

 

[el-remmen]

The concern here would be action negation not via "block" (of the Long Rest), but in the other direction.

Instead of negating the players having all of their toys, you've negated their gamestate advantage by bumping up their opposition.

That's a weird way to look at it.

1. I meant, have the BBEG statted that way from the get-go before the issue of rests or how the PCs approach the final fight (if they even somehow know for sure it is the final fight - be we can make that assumption) has even come up. I can't know the details of how the PCs will be or what they will do when they get there - I can only build in contingencies that make sense.

2. Hard fight or easy fight - getting to fight some foreshadowed foe and what is at stake in the fight should be fun and build up the tension and drama.

3. Medium difficulty when full-up but Hard/Deadly when not, is an advantage for a fully-rested party.

 

[Manbearcat]

You've mentioned several times that the players change what the story is about.....and I get what you're going for, but I don't really think that's an accurate way to phrase it. The players are going to determine how the story goes, absolutely. And I suppose they could change what the story is about if they just decide to walk off and become farmers. But the thrust of the game at that time was the struggle against Strahd. If there's a story, that's what it is. The players can determine if the characters succeed or not, but that's not really the same as changing what the story's about.

I think there is a lot to be said about this.

In @darkbard and his wife's last Dungeon World session they had made camp below a 400 meter, multi-obstacle wall on their Perilous Journey through/to the top of the mountain to face their ultimate adversary in the game (which became their adversary in session 2 I believe?). This was the 3rd camp of that journey.

Prior to play I had worked up some robust conflict resolution mechanics (a series of Custom Moves and procedures to invest the conflict with tactical and strategic decision-points + harrowing, thematic danger) to resolve the climb. Given the gravity of the effort, this would have likely have taken up a good 1.5 to 2 hours (given the inevitable snowballing complications and resultant game of "Spinning Plates" that would have arisen from the play). Given that our sessions are typically about 2.75 hours, navigating this wall and getting to camp 4 to Make Camp/Manage Provisions and then do End of Session would have likely have been the full content of the session.

However, darkbard's wife (a Wizard) had a spell loaded out that let them transit to the Ethereal Plane and obviate "the wall obstacle" entirely! So the session actually ended up being (a) saying goodbye to their cohorts (a Sherpa and his nephew who was one of their two Porters), (b) a Perilous Journey conflict through the Ethereal Plane to the Feywild barrier doorstep of an enchanted elven village (at a tree line at much higher altitude than should be possible) and, (c) the subsequent showdown with the BBEG with the Wizard's nemesis (an interdimensional, Lovecraftian horror) after a spellcrafting move of hers went south!

Obviously Dungeon World's "play to find out" is the polar opposite of a WotC AP, but what I wanted to focus on was how "the micro story" can change (without affecting the macro story). I had anticipated the session being about climbing a big, scary, multi-obstacle frozen wall! When the reality was, it turned out to be something entirely different (because a Wizard had a move to change the landscape of play...happens even in Dungeon World!)!

 

[Manbearcat]

That's a weird way to look at it.

1. I meant, have the BBEG statted that way from the get-go before the issue of rests or how the PCs approach the final fight (if they even somehow know for sure it is the final fight - be we can make that assumption) has even come up. I can't know the details of how the PCs will be or what they will do when they get there - I can only build in contingencies that make sense.

2. Hard fight or easy fight - getting to fight some foreshadowed foe and what is at stake in the fight should be fun and build up the tension and drama.

3. Medium difficulty when full-up but Hard/Deadly when not, is an advantage for a fully-rested party.

I think this is one of the tension points for a game like 5e or 3.x or AD&D.

The NPC's contingency has to feel like a neutral outgrowth of play/setting rather than a setting-extrapolation metamove by the GM with the sole purpose of contracting the disparity of capability gained by the PCs via their Skilled Play ("we've played with sufficient Skill to reap the rewards of this Long Rest-driven resource advantage"). That feel like can be fraught. That actually being (a neutral outgrowth of play/setting), even if it feels like, can be fraught.

Contrast that with a game like Cortex+ MHRP (or Fantasy Hack) where the GM has a table-facing Doom Pool that builds through play, of which the GM can spend at their discretion to oppose the PCs (like to bulwark the BBEG's forces in the big showdown).

Or Contrast that with a game like Dungeon World or a PBtA/FitD game where this will either be the outgrowth of a move made by the players triggering a GM move that bulwarks the BBEG's forces...or where the GM disclaims decision-making and generates content (in this case "reinforcements and how much...or not") via Fortune Roll procedures.

 

[el-remmen]

Contrast that with a game like Cortex+ MHRP (or Fantasy Hack) where the GM has a table-facing Doom Pool that builds through play, of which the GM can spend at their discretion to oppose the PCs (like to bulwark the BBEG's forces in the big showdown).

Or Contrast that with a game like Dungeon World or a PBtA/FitD game where this will either be the outgrowth of a move made by the players triggering a GM move that bulwarks the BBEG's forces...or where the GM disclaims decision-making and generates content (in this case "reinforcements and how much...or not") via Fortune Roll procedures.

I thought this thread was about D&D. I haven't played those other games. I am sure their mechanics and approach are also fun (I'd love to try them at a con sometime). But yeah, as your reply suggests, when I am playing D&D I have certain expectations about interacting with the adventure/setting/NPCs.

 

[Manbearcat]

I thought this thread was about D&D. I haven't played those other games. I am sure their mechanics and approach are also fun (I'd love to try them at a con sometime). But yeah, as your reply suggests, when I am playing D&D I have certain expectations about interacting with the adventure/setting/NPCs.

Unclear why you think this suddenly isn't a thread about D&D. Its still a thread about D&D. Since the feels like and the actually being was the essence of my point, I brought the contrast in to compare how the feels like and the actually being changes when system changes (even when the paradigm of play or the genre, or both, persists). Just like if you're talking about the driving experience of one car, you're invariably going to contrast it with another car.