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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gargoyle" data-source="post: 6400028" data-attributes="member: 529">Some enjoy it, but I've always found the "preparing camp" thing to be as tedious as getting out the 10 ft poles and checking every square inch of dungeon corridor mentality.  It's not always the player's fault these things happen of course, it's mostly adventure design and DM's.  In a dungeon it's the arbitrary placement of deadly traps that does it, while in the wilderness it's the random encounter in the middle of the night and the surprise round without armor or spells ready.  These camping encounters feel like an arbitrary deadly trap in a dungeon corridor, and that's why players get nervous and paranoid when they camp, they know they're vulnerable.  And that's ok to a point, but not to the extreme that I've seen sometimes.  In heroic fiction, the heroes might set watch and avoid making a fire, while in D&D there are multiple spells cast, complicate watch procedures, construction of special armor, and other silliness. I actually don't really have a problem with camping being dangerous or with player characters taking precautions or even the occasional character death; my biggest problem with all of that is that it tends to take a lot of real time while they describe their precautions, and even after they get into a routine it feels less than heroic. And if their paranoid routine fails for some reason (usually because of dice) it just gets more paranoid.  It feels silly.My take on it is, the DM needs to give the camping PC's the benefit of the doubt. Let them sleep in armor without penalty for several nights in a row; the rules don't say it hurts them, so assume it doesn't.  Seriously it's not that big a stretch to think that adventurers could pull that off, even if you think it's unrealistic, give them a level of exhaustion after a few nights of it so they seek out an inn if you like.  If they set a watch, don't let the sleeping player characters suffer a surprise round if alerted.  Assume the watch is competent and they are sleeping lightly.  If they go to the extreme of using a spell like alarm, give them a chance to turn the tables and surprise intruders.  Make them feel heroic instead of like mugging victims.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt goes a long way to establishing some trust.  Which of course you can violate later when you really want to. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />But the big benefit to building some trust with the players that you're not going to murder them in their sleep is that you won't spend ten minutes of real time going over camping procedures or have a TPK on a random encounter that feels unfair.  That said, if they are facing a foe that really would try the tactic of murdering them in their sleep, like a group of assassins, you can do that, but you really need to foreshadow it so it doesn't feel cheesy.  Give them a clue that it's going to happen so they feel smart if they make the right decisions to thwart it, or to make them feel like it's their fault if they don't.  But if you don't make that type of encounter the exception, get ready to spend a lot of time listening to their camping precautions.  Or if you like this sort of gameplay and love 10' poles, of course that's cool too.  I'm just not a fan of it.</blockquote>

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