Shardstone
Hero
This is paradoxically common knowledge and something most people do not know or just simply forget — that how you handle resting dictates the feel of your game. While it'll always be combat-slanted (in reality, conflict-slanted), when your players can recover influences the pacing of your encounters which, in turn, has narrative impacts that reshape the genre of your world.
I'll go over a few different examples, some from the DMG, some not in the DMG.
First example is gritty realism. That's a 24-hour short rest and a seven-day long rest. This kind of resting slows down the game's pacing a lot OR creates a high-tension game where every combat could potentially kill you. If you like more OSR-style gaming, you can put players in a high-density area, forcing them to use non-combative means to deal with the encounters around them. Narratively, this can make dungeons very intense and changes how magic feels in your world. Instead of having people wake up with all their powers, they now have to manage things over around a week or so, forcing the play to rely more on magic items, equipment, NPC connections, or their own ingenuity.
Another example is Safe Haven Resting. In this version, you can only gain the benefits of a long rest by resting in a haven. This can be anything from an oasis to a safe house. Short rests can be taken anywhere, but are usually longer as a result, sometimes 8 hours, sometimes 24. Likewise, sometimes a long rest in Safe Having Resting may require 24 hours. This creates a game more focused on exploration. Players have to find the haven, as it is their lifeline, have to potentially defend it or clear it out, and have to remember where it is for future use. Haven's also make amazing narrative tools, because you can have things like baiting in an enemy to destroy them with the haven, or have someone who forces a contract on the players in order to use the haven, and so on.
There is also the idea of Reward Resting. In this version, the benefits of a short and long rest are rewards from DMs. This can be for things such as defeating a particularly important or powerful enemy, discovering something they've been looking for, or even seeing something amazing after a long time of tension or darkness. Reward Resting can be narratively explained with ideas such as "inspiration" or "relief" — the characters are so relieved and impressed upon by the event that their body relaxes. In this kind of resting system, wounds and HP are probably divorced in the narrative. You're at full HP, but that's because your willpower is letting you push past the fact you have lacerations. This kind of resting is the best for cinematic games, action-heavy games, or even official modules, because it lets you keep the momentum of the story going without having to break for resting. You can still have default rests as well with Reward Resting, relying more on the rewards then finding 8 hours to sleep.
These different kinds of resting paradigms can be combined to create a game with rich texture. Gritty Realism and Safe Haven resting, when combined, can make for a highly tense wilderness, plane, or Underdark-focused campaign. You can throw Reward Resting into the mix as a pleasant surprise when the players overcome a challenge or discover something despite the odds against them. You can also manipulate these ideas more, tweaking how many days a long rest is for Gritty Realism, or by letting Inspiration be how players get their Reward Rests. Safe Havens could open up new avenues in your game where the players have to either construct a safe haven or work on an existing one to protect or save it.
In terms of genre, these resting paradigms lend themselves well to new themes. Gritty Realism is great for Fantasy Noir or similar investigation stories. Safe Haven resting is also great for that, letting you bring up safe houses, NPC connections, and so on. For high-flying games or ultra-heroic games, Reward Resting feels right, letting your characters surge with power in response to accompolishing some heruclean task. Or, you could use it for a post-apocalyptic world, where finding water or fresh food or shelter gives you your Reward Rest. You can even use Gritty Realism + Rewards at high levels, making it easier to operate around the player's immense amount of resources while still rewarding them for their in-game accomplishments. These manipulations let you hone in on a game's feel, because resting itself is so core to the game. The ripple effects I mention in this post are just the tip of the iceberg.
A lot of people say that D&D is only good for one thing. But I find that simple alterations like these opens up D&D to new stories.
I'll go over a few different examples, some from the DMG, some not in the DMG.
First example is gritty realism. That's a 24-hour short rest and a seven-day long rest. This kind of resting slows down the game's pacing a lot OR creates a high-tension game where every combat could potentially kill you. If you like more OSR-style gaming, you can put players in a high-density area, forcing them to use non-combative means to deal with the encounters around them. Narratively, this can make dungeons very intense and changes how magic feels in your world. Instead of having people wake up with all their powers, they now have to manage things over around a week or so, forcing the play to rely more on magic items, equipment, NPC connections, or their own ingenuity.
Another example is Safe Haven Resting. In this version, you can only gain the benefits of a long rest by resting in a haven. This can be anything from an oasis to a safe house. Short rests can be taken anywhere, but are usually longer as a result, sometimes 8 hours, sometimes 24. Likewise, sometimes a long rest in Safe Having Resting may require 24 hours. This creates a game more focused on exploration. Players have to find the haven, as it is their lifeline, have to potentially defend it or clear it out, and have to remember where it is for future use. Haven's also make amazing narrative tools, because you can have things like baiting in an enemy to destroy them with the haven, or have someone who forces a contract on the players in order to use the haven, and so on.
There is also the idea of Reward Resting. In this version, the benefits of a short and long rest are rewards from DMs. This can be for things such as defeating a particularly important or powerful enemy, discovering something they've been looking for, or even seeing something amazing after a long time of tension or darkness. Reward Resting can be narratively explained with ideas such as "inspiration" or "relief" — the characters are so relieved and impressed upon by the event that their body relaxes. In this kind of resting system, wounds and HP are probably divorced in the narrative. You're at full HP, but that's because your willpower is letting you push past the fact you have lacerations. This kind of resting is the best for cinematic games, action-heavy games, or even official modules, because it lets you keep the momentum of the story going without having to break for resting. You can still have default rests as well with Reward Resting, relying more on the rewards then finding 8 hours to sleep.
These different kinds of resting paradigms can be combined to create a game with rich texture. Gritty Realism and Safe Haven resting, when combined, can make for a highly tense wilderness, plane, or Underdark-focused campaign. You can throw Reward Resting into the mix as a pleasant surprise when the players overcome a challenge or discover something despite the odds against them. You can also manipulate these ideas more, tweaking how many days a long rest is for Gritty Realism, or by letting Inspiration be how players get their Reward Rests. Safe Havens could open up new avenues in your game where the players have to either construct a safe haven or work on an existing one to protect or save it.
In terms of genre, these resting paradigms lend themselves well to new themes. Gritty Realism is great for Fantasy Noir or similar investigation stories. Safe Haven resting is also great for that, letting you bring up safe houses, NPC connections, and so on. For high-flying games or ultra-heroic games, Reward Resting feels right, letting your characters surge with power in response to accompolishing some heruclean task. Or, you could use it for a post-apocalyptic world, where finding water or fresh food or shelter gives you your Reward Rest. You can even use Gritty Realism + Rewards at high levels, making it easier to operate around the player's immense amount of resources while still rewarding them for their in-game accomplishments. These manipulations let you hone in on a game's feel, because resting itself is so core to the game. The ripple effects I mention in this post are just the tip of the iceberg.
A lot of people say that D&D is only good for one thing. But I find that simple alterations like these opens up D&D to new stories.
