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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 9779267" data-attributes="member: 87792">I really can't agree here other than that an encounter is a technical grouping of events and is as much a term of art as "Armour class" or "damage dice". Your average encounter is a fight. And that does map to a real world construct. "I will hold on to this spell for a few minutes until the short job is done and after that it will be a relief to relax" or "this spell lasts about a minute; more than enough to do this one task but not much longer" makes far more emotional sense for a whole lot of things than "I'm going to program my mobile phone with an alarm/turn over this egg timer to tell me how long is left" other than for some extremely niche magic. Which means in my experience that a "strongly simulationist system" ends up with a world that looks every bit as artificial as the one Order of the Stick plays for laughs. Just to confirm Sanderson's First Law of MagicAn author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.And I have never run into a group that didn't get what an encounter was. The problem is that if magic is reasonably common and durations are fixed (e.g. five minute) then you as a consequence have reliable and accurate timekeeping. And that has significant worldbuilding implications. I'm thinking of such navigation challenges such as the search for longtitude.</blockquote>