Five-Minute Workday Article

[Balesir]

The fact that we've had complaints from players and DMs of the 5 (or 15) minute workday in AD&D, 2E, 3E *and* while playing 4E pretty much tells us there is NOTHING that can be done. You know why? Because every DM is different, every DM designs his combats and adventures different, and every reason why "going nova" occurs to a particular game is completely different. It's NOT POSSIBLE to fix the issue, because there is no ONE ISSUE to fix.

No systemic solution has been tried, in any of those editions. I think that is the point; we are in the middle of a playtest, an ideal opportunity to, you know, play test a systemic solution, but what is contemplated is a continuation of what has been done before; id est, nothing.

I hear a lot of:

- it's the players' fault for not playing correctly,

- it's the DM's fault for not DMing correctly, and

- it's not really a problem at all if you stick your fingers in your ears and shout "la, la, la!"

The problem is simple: if there is no cost for recovering all your character resources, it's a sensible thing to do to recover them immediately after spending any of them.

Can you work around this by adding in game-word related "costs" as a DM? Sure. Can you work around it by adding in "social" costs for asking for it, as a player? Sure.

But wouldn't it be nice not to have to use these crutches simply by introducing an optional, systemic cost or incentive that makes operating in another way a possibility worth considering, just on "game physics" grounds?

 

[Mattachine]

I don't think it's something that needs to be fixed. It is a play style that some groups adopt and others don't.

Why didn't this seem to be as much of a problem in older editions? Module/adventure design typically had wandering monsters, no safe rest zones, or a time limit.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Other game systems don't have problems with "the 5-minute work day" so saying this is an unsolvable problem is another cop-out

See my most recent post- it DOES show up in other systems.

 

[an_idol_mind]

I think WotC's best bet at solving this supposed problem lies not in rules but rather in the adventures they release. Sure, rules can be modified to tweak things a little, but it will be the first adventures released that set the culture of this edition of D&D.

Lots of people will look to these opening modules as a guideline on how to create their own adventures for D&D. If there are numerous safe resting zones and easy ways for the party to retreat and return with little repercussion, then that will be the default that a lot of people use in their own games.

In addition to the core rules, I hope that WotC puts a lot of thought into what adventures they plan to release, because a strong set of adventure modules will be a bigger boon to problems like this than a few options planted into the core rules.

 

[77IM]

See my most recent post- it DOES show up in other systems.

But not in all systems, and when it does show up, it's often not to the same extreme degree as in D&D.

Systems where your resources return gradually, at roughly the same rate that they get expended, are the least likely to have the problem.

-- 77IM, the perfect is the enemy of the good

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Systems where your resources return gradually, at roughly the same rate that they get expended, are the least likely to have the problem.

Possibly true.

Like I have said, my experience with the 15MWD is purely second hand, despite playing in 100+ systems in 30+ years in the hobby across 3 states, 5 cities, and dozens of GMs.

 

[billd91]

But not in all systems, and when it does show up, it's often not to the same extreme degree as in D&D.

I get the impression that not much is to the same extreme degree as in D&D. My guess is that's true, if it is, because D&D has been played by so many more people and by a more diverse group than pretty much any other RPG over its lifetime.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

As I said most recently here, the 15MWD shows up in any game that has ablative resources and a GM willing to put the campaign world on hold while thë party restocks & recuperates.

Which may not even be a problem for the group or the GM. They want a 15 minute adventure day, they got it, so be it. But the problem is that now the casters dominate. And that's the real problem in my opinion.

If you give every class daily resources (be it tons of extra hit dice and extra action for fighters or daily powers aka 4E), you could avoid this, for example.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I don't think that will work. If you use resources to achieve your goal, and there is no cost to rest, then the smart choice is to rest to get your resources back - so you can use them to achieve your goal.

Yep, costs are good. They offer the players a chance to make a meaningful decisions.

I did mention costs. The chance of random encounters while resting that are not related to your goal, offer little to no reward (i.e. no XP because they do not contribute towards achieving your goal; no treasure because they are just wandering monsters, etc.). I also intended to imply that resting may make achieving your goal impossible if time-sensitive or more difficult to achieve because you give your opposition the gift of time. These are meaningful decisions, they just aren't strictly mechanical rules devices.

I personally do not like the idea presented up thread of the XP reward being reduced by the passage of time if the reduction is artificial. I do like the idea of partial success equalling partial rewards. If the goal is "free the captive dwarven clan" which numbers a hundred dwarves at the start of the adventure and the captors kill 25 dwarves while the party takes an extended rest in retaliation for the party's first attack, then a 25% reduction in the XP award seems appropriate, for example.

 

[KidSnide]

As I said most recently here, the 15MWD shows up in any game that has ablative resources and a GM willing to put the campaign world on hold while thë party restocks & recuperates.

I never really saw the 15MWD show up in DM-written campaigns. IME, DM-written games don't tend to have large dungeons where PCs would retreat and then go back. Instead, locations were designed to be handled in a single day, and retreating after beginning the assault was effectively the same thing as forfeiting the goal for doing the assault in the first place. Sometimes that's the right thing to do, but it's hardly cost-free.

Where I've seen a ton of 15MWD is in WotC written scenarios. From Nightfang Spire to Keep on the Shadowfell, there are these large, sprawling, populated areas with no DM guidance about how the NPCs respond to repeated incremental incursions.

The 15MWD comes from a scenario where exploration, destruction and loot are the only objectives and there is no larger goal to entering a dangerous location. No single design element will end the issue for everyone, but there are many ways to handle it. Story pressure and dynamic locations are good answers for some campaigns, but other groups just want a dungeon to explore. For those groups, I would suggest tying xp rewards to some measure of "exploration efficiency", but -- in any case -- the key is providing a toolbox for DMs to handle the problems they do see.

-KS