How I got rid of the 5-minute adventure day and nova-resting

[robertliguori]

I never had this problem because just the threat of Wandering Monsters was enough to get PCs moving along. There was always a clock ticking. The longer you spend in the dungeon, the more potential beasties will find you or find the horses and camp you set up on the surface...

Given that most dungeons are finite and closed, wandering monsters are a huge argument against trying to rush a dungeon. I mean, it's not like the monsters are appearing out of the aether, is it? Presumably, the orc patrol that stumbled across your resting place would have been attached to another encounter if you had found them normally. The fact that the monsters in the dungeon have enough patrols to keep up a threat of wandering monsters is an argument for tackling the dungeon through slow attrition rather than heroism.

 

[Jhaelen]

Given that most dungeons are finite and closed, wandering monsters are a huge argument against trying to rush a dungeon.

But that's purely a design decision. I only create two types of dungeons:
- extremely small ones that contain hardly more than a single encounter area.
- 'Underdark'-style dungeons with mile-long winding passages and city-sized caverns.

The former will never have random encounters, the latter is basically just another type of wilderness with lots of random encounters.

(Well, actually, I never truly use random encounters, I prepare encounters in advance and insert them when circumstances are appropriate.)

 

[Harr]

It would be more video-game-y if the people/items with quests had a ! floating above them, and a ? when you came to get your reward.

Heh I know that's a joke, but that's actually the idea brought to tabletop! The WANTED board in the inn has a list of whatever NPC's in the city has a quest to give the party. The idea is they don't have to walk around, they can go to the inn, look at the list, go straight to that person, hear the quest description and either accept the quest, reject it, or leave it for later. It accomplishes pretty much the same function as the exclamation marking does in the 3D environment of WoW: It helps with the random wandering around *if* you choose to use it.

Of course it doesn't mean they can't find a quest by accident while going shopping or by just randomly talking to someone, but I haven't tried to do that yet... will make a note of it.

- for instance, the false quest that leads you to the real quest inside. (eg, you have a quest to recover the widget, nothing very significant. But when you get inside the dungeon where the widget is you discover someone significant wounded in the dungeon who needs help getting out).

That's a great idea and one I will have to try to incorporate. I've consciously steered away from the "the guy that hired you is actually evil and betrays you!!!" type of things because it's just SO cliche they expect it at every turn... but something like what you describe sounds cool.

- Or the two quests that cross over (eg the iron golem is going to be used to stop the healer-girl getting to the front lines).

That is an *awesome* idea! Would never have thought of something like that... maybe an ally they make in a previous quest is at odds with an ally from another previous quest. I'm definitely doing this.

- And then you could even try the "you can do BOTH these quests at once if you are clever" scenario - eg, if you manage to recover the giant mount of doom you could ride him back in time to make it to the ball...

Hm, that sounds good, Id be worried though that I could pull it off. Obviously if I could it would be great though, but from past experience I've become leery of complexity of more than one thing happening at once. I actually have a big rule that [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waa2ucfgVgQ]you never split the party[/ame] that every player is aware about (and agrees with).

(EDIT -> Uuhhm, ok I didn't mean for that to embed like that (??), just wanted to make an anchor-text link sorry)

That's just a couple I've thought of. While it's good to get your players to recognise the adventure and work towards it, sometimes you need to throw them a curveball so that they will grow as players. But too many curveballs and that becomes the standard, so be careful.

No only the standard, but the game can get bogged down and collapse under its own weight, which has happened. Nevertheless, that sort of thing remains the 'horizon' that I work towards when I think about improving my DMing.