Erechel
Explorer
Same here. Except "a couple years" for me is 35 years.
Also Erechel, where does it say in the book that encounters are designed around 6-8 per game session?
The book doesn't say that. They throw the Adventuring Day construct, which is a narrative construct, and it is designed to build tension over an adventure or session. It really doesn't matter how much time in-game it is: this is why having "adventuring days" of a week doesn't alter the core concept of adventuring days. The in-game time isn't really the issue, but it is the adventuring day itself. You can say that an adventuring day lasts:
*Gritty realism = 1 week in fiction time
*Default = 24 hours in fiction time
*Epic Heroism= about 3 hours in fiction time
And those are all adventuring days. It doesn't matter, really. And all that could be structured by session as a base, no matter how much time it really passes in fiction time. What I'm saying is that an Adventuring Day, as a narrative construct, should be oriented to maximize tension in an adventure. And that an adventure is at the most efficient if it happens in a single session, because you could build tension to reach a climax of the session. And that it is difficult to build any type of climax in a single session if you are in the middle of an adventuring day, and so your characters are at their strongest point. You hardly could put a boss fight in the middle of an adventuring day, being it noon or wednesday in fiction time. If you do, it would be an easier fight, and many players will perceive it as not a challenge at all, thus no a real climax of the session. This isn't to say that several small stories could not build tension, or that you could not use an adventuring day in three or more sessions (although better you have a lot of regularity and compromise, as problems may arise, or a lot of memory), but I don't think that it is advisable. Building a climax only 1 every three sessions? It sounds unsatisfying, as the real "session" (let's say, the "episode") is divided in three or more weeks. It's like to see a single episode of a TV show divided in three weeks.
Also 35 years of experience isn't valid with an "adventuring day", as it is a construct from 5e, although based on earlier concepts. It surely helps to know the basics of GM narrative, hence my own "curriculum". And having cliffhangers isn't an issue, maybe I'm expressing myself wrong, and I'm not saying what I want to say (it is a little difficult to write in English for me), but having meaningless cliffhangers is. A meaningless cliffhanger is one in which there isn't anything at stake. Its building suspense where it don't really is any. That becomes dull easily. But a cliffhanger isn't the opposite of building a session climax; you could build (as I've said earlier) a cliffhanger after building a climax, EG adding a twist, but surely you have to build a climax in a single session. It's difficultier if the game structure builds in a base of 3 sessions per adventuring day, which isn't at all what it does; as you said it doesn't assume a session and that's the core problem: D&D doesn't know what to do with a given session. It doesn't provide a base model to modify, unless you understand (as I do) that the Adventuring Day = Session. Then you could work on.