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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8061132" data-attributes="member: 72555">(a) of course adventures not plotted for Gritty rests don't plot well with Gritty rests.(b) Does the Curse of Strahd plot plan for PC failure?To go with Gritty rests, you should structure your plot around it.Start encounter building from the top down.Chapter: A chapter is the time between long rests.  Chapters have plot-pressure at the scale of days or weeks; if players ignore the contents of a chapter for 2-7 days, bad things (tm) happen.  A Chapter should have 2-4 Scenes of varying difficulty.Scene: A scene is the time between short rests.  Scenes have plot-pressure on the scale of hours or days.  If players ignore the contents of a scene for 2 - 24 hours, bad things (tm) happen.  A Scene should have 1-5 Encounters of varying difficulty.Encounter: An encounter is something that has time pressure over seconds to 10s of minutes.  Combat encounters can be built using the various encounter building tools, and are measured as easy (1 point), medium (2 points), hard (3 points) or deadly (4 points).  Above-deadly can also exist, below-easy is fluff.A typical Scene has 4 points of Encounters in it, but can vary from 3 to 6 or more.---Now, instead of building your adventure as a bunch of encounters, build it as a bunch of chapters.  Each chapter is built as a bunch of scenes (some mutually exclusive), and each scene as a bunch of encounters.Players are free to start a scene and abort, but for each encounter/scene/chapter there are consequences for players "losing" the plot-unit (ie, letting the thing they might want to interfere with happen).Having more possible scenes than players can reasonably deal with in a chapter, or more chapters than the players can reasonably deal with in an adventure, is good.  It means you have to be serious about the "losing" consequences.  "Losing" doesn't have to mean, and shouldn't mean, "game over, players lose", but rather that the world changes in ways that the PCs might have motivation to avoid."Winning" does the opposite; you should have an idea what the PCs get out of defeating a Chapter, Scene or Encounter.  What "progress" occurs.Random encounters/scenes/etc are possible.  But even then, there are consequences to "winning" or "losing"  them.  If they are attacked by bandits, and they flee, what happens world-story wise in the future (the "loss" path), compared to defeating them, tracking them down and clearing their hideout (a "win" path)?  Or if they recruit the bandits, what does that look like (another "win" path)?---This structure can be applied to single-day chapters and single-hour scenes.  But I find those kind of stories are harder to think about (to me), and are crazy frantic, and really don't work for any kind of wilderness exploration.With overnight resets, all chapters have to be frantic single-day ones.  With gritty week-long resets, a chapter where danger and risk happens every 2-4 days can go on for months without a reset.PCs who get exhausted are free to take a week off, but you'll have planned consequences for it, and it won't "break the plot".  It will be part of how the plot develops.The idea of having "too much stuff to do" and setbacks when the players choose not to address a problem and rather rest also means your adventure can adapt to different degrees of PC optimization.The same adventure can be one of constant, frantic retreat of refugees from onrushing hordes, as PCs run out of resources and rest, letting the "lose" conditions go; or a story about rallying the populance into resisting and pushing back a retreating horde, as they knock off win after win.</blockquote>

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