D&D 5E [Poll] 15 Minute Adventuring Day, 5e, and You

[pemerton]

I don't think I would call it no reward. My players are definitely feeling the reward from adventuring in the Caves of Chaos. They're gotten two magic weapons already and some other valuables after two game days of adventuring and tangling with orcs.

But would they lose those XP and treasure if they rested?

To put it another way - if your players choose to have their PCs rest, are you going to decline to run excititng, rewarding scenarios for them?

If the answer is no, then the 15 minute day has cost them nothing at that metagame level.

If the answer is yes, then isn't that a bit weird? Isn't the point of fantasy RPGing to participate in exciting, rewarding scenarios?

you generally get the same treasure and XP by returning the next morning, except in the rare case that the monsters flee their lair during the night

Even then, isn't there a different adventure to go on in the next session?

How many groups are playing long sessions with no XP awarded as the PCs trudge from empty cave to empty cave learning that everyone has fled during the night? That doesn't sound like a very interesting session to me/

My players were more disappointed in the lost of XP really, but either resource is always just around the corner anyway. It isn't like they need to meet a quota on Kobold skulls to pay their rent.

That sounds right. As long as their are players and a GM, there should be no shortage of scenarios to play through.

This is why I'm a little dubious about using XP and treasure to regulate adventure pacing.

 

[pemerton]

The first sentence is interesting to me, because it implies that you're looking for a challenge -- a risk of TPK, or at least permanent character death -- in most encounters.

The thing with that is that it really encourages resting after every encounter. If any encounter might kill you, it makes sense to rest after every encounter: the second one is going to carry an EVEN BIGGER risk of death than the last one, which was already challenging!

If you'd like a day to last more than a single encounter (which is by no means something that everyone necessarily wants!), I think it might help to embrace the idea that most encounters will not be a significant challenge. Rather, only the final encounter in a day will be a significant challenge. The other encounters serve as rising action: dangerous and troublesome, but probably not deadly.

I'm not sure what it means, in D&D, for a combat to be dangerous but not deadly. In the absence of a wound system, if it's not (potentially) deadly than it's not dangerous - you mark off the lost hit points and continue on your way.

Not only is it not dangerous, but it may not even be troublesome. I mean, perhaps the PCs fight hard to win, and so it's troublesome in the fiction, but if at the table all the players are doing is rolling to hit and damage dice for a few rounds, that sounds straightforward rather than troublesome.

4e has particular mechancial responses to these issues - the need to make decisions about power usage even in easy encounters makes them "troublesome" - ie requiring of engaged thought and effort from the players - even if the PCs aren't in much danger. And the short rest/healing surge mechanics mean that you can run every encounter as potentially deadly if you like without limiting the PCs to one encounter per rest - because with a short rest they get all their hp back, at least until they run out of surges.

Obviously D&Dnext won't be using these techniques - some classes will not have a sophisticated decision-structure in combat, and the healer's kit/HD mechanic does not deliver the same per-encounter hp replenishment as in 4e.

But what is it's technique for making encounters that are not significant challenges nevertheless interesting?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

But what is it's technique for making encounters that are not significant challenges nevertheless interesting?

I suspect the answer may look like this:

1. The encounter will be over quickly in real-time, so it doesn't need to be that much more interesting then, say then dealing with a large walls for the part would be. (a bunch of strength check, someone throws a rope, and maybe someone casts a spell.)
2. The encounter matters since it will cost some resources for long-term "operational" play, so it is interesting in that regard.

2) I find a bit flat, not that I am against operational play, but 4E had both tense encounters and management of daily resources as well. 1 is something that 4E didn't really allow, unless you had encounters against 8 Minions of your level or lower (which falls basically outside the range of recommended encounter difficulties).


Personally, for operational play, I a fond of ideas that have even longer-term resources than daily spells.

 

[pemerton]

I suspect the answer may look like this:

1. The encounter will be over quickly in real-time, so it doesn't need to be that much more interesting then, say then dealing with a large walls for the part would be. (a bunch of strength check, someone throws a rope, and maybe someone casts a spell.)
2. The encounter matters since it will cost some resources for long-term "operational" play, so it is interesting in that regard.

OK.

That seems reasonably playstyle specific, but maybe that's just me.

 

[billd91]

But would they lose those XP and treasure if they rested?

To put it another way - if your players choose to have their PCs rest, are you going to decline to run excititng, rewarding scenarios for them?

If the answer is no, then the 15 minute day has cost them nothing at that metagame level.

If the answer is yes, then isn't that a bit weird? Isn't the point of fantasy RPGing to participate in exciting, rewarding scenarios?

Even then, isn't there a different adventure to go on in the next session?

<snip>

That sounds right. As long as their are players and a GM, there should be no shortage of scenarios to play through.

Could they lose treasure and XP? In the short term, yes, any treasure and XP associated with the current situation. In the long term, depends on how long they want to keep playing the campaign with those characters. That, in turn, could be affected by other in-game considerations that may flow from resting when they really needed to keep up the tempo.

Given that we have many pleasant ways to spend our time, whether watching good movies or playing games we find fun (including board and card games), I don't find the metagame motivations of more adventures even if the current one fails to be particularly compelling. We'd find something fun to do anyway, even if that means putting aside the D&D campaign for a while.

 

[pemerton]

Could they lose treasure and XP? In the short term, yes, any treasure and XP associated with the current situation. In the long term, depends on how long they want to keep playing the campaign with those characters. That, in turn, could be affected by other in-game considerations that may flow from resting when they really needed to keep up the tempo.

Given that we have many pleasant ways to spend our time, whether watching good movies or playing games we find fun (including board and card games), I don't find the metagame motivations of more adventures even if the current one fails to be particularly compelling. We'd find something fun to do anyway, even if that means putting aside the D&D campaign for a while.

I'm not entirely I sure I follow this - are you saying that if there's a TPK because the players decided to have their PCs push on, or if there's no adventuring for the PCs still to do because the NPCs, treasure etc all disappeared overnight while the PCs rested, then the solution is to end the campaign and have the group spend its evenings on other recreational pursuits?

 

[billd91]

I'm not entirely I sure I follow this - are you saying that if there's a TPK because the players decided to have their PCs push on, or if there's no adventuring for the PCs still to do because the NPCs, treasure etc all disappeared overnight while the PCs rested, then the solution is to end the campaign and have the group spend its evenings on other recreational pursuits?

Not even close. What I'm saying is that the metagame motivations - that we'll be able to go on more adventures and gain more loot - isn't interesting since the metagame motivation that "we'll have fun doing something" applies to a whole lot of activities we may choose to do. What's interesting to me, since this is an RPG and we're in the middle of a campaign with a particular set of characters with a particular short term goal, is "how will taking a rest affect our ability to achieve that goal?" If it completely screws it, then that's something I need to take into account when playing my character and either press on to achieve the goal or live with not achieving the goal.