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

[Elf Witch]

We made it through all three caves in three days.

Some of them were tough fights and healing seems to be something that needs to be addressed.

We didn't have any 15 minute day. The players used a lot of tactics like scouting and stopping any kind of reinforcements from arriving.

I have a question for those of you who are changing things to me that would seem to defeat the whole idea of a play test. I would think that you don't get as good a view if you don't run it as RAW.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Actually, no, that's not sweet at all. The argument has never been that the majority of games and tables experience a 5 minute work day or a 15 minute adventuring day or whatever. When you get a 30% ratio of screw-ups you've got a system failure.

What's sweet is that we're getting actual playtest reports, rather than pointless game theory wonkery. Actual factual information helps us to actually address the actual problem much more than theoretical blahblah does (which is what 80% of the threads on this topic are currently).

For the purposes of a playtest, hearing what went wrong is frickin' golden, because it lets you address that problem.

. About 40% of party resources disappeared in less than 8 rounds of combat. 8 rounds * 6 seconds per round = 48 seconds.

They then thought to themselves, "Hey, another one of those and we might die," and noted that they had no pressing need to get themselves killed, so they decided they wanted to take an extended rest.

To which I had to reply (and I paraphrase), "Come on guys, it's just a play-test. If you die its good data and you're not married to these characters anyway." Then they decided to go along.

Most of the people in my group like to win at games. Maybe one or two are super-paranoid because they played a lot of NetHack. Regardless, as gamers they are not the sort of people to have their party die because they took an unnecessary risk for 0 reward.

See, info like that makes me excited to see what might be done to improve the experience.

They rested because they felt challenged -- they were afraid of being killed in the next encounter. This is generally a good thing. You DO want a party to rest when it is afraid it might not be able to take on the very next encounter -- that is, really, exactly when they should rest! One encounter that sucks up 40% of your resources in 8 rounds is a pretty big, pretty tough encounter, I think!

So, to drill down a bit, I wonder what it was about that experience that wasn't awesome for you. Did it not go how you expected? Do you think your party got off too easily? Do you think they should've maybe had a more gradual build up to a big confrontation before a rest?

It seems like you think a better reward would've helped motivate your PC's a bit more. How do you think they might react if, say, the group of monsters they fight escapes from the caves and takes the treasure therein with them while they sleep? Might this motivate them to press on to get the reward?

If it is true about some of the people experiencing the 15MAD in 5e that they have followed a sort of boom-and-bust cycle, I wonder what the problem is that lies underneath that. It might be that some DMs want to give PC's more HP at early levels to counteract the higher lethality of the game, since that seems to be the big trigger for resting mentioned here. Hmm...

 

[mlund]

What's sweet is that we're getting actual playtest reports, rather than pointless game theory wonkery. Actual factual information helps us to actually address the actual problem much more than theoretical blahblah does (which is what 80% of the threads on this topic are currently).

OK, I see what you mean.

I disagree with a dismissive attitude towards game theory wonkery, though. You have to have in game theory, too. I've seen too many games fail, decline, or simply never live up to expectations because it took years for players to finally articulate clearly what the problem was to others - and it's always been some sort of game theory issue at the root.

They rested because they felt challenged -- they were afraid of being killed in the next encounter. This is generally a good thing.

Yes and no.

Most encounters should be challenging. The risk of failure is the reason why people play games with randomization. The issue is the ratio of risk-to-reward and cost-to-benefit - not the mere existence of challenge or risk.

One encounter that sucks up 40% of your resources in 8 rounds is a pretty big, pretty tough encounter, I think!

Eh, it probably has a bit to do with fragility at that level and some system adjustment more than anything else. 8 rounds of combat in Caverns flew by compared to most 3E and 4E experiences I've seen.

So, to drill down a bit, I wonder what it was about that experience that wasn't awesome for you.

The general disappointment of the players was the first part.

They were not amused with the idea that in-game they'd gotten about 30 feet into the Caves and spent less time than a commercial break for television in what they considered to be active adventuring before they had to step back and consider an 8-hour nap.

The fact that when they calmly weighed their options there was no reason to accept the increased risks. No carrots. No sticks.

Did it not go how you expected? Do you think your party got off too easily? Do you think they should've maybe had a more gradual build up to a big confrontation before a rest?

Having a better narrative flow would've been nice, certainly. Having anything positive dangling out there so the players wouldn't have felt like idiots for incurring more risk would've been nice.

It seems like you think a better reward would've helped motivate your PC's a bit more. How do you think they might react if, say, the group of monsters they fight escapes from the caves and takes the treasure therein with them while they sleep? Might this motivate them to press on to get the reward?

No. It would invite discontent and the perception that I was trying to punish them with my own artificial constructs for not playing the game the way I wanted them to.

In fact I did have the Kobolds bug out after they rested (later, after they killed the chieftain). The Kobolds took everything of value they could and left traps behind. The players got the primary loot from the chieftain, though, so there wasn't too much grumbling.

Plus they weren't entirely enthused with the idea of having to kill any kobold matrons and pups in the common area anyway.

It might be that some DMs want to give PC's more HP at early levels to counteract the higher lethality of the game, since that seems to be the big trigger for resting mentioned here. Hmm...

Actually, I think that's questionable data since we're dealing with level 1 characters anyway. When you have 2 spells a day and blow 50% of your spells in a single fight its hard to call that "going nova." When you have 4 spells at each 3rd, 2nd, and 1st level and you burn through half of them in a single go you've got a very different problem.

A party that's behavior is to drop 2x fireball, 1x haste, 3x cure serious wounds, and then camp out because the Cleric and Wizard have burned most of their meaningful juice for the day after the first encounter is a different kettle of fish than a bunch of umpteen HP characters who are dying after two lucky dagger throws from some kobolds.

So, to a real extent zooming down on a single instance of low-level play sometimes isn't as helpful to the big-picture view as surveying a broad experience across various levels of play.

- Marty Lund

 

[I'm A Banana]

Most encounters should be challenging. The risk of failure is the reason why people play games with randomization. The issue is the ratio of risk-to-reward and cost-to-benefit - not the mere existence of challenge or risk.

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 wonder if each encounter might've consumed only, say, 10% or 20% of your party's resources, and if you had them more spaced out (so the party would go through two or four relatively easy encounters, rather than 1 massive one), if that might've felt a bit less like a boom-and-bust, and if the party's psychology would've changed from: "Holy mother! Nearly half our stuff is gone after one fight, we need to retreat!" to "Well, if it's like the last few, we can probably handle it!"

...and THEN, you hit them with the big guns.

So rather than every encounter being a challenge, only the LAST encounter of the day is. The rest might involve a few lucky hits or a few cast spells, but they heavily favor the party.

FWIW, this very closely resembles the three-act dramatic structure. The heroes mostly succeed at what they do. The climax only really happens once.

Eh, it probably has a bit to do with fragility at that level and some system adjustment more than anything else. 8 rounds of combat in Caverns flew by compared to most 3E and 4E experiences I've seen.

Fragility I totally buy. I think some folks want to return to very fragile first-level characters, and others aren't going to like the playstyle that results from that. Fortunately, it's easy to fix in either way, by just adding or subtracting HP's.

The general disappointment of the players was the first part.

They were not amused with the idea that in-game they'd gotten about 30 feet into the Caves and spent less time than a commercial break for television in what they considered to be active adventuring before they had to step back and consider an 8-hour nap.

The fact that when they calmly weighed their options there was no reason to accept the increased risks. No carrots. No sticks.

Yeah, again, I'm seeing evidence that a smaller series of less deadly encounters (possibly ending with a big fight!) might have worked better for your group. It definitely seems like the problem was on the adventure design side of things.

I wonder if your group might've fared better going room-by-room...hmm....

The treasure apparently wasn't enough of a carrot, which matches my experience pretty closely, actually (the module as it's written doesn't come with a town and it's kind of hard to actually change equipment or spend gold in any way, even if you DM-handwave it). And the daily rest wasn't enough of a stick, which ALSO matches my experience (I'm a big advocate for a weekly rest).

No. It would invite discontent and the perception that I was trying to punish them with my own artificial constructs for not playing the game the way I wanted them to.

That's really interesting to me because it's very different from any group I've been a part of. I wonder what your party might expect to have happen in the eight hours after they tried to take the treasure...

Just to show the other side of it, most groups I've been a part of would probably give me a raised eyebrow and a sarcastic remark if I just had intelligent monsters abandon all that lovely treasure and just bug out (or, worse, just stay there as if nothing happened!).

I wonder if easier encounters wouldn't help that, too. If your group is a play-to-win type, they might feel that they have more agency in the situation if most encounters are not potentially deadly, making the decision of "Can I take one more encounter?" a little more strategic than it would be in a game where most encounters risk life and limb.

Actually, I think that's questionable data since we're dealing with level 1 characters anyway. When you have 2 spells a day and blow 50% of your spells in a single fight its hard to call that "going nova." When you have 4 spells at each 3rd, 2nd, and 1st level and you burn through half of them in a single go you've got a very different problem.

If we can figure out the main cause and effect relationships at 1st level, all we have to do is prevent higher levels from hurting it.

It's starting to seem that a big cause of 5e's 15MAD that we can see is effectively a matter of how tough encounters are. A chunk of people are hitting encounters that sap a lot of their HP, and find that having to run away and rest afterwards is kind of sudden and jarring and disruptive, which makes a lot of sense to me. This seems to me to be kind of an adventure-design problem, possibly related to the Caves of Chaos having no obvious "introduction" (there's the kobold caves, but nothing in the adventure makes you go there first) that sets the pace up front.

Hmmm.

I'm thinking a LOT differently about this than I was a few days ago! So keep it comin'!

 

[CM]

[MENTION=18340]CM[/MENTION]

Sounds frustrating (and boring) but I am interested what your vote was.

The Caves of Chaos could turn out that way, but it doesn't have to. I know I feared this too as a GM and took a lot of prep steps to change things up. I have also seen a lot of threads on interesting things players did too (rather than just try and mass fight their way through every cave).

I won't go into specifics (I have a thread called "Our 5 Session Playtest" and with some tools and options for DMs to make the experience a little more interesting). Cheers.

I voted "yes" to experiencing the 15 minute adventure day.

I also don't feel that being a playtest, it was my responsibility to "fix" the adventure provided, and believe that doing so might unintentionally color the players' experience. Instead I ran it as faithfully as possible to the text provided.

If that results in a subpar experience, well, I feel they should have provided a better adventure...

 

[mlund]

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.

My friends are playing a game. For it to capture their dramatic and competitive interests there must always be a possibility of failure and success.

It doesn't have to be a statistically significant chance of failure all the time, but they appreciate the fact that if their character wanders off alone naked into a den of ravenous, crazed weasels they could get eaten. It makes the fact that they chose to wear armor, pick combat tactics, and work as a team seem meaningful to them.

That doesn't mean challenges are statistically significant risk to TPK. It just means that if they roll badly, plan poorly, and execute poorly they feel like things are dangerous for their characters.

Of course, being openly encouraged by the game system to just take a nap and go back to square one directly undermines this for them.

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.

The challenge in most cases is simply keeping as many resources as you can preserve and avoiding unnecessary situations where things could snow-ball (cascade character failure after the healer goes down, etc.).

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.

Ah, there in lies the rub. I, the dictatorial DM, will decide when and where their adventuring day ends. After a few "dangerous" encounters (I'm still confused as to where the "danger" is if there's not risk involved) have been met by off-loading daily renewable resources the players head for the exits - because their characters have no reason to take unnecessary risks.

I wonder if each encounter might've consumed only, say, 10% or 20% of your party's resources, and if you had them more spaced out (so the party would go through two or four relatively easy encounters, rather than 1 massive one), if that might've felt a bit less like a boom-and-bust, and if the party's psychology would've changed from: "Holy mother! Nearly half our stuff is gone after one fight, we need to retreat!" to "Well, if it's like the last few, we can probably handle it!"

I'm not really interested in overlooking design flaws just because I can paper over them myself. The rules give incentive to rest. The module puts a slew of rats 20' next to a bunch of kobold guards deliberately monitoring the pit-trap the party just fell into. The monster entry for both even says that they respond to the pit activating and fall upon the characters. They chew threw a bunch of party resources and the players want to pack up and go home.

If that's not supposed to happen then the game is doing it wrong. Yes, I can fix it. No, that doesn't make it OK.

That's really interesting to me because it's very different from any group I've been a part of. I wonder what your party might expect to have happen in the eight hours after they tried to take the treasure...

One of two things:

1.) Exactly what happened 8 hours before they tried it. (I mean, it's a dungeon crawl. Nobody questions dungeon ecology.)

2.) So much defensive mobilization and organization that they might as well stay home. (I mean, it's a war-zone. Once you've lost the element of surprise your spec-ops is doomed.)

Which goes back to the old Combat As Sport vs. Combat As War chestnut, I suppose.

Just to show the other side of it, most groups I've been a part of would probably give me a raised eyebrow and a sarcastic remark if I just had intelligent monsters abandon all that lovely treasure and just bug out (or, worse, just stay there as if nothing happened!).

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.

If your group is a play-to-win type, they might feel that they have more agency in the situation if most encounters are not potentially deadly, making the decision of "Can I take one more encounter?" a little more strategic than it would be in a game where most encounters risk life and limb.

The best solution, IMO, is for competing one more encounter today to have more value than completing one more encounter tomorrow, and then they weigh the perceived risk vs. the perceived reward.

What does it cost a player to rest their character if the DM isn't inventing sticks to punish them with? They don't lose time in the real world. What does it gain them if they press on? Nothing, currently.

If we can figure out the main cause and effect relationships at 1st level, all we have to do is prevent higher levels from hurting it.

I disagree. To some extent the 15MAD is more tolerated at low levels because fragility and scarcity are plainly built into the system. The 15MAD started to wear thin in play-groups I experienced in 3E somewhere around level 3-5. It's a matter of resource-management and when your wizard can only spend his daily spells in 50% increments everyone understands the variance is going to be high.

I also don't feel that being a playtest, it was my responsibility to "fix" the adventure provided, and believe that doing so might unintentionally color the players' experience. Instead I ran it as faithfully as possible to the text provided.

If that results in a subpar experience, well, I feel they should have provided a better adventure...

Amen.

The same can be said in macro for the rules system itself. DM's can paper over blast-rest-blast as much as they want, it doesn't change that the system has a mechanical incentive problem that needed to be papered over ad hoc.

- Marty Lund

 

[n00bdragon]

I know my groups haven't encountered that, but I've been very explicit about the "If you let them escape, they will get reinforcements, and this will snowball and maybe decimate you," nature of the adventure, basically just telling them that (they're playing trained adventurers, after all!). In my groups, this has lead to a lot of careful play, blocking off exits, using scouts, and luring out hostiles. It sounds like maybe that playstyle could be reinforced a bit more, to help overcome the snowball tendency? Or maybe the designers should probably face up to the idea that 15 goblins over 3 encounters (or whatever) does not have equal pacing to 15 goblins in 1 encounter, and try to make the latter a bit more dynamic somehow

The problems are several-fold:
1. It's left entirely up to the DM what the circumstances of the encounter are such as how far away you are when you're allowed to notice the monsters, monster positioning, etc. At least in my game monsters encountered us rather than the other way around. You walk into the room and then suddenly a goblin patrol enters from the west and the south and the north all at the same time. You can chalk this up to crummy DMing but the system deserves some blame for not giving any guidance on this at all and making it possible in the first place.
2. There's no effective way to keep monsters from running away. The lack of AoOs makes it so that monsters can simply double move away from you and you must double move to keep up losing any hope of killing them before they find friends. My group followed an ogre this way for almost ten rounds (with the wizard frantically trying to cast Ray of Frost on it and getting bad luck on the rolls, but the fact that the only solution to this problem is a wizard spell really burns my bacon) and he still managed to find a group of orcs to hide behind. We finally just ended up killing the orcs because the DM was tired of playing. We had followed goblins to more goblins, then another goblin to the ogre, then the ogre to the orcs, then the orcs finally shrugged and fought to the death.
3. Combat just isn't fun. There's nothing to do. No interesting choices to make. There isn't a game to play aside from just making stuff up and asking the DM if you can do whatever, and since we were doing a playtest to test the game and the rules and not play Magical Tea Party we were all against that. Many will shrug this off as us just being uncreative but a good game should be entertaining on its own and a springboard that makes you curious to try things. Nothing in the rules of the playtest made us particularly curious or interested in trying anything.

 

[Connorsrpg]

I certainly do not disagree with those calling the adventure poor as it was presented. I am sure they simply used it so you had a bunch of enemies to try out the PCs powers on.

Don't read too much into the play this adventure as RAW. Most of the GM advice (and the part we locked onto) was playtesting to see if this game would suit our 'play style' - so we placed the caves into a setting we have used and ran it for 5 sessions straight using all the tips and tricks we have learnt over the many years of playing.

I did not want to 'dumb down our game' to make sure we were playtesting the 'adventure' right. We just wanted to playtest the rules and the character options. That to me doesn't require adhering to the exact 'encounters' set out in the adventure. I did all I could to make the basic sandbox of the Caves of Chaos interesting for our group...and it worked...and we got to see how the core rules and charater powers worked.

I am sure all the stuff talked about will be in the future DM stuff. Also, more thought-through adventures will appear.

Anyway, it worked with our style. We did have some issues, such as encouraging full hp healing, but fortunately my players didn't choose to just rest. But more likely, like another player here, we had extra PCs too. I am sure all styles and groups with different make up can provide meaningful feedback.

I was also just adding options that the OP asked for too BTW. That is what we did. It worked for us

 

[SteveC]

Our first session we did: after the first combat, the group said "wait, that's all we can do in a day?" and immediately went to camp.

At that point, they understood the radical shift that had happened from 4E and knew they were only going to get to use their spells very rarely, unless they wanted to constantly camp. They adapted, but our playtest notes strongly indicated a lack of interest in melee basic attacks and cantrips for 90% of the workday.

Our grognards assured them that this was pretty good, since in his day, you got all of one spell in a day as a wizard, and nothing at all until 3rd level as a cleric!

 

[Connorsrpg]

Oh and for the record, just b/c I haven't experienced the 15 min work day it does not mean I am against bringing in some rules to deal with the fact it does happen.

I loved the Action Point idea of 4E and the Bennies of SW. (In fact we have Bennies/APs of different colours that do different things - that really encouraged people to push on).

On the flip side I did not like the generous, rest and restore ALL HPs either. That too encourages resting.

I certainly am not saying I have the answers. I merely posted what we did as asked to (and they have worked for us over all editions). In my mind a lot of GM advice will go a long way to fixing this, as will a general buy in of 'playstyle' by players, but I also agree, there needs to be some rules incentive to continue too (How is that - all said and I didn't even fall ).