Reframing the 15 min day

[Celebrim]

...15 minute workday is a misnomer, most of the time it was the 5 room shuffle.

Now that I can fully agree with. Yes, indeed, the '15 minute workday' is mostly a product of play style, but what you call the '5 room shuffle' is pretty much built into D&D.

To be more precise, it's really the '5 encounter area shuffle'. The term '5 room shuffle' applies to a particular sort of 'old school' design that is probably even more simplistic than actual 'old school' design ever was. More generally, about 5 encounter areas - meaning some grouping containing collectively the equivalent of a challenge - is about all that a D&D party can handle without a rest.

But that's pretty much always been true. That was pretty much true of 1st edition too. By the time you handle 5 encounter areas, some of which might consist of guards converging from 3-4 nearby rooms, and explore a few 'empty' rooms (without significant challenges), solve a puzzle, put some clues together, and maybe do some roleplaying you are going to be looking for somewhere to hole up. You've also probably had a fairly long and hopefully satisfying session.

The thing is, I'd be really surprised that for all the changes 4E does much better than that. I expect that in 4E you'll be doing '5 room shuffles' too. I'm not sure what the limiting factor will be, whether hit points or your big per day abilities, or something else, or some combination, but I would bet that there will be limiting factors such that even if you want to push on, it won't be advisable to do so.

And would you really want it to? I mean, if you can do much more than about 5 encounter areas without a rest, 1st to 30th level will take all of about 4 weeks game time.

 

[hong]

And would you really want it to? I mean, if you can do much more than about 5 encounter areas without a rest, 1st to 30th level will take all of about 4 weeks game time.

This is a byproduct of D&D failing to keep track of bodily fluids.

 

[hong]

No, the heart of the problem is hit points.

No, the heart of the problem is a system that breaks down if you use the 15-minute day, namely the 4 encounters/day paradigm. To avoid the system breaking down, you have to design encounters around it, and this results in said encounters being boring. Alternatively, you accept that the system breaks down, and this results in some classes outshining the others.

So long as you have hit points, you run the risk of '15 minute adventuring days'.

The 15 minute adventuring day occurs whenever:

a) The players achieve a certain level of system mastery.
b) The players are under no time pressure.
c) The players are willing to accept the 'gamist/metagamey' feeling that the '15 minute adventuring day' generates.

You forgot d) The players are unwilling to take the gamist/metagame chance that the DM will not punish them for failing to dispose of their enemies as quickly/efficiently as possible.

As long as you have hit points, players with sufficient system mastery and no time pressure will pretty much always tend toward a pattern of 'fight/rest/fight/rest/fight/rest'. If you shorten the rest period, you end up with a different label, but you don't end up with a different pattern of play.

And this is not a problem if each fight is interesting, and the system still works.