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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8684608" data-attributes="member: 6796468">Here's what I've learned:Short and Long Rests should take exactly how much time you need them to take as a DM/Narrator, rather than a pre-specified fixed quantity of time based on a person who wrote a book of rules that you are explicitly encouraged to change or discard to best fit your personal game.And you should let players know this during Session 0.Because while the "Five Minute Workday" can be somewhat lessened by short rests, it can also be exacerbated by short rests. But it can also be -ruined- by rests in general.Adventures move at the speed of plot. And for some adventures that means weeks of effort but for others it means a mad dash through the villain's castle, and short rests/long rests are still part of the common game-cycle even when you're running fairly short narrative duration adventures where taking an 8 hour break in the middle of hostage negotiations to get some shut eye really isn't an option.Isn't that right, Harry?<img src="https://tvovermind.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/ellis-01.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />If you want your party to face 3 encounters before they can get a short rest in, give them a short rest after the third encounter unless they come up with some clever way to finagle a short rest outside of your plans (player agency is still a thing), but you can frame a short rest as an option with description of a scene or situation... and then have it take 5 minutes.Or 15 minutes.Or 3 hours.Depending entirely on how you want your story's plot to unfold.Same thing with long rests. "As you take a breather behind the locked door you lock eyes with other members of your party and realize that this is it, this is the time to dig deep. There's no turning back and it's time to bring all your might to bear. You gain the benefits of a long rest."Because whether it takes 6 seconds or 6 days is in the end largely irrelevant outside of the shared narrative you're creating with your players.Worried your party is gonna blow all their power on a single encounter, take a rest, and then do it again? Chain encounters. Have the baddies wonder what happened to their friends and interrupt. Have the noise of killing the evil vizier draw the attention of cutthroats or his allies or the guard... Have utterly common NPCs scream in fear and shock when they witness an act of gruesome violence, then flee, screaming for help."You're punishing the players!" Sure, you could see it that way. Mostly I'm reminding them through the shared narrative not to play their characters as bundles of game-mechanics rather than characters to inhabit. That blowing all their resources in one shot and expecting to be rewarded for their gamist ingenuity won't go well. Or, at least... not all the time.</blockquote>

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