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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6577694" data-attributes="member: 82106">5 minute workday? This is not caused by 4e, its been a thing, witnessed by the existence since early days of the term '5 minute workday' since the first dungeon was drawn. It was a primary motivating factor for the invention of wandering monster checks. Frankly I thought 4e's inclusion of a 'short rest' during which some limited recovery could take place, plus milestones (rather lightweight, but a help) and just the whole design of surges etc was the best antidote the game has yet seen. I have had plenty of games where the party went on through 5 encounters in a row even without time pressure. At first, when they were new to 4e, they very frequently retreated immediately as soon as a character took damage, but they rapidly realized that being down a surge or two wasn't that big a deal in most cases, and that encounter powers could carry them through even if they had expended their dailies. By the accumulation of failures in an SC, which might be precipitated by doing things which require time. This creates tension directly through the SC mechanics AND obviates the need for the DM to do some highly subjective time cost assignments. Lets say the PCs stop for lunch on the theory that a well-fed warrior is a good warrior. Let the characters make a check, lets say Streetwise to find the quickest meal. Make the check, you get a quick meal and gain some energy for the hard trek ahead, one success. Fail the check and you're delayed excessively, one failure. Nobody needs to work out the exact times involved, there's plenty of drama as the precious fails mount up towards disaster, etc. Heck, in the time-keeping scenario the DM says "well, you took a whole half hour to get lunch" but where's the tension? The players may have a sense that this is poor, but they don't KNOW the deadline exactly to the minute, maybe half-an-hour isn't so bad, maybe its game over, they don't even know. At least my players have a sense of building tension.Back in the late 80's I conceived a campaign that would involve a war between civilization and the forces of chaos. I laid out maps in great detail with resolution down to every tiny hamlet and hilltop in the kingdom. I created a time line that was so exhaustive it explained the doings of every NPC of any consequence whatsoever, every fight and raid, every action, plot, etc of everyone. Everything was mapped out. I knew how much gold everyone had, how many men they could hire, how much militia every area could raise and exactly how long it would take, etc etc etc. I planned out all the different possible branchings of the plot, determined what the key events were, classified the various outcomes into general scenarios, and worked out the progress of EACH scenario from start to end. It was first of all a VAST amount of work, 1000's of hours of work. And it just wasn't that useful. It really wasn't. No amount of planning can anticipate what turn out to be the real critical factors in that kind of a setup unless the DM simply railroads the whole campaign onto his agenda and MAKES it come out that way. The players weren't interested in playing out large battles with miniatures, they invented entirely new and different agendas to pursue and simply reconstructed the narrative so thoroughly in the process that at best a lot of my preparation was only useful as backdrop, something I could have prepared with much less work. This kind of play doesn't exist more because it really doesn't appeal to any but a VERY select subset of DMs and players. It sounds nice IN THEORY, but it simply doesn't work. The more you push in that direction, the LESS well it works too. I had some fun doing the prep work for that campaign, and the actual campaign that evolved out of it was a good one, and I based several following campaigns in the same area and using the same characters and events, but I do not recommend this at all as the best way to make a campaign work.You missed his point entirely. The conflict that was set up was the PCs against the clock, with the stakes being their dramatic need to rescue the hostages. There is MOST CERTAINLY a strategy for them to follow, go fast, and there's a victory possible, rescuing the hostages, as well as a defeat. The problem is the PCs also face the obstacle of the bad guys, so they have to balance getting there in time with getting there in the best condition to win. There may even be other conditions unknown to the players. If they don't know the exact impact of each time expenditure they can't pursue a strategy, they can only guess. You can call the outcomes 'only better or worse results' but what we're discussing is how do the players know which choices are better or worse? I think what you'll find is that the really exciting games take drama much more into account.I don't think anyone is saying that the left/right choice is never significant and they're just always going to re-arrange things. It can be quite significant, and it can be quite significant in 4e as much as any other edition. It just doesn't HAVE to be. In OD&D it would be virtually inconceivable for that choice not to be fraught with significance at various levels. The dungeon map was the central focus of the entire game. Heck, parties existed AS MAPS IME of that era of play, if you had the map you were the party! There was always the various informational spells too, as Pemerton noted the other day. This can all be done in 4e, though you probably don't want to include certain traditional aspects like combat every 3 rooms with a room full of monsters.</blockquote>

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