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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remus Lupin" data-source="post: 5805739" data-attributes="member: 12760">That's helpful to me, and clarifies for me where the "15 minute day" problem comes from, namely the extended dungeon crawl. I agree that here it can be a problem for precisely the reason the article mentions (and of course now all the references to the caves of chaos are clicking into place for me as well!).While I played some dungeon crawls when I was younger, I think that my baseline dungeon crawl experience was running "Sunless Citadel" with 3e first came out. There is certainly a lot of temptation for 15 MAD tactics in that dungeon, particularly early on and throughout the first level, because encounters with the kobolds and goblins can lead to quick exhaustion of resources. Of course, the module also offers possibilities to role-play at least some of that (and gave us all the iconic kobold minion, Meepo!)But I pressed my players not to 15 MAD it by reminding them repeatedly that they were on a rescue mission. While it was eventually necessary for them to rest up, heal and refresh spells, as the DM, I was responsible for ensuring that the momentum of the game was appropriate both to the story being told and the abilities of the characters. So while I'd remind them that they were on a rescue mission, I also recognized that rest was both necessary and possible in the citadel and tried to make allowances.But as with a lot of narratives, time is flexible in an RP situation. So while the bulk of your at table time might be spent on a combat with the kobolds or a troll, a lot of the actual "in game" time is spent checking for traps, exploring hallways, opening chests, etc. Since the encounters feel so central, it seems like it's all you do unless the DM makes an effort to give life to the rest of your adventuring experience, in which case, your 15 MAD may be more like a 5-6 hour adventuring day. Still short, perhaps, compared to what you might otherwise do in real life, but not as brief as its often made out.Also, I think it's important to remind players that they don't HAVE  come come at every encounter at full power. In fact the rules are constructed in such a way that there's an assumption that an average party at an appropriate EL will use a specific portion of its resources per encounter. So you ought to be able to gauge how close you are to needing to rest by how many level appropriate encounters you've had.</blockquote>

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