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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 9108570" data-attributes="member: 2629">I already did, but to cover it again:First 'issue' raised in this thread: The books do not provide the players anything to do with their gold.  The OP argued that gold "has no purpose".  This seems to refer to the lack of a clear price tag for magic items to be bought (although there are rough guidelines), and minimal guidance on things like building a stronghold, running a business, etc...  In the eyes of the OP, and in the eyes of many players (but not all as the OP suggests), money is pointless.  The PCs get the money ... and it sits on their character sheet and never does anything.So, how does story solve this?  Think about what happens in real life when someone suddenly has a lot more money.    The church comes to you and asks you to donate so that they can build a new church in a neighboring town.  You have a lot of people that suddenly want to be your friend, or that want you to invest in their business.  Someone will come to you with something 'of great value' that only someone like you would appreciate.  The local official comes to you to collect 'taxes'.  You're the target of the thieves guild.  A real estate agent contacts you to offer to sell you a property in the elite part of town - which means the PCs will have access to new opportunities.  And you might just say, "So what?  That just takes the money away and the PC doesn't really get anything out of it!"  In each of those situations, the money gave the PC power to direct the storyline.  Do they support the church or buy their own manor?  Each has ramifications.  A PC without the money doesn't get to make those choices.  It deepens the game, and the worldbuilding, around the PCs.Second issue: 6 to 8 encounter expectation per adventuring day / long rest.  Many DMs struggle because their PCs rest after every battle and always seem to be facing enemies when fully rested.  How does story solve this problem?  Usually, the world is too complex to sit back and wait it out and take rests constantly.  Let's say that the brand new PCs encounter a goblin ambush along the road and then track the goblins back to their crag of a home that looks like a maw.  There are two goblins at the cave entrance, some wolves penned up just inside the cave and then four more chambers with goblins inside of them within the cavern.  One group of PCs might take out the guards at the door, rest, take out the wolves, rest, take out one chamber of goblins, rest, take out more goblins in another chamber, rest, hit the next goblins in the next chamber, rest and then go after the boss goblins in the final chamber.  That is something like 5 hours to 5 days in which none of the goblins left their rooms, discovered anything was wrong, etc...  The adventure even assumes that the final leader might be ambushed with no idea anything is wrong ... Another DM might run it with more of a real story to be told.  That DM would sit down before the adventure and ask what these goblins do with their lives.  Do they hunt for food?  When?  Do they do anything for fun?  Do they have relationships?  Why are they there?  Just as a camp for ambushing the road, or is there another purpose?  The module from which this is taken may provide some of these types of answers - but it takes all of 2 or 3 minutes to build it out much deeper.  Then, with those answers in mind, you can decide how the place will operate in the absence of the PCs being caught so that you can have the goblins react more naturally.  As a DM, I have a rough schedule for how the situation might unfold with goblins moving between rooms for natural purposes.  So how does this relate to the 6 to 8 encounters per day?  The PCs have a time limit when there is a story unfolding.  From the moment they engage the guards there is a risk of being discovered.  If they're discovered, the enemies will start to come at them.  Will they come in waves if discovered or will they get organized and come in bulk?  The last PCs to go through this for me took out the goblins at the gate, but the snarling of the wolves and the rattling of chains drew the attention of two different groups of goblins that were 30 to 50 feet away.  They dispatched the wolves but had to deal with a couple new problems (one 'environmental', another real combat) while an alarm was raised.  They had just enough time to finish the combat before a larger group of enemies set upon them.  That group saw that the PCs were slaughtering the goblins, so they did what goblins do best: Run!  The PCs realized the fleeing goblins might raise an alarm so they tried to catch them before they could flee the caves.  Encounter 1: Road AmbushShort RestEncounter 2: Guards at the doorEncounter 3: WolvesEncounter 4: Environment situatrion and investigating creature (technically 2 encounters)Encounter 5: The goblins trying to "break the line of the PCs and flee"Encounter 6: PCs hunting down the goblins that escaped and finishing them offShort RestLong RestThis is what the designers intended.  This is similar to how D&D has worked for dungeon exploration for decades in many games (although not all - many classic adventures are a hodgepodge of nonsensical adjacent threats).  In general, when you're telling a story, it is more natural to see encounters flow together with short breaks, and that tends to result in the 6 to 8 encounter day working naturally.  I can go on with more examples ... but a lot of them boil down to what I said: A lot of these perceived problems just don't exist when the world is given the 'story' elements to make sure it feels lived in and real.</blockquote>

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