Abraxas
Explorer
There is also a variation on this - it's a Dming style that forces (or at least highly encourages) the PCs to expend their scarce (but renewable) resources quickly or die leaving them little recourse but to try and recover them.
What is the 15-minute adventuring day?
- Thread starter jasper
- Start date
Stormonu
NeoGrognard
"15 minute day" is more or less referring to how long the PCs are active in the game before deciding to stop and rest - i.e., 15 minutes of exploring and combat and 8 to 23 3/4 hours of rest. I'm not sure why 15 minutes became the accepted term, might have relation to the length of old D&D turns back in 1E (though, if I remember correctly, a turn was 10 minutes?).
It's been a while, but if I remember correctly, 1E tournament modules had a stiff penalty for resting, equating it to real time (Thus, if the group were to rest 1 hour, they would have to "wait out" that time in real time). As the years went by, this later just changed to disallowing rests except at certain prebuilt points in the adventure.
FireLance
Legend
Which is also, apparently, the "smart" thing to do if you have no time limit and are exploring a mostly trap-based (or otherwise unreactive) dungeon such as the Tomb of Horrors.
MichaelSomething
Legend
Note that there are some instances where it would be a good idea to rest after a single encounter. For example, if your 15 minute adventuring day consisted of defeating a dozen dragons, then most people should be willing to let you call it a day.
gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
Something that I've never seen in our games in 30 years of play. When PCs expend all their resources, the only result is TPK. I don't let the rest. They can runaway from an overly powerful encounter when their resources are spent, but if they stand and fight anyway, the chances of PC Death is expected.
We almost never have just a single big encounter - we do sometimes, but rarely. Mostly there are several small encounters and one big encounter every gaming session. Chances to go camping are also rare, unless extended travel between encounter locations allow it.
Yes, I've heard of the term and can understand how it happens, it just doesn't happen with us.
GP
The feasibility of the 15-minute adventuring day turns in part on the character build and action resolution system being used. For example, a system which makes in-combat teleportation and long duration scrying defence viable (such as high level D&D and mid-to-high level Rolemaster) makes it fairly easy for the PCs to teleport out of a difficult situation back to their warded safehouse and restore their resources.
At the metagame level, these systems can be seen as ones which give the players a singificant degree of situational authority - that is, even if the GM foists a certain situation upon them, the players - using the resources provided to them via their magic-using PCs - can extract their PCs from that situation.
The response suggested in some of the posts upthread - to impose time pressure such that the players, by extracting their PCs from the situation, will actually fail in what they are hoping to achieve - can be seen as one way of the GM trying to reshape the situation so that the players have in fact not successfully extricated themselves from it.
An alternative response is to do what 4e does, and remove those elements of magic-using PC build and action resolution that permit the players to override the GM's situational authority.
Which approach to reestablishing the GM's situational authority is prefereable - assuming that you want to do so - is a matter of taste, and likely to be guided at least in part by a range of other factors relevant to setting the parameters of PC build and action resolution rules. (Appeals to verisimilitude can cut both ways here - the thought that magic should be magical, for example, prima facie tells in favour of traditional D&D or RM PC capabilities, rather than 4e's mechanical limitations - but the thought that the gameworld should have comparable social and political dynamics to the normal world prima facie tells against the constant existence of time pressures that shut down the 15 minute adventuring day in traditional D&D or Rolemaster.)
At the metagame level, these systems can be seen as ones which give the players a singificant degree of situational authority - that is, even if the GM foists a certain situation upon them, the players - using the resources provided to them via their magic-using PCs - can extract their PCs from that situation.
The response suggested in some of the posts upthread - to impose time pressure such that the players, by extracting their PCs from the situation, will actually fail in what they are hoping to achieve - can be seen as one way of the GM trying to reshape the situation so that the players have in fact not successfully extricated themselves from it.
An alternative response is to do what 4e does, and remove those elements of magic-using PC build and action resolution that permit the players to override the GM's situational authority.
Which approach to reestablishing the GM's situational authority is prefereable - assuming that you want to do so - is a matter of taste, and likely to be guided at least in part by a range of other factors relevant to setting the parameters of PC build and action resolution rules. (Appeals to verisimilitude can cut both ways here - the thought that magic should be magical, for example, prima facie tells in favour of traditional D&D or RM PC capabilities, rather than 4e's mechanical limitations - but the thought that the gameworld should have comparable social and political dynamics to the normal world prima facie tells against the constant existence of time pressures that shut down the 15 minute adventuring day in traditional D&D or Rolemaster.)
I don't know that this has helped. I've seen people complain that the 15 minute workday is alive & well: once a party's dailies and/or healing surges are gone, that's it.
(As I've said elsewhen here, I haven't seen this issue crop up in any game in 34 years of gaming, including in 4ed, FWIW.)
... and unless you don't count situations where you ran away from an encounter you were losing, rested and healed, possibly acquired some new equipment specifically to deal with the enemy that forced you to run away, and then came back (which definitely happened a few times a year while I was playing 3.x), then that's just bizarre.
Bizarre to you, but judging from past responses, I'm not alone.
See, its not the retreating that makes it a 15 minute workday, its WHEN and HOW OFTEN you do it, and with what in the tank. Let's put it this way: nearly every time our party has rested, we still had resources available. Maybe not much; maybe my Cleric/Sorc was on the front line next to the Rogue because the dinged-up fighter was too fragile to do anything but shoot his bow. But when we rest, it's not after 3-4 combats, it's 5-8.
Part of the secret is to always try to hold something in reserve. In 3.X, our spellcasters don't lob spells when the situation is well in hand. That playstyle let us get through 7 encounters in RttToEE with the party's Wizard still having at least 2 6th level spells left. My 4Ed Starlock (MC: Psion) hasn't used a Daily power in the last 3 sessions (covering 2 campaign days)...and hasn't dipped below half of his available Healing Surges despite getting involved in melee 2 times in those sessions.
And this isn't an isolated thing: my 34 years in the hobby has been spent in 5 cities in 3 states and with 10 different groups.* No 15 minute workday.
So, while it's only anecdotal, it seems to be a lot more common than you seem to think it is.
* and covering 90+ systems- though each group played some form of D&D but one.
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