What is the 15-minute adventuring day?

[rogueattorney]

In the 30 years of playing and DMing (mainly pre-2e) D&D, I have rarely ever seen the 15-minute adventuring day.

Far, far more common in my experience has been "just one more room syndrome." That is where the party suffers dire consequences from deciding to extend the adventuring day, when they really should have head back up to the surface and taken a break.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Interesting. I haven't seen these complaints, but then I haven't been looking for them either.

Because I tend not to run many dungeon-bash type adventures, I've rarely encountered the 15-minute day in the "enter, blow resources, retreat, regroup" variant. It's always tended to be in the "fly or teleport out of the adventure zone into the safe zone" variant. The 4e changes to the relevant spells, plus the 4e changes to PC resilience and robustness under pressure (especially compared to Rolemaster!) have therefore made a big difference to how my game plays.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Interesting. I haven't seen these complaints, but then I haven't been looking for them either.

Here's a thread with people asserting 4Ed solved it...and others saying they're still seeing it.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...venturing-day-does-d-d-4th-edition-solve.html

 

[Gentlegamer]

The 15-Minute Adventuring Day(TM) is also a symptom of party size being too small. The party expends more resources 'per head' than it really should. A partial remedy is judicious use of hirelings, henchmen, and followers.

 

[Jhaelen]

The 15-Minute Adventuring Day(TM) is also a symptom of party size being too small. The party expends more resources 'per head' than it really should. A partial remedy is judicious use of hirelings, henchmen, and followers.

Not really. At least in 3e it isn't. My group had nine pcs and was frequently accompanied by one or more npcs. There have still been encounters in which they spent too many resources of a particular kind to be comfortable with continuing to adventure.

The two most common resources they ran short of:
- (in-combat) healing
- power points

Hirelings are useless in 3e. THey don't accomplish anything and might actually be a cause for losing _more_ resources of the kind you cannot spare.

Imho, the 15-minute adventuring day is a direct result of 3e's design.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Imho, the 15-minute adventuring day is a direct result of 3e's design.

Obviously, I disagree, but what elements of 3Ed's design make you feel this way?

 

[Ranes]

The fifteen-minute work day is a direct result of bad DMing and I saw it in action in 1979. 3e has nothing to do with it.

 

[Dannager]

The fifteen-minute work day is a direct result of bad DMing and I saw it in action in 1979. 3e has nothing to do with it.

I'm not sure you can say that bad DMing is responsible. Certainly there are things that DMs can actively do to avoid the 15-minute adventuring day (lots of small encounters that aren't that challenging, or random encounters while the party tries to rest which doesn't really solve anything), but it didn't come about because of anything the DM did. Even running published adventures as-written often resulted in this issue popping up.

Remember, a DM's ability to solve a problem doesn't mean that it's his fault it existed in the first place. The root of the problem is a system that forces resource management at the daily level. It always was, and it will be until the resources a party needs to move from encounter to encounter recharge at the encounter level (or something comparable).

DM "fixes" for the 15-minute adventuring day are often equivalent to dropping a hungry lion behind a worn-out Olympic runner when all the runner really needed was a drink of water.

 

[Ranes]

I was responding to the post about the 15 minute work day being a direct consequence of 3e design.

There has indeed always been a problem with 15 minutes workdays but it wasn't running modules that caused the issue to pop up. It was players' decisions that caused the issue to pop up.

Your DM fix analogy would be another example of bad DMing.

 

[Jhaelen]

The fifteen-minute work day is a direct result of bad DMing and I saw it in action in 1979. 3e has nothing to do with it.

Actually, I always felt it's caused by the players. As a DM the only way to counter it is to _not_ use certain types of adventures. Ideally, every adventure includes some kind of pressing time-limit.

But I'm not really interested in arguing with you.

I'd be more interested about details about the fifteen-minute work day you've seen back in 1979. How did it manifest? What kind of important resources were spent after 15 minutes? And most important: What game have you been playing?

I'm convinced it's a problem that would best be solved by modifying the rpg system. E.g. in 3e if you had a party where all members had classes from the Book of Nine Swords, I doubt, you'd ever see a 15-minute work day.