What to do about the 15-minute work day?

[Hussar]

Exactly. But instead of adding "other considerations" to the adventure, people are demanding mechanical and most often gamist obstacles.

To be fair, it's an entirely gamist problem, so, a gamist solution does seem to be the best answer. After all, it's been repeatedly pointed out that "other considerations" means that the system is now dictating my campaign to me. If the only way to stop 15 MAD is random encounters or time based adventures, then every single adventure has to have either one of those two and probably both.

What if I don't want that? Why should D&D be limited to only your style of gaming? After all, if you don't like the gamist solutions, don't use them. That way you can still have your style of game and I get my style of game and we're both happy.

But, if there are no mechanical solutions, then you're happy and I'm left out in the cold. I mean, even in 4e, it's trivially easy to get an AD&D style game - use Essentials characters and change the healing rates. Done. And, because the game is so transparent, you can pretty easily predict what any knock-on effects, if any, are going to occur.

I have no idea why the concept of having mechanical solutions to this issue is so hard to accept. If you don't like them, because the math is so transparent, it's trivially easy to change. But, if they're not there at all, then I can't really get what I want.

I can get a 4e style game in 3e - healing wands and reserve feats, coupled with some of the later splat book classes generally get there. It's doable, but, it took quite a while to have what I needed. Going the other direction is much, much simpler. With transparent systems with functional math, removing subsystems becomes very, very easy.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Why do 'other considerations' have to be all or nothing approaches?

Mission has a time limit.. stop the thief before they get out of town or the bad guys move away and the group has to search for them.

Mission has complications if delayed, reinforcements arrive and defended built

Two missions are exclusionary, and political ramifications occur based on the players choice

Bad guy ambushes resting party after finding out that the group is on to him

Environmental hazards force the party into continueing... or stopping at a convienant cave where orcs ambush them.

Another group is after the same mcguffin

A bigger bad guy takes over the bad guys...

Or, the dm talks to the players and finds out that they really enjoy the Nova to rest to Nova cycle...so she brings the encounters up to par and Nova right back. Pretty much like Mike mearls talks about with the xp budget for adventuring day.


Lots of other considerations there...and one of them is specifically gamist.

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[Tovec]

Why do 'other considerations' have to be all or nothing approaches?

Mission has a time limit.. stop the thief before they get out of town or the bad guys move away and the group has to search for them.

Mission has complications if delayed, reinforcements arrive and defended built

Two missions are exclusionary, and political ramifications occur based on the players choice

Bad guy ambushes resting party after finding out that the group is on to him

Environmental hazards force the party into continueing... or stopping at a convienant cave where orcs ambush them.

Another group is after the same mcguffin

A bigger bad guy takes over the bad guys...

Or, the dm talks to the players and finds out that they really enjoy the Nova to rest to Nova cycle...so she brings the encounters up to par and Nova right back. Pretty much like Mike mearls talks about with the xp budget for adventuring day.


Lots of other considerations there...and one of them is specifically gamist.

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

My problem is that a lot of those solutions are expected to be used as sticks in this problem. I view a LOT of those solutions more as carrots, to motivate them and not to punish if they fail to get the job done. I realize that is largely the same thing but it feels really artificial if I have to use those situations over and over just to motivate my group.

For every one of these solutions there is a "yeah, but why" moment that my players may ask. When I use them for fun, as a carrot, then that reason is built in. When used as a stick those reasons are often contrived. WHY must we recuse the princess from the dragon in 5 days but not 6 or 7? It can't be due to our efforts. If he was going to eat her then he was going to do it regardless of our actions, if our actions provoke him then that is all the same issue so reinforcements don't really matter in that way either. It can't be that that is how long it takes for the dragon to get home, and it takes us the same amount of time. The travel speeds are relatively fixed per day so that seems artificial to bring up an arbitrary stopwatch to gauge our actions.

The problem for me has never been getting the party to press on. Rarely does it become, "shall we clear out everything today or do it over the course of the next 2 or three days instead". That almost never happens actually. The problem IS going NOVA because so often, too often, the party can plan their own path and adventure. That is a benefit of the system which opens itself up to this flaw.

If the party can choose their assignments, if the good king isn't always summoning them to do heroic quest A or B, then the party can usually choose how to spend their resources. If they have income for disposable equipment and magic items then they can even set their healing/stamina rate too, so that becomes less of an issue.

The solution of pushing them for some reason, or stopping them from getting a good nights sleep doesn't address this problem. Choosing how or when to nova is part of it. Why don't we focus on their capablilty to nova, which would solve both the timing problem (and force encounter solution) AS WELL as the root problem of nova-ing being a viable choice in the first place.

That is why I voted "other". It isn't that I don't believe that nova-ing isn't a problem or that 15 minute work days aren't a problem. It is that I disagree that mechanics or advice alone are the solution, unless those mechanics are reducing the potential for nova in the first place. (And I know that's not what the question meant when it proposed mechanics as a choice.)

Just my two cents.

TL/DR version: It seems like we need to look at the potential for nova as opposed to how to make players not want to nova (stick solutions only).

 

[pemerton]

Bad guy ambushes resting party after finding out that the group is on to him

Environmental hazards force the party into continueing... or stopping at a convienant cave where orcs ambush them.

<snip>

A bigger bad guy takes over the bad guys...

What would be good woudl be for the rulebooks to have some discussion of the circumstances in which this sort of thing will and (probably) won't work.

Some potential pitfalls of these methods: the GM ends up creating a TPK, or some comparable mechanical hosing of the PCs.

Or, if the extra threats aren't serious enough to do that, are they irritating distractions from the main focus of play - in which case, including them looks like it might reduce the overall quality of the play experience?

Only if (i) the extra encounters aren't enough to generate a TPK, and (ii) aren't experienced by the players as an irritating distraction, do we have a solution to the 15 minute day: the players try to end the day by resting, but the GM keeps the day going by introducing further encounters! That's a technique that I've used (see the description here).

To use the technique reliably, a GM (i) needs tools to measure the threat posed by an encounter (so as to avoid unintended TPKs), and (ii) needs to be able to judge what will or won't be experienced by the players as an irritating distraction. In the absence of anything like an explicit Belief mechanic, this requires good informal communication between players and GM to keep everyone on the same page as to what the game is about.

Mission has a time limit.. stop the thief before they get out of town or the bad guys move away and the group has to search for them.

Mission has complications if delayed, reinforcements arrive and defended built

Two missions are exclusionary, and political ramifications occur based on the players choice

<snip>

Another group is after the same mcguffin

Let's assume that, if the PCs fail to meet the time limit, the campaign goes on: the GM comes up with new scenarios which the players can run their PCs through.

What, then, is the cost of the time limit for the players? It's that the story of one particular scenario doesn't end as they hoped. For the players to be sufficiently invested in the scenario to take risks with their PCs to pursue the ending they want, it seems (i) that they have to be confident that the GM isn't just going to TPK them, and (ii) the scenario has to be one that they care about as part of the overall play experience.

This seems to give rise to the same requirements, of good tools for the GM to measure encounter difficulty, and good communication to keep all the game participants on the same page.

Mearls seems to be saying the right sort of things about encounter-building tools. I haven't heard anything yet about player buy-in into the stakes and themes of scenarios - hopefully they are thinking about that too.

 

[Zustiur]

Automatic recovery after each encounter wouldn't encourage additional resting, but that's not really saying much. Recovery not linked to resting or some other player-decided (however DM-discouraged) mechanism would also do the trick. For instance, if recovery happened at a milestone, chapter, or other story-based point chosen by the DM.

Hmm. Ok, Story-based recovery would definitely make for a solution. I'm not sure how D&D it is, but sure, that could work.

OTOH, if player-timed recovery of resources is deemed desirable, then, to avoid class imbalances, it would make sense to give all classes comparable resource distributions - very different resources, perhaps, but comparable in how many and how often/easily they're recovered.

If I read that correctly, what you're referring to is the 4E standardization of power access. Also known as 'everyone is the same'.

Exactly. But instead of adding "other considerations" to the adventure, people are demanding mechanical and most often gamist obstacles.

Yes, for once in my life I managed to say it with two sentences instead of a post-asaurus.
[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] I have a question for you. How much do you personally think the problem is the 15 minute pattern, and how much do you think it's to do with nova-ing and class balance.
In other words, would removing the 15 minute pattern prevent the nova? Would it resolve the class balance issues?

My own answer is as follows:
The more I read these threads the more I'm convinced we're focusing on the wrong problem. Fix the class balance first. That should automatically reduce the 15MAD issue (because it won't be highlighting the difference between classes any more). Then, if required, fix the nova issue. With both of those fixed, I'd be surprised to see the 15MAD at all, and even if we did, it wouldn't have the same negative impact that it does in 3E.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Let's assume that, if the PCs fail to meet the time limit, the campaign goes on: the GM comes up with new scenarios which the players can run their PCs through.

What, then, is the cost of the time limit for the players? It's that the story of one particular scenario doesn't end as they hoped. For the players to be sufficiently invested in the scenario to take risks with their PCs to pursue the ending they want, it seems (i) that they have to be confident that the GM isn't just going to TPK them, and (ii) the scenario has to be one that they care about as part of the overall play experience.

This seems to give rise to the same requirements, of good tools for the GM to measure encounter difficulty, and good communication to keep all the game participants on the same page.

Mearls seems to be saying the right sort of things about encounter-building tools. I haven't heard anything yet about player buy-in into the stakes and themes of scenarios - hopefully they are thinking about that too.

Absolutely.. all the 'other considerations' are in essence "this isn't working out as planned".... which won't work if the players don't have a plan other than gamist character advancement. If the players are vested in the story, preferably by bringing in hooks with their character background and seeking out plot lines.. then these other considerations work very well.

And yes, guidance on how to toe the line between 'really hard' and 'TPK' is much needed for many GMs.


One of my last resort 'sticks' for garnering player involvement is to have *nothing* happen. NPCs don't seek out the group for help, local areas have been cleared out, peace breaks out locally. Basically drop the ball for the plot into the players lap and wait to see what they do with it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If I read that correctly, what you're referring to is the 4E standardization of power access. Also known as 'everyone is the same'.

Some sort of common advancement scheme would be a simple, elegant way to achieve that, but it wouldn't have to be AEDU. Just every class gets some daily and some at-will abilities, comparable in number and effectiveness however different they may be in the details.

As to 4e making classes "the same" that's one of those lies of the edition war that's been repeated so often it's commonly taken as true. I don't see how refuting it, yet again, at this late date would add anything to the discussion, though. So, let's just go with it: Yes, if you want class balance, you must make classes 'the same' in the sense that they're 'the same' in 4e and in outright classes systems. If you make one class vastly and situationally more powerful than others by giving some classes powerful dailies and others nothing, that's not balanced, and that particular type of imbalance is going to both lead to, and really be highlighted by, the 5MWD.

My own answer is as follows:
The more I read these threads the more I'm convinced we're focusing on the wrong problem. Fix the class balance first. That should automatically reduce the 15MAD issue (because it won't be highlighting the difference between classes any more). Then, if required, fix the nova issue. With both of those fixed, I'd be surprised to see the 15MAD at all, and even if we did, it wouldn't have the same negative impact that it does in 3E.

Fixing both the nova and class-balance issues would mean having no classes with 'daily' powers, at all. That's entirely doable, and would have the bonus of being much easier to balance. There are precedents of daily-less martial and arcane classes in 3.5 and Essentials/4e. 'D&D' Gamma World works that way, with just about everything (except it's oddball card mechanic) being wholly encounter-based. Out-of-combat healing could be moved to a different (preferably adjustable by the DM to fit campaign pacing) time scale and supplemented with consumables rather than with renewable powers.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The true design trade-off is not between balance and variety, but between getting the mix of those right versus the time to do it and test it. Making everything truly the same throughout is one way to get balance. Ignoring balance entirely is one way to get variety. The more difficult but rewarding method is including another monkey in the barrel, yet nonetheless making it work well enough.

Or in other words, even 3E didn't give all fighters a flat 10 hit points and all wizards 20 slots of a spell that does 11 points of magic missile damage to all selected targets in sight. And even 4E didn't make a wizard standing next to a fighter a null question, which would have been the case had half the things said about its sameness had any basis in fact. So where "nirvana" equal some perfect mix of balance and variety, we are talking about a scale more like this, than 3E and 4E on opposite poles:

No balance ------------- 3E -------- Nirvana -------- 4E ------------- No variety.

(Don't read anything into relative differences on the graph, here. It is not that exact of a comparison. )

 

[Tony Vargas]

The true design trade-off is not between balance and variety, but between getting the mix of those right versus the time to do it and test it. Making everything truly the same throughout is one way to get balance. Ignoring balance entirely is one way to get variety. The more difficult but rewarding method is including another monkey in the barrel, yet nonetheless making it work well enough.

I have to disagree in a fundamental way: Variety is part of balance. Balance is about having meaningful and viable choices - the more the merrier. Imbalanced variety isn't variety at all, it's a few obvious-best choices, a few broken combos, and a whole lot of non-choices that might as well not exist.

Maybe:


Total Imbalance------------------Just OK-----------------Perfect Balance.
-----------------3e--AD&D----4e----------------------------------------
One Viable Choice---------------------------------------Unlimited viable choices.
Infinite Trap Choices-------------------------------------No trap choices.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I have to disagree in a fundamental way: Variety is part of balance. Balance is about having meaningful and viable choices - the more the merrier. Imbalanced variety isn't variety at all, it's a few obvious-best choices, a few broken combos, and a whole lot of non-choices that might as well not exist.

Sure, but that's on a different axis than the point I'm trying to make. To put it in your terms, trying to introduce a new meaningful and viable choice is a risk of imbalance--or more work to get balanced so that the new choice is meaningful and viable.

I suppose the distinction is one of theory versus practice, though I'm sure you didn't mean it as simplistically as I'm about to say it. In theory, if having 5 meaningful, balanced choices is good, then having 6 or 10 or 20 or 50 is getting better. In practice, there's a point at which they aren't going to all be meaningful, balanced choices any longer.

This is especially true when all choices are allowed to fully affect all other choices--thus siloing. So only 1 silo with N things in it is dull. But so is N silos each with one 1 thing in them. Neither is particularly balanced, except by luck, and even that minimal balance is likely to be illusion. But D&D has never been particularly close to either extreme, in any version.

As the old joke goes, once we get everyone to agree about the nature of the relationship, then we can discuss costs.