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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5976896" data-attributes="member: 42582">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 <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-discussion/319889-doppelganger-mayhem-long-lead-up.html" target="_blank">here</a>).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.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.</blockquote>

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