Like most parties, my table will rest at any opportunity, always wanting to reserve the ability to 'go nova' on any and all encounters. They abhor even the slightest chance that they might not have overwhelming odds on their side, and even at full power are very risk averse.
I'd like to challenge this a little, force to them out of this little comfort bubble, and I'm interested in how anyone else may have done this? I want them to feel the tension of real danger, without just throwing wave after wave of creatures at them. More than that, I want them to choose the danger. Or heck, not choose it, but then have it be something niggling in their mind that maybe they should have.
I did have one idea. Shortly after a big encounter has left them weakened and sub-optimal, they hear a plaintive cry from nearby, followed by a menacing roar. It's clear that someone needs their help, and also that the threat could well be quite a challenge in their current state. They must truly run into danger to help this person, with no promise of reward. Will they run, battered and bruised, into danger to save an innocent? Or will they try to just get in a short rest first (in which case they will never find where the cry came from). Lets see just how heroic they really are.
That's a pretty time honored story motivation. I'd have no issues running with it.
Players/Characters are going to rest whenever they can. They just are - that's the smart thing to do, so you're never going to convince them that they need to go on and do 6-8 encounters before they rest unless they need to keep going.
So you can structure the Adventure so they need to keep going.
Your moral dilemma is a good Story based technique, but only if the Party is actually Heroic. Don't do that with an evil Party.
Another Story based technique is the ticking clock. You must reach such-and-such a point in the Dungeon before this deadline, or Bad Things(tm) are going to happen. They just don't have time to stop and rest each and every time.
A mechanics based technique I've seen suggested is using a number-of-encounters based modifier for experience: the 1st encounter of the day is worth 1/3 base experience , the second 2/3, the third 1x base, the 4th 1+1/3 base, etc. Basically the longer they push, the more experience they're accumulating - and give them the ability to earn more experience than they normally would have, if they really push themselves. But if they are going to long rest and nova all the time, their advancement is going to crawl.
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Also don't underestimate the power of time sensitivity. If they're just clearing a dungeon with no stakes aside from combat, they'll rest whenever. If they know they have 2 hours to stop a ritual to shift a nearby town to the shadow fell, we'll they're gonna have to get creative.
Your moral dilemma is a good Story based technique, but only if the Party is actually Heroic. Don't do that with an evil Party.
Heh, well they definitely identify as good. This'll tell us if they really are good, or just mercenaries ;) Hmmmm, that gives me a tangential idea - how will they react if they're offered gold to do something unambiguously evil? (cue furious scribbling in ideas notebook)
Another Story based technique is the ticking clock. You must reach such-and-such a point in the Dungeon before this deadline, or Bad Things(tm) are going to happen. They just don't have time to stop and rest each and every time.
Also don't underestimate the power of time sensitivity. If they're just clearing a dungeon with no stakes aside from combat, they'll rest whenever. If they know they have 2 hours to stop a ritual to shift a nearby town to the shadow fell, we'll they're gonna have to get creative.
I'll definitely look for opportunities to put a more literal timer on things. Until now, I have been trying to make it clear that this isn't a video game - the world moves on regardless of whether they are looking at it or not. They took a beating in the Cragmaw goblin hideout, and made a tactical withdrawal for a long rest before returning to get Sildar. In that time I let the goblins regroup a little, and reset/refill the water trap (the party got hit by that thing four times, twice on each visit, I was just shaking my head in the end). I didn't adjust Sildar's condition when they found him from what it says in the story, but they took his beaten and near-dead condition to be their fault, and I was more than happy to let them believe it.
A mechanics based technique I've seen suggested is using a number-of-encounters based modifier for experience: the 1st encounter of the day is worth 1/3 base experience , the second 2/3, the third 1x base, the 4th 1+1/3 base, etc. Basically the longer they push, the more experience they're accumulating - and give them the ability to earn more experience than they normally would have, if they really push themselves. But if they are going to long rest and nova all the time, their advancement is going to crawl.
I really like this idea. I don't think I'll try to introduce it mid-game though, especially in a canned adventure, since I don't want it to lead to an inadvertent imbalance that I'm not experienced enough to address. But as I get more experienced, this could well become a house rule.
Seems like it should maybe key to the number of XP and their current level, though, rather than number of engagements? Since not all engagements are built equally? I can see being very annoyed as a player if I entirely randomly choose the highest CR encounter as the first of the day for 1/3XP, and spend the rest of the day swatting at Stirges. Or worse, having an encounter that was engineered to require the party to go nova and bring them to the brink of TPK - it would suck to only get 1/3 XP for that. Worse, I'd hate to have the party trying to power-game it into an advantage, by murder hoboing 5 commoners before breakfast and then arguing that the rest of the day is 2x XP! Not that I think they'd be so extreme, but you get the picture.
Maybe it's something like the first 1/4 level's worth of XP (which will vary by level, of course) is multiplied by 1/3, then the next 1/4 by 2/3, next 1/4 by 1, and so on. That would also give them pause to not try to chunk out big encounters with tactical withdrawals to rest (assuming they could even escape). Makes the math harder, but I'm a numbers guy, so I'm ok with that.
Or you could do the calculation as if every encounter was worth the average number of XP between rests.
E.g: They have 5 Encounters, worth 4,000, 1,000, 3,000, 2,000, 5,000 XP ( just picking numbers out of the air ), so the average is 3K, and do your calculations from there. That way really tough encounters bring the average up, and murder hobo'ing commoners brings the average down.
Or do it against the total XP earned between rests, with the modifier scaling with the number of significant encounters ( murdering commoners doesn't count ): 0.5, 0.7, 0.9, 1, 1.1, 1.3, 1.5 ( against, just picking numbers out of the air ), multiplied against all XP for the day.
Won't know how well that works until you try it, though.
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I'm not one to dive hard into the numbers, but generally if my players try to rest in a place where enemies might be around, I'll put a potential random encounter on the table. If the party takes precautions like finding a defensive area of the dungeon that's cleared and somewhat out of the way, they might get advantage to spot upcoming threats. If they post watch and they roll well on perception, they might be able to avoid the enemy and complete their rest. Otherwise, if they just go for a rest when they shouldn't logically be able to? Sounds like a good way to get yourself attacked.
Oh my gosh, I can't stand when players won't stop taking rests! (It's especially frustrating when it makes the "milage" classes, like Fighter and Warlock, look bad.) I do like the idea of a call for help. Charles is right on though...there are two main ways to stop this behavior.
#1: Put a time limit on the dungeon. Maybe the door seals when the full moon rises, maybe the cultists complete their ritual tonight, maybe the prince has a day to live unless the healing herbs are found, et cetera.
#2: Good old wandering monsters. At every short rest, roll a d6. On a 1 (or even a 1 or 2) monsters attack, and the players lose the benefit of the rest and have to rest again. Now the players have to weigh the risks of resting against the rewards.
If there's a #3, it's to make sure you're running real dungeons with at least 4 monsters along the path. If you're running a "go here, fight this, go here, fight this," game, with plenty of time to repair to town in between, of course your party will take advantage.
One thing I like to do seems to work well is fallback quests or tasks that the party has ignored but has been brought to their attention for example. In a way I do keep everything on a sort of timeline and make my own judgment calls on whether or not the players are progressing fast enough in whatever direction they may be heading. I do like to keep my games fairly open but I do also like to present problems within my world that have dire consequences if not acted upon. And there are a lot of times the players choose not to act upon. This can only cause issues or disrupt within the world and even in some cases causing various NPCs to point the blame in the players direction. Sometimes you just have to make it clear to your players that if certain things within the world are not kept in to check in a whole Lotta nastiness can come from. Again though, I would not force the players do this if they did not want to but you can utilize actions that they had made or did not make in the past to mold your world and bring new challenges that may arise for the players down the road during the adventure. Just keep all of your old notes, quests, and anything else related to the game on hand so you may be able to go back and rework these in order to fit in one way or another. That's what I do anyway. It seems to work out very well.
What you're dealing with is the infamous Fifteen Minute Workday, and DMs have been trying to get players to stop doing it since there's been such a thing as DMs and players.
One easy houserule to implement to help put the brakes on the 15MWD, in conjunction with other options, is that players can only benefit from one long rest per day. Sleeping for sixteen hours a day isn't heroism or smarts, it's narcolepsy. Sleeping for twenty-four hours a day is right out.
Now, by itself this does nothing, since any amount of time can be handwaved away by the narration "time passes, then...". Unless you're going to make your players sit there in awkward silence for an hour any time they force this issue (hint: don't do that), you can't use in-character boredom as a tool to crank up the pressure.
What you can do is, as suggested, put events into motion in your game world that worsen/decay as time progresses. To paraphrase Angry, the players' default state should be Losing - if they sit and do nothing, then eventually (and not necessarily a LOT of 'eventually', either), some countdown hits zero and Something Terrible Happens. The ancient dragon they didn't adventure enough to discover the hints of awakens from their slumber, the wicked necromancer whose minions drove the heroes to cower in their comfy tavern for sixteen hours a day completes his research and descends into lichdom, the astral tides align and unleash elemental chaos on the world while the party are still a bunch of fourth-level weenies instead of the ninth-level face kickers they were supposed to be by this point due to their overdeveloped sense of caution.
If your party is sharply risk-averse, the best solution is to let them know that the greatest risk of all is accomplishing nothing. If the players balk and rail against you forcing their hand, let them know that they have ample time to keep on top of the myriad disasters that may befall their world...if they use that time effectively. Long resting after every shitty three-goblin skirmish is not an effective use of their time.
What you can do is, as suggested, put events into motion in your game world that worsen/decay as time progresses. To paraphrase Angry, the players' default state should be Losing - if they sit and do nothing, then eventually (and not necessarily a LOT of 'eventually', either), some countdown hits zero and Something Terrible Happens. The ancient dragon they didn't adventure enough to discover the hints of awakens from their slumber, the wicked necromancer whose minions drove the heroes to cower in their comfy tavern for sixteen hours a day completes his research and descends into lichdom, the astral tides align and unleash elemental chaos on the world while the party are still a bunch of fourth-level weenies instead of the ninth-level face kickers they were supposed to be by this point due to their overdeveloped sense of caution.
If your party is sharply risk-averse, the best solution is to let them know that the greatest risk of all is accomplishing nothing. If the players balk and rail against you forcing their hand, let them know that they have ample time to keep on top of the myriad disasters that may befall their world...if they use that time effectively. Long resting after every shitty three-goblin skirmish is not an effective use of their time.
I agree with this, 100% :)
I think that random encounters have their uses, but can quickly become the GM combating perceived Party laziness ( good for nothing Party is resting all the time! ), with GM laziness ( I don't have to actually have to put in the effort to design my conflicts so that the Players are feeling time pressure, I can just roll a D6 ).
A skilled GM can keep pressure on the Party without the artificiality of the hourly random encounter check.
"OK, the Baron's men are searching the village, house to house, looking for you ... you sure you want to rest now?" .
"Well, judging from the moon, it's about 10pm, and you know that the Blacksmith's daughter will be sacrificed at Midnight ... sure you've got the time for a short rest?"
A well designed Adventure conflict is move&countermove between the Party and all the other faction(s) involved in the struggle. If the Party wants to rest, point out that their opponents are probably not resting, and may get ahead.
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What you can do is, as suggested, put events into motion in your game world that worsen/decay as time progresses. To paraphrase Angry, the players' default state should be Losing - if they sit and do nothing, then eventually (and not necessarily a LOT of 'eventually', either), some countdown hits zero and Something Terrible Happens. The ancient dragon they didn't adventure enough to discover the hints of awakens from their slumber, the wicked necromancer whose minions drove the heroes to cower in their comfy tavern for sixteen hours a day completes his research and descends into lichdom, the astral tides align and unleash elemental chaos on the world while the party are still a bunch of fourth-level weenies instead of the ninth-level face kickers they were supposed to be by this point due to their overdeveloped sense of caution.
If your party is sharply risk-averse, the best solution is to let them know that the greatest risk of all is accomplishing nothing. If the players balk and rail against you forcing their hand, let them know that they have ample time to keep on top of the myriad disasters that may befall their world...if they use that time effectively. Long resting after every shitty three-goblin skirmish is not an effective use of their time.
I agree with this, 100% :)
I think that random encounters have their uses, but can quickly become the GM combating perceived Party laziness ( good for nothing Party is resting all the time! ), with GM laziness ( I don't have to actually have to put in the effort to design my conflicts so that the Players are feeling time pressure, I can just roll a D6 ).
A skilled GM can keep pressure on the Party without the artificiality of the hourly random encounter check.
"OK, the Baron's men are searching the village, house to house, looking for you ... you sure you want to rest now?" .
"Well, judging from the moon, it's about 10pm, and you know that the Blacksmith's daughter will be sacrificed at Midnight ... sure you've got the time for a short rest?"
A well designed Adventure conflict is move&countermove between the Party and all the other faction(s) involved in the struggle. If the Party wants to rest, point out that their opponents are probably not resting, and may get ahead.
Yeah, this sounds like the best way of doing it. Overused, it sounds like random encounters could feel a bit cheap, and fighting for the sake of fighting.
I'm running LMoP, and it doesn't really have anything like that. I mean, I guess I could lean in on "what's happening to poor Gundren while you lot are fannying about?", but that seems a double-edged sword encouraging them to skip chunks of the adventure. Some of the side quests don't feel very well integrated into the main plot, only being there to level up the characters rather than bring them closer to the end goal.
We'll probably do Icespire Peak next, and unless it already addresses this issue, I'll definitely be using the ideas in this thread to up the urgency a little. I think I'll carefully read through and put together what I think is a reasonable in-game time frame for how long things will take, and find some reason to press that as a time limit.
One of my Players is running Icespire Peak as me as a Player. From what I can tell (I deliberately have not read it), it seems to be a collection of mini-missions so far with not much of an over-arching conflict with time-pressure.
But, it does have a Dragon. You could absolutely introduce a larger meta-plot. Give the Dragon some overall goal, find ways to have their actions to achieve that goal impact the individual sub-adventures, give the Dragon actual minions and lieutenants to interact with the Party directly, plant clues for the Party to slowly discover the Dragon's fell designs, etc.
Essentially leverage the internal sub-adventures of Icespire Peak to tie into your overall pressure-creating plot.
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One easy houserule to implement to help put the brakes on the 15MWD, in conjunction with other options, is that players can only benefit from one long rest per day. Sleeping for sixteen hours a day isn't heroism or smarts, it's narcolepsy. Sleeping for twenty-four hours a day is right out.
Just want to point out that this isn't a houserule. RAW players cannot benefit from more than 1 Long Rest every 24 hours.
"Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity — at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity — the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character's total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.
A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits."
Emphasis mine. If your players are trying to rest more than once per day... don't let them. They can sit around if they want, but even if they're banged up from a fight they aren't tired, not enough to sleep for 8 hours anyway.
Well here is the thing about the word "random" in random encounters... its not really random. Every random encounter table ever made serves a purpose in the story, its only random in the sense that the events on that table happen at random times in random order, but their intention is to give the DM a method of introducing interruptions in play.
I guess what I'm saying is that its about how the encounters are described and defined. There is a difference between being a DM and a player, in that, I don't need to explain it to myself as a DM, I just need to make it feel real to the players.
I can take any random encounter in any book at any time in any game and make it make sense to the players in a way that it will appear that I planned the whole thing from the very start. Its not a magic trick, its just the illusion of putting adjectives together in a certain order to make it appear, to the players, that everything is somehow the genius of my planning and not some random unprepared crap I'm springing on the players.
The point here is to create the illusion that its not safe to rest, so the players don't and that is a GM fiat of sorts because at the end of the day, whatever the DM says is real.. is real. You just have to play with the psychology and adjectives of random encounters.
More importantly however is that by using random encounters and giving the illusion that as a DM you are "punishing the players with randomness" is a far more effective way to never have random encounters or a 15 minute work day in the first place then trying to constantly pencil in and plan in advance how you are going to keep the players from constantly resting.
Everything everyone describes is clever, smart and certainly a good way of doing it, until you have to plan it in advance for every session, several times a session. Your going to run out of ways to stop the players from resting eventually. You might come up with 2,3,5 maybe even 10 ways, but at some point the players will simply overwhelm your ability to make shit up all the time to keep them from resting after every fight.
All I'm saying is that Random Encounters are a system.. its a way that defines "how we play" that prevents the five minute day via threat, without really ever having the execution and its 100% efficient and effective without any extra effort at all. You simply feint it now and again to remind them that "hey this is a thing".
Good DM's find ways to create consistent control, methods if you will to get the players to do exactly what he wants them to while making them feel like they are 100% in control at all times. DMing is a magic trick... an illusion of sorts, what you guys are describing is the insane amount of work of trying to trick players... what I'm describing is a full proof method of getting exactly what your trying to achieve without having to do any work at all.
This is great, and a good point for a new DM. Effectively for my players, 'random encounters' are only as random as I make they feel. They have no idea what's in the story, and as far as they are concerned this is what was supposed to happen at this location at this moment in time - nothing random about it. Thanks.
Keep it varied. I’ll have a couple trivial encounters after a long rest where it makes them feel like it wasn’t worth the resting time. They’ll then speed up and take more risks and I can throw something heavy and shake them up again.
Throwing seven random encounters at the party any time they try and rest isn't being a clever, workload-free DM - it's putting your players on a forced death march. If the players are never allowed to rest, if they get attacked every single time they try and lay down for five minutes anywhere but in a locked tavern room, what you end up with is a bunch of players who will quickly vacate your table.
Random encounters have their place, but they are not a replacement for time tension built into your story and your world. If you can't create that tension, then your players aren't going to act like it's there. Random encounters won't make them feel time tension, it'll simply make them feel like they need to learn Leomund's Tiny Hut as soon as possible - or, worse, plan on never going more than half a day's travel out of town.
The players should be allowed to rest when they feel like they need one. If you keep forcing combat after combat after combat down their throat until they choke on combat and die, it's not their fault when the party TPKs - it's yours. Your notion that it's the DM's job to trick the players into dancing to his tune while faking them into believing they're actually playing a game is ludicrous and honestly slightly offensive.
As a DM, it's my job to present my players with situations and ask them to make choices. If those choices include an overabundance of caution, that will cost them. If those choices include an overabundance of recklessness, that will cost them. If they're dumb, that'll definitely cost them. But at no point do I make a decision for them and hoodwink them into following along. At that point I may as well just be writing a story for them to read instead of playing a game of D&D.
#2: Good old wandering monsters. At every short rest, roll a d6. On a 1 (or even a 1 or 2) monsters attack, and the players lose the benefit of the rest and have to rest again. Now the players have to weigh the risks of resting against the rewards.
To emphasie the "time-wasting" nature of this, give no XP for wandering monsters.
XP is only for overcoming encounters that bring the party closer to the goal of the adventure.
Good DM's find ways to create consistent control, methods if you will to get the players to do exactly what he wants them to while making them feel like they are 100% in control at all times. DMing is a magic trick... an illusion of sorts, what you guys are describing is the insane amount of work of trying to trick players... what I'm describing is a full proof method of getting exactly what your trying to achieve without having to do any work at all.
No. I don't need to trick my Players. I do not need to be "100% in control at all times".
What goes on at my Table is that I'm collaboratingwith my Players on a series of game events.
I set up the framework of lore, world, NPCs, and events with which the Players interact. I set up the initial conflict, and I set up the NPCs goals. The Players come along, and interact with that, I role play the reactions of the world and the NPCs, and the results of that collaboration become a series of Narrative events, which - later when we talk about the Game we just had - become a story that we tell about that game.
Yes, I try and manage the pacing of the events - that's part of my job. That's why I build time pressure into the scenario: the Party is being pursued; they need to rescue the beautiful monster before he's sacrificed to the evil princess at midnight; one of the Party has been bitten by a wererat and the Party needs to get to the city to find a high level Cleric to undo the curse before the full moon; etc. Everything is couched in terms of you can gain this benefit, it comes with this risk, the choice is yours. The choice lies with the Players - and yes, sometimes that choice bites them on the ass, but they knew the risks going in. And that risk varies and changes with the Adventure which is unfolding - it's not always: Oh? Resting? Random encounter time, roll initiative! ( ...what, I rolled a 1 ... not my fault .... ).
I don't lie to my Players. I don't hit them with an encounter which doesn't fit into the unfolding events, when they don't do exactly what I wanted ( damn it, they're resting! ), and then try and gaslight them into believing it's somehow their fault.
And building that time pressure to incentivize your Players to choose not to rest overmuch into your adventure scenario is not an "insane amount of work", that's basic GM'ing. With a little practice, it's dead simple - we've all read enough books, seen enough movies, that we can pull out and recycle those plot elements ( after dressing them up and disguising them, of course ), off the cuff, almost without thinking. Hell, I gave you 3 examples above ,off the top of my head. Any GM with any experience should be able to do that almost by reflex.
And frankly, if you're not willing to do your job and put in the work required to run the game - if you want complete control "without having to do any work at all" - why should you sit in the GM's chair?
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#2: Good old wandering monsters. At every short rest, roll a d6. On a 1 (or even a 1 or 2) monsters attack, and the players lose the benefit of the rest and have to rest again. Now the players have to weigh the risks of resting against the rewards.
To emphasie the "time-wasting" nature of this, give no XP for wandering monsters.
XP is only for overcoming encounters that bring the party closer to the goal of the adventure.
The logical result of having monsters interrupt rests will be more rests as players have to anticipate being interrupted at least once before they can successfully rest.
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Like most parties, my table will rest at any opportunity, always wanting to reserve the ability to 'go nova' on any and all encounters. They abhor even the slightest chance that they might not have overwhelming odds on their side, and even at full power are very risk averse.
I'd like to challenge this a little, force to them out of this little comfort bubble, and I'm interested in how anyone else may have done this? I want them to feel the tension of real danger, without just throwing wave after wave of creatures at them. More than that, I want them to choose the danger. Or heck, not choose it, but then have it be something niggling in their mind that maybe they should have.
I did have one idea. Shortly after a big encounter has left them weakened and sub-optimal, they hear a plaintive cry from nearby, followed by a menacing roar. It's clear that someone needs their help, and also that the threat could well be quite a challenge in their current state. They must truly run into danger to help this person, with no promise of reward. Will they run, battered and bruised, into danger to save an innocent? Or will they try to just get in a short rest first (in which case they will never find where the cry came from). Lets see just how heroic they really are.
That's a pretty time honored story motivation. I'd have no issues running with it.
Players/Characters are going to rest whenever they can. They just are - that's the smart thing to do, so you're never going to convince them that they need to go on and do 6-8 encounters before they rest unless they need to keep going.
So you can structure the Adventure so they need to keep going.
Your moral dilemma is a good Story based technique, but only if the Party is actually Heroic. Don't do that with an evil Party.
Another Story based technique is the ticking clock. You must reach such-and-such a point in the Dungeon before this deadline, or Bad Things(tm) are going to happen. They just don't have time to stop and rest each and every time.
A mechanics based technique I've seen suggested is using a number-of-encounters based modifier for experience: the 1st encounter of the day is worth 1/3 base experience , the second 2/3, the third 1x base, the 4th 1+1/3 base, etc. Basically the longer they push, the more experience they're accumulating - and give them the ability to earn more experience than they normally would have, if they really push themselves. But if they are going to long rest and nova all the time, their advancement is going to crawl.
Best of luck!
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Also don't underestimate the power of time sensitivity. If they're just clearing a dungeon with no stakes aside from combat, they'll rest whenever. If they know they have 2 hours to stop a ritual to shift a nearby town to the shadow fell, we'll they're gonna have to get creative.
Heh, well they definitely identify as good. This'll tell us if they really are good, or just mercenaries ;) Hmmmm, that gives me a tangential idea - how will they react if they're offered gold to do something unambiguously evil? (cue furious scribbling in ideas notebook)
I'll definitely look for opportunities to put a more literal timer on things. Until now, I have been trying to make it clear that this isn't a video game - the world moves on regardless of whether they are looking at it or not. They took a beating in the Cragmaw goblin hideout, and made a tactical withdrawal for a long rest before returning to get Sildar. In that time I let the goblins regroup a little, and reset/refill the water trap (the party got hit by that thing four times, twice on each visit, I was just shaking my head in the end). I didn't adjust Sildar's condition when they found him from what it says in the story, but they took his beaten and near-dead condition to be their fault, and I was more than happy to let them believe it.
I really like this idea. I don't think I'll try to introduce it mid-game though, especially in a canned adventure, since I don't want it to lead to an inadvertent imbalance that I'm not experienced enough to address. But as I get more experienced, this could well become a house rule.
Seems like it should maybe key to the number of XP and their current level, though, rather than number of engagements? Since not all engagements are built equally? I can see being very annoyed as a player if I entirely randomly choose the highest CR encounter as the first of the day for 1/3XP, and spend the rest of the day swatting at Stirges. Or worse, having an encounter that was engineered to require the party to go nova and bring them to the brink of TPK - it would suck to only get 1/3 XP for that. Worse, I'd hate to have the party trying to power-game it into an advantage, by murder hoboing 5 commoners before breakfast and then arguing that the rest of the day is 2x XP! Not that I think they'd be so extreme, but you get the picture.
Maybe it's something like the first 1/4 level's worth of XP (which will vary by level, of course) is multiplied by 1/3, then the next 1/4 by 2/3, next 1/4 by 1, and so on. That would also give them pause to not try to chunk out big encounters with tactical withdrawals to rest (assuming they could even escape). Makes the math harder, but I'm a numbers guy, so I'm ok with that.
Or you could do the calculation as if every encounter was worth the average number of XP between rests.
E.g: They have 5 Encounters, worth 4,000, 1,000, 3,000, 2,000, 5,000 XP ( just picking numbers out of the air ), so the average is 3K, and do your calculations from there. That way really tough encounters bring the average up, and murder hobo'ing commoners brings the average down.
Or do it against the total XP earned between rests, with the modifier scaling with the number of significant encounters ( murdering commoners doesn't count ): 0.5, 0.7, 0.9, 1, 1.1, 1.3, 1.5 ( against, just picking numbers out of the air ), multiplied against all XP for the day.
Won't know how well that works until you try it, though.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I'm not one to dive hard into the numbers, but generally if my players try to rest in a place where enemies might be around, I'll put a potential random encounter on the table. If the party takes precautions like finding a defensive area of the dungeon that's cleared and somewhat out of the way, they might get advantage to spot upcoming threats. If they post watch and they roll well on perception, they might be able to avoid the enemy and complete their rest. Otherwise, if they just go for a rest when they shouldn't logically be able to? Sounds like a good way to get yourself attacked.
Oh my gosh, I can't stand when players won't stop taking rests! (It's especially frustrating when it makes the "milage" classes, like Fighter and Warlock, look bad.) I do like the idea of a call for help. Charles is right on though...there are two main ways to stop this behavior.
#1: Put a time limit on the dungeon. Maybe the door seals when the full moon rises, maybe the cultists complete their ritual tonight, maybe the prince has a day to live unless the healing herbs are found, et cetera.
#2: Good old wandering monsters. At every short rest, roll a d6. On a 1 (or even a 1 or 2) monsters attack, and the players lose the benefit of the rest and have to rest again. Now the players have to weigh the risks of resting against the rewards.
If there's a #3, it's to make sure you're running real dungeons with at least 4 monsters along the path. If you're running a "go here, fight this, go here, fight this," game, with plenty of time to repair to town in between, of course your party will take advantage.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
One thing I like to do seems to work well is fallback quests or tasks that the party has ignored but has been brought to their attention for example. In a way I do keep everything on a sort of timeline and make my own judgment calls on whether or not the players are progressing fast enough in whatever direction they may be heading. I do like to keep my games fairly open but I do also like to present problems within my world that have dire consequences if not acted upon. And there are a lot of times the players choose not to act upon. This can only cause issues or disrupt within the world and even in some cases causing various NPCs to point the blame in the players direction. Sometimes you just have to make it clear to your players that if certain things within the world are not kept in to check in a whole Lotta nastiness can come from. Again though, I would not force the players do this if they did not want to but you can utilize actions that they had made or did not make in the past to mold your world and bring new challenges that may arise for the players down the road during the adventure. Just keep all of your old notes, quests, and anything else related to the game on hand so you may be able to go back and rework these in order to fit in one way or another. That's what I do anyway. It seems to work out very well.
What you're dealing with is the infamous Fifteen Minute Workday, and DMs have been trying to get players to stop doing it since there's been such a thing as DMs and players.
One easy houserule to implement to help put the brakes on the 15MWD, in conjunction with other options, is that players can only benefit from one long rest per day. Sleeping for sixteen hours a day isn't heroism or smarts, it's narcolepsy. Sleeping for twenty-four hours a day is right out.
Now, by itself this does nothing, since any amount of time can be handwaved away by the narration "time passes, then...". Unless you're going to make your players sit there in awkward silence for an hour any time they force this issue (hint: don't do that), you can't use in-character boredom as a tool to crank up the pressure.
What you can do is, as suggested, put events into motion in your game world that worsen/decay as time progresses. To paraphrase Angry, the players' default state should be Losing - if they sit and do nothing, then eventually (and not necessarily a LOT of 'eventually', either), some countdown hits zero and Something Terrible Happens. The ancient dragon they didn't adventure enough to discover the hints of awakens from their slumber, the wicked necromancer whose minions drove the heroes to cower in their comfy tavern for sixteen hours a day completes his research and descends into lichdom, the astral tides align and unleash elemental chaos on the world while the party are still a bunch of fourth-level weenies instead of the ninth-level face kickers they were supposed to be by this point due to their overdeveloped sense of caution.
If your party is sharply risk-averse, the best solution is to let them know that the greatest risk of all is accomplishing nothing. If the players balk and rail against you forcing their hand, let them know that they have ample time to keep on top of the myriad disasters that may befall their world...if they use that time effectively. Long resting after every shitty three-goblin skirmish is not an effective use of their time.
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I like to use “chase scenes” where if the part rests their targets will escape
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I agree with this, 100% :)
I think that random encounters have their uses, but can quickly become the GM combating perceived Party laziness ( good for nothing Party is resting all the time! ), with GM laziness ( I don't have to actually have to put in the effort to design my conflicts so that the Players are feeling time pressure, I can just roll a D6 ).
A skilled GM can keep pressure on the Party without the artificiality of the hourly random encounter check.
"OK, the Baron's men are searching the village, house to house, looking for you ... you sure you want to rest now?" .
"Well, judging from the moon, it's about 10pm, and you know that the Blacksmith's daughter will be sacrificed at Midnight ... sure you've got the time for a short rest?"
A well designed Adventure conflict is move&countermove between the Party and all the other faction(s) involved in the struggle. If the Party wants to rest, point out that their opponents are probably not resting, and may get ahead.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Yeah, this sounds like the best way of doing it. Overused, it sounds like random encounters could feel a bit cheap, and fighting for the sake of fighting.
I'm running LMoP, and it doesn't really have anything like that. I mean, I guess I could lean in on "what's happening to poor Gundren while you lot are fannying about?", but that seems a double-edged sword encouraging them to skip chunks of the adventure. Some of the side quests don't feel very well integrated into the main plot, only being there to level up the characters rather than bring them closer to the end goal.
We'll probably do Icespire Peak next, and unless it already addresses this issue, I'll definitely be using the ideas in this thread to up the urgency a little. I think I'll carefully read through and put together what I think is a reasonable in-game time frame for how long things will take, and find some reason to press that as a time limit.
One of my Players is running Icespire Peak as me as a Player. From what I can tell (I deliberately have not read it), it seems to be a collection of mini-missions so far with not much of an over-arching conflict with time-pressure.
But, it does have a Dragon. You could absolutely introduce a larger meta-plot. Give the Dragon some overall goal, find ways to have their actions to achieve that goal impact the individual sub-adventures, give the Dragon actual minions and lieutenants to interact with the Party directly, plant clues for the Party to slowly discover the Dragon's fell designs, etc.
Essentially leverage the internal sub-adventures of Icespire Peak to tie into your overall pressure-creating plot.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Just want to point out that this isn't a houserule. RAW players cannot benefit from more than 1 Long Rest every 24 hours.
"Long Rest
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity — at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity — the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character's total number of them (minimum of one die). For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.
A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits."
Emphasis mine. If your players are trying to rest more than once per day... don't let them. They can sit around if they want, but even if they're banged up from a fight they aren't tired, not enough to sleep for 8 hours anyway.
This is great, and a good point for a new DM. Effectively for my players, 'random encounters' are only as random as I make they feel. They have no idea what's in the story, and as far as they are concerned this is what was supposed to happen at this location at this moment in time - nothing random about it. Thanks.
Keep it varied. I’ll have a couple trivial encounters after a long rest where it makes them feel like it wasn’t worth the resting time. They’ll then speed up and take more risks and I can throw something heavy and shake them up again.
Heh. here's the thing, Lizard.
Throwing seven random encounters at the party any time they try and rest isn't being a clever, workload-free DM - it's putting your players on a forced death march. If the players are never allowed to rest, if they get attacked every single time they try and lay down for five minutes anywhere but in a locked tavern room, what you end up with is a bunch of players who will quickly vacate your table.
Random encounters have their place, but they are not a replacement for time tension built into your story and your world. If you can't create that tension, then your players aren't going to act like it's there. Random encounters won't make them feel time tension, it'll simply make them feel like they need to learn Leomund's Tiny Hut as soon as possible - or, worse, plan on never going more than half a day's travel out of town.
The players should be allowed to rest when they feel like they need one. If you keep forcing combat after combat after combat down their throat until they choke on combat and die, it's not their fault when the party TPKs - it's yours. Your notion that it's the DM's job to trick the players into dancing to his tune while faking them into believing they're actually playing a game is ludicrous and honestly slightly offensive.
As a DM, it's my job to present my players with situations and ask them to make choices. If those choices include an overabundance of caution, that will cost them. If those choices include an overabundance of recklessness, that will cost them. If they're dumb, that'll definitely cost them. But at no point do I make a decision for them and hoodwink them into following along. At that point I may as well just be writing a story for them to read instead of playing a game of D&D.
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To emphasie the "time-wasting" nature of this, give no XP for wandering monsters.
XP is only for overcoming encounters that bring the party closer to the goal of the adventure.
No. I don't need to trick my Players. I do not need to be "100% in control at all times".
What goes on at my Table is that I'm collaborating with my Players on a series of game events.
I set up the framework of lore, world, NPCs, and events with which the Players interact. I set up the initial conflict, and I set up the NPCs goals. The Players come along, and interact with that, I role play the reactions of the world and the NPCs, and the results of that collaboration become a series of Narrative events, which - later when we talk about the Game we just had - become a story that we tell about that game.
Yes, I try and manage the pacing of the events - that's part of my job. That's why I build time pressure into the scenario: the Party is being pursued; they need to rescue the beautiful monster before he's sacrificed to the evil princess at midnight; one of the Party has been bitten by a wererat and the Party needs to get to the city to find a high level Cleric to undo the curse before the full moon; etc. Everything is couched in terms of you can gain this benefit, it comes with this risk, the choice is yours. The choice lies with the Players - and yes, sometimes that choice bites them on the ass, but they knew the risks going in. And that risk varies and changes with the Adventure which is unfolding - it's not always: Oh? Resting? Random encounter time, roll initiative! ( ...what, I rolled a 1 ... not my fault .... ).
I don't lie to my Players. I don't hit them with an encounter which doesn't fit into the unfolding events, when they don't do exactly what I wanted ( damn it, they're resting! ), and then try and gaslight them into believing it's somehow their fault.
And building that time pressure to incentivize your Players to choose not to rest overmuch into your adventure scenario is not an "insane amount of work", that's basic GM'ing. With a little practice, it's dead simple - we've all read enough books, seen enough movies, that we can pull out and recycle those plot elements ( after dressing them up and disguising them, of course ), off the cuff, almost without thinking. Hell, I gave you 3 examples above ,off the top of my head. Any GM with any experience should be able to do that almost by reflex.
And frankly, if you're not willing to do your job and put in the work required to run the game - if you want complete control "without having to do any work at all" - why should you sit in the GM's chair?
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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The logical result of having monsters interrupt rests will be more rests as players have to anticipate being interrupted at least once before they can successfully rest.