5-minute workday

[Longes]

I'm probably the biggest proponent you will ever find of ending the 5-minute workday (it's a thematic issue for me)

Is 5-minute workday thematic to fantasy, or not? I'm trying to remember any instance where heroes go through a multiple fights within a single day, and I'm comming up short. The closest I can remember is the siege of Amber, and there Corwin and Bleys both hanged back and conserved strength until the very last moment. In LotR the fights are few and far apart. I'll admit to only reading the Drow trilogy from all of the Forgotten Realms books, but I don't remember Drizzt ever having to fight all day. I'm rereading the Wizard of Earthsea, and Ged's fights are months and years apart.
So is the 5-minute workday an issue that arises only in the RPGs, and not actually something that happens in the base material RPGs want to emulate?

[Ancient History]

Well, the thing about real-world combat is it tends to be rare and brief. Medieval societies in particular strove to avoid battles in war, as they were deadly and costly, preferring longer but less bloody sieges; trials by combat and passages of arms were very formal events, heavily regulated and with many precautions taken, not entered into lightly or very frequently; even boxing matches are generally very limited affairs, particularly in the modern day.

That's not to say that you can't get into a duel or a boxing match that lasts for many rounds, or a battle that goes on for hours, or even multiple battles in a day - but historically, that's pretty exceptional.

(Granted, what most RPGs miss is all the work leading up to and after the 5-minute workday - prepping armor, weapon, and animals, the waiting around, care for weapon, armor, and animals afterwards, medical care, etc.)

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yes. One of the dirty secrets of TTRPG-writing, especially those that take their cues from D&D, is that a regular three-encounter, let alone five-encounter, workday is actually a deviation of genre convention.

There are arguments, and good ones IMO, for a multiple-encounter workday but they're invariably justified by gameplay reasons.

[Ancient History]

As a counterpart, there's also fairy tales which often have a rule of three thing going on, though rarely outright combat - usually a riddle contest or being courteous to old women and animals, that kind of thing.

[Chamomile]

Fantasy heroes spend the other 15 hours and 55 minutes of their waking workday doing other things which also advance their quest towards completion. They fight one encounter but then spend the rest of the time walking places or negotiating with princes or something. Thus, I can see why someone would consider it thematically dissonant for fantasy heroes to fight a single battle for five minutes and then make camp even if it is entirely in-genre to have a single battle for five minutes and then not have any more combat for the rest of the day.

[codeGlaze]

I'll admit to only reading the Drow trilogy from all of the Forgotten Realms books, but I don't remember Drizzt ever having to fight all day.

(iirc: This is in a drizzt story...)
There's the time they had to cross the swamps to get to ... silverymoon? Avoiding the swamp trolls the whole way. Exhausted, no sleep, constantly under threat of attack; or a day or more. Pretty sure it was a Drizzt novel, because the barbarian pushed them on their raft and then carried the halfling out toward the end.

There's the 10,000 orcs story line that involved extremely long, draining, battle montages.
There's the large battle that happened during the crystal shard.

The theme seems to be huge, drawn out fights or multiple small encounters leading up to a big encounter (BBEG), during a raid or infiltration.

The thematic break for me with 5-minute work days is the "lame feeling" that comes from a "fantastical hero" being spent for the day after a short duration or several small encounters. You're fucking magical and fantastical and you serious mean to tell me that you're not just tired, but completely spent after a handful of dust ups? Or even more famously, after casting 3 spells at first level. -___-

I walked my wife, son and a couple friends through the beginning of a 2e board-crawl the other weekend. And Die Fraus's first question to me was "Are these 2 spells I get as an MU encounter-based or daily? Because... I want to switch if they're daily."

It's why one of my first house rules was to make cantrips unlimited use. Or in the case of that 2e crawl, allow spells to be encounter-based (for the time being).

[Stinktopus]

I think part of the problem with ending the 5 minute workday is that lots of little fights are boring. The "typical encounter" that expends 10-20% of the party's resources can easily end up feeling like a chore with a foregone conclusion (see random encounters in Final Fantasy games).

I have one player who loves to play Radiant Servants of Pelor/Lathander/equivalent deity. A fight against a level appropriate band of undead ends in one round, and basically isn't worth setting up a battle mat.

The nature of the game, time constraints, and creative issues lead to me running games where we skip straight to the "boss battle" and have one massive, high risk combat per session instead of four battles against wimps.

[codeGlaze]

While playing that 2e game I mentioned above, I remembered why low-hp + low/medium risk NPCs in small batches can be fun... and why it sucked to be an MU at the first 5 levels.

The "tutorial" I was bringing them all through made sure to have small amounts of loot and plenty of health potions. So it ended up being kind of fun to see "what's in the next room?". Primarily because each encounter lasted maybe 3 or 4 turns. And at this point the turns were pretty much "did you hit?"... so nothing really bogging down the turn time.

[K]

The problem is that DnD has pretty much only ever had one fun mini-game: combat. Combine that with the fact that only deadly combats are fun, you get your workday problems.

If encountering a dungeon/plane/ruin/castle/sewer/battlefield/bakery involved more fun things, fewer combats and more fun/dangerous combats would be possible.

[Maxus]

I'm probably the biggest proponent you will ever find of ending the 5-minute workday (it's a thematic issue for me)

Is 5-minute workday thematic to fantasy, or not? I'm trying to remember any instance where heroes go through a multiple fights within a single day, and I'm comming up short. The closest I can remember is the siege of Amber, and there Corwin and Bleys both hanged back and conserved strength until the very last moment. In LotR the fights are few and far apart. I'll admit to only reading the Drow trilogy from all of the Forgotten Realms books, but I don't remember Drizzt ever having to fight all day. I'm rereading the Wizard of Earthsea, and Ged's fights are months and years apart.

In the third book of the Icewind Dale trilogy, Drizzt & Co go through multiple encounters--wererats, thieves, demodands, and a damn hydra--in a single day. The barbarian even chilled a moment to take a breather. Drizzt has multiple run-ins with Entreri at the same time. In the second book, him and Entreri have a couple of fights against duergar. In the series after that, they again have multiple battles against drow and shit, several times in the same day.

In LotR, they had a couple of fights in Moria, I recall, and then you got the stuff in, say, Helm's Deep that lasted forever. Gimli and Legolas killed forty-something orcs apiece.

If you want to go the magical route, check out the Dresden Files, where magic costs fatigue but getting hyped up can push you through it. Harry Dresden gets into shit several times a day over the course of a book. I mean, trading hits with another wizard, zombie attacks, getting tortured, and then fighting two different necromancers and their winions. All in pretty much the same day. Or, if you wanna go another book, he fights a formal duel against a prepared adversary and then shortly later is thrown into a big shitstorm raid.

If you want more modern epic fantasy, take a look at Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings. There's protracted battles in there, in the prologue even, with people using magical abilities the whole way--but they can recharge mid-battle, off magic-infused gemstones.

[Longes]

In LotR, they had a couple of fights in Moria, I recall, and then you got the stuff in, say, Helm's Deep that lasted forever. Gimli and Legolas killed forty-something orcs apiece.

Both are single continuous encounters. In Moria they get attacked, run, and then Gandalf makes his stand near the exit.
Helm's Deep is a siege, so again, a single encounter.

[schpeelah]

Fantasy heroes spend the other 15 hours and 55 minutes of their waking workday doing other things which also advance their quest towards completion. They fight one encounter but then spend the rest of the time walking places or negotiating with princes or something. Thus, I can see why someone would consider it thematically dissonant for fantasy heroes to fight a single battle for five minutes and then make camp(...)

That's propably the main thematic problem with the 15 minute workday. Fantasy heroes don't then to fight more than once a day, but that's because they don't encounter one more than once a day. The important bit is that they don't call it a day after a fight. Necessitating that characters leave the fight at least capable of participating in another, even if they aren't normally expected to have one.


Anyway, I can't remember any titles off the top of my head, but I'm under the impression I know a number of works where the characters have a lot of encounters in one day, but that's when the one day takes up a major portion of the work with one encounter per chapter or episode (and thus one session I would think).

[Kaelik]

In LotR, they had a couple of fights in Moria, I recall, and then you got the stuff in, say, Helm's Deep that lasted forever. Gimli and Legolas killed forty-something orcs apiece.

Both are single continuous encounters. In Moria they get attacked, run, and then Gandalf makes his stand near the exit.
Helm's Deep is a siege, so again, a single encounter.

Any system that classifies a multiday siege as a single encounter has no place in a conversation about a 5 minute workday.

[Longes]

Anyway, I can't remember any titles off the top of my head, but I'm under the impression I know a number of works where the characters have a lot of encounters in one day, but that's when the one day takes up a major portion of the work with one encounter per chapter or episode (and thus one session I would think).

I probably can remember something too, if I really tried, but my point is that having multiple encounters per day is an exception, rather than a rule in the source material.

[hyzmarca]

The five minute workday is really only a problem because of three other mechanics, healing magic, spells/powers-per-day, and setpiece monsters.

The last one if a holdover from old published dungeons. There's an orc in the bathroom and a troll in the adjoining k bedroom, but the troll will never need to pee no matter how long you wait, so after you kill the orc you can wait a week for your cleric to repeatedly Heal Light Wounds on the party until everyone has full HP.

This is because the troll isn't a person. It's a label attached to the bedroom that says "there's a troll here."

This kind of thing sucks. But it's an easy trap to fall into for inexperienced DM, especially when running canned dungeons.



Powers-per-time-interval is the other problem. Adventurers rest because rest is their resource replenishment mechanic. You could replace it with literally any other resource replenishment mechanic (or no resource replenishment mechanic). If a resource replenishment mechanic exists, players will try to game it.

Healing is the least reason for the five minute work day, and is only a problem because some characters get a limited number of healing spells per day. No healing or healing with different limits would both take away this incentive for the five minute workday, but it isn't a major issue compared to all the other rest-replinished powers.

[erik]

Most Dresden File stories have about 1-2 days for him to resolve whatever issues are pressing. Usually with more than 1 fight per day. But then he gets 6 months off before the next major mission (with a handful of minor missions between).

[angelfromanotherpin]

That's propably the main thematic problem with the 15 minute workday. Fantasy heroes don't then to fight more than once a day, but that's because they don't encounter one more than once a day. The important bit is that they don't call it a day after a fight. Necessitating that characters leave the fight at least capable of participating in another, even if they aren't normally expected to have one.

This.

[mlangsdorf]

[Setpieces monsters are] a holdover from old published dungeons. There's an orc in the bathroom and a troll in the adjoining k bedroom, but the troll will never need to pee no matter how long you wait, so after you kill the orc you can wait a week for your cleric to repeatedly Heal Light Wounds on the party until everyone has full HP.

This is because the troll isn't a person. It's a label attached to the bedroom that says "there's a troll here."

This kind of thing sucks. But it's an easy trap to fall into for inexperienced DM, especially when running canned dungeons.

This is kind of weird to me, because I learned how to GM from Keep on the Borderlands and the 1st edition DMG, and both of those made clear that the dungeon wasn't static. If you killed the orc and left for a week, someone else might have moved in, or the troll would be posted to a new position, or if you'd killed enough monsters, all the surviving monsters might have left the dungeon and taken all their treasure and XP with them.

So the 5 minute workday wasn't a problem, because the dungeon wasn't static (KotB specifically lists how many reinforcements each tribe gets, and which other tribes they'll flee to if badly depleted, for instance). You had to get in and kill as many slavers as possible, stealing as much of their loot as possible, before they got more reinforcements or got wise to your tactics.

I guess 2nd and 3rd editions may have been different in that regard, and of course 4th edition was very much wedded to its static dungeons, but the entire thing just seems off to me.

[Zaranthan]

necromancers and their winions.

Today I learned the Dresden Files runs on 5E. On topic, my favorite resource management schedule is at-will everything. Turning back because you're in over your head is more interesting than because the wizard is le tired.

[Eikre]

How about we just give people a middle-ground between the five minute breathers they take after every fight and the eight-hour-long night's sleeps in tents that people do after a supposedly full day of adventuring?

Like, let's say that everything you've got "per day" comes back after an hour-long break. And that you get some temp HP equal to whatever you would heal from a night's rest, too. But real HP only heals after resting all night, and exhaustion penalties will still stack up if you're sleep deprived, so presumably people will still usually make time for bed until they reach a high enough level to mitigate those kinds of concerns.

Now, the players still stand to finish a fight and rush directly into the next room with whatever resources they've got remaining if they think they're working against a real time limit. But otherwise, they're liable to just eat lunch or take a walk instead of making camp every time the wizard is unhappy with how many spells he's already cast.

[Username17]

Standard fairy tales pretty much do run on D&D style Vancian magic with multiple encounters in a work period. Vasilisa the Fair in most versions of the story gets seven magic tricks and uses exactly one of them to solve each of the challenges.

The thing about translation to RPGs is that in Fairy Tales it is the same writer picking the pre-selected magic tricks and the challenges. So the "spell slots" are always filled with appropriate powers. In a cooperative storytelling game, the person pre-selecting the available powers is a different person from the person selecting the challenges.

So D&D's magic user paradigm is inherently more suited to the literary source material it's based on than it is to the kind of cooperative storytelling game it was nominally made for. It is a clumsy port that needs to have considerable alteration to work properly in the new medium.

-Username17

[unnamednpc]

One problem is of course that the recharge currency for 'continuing play' is dumb, useless, and arbitrary, because eight hours (or one hour, or five minutes, or whatever) of in-game time are ultimately as tangible and meaningful as the taste of the chicken broth at the tavern in Hommlet.
Sure, a GM can go all-in with encounter tables for each hour of rest, or set an invisible countdown until the princess gets eaten by spiders, but ultimately, it boils down to a binary 'DO you get to use the recharger, or DON'T you'. And if you do, then you can just as well jettison the entire mechanic, because PCs are going to face every encounter refreshed and at peak murdering capacity anyway, and if you don't, your game quickly becomes an unpredictable, weighted-towards-failure death spiral.

[Prak]

I think there's a level where you can make the choice to rest meaningful. I wouldn't roll for random encounter each hour, but I would try to have some idea of what the monsters in the area do- if it's a dungeon, there may be a patrol schedule, if there are only low int predators, there'll be a sort of hunting schedule- and I would tell the party "if you rest, there's a chance for an encounter. The longer you rest, the more likely it is you'll have a fight interrupt your rest, but also the location you pick will influence that. If you set up camp on a game trail, you're fucked, if you find an empty cave, you'll probably be fine." And then I'd just roll once with a chance based on the number of hours if there isn't a set schedule to judge by. I'd probably do something like a 10% cumulative chance per hour, but I'd need to sit down and figure out exactly how likely I wanted a fight. And if they're on a rescue mission or the like, I'd just remind the players that there are events happening that will continue whether they press on or rest. For a ritual, you can schedule this, and maybe even allow the players to find out when it'll happen ("The book says that the best time to sacrifice the virgin sheepherd to Lolth is midnight, when the moon is invisible and the constellation of the All Consuming Spider is in ascendance"). For a set up like "the princess has been captured by a giant spider" you're back to rolling a percentile, but this time it's "is the spider hungry- Y/N?" And again, I'd just roll once, because it doesn't matter when the spider ate her, just whether she's rescue-able when they show up, and if they want to know how long she's been dead (and have someone who can know that), I'd roll the die closest to the number of hours spent resting+travel. Or maybe just a d20. There should be a possibility that she was eaten before the adventurers rested, because it shouldn't just be "you killed her by resting."

[unnamednpc]

That still puts the decision whether 'rest' is attainable squarely up to the MC. And if that switch is flicked to Y, people will heal up and recharge, and we're back to square one and we might as well have no recharge mechanic at all, because it will just become another thing people DO. And they will come up with an elaborate plan to guard their camp against wandering leprechauns, and if that works, it will be a thing that simply always happens. A small bit of prefab narrative timewaster the group has to to check off before they can reset their characters to 'useful' and get on with the game. And if it at some point doesn't work because maybe the GM decides that you can't get away with shit all the time, your PCs get mauled by Ratdogs in their sleep and the game is fucking OVER, so what do you do?
And in a way, having your implied Schroedinger's scenario, where you can't know in advance at which point the PCs will be rested makes everything just more floaty, because if you want to plan for a game that has attrition, but kind of don't wantotoo much of that thing where your game just fucking ends because half the group is dead and out of spells and no, you can't go back to town because if you come back in a week, Hitlerthulu will have pimpes little Timmy to the Ogres, you theoratically have to do some very counter-intuitive and antithematical planning, where encounters get EASIER the further you go, because you can't expect the PCs to be at their top game, but you also never know HOW MUCH easier and in the end, the players never feel like they get to fully utilize their characters, the GM can't reliably build any encounters, and nobody gets what they want.

[PhoneLobster]

One problem is of course that the recharge currency for 'continuing play' is dumb, useless, and arbitrary, because eight hours (or one hour, or five minutes, or whatever) of in-game time are ultimately as tangible and meaningful as the taste of the chicken broth at the tavern in Hommlet.

And you can completely formalize time management and resource recovery rules within that formal structure and it can STILL end up being basically arbitrary and borderline meaningless.

You can even have formalized rules for roaming creatures, long range detection and "whole of dungeon" combat encounters and even then there are times when it is STILL almost purely arbitrary if characters get to rest.

Because at some point the decision to insert an interruption or not ends up being a largely arbitrary one, and at some level, at some point it needs to be.

Even if you are on a fixed schedule and somewhere very safe like "at home" and you KNOW your party is going to heal in exactly 6 game days, you basically DO want the decision as to whether ninjas attack you at home in that interval (and precisely when they do) to be an essentially arbitrary decision.

Yes, it could screw you, or it could be generous and always let you heal, the game design is going to need to assume something there and clearly inform GMs as to what it expects as a normal guideline and how far they can or should diverge from that. But in the end not every single encounter, adventure or whatever can or even should be formally generated from it's very conception. Even somehow magically (and probably badly) reducing everything else to formal mechanics outside of arbitrary GM control, the next adventure arc needs to start at SOME point in time.

All that said, better formalization on dungeon roaming, in combat recovery times and out of combat time formalization DO have benefits, and it's definitely nice to have some (probably within "combat time") formally generated interruptions from those sorts of rules, it's just that you can and should never utterly 100% eliminate arbitrary GM generated ninja attacks/interruptions/events.