22 thoughts on “Question: How do you GMs work around the 15 minute work day?”

  2. Also, don’t take away the spellcasters’ spells that often. On a miss, do something else: have the Magic Missile hit an ally, for example.

  7. Just happened a little last session. It wasn’t a big problem, but it just got me thinking. The party went into the dungeon, slew a couple of kobolds and went out to take a nap.

    The 15 min work day is often a problem in games with rapid healing rates. In DW, you heal half your hp when making camp.

    Putting a time pressure on the players is not always a viable option, so that doesn’t always solve it.

  8. But why did they feel the need to make camp? And what’s the problem here? Random encounter for them, roll take watch! And when you come back, either there are more kobolds than before, or whatever lurks in the deeps now knows that you are about to enter (seeing as you slayed his first line of defenses).

    In another way: retreating from a totally full dungeon is just ignoring a threat. So the gm gets a golden opportunity. Advance a front, fill the dungeon with harder monsters, let them place more traps and/or counterattack the invading party, and whatnot.

  10. My “Dungeons” are rarely Dungeons, you can’t really escape the danger by “going outside”. If it is a dungeon, I often also collapse the entrance behind them on a 6- (Take away their stuff)

    I like to have an unstable environment – the place is on fire, the ground is literally unstable – you’re uncertain of what might be nearby if you sleep here. Make the world constantly dangerous and insecure, make the party feel like the clock is ticking, and things are advancing even when they are not.

    “You can probably go back out and make camp, but there’s a chance sombody’s going to find the slaughtered or missing guards and barricade themselves in – or come looking for you. What do you do?”

  11. It has been a while since I’ve run a dungeon crawl; but if I were to today: I would do away with hp, make wounds more serious than fixable after a nap, and try and construct a narrative such that time is important (or the dungeon can’t be left easily)

  12. Is it possible that players are getting in over their head if they’re only having one scene in the dungeon before resting? Consider starting the game in media res, a ways into the dungeon. This way, they are already committed and it will be adventure whether the backtrack or not.

  13. Marshall Miller In medias res is a good idea, but it is not widely applicable. If they find out that the evil sorcerer Wuzhisname is hiding in the Tomb of Horribles, then it’s hard to do.

  14. Make moves!  When the players say “we bail out and go to sleep” they’re looking to you to see what happens. Soft moves to start, and if they don’t get the hint, harder ones to say “WAKE UP, TIME TO DIE”

  16. Kasper Brohus For sure, I meant starting the whole game, not just a session.  

    However, I think it can still be a useful technique for starting sessions or framing scenes, e.g. “Ok, so you discovered last session that the evil sorcerer Wuzhisname was hold up in the Tomb of Horribles and it was decided that he could not be allowed to unlive.  After climbing the Mount Steep and picking your way through the traps left to keep what’s in in and what’s out out, you have passed through the long inner tunnel to this, the first real resistance from the physically fit dead that reside there.”  As GM, you can fast forward a bit to get through the monotonous parts without over-stepping your authority and over-committing them.

  17. Are these former D&D players? It’s an interesting reaction to being in a dungeon. Just thinking of it – there’s few instances where it can ever match the fiction.

    If they travel through a larger underworld, that would make sense. Like the Underworld in Britannia or the Mines of Moria. But in general, dungeons are too small to just take out your sleeping bag and make camp. It feels inconsistent right off the bat – “We’re in the entrance of a cultist temple and have slayed the guards. Let’s make camp!”

    Olden day D&D adventures had a wandering monster table to keep players on their toes. These days the DW keeper is one living wandering monster table full of moves supported by the fiction why it is a horribly bad idea to make camp in a dungeon.

  18. Adam Koebel: Next time my players get ambushed while camping, I am going to switch my standard “Orc Shadowknife kills an NPC silently” for “Orc Bloodrager bursts in screaming ‘WAKE UP!  TIME TO DIE!'”

  20. My experience with DW – it never came up.  So little of what the PCs did resulted in damage that resting wasn’t an issue – resolving their personal(and competing) goals was more more central.

  21. In the fiction I would think that a 15 minute work day would not make sense. “15 minutes after entering the dungeon you all emerge back into the light. It’s still morning and though you are maybe breathing a little heavier than when you went in you just aren’t tired enough to nap or need more than a few minutes to relax. But dare you do any relaxing at all with ____ still waiting for you?”

  22. Alessandro Gianni

     I did precisely this when the party decided to camp after fighting some goblins. While they where sleeping not only did the goblins fortify the entrance to the next level but they but rigged a trap on the door the party had sealed to make a safe room.

    By the time the party got down to level two of the dungeon, their HP was pretty well back to where it had been before they rested.

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