how do YOU deal with "scared" players?

[3drinks]

You know the ones. They don't use their resources because they "might need them later". They retreat back to town to heal after every encounter even if they lost 1 - 2 hp. Those types.

What's your solution, GitP?

[Rynjin]

Give them a time limit.

[BWR]

Give them a time limit.

This really is the only option. But this is just a result of a vital element of running a world: the world goes on willy-nilly.
Tell the players straight and on no uncertain terms that the world does not stop for the PCs, and if they delay, things may well get worse.
They may fail to rescue the hostages, enemy encampments may get reinforcements and be on high alert, oncoming groups of enemies will get to their goals, etc.

The thing to be aware of as a GM when trying to run a game like this is to not hand out too great challenges on a regular basis. I have a GM who complains that we do the 15 minute adventuring day, but he fails to take into account that after one encounter we are seriously depleted and another such encounter (or even half such an encounter) would be certain death.

[daremetoidareyo]

This really is the only option. But this is just a result of a vital element of running a world: the world goes on willy-nilly.
Tell the players straight and on no uncertain terms that the world does not stop for the PCs, and if they delay, things may well get worse.
They may fail to rescue the hostages, enemy encampments may get reinforcements and be on high alert, oncoming groups of enemies will get to their goals, etc.

The thing to be aware of as a GM when trying to run a game like this is to not hand out too great challenges on a regular basis. I have a GM who complains that we do the 15 minute adventuring day, but he fails to take into account that after one encounter we are seriously depleted and another such encounter (or even half such an encounter) would be certain death.

Try seeing what happens of you give them more assurances about replaceability of spent resources and access to more HP security. Maybe their stingy due to insecurity and assuaginf that will encourage more risk taking. Go biggwe and let them rock rock out with some resounding successes.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Maybe try to give them a sense of knowing when to pause and think, for now. When they should be going for their second or third easy encounter of the day you can give out descriptions like this: "with this hunting party defeated, the goblins shouldn't have much left to push back with. If you move now you can catch them with their pants down before they can relocate the captive children."

When they're in for a bossfight while low on resources (and you don't want to sqeeuze in another easy encounter to let them naturally reach the ebs of their adventuring day, which is totally a good option, probably the best option even), you give out a more daunting description: "The forests ahead draw denser and harder to travel across. The birds are not whistling anymore, and even the wind seems to be holding her breath. Xadrivl's sharp elven senses tell him there's danger up ahead. Having second level spells for this would be nice."

When they get to slightly higher levels with a few sessions under their belt they should be getting a more natural feeling for this, or at least have more resources to avoid dying with when the going unexpectedly gets tough. Lots more hitpoints, affordable potions, maybe some scrolls or a wand, abd by then they know it's all replaceable, because the loot keeps getting richer.

I think the crux of the matter is that you have to find the right balance for your group between carrot and stick here. Punishment for not pushing hard enough alone will just make you look like a deadly hardass GM, while friendly encouragements and hints on what's ahead alone could make it look like you're running them through easy mode which could make them lose interest.

[3drinks]

When they get to slightly higher levels with a few sessions under their belt they should be getting a more natural feeling for this, or at least have more resources to avoid dying with when the going unexpectedly gets tough. Lots more hitpoints, affordable potions, maybe some scrolls or a wand, abd by then they know it's all replaceable, because the loot keeps getting richer.

See. This is the part that gets me. As a veteran player from AD&D, I've seen it all, including the Tomb of Horrors (that I've still never completed to-date, ha). There's two players in particular - and these were level 14 - that despite being a fighter type and a warlock, wouldn't even approach or expend anything. Almost like they were trying to make other PCs use their resources so they'd have their own for a rainy day. They "won", thanks to one PC carrying the fight for them, but this high of level I can't wrap my head around this fear of losing expendables.

Maybe they've just had such traumatic past campaigns with tyrannical DMs that under pay and over challenge (I'm slightly the opposite, I want you to have good loot so you can keep up with the challenges, maybe slightly better than the encounters) that it's altered their frame of mind to create a sense of PTSD.

[sleepyphoenixx]

For the resources you can either give them nothing but consumables and force them into situations where they have to use them or have a player who uses consumables regularly to good effect to "teach" them.
The other option is to talk to them ooc and explain how using consumables is often a more efficient use of wealth than buying a permanent item.

As for the retreat/15-minute day issue aside from a time limit you can also put them into situations where retreat is not an option.
A teleport trap that dumps them deep into a dungeon, being stranded on an island full of enemies or their enemies following them are all valid options.

Sure, Rope Trick etc. still allow resting anywhere (assuming they have access to it), but in that case you should warn them that giving enemies who know they're coming 8+ hours of preparation time is likely to bite them in the ass. And follow through if they insist on doing it anyway of course.
Also Rope Trick isn't exactly secure if your enemies know it's there and have casters of their own. Not an option you should overuse, but it exists.

[3drinks]

As for the retreat/15-minute day issue aside from a time limit you can also put them into situations where retreat is not an option.
A teleport trap that dumps them deep into a dungeon, being stranded on an island full of enemies or their enemies following them are all valid options.



It's not the "adventuring day" as much as it seems this overwhelming need to "hoard items because what if they never get that again?"

Setting up a portcullis that drops over the cavern entrance, for example? That sounds reasonable all in all. I suspect they'd side eye me for that and claim I'm "out to get them" though.

[Droid Tony]

For the retreat issue, you simply need to take away any place they can retreat too. So simply set the adventure in a very far away place that is isolated. Then the group can't just retreat.

And at 10th plus level you can have also sorts of fantasy places beyond just walking a couple of miles from town.

The classic lost plot works too: have the group be lost in some unknow location.

To use up consumables? Well, maybe just don't worry about it?

[sleepyphoenixx]

It's not the "adventuring day" as much as it seems this overwhelming need to "hoard items because what if they never get that again?"
It's an unfortunately common mindset.
Your best bet is trying to make things difficult enough for them to use them anyway or having a player (or npc, to a lesser degree) that shows them how to be awesome with consumables.
Ooc you could try to appeal to their logic. Consumables that are never used just take up WBL after all, so it's better to use it to "make room" for more loot, assuming you factor their WBL into things.
But if they're hardcore hoarders who'd rather die than expend their consumables there's sadly not much you can do except having them drop less. It's ultimately their loss.


Setting up a portcullis that drops over the cavern entrance, for example? That sounds reasonable all in all. I suspect they'd side eye me for that and claim I'm "out to get them" though.
That's the low level version, yes. The important bit is to keep it logical instead of a deus ex machina.
A goblin tribe camped out in a cave probably won't have a portcullis (except maybe a wooden one), but they can certainly set up a nasty gauntlet of traps if your pc's decide to take a 9 hour break after killing the door guards. Or poison all their weapons. Or raid a nearby village in retaliation. Or follow the pc's back to their camp. Or just leave, taking their loot and xp with them.

And as the levels increase so do the potential responses of the people they piss off, especially once magic enters the picture.
Summoned/called creatures being sent after them, hired assassins with knowledge of their abilities (and preparations to counter them), static spell defenses like Forbiddance or Guards and Wards being set up or even scry & die tactics are all valid responses to the pc's leaving unfinished business behind to go take a nap, depending on the resources of the business in question.
If they decide to run from the adventure the adventure will come to them. With friends.
Basically put yourself into the position of the enemy in question and ask yourself what a reasonable response would be for them and do that. "Do nothing" won't come up often.

And if they claim you're out to get them you can tell them "i'm not but your enemies are" and that you're going to try and make their enemies react in a believable fashion to their actions.
It's not a video game after all. The world moves on even if the pc's aren't there to trigger a quest or cutscene.

[Calthropstu]

This really is the only option. But this is just a result of a vital element of running a world: the world goes on willy-nilly.
Tell the players straight and on no uncertain terms that the world does not stop for the PCs, and if they delay, things may well get worse.
They may fail to rescue the hostages, enemy encampments may get reinforcements and be on high alert, oncoming groups of enemies will get to their goals, etc.

The thing to be aware of as a GM when trying to run a game like this is to not hand out too great challenges on a regular basis. I have a GM who complains that we do the 15 minute adventuring day, but he fails to take into account that after one encounter we are seriously depleted and another such encounter (or even half such an encounter) would be certain death.

Had someone run a strahd campaign in 3.5 once. He had a bunch of ritual sites you had to disable that made him much stronger. And the whole adventure had to be done within a set number of days. We dismantled several sites, but strahd never seemed to get any weaker.
And, after each fight with him, we were depleted to near nothing. Turns out the gm had strahd going behind us restoring all the ritual sites we dismantled which was not include in the module. We literally accomplished nothing. The entire group rage quit when we heard this because we could not complete the adventure.
The time constraints were impossible.
My point is, make any time limit realistic and don't have extra stuff undoing the work already done.


Another thought, maybe put a timed limit on bonuses. For example, payroll is going out on friday so if you manage to raid the place on thursday, you can get that gold before it is distributed and spent.

[False God]

Time limits, unsafe places that block retreat, and "reactive dungeons" are really your only solutions here. I like the latter best because the first two will lose effectiveness as players level up and gain access to powerful magic (if they're a low-magic party, ie no full casters, then they'll remain effective for a long time), but the last one is always effective: the dungeons reinforce their defenses if the party leaves, or the enemies in the dungeons pack up and move while the party is back home healing.

Ultimately, I don't like being forced by DMs to use items, and I don't care if my players don't want to use their resources. That's their call, not mine. If it means they lose the fight, well, tough.

[D+1]

You know the ones. They don't use their resources because they "might need them later". They retreat back to town to heal after every encounter even if they lost 1 - 2 hp. Those types.

What's your solution, GitP?
Kill 'em. I mean, I can suggest and even TELL them outright, "You have stuff you can use here..." But it's their PC and their choice. If they want their PC to struggle and die without using the resources they have, then they will repeatedly have to struggle when they don't need to, and repeatedly die anyway. If I am satisfied that I'm not just blindly ambushing them, but have given them full and fair warnings and cautions about what they're facing, then chips will fall. Afterward I will point out that they died with stuff on their PC's that could have prevented it, and I'll talk again about what the expected level of challenge they have is, but they will either learn that lesson or they won't. If they're still having fun then I'm still having fun, even if their PC's aren't surviving as often as they could.

Now, I've run 3E campaigns where the players are paralyzed by choice. They have so much stuff their PC's can do they lose track of it all. They couldn't/wouldn't even level up their PC's without using PCgen because it was too much to bother tracking and in MOST combats they could stick to the tried and tested basics. However, when they needed to pull out some stops to meet a higher challenge they frequently foundered. Sometimes it was a matter of mistaking breadth for depth. They had a LOT of things they could do, but they can still only do ONE thing at a time; they get ONE basic kind action to take per round and none of the MANY things they could do was a knockout blow/"I win!" button. Sometimes it was they genuinely didn't realize they had something more effective they could do until it was too late. Buried in the MULTIPLE pages of their character sheet was an item or a normally unused ability that would have been effective, but it wasn't found soon enough, or wasn't found at all until the encounter was done. And then sometimes they value some things too highly and can't bring themselves to use it BECAUSE it is so valuable. "We're facing X now, but we could face X+1 later, and that would be the time that it was intended for us to make use of this.. not just yet."

A LITTLE of that I'll take SOME blame for as DM, for not communicating well enough what they're REALLY up against. But most of it really is just lessons THEY need to learn the hard way. And as a player I'm as guilty of it as they are. To use an analogy, I want to keep the ace up my sleeve to one day trounce the DM's straight flush with a ROYAL flush in a big, flashy, satisfying throwdown, and in the meantime keep getting beat by two pair when I could have showed three of a kind. The thing is, however, that when the DM is showing a straight flush it's because he's stacked the deck, and in any case if the DM WANTS to win, he wins.

[Sutr]

Have the people they raided raid the town or move their operations. Intelligent creatures respond.

[Doctor Awkward]

One of the larger elements of the mechanics side of Dungeons and Dragons is that of resource management. And there do exist people in this world who are just bad at that. However it's also possible that they are playing to the type of game that you are running.

The first question I would ask is why do your players feel like they have to hoard items and resources? Is it because they like that in real life or are they just reacting to the world that you are presenting them? In most of the games with our regular group when we start at low level, there's always at least one or two people who buy a Belt of Healing as part of their gear and someone who can use or UMD a wand of Cure Light Wounds. In games that I run I also assume that most enemies of average intelligence will carry a couple of healing potions so they are frequently found as loot. So we end up going into most combats at or near full hit points. If things like these are not readily available in your world then retreat is absolutely the safer option.

I would also look at the types of encounters you put them in. If, for instance, most of your combats are expressly designed according to the four encounters per day guidelines and (unless the dice decide otherwise) are apt to expand exactly 25% of their available resources, the players will strategize around that. Likewise if most of you encounters are at or above their capabilities-- perhaps because under your logic you are giving them more resources so they can handle bigger challenges-- then their best tactical option would certainly be to retreat and return at full strength from everything they can to face every challenge at their maximum possible potential.

So how do you "handle" players like these?

The same way you handle every other issue at the table: talk to your players and ask them for feedback.


Ask them after a session, "Hey guys? I noticed that you routinely retreat from the dungeons after every encounter. How come? You didn't seem that badly wounded and you had lots of resources to heal yourselves."
See what kind of feedback you get. Maybe, like my group sometimes does, they genuinely forgot that they had some of those healing items in the bottom of their pack. Maybe they think your encounters are too hard.

Also ask yourself why their play style bothers you so much. After all, as a DM your job is to facilitate fun. If the players are having fun, then you aren't doing anything wrong. If you aren't having fun running this type of game, then tell them you want to change up the structure a little bit for the next adventure by adding a ticking clock element. See how they react and keep the communication open and honest.

[Zaq]

There can be a lot of reasons why this kind of playstyle is a thing. I've certainly got a few elements of it in my own playstyle, so I'm not judging too hard. A non-exhaustive list:


Bad experience with past GMs. If they've had experiences where there does come a "crunch time" where every single potion in your inventory matters, it's understandable why they'd want to hoard.
It doesn't just have to be D&D/tabletop, either. There's a ton of video games and similar things where you really are encouraged to engage in absolute frugality until the last possible chance. (I personally blame growing up on EarthBound and other 16-bit-era RPGs, but plenty of modern roguelikes will also punish you if you chow down on all your resources immediately.) So again, this is understandable. You've gotta do something to convince them that it's not quite that binary in your game.
Do your players hoard items or sell items? If they're actually selling consumables instead of just filling bag after bag with them, then the problem is that they're seeing the consumables as gold rather than as another form of resource. I don't have a one-sentence solution, but it's an angle.
There's also the "out of sight, out of mind" problem. Most people like me and presumably like you (who are sufficiently into the game to want to GM, to spend time online talking about it, and so on) can really love the fiddly bits and can get really into every single option a character has at their respective fingertips. But a lot of other players either don't want to or don't care to keep an entire set of options (including one-off items that might be in a weird place on their character reference sheet, if there at all) in their brain at once. They want to just manage their primary stuff and not worry about auxiliary items, whether as a conscious choice or simply as a result of forgetting. It's basically impossible to force a player to choose to focus on more things simultaneously and still feel like a friendly and fun game long-term, so you've gotta make them want it (or come to terms with them not wanting it).


Dig deeper. Look at root causes and see what you can see.

[Allanimal]

I think it would be funny if they retreated from a dungeon after one easy-ish encounter, when they go back, they find the dungeon has been cleared out already by another band of adventurers. All that XP and loot gone, save a few coppers that they couldnt be bothered to haul off.

[Elkad]

I keep a reserve. But I'm expecting the DM to occasionally throw a 6th encounter at us for the day.
Or give us something we are supposed to run from, and then beat it anyway.

But I'm not a 15-minute day guy. I'm the guy yelling at the party to stop wasting time looting and push on to three more rooms while our short-term buffs are running.

Which means you can often clear way more than 4 encounters.

[Faily]

"You can't use your potion of Cure Serious Wounds if you're dead."

Honestly, if they don't use the consumables given to them, then well... drive home the point eventually.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Lot of good advice here; time limits, gentle reminders, one-way dungeons. All very workable.

I'm gonna go with vicious mockery (not the 5e bard spell). If the social dynamic of your group allows it, calling your players a bunch of lilly-livers, whining about "oh noooo. We might not have everything we need to overwhelm every encounter. Our characters might struggle or *gasp* even die!" can light a fire under their butts. Seriously, you have action points, res magic is a thing, and you can replace nearly anything in a big enough city (anything that isn't unique in Sigil and even a lot that is unique in Union.)

Combined with any of the above, show don't tell approaches, it tends to bring out a more competitive aspect of a lot of players.

That aside, consider some of your assumptions about the game. Do you hand out treasure rarely enough to justify pot-hording? Are your encounters regularly near-lethal challenges that warrant great caution or cake-walks that make using pots a waste of money? Sometimes player behavior that looks over-cautious to you looks perfectly reasonable on the other side of the screen and -they're- the ones who're right about it.

[Jay R]

You know the ones. They don't use their resources because they "might need them later". They retreat back to town to heal after every encounter even if they lost 1 - 2 hp. Those types.

What's your solution, GitP?

Those are two different situations.

When the group retreats after each encounter, the solution is rivals. The party beats the goblins in the first level of the dungeon and retreats to heal. The next day, on their way out, they pass another party coming back with all the loot (and XPs) from the dungeon.

But the party who never uses their assets? That’s their business, not mine. I decide what the monsters do, what the top villain does, what the minions do, what the townsfolk do, what the animals do. I do not decide what the PCs do.

[Luckmann]

You know the ones. They don't use their resources because they "might need them later".The beatings will continue until morale improves.
They retreat back to town to heal after every encounter even if they lost 1 - 2 hp. Those types.Consider the dungeon ecology. Going back to town is usually a 8-12 hour trip, or more. Leaving for so long should have obvious consequences in most cases.

[Lapak]

A relatively impartial mechanic I'm growing fonder of is the Angry GM's Tension Pool.

Capsule version: every time the party burns time during an adventure, you add a 6-sided die to the Tension Pool. When they do something reckless or attention-getting, you roll all the dice in the pool. When there are six dice in the pool, you roll it and empty it.

Whenever you have reason to roll the pool, if there are any 1s showing the party suffers from some kind of complication, which could consist of any of the reactive things mentioned above: they discover the next passage has been heavily trapped, the inhabitants organize an ambush or counter-attack, doors that were open the last time they went through them have been locked and barricaded, etc.

The reason I like this is that reactive dungeons run purely on DM intuition can get pushback where the players complain you are out to get them for being smart; reactive dungeons that are triggered by random dice rolls which are in turn triggered by the party's actions both feel impartial and feel like they are in the party's control. Don't want to risk the Tension Pool getting rolled? Keep pushing on. Going all the way back to town? That's burning so much time that the pool will go to six full dice and get rolled, meaning that things are very likely but not absolutely going to be somehow worse when you get back.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Angry GM's Tension Pool
I love it. I'm stealing this, it's great.

[Jay R]

Don’t forget that the wilderness constantly adapts. The party killed six ogres at the entrance to the dungeon, and went back home to heal?

When they return, there are 12 ogres burying their kin.

Or eight gryphons eating ogre flesh.

Or six ogre zombies.

The crucial fact is this: a safe place that you aren’t guarding does not necessarily remain safe.

[Elkad]

"The party escapes into the rope trick, deep inside the dungeon. It's dark in the room below. Hours pass. Suddenly there is a flash of light, and then the whole room is on fire. Goblins, under cover of darkness, have filled the whole room with firewood, brush, and oil, and set it alight. Your rope trick has 30 minutes left, and the fire will likely burn for many hours. What do you do?"

[Remuko]

A relatively impartial mechanic I'm growing fonder of is the Angry GM's Tension Pool.

Capsule version: every time the party burns time during an adventure, you add a 6-sided die to the Tension Pool. When they do something reckless or attention-getting, you roll all the dice in the pool. When there are six dice in the pool, you roll it and empty it.

Whenever you have reason to roll the pool, if there are any 1s showing the party suffers from some kind of complication, which could consist of any of the reactive things mentioned above: they discover the next passage has been heavily trapped, the inhabitants organize an ambush or counter-attack, doors that were open the last time they went through them have been locked and barricaded, etc.

The reason I like this is that reactive dungeons run purely on DM intuition can get pushback where the players complain you are out to get them for being smart; reactive dungeons that are triggered by random dice rolls which are in turn triggered by the party's actions both feel impartial and feel like they are in the party's control. Don't want to risk the Tension Pool getting rolled? Keep pushing on. Going all the way back to town? That's burning so much time that the pool will go to six full dice and get rolled, meaning that things are very likely but not absolutely going to be somehow worse when you get back.

that is a really neat idea. still def something id warn the party about before a campaign (which i assume you do). its pretty clever.

[Lapak]

I love it. I'm stealing this, it's great.
For a guy whose whole schtick is "I know better than you," he has some genuinely good ideas.
(https://theangrygm.com/)
If it's a physical tabletop, he recommends keeping the Pool dice in something you can add to as obviously as possible, like a small glass fishbowl, so it's very clear when dice are going in and it's easy to pick up and roll the pool whenever you need.

And yeah, this is something that's effective because you make it clear to the players what's going on ahead of time; the point is to get the players to be the ones pushing the pace and they only do that if they get the point.

[Fizban]

A relatively impartial mechanic I'm growing fonder of is the Angry GM's Tension Pool.
I don't particularly like Angry's tension pool, simply because it's not as revolutionary as he'd like it to be (it's fine, I'd rather just keep and exercise full control). Why? Because random encounters are already supposed to exist, as do dungeon timetables.

Of course, the existence of random encounters is part of the reason some parties are terrified of fighting too much. You should always hold something back, because you might be attacked while resting, or on your way to resting, or just by reinforcements. And learning when to drain the tank all the way is absolutely an adventuring skill. The problem is inconsistent and/or adversarial DMs who punish you for doing so by deciding to spring extra enemies on you with fiat because you're weak, or who make an encounter that clearly looks like the last wave and then surprise there's another wave!

But because the Tension Pool is deliberately triggering events based on player actions, it's super weird if those events are things that should not have had any influence from player actions, such as "random" cave-ins or the arrival of reinforcements which weren't present in the dungeon already. And combining the Tension Pool with a dungeon timetable (and plotting nearby enemies, etc) just means its a re-skinned random encounter table.

Most of the power of the Tension Pool is just that you're specifically communicating to the players that their time-wasting is causing dice to be rolled. An adversarial (or inconsistent) DM could be trying to hide when they're rolling dice behind the screen, so they can get those stupid players for standing around in their dungeon, so, don't do that? When you roll for random encounters do so loudly and obviously, and if it interrupts what they were talking about then hey, they just dramatically realized they were being loud/wasting time right before something happened. Or didn't.

For time-only conversion's sake, note that the net chance of rolling at least one 1 on six 6 sided dice is about 67%. I can't remember if Anrgy was using 10 minutes or 1 hour, but this means that when the tick hits 6, something will probably happen, much more so than a traditional random encounter table. And this also means it can be gamed, hard, by a party that gets *out* on the count of 5 (causing the exact opposite of desired behavior)- unless you go back on the concept, and decide that leaving also causes something to happen anyway.

[Bartmanhomer]

Well, I'm a scared player but I have to fight no matter how scared I am. :smile:

[Lapak]

I don't particularly like Angry's tension pool, simply because it's not as revolutionary as he'd like it to be (it's fine, I'd rather just keep and exercise full control). Why? Because random encounters are already supposed to exist, as do dungeon timetables.Two responses to this: random encounter tables have fallen out of general practice to the point of disappearing, and Complications are not always (or even necessarily usually) combat encounters.

As for dungeon timetables, I find that introducing randomness to it this way is more motivating to players than having a set timetable they cannot see. The PCs don't (almost certainly) know that the Kobold King will summon reinforcements from his troll allies 15 minutes after the outer guards are defeated. Indeed, they may never have any reason to know that they could have avoided fighting trolls by moving faster. But they can see and understand the pool, and getting ahead of it is a motivator.

Of course, the existence of random encounters is part of the reason some parties are terrified of fighting too much. You should always hold something back, because you might be attacked while resting, or on your way to resting, or just by reinforcements. And learning when to drain the tank all the way is absolutely an adventuring skill. The problem is inconsistent and/or adversarial DMs who punish you for doing so by deciding to spring extra enemies on you with fiat because you're weak, or who make an encounter that clearly looks like the last wave and then surprise there's another wave!For sure, which is part of why I like this mechanism to begin with: it removes some of the arbitrariness of when things get worse from the DM's hands.

But because the Tension Pool is deliberately triggering events based on player actions, it's super weird if those events are things that should not have had any influence from player actions, such as "random" cave-ins or the arrival of reinforcements which weren't present in the dungeon already. And combining the Tension Pool with a dungeon timetable (and plotting nearby enemies, etc) just means its a re-skinned random encounter table.To some degree, it is, but the critical point is that the PCs have significant control over not just how often the 'encounter' gets rolled for, but how likely a problem is to occur when the roll happens. Players like to have control over their destiny, even if a die roll makes that control less than perfect.

For time-only conversion's sake, note that the net chance of rolling at least one 1 on six 6 sided dice is about 67%. I can't remember if Anrgy was using 10 minutes or 1 hour, but this means that when the tick hits 6, something will probably happen, much more so than a traditional random encounter table. And this also means it can be gamed, hard, by a party that gets *out* on the count of 5 (causing the exact opposite of desired behavior)- unless you go back on the concept, and decide that leaving also causes something to happen anyway.
The time scale varies depending on environment, as he has it, with the goal being that the pool should fill up 2-3 times during the adventure IIRC. As for gaming it, remember two things. First, the pool doesn't ONLY get rolled at 6 dice - it gets rolled whenever the party does something reckless or overly attention-getting in the current context. Second, yeah, gaming it is part of the point - if they finish the adventure before the next time the pool hits 6 dice, that means they were hurrying - which is what we were shooting for all along!

[RNightstalker]

You know the ones. They don't use their resources because they "might need them later". They retreat back to town to heal after every encounter even if they lost 1 - 2 hp. Those types.

What's your solution, GitP?

Have smart enemies that don't let them rest in the middle of the dungeon or harass their retreat to town. Have new traps waiting for them when they come back.

[Psychoalpha]

Had someone run a strahd campaign in 3.5 once. He had a bunch of ritual sites you had to disable that made him much stronger. And the whole adventure had to be done within a set number of days. We dismantled several sites, but strahd never seemed to get any weaker.
And, after each fight with him, we were depleted to near nothing. Turns out the gm had strahd going behind us restoring all the ritual sites we dismantled which was not include in the module. We literally accomplished nothing. The entire group rage quit when we heard this because we could not complete the adventure.
The time constraints were impossible.

Sounds about right for a Ravenloft campaign.

"Congratulations, no matter what you do it won't matter, you'll never make anything better, and all your hard work will be undone almost immediately."

God I hate Ravenloft. >_<

[Fizban]

Two responses to this: random encounter tables have fallen out of general practice to the point of disappearing,
Hence why I said "supposed to." They're in the DMG (under Wandering Monsters), they're in earlier modules, and it's not the system's fault that people stopped using them without a replacement.

and Complications are not always (or even necessarily usually) combat encounters.
There are plenty of random encounter tables in modules that have non-combat occurrences. World's Largest Dungeon has little blank space in its tables, usually with anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 non-hazardous fluff descriptions. But if you've got something called the Tension Pool which is supposed to make Bad Things happen, and this is a combat focused game, well it's almost certainly gonna have to come down to combat. Either it's fight which expends resources and entails risk, or it's an increase to the risk of a future fight, or it's a mission failure/decrement.

Funny thing is, with buffs having limited duration, that alone should be enough to encourage pushing forward. The whole problem could be easily painted as a casters vs non-casters split, as anyone with a timed ability will most likely begin thinking in terms of that duration.

As for dungeon timetables, I find that introducing randomness to it this way is more motivating to players than having a set timetable they cannot see. The PCs don't (almost certainly) know that the Kobold King will summon reinforcements from his troll allies 15 minutes after the outer guards are defeated. Indeed, they may never have any reason to know that they could have avoided fighting trolls by moving faster. But they can see and understand the pool, and getting ahead of it is a motivator.
And many "timetables" are just "guards from the next room arrive xdy rounds later." But what I what I mean by timetables are the calls for putting time limits on an adventure. Which, in a properly written module, will have a timetable with all the events that happen. . . on a timetable. Red Hand of Doom is an example of this.


Players like to have control over their destiny, even if a die roll makes that control less than perfect.
Which is why they have character sheets full of mechanics. To be clear, this is a narratively focused mechanic- and while I like the idea of adapting various narrative driven mechanics into 3.x, cramming narrative mechanics into a simulationist game just doesn't work very well because they're inherently incompatible. Seriously, I love the idea of a PC transcending the limits on their character sheet because it's hero time, but that's the exact opposite of how 3.x works. Stealth mission failure should not be determined by some added pile of d6's when there are clear stealth mechanics, etc. Note that Angry doesn't write for 3.x: he's switched to 5e, which with its significantly lower level of rules and detail, is much more fit for adding narrative-focused mechanics. The OP has not specified system aside from this being the 3.x/PF/d20 section.


Additionally, unless you just up and leave, well this system doesn't actually give the players much more than the illusion of control unless they deliberately game it hard-

The time scale varies depending on environment, as he has it, with the goal being that the pool should fill up 2-3 times during the adventure IIRC. As for gaming it, remember two things. First, the pool doesn't ONLY get rolled at 6 dice - it gets rolled whenever the party does something reckless or overly attention-getting in the current context. Second, yeah, gaming it is part of the point - if they finish the adventure before the next time the pool hits 6 dice, that means they were hurrying - which is what we were shooting for all along!
They can hurry to avoid filling up the dice pool, but the goal is that it should in fact fill up multiple times during the adventure. Those are opposed directives: so is the DM writing the adventure in a way that will trigger the rolls, or not? The players have only one level of input, which is moving as fast as possible and not being noticed.

Or rather, I've gone and looked it back up (link (https://theangrygm.com/hacking-time-in-dnd/) for observers (warning: harsh language)), but if anything it's kinda worse? The time pool is rolled when you attract undue attention, which you can always do, which happens in place of adding a die. So you can avoid adding dice and keep them low by making noise, and then if/when something does happen, a die is removed. That's fine and all, means you get the same number of rolls as if you'd laid low, but after a delay, which is good right? Except it's deliberately designed so that whether you make noise or not, unless you get out before the time limit Something Bad happens, you roll the same number of dice.

Except you get more time. Because this was Angry's big solution not to random encounters, but the flow of time, and time only passes when the pool empties. So by making noise, the party gains effectively infinite time by preventing the pool from ever being full. They can explictly get one free "die" worth of time at the start, then force rolling that die, and it stays at one die until something happens even though they're "spending time," at which point they get another free die. Even if you could the number of dice rolled instead of waiting for the pool to be filled, they're still getting twice as many time units, which is a tradeoff for the chance of bad things, but as written they also get as many units as they want.

And this can work in a narratively driven game where everything happens at the speed you said it does, but if you're in 3.x, that's just not how it works. There is a specific amount of time it takes to do things. And in fact one of his own examples, searching through a chest, would be wrong in 3.x. Search in 3.x takes 6 seconds per 5' cube. That means that searching every inch of the walls, floor, ceiling, etc has a very specific pre-calculable answer for how long it takes (and this is easy math anyway, x squares by y squares), and searching a single chest or cabinet is not a minutes-long activity. As a skill where players shouldn't know the result, Search checks should be rolled by the DM, who does not need to roll every one individually. So, what's the problem with searching everything (and why should searching one container cause a time tick)? The players just spent 10 minutes arguing over what they're going to do? That's 10 minutes. The players take other actions? Those have defined times as well. Looting is the only real wildcard, as there's no official statement of how long it takes to remove a body's clothing (any object not stuck to something else is Move to pick up, Move to stow, 6 seconds total per object). In fact, a lot of the examination that people would say justifies the time assumed there, isn't searching or looting, but Appraising- figuring out what is worth looting, which also has a defined time cost (which no one uses, because no one likes the Appraise skill [myself included]).

If anything, the reason to use such a system is to force things to take more time, in order to compensate for groups that actually plan ahead to move efficiently and leverage ridiculous spell durations. Who, if prevented from moving quickly by the time mechanic, might figure out how to cheese it for infinite spell duration (as I said above, buff durations are already a significant reason to avoid dallying, and the speed at which adventurers can in fact move through a dungeon in 3.x would make this time mechanic more useful for forcing those durations to expire in spite of the normal rules). To which Angry would tell you to be a DM and deal with it, as would I, but the point is that it clashes with 3.x.


Anyway. Angry put together a dice pool mechanic for imposing a sense of dread on the narrative passage of time, and it has the potential to be pretty good at that. It's just that such a mechanic in inherently inimical to a game which is full of precise timing like 3.5 (whether or not people actually run spells or actions that precisely), but for a system like 5e that basically leaves all the details of skill use to the DM and has simple spell durations, it'll work. As long as the DM fully understands how to calculate the odds and has planned the Bad Things to mesh with the adventure according to their odds and without standing out as dissociated from what's actually happening. All of which applies to someone writing encounter tables, timelines, setting up guards, etc, just with different ways to mess up.

[Lapak]

Hence why I said "supposed to." They're in the DMG (under Wandering Monsters), they're in earlier modules, and it's not the system's fault that people stopped using them without a replacement.When a mechanic falls out of common use, it's often because it's not doing whatever it was it was meant to do - design failure on either the conceptual or ease-of-use level. So looking for alternatives is worthwhile here even if you don't think this is the right one, which I respect as your feeling about this. Especially given that we have a philosophical divide beyond the mechanical one...

Which is why they have character sheets full of mechanics. To be clear, this is a narratively focused mechanic- and while I like the idea of adapting various narrative driven mechanics into 3.x, cramming narrative mechanics into a simulationist game...because I have felt for a while now that 3e is much more of a hybrid than a pure simulationist than you clearly do, and that leaning harder into its simulationist end tends to make for a worse gaming experience - for me and those I play with, at least. Your mileage may and probably does vary.

They can hurry to avoid filling up the dice pool, but the goal is that it should in fact fill up multiple times during the adventure. Those are opposed directives: so is the DM writing the adventure in a way that will trigger the rolls, or not? The players have only one level of input, which is moving as fast as possible and not being noticed.The benefit is from the tension between the two things, because a complication is not guaranteed even when you fill the pool. More likely than not on a given roll, but fill the pool even twice and the odds are in favor of 'one Complication, one time you get away without one.' Playing with this mechanic, the goal for the players is to minimize the complications, not avoid them completely, and the counter-balance is everything else in the adventure: exploring a side passage or searching a throne room for hidden treasure are both now risk/reward calculations that have costs that are (more) transparent to the PCs rather than hidden ones.

But I'm ok with letting this go at this point if you are; I threw it out there as an option, some people may find it useful even if you do not, and I think that you and I specifically are looking for different things out of this kind of mechanic such that we're unlikely to agree. But we've more or less explored the pros and cons at this point, and can let other folks decide if they like it or not.

[3drinks]

So I'm liking everything presented here and surely it's helping my own ability to plan. But how do you handle the passage of time without it seeming arbitrary? That's my hangup on it.

[mouser13]

Force it a bit by seeing fires off distance or NPC running for her/his life asking for help. Or if only because of HP loss then maybe etheral wands of lessor vigor or cure light wounds would help then see that they can handle the encounters maybe they will not need even them that much.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

"I'm not looking for a chance to screw you over or kill your character with a "Gotcha!" trap. At the same time, this isn't a video game where time only progresses through your actions. Get going and be bold!"

[Kelb_Panthera]

So I'm liking everything presented here and surely it's helping my own ability to plan. But how do you handle the passage of time without it seeming arbitrary? That's my hangup on it.

You tell them flatly at the beginning of the adventure, "Listen up. The antagonists for this adventure have a time-table and they're sticking to it. You take as much or as little time with each step of the thing as you like but dragging your feet will have consequences. You have been warned."

Then follow through on it. Set a timetable for the baddies and stick to it. It might seem arbitrary to the players in the midst of things but as long as you've got your notes to show them when it's all said and done and point out that you -did- warn them, their complaints will be hollow ones.

[nedz]

The Time and Space approaches are good but there is also a psychological method.

Run an encounter which actually scares them. It's tricky to pull off but it should habituate them somewhat.

[Rynjin]

So I'm liking everything presented here and surely it's helping my own ability to plan. But how do you handle the passage of time without it seeming arbitrary? That's my hangup on it.

Pretty much every action has a listed time scale it takes to do.

Resting takes 8 hours for instance, and you cannot recover resources twice in the same 24 hour period.

Gathering information with Diplomacy? 1d4 hours.

Casting meding? 10 minutes.

Etc., etc.

Just apply the natural time consequences that each action takes.

[Jay R]

So I'm liking everything presented here and surely it's helping my own ability to plan. But how do you handle the passage of time without it seeming arbitrary? That's my hangup on it.

Write down a table of possible results (which the players do not see), roll a die, look through a couple of books, and then arbitrarily decide that the most narratively interesting result occurred.

[Yes, of course this is arbitrary. You didn't ask how to keep it from being arbitrary; you asked how to keep it from seeming arbitrary.]


Sigh. Oh, all right; I'll be serious. You decide what will be there when they get back exactly the same way you decided what would be there the first time, informed by what you already know is nearby.

Look through your notes to see who else is likely to reach that spot, decide the probability that they do so, and then roll to see if it happens.

For instance, let's say the party slew six ogres, and then went back to town to recuperate. Check the surroundings. If there are other ogres around, then the party might come back to a dozen ogres burying their dead kin and swearing vengeance.

If there is a dragon on a nearby mountain, they might come back to a dragon eating ogre flesh.

If there is a necromancer inside the dungeon they didn't enter, then they could come back and find six ogre zombies.

If nothing else, there should be wolves or ravens or vultures eating the corpses, and smells that are attracting other animals.

The crucial fact is that the world is not in stasis. Things are happening, because the PCs aren't the only ones doing stuff.

When you (or some module writer) decided what encounters would be found, that isn't intended to be creatures that are always and forever staying right there. They are the creatures who happen to be there the moment the PCs show up the first time. It isn't arbitrary to have something else there the second time, based on what was left behind the first time.

Or at least, it's no more arbitrary than deciding what was there the first time.

[3drinks]

That....makes a ton of sense, thank you for that!

[allmanfo]

So I'm liking everything presented here and surely it's helping my own ability to plan. But how do you handle the passage of time without it seeming arbitrary? That's my hangup on it.

Another way to deal with your hang up, on time might be to discuss character goals/backstory with your Pc's, then build a timeline by collaborating with your players. This way the use of time will seem less arbitrary to your players, because they were involved in the decision making process and you won't have to do as much work.

Ex. 1: Let's say the Fighter wants to join Organization X and that organization only accepts new members on date Y. This should help make the Fighter more aware of how much time they have spent, especially if there are other adventures they have to accomplish first.
Ex. 2: Let's say the Warlock looking to avenge the death of their father and finds out that a specific person might know the whereabouts of the six fingered man that killed the Warlock's father and will be in X city on Y date.

In any case, the timeline should be short enough, so the players should realize that time is finite. I recognize that this is Dungeons & Dragons, not Resource Management & Dragons, but time is a resource to and should be used wisely.


In terms of potions: You may want to consider whether healing potions randomly heal hp, or heal a fixed number of hp

[Jay R]

Also, if you use wandering monsters at all, remember that they wander whether there are PCs around or not. Anything that appears on your wandering monster chart for that area is likely to come by and see the carnage.

Most especially, anybody who lives near there is now on guard. Suppose you lived in a dangerous area where raiders are a possibility, and you found the bodies of your dead neighbors. Wouldn’t you prepare for the next attack?

The dead bodies next to an unopened but exposed dungeon is a clear indication that people know about the dungeon, and intend to come back, or at least tell others about it.

They are now expecting a party capable of beating six ogres, but who were sufficiently damaged By six ogres to go back home to rest.

This is an obvious place to set up an ambush, complete with footprints to show which direction the marauding PCs will be coming from — and they’re probably due tomorrow morning. Set up the ambush on the east side of trail, so it’s harder to see them on the morning light.

[Mordaedil]

I know a way to kinda fix this, but it might be a solution most people don't really like.

Potions: Reduce cost to maybe a 1/10th and add an expiration date, forcing them to use them or lose them for the duration of the adventure. Allow them to get longer duration potions, but at heightened cost, with regular potions lasting a full year.
Wands: Reduce the number of charges to 10 (along with the cost), but allow them an easy way to recharge them back at town.
Staffs: Allow them to recharge them, but otherwise keep them as the same.

Well, that deals with cautious players' concern for items.

For combat, you just kinda gotta hammer home that time passes even while they rest. Have them be attacked in "safe" areas, punish them if they don't have watches, berate their cowardice from NPC's and possibly spread bad rumors from their inactions.

[Composer99]

So I'm liking everything presented here and surely it's helping my own ability to plan. But how do you handle the passage of time without it seeming arbitrary? That's my hangup on it.

You can't really escape the accusation of being arbitrary. Either you yourself decided, during your adventure prep, that events would happen over a certain timeframe, or that dungeon denizens would follow certain schedules, or that antagonists would react intelligently to the PCs, etc., or the module you are running includes such details, which means someone else decided to include those elements.

But the fact that you might be accused of being arbitrary does not mean that is what is happening. Such decisions are being made to further the goal of building a believable, living, breathing world.

[denthor]

Time and distance are an ally to a DM. If they are 4 or 5 days away from that town. Do they really want go back?

[Tvtyrant]

My suggestion is getting rid or consumables and use per day items instead (or even per encounter.) Then they have no reason to not use them, as they will get the benefit next time as well.

[Aquillion]

Talk to them about it out-of-character. Ask them if they're playing this way because they enjoy it, because they're afraid you'll hit them with something horrible without warning, because they feel it's in-character for their characters, because "well why not just top up if we can", or something else.

The answer to that will give you a sense of how (and if) to move forward with the issue.

For instance, if they enjoy it there might not be anything you can do (although you can ask them why they enjoy it and dig into that.)

If it's what they think their characters would do, or if the answer is "why not?", providing in-universe time-pressure might be a good answer.

It's also possible that they'll just stop doing that if you point it out. At my table we've eg. had to explain to the youngest player that going to sleep at 11:00 AM after one encounter to recover all our spells wasn't a reasonable thing to do in-universe even if it made tactical sense - sometimes players just go "oops, right" and get more into character after that. But to some extent it depends on what sort of game they want to play.