On Overland Travel, Part 2: Long and Short Rests

In the first article in this series, I set
out to prove Vaarsuvius wrong, to salvage random encounters in overland travel.
I found that the problem lies in the interaction of travel, Random Encounters,
and resting, which is what I’ll tackle in this article.

Part
4 of On Wandering Monsters lays out a couple of ways in which the use of
Wandering Monsters in dungeons can smooth out some of the roughness between
classes, and part 2 discussed how they can be used to further, rather than
distract from, the narrative. One would think that all of that would apply equally
well to overland Random Encounters, except that, due to the interaction of certain
game mechanics, these battles are a tedious waste of time because the party is
always going into them at full power, and always heals immediately after. It’s
a standard rule of writing that you need to have stakes to have tension and
that tension is the soul of drama, with the corollary being that no stakes = no
tension = no drama = half the players will be on their phones during overland
travel.

So, what can we do to solve this problem?
One answer, I think, is to make overland travel work, in some ways, more like a
dungeon crawl—not in the sense of filling the woods with traps and hallways,
but rather in imposing some resource management complications. The first step
of which is that…

Long Rests Must be
Prevented

The main reason why dungeons are gripping
is because it is very challenging and dangerous, if not impossible, to attempt
a long rest without losing substantial progress (that is, leaving the dungeon).

If we change the rules and/or assumptions
to prevent long rests between Random Encounters, just as they are impossible to
use between Wandering Monster encounters in dungeons, we can replicate the same
resource-conservation and increasing tension effect. So let’s try and find a simple,
elegant tweak to the rules that gives us the desired behaviour.

“The Gritty
Realism” Approach

The Dungeon
Master’s Guide has an optional rule that touches on what we’re looking for:

Gritty Realism

This variant
uses a short rest of 8 hours and a long rest of 7 days. This puts the breaks on
the campaign, requiring players to carefully judge the benefits and drawbacks
of combat. Characters can’t afford to engage in too many battles in a row, and
all adventuring requires careful planning.

Dungeon Master’s Guide 5th Edition, 2014. p. 267.

While I think the goals of this rule are
the same as ours, I don’t think this is the solution for us. If you tell the
party they need to stay put for 7 days to gain a long rest, I can guarantee
that they’ll be tempted to just bring 8 times as many trail rations and stop
for a week after every single battle. This puts too great a conflict between
meta-rewards and the narrative, as breaking for a week after every day of
hiking is hardly heroism. This houserule also prevents the use of short rests
in the dungeon, which harshly penalizes martial characters for reasons
described in my Wandering Monster series.

If D&D doesn’t provide variant rules
that serve our purposes, it’s time to turn to other sources of inspiration,
such as….

The “Skyrim” Approach

In Skyrim,
resting requires a bed or bedroll. These are only placed sparingly in the
world, often requiring stumbling into a wilderness campsite (which rewards exploration)
or staying at an inn (which are few and far between).

Obviously the bedroll solution is right out,
as characters carry bedrolls around with them—campsites in D&D aren’t
static elements to be discovered, they’re items on the inventory sheet.
Requiring a bed could work, but it provides a number of problems. Putting
myself into the shoes of a Player, I can already imagine the arguments I’d use
against the GM who imposed this rule:

What
about pre-historical civilizations that didn’t use beds? Did they simply never
heal their injuries? This makes no sense.What
if I just drag a bed around with me?Okay,
but what if it was on a wagon?What
do you mean my RV wagon can’t make it up the mountain pass? I’ll go around. I
don’t care that it takes six months more. The Druid can forage for free food.

Even reasonable, non-disruptive players would end up asking these questions, and I think with this rule we’d simply be trading out one set of detrimental
incentives (that is, to simply nuke every enemy with every spell and then take
a nap) with another set (those listed above). What if instead of simply a bed,
you need something a little more intangible? Such as…

You Need Comfort

All of the problems of the above involve lugging
a bed into a context that doesn’t typically have beds, so what if we say you
need the full context? A few years ago, I hiked the West Coast Trail, an
adventure which took my group seven days. I can guarantee that sleeping on a
‘bedroll’ in a tent is not as
relaxing or rejuvenating as sleeping in a real bed. It’s not just the sleep,
it’s the food—there is a world of difference between perfectly-nutritious 'trail
rations’ and a burger. Part of this is psychological, which doesn’t mean it
should be discounted—many of the in-game benefits of a long rest are mental
(recovering spells, for instance), not physical. By the end of our hike, our
bodies were in shambles. We had blisters, bruises, cuts, sunburns, and we
smelled terrible—all this despite 'resting’ every night, often for
substantially more than 8 hours. But one shower, an unhealthy amount of pizza,
and a night in a bed later, we felt miraculously cured—much like an adventurer
does after a long rest.

So what if, without a certain degree of
comfort and security, any length of rest simply counts as a Short Rest?

Let’s break down some elements of comfort
that seem relevant to a fantasy adventure:

Good shelter—something more than just a tent. A
house or inn is ideal, but particularly hospitable cave will do. These
locations are few and far between, and may be popular rest stops for other travelers
(thus discoverable by asking around in town), or are already the lairs of
monsters or bandits.Hot Food—Specifically not 'trail rations.’ Something baked,
cooked, boiled, or fried over a fire or stove.A Comfortable Bed—More than just a bedroll on the
rocks. It can be a real bed, a cot, a pile of hay, or the like.Hygiene—Clothes have to be washed and hung out to dry,
some stubble might need shaving (depending on race, gender, culture, and
preference), and bodies need to be cleaned. Soap is preferred.Safety—The characters have to feel safe as they rest. Simply being
safe (such as posting a watch and avoiding encounters) isn’t enough; actual
relaxation must be possible. If the party has to take substantial steps to
ensure their physical safety, then it doesn’t count as a long rest.

The goal here is that when the party spots
a roadsign inn ahead, the wizard says “thank god, a hot bath.” Sprinkling roadside inns and friendly
farmsteads along the road is something the GM can control, so the difficulty of
overland travel can easily be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the rate of
pit-stops.

Narratively, this approach fits with much
of D&D’s source fiction. Think about Bree, Rivendel, Beorn’s house,
Lothlorien—adventures in both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are punctuated by breaks at
memorable pit stops, before which, our heroes are quite ragged. This narrative
element is entirely lacking in D&D, as, from a mechanical standpoint, whether
you’re sleeping in a five star hotel or out in a rainy night, all rest is
equal.

There’s still a few cracks to work out in
this system—for instance, as Milo is fond of pointing out, Prestidigitation negates the need for showers and laundry, players
will devise means to dragging beds out with them, and rangers will start
bagging deer to replace their trail rations. Also, we don’t yet have an elegant
solution allowing long rests before dungeons, but I think it’s a start.

Next
Up: On Overland Travel, Part III: Random Encounters