I've noticed a problem in my current 3.5 D&D campaign.

The party often has the choice of continuing exploration, or resting for the day.

However the choice isn't a very meaningful one, since it seems that stopping is better in every case. The only reasons not to seem to be out-of-game reasons like role-playing a reckless character, deliberately creating a challenge for yourself, or not wanting to do the 'paperwork'.

I guess this is the purpose of wandering monsters, but either 3.5 doesn't have them, or they're not common enough to make the choice meaningful.

In any case, what do you do when the party has a safe haven to fall back to, such as a town?

Quote from: Age of Fable;339636I've noticed a problem in my current 3.5 D&D campaign.

The party often has the choice of continuing exploration, or resting for the day.

However the choice isn't a very meaningful one, since it seems that stopping is better in every case. The only reasons not to seem to be out-of-game reasons like role-playing a reckless character, deliberately creating a challenge for yourself, or not wanting to do the 'paperwork'.

I guess this is the purpose of wandering monsters, but either 3.5 doesn't have them, or they're not common enough to make the choice meaningful.

In any case, what do you do when the party has a safe haven to fall back to, such as a town?

Depends on the campaign...but the mean answer is "blow it up".

Or maybe there could be dangers travelling between the dungeon and the town.

Quote from: Age of FableI've noticed a problem in my current 3.5 D&D campaign.

The party often has the choice of continuing exploration, or resting for the day.

However the choice isn't a very meaningful one, since it seems that stopping is better in every case. The only reasons not to seem to be out-of-game reasons like role-playing a reckless character, deliberately creating a challenge for yourself, or not wanting to do the 'paperwork'.

I guess this is the purpose of wandering monsters, but either 3.5 doesn't have them, or they're not common enough to make the choice meaningful.

In any case, what do you do when the party has a safe haven to fall back to, such as a town?

You ambush them on their way back to town.

Quote from: Age of Fable;339643Or maybe there could be dangers travelling between the dungeon and the town.

Oh, yeah. Here's a Wilderness Encounter Table I designed. It's for D&D 3.5, so maybe it'll help...

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=13052&page=18

Ah, 3.5E has rules for random encounters on pages 77, 95, and 101 in the DMG. Quick question, AoF, are you the DM?

I have noticed that to happen in 3.5 if the DM isn't wary.  I think its in part because combats take so long that after one, the party is ready for a time out.  4E also has long combats but their rules are designed to encourage players to push on (hit milestones, healing surges, encounter powers, etc).

The key is to have a reacitve, not a static environment.  If exploring the dungeon, the inhabitants should prepare traps and better organise their defences if the party leaves to rest up or just take too long.  What you want to do is make the first encounter tough as the party hits a well organised, prepared and alert defence.  If they break through and keep going, reward them by giving them a few easier encounters, in effect, catching the enemy off guard.

Other good methods are having a time limit that encourages the party to hurry.  Maybe they need to save someone before they are killed.  More ammusingly, if the party make a particularly good showing and then stop to rest, have the monsters leave and take their treasure with them! In my experience the party hates nothing more than watching treasure and xp getting away.  Alternatively have another party of adventuerers go in and clean out the good stuff while they were resting.

In short, if you put of bit of work and imagination into it, the party should always feel like they could miss out on something good if they stop to rest up a day.

Time is a ressource.

If time is not played as a ressource, spell slots become meaningless, the whole world around the dungeon becomes meaningless, as it would be frozen in time.

So really, I don´t see the problem.

Wandering Monsters don't have to be random.   It could be as simple as "the reinforcements will be arriving in an hour" or "the other dungeon looters are searching the place too" or "the undead rise up again at midnight"

At low levels especially, the undead who don't stay down are probably my favorite "timer" for getting players to keep moving.

Thanks everyone.

To answer the question above, I'm not the DM.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;339646Oh, yeah. Here's a Wilderness Encounter Table I designed. It's for D&D 3.5, so maybe it'll help...

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=13052&page=18

Thanks, that looks interesting. (And you sure love those elementals popping out of thin air.) I'll try to use portions thereof at my table in the near future.
But heaven forfend we produce something that anyone except the author can navigate? Behold the fruit of my labour (product of the last 20 minutes).

Quote from: Windjammer;339676Thanks, that looks interesting. (And you sure love those elementals popping out of thin air.) I'll try to use portions thereof at my table in the near future.
But heaven forfend we produce something that anyone except the author can navigate? Behold the fruit of my labour (product of the last 20 minutes).

lol....hey, man...I really like how you formatted that. I don't know how to use Photoshop or whatever you did to make it look that good, but I like it. Well done. Maybe I should hire you.

That's just plain Winword. Doing the stat blocks like I did on page 1 is extremely time consuming (that's why I didn't follow that formating for the stat blocks on pp.2-9). The rest can be done really quickly.

Edit I once re-layouted Judges Guild' Ready Ref Sheets for my own pleasure. Obviously I can't post that without a massive copyright violation, but I hope posting a small excerpt won't harm. It contains part of the city encounter tables. There's tons of fun to be had with these.

I'm thinking of giving the party a choice on their way to their destination: dangerous shortcut or safe round about way. If they take the dangerous short cut, I'm going to have them fight like 6-7 encounters in one day. If they go around, only one or two. If they try to camp in the ravine on the short cut, there will be three monsters that get to make perception checks to notice the group. If they fight one and then don't move one, the others will get a bonus.

None of these fights will be super hard, but, it should get taxing after a bit.

Quote from: Cranewings;339690I'm thinking of giving the party a choice on their way to their destination: dangerous shortcut or safe round about way. If they take the dangerous short cut, I'm going to have them fight like 6-7 encounters in one day. If they go around, only one or two. If they try to camp in the ravine on the short cut, there will be three monsters that get to make perception checks to notice the group. If they fight one and then don't move one, the others will get a bonus.

None of these fights will be super hard, but, it should get taxing after a bit.

But with no time counter there is no benefit to the dangerous shortcut. If the only effect is that the DM doesn't say... you travel for another 6 hours.. then there is no point.
I think the timing isuse is one of the real problmes with Sandbox style environments. In a plot driven game  you have numerous ways to drive the game onwards but in a sandbox players can always leave and come back later. Wandering monsters are not the answer as PC in a sand box are likely to  be driven by experience and treasure and you get that from WM as well as the in place guys. An opposing team after the same things is interesting but you start to move out of the pure sand box and toward a narative again.

What's the problem?  If there is no in game reason for the characters to press on then I agree that it is to their advantage to rest up.  If you don't want to, then branch out on your own.  When they say, lets go back to town, you can decide to just stay behind for a bit, check out one more room maybe.