In some OSR games, PCs have to rest one turn in six (10 mins out of every hour). Some games allow them to skip this, but suffer penalties for tiredness if they don't.

I admit I've never played this way. How does this work out in practice? Does it add anything of value to the game? I seems likely to boil down to "alright, time to rest; OK, rest's over" in practice.

OSRs can blow these things out of proportion.

This was definitely a rule in basic D&D, but I always took the purpose of it as making management of the game easier. The time it takes for characters to do things which are hard to quantify, hard to track, or things characters can assumed to be doing that we don't make explicit in the game (like taking a leak), whatever that total odd time may add up to over the course of an hour can be attributed to the 6th turn. The other benefit is it gives 5 turns of activity per hour of game time rather than 6, meaning you get to deal in more round numbers. If there's a 4-hour time limit on the mission, that's a nice round 20 turns rather than 24 turns.

I think when we start tracking the spare turn and giving penalties for players not announcing their characters are "taking the 6th" or opening up the complexity of allowing them to over-ride it in exchange for a future penalty, I think at that point we're just jumping the shark.

Although I would allow them use of the 6th turn for the "escape" or "return journey." Presumably, the compensating rest will occur during downtime after the adventure, so I don't need to think about future penalties. From the perspective of the rules-focused gamer, I would regard this "inconsistency" as something similar to the 10th frame in bowling. Or how in the 4th quarter of a football game, the receiver will opt to run out of bounds to stop the clock.

But overall, I feel like DMs and designers who sweat the 6th turn, track it, build mechanics around it, etc, are probably missing the mark on the spirit of the rule.

The 6th turn rest has never really made sense to me given the glacial pace of D&D exploration.  I have always use it, but always more-or-less hidden from the players, I tick off the 6th turn without mentioning they did anything.

If we're looking for the reasoning behind it, I think Lunamancer's comments are very logical.  It gives you round numbers and 'free' time to slot any and all miscellaneous actives.

Thanks for the feedback. Not worrying much about it sounds good to me.

Quote from: Dark Train on February 24, 2022, 01:11:04 PM
The 6th turn rest has never really made sense to me given the glacial pace of D&D exploration.  I have always use it, but always more-or-less hidden from the players, I tick off the 6th turn without mentioning they did anything.

If we're looking for the reasoning behind it, I think Lunamancer's comments are very logical.  It gives you round numbers and 'free' time to slot any and all miscellaneous actives.

um, it even explains why in BX and I think A why the movement is slow. Because the characters are checking for traps, mapping and other stuff as well as trying to be quiet as they go. All that can be very exhausting after nearly an hour of this, especially if there has been some, or lots of, combat along the way.

The breather moments allow the characters to untense for a moment, get their bearings, maybe notate the map they are making, etc.

Essentially alot more is going on in a turn of exploration. And alot of people seem to conveniently forget that. Same for a round of combat.

Quote from: Lunamancer on February 24, 2022, 12:57:22 PM
OSRs can blow these things out of proportion.

This was definitely a rule in basic D&D, but I always took the purpose of it as making management of the game easier. The time it takes for characters to do things which are hard to quantify, hard to track, or things characters can assumed to be doing that we don't make explicit in the game (like taking a leak), whatever that total odd time may add up to over the course of an hour can be attributed to the 6th turn. The other benefit is it gives 5 turns of activity per hour of game time rather than 6, meaning you get to deal in more round numbers. If there's a 4-hour time limit on the mission, that's a nice round 20 turns rather than 24 turns.

I think when we start tracking the spare turn and giving penalties for players not announcing their characters are "taking the 6th" or opening up the complexity of allowing them to over-ride it in exchange for a future penalty, I think at that point we're just jumping the shark.

Although I would allow them use of the 6th turn for the "escape" or "return journey." Presumably, the compensating rest will occur during downtime after the adventure, so I don't need to think about future penalties. From the perspective of the rules-focused gamer, I would regard this "inconsistency" as something similar to the 10th frame in bowling. Or how in the 4th quarter of a football game, the receiver will opt to run out of bounds to stop the clock.

But overall, I feel like DMs and designers who sweat the 6th turn, track it, build mechanics around it, etc, are probably missing the mark on the spirit of the rule.

You have sold me on the sixth turn. I always forget to count people's torches going out. This would be the perfect catchup time. It sounds like you don't use it despite what you said?

It does seem weird from a fictional perspective perhaps.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on February 25, 2022, 05:23:16 AMYou have sold me on the sixth turn. I always forget to count people's torches going out. This would be the perfect catchup time. It sounds like you don't use it despite what you said?

It does seem weird from a fictional perspective perhaps.

I use it more or less as I described it.

I do the same thing with wilderness travel. In AD&D 1E, they break the day down into 6, 4-hour blocks. I assume 3 are spent traveling, even though the daily overland movement rates given in the game assume 8 hours of daily travel. The extra time is spent packing up camp in the morning, setting up camp at night, and perhaps a break during the day. If there is a monster encounter, the time spent dealing with that is not something that's worth tracking when I'm on a 4-hour block time scale, so it's just absorbed into the extra time.

Now the 6th turn in dungeon crawling, if I had something like a "Metroid" ending, where there was a time limit to escape the dungeon, I would be open to giving the players back the 6th turn if they urgently need it. Given a treasure-laden reduced movement rate and that presumably by this point a good amount of their lighting will have been expended, they might need it. A player who's read the rules might even ask for it. Their characters can tough it out for a few hours without rest or penalty, the idea being that once they escape there will be able to make up the rest time. If time really is that tight and the time limit is the central focus if play on that last leg, I'd be more likely to track something that I would otherwise handwave into the 6th turn.

Wait so you do use it? Just not the penalties? What if they don't want to stop and rest?

Quote from: Omega on February 25, 2022, 04:26:05 AM

Quote from: Dark Train on February 24, 2022, 01:11:04 PM
The 6th turn rest has never really made sense to me given the glacial pace of D&D exploration.  I have always use it, but always more-or-less hidden from the players, I tick off the 6th turn without mentioning they did anything.

If we're looking for the reasoning behind it, I think Lunamancer's comments are very logical.  It gives you round numbers and 'free' time to slot any and all miscellaneous actives.

um, it even explains why in BX and I think A why the movement is slow. Because the characters are checking for traps, mapping and other stuff as well as trying to be quiet as they go. All that can be very exhausting after nearly an hour of this, especially if there has been some, or lots of, combat along the way.

The breather moments allow the characters to untense for a moment, get their bearings, maybe notate the map they are making, etc.

Essentially alot more is going on in a turn of exploration. And alot of people seem to conveniently forget that. Same for a round of combat.

It's still a snail's pace, given the length of a turn (10 minutes). Feels more like a heist movie, where the PCs are moving in exaggerated slow motion as they break into some vault, than the speed you'd move in any enemy-infested area where there are monsters patrolling the halls.

I still use the rules, I just don't think the times given make any sense.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on February 25, 2022, 09:48:07 AM
Wait so you do use it? Just not the penalties? What if they don't want to stop and rest?

Well, as I describe it, you may as well ask me if I use rounding or rough estimates. Of course I do. And of course I'm also willing to switch gears into high precision mode if being exact becomes important.

There are no options laid out before the players. Nothing to game. No tradeoffs to consider. No penalties.

It does kind of seem like a lot of OSR is in reaction to the relative lower difficulty level of the newer editions of the game, so they go in the opposite direction.

Having been whelped on 1e and BECMI, I was amused to learn that you get all your hitpoints back after sleeping one night (not even a full day).

Whatever you enjoy in your game is good, but I find it amusing.

As I never really play dungeon crawls where this is applied verbatim, I'll share my general experience with resting mechanics.

Rests exist to simplify bookkeeping and to provide good places to end sessions. I have been in a campaign or two where resting became a problem--players wanted to spam resting. This was likely because the reason to rest--resetting cooldowns and such--was never balanced by a reason not to rest, so players did it habitually. I've never seen groups where players refused to take rests, though.

The technique that I typically use to encourage PCs to use rests wisely is to give antagonists plot progress on a subplot the PCs have already been exposed to each time the players rest, or at least in proportion to the time they take. If you're out of town completing a sidequest, you are going to be in a lot better shape story-wise if you return after five rests than if you return after fifteen. This conveys a sense that the universe is dynamic and lived-in, but also can make players feel a loss of agency. It also requires telegraphing when the next encounter will be hard so players don't push themselves too far. 

Do you guys force the players to rest after a combat encounter? Force as in there's penalties if they don't take ten minutes to regroup and so on. Or do they just fight and carry on?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on March 02, 2022, 05:26:13 PM
Do you guys force the players to rest after a combat encounter? Force as in there's penalties if they don't take ten minutes to regroup and so on. Or do they just fight and carry on?

For me, it's same answer as above. No penalty, and it's all about rounding. If a combat lasts 5 rounds, there will be 5 rounds of resting and regrouping to round the entire encounter up to an even turn. If it's 11 rounds, then it's 9 rounds of rest. In the final leg of the journey, if time is of the essence and there will be plenty of time later for rest, then I'll go exact round by round with no rest at the end of combats.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on March 02, 2022, 05:26:13 PM
Do you guys force the players to rest after a combat encounter? Force as in there's penalties if they don't take ten minutes to regroup and so on. Or do they just fight and carry on?

Nope, only for not resting on turn 6. BX does not penalize you for combat as combat in BX is already pretty brutal. Dead a 0HP. Resting recovers 1d3 hp per day of uninterrupted rest.

Its assumed the turn 6 resting also includes things like simple first aid or just taking a breather before soldiering on.