Party goes out to desert land

>Party goes out to desert land
>Heads deep in to unoccupied sands
>Bury selves in sand, camouflage
>Lie there all day
>Stay there 364 days
>Every night keep a night watch in shifts
>364 nights of no report
>On the 365th night, do not post a sentry
>Attacked by goblins
What the fuck is it with DMs and night watch

>DMs being cruel
Wow I have literally and figuratively never heard of this happening ever in all of history. I sure hope you've recover from the vast mental trauma such an event has given you.

It really wasn't that traumatic dude it's just a game

Curiosity overcomes me. Why did you bury yourselves in the desert for a literal year, anyway?

That's probably what the goblins want to know too.

It's pretty clear it's just a hyperbolic example.

sadism

Are you retarded? He was just exaggerating to prove a point

>Not having things attack them in the night regardless of whether they post a watch or not.

I don't get people these days. It's like they've forgotten the purpose of random encounters. They're a tax on staying in dangerous areas, paid for in blood and other resources. They're there to stop your players from going all out with whatever it is their slaughter abilities are every time they run into a rat and then running away and resting and hiding.

>2017
>random encounters
How have you still not learned to not waste people's time with this pointless bullshit?

Ok so this "example" of how a DM acted unfairly never actually happened.
So then whats the problem?

I've actually floated the idea of "abstract random combat", where instead of rolling the dice and getting 1d6 monsters to fight, you roll the dice and the party takes a certain amount of damage, and expends ammo/abilities/spells/whatever accordingly.

Most groups would rather have the fights.

Autism.

Implying giving the players total freedom to pick where, when, and how they get into fights is any better.

Autism is the problem, user

But don't worry, there are people who can help with that

>This bad thing I made up
"Whats up with that bad thing guys?"

I tried the same thing a couple times. Actually calculated the average amount of resource expenditure for a typical fight. scaled it down about 30%, and kept it in my notes. The first time I used this, my players got really mad at me, saying that 2 spells slots or 16 HP damage was too much. That, if it were a real fight, they would have used much less resources. So, I went back to random nightly encounters, and when I did, they used about double what I had calculated. Not that they cared, they just want to fight things.

It feels like an unfair tax if you just go "okay you lose such and such", but if they fought for it and bled for it, it feels fair despite costing more. Makes sense.

>dm used to do this shit
>we countered with making characters who were always ready for battle
>gets pissed and bans loads of abilities and gear next game he runs
>throws a fit when we wont let him run
Seriously, why do they do this? I can understand wanting to use a surprise encounter but every game, twice a game broke us.same guy used to have us "hollywooded" away and captured to strip our gear. He always got flak for it and always used it in his campaign. We kicked the guy yeara later for retconning action that made it harder to fuck us over.

>Okay guys set up watches
>"Someone take first, I'll do the other 3 since I have a ring of sustenance and a godly Perception"
>Literally nothing ever happens at night, DM always just goes "the night passes by uneventfully"

WHY EVEN FUCKING MAKE US DO IT THEN YOU FUCKING BASTARD

The goblins camouflaged better and they spent 364 days waiting for your party to lower the guard. Truly a wily hunter, a goblin.

It was a duel of autism between the players and the goblins

Jokes aside i would decide it with a die roll if you guys are attacked

But of course the goblins would attack on the day they saw you didn't post a guard, dumbass.

I prefer to run systems where the PCs can recover most of their resources between fights.

I think you will find that by eliminating the players (free will and imagination are pesky distractions) and reducing the whole game to rolling a few buckets of dice against pre-determined DC you will greatly improve efficiency of the whole process.

I prefer to run games where the half of PC build options based on consistency-not-peakiness are relevant and useful.

>players want to play the game
How fucking dare they anyway, don't they realize we're writing a BOOK here? Someday we're gonna be famous! That fat fuck GRR Martin is gonna weep into his fat fucking hands at how successful our HBO show is!