Long rests outside while raining

This provoked a lengthy argument in my last game of D&D, so I thought I'd bring it to Veeky Forums and get your take on it:

This is a fairly new campaign, and the party has started off fairly low level. We were required to make a lengthy travel on foot from town to our destination. Nobody brought any real camping gear save for a couple bed rolls, but enough food to keep themselves alive for the trip.

The DM made a random roll and stated it started to rain pretty hard during the night when we were supposed to be taking our regular long rest each day. But he ruled that since we had no tents and couldn't find any shelter from the rain (we all failed our skill rolls to find any), we could not get the benefits from a long rest since we were being rained on all night.

This provoked an argument from another player who stated that there's no rules for something as mundane as rain interrupting a long rest, that we technically don't have to be asleep to get the benefits of a long rest, and that our PCs are supposed to be too heroic to let something like a little rain prevent them from recuperating.

Whose side do you fall on?

I fall on the DM's side here. Being caught in bad weather without proper gear makes for a miserable time and could totally buy that it would make it hard to marshal mystic forces and the like to prepare spells and such. Take it as lesson learned and carry a fucking tent.

The dm because he's the fucking referee and while you can appeal his rulings at the end of the day he makes the call.
Also what kind of starting fear doesn't include tents?
Also you're already leaning into metagaming ruleslawyering so why not just rest another full day? Your quest probably doesn't even have a time limit.

>Whose side do you fall on?

The DM.
Because it's his call and also because unless you're some kind of amphibious species: being rained on all night would leave you haggard and terrible, it'd be fucking awful.
Just because you're a 'hero' doesn't mean you're just magically immune to the environment and you're some video game character autist.

Gonna go with the DM. It's a completely reasonable call and it's one the players can reasonably avoid in the future with the barest bit of forethought. It's not like the DM was just "lol orcs show up" every night to Jew the players out of long rest benefits.

Long, heavy rains are absolutely miserable if you have no shelter.

TEEGEE HAS SPOKEN

The GM has the right to run the game how they like, but the fault is still theirs for not clearly conveying to the players the nature of the game.

If they wanted to run a game where things like having appropriate camping equipment was important was going to have a meaningful impact on the game, they should have informed the players of this rather than just assuming everyone was on the same wavelength.

>but the fault is still theirs for not clearly conveying to the players the nature of the game.
>If they wanted to run a game where things like having appropriate camping equipment was important was going to have a meaningful impact on the game

Absolute load of horseshit. Unless you're a fucking idiot there's no excuse for going "duh, I didn't think I'd need a bedroll". Shit like weather conditions having an effect on the party is so fucking obvious I can't believe someone here actually believes it needs to be spelled out ahead of time. Nigger this is like playing a sci fi game, opening the airlock, promptly dying because you forgot to put on a space suit, and then bitching at the DM because he didn't tell you it was "that kind of game".

Except there are loads of fantasy games that would never come up. That you make the same assumption has no relation to that assumption being universal.

It also creates a weird meta-conflict, where something the players weren't aware of, but their characters presumably should be given that they live in the world, ended up creating a problem for them.

Clear communication is key, and stating your assumptions is a vital thing for a GM to do. Sure, you need a space suit in a sci-fi game. But are you the kind of GM who will check what equipment your players bring with them, or are you the kind who'll just assume basic things like that are around without needing to specify? There are lots of different approaches and styles, and players who have experienced different GM's, or just tend to a different approach, will get annoyed if they're blindsided by something they weren't expecting. You also lose literally nothing by properly communicating in advance. It's entirely advantageous to everyone involved.

Lolwut.

It's literally a tiny portion of your starting gold, you should always have adventuring gear. I shouldn't have to tell my players "Hey, don't just gear your characters out like a bunch of meatheads, show some common fucking intelligence."

Now, I WILL say that, if the players hadn't immediately resorted to bitching about how it's unfair because "muh long rest", I would accept a player saying "Hey, can I try and create a makeshift shelter, or find a cave?". Noone should be defending a player doing something this dumb.

Unless you're telling me you would legit go camping or hiking and not bring a tent. But no one would do something that stupid, right?

Have you ever experienced the vacuum of space? No? Then you don't know for sure if it kills people.

>Shit like weather conditions having an effect on the party is so fucking obvious I can't believe someone here actually believes it needs to be spelled out ahead of time.
Except for the part where expectations for the average D&D campaign are not judged by where they stand in relation to real life, but by where it stands in relation to the average D&D campaign, and the average D&D campaign glosses over such things.

In a real "medieval-era" campaign drinking unboiled river water will give you the shits and frequenting prostitutes will give you the clap, but most DMs don't put those into campaigns and say "ha ha who the fuck doesn't boil their water" after everyone fails their IRL boy scout check.

If nobody would be that stupid, why would their characters have done it?

Again, it just creates a weird meta-conflict that makes no sense, and the source of that conflict is you as a GM not stating the assumptions by which you're running the game. You have every right to run the game however you like, but informing people of that kind of thing is only beneficial to you. There's literally no reason not to. You might consider it so obvious it didn't need to be stated, but given what happened with your group you were clearly wrong.

I played in someone's custom setting once where you had to roll to gain nutrition from eating.

You could eat the food and then not gain any nutrition from it and then become increasingly famished over time.

First post, objectively correct post. I don't care how "heroic" somebody is, if you get rained on all night, you're gonna have a bad time.

>If nobody would be that stupid, why would their characters have done it?

I don't know, why didn't you buy a tent? Why isn't something as simple as "Adventuring gear" on your list? Where did that, what, 10 GP go?

>I don't know, why didn't you buy a tent?
Because the characters were expecting a campaign where the mundane aspects of travel were glossed over and the DM was not.

Well, personally, I always do, but I also know groups who don't and have never done because it just doesn't come up in their games. That their style is different doesn't make it wrong, and it'd be just as important for a GM of that style to make their assumptions clear so people wouldn't waste money on supplies that will never come up or be of actual use.

>goes adventuring
>doesn't take basic adventuring gear
>wtf why am I being punished for not making assumptions

Because, once again, your way of doing it is not the only way of doing it, and being clear about such things and avoiding potential conflicts is effortless on the part of the GM. Everybody should do it, and there is literally no reason not to.

The players should have squared it away with the GM then. That kind of thing is part of the base game, it's the norm, expecting otherwise and not clearing it with the GM is on the player. It'd be literally as simple as "Hey, how serious are you tracking adventuring gear?"

On top of that, they had bed rolls and food, so they obviously had some idea that it was important, players were dumb, they didn't think to get creative, and only started bitching(One of them literally said "It doesn't say that happens in the rules", man, come on). They're entitled, simple as that.

>start campaign that differs in style from what players were expecting
>stylistic difference leads to conflict
>wtf why can't i just assume that everyone plays the exact same way i do

You can't just write down "adventuring gear." There's tables that list out the individual equipment and what everyone has. If you forgot the pot I guess you'll just get the shits and spend the rest of the campaign shitting brown water into a ditch.

>mundane aspects of travel
>implying protecting yourself from the elements and making sure you have enough goddamn food, water, and medical supplies is mundane

Where did this meme originate?

And all of that could have been avoided by the GM clearly stating his assumptions at the start of the campaign. Dumb buzzwords like 'entitlement' are entirely irrelevant.

>Where did this meme originate?

People who don't actually play RPGs but think all players are idiots and all GMs are pussies

...Yes, it is? Because it implies a level of grit/realism that's often just ignored in more fantastical stories, where either the characters always have the supplies they need as a matter of course, or they don't need them because they're the Heroes and things just work out.

>it's the norm
If your local community doesn't hold the norm, it's not the norm.

There were tents for sale in town. Pay some fucking attention or find a murderhobo group.

Should you be able to botch a wiping your ass in the woods roll?

It's his campaign, if you're autistic about stuff like that why didn't you state your assumptions?

But how would they know they mattered unless the GM told them? Just assuming everyone shares your understanding of how things are going to go often leads to problems like the one in the OP, and the solution is no effort at all. State your assumptions, make people aware. There's just no reason not to.

He can do anything he wants and it's still "his campaign", including have them all raped to death in the night because they forgot to specify they locked their doors in a bad part of town (LOL WHO DOESNT LOCK DOORS), but if you're going to do that you should warn the party about the assumptions you're making first.

The players opening up the dialogue would have worked too, sure, but as a GM it's generally considered your job to do that kind of thing, since you're the person running the game. You're the person defining how the world worlds, so you should make sure your players are on the same page.

DM, it's completely reasonable that it'd both rain and interrupt your sleep.

Because why would they be selling something in a town I fucking made up every aspect of if it wasn't important?
>There's just no reason not to.
A healthy respect for everyone's time and a general assumption of a triple-digit IQ?

My character doesn't poop. It's not in the rules.

Were you the DM?

Even Star Wars characters remember to fucking eat, you dolt.

There's a stark difference between the GM blindsiding players with nitpicky survival stuff and not mollycoddling them about remembering to buy a goddamn tent.

have you ever tried to sleep outside in the rain with no tent

If you had That-DM he'd make you roll every hour to see if you get hit by lightning.

Actually no but I thought the sentence read better in first person.

You might be mentioning it as a flavour detail and nothing more. I know I've done similar things.

And what's more respectful to people's time, spending a few minutes to make sure everyone is on the same page, or losing what sounded like a significant chunk of time to an argument mid-session? And, once again, it's not about being intelligent, it's just about different people having different perspectives and approaches to things. Someone isn't less intelligent for not being able to read your mind.

>My character doesn't poop.

t. brainlet
Enjoy your tentless camping.

But there isn't a difference. It's all on the same scale, and it all has the same effortless solution. Tell people how it's going to work.

Sure, characters always eat. But are you tracking rations, or are you just assuming the characters always have enough to get by? Are travel necessities things they need to explicitly purchase, or do you just assume they'll always have them? I've seen lots of games that do both, and it's perfectly reasonable to understand a player from one style going into the other and getting blindsided. And the solution is so simple, why would you not take the time to talk about it?

>My character doesn't poop.

Where does the food go? Do the townsfolk poop?

>that we technically don't have to be asleep
You actually need to be asleep for at least 6 hours to benefit.

Unless you're an Elf.

No, but I've also never tried being a magical elf or an orc who can gain superstrength by getting angry. How things work in a gameworld is not necessarily directly related to how they work in our world.

So you don't have an argument at this point? Cool.

It gets turned into energy. Why do you think people have to eat?

I guess the townsfolk can poop if they're into that kind of thing.

Elfs and orcs are waterproof?

Are orcs related to ducks?

Most settings are loosely Germanic based so they probably are into that kind of thing.

They might be. I don't know what assumptions the setting is operating under unless the GM has told me.

>why would you not take the time to talk about it?
Because I don't patronize my players. I'm the GM, not some Billy Busybody chaperone who has to remind them to tie their shoes. Anyone with an ounce of cognitive ability will know going innawoods = survival situation. Come prepared, and be fine. Don't come prepared, and learn an important lesson.

Incorporating basic survival techniques like sleeping in a fucking tent to get out of the rain is again, really damn obvious unless you're legally retarded. Or are just some asshole contrarian who can't take responsibility for his own lack of foresight and demand the GM spell everything out for him.

Or in your case, both.

>implying you ever did

but you're a hooman

But that's wrong. You need at least one sleep cycle (approx 90 minutes, depends on person).

In such a setting where people are immune to the effects of weather why do they build shelters to live in?

Not benefiting from a Long rest is hardly game over or particularly disruptive. Worst case scenario is it motivates them to hire an Inn next town they stop in to rest up in.

Your prince has assembled you for a dangerous mission. A flock of migratory orcs has flown in from the north and is currently shitting all over town. We need you to scare them off any way you can.

Huh?

What edition are we talking here?

>Anyone with an ounce of cognitive ability will know going innawoods = survival situation.

But that's just not true, especially in the context of a fantasy story. That's an assumption you're making, and it's clearly one your players didn't share. It's perfectly possible to run a game where that isn't the case, and where problems of that kind never come up. If you outright refuse to tell people that kind of thing and just expect them to read your mind or always agree with you, you're just being an asshole.

You still haven't given any reason not to talk about your assumptions beyond stubbornness, laziness and blaming people for not thinking the exact same way you do.

If the players are buying some level of camping stuff (they got bedrolls at least according to OP) then obviously they know that you require some gear on your journey when it comes to mundane, everyday actions. So we can conclude that they were either stupid or insanely cheap for going with only bedrolls, and that bitching to the GM about not having tents and getting penalized for it is just childish. The OP even mentioned that they had to roll to see if they could find a natural shelter, which means that the GM gave them another possible solution, and had they passed that roll the players in question would probably be completely okay with needing a tent and only got mad because things didn't go their way.

'Talking to them in advance would have saved a lot of time' seems like a pretty compelling argument, IMO. It's entirely beneficial with no downsides beyond having to accept that maybe other people have different perspectives to you that are equally valid, which shouldn't be particularly hard to accept.

I don't know, it's up to the GM to tell me.

And how much effect it has really doesn't matter. It disrupted the game, and the solution is effortless, obvious and simple. Why not just tell them how things work? Even if they are already on the same page, it doesn't do any harm, and might open up a discussion about which aspects they'd enjoy focusing on, which is useful information to have as a GM.

They obviously knew enough to buy food and bedrolls. It's very disingenuous to proclaim their ignorance despite them trying to prepare for such an event.

Do you also think it's fair for the players to be incapacitated with diarrhea they don't mention boiling water before putting it in their canteens, or to have their tent blown off a cliff if they didn't stake it, or to have a bear run off with all their food because they forgot to bring a bear bag, or have them all starve to death because nobody remembered to bring a map?

All of this shit is survival 001 but most D&D players aren't actually preparing for an real outdoor trip.

None of which is actually relevant because just talking about it would have avoided all of it. It's a non-issue that you're trying to downplay, rather than just solving it.

Then why didn't they buy a tent?

And, fuck, IIRC D&D has bedrolls in most default packages anyway. Maybe they just picked those because the book said so? I don't know the details of the situation, but rather than picking apart the particular tendencies of the group, why not just take the obvious, easy solution which avoids the problem in the first place?

>I don't know, it's up to the GM to tell me.
So it's up to the DM to determine what happens, which in OP's case was yes, rain does ruin your parade.

And the fix is even simpler, remember this and plan ahead in the future.

For fixing it going forwards, sure. But why, as a GM, wouldn't you do so ahead of time to make sure it doesn't disrupt sessions in the way OP described? Conveying your basic assumptions has no downsides.

Why do you think I'm OP? Especially since OP specified he isn't even the GM.

>But that's just not true
No, it's not, but only if you're a fucking idiot.

>If you outright refuse to tell people that kind of thing and just expect them to read your mind or always agree with you, you're just being an asshole.
Should I tell players they have a chance of getting hit by enemy weapons during combat?

Should I tell players they may go up against NPCs who are easily convinced of their lies?

Should I tell my players they're at a disadvantage if they attempt a skill they have no training in?

Why should I waste everyone's time telling them things which are obvious? Discussing "assumptions" ahead of time is for when your world defies the logical conclusions an intelligent and functioning person can make about a typical game experience. Bad weather is no such conclusion. In fact, it's the opposite. You should bring that shit up if you DON'T intend on penalizing players who forget to fucking eat or try sleeping unsheltered in a downpour.

You sound like the absolute worst kind of patronizing snob because you apparently assume all players are retards.

I'm starting to get the feeling that you're OP. It's 100% the players fault, they were aware that you require camping equipment yet they opted not to buy almost any such gear. The only scenario where your argument holds any water is one where the players bought no adventuring gear thinking that it was too mundane.

What kind of map points to food? That'd be a hilarious thing for a fat character to have.

>Then why didn't they buy a tent?
Because they're new, and people learn by trial and error.

The downside to missing out on a long rest is trivial at best. Nor did they appear to make any effort to alleviate their situation by building a bivouac or other temporary shelter, instead arguing with the DM trying to cow him out of a minor situation that didn't go in their favour.

Like eating raw meat from a diseased wolf, yes you do run the risk of illness for that.

I got confused and thought you meant real life, because this is an argument about realism. Sorry.

If you fail your survival/ herblore/ commonsense/ whatever roll you end up grabbing the settings equivalent of poison ivy leaves to wipe with...

It's not true because there are fantasy stories where it isn't true. That's the point. It's not about being an idiot, it's about not all worlds operating on realism as their defining principle. That the world does so is an assumption that needs to be stated when you're setting up a game.

The examples you use are all rules based things so, yes, you should also tell your players those while you're teaching them the mechanics, but that seems kind of beside the point.

Yes but that wasn't what they argued, suggesting they too made similar assumptions to wilderness exploration/travel.

Instead they argued getting rained on wouldn't interrupt ones rest, a fairly unreasonable statement considering other factors they did account for.

That all relies on assumptions you're making that aren't necessarily true. I can't make any comment on the players. I can just point out a solution that would have avoided all of it, at no cost. Why is there even a discussion at that point?

>It's not true because there are fantasy stories where it isn't true.

Fucking name one.

Even the Fellowship got snowed out at one point and had to turn around.

Most editions do have resting rules, I assumed 5e as that is what most newbies start at.

Although fair enough.

The players might be new new, sure. The characters are people who have grown up in this world, and should already know things like that. And part of the job of the GM is making sure the players understand how the world works so they can play their characters appropriately.

>Then why didn't they buy a tent?
Because they aren't, in fact, fantasy adventurers with the common sense that people in their world should have, but hollow shells of individuals being puppeted by individuals who haven't overnighted anywhere in their lives.

This has the side effect of everyone in-universe PERCEIVING the characters to be complete retards when in fact their actions are probably determined by people of completely average intelligence, entirely capable of doing whatever it is they do to earn their daily bread.

>Like eating raw meat from a diseased wolf, yes you do run the risk of illness for that.
You run the risk of disease for drinking fucking water.

>at no cost
Time is not infinite. You're also making assumptions yourself. You're assuming the players weren't told that they would need adventuring gear (which is a weird assumption since they do have some adventuring gear). And yeah, if you can't give any argument as to why the players would get some camping equipment and at the same time assume that camping equipment isn't needed, there really is no discussion.

And they didn't argue that with the DM, so instead of cowing to their unreasonable demands he used rule zero on an incredibly minor scenario.

If they had instead argued hey, we're new and we didn't know weather would be a factor. Please let us retroactively buy tents and tarps for our party then it would still be up to DM's discretion.

Well, I don't recall the Epic of Gilgamesh containing any particularly significant notes on the necessity of camping equipment. Or Le Morte d'Arthur. Or the Song of Roland. Or a lot of other works of mythology or pulp fantasy.

There's plenty of ways it could happen, but speculating about minor details is pointless when the broader solution is so obvious. Hell, several obvious explanations have already been posted in this thread.

I've never said I think the players are blameless. Nobody in the situation did the best thing they could. But when it comes to issues like this, the responsibility is generally considered to rest with the GM, especially if the players are new or inexperienced and wouldn't think to go through things like that as intuitively as a more experienced player would.

>You run the risk of disease for drinking fucking water.
You know there is a reason purify food/water is a spell right? You run the risk (minor) of illness from drinking from sources in the wilderness.

Yes but it's not exactly a major enough issue missing out on one nights rest. They need to fail a few times to learn the basics of roleplaying an adventurer and they won't get that if the DM handholds them.

I don't recall it being a big thing in the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, either.

Yes, the obvious solution is that the players learn from their mistakes and man up, instead of bitching about their own mistake. You really are OP, aren't you?

>They need to fail a few times to learn the basics of roleplaying an adventurer and they won't get that if the DM handholds them.

...What?

Why is failure a necessary part of learning in the context of a roleplaying game? I do not get that at all. OOC 'failure' isn't a factor, unless something goes wrong with the game and people stop enjoying themselves. IC, success or failure all drive the plot and keep the game enjoyable, sure, but OOC failure isn't and shouldn't be something that happens if you can help it, because that means something has gone wrong. And the situation described in the OP isn't an IC failure that creates interesting situations, it's an OOC failure of proper communication.

As I said, that's the best way to go about it going forward. But it's also an opportunity for the OP to learn that, as a GM, stating your assumptions ahead of time can avoid a lot of problems.

I think accusing Dipshit McTalkyBefore of being OP is a stretch because the OP is actually quite neutral and almost confused that people would assume sleeping in a downpour would be restful.

It's not even a failure of proper communications, you're being incredibly disingenuous to say that. A scenario appeared they didn't think/know to prepare for and they got a negative outcome. Same as random encounter leading to, say, mummy rot.

And by failure I mean a negative consequence occurred, it's generally a standard feature of collective role play.

Who else would spend 45 minutes arguing in favor of such idiocy?

As I said before, until you can explain why the players bought camping equipment while thinking camping equipment is meaningless, your argument is invalid and all your fingerpointing towards the GM is just retarded.

>Not needing sleep for a long rest
If you're playing 5th edition, that's absolutely false unless you're an elf.

>Who else would spend 45 minutes arguing in favor of such idiocy?
Trolls.

"Rest" still implies you're in a relatively and low-stress environment. Sitting on my soggy ass while rain pummels me for nine hours doesn't sound very comfortable and I probably would have a hard time writing in my spellbook or cleaning my armor.

But it wasn't a matter of proper IC decisionmaking going wrong, it was a matter of an OOC lack of understanding leading to incorrect IC actions. It's effectively metagaming in reverse.