Setting a watch sucks
At the end of a long day of adventuring, the party needs to set up camp somewhere in the wilderness. Thematically it’s about time to hit the hay. Mechanically, the PCs need to reset their stats / abilities / spell slots / exhaustion level. The GM asks, “so, are you going to set up a watch?”
Yawn. I really dislike this moment. In play, it feels like irksome book-keeping whose only incentive for the PCs is not getting stomped on in their sleeping bag. Fair enough, that should be a big incentive, but at the table this particular moment feels akin to when you’re watching a presentation and the speaker starts by asking you, the audience, a question. Oh god, who’s going to field this one? Am I going to be a hero today?
British Library digitised image from page 8 of "Maid Marian, and Crotchet Castle ... With an introduction by George Saintsbury"
What’s the problem with setting a watch?
- There’s hardly a pay-off. So you collectively decide who’s going to take which shift (often fairly arbitrarily): okay, you’re first, then me, then…wait who was third watch again? Then… nothing happens. The morning comes around. Ha ha, there was nothing to be worried about after all! From a GM’s point of view, we can sort of see the point of this. We’re trying to instill a sense of tension, the need for caution, ATMOSPHERE. But, does that come across in play and is it fun?
- It’s anti-climactic. Part of that is because of the above. But also, long rests often happen at the end of sessions. As a party you’ve slain some things, bagged some loot, plumbed sordid depths. Hey, that’s cool stuff. What’s the perfect climax to all that action? Let’s do some admin.
To be clear, I don’t think this is the GM’s problem necessarily. There’s a strange situation that arises where if the GM wants to spring an encounter on the party whilst they sleep, they need to check if they’re going to set a watch. Except if they just asked this as a one-off the party would be suspicious. So the general system (DnD 5e comes to mind) encourages them to ask every time even if they know the night will pass without incident. Either you always ask or you never ask.
What’s the solution?
Option 1: nope!
Episode 1, Season 4 of the Brain Trust podcast, ‘Save Points and Research’, made me think about this topic and they offer one simple solution: forego encounters when the PCs are long-resting.
Consider Soulslike video games. The rest and reset mechanic involves sitting at a bonfire. When you’re at that bonfire you’re untouchable. There’s no need to think about random encounters taking you unawares. There’s a purity to this solution, and it makes for welcome light and shade; the action can’t always be ON, play needs punctuation.
This may seem extreme, but it’s worth interrogating why this couldn’t work at your table, what you would be compromising. And potentially it raises questions about encounter design.
Option 2: Schrödinger’s rest
Here’s my solution. PCs declare their characters are long-resting. Great, they commit to their rest, there’s no chat about watches. Either they wake up in the morning well-rested or the GM tells them there’s an interruption. It’s only at that point the players need to care about who’s awake and when. We’re not dividing the night up into discrete periods. Either something happens in the night or it doesn’t.
So far, we’ve basically addressed our two issues with setting a watch. But we’ll add a wrinkle that captures that energy of compromise which defines a watch.
“Who’s awake?” the GM asks.
The players are now treating things semi-retrospectively. You may be familiar with the flashback mechanic in the game Blades in the Dark (John Harper). It lets players suddenly reach back in time to state how their characters prepared for their present situation. It helps avoid the long-winded prep that inevitably goes out the window when the shit hits the fan. We’re channeling some of this in a very minimal way.
Our players collectively are presented a dilemna.
They each have the chance to volunteer their character. They can discuss it between them and decide which PC happens to be awake when the interruption happens. The catch? The volunteered PC will not have had their long rest yet.
Alternatively, they can choose to leave it to chance. We’re in a Schrödinger’s cat situation where each party member may or may not have had their long-rest. Leaving it to chance means the GM will randomly decide who is awake at this moment. Then they’ll flip a coin to determine if that character has rested. Maybe it’s the one who’s had their forty winks and is full of pep, or maybe it’s the one who looks like an abandoned sack of potatoes because they had their arse handed to them during the day.
The encounter happens. If the rest of the party are roused into action, half of them (rounded down, randomly decided by the GM) have already had sufficient rest, but there’s a risk the other half won’t have the chance to catch up.
Tomorrow is another day.
Example 1
Players (collectively): “Yeah, we’ll long rest.”
GM: “As the sun sets, the warmth of the day escapes quite abruptly, and you huddle down in your sleeping bags. The clear night passes quietly until… the sound of a stick snapping underfoot comes from somewhere in the thicket. Who’s awake?”
Player 1: “Balthur still has a fair bit of stamina in him. I can imagine him being restless from that last battle.”
Player 2: “You sure? That would be ideal, Saff’s in a bad way. I don’t think Marv is any better.”
Player 1: “Yeah, I’ll take the hit. Maybe it’s nothing we need to be worried about.”
Example 2
[same starting situation]
GM: “Who’s awake?”
Player 1: “Damn, we’re all pretty beat.”
Player 2: “Let’s let fate decide. Maybe we get lucky. Here’s hoping Saff’s had some quality shut-eye.”
The GM rolls to decide which character hears the sound — Balthur. Then they flip a coin (or roll a die) to decide whether he’s long-rested already.