Player characters do not have unlimited resources in Dungeons & Dragons groups opt to take long rests often to go into every battle with their full power at their disposal, and if the campaign does not include a sense of urgency in its story, there is little reason not to. Dungeon Masters should include time-based consequences and stakes in their games to make taking short and long rests a legitimate judgment call for their players. By crafting stories where the villains are not static bosses waiting patiently in a distant chamber, and where the delaying to rest and recharge abilities has pros and cons, player characters are incentivized to press on and engage in more encounters, allowing attrition to take its toll as it is designed to.
Some DMs think players are "tricking" the system of D&D when they make use of certain core rules, like long and short rests, but more often this is a case of the DM not using the system to its fullest. It is the responsibility of the DM to ensure that their game has stakes and a sense of urgency. If the players are presented with a goal-free sandbox, without direction or an overarching story, there is no logical reason they would not rest often to better their odds of surviving combat. Even in a high-stakes, time sensitive campaign, pressing on recklessly could lead to the party’s death, which ensures whatever quest they were undertaking ends in failure. Adding a sense of urgency to the game makes the simple decision of whether to rest more than a tactical decision, but a way to encourage roleplay that fits D&D’s heroic fantasy tone. Instead of just deciding based on access to the most powerful options on their character sheet, the decision can reflect the characters’ priorities, as they weigh pragmatism against idealism.
The urgency to battle on, instead of setting camp for the night, should always come from story-based stakes, not simply weighing one resource against another. There are a lot of ways DMs can make travel interesting in Dungeons & Dragons, but excessive focus on simple resources like food and water is not one of them. While terrain-based challenges involving harsh weather, exhaustion checks, and foraging for food, can pose a challenge for low-level parties, this is not the tone of D&D’s larger-than-life heroic fantasy at higher levels. Trying to drive urgency based on weighing battle resources with dwindling rations remains a purely resource-based judgment, rather than expressing anything about the characters, as with a story-based decision. Spells like Goodberry and Create Water are present for a reason, and simple magic items like a Bag of Holding provide another way to carry more than enough supplies for any journey.
Story-Based Stakes Lend Urgency To D&D, Not Limited Rations And Water
This is by design, as higher level D&D adventurers travel the planes of existence instead of just forests and mountains, making concerns over carrying enough rations a poor fit for such adventures. By building urgency through story stakes, the DM gives the group an opportunity to decide how much their characters are willing to risk to accomplish their goals. If the party learns that a village will be under attack by a force arriving in two days’ time, and the player characters are roughly a day’s travel away, the DM has created a simple scenario that lends urgency to the game. The heroes can try to press hard to reach the village in one day, possibly facing a number of encounters along the way that tax them to their limits. They could also judge that they have to rest - pushing ahead might give the village less time to prepare its defenses, but if the heroes do not survive to reach the village then they cannot help the villagers at all.
A classic pulp adventure scenario involving a race to reach a powerful relic makes for a good sense of urgency in a game. If the party is tasked with sealing away an evil D&D relic similar to The Crystal Shard of Forgotten Realms, and evil-aligned groups are also pursuing the relic, the heroes must weigh overexerting themselves in back-to-back battles against letting the villains reach the relic first. More open-ended scenarios can still apply the same urgency techniques, as there might be several dungeons of note in the area filled with riches to plunder, but rival adventuring parties might be heading to the same locations. This scenario essentially weighs greed and ambition against survival, when parties decide whether to risk multiple encounters to reach the dungeon first, but it offers a tool to add urgency for DMs running games with evil or neutral-aligned D&D player characters.
Just as having a “session zero” before starting a new D&D campaign helps everyone have realistic expectations of what to expect from the tone of the game, transparency when describing time-sensitive stakes makes for a better experience at the table. Having an unexpectedly challenging encounter with no forewarning can be off-putting to many players, when they would have elected to rest up and face it with their full resources with advance warning. In the same way, without some sign that the clock is ticking, players might take an excessive number of short and long rests and find the story-based consequences of their delays an unwelcome surprise. The DM’s role is certainly to present challenges, however, offering players an opportunity to make informed decisions leads to more roleplaying, and a more enjoyable game overall. If the group decides to press on, knowing the risks, they can abide by their decision, and in the same way if they decide to take the cautious approach, the story-based consequences will be something they are prepared for, not a surprise “gotcha” moment.
Skilled D&D Dungeon Masters Craft Complex Stories With Time-Sensitive Goals
While Dungeon Masters who are new to the hobby should stick with the bare minimum needed to run a D&D game, experienced DMs should aim for crafting more complex stories where urgency is about more than just whether to rest or not. High level games including teleportation magic and supernatural mounts allow characters to travel swiftly, but a complex story with multiple factions involved, several possible leads available regarding a single mystery, or just a larger number of relics to secure, can make choosing which destination to prioritize as important as when to fall back and recover.
A pure sandbox-style exploration game has a certain appeal, but without story-based stakes there is little reason for the group to press on and tax their resources. Stories where antagonists and other factions are actively pursuing their own goals gives the campaign a dynamic sense of realism and immersion, and it creates urgency that adds to Dungeons & Dragons’ sense of heroic adventure, instead of just comparing spell slots against remaining rations on a character sheet.
