Why do many DMs propose rest rules that drive behavior opposite of what they want?

[Deathtongue]

A lot of DMs say that they want resource models that prevent the wizards and paladins and the like from going into every other battle at full efficiency. To do this they make resting take longer. The idea is that crises happen and 'resolve' faster than it takes to get up to full strength, so that in order to stop the princess from being eaten / town from being raided / caravan from being lost the party can't take long rests unless they want to risk mission failure.

Fair enough. A lot of games I respect do it that way.

However, what I don't understand is how DMs then don't recognize that by doing things this way, they're actually driving behavior opposite of what they claim to want! That is, parties of heroes braving personal danger and doing jaw-dropping heroics instead of taking the choice of 'I don't want to die and lose this character, guess the princess gets eaten'.

Let's talk about Shadowrun for a bit.

Characters in that game are glass cannons and any resource depletion is punishing. Getting just a couple of wounds can take you out of the fight for days. So can just upgrading your gear or restocking on consumables. However, the game is also quite lethal. Moreover, any kind of disadvantage makes it quadratically harder to win due to the way the dice system handles penalties and bonuse.s

This incentivizes the players into holding up in their bunkers / secret hideouts / pleasure palaces, leaving only to do the bare minimum of resource acquisition, until it's time for the next mission. They give that one mission their all. They have to, because if they do it haphazardly they're brown bread. So if they're trying to replenish their resources and something juicy comes along? They ignore it. I mean, if it's juicy enough, they might take a risk, but if the risk fail (as it often does in such a lethal system) that's what happens man. Anyway, even if that opportunity passes, there will always be another one. So WHAT if those orphans will die if you don't drop everything and go to Chicago right now? I took some serious wound penalties three days, I'm operating at half-efficiency and can't even shoot right. Those orphans can go take a hike into hell.

Shadowrun's resource management system drives the kind of behavior it wants from PCs. It wants them to be paranoid penny-pinchers who scoff at doing feel-good missions if it puts them at great risk. If Shadowrun gave people more incentives to take on missions when they weren't at full capacity (by making spellcasting and hacking less taxing, by letting people carry better gear on missions, by letting them heal faster, etc.) it'd drive riskier, more altruistic behavior.

So my question is: why do so many D&D DMs propose resource models (i.e. it takes a week's downtime to recover your spellslots) that encourage Shadowrun behavior from their PCs?

[Boci]

A lot of DMs say that they want resource models that prevent the wizards and paladins and the like from going into every other battle at full efficiency. To do this they make resting take longer. The idea is that crises happen and 'resolve' faster than it takes to get up to full strength, so that in order to stop the princess from being eaten / town from being raided / caravan from being lost the party can't take long rests unless they want to risk mission failure.

Fair enough. A lot of games I respect do it that way.

However, what I don't understand is how DMs then don't recognize that by doing things this way, they're actually driving behavior opposite of what they claim to want! That is, parties of heroes braving personal danger and doing jaw-dropping heroics instead of taking the choice of 'I don't want to die and lose this character, guess the princess gets eaten'.

DMs not understanding player motivation and behavior may be a factor, or they could be collatoral damage in an attempt to nuke the 15 minute adventuring day. But there could also be better reason, first and formost:

Hard descisions. The DM wants the players to:
a. not nova too quickly
b. think of non-combat ways to resolve encounters
c. be faced with the descision of delaying time and recouperating, or acting in a timely manner. You mention D&D being heroic. Heroes often went into fights they weren't entierly ready for simply because if they waited, innocents would suffer. In a roleplay heavy group, what you describe as discouraging heroic behavior could in fact make it all the braver. However, if the DM imagines this and the players don't, it will only leave to problem.

[malachi]

From what I've seen people saying, the primary reason for increasing rest time (gritty variant) is to make the resource management portion of the game function with a certain balance between long and short rest characters for a certain narrative pacing. You don't have 3 fights against the mid-range to elite soldiers before fighting the champion (and don't have to figure out how to safely rest for an hour somewhere between fights 1 and 3); instead, you can widen it out so that the players pick off two squads on Monday, travel to the enemy base of operations on Tuesday, and fight the third squad and the champion on Wednesday.

So I don't know that I would agree with your premise that longer resting times drive players to conserve all of their resources, but that's probably because I have a different outlook, and partly because I think your metaphor is a little off. In your Shadowrun metaphor, simply recovering resources has a risk of bad things happening, and it is expected that things will happen while characters are simply recovering resources. In 5e, recovering resources doesn't actively expose you to extra risk, and will at most have a risk of taking longer to recover or not allow you to regain resources if you're interrupted.

As a question, what do you think the result would be if the rules changed to something silly like "short rests happen in one minute, long rests take an hour"? Would that encourage players to move on with less-than-full resources, or would that actually encourage players to tackle almost every encounter after a long rest?

[Deathtongue]

b. Heroes often went into fights they weren't entierly ready for simply because if they waited, innocents would suffer. In a roleplay heavy group, what you describe as discouraging heroic behavior could in fact make it all the braver.

Is that so? D&D posits a world so corrupt and destructive that the world is always doomed. If it's not a cannibal cult today, it's ghosts haunting the orphanage tomorrow. Seems to me the braver and more innocent-saving decision would be to occasionally accept that the princess will be sacrificed or the town will be razed so you'll still be alive when the dragons start raiding or the orc warbands start massing.

[mucat]

You're assuming that the GM doesn't know their players at all, and/or that the players don't know what kind of game they want.

Shadowrun characters are jaded, amoral, and selfish, because they live in a shîtsack world where all the good guys have already died off. When you play Shadowrun, it's because you want to tell that kind of story (and maybe because the brief, doomed flashes of actual good will shine brighter against that dark background.)

D&D characters, especially in a heroic campaign, don't behave like Shadowrunners just because it's "incentivized". If you're the good guys, you save the damned princess because that's who you are, not because it's easy or convenient or safe. If you're <i>not</i> the good guys, you do something else...but resource-management incentives should not be making that decision for you. Resource management is about HOW you pursue your goals, not about what goals you pursue.

I'm not arguing for or against rewriting the rest rules...but any player who says "My character is acting selfish (or any other pattern of behavior) because that's the optimal way to win this game" is not even trying.

[Boci]

Is that so? D&D posits a world so corrupt and destructive that the world is always doomed. If it's not a cannibal cult today, it's ghosts haunting the orphanage tomorrow. Seems to me the braver and more innocent-saving decision would be to occasionally accept that the princess will be sacrificed or the town will be razed so you'll still be alive when the dragons start raiding or the orc warbands start massing.

You're focuing on the world as a whole. Heroes stories, and D&D adventures often have a tighter focus. Sure "Oh no, the unnamed princess we don't know is going to die" might to stir them, but in a RP group, "Oh no, Kassi is in danger!" may well. And if they go out and save them at half-resources, that just makes their actions all the more heroic.

Shadowrun characters are jaded, amoral, and selfish, because they live in a shîtsack world where all the good guys have already died off. When you play Shadowrun, it's because you want to tell that kind of story (and maybe because the brief, doomed flashes of actual good will shine brighter against that dark background.)

Also worth noting that Shadowrun recouping involves the base, which is part of a characters resources. In D&D you have to ask the DM for a fortified base.

[malachi]

Is that so? D&D posits a world so corrupt and destructive that the world is always doomed. If it's not a cannibal cult today, it's ghosts haunting the orphanage tomorrow. Seems to me the braver and more innocent-saving decision would be to occasionally accept that the princess will be sacrificed or the town will be razed so you'll still be alive when the dragons start raiding or the orc warbands start massing.

Everything I have seen in the DnD lore doesn't paint things so cynically. While there is corruption and evil out there, the setting seems to heavily expect that it will be met and stopped without having to make the morally-grey decision to ignore the heroic actions.

Granted, it seems like your interpretation is a logical inference from the amount of doom and gloom required to keep adventurers, particularly high-level ones, occupied.

[Lance Tankmen]

For me it was three folds, The 100% every time meant very few fights even challenged my party by legal encounter builder , of course the encounter builder and magic items may be to blame but thats a separate issue. The second could be me to blame as DM but again any fight the caster hurls fireball mobs die fights do nothing, single model dies to action economy or fails the saves the casters constantly throw at it fighters do nothing. The third thing was a bonus not intended but nice none the less, Short rests shine with gritty realism, of course i use home-brew rest cycle stuff but Ive never had a problem in any of my gaming groups with waiting out and being cowards, except for the players who meta gamed stats , so they knew the monsters and didn't want any risk only reward. But my answer to that was always other adventurers get the gold or it moves away

[Man_Over_Game]

So my question is: why do so many D&D DMs propose resource models (i.e. it takes a week's downtime to recover your spellslots) that encourage Shadowrun behavior from their PCs?

For me, it's not quite as important about the attrition aspect, but that certain classes rely on that attrition to stand out.

Take, for example, a Rogue vs. a Bard. A Bard can do pretty much everything a Rogue can do (besides deal damage), and do it better. A Rogue needs to be stealthy, but a Bard can cast Pass Without Trace. A Rogue needs to break into something, and the Bard can unlock anything with Knock (even magical locks). If there is anything the Bard wants to do but can't with magic, they can take Expertise to do what the Rogue would normally be able to do.

So what DOES the Rogue do that's unique? They're consistent, resourceless, and endurable. The Bard might not want to spend a level 2 spell slot for a locked door, but a Rogue has no qualms about that. The Bard can comfortably unlock 2-3 things a day, where the Rogue can unlock something every six seconds.

The problem comes in when the DM doesn't include more than 3 things to unlock in the day. Now the Bard can unlock that third chest and still be able to do so much more, where the "specialized" rogue no longer stands out. What good does the rogue's endurance do when the bard is going to solve the problem using a limited resource and do it better?

In the previous thread, I've shown it takes a full two short rests before a Fighter can ever be as "heroic" as a Paladin.

--------

Yes, attrition does cause some characters to be less heroic and be more stingy on resources, but other classes are designed to be there to pick up the slack. Otherwise, you run into the 3.X problem where the Fighter is a glorified sidekick to the Wizard, just on a slightly less dramatic scale.


So, for me, it's a choice. Do I adjust the narrative, or do I make some player's classes simply "less"?

[TyGuy]

You can do gritty realism at a 1 to 1 scale and there's no net change other than narrative. And that's the main focus, narrative. Because cramming 6 encounters into an adventuring day is hectic from a narrative standpoint. So DM's might stretch things out. Resource management is secondary to the narrative implications.

The issue you keep trying to strawman is that of pacing, not time scale. You can make unrealistic demanding time restraints in the regular rules too.

(Regular) You've had 5 encounters today and a short rest after each one, now you have a couple hours to rescue the princess = (Gritty realism) you've had 5 encounters this week and a short rest after each one, now you have a day to rescue the princess.

[RazorChain]

Because D&D is gamist and tries to go against the fundamentals of human nature and the DMs are trying to enforce a bad design principle.

If you are assaulted by three thugs with knives you are supposed to draw your knife and fight them in order to save the bullets to your handgun incase you meet an enemy down the road with an assault rifle.

A smart person will shoot them dead with the handgun to ensure their survival and buy more bullets later

[Man_Over_Game]

Because D&D is gamist and tries to go against the fundamentals of human nature and the DMs are trying to enforce a bad design principle.

If you are assaulted by three thugs with knives you are supposed to draw your knife and fight them in order to save the bullets to your handgun incase you meet an enemy down the road with an assault rifle.

A smart person will shoot them dead with the handgun to ensure their survival and buy more bullets later

Well, that makes sense in our world, because lethality only has to work once before Game Over. You have to risk everything to win, every time.

However, in DnD, where HP scales faster than damage (a Rogue gains 3.5 damage every 2 levels, HP grows at an average rate of 14 HP every 2 levels), your chance of dying is actually pretty low.

Changing the lethality is an option, but keep in mind that most games require a chance to react to problems. In order to react to damage to prevent it, you have to survive it.

Good Chess takes multiple turns to play out, to adapt and become better. If your decisions don't matter and you cannot adapt, then you're effectively playing a game of random chance. Increasing lethality to be akin to "real life" effectively lowers player agency. We aren't playing a game. If someone's pointing a gun at you, there isn't going to be a vast list of things you're going to be able to do that's going to make your situation any better. That's why we play games: to have a semblance of control.

[Pex]

DMs should stop trying to control player behavior. It's the players' characters, not the DMs'. It is in the game's interest not to have 15 minute adventuring days. You stop that by having consequences for not continuing the adventure to rest. However, it's really a metagame problem, so you handle it metagame and tell the players to stop that and play the game instead of gaming the system. At the same time DMs should get over themselves thinking players are trying to get away with something because they want to short rest when low on short rest stuff and long rest when low on everything after putting in good faith effort of adventuring. Players are supposed to get back their stuff. That's how the game works.

[Man_Over_Game]

DMs should stop trying to control player behavior. It's the players' characters, not the DMs'. It is in the game's interest not to have 15 minute adventuring days. You stop that by having consequences for not continuing the adventure to rest. However, it's really a metagame problem, so you handle it metagame and tell the players to stop that and play the game instead of gaming the system. At the same time DMs should get over themselves thinking players are trying to get away with something because they want to short rest when low on short rest stuff and long rest when low on everything after putting in good faith effort of adventuring. Players are supposed to get back their stuff. That's how the game works.

What you're saying is a bit conflicting, though. On one hand, you're frustrated that DMs are controlling the pacing of a group, but on the other hand, you recommend consequences to control the pacing of the group.

I guess my question is, what is acceptable and what isn't?

[CantigThimble]

Changing the lethality is an option, but keep in mind that most games require a chance to react to problems. In order to react to damage to prevent it, you have to survive it.

Good Chess takes multiple turns to play out, to adapt and become better. If your decisions don't matter and you cannot adapt, then you're effectively playing a game of random chance. Increasing lethality to be akin to "real life" effectively lowers player agency.

I'm just going to mention that player agency can also come from the opportunity to prepare, not just the opportunity to react. Most highly lethal systems are very focused on looking ahead so you're prepared and don't get into a fight you won't be able to win with minimal risk. That style is differemt, but doesn't lack player agency.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'm just going to mention that player agency can also come from the opportunity to prepare, not just the opportunity to react. Most highly lethal systems are very focused on looking ahead so you're prepared and don't get into a fight you won't be able to win with minimal risk. That style is differemt, but doesn't lack player agency.

Incredibly valid point, and one I didn't think about. Still, I don't think DnD is best suited for that playstyle, but I could definitely see someone wanting to do something like that, and I think 5e could easily be adapted for that playstyle.

Spoiler: A few thoughts on the concept

Show

Due to how explosive magic can be in a short amount of time, as well as how versatile it is, I'd probably keep it how it is. Weapons would deal double the weapon dice damage, and criticals activate on a 19/20 (with crit expanding abilities changing to 18-20 or 17-20). Attack spells would still be able to crit.

This does mean that casters are best used to nuke many threats quickly, or to scout for the team (which makes sense, because that's something other classes would be unable to do).

[Rukelnikov]

That was 3.x high tiers in a nutshell.

I spend half my allotment of spells on protections, save a quarter to renew protections, and rocket tag the remaining quarter.

And that's on top of my contingency, clones, maybe phillactery, and if everything else fails bottle of thought.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That was 3.x high tiers in a nutshell.

I spend half my allotment of spells on protections, save a quarter to renew protections, and rocket tag the remaining quarter.

And that's on top of my contingency, clones, maybe phillactery, and if everything else fails bottle of thought.

And at least some people (myself included) strongly dislike that style. For one thing, it only allows certain characters. I'm not taking classes or builds--I mean personalities. Only paranoid chessmaster types can pull that off and stay in character. And there's a lot of fun characters other than those types.

[Orc_Lord]

For the people that like gritty realism how do you handle dungeons?

I tried it, and when after two battles they had to rest for a week it felt like an anti narrative action to me. I implemented it because I was trying to do what Man Over Game was saying. To drive the story

I should have probably done it in the beginning of the campaign which was probably my biggest mistake.

[Rukelnikov]

And at least some people (myself included) strongly dislike that style. For one thing, it only allows certain characters. I'm not taking classes or builds--I mean personalities. Only paranoid chessmaster types can pull that off and stay in character. And there's a lot of fun characters other than those types.

I wasn't presenting it as something better or worse. I merely mentioned it as an example of what Thimble was talking about.

And yeah it's definitely not a style everyone enjoy, and even those that enjoy it may not wanna play that kind of game every week.

Personally, it was awesome from a theorycraft perspective, but for the actual game my epic Incantatrix just loaded disintegrate with as much metas as he could.

[Man_Over_Game]

For the people that like gritty realism how do you handle dungeons?

I tried it, and when after two battles they had to rest for a week it felt like an anti narrative action to me. I implemented it because I was trying to do what Man Over Game was saying. To drive the story

I should have probably done it in the beginning of the campaign which was probably my biggest mistake.

There's a couple solutions I recommend:

1. Tone down the Rest requirement. I like to use 8 hour Short Rests, 32 hour Long Rests (basically a full day off), and that's a solid balance of Adventuring vs. Resting.
2. Add a spot-fix when you need a solution. I have used two different kinds:
   
   1. My Adrenaline Surge feature (basically, characters get Exhaustion mid-combat during a particularly hard fight, but get the benefits of a Short Rest in return)
   2. Ley Lines (Dungeons were built around Ley Lines, which generate a lot of magical energy. Being near one reduces the amount of time a Rest takes, but you can only benefit from that kind of rest from a Ley Line every 24 hours. Such as a 5 min. Short Rest and a 30 minute Long Rest)
   
   

[RazorChain]

Well, that makes sense in our world, because lethality only has to work once before Game Over. You have to risk everything to win, every time.

However, in DnD, where HP scales faster than damage (a Rogue gains 3.5 damage every 2 levels, HP grows at an average rate of 14 HP every 2 levels), your chance of dying is actually pretty low.

Changing the lethality is an option, but keep in mind that most games require a chance to react to problems. In order to react to damage to prevent it, you have to survive it.

Good Chess takes multiple turns to play out, to adapt and become better. If your decisions don't matter and you cannot adapt, then you're effectively playing a game of random chance. Increasing lethality to be akin to "real life" effectively lowers player agency. We aren't playing a game. If someone's pointing a gun at you, there isn't going to be a vast list of things you're going to be able to do that's going to make your situation any better. That's why we play games: to have a semblance of control.

No. All martial arts tell you to end a fight as quickly and efficiently as possible. For me a fight is not a game of chess unless the loser dies in the end.

I play rpgs for immersion and my character is most decidedly not thinking about HP scaling during a fight or that he has 120 HP and a sword blow can barely hurt him.

Changing lethality doesn't lower agency in any shape or form. More lethality just changes how you conduct fights.

[Boci]

No. All martial arts tell you to end a fight as quickly and efficiently as possible. For me a fight is not a game of chess unless the loser dies in the end.

I play rpgs for immersion and my character is most decidedly not thinking about HP scaling during a fight or that he has 120 HP and a sword blow can barely hurt him.

If you want immersion, doesn't your character realize they're kinda buff? Sure they won't go "I have 120 points, that sword probably deals 2d6+4 damage" but how could they not realize that they can reliable survive round after round with weapons that would have one been deadly to them?

[Alucard89]

I never understood "DM propose new rest rules/restrictions etc.". He can propose, but it's table decision as whole. Sure DM can say "no, we play as I want", then players walk away and DM is left alone. He won, congrat. Same with players proposing with "we want to play that way" and DM leaving.

Imo whole resources arguments are really "stupid" (no offense to anyone) as it's a matter of how whole table wants to play the game.

For example at our table we totally don't care about difficulty of fights. We usually long rest every session, have no more than 3, MAYBE 4 encounters per long rest and we enjoy just blowing all stuff up, walking around in magic gear with magic swords, being heroes among heroes and doing heroic deeds like killing dragon in 3 turns.

We prefer to focus more about story, character development, dialogues, small quests etc. Fight is just for "movie scenes" so to say.

I think many DMs propose this as they think other people should play his game as he imagined it. It's not bad per say, but it's 5 people (usually) around table, not one and DM is one of them.

As long as whole tables agrees I don't think it matters if Long Rest is 4h, 20h, once per session, or twice.

DM coming and saying "We play XX way I can't do anything" or players coming saying "our DM plays XX way and we don't have fun" is only a fault of not communicating with each other.

There is no good proposition or solution to rules. There are only those which work with table or do not.

[RazorChain]

If you want immersion, doesn't your character realize they're kinda buff? Sure they won't go "I have 120 points, that sword probably deals 2d6+4 damage" but how could they not realize that they can reliable survive round after round with weapons that would have one been deadly to them?

I understand what you are implying. But do we want to go there?

[TyGuy]

For the people that like gritty realism how do you handle dungeons?

I tried it, and when after two battles they had to rest for a week it felt like an anti narrative action to me. I implemented it because I was trying to do what Man Over Game was saying. To drive the story

I should have probably done it in the beginning of the campaign which was probably my biggest mistake.

I would not recommend implementing gritty realism mid campaign unless all people involved are completely on board.

To answer your question. If we assume that 8 hour rests mid dungeon crawling are out of the question in gritty realism (honestly, 1hr was pushing it anyways) the solution is simple. You reduce the difficulty of the encounters. Unless your group is very special, eminent death close calls are not necessary for every single combat to enjoy the game. Easy encounters still drain resources.

PC's burning through resources too fast to make it through a dungeon means either the players are playing poorly (not the DM's fault) or the encounters are tuned too high (DM's fault)

[MaxWilson]

What you're saying is a bit conflicting, though. On one hand, you're frustrated that DMs are controlling the pacing of a group, but on the other hand, you recommend consequences to control the pacing of the group.

I guess my question is, what is acceptable and what isn't?

I think it's fine to throttle rewards. You can tell the players, "Hey, I know it's kind of unrealistic that all these tasty monsters happen to be in the same area with their treasure simultaneously, and yet they haven't joined forces or killed each other or anything--they're all just sort of there. But I won't guarantee that that will be true for more than a day or so, in game. In other words, there's enough XP here for you all to level up without killing yourselves, if you fully explore the dungeon, but after a long rest all bets are off and the world will do what makes sense."

[ChiefBigFeather]

For the people that like gritty realism how do you handle dungeons?

I tried it, and when after two battles they had to rest for a week it felt like an anti narrative action to me. I implemented it because I was trying to do what Man Over Game was saying. To drive the story

I should have probably done it in the beginning of the campaign which was probably my biggest mistake.

Well, I rule that short rest needs to be a nights rest and a quick meal. Most people require about 8 hours to do that, but in a hurry it could be done in 4. If you can't do a 4 hour rest in a dungeon, you probably can't do a 1 hour rest either. I should also note that I changed the duration of some spells to make sense under the new rest rules.

Hey, I know it's kind of unrealistic that all these tasty monsters happen to be in the same area with their treasure simultaneously, and yet they haven't joined forces or killed each other or anything--they're all just sort of there.

This is why I usually don't do "dungeons".

[Hecuba]

For the people that like gritty realism how do you handle dungeons?

I tried it, and when after two battles they had to rest for a week it felt like an anti narrative action to me. I implemented it because I was trying to do what Man Over Game was saying. To drive the story

I should have probably done it in the beginning of the campaign which was probably my biggest mistake.

Channing it midcampaign is workable, if you all agree on the appropriate handwaving and peg it at the beginning of something discrete like beginning a dungeon crawl. But yes, making that decision at the beginning of a campaign.

As to how you handle dungeons, generally I find it easiest to do so by increasing either the physical scale or the number of ancillary combatants to offset the narrative change in the time scale.

Physical scale is generally preferable, where it works. If the dungeon can be large enough to pass the narrative version of the smell test, simply in increase the scale and allow the party of scout and foritfy a fallback. The orcs are no longer the next room over in Undermountain: they're on the other side of this level of a very vast dungeon, and not yet aware of your presence. This can mean the pregenerated mapps need some adaptation to use, but it's workable.

When such a physical scale isn't workable narratively, you can manage something similar by imposing an ongoing conflict where the party is effectively a highly effective strikeforce. The conflict is continued by NPCs on both sides in a relative stalemate when the party withdraws to a nearby area already made safe. This effectively imposes a scaled down model of urban combat on the dungeon.

Neither of these work especially well for particularly small dungeons, but neither does a default length long rest.

[Anymage]

For the people that like gritty realism how do you handle dungeons?

I tried it, and when after two battles they had to rest for a week it felt like an anti narrative action to me. I implemented it because I was trying to do what Man Over Game was saying. To drive the story

I should have probably done it in the beginning of the campaign which was probably my biggest mistake.

Gritty Realism is mostly aimed at the people who aren't big on dungeons, and prefer at most one set piece battle per day. Allowing the daily resource casters to nova those does cause balance problems. As I hinted at in the last post it is possible to change resource mechanics so that most classes are playing on a level playing field, but that's what 4e did and I'm sure we all remember the fan backlash towards that.

If I did want to do a dungeon in GR, I'd focus on the model that retro D&D fans pride themselves on. You're not meant to fight everything in the dungeon, you're meant to evade as much as you can to conserve your resources. But if I were doing GR, I wouldn't have monsters and treasures just happening to be occupying ruins in the first place.