This is why it should never be "out-of-the-blue", time should only be pertinent to encounters where it would make sense. For example, when a building is burning, why would it make sense for us to be able to ignore the situation for days, and then come back to see nothing has happened, despite the NPCs telling us they urgently need to rescue someone from the fire. How many days can this building be urgently burning down, lol?
Time being determined by use of our long rest, to be clear, not an actual gameplay timer.
On the other hand, it makes sense for many of the goblin events to be non-time sensitive, because while an attack may be coming for the grove in theory, it is more ambiguous how many days away that might really be, and so players can be be given leeway there. The right balance between time sensitive and non-sensitive is necessary for this work.
Also, it's very important that opting not to complete the encounter in time does not result in "failure." Rather, it should result in alternative story options, ex. "Mayrina was sent away" (leaving room for her to be rescued in a later encounter with the Hag coven), rather than "Mayrina was killed." Sure, there might be some benefit to one story choice over the other, but that's already the case with the various story options we have. So long as the difference isn't overly punitive, completing the event, even if not "in-time" would still result in "succeeding" in the quest, but just a different version of success.
I like quest results to be based on things such as dialogue choices not time.
