Ultimately, if you think about it, what is the big deal about letting people long rest as much as they want - provided that the story doesn't call for you to NOT long rest often?
I liked Kingmaker rest system because it gave you the ability to long rest as much as you wanted, BUT you always knew that you were on a time table. If you didn't manage your resources well, you'd mess yourself over in the long run.
The issue I have with unlimited long rests in BG3 is that you are, like kingmaker, on a time table. Yes, eventually people are like, "Oh, the tadpole isn't changing you as fast as it should," but YOU STILL HAVE A WIGGLING ALIEN TADPOLE IN YOUR BRAIN THAT WILL EVENTUALLY TURN YOU INTO A GRUESOME MONSTER IN AN UNSPEAKABLY HORRIBLE MANNER. So, if you take too many long rests, it is only logical that things should start happening in the game to discourage your from continuing to long rest so much. You should start showing symptoms of changing or the ritual should show signs that it's nearing completion or the goblins should find the grove again and raid it or the githyanki should not just sit there at the bridge waiting for you to show up but they come find you suddenly and ambush you at Moonhaven or wherever you are, or the tieflings should get restless and steal the idol again or SOMEthing.
But whatever. You know, I've come to terms with this one. Neverwinter let you long rest with a little processing please wait popup after every fight, and no D&D game has yet to develop a truly smart and fun rest system. So, if they don't do anything different with this, it won't break the game. Do I think they could make it better and more fun? Absolutely. It isn't an impossible task to make the rest system intelligent and fun at the same time.
I still think the absolute best approach is to treat it like you are the DM of a tabletop experience. Players can do whatever the frick they want in tabletop, but the DM provides consequences for abusing any system. If you long rest too much, make complications happen. Food and camping supplies management, overall, is boring. It is, to me, a secondary band aid fix. I'll put up with it, but ultimately, as a DM, I know that players typically don't like to micro-manage food and supplies. They like to glaze over that aspect of RPGing. I don't need to tell them, "You just picked up 6 apples, 4 pies, 3 racks of ribs, and a partridge in a pear tree. Oh, and there were 4 forks and 8 knives as well." They'd kill me if I did that to them everywhere they went to explore.
No, as a DM, and it would work well with video games too, this should be glazed over. It is assumed they are finding food and such unless they are in some desolate wasteland and resources are scarce. Then and only then might the DM apply some sort of survival aspect to the game, and even then it is usually handled via a Survival skill check.
So how does a DM handle resting in a tabletop session? They say, "You can't do that here," if there in some dangerous location like a hostile goblin camp or in a hag's lair, and they say, "Well, because you slept three days, the ritual came to a conclusion and the tieflings were booted out of the grove and you can't access it now," after several warnings that they'd best not rest too much or there are going to be consequnces. That's how D&D is played. DMs who let players just long rest infinitely when they are on some sort of time table story-wise are not DMing well. The whole point of an RPG is to create an alternate reality that people can escape to. It is fantastic in many ways, but there are still logical, realistic rules set up to make the world more real and immersive. There needs to be some explanation for things that don't line up with reality. "I let you long rest 8 times, allowing 8 days to pass, but the ritual is still not finished." "Why? How?" the player asks. "You slipped into a time warp and went back in time 3 times," the DM replies. "Ah,"says the player. "That explains it. But where did the time warp come from?" "The magical artifact you are carrying... perhaps..." says the DM.
At least that's explaining why you can long rest for 20 days in the game and nothing happens. Everyone and everything is still in the same place having the same conversations.
