4) Decouple story moments from long rests.
If Wyll likes something that you did in battle, he can tell you about it right after the battle, wherever you happen to be. Or some amount of time later when there is no active threat nearby. Or maybe it's the next short or long rest. Maybe some are tied to a location - it would make sense for the party to take place in the grove, for example, no matter which side you took.
-On the Topic of Short Rest-
I fully support the idea of having a short rest initiate some of the long rest dialogue, it would alleviate a lot of the issues with story development.
-Back to Long Rest-
I still think that the player should be limited on where they can use long rest. And, it is okay to have a permanent camp to waypoint to for long rest. Combat becomes more interesting when you have to manage a healthy amount of resources.
We'll probably always be able to fast travel out of a dungeon, but the player should have to walk back to where they were from the nearest waypoint. This would put a fair amount of incentive to push through the dungeon and manage resources.
Essentially the player should have to take a waypoint to camp (can only use long rest there) and then take a waypoint back out.
- This way, players who are new to the game and struggling with combat can recuperate with long rest and resume the dungeon crawl.
- After the player becomes accustomed to combat, they will want to avoid repeating the same path into the dungeon.
- The player will start to strategize on how to manage spell slots and items, etc.
Players who are familiar with D&D will already be managing their resources throughout the campaign.
