I would honestly prefer a more immersive camp experience and do away with the mini-camps altogether. I think they look cool, but they're not necessary, and the fact that they have no placement on any map is just totally weird to me.
Here's what BG3 seems to me: A totally obscure game with a lot of things that just don't make sense.
On the one hand, I see people's points when they say that the game map is not meant to be meter for meter all the way through. You're suppose to imagine that the whole map is actually not to scale and distances are supposed to be more stretched out. In other words, the harpy nest isn't ACTUALLY right around the corner just outside the grove. It's actually like miles away. The map is not supposed to be actual distances.
Buuuuut... if I get into a fight with the harpies, little Mikron can literally dash his heart out all the way to the grove for safety, and you can literally fight the harpies all the way up the cliffs to the grove entrance.
Likewise, if I shove the bugbear on top of the cliff by Nadira the tiefling astronomer, I can send him flying approximately 60 feet off the edge and all the way down to Orm the bear who's fishing by the river.
Sooooo... makes no sense that it ISN'T foot for foot, meter for meter.
The camps are the exact same thing. It is clear based on dialogue and such that the camps are somewhere nearby on the map, but you can LITERALLY see everything. There is no camp east of Dank Crypt if you pan your camera out over the river. It's also not on the other side of the nautiloid near where you meet Astarion, though visually it looks like it belongs somewhere maybe over there closer to the bog. Likewise, in the Dank Crypt, there are no literal doors or stairs or anything leading into the mini-camp. You can literally explore everything in the Dank Crypt except beyond the sarcophagus chamber where you find the Book of Dead Gods, and that looks just like a cave system.
So it's weird because all you can think is, "What the heck? Why? Why did you make these weird mini-camps that are just nebulous pocket realms that exist nowhere? As pointed out, there are literally campsites and fireplaces and observable resting areas all over the place.
If it was me, I'd have made it where you can use all of the following places on the current map:
1. Beach near fishing piers - Short Rest Area (you can sit and enjoy the fish and recover, if needed, after fighting the intellect devourers should you go back that way)
2. Other side of nautiloid near boat pier there where you find crates and barrels - Short Rest Area (same as first spot)
3. Harper Cove where you find the Harper Map and such - Short Rest Area
4. Outside the upper Dank Crypt Ruins entranceway where there are benches at the overlook - Short Rest Area
5. Inside upper level of the Crypt after fighting Mari and Barton and their mercenaries - Long Rest area (because there's plenty of food and a fireplace and you can lock doors and everything) Finally, your first long rest area. Talk about preventing long rest spam up until this point. It would be your first real long rest since you started on the beach. It also makes sense that you wouldn't long rest until you'd made at least this much of a significant progress on your adventure. It's a decent amount of progress before your first End Day. Could you get stuck and unable to make it this far? Yes. Is that possible in the present game? Yes, actually. Make a wrong roll with the mind flayer and wind up dead. Reload. Battle goes wrong with Mari and Barton and company. Reload. There's not much of a difference.
6. The Grove, naturally - Long or Short Rest Area. Perfect place for your MAIN CAMP. It's the hub where you can buy and sell things and it's close enough to return to at any point especially with Fast Travel. This would be a place where you COULD spam Long Rest, but then, that would be no different from inns in other RPG's including the previous BG games. Return to the inn and long rest any time you want. Similarly, return to the Grove and long rest any time you want.
7. Harper Lookout - Short or Long Rest
8. Owlbear Cave- Short or Long Rest
9. Moonhaven Apothecary Cellar - Short or Long Rest
10. Moonhaven Blacksmith's Forge - Short or Long Rest
11. Bog Campsite - Short or Long Rest (but Long Rest provides potential Random Encounter chance; it's dangerous)
12. Ethel's House after the fight with the redcaps - Short Rest
13. Inside Ethel's Lair after you fight the Four Masks - Short Rest on the path on your way to her lair
14. Inside Ethel's Lair beyond the secret door entrance portal to the Underdark - Long Rest since it's remote, obscure, and probably not the first place Ethel would expect you to go. That said, if you Long Rest during the event, SOMEthing should happen like Ethel is totally surprised you're actually still in her lair. She thought you changed your mind and took off because you never showed up. Maybe you even catch her a bit unprepared. Or maybe Mayrina's already given birth and is dead. Something happens because you Long Rested instead of pushing forward to fight her right away.
15. Ethel's House after Ethel is dead - Short or Long Rest because you cleared the whole dang place.
16. Zhentarim Hideout - Short or Long Rest. Perfect place for either, as long as you're either welcomed by them or they're cleared out. Quiet, hidden, and pretty much totally safe.
17. Waukeen's Rest Stables - Short or Long Rest. Doing either immediately shows cutscene where it rains and the fires are put out leaving the building a smoldering ruin. (You are unable to Short or Long Rest prior to the fires going out.)
18. Toll House - Short or Long Rest after you clear it of gnolls and enemies. Relatively safe since you can close and lock doors, etc. Again, only AFTER you clear enemies.
19. On the way to the Goblin Camp/Selunite Temple, Goblin Checkpoint - Short Rest. Whether you are friendly with them or hostile and killed them all first, you could likely get away with a short rest there once hostiles are not present.
20. Little secret nook behind a waterfall near the temple - Short or Long Rest. Hidden rest zone baby! Good find.
21. Goblin Camp itself - Long and Short Rest provided no hostiles. In other words, if the goblins are your enemies anywhere inside or outside of the temple, no rest. Otherwise, it's a total rest area. Might be fun to have some cutscenes showing you camping amidst goblins for the night and discussing the smell and such.
22. Inside Temple, up in the rafters - Short Rest. Out of sight, out of mind. No one bothers to check the rafters to see you taking a break up there.
23. Any room in the temple if you haven't alerted the goblins - Short Rest, and this only IF the area is cleared. In other words, you can't even Short Rest in the torture area if Spike is still there.
24. Ragzlin's Throne Room - Short or Long but only AFTER clearing the area of hostiles.
25. Gut's Chambers - Short or Long but only AFTER clearing the area of hostiles.
26. Selunite Outpost in the Underdark - Short or Long Rest, a good place to fall back to at any point in the Underdark
27. Spaw's Grotto, as long as they aren't hostile or they're all dead - Short or Long Rest. Another good place to fall back to.
28. Zhentarim Stash - Short or Long Rest
29. Decrepit Village - Short Rest. Not real safe for a Long Rest, and there are other Long Rest Areas not that far away that are MUCH safer and more intelligent.
30. Arcane Tower Bedroom Level - Short or Long. A GREAT Underdark Home Base
31. Camp near the Spectator Domain - Short Rest. There's a literal campfire there just begging to be used, but it's not exactly in the safest place. Makes more sense as a short rest area.
32. Grymforge Contemplation Chamber after encounter with Phil - Short or Long. Again, campfire and bedrolls already provided
33. Grymforge West Side with lots of crates and barrels and target practice dummies near Stonemason Kith (place overlooking the actual Sharran City on the northwest side of the map not far from where the rothe are trying to pull open the collapsed passage)- Short or Long Rest provided duergar aren't hostile.
34. Grymforge West of the Collapsed Temple Entrance Area (there are chairs and such in that little nook overlooking the Sharran city) - Short Rest
35. Grymforge Temple Entrance Area - Short Rest near tent and supplies provided duergar are friendly. Long Rest once the area is totally clear of duergar or you are friendly with Nere.
36. Dormitories on the east side - Short or Long Rest provided hostiles have been cleared.
37. Anywhere near the forge itself - Short or Long Rest. No one goes there. They haven't figured out how. Perfect spot to vacation.
Suffice to say, there are PLENTY of places to make resting spots in the game already that players really wouldn't need to backtrack to previous campsites very often. All of these locations would make it so that you could virtually short or long rest pretty frequently provided you had the resources and you wanted to spend them.
And honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think the Camping Supplies system isn't really needed. Go back to food and water and alcohol and such healing characters but only IF resting. IF Short or Long Resting, you use food to heal you up, each food item restoring HP equal to certain dice: d4, d6, d8, d10. No Short or Long Rest buttons or limitations other than these.
In other words, I fight devourers and need to short rest. I reach a short rest area and an indicator pops up. You can short rest here. So, I THEN pop up inventory and eat and drink until my characters are where I want them to be from an HP standpoint. I move on. Ouch. Hurt again. Short rest. Use food and drinks. I move on. Dang, hurt again. Still same day. Reach short rest area and use food and drink again. Three or four times or more, I can keep doing this. Finally, I'm out of spells and such. NOW I need to long rest. I've reached a long rest area like the dank crypt. I long rest and spend food to recover all HP and since it's a long rest, spell slots and such are also recovered. Make it so there is an auto-button that spends the food and drinks for you when you want to recover so if you just want to spend enough to be full health, it does it for you so you don't have to painfully feed each character food items until they're full health ALL the time.
What this does is puts long and short rest management fully into the player's hands, provides a need to keep food on you at all times, takes away short rest limitation of only 2 a day, which actually is rather limiting, makes food and drinks more important, and it makes it so you'll long rest less frequently. If you can short rest more, you'll end day less. Short rests are only supposed to be like an hour of resting. So let players short rest more.
Sure, it's not totally 5e, but we're not doing total 5e anyway with the current Short Rest No Hit Dice system, so why not? Reach short rest area, eat a carrot, restore 1d4 HP. Eat a rack of ribs, restore 1d10 HP. Whatever. Makes sense to allow such things in a Short Rest or Long Rest area.