In my current campaign (in which I am a player) we are considering switching over to the Gritty Realism rest variant in the DMG so that the party would have to expend more resources between resting. The variant says:
This variant uses a short rest of 8 hours and a long rest of 7 days.
But we are confused at how this variant interacts with the normal rules for resting.
A normal long rest has this description:
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity – at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity – the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
How do these rules transfer over to the variant? Is it true that you must spend 7 full days only in a single long rest and that you may not perform more than 2 hours of light activities over the entire 7 day (168 hour) period? It seems like over 7 days you could easily spend at least 2 hours eating and talking.
Would the long rest be invalidated if they take are interrupted by a single hour of strenuous activity over the entire 7 days? Even for a "gritty" variant that seems really extreme.
How are the activity limitations supposed to work in this variant?
Best Answer
There is no official interpretation
The Gritty Realism rules seem to be an afterthought, slapped on top of the usual rules.
At least the 2 hours of light activities per long rest are hard to implement, I would go crazy with 166 hours of bed rest per week.
How we do it
Short Rest
This one is easy, just replace "1" with "8" in the description of short rests:
Long Rest
The 1 hour strenuous activity limit and the 6 hours of mandatory sleep is per day. This leaves 17 hours per day for light activity.
If you fail to comply, that day is lost, but you do not have to start the 7 days again.*
*) otherwise 61 minutes of running away every 168 hours could slowly kill you