Pendragon published adventures were so bad they taught an entire generation to play wrong…in direct contradiction to one of the core principles of the game.

Next to that it’s hard for me to get worked up when an adventure assigns penalties that are appropriate to the fiction, even when the core rules don’t explicitly give the GM permission to do that.

I mean, I’m a huge proponent of System Matters but I’m pretty sure System Matters doesn’t mean the GM needs explicit in-rules permission for every single thing they do.

Does the penalty make sense? Yes. Does it utilize existing game concepts in a new and different way? Yes. Does is invalidate a core principle of the game to use the mechanic that way? No.

Then I’m still not seeing the problem.

Is there some fundamental design principle that an adventure writer should never put on their “GM Hat” and include “house rule” type elements as part of an adventure design that I’m not aware of?

Would it be different if the text called for a Travel Roll instead of just directly pinging Fatigue?