Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 pukunui Sep 26, 2014 15:35:59	Hi all,   I normally run fairly lengthy premade adventures (like Red Hand of Doom back in the 3.5 days and now Legacy of the Crystal Shard). One thing that's always kind of irked me about them is the speed with which PCs gain levels. I'm not one to insist that PCs find a teacher and spend time training before they can level up, but I do like the idea of there being periods of downtime in between adventures.   Since we've got some actual downtime activities in the PHB (with more coming in the DMG, if I'm not mistaken), I was thinking it could be fun to run a more episodic campaign where there is some actual in-game time between each adventure during which the PCs can busy themselves doing various things.   To that end, I thought it could be fun to randomly determine just how much downtime there is between adventures, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing it. I could split it into days, weeks, months, and years and roll for one of those increments, and then have another roll to determine how many days, weeks, months, or years.   I don't think I'd want to go with a d4 for the initial roll, as I'd prefer to make years be the least likely outcome. Maybe a d% roll with 50% for weeks and maybe only 5-10% for years, with days and months getting the remainder?   And then I thought if you get days, it'd just be up to a week's worth; if weeks, it'd just be up to a month's worth; and so on.   Since downtime activities are measured in weekly increments, it might just be better to skip days and just go with weeks, months or years, though.     Anyone got any thoughts on this?     Cheers, Jonathan
#2 iserith Sep 26, 2014 15:41:00	I think the length of downtimes should be determined by the players. Perhaps there can be a sliding scale of some kind where the longer they spend in downtime increases the difficulty and urgency of whatever adventure follows. The idea being that Team Badguy is always doing bad stuff and the longer their schemes develop, the harder it is to stop them. In this sense, the players get to control both the benefits of their downtime and the difficulty of their future adventures.
#3 bawylie Sep 26, 2014 16:33:57	I think the length of downtime should be determined by wealth.    If I were an adventurer, I'd come back from adventuring and live it up. Way up. And only go adventuring again when a) something pressing required my intervention or b) I ran out of money and could no longer drown myself in wine, women, and song.
#4 BW0222 Sep 26, 2014 16:34:25	In most of my home campaigns, down time is usually determined by the players and what is happening in the campaign. Typically, players take down time after they have finished a major plot arc -- killed a main opponent, finished a long quest, returned from an evil kingdom. As a DM, I would recommend three types of down time...   a) When players arrive in fairly safe areas, are waiting for something, and there are no specific encounters coming towards them. This is somewhat optional. "Say... it is three days until your ship sails to Freeport. What are each of you doing?"   b) Set times between adventures. They have finished small plots, are waiting for some long term event, etc. Say, they just finished resuing the merchant's goods from the bugbear chiefton and have some gold. "Assume you folks are going to have a couple of weeks. What are each of you doing?" Folks might travel home, spend money, buy expensive items (say platemail), work in their temple, etc.   c) Long times between major plot points. They have just completed a large month or year long plot point -- killed the deamon, uncovered the plot to murder the Duke and prevented a war, etc. There really isn't anything (adventure related) for them to do or followup on. "Ok... it is going to be six months before something happens. I'd like everyone to email me before the next session and I'll email you back again." This could include long term plans such as building a shrine, working on setting up a theives guild, training, crafting, etc. I usually do this every six to nine months.
#5 Noon Sep 26, 2014 17:19:25	When subjectively it's just 'And then three weeks pass' at the game table then they adventure again - does that give you what you want?   If not, what do you want to get out of it?
(Reply to #5) bawylie	Noon wrote:
#7 pukunui Sep 26, 2014 18:04:02	iserith wrote:
#8 CCS Sep 26, 2014 20:14:07	Often times in my own games "adventuring" is done in the spring-fall seasons. And then the characters winter. Sometimes a dire enough threat will present itself though.....
#9 Akeisha Sep 27, 2014 3:41:51	In my campaigns, 'episodes' of downtime are taken on a case by base basis. One time might be quite short before the characters are out and about adventuring again while the next one may be a bit more leisurely in length...it all depends on the current situation and the characters's health conditions. The downtime can also be a bit longer if they have something specific happening/occuring as well.
#10 Delazar78 Sep 27, 2014 8:48:17	I would do 1d4 x10 days of downtime between adventures
#11 MechaPilot Sep 27, 2014 16:03:52	pukunui wrote: