Downtime

My current campaign is set almost entirely in a single city. Specifically, the City of Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. This campaign has been going since December of last year. And in that time, the party has only left the city walls twice (and both times they didn't venture far enough to be out of sight of the city walls (they visited a farming village run mostly by hobbits and gnomes a few sessions ago, and in the 13th session, they visited a slum that has grown up between the "city walls proper" and an outer defensive wall on the northern end of the city.


My starting points were a 5e module (which I owned), and a very interesting idea I experienced in Bdubs current online campaign--see BDubs and Dragons.  Now, I don't use the same ruleset (ACKS "adventurer conqueror king system) as BDubs--which I understand is fairly similar to AD&D 1e.  But I enjoy playing in different rules sets from time to time--because I feel like I learn a lot from seeing how another person runs a session of D&D.


Specifically, in this case, BDubs uses a rule that is right there in the 5e rulebooks--but which seemed like a bookkeeping rule, and I had basically previously ignored.  Specifically, his campaign has "downtime."  In essence, downtime means that the campaign setting doesn't "pause" between the sessions.  Instead, players have to get out of the dungeon, make their way back to town, and can spend the time between sessions, schmoozing, gossiping, buying items, gambling, running businesses, hiding from the cops, etc.  The way downtime works is very simple--but it isn't explained very well at all in the 5e core rulebooks--instead the 5e books only give you rules for how to adjudicate downtime, but they don't explain when to use it or why you should use it.


Downtime works like this.  When the players are in a session, they take time exploring the world, travelling, resting to restore spells, etc.  but when the session ends, time advances on a 1-to-1 basis as in the real world--instead of acting like a saved video game file--where nothing happens until you "pick back up."  This doesn't sound like a revolutionary concept.  And to be honest, I didn't really see what the point of this rule was until my second session playing in BDubs campaign.  But it actually massively changes the game.  It's a huge deal.


Why?  Well there are at least two very interesting and good things that downtime does for D&D.  First, it makes your campaign setting feel a lot more real.  Because there isn't a pause button in the real world. It gives the DM time for all of the NPCs--both good and bad--to DO stuff, EVEN WHEN THEY're NOT INTERACTING WITH THE PLAYERS.  So here's an example.  In my current campaign, my players have spent several sessions exploring a dungeon in the "City of the Dead" (it's like Central Park if the primary purpose for Central Park was first and foremost a cemetery, but also a popular park area for trees, walking trails, fountains etc.)  The players have gone into this crypt a few times.  They've even met the guy who owns it--a vampire.  But because the game doesn't "pause" when the session ends--it's much more difficult for them to clear the dungeon "room-by-room" as I've seen happen in some campaigns.


For example, the second time they came back to the dungeon, the Vampire had hired a couple of guards to stand watch outside of his tomb (the party offered to pay the guards more money and hired them).  The third time the party came back to the dungeon, they were met by one of the Vampires high ranking lieutenants (with a flesh golem and hell hound in tow).  She threatened to kill them if they came back--but also offered them a job.  Clearing out the other half of the dungeon which was currently infested with aboleth spawn (which in my campaign look like the underwater pirates from Pirates of the Carribean 2).  They succeeded in clearing the aboleth spawn out of the dungeon a few weeks ago--and were well paid by the Vampire (through intermediaries).  In the latest session, the party went by the crypt leading down into the vampire's lair, and found that it had been walled off (they weren't intending to enter.


When the campaign simply "pauses" whenever you're not actively playing the game, it's much harder as the DM for your evil NPCs to actively adapt their response to the players.  So if I wasn't using downtime, it's a lot more likely the players would have been able to keep pushing from room to room and have cleared out a lot more of the dungeon (or even found and staked the vampire already).  But a vampire doesn't get to be 500 years old by simply sitting there and letting people punch through his dungeon and kill him.  Which is why giving the Vampire a week between each session is such a revolutionary move--he has time to counter the players (outside of direct combat).  Without downtime, the evil NPCs are far more limited.  There simply isn't time for them to respond to players--because the game "pauses" so the players can just stay in the dungeon and clear it out over a handful of weeks.


The other reason downtime is great is because it adds a new resource to the campaign (for the players).  It gives the players time.  Time to do other stuff beyond just killing monsters and clearing dungeons.  In the waterdeep campaign, my players acquired a rundown old tavern early in the campaign (someone promised them gold and reneged and gave them a bit of property instead).  During their downtime, the players have renovated the tavern and run it as a regular concern--and it has been turning a steady profit too.  The players also found and cleared out a "subbasement" under the regular basement which they're using as a makeshift hideout (several of the players are currently wanted for breaking and entering and murder).


Anyways, both of these aspects of downtime--giving the evil NPCs time to adapt to the player's plans, and giving the players time to do stuff like performing and running a business--make for a much richer campaign.  And as soon as I saw it in Bdubs campaign, I knew I had to steal it.

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