Weeks and Weeks of Adventuring

[Raven Crowking]

I don't know if this is considered a problem when it comes up in other games, but it seems as though PCs never have to take a break. I mean, sure, they stop to heal damage (usually until their spells are renewed), but when do they take a break from adventuring? This is, presumably, a pretty stressful vocation. One might want a vacation. One might, in fact, begin to act sub-optimally if one never had a bit of downtime.

Has anyone out there worked out house rules to reflect this?



RC

[Fieari]

No, but the core rules help. Developing new spells, item creation, heck... sometimes even leveling up requires some down time. And then you factor in story rewards to the characters, like being given a castle they have to manage for a while before the next big adventure comes up. Now, frequently, this time is covered very rapidly via handwaving, but in game, months go by.

[the Jester]

Yeah, I have this problem as well. I try to make the pcs wait for things soemtimes- their adventure involves a festival several months away, for instance. Also, after a successful adventure's conclusion, they usually party for a few days, commission new items (takes longer when not everything is on the shelf, as in a small town or what have you), etc.

Also, you could use holy days to require clerical downtime; require rogues to teach a lockpicking class for a couple of weeks to stay in good with the thieves' guild; etc.

Another idea- use winter as the 'off-season.' Nobody likes traveling through constant driving rain and snow and wind.

[dren]

Game pauses are one of the things I build into my campaigns. They are needed for 1/10 of the things the characters need to do. Increase in spells, contacting people, their religious faith, working in organizations, goverment obligations, all require some time.

For example, a wizard will get two spells each level. If he needs a spell in the middle of an adventure, he has to buy it. But, if done in a two, three, six month break they are "free" as part of their ongoing research.

When the party has completed a major mission, tell them they are going back "home". Ask them what they would like to do for the break. Give them small bonuses for these breaks.

Remember, the pacing of the campaign is more up to you, the DM, then the players. The players are only reacting to what you provide.

[Raven Crowking]

Game pauses, travel time, etc., all help. There was a big break recently when the paladin commissioned much better armor (it took ten weeks to make), and an even bigger break after a near tpk while the remaining PC (out of game) travelled to the nearest place that could resurrect his fallen companions, then return to the general area. "Five years have passed, and in that time...."

But, in my experience, all players want their characters to hussle from one ruin to another, one adventure to the next, from the Old Forest to the Barrow Downs and on to Mordor. After all, unless you need to wait for something, there is no good game reason not to.

What I am looking for is a good game reason not to. Not only so that the PCs will accept down time, but also so that, sometimes, the PCs would rather have down time when their talents are sorely needed.

What I was thinking of incorporating is a house rule that says, in effect, the longer you push yourself, the less well you heal. Any thoughts on this?

[Kelleris]

Another thing you might consider is requiring Fortitude saves to avoid coming down with what is, in effect, a disease.

I know I'm getting a cold now because I've been working too hard.

After so many days of constantly being on edge (hard traveling, adventuring, surviving in particularly bad conditions) have everyone make a Fort save, and increase the DC by 2 every day thereafter. The "disease" would do Wisdom damage (representing mental fatigue) and gradually cause fatigue and then exhaustion (representing the lethargy of the overworked). It could still technically be removed via the appropriate spells, but you could just rule that it's as much a mental condition as an actual disease, and therefore requires rest to overcome.

[Chimera]

Most player's I've gamed with have been highly adverse to "down time". I don't quite understand it. It's not a race and starting characters are all quite young. Why the big rush?

When I GM, I tend to enforce it to a certain degree, by requiring PCs in service to certain organizations to spend time at those locations, participating in holy day celebrations, teaching, etc. I also require a minimum 3 month period to gain a new class when multi-classing (find a teacher, etc). All in all, I find it much more realistic and satisfying than "we go all out, non-stop for an entire year without a rest - now we're 19 years old and 20th level!".

But then, I also add in time during travel, to cover things like bad weather ("sorry, it rained really hard and the road is a sea of mud"; or "a bad storm is keeping all the ships in port"), lack of wind while at sea, resting horses (don't tell me your horse travels it's maximum distance for 40 days without a rest...) and so forth.

As a player, I will sometimes insist on a couple of days of rest here and there.

In the FR campaign I'm playing in, I did some meta-gaming with the GM, insisting that it would be way too convenient and suspicious to just happen to find a ship going from Mimph to Sembia the very day we happen to be looking, that it very probably wouldn't be going straight there, and that he should add in some travel time due to weather and port delays. As it turned out, we ended up crossing over to Turmish, going overland to the other side, then taking a ship that took us on a round-about passage to Selgaunt.

Then after leveling up, my character needed almost a month of 'down time' to read some scrolls and copy them to his spell book. So when we completed a task which took us to the Abbey of the Just Hammer, he told the rest of the group to meet him in 30 days in Taver's Mark. What they do in that time is up to them. Heck, when they show up, I might just ask for another tenday to attend to some personal business.

[Buttercup]

I haven't built down-time into the game as much as I'd like to. For instance, we didn't play during the month of August, because we all wanted a break. If I had planned ahead, I could have had them in-between adventures during this time, and then when we met last Monday, I could have asked each of them what their character had been doing.

But I didn't plan ahead, and so our last session in July left the party in the middle of a temple full of snake cultists. Of course, they were eager to get going this past session, so it turned out ok, but I definately want to start incorporating down time into the story.

[FreeTheSlaves]

I pretty much let campaign events dictate the pacing of the adventure. To date the adventures went heavy in the first 3 weeks, two years passed, adventure heavy for 4 weeks, a month passes and the current adventure for about 3+ weeks. After this the adventure will pass a month until the next planned adventure, from there I'm guessing a year will pass to build up the fleet.

This is not in stone but unless the group as a whole is doing something I handwave the players individual missions.

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I don't think downtown is a problem unless you let it be. Not too many players want to roleplay downtime so just wave your hand and have it fly by. Maybe give a recap of what the players were doing during the period of time.

It's funny, in our current campaign which has been going on for 2-3 years of real time, only about 3-4 months have passed in the game.

It's all about keeping the players busy.

[Tonguez]

I declare that each adventure takes 3 months (ie one quarter), that three months includes both the actual adventure time and also the downtime and 'faction events' (similar to a winter phase, where faction events are random events (and reactions) involving the PCS freinds, family, Patrons and Dependents)

[Gideon]

In the campaign I play in my charachter went from 5th -17th level in 1 year because we never stopped adventuring. Some of the players in my group just didn't like "sitting around" for a month or two. I know that my charachter always grumbles about "As soon as I get done my job; i am setting down, building a forge, and finally learning how to make a decent set of armor." So the point of all of that was that at least part of it should occur in charachter.

Mechanically, I agree with the disease usage. Although, I would use normal DMG diseases instead of the 'fatigue' disease listed above. You could increase the DC by 2 every week that the charachters adventure straight. I would also let the bonus from endurance be added to the Fort saving throw.

[VirgilCaine]

Originally Posted by Gideon

Mechanically, I agree with the disease usage. Although, I would use normal DMG diseases instead of the 'fatigue' disease listed above. You could increase the DC by 2 every week that the charachters adventure straight. I would also let the bonus from endurance be added to the Fort saving throw.

I like this idea.

"Hey guys, don't look at me, you've been through a lot of villages, and at least ten of them were having feast days. You didn't even stay around to the end of the celebration for that town you saved from the wyverns and the giants. You guys have been adventuring for at least a month with hardly a break. There's costs in that, you see. A pus-filled cost, but a cost nonetheless."

[poilbrun]

The problem I encounter in my campaigns is that, should the PC decide to have downtime, the big evil organization would keep on with its plan, and the PC would have big trouble to pick up where they left. In truth, they'd probably worse off having taken a break than having continued adventuring. At the moment, several organizations are on their trail, and the only reason they're still quite safe is because they've not stopped moving from one part of the kingdom to the other for 2 months now. The fact that they've been allowed to use a portal twice also helped them, since their trail was suddenly cut off.

Originally Posted by Chimera

In the FR campaign I'm playing in, I did some meta-gaming with the GM, insisting that it would be way too convenient and suspicious to just happen to find a ship going from Mimph to Sembia the very day we happen to be looking, that it very probably wouldn't be going straight there, and that he should add in some travel time due to weather and port delays.

But from another point of view, I don't think anything is wrong when that happens in a novel or a movie. If the action takes place on the other side of the sea, why should play be boggled down because there's no ship leaving to where you want it to go.

Of course, this, and the rest of the thread, all boils down to this: what are you looking for when you play? Me and my players are more in it for the action and the intrigues (well, I'm in it for the intrigues, but even though they say they don't, I'm not sure they would like the game with only more and more action each week). If your idea of fun is more realism in the game, I wish you all the fun you can have, and the idea of a disease-like effect for adventure burn-out is probably a good idea for you, as is adding days to travel because of bad weather. But I know that if I told my players: you trip from X to Y took 8 days instead of 6 because of bad weather condition, they would reply: ok, cool. Of course, that's not always how travel works in my game. For example, they recently had to cross a swamp on their way to a major city. The description of the travel was basically: after 6 uneventful days on the road, you enter a fetid swamp (add some more description, a couple of encounters so that they know they've entered an area were the law of the kingdom as no hold)... and then, after having exited the swamp and 4 more days on the road, you finally arrive to your destination.

[Chimera]

Originally Posted by poilbrun

The problem I encounter in my campaigns is that, should the PC decide to have downtime, the big evil organization would keep on with its plan, and the PC would have big trouble to pick up where they left. In truth, they'd probably worse off having taken a break than having continued adventuring. At the moment, several organizations are on their trail, and the only reason they're still quite safe is because they've not stopped moving from one part of the kingdom to the other for 2 months now. The fact that they've been allowed to use a portal twice also helped them, since their trail was suddenly cut off.

Maybe your evil organizations are too impatient. They don't build slack into their timelines? Geez, no wonder they fail.

Or maybe your games revolve too much around fighting the plans of evil organizations.

Originally Posted by poilbrun

But from another point of view, I don't think anything is wrong when that happens in a novel or a movie. If the action takes place on the other side of the sea, why should play be boggled down because there's no ship leaving to where you want it to go.

The simple answer is that they don't show this in a movie or novel, because it would destroy the pacing. The Harry Potter books take place over an entire year at Hogwarts. But you don't have chapter after chapter of mundane crap happening between the plot points.

Originally Posted by poilbrun

Me and my players are more in it for the action and the intrigues (well, I'm in it for the intrigues, but even though they say they don't, I'm not sure they would like the game with only more and more action each week).

How does saying "Ok, you spend two weeks enjoying the town's gratitude and generosity before moving on" distract from the action and intrigue? Personally, it gives me a sense of reward.