I can't speak for the OP, but what I do is have the players tell me what they did during the break. Settled down on the farm? Great. You may have heard some rumors from that traveler who asked for shelter that stormy night. Hunted orcs? Awesome. You were never able to find "king" Grozzle but you did manage to gather a little more information which might come in handy. Spent time at the gambling tables? Cool. You made a small fortune and then lost it all while making a new ally. Or are they?
As far as details, put in as much or little as you want. Want to write a short story? Go for it. Post it where everyone can read and be ready to give a brief summation for the group at the session for those who didn't have time to read it. Don't care? Not a problem, but I will ask for a brief outline and may fill in some details for you.
The only restriction is that you don't gain or lose money unless it's something pertinent to the game (e.g. built a castle) and you don't gain any XP. I don't care if you fought a thousand goblins in your off-time, it doesn't count. Sorry but the game doesn't work that way. There was no real risk, so there's no gain.
I also ask people OK an outline of what happened because I may nix some ideas. The cleric isn't going to be teleported up to Valhalla to have tea and crumpets with Thor. But if you want to have a whirlwind romance and now you're married? Fantastic, describe them for the group.
I'm not the (sole) author of the campaign, I am narrator and set boundaries. How much or little players want to add to the story is up to them.
To me, my first reaction was: okay, so no matter what you do, nothing you do actually matters. If nothing can be gained and likewise nothing can be lost, then aside from "I want my PC to do this thing." Someone could say "I do nothing." and have the same outcome.
First off, it sounds like the OP isn't using xp and further, has players who are on board with lots of downtime.
I totally couldn't tell from the OP, to be honest.
But since you're talking about stuff much closer to my own situation, I'll carry on here...
Well, first I'd expect each of these players to have multiple PCs in the game world. Given that, what usually happens is that Johnny and Jimmy would put those PCs on hold for the winter, while bringing in another pair to go adventuring with Sue and Jane.
Depends what they're doing. If they just party in the mead hall all winter then no, no increases for them (and a decrease in their coin total, too!). But if they're learning spells or picking up a new language or whatever, then yes.
Okay fair enough, so in your case the game still focuses on the "adventure" and "downtime" is more of a "fill-in-the-blank" of what happened while the adventure was going on?
I'm not the least bit concerned about keeping everyone at the same level of xp total. Going out in the field is 99% certain to get you more xp than staying in town...but it's also going to carry the risk of death or other bad things happening, which is much less likely in the safety of town.
Well, the question was more aimed at the fact that players, and therefore their characters, tend to go where the rewards are. So if two characters stay home and get nothing other than a nice story, and two characters go out and earn a bunch of XP, we can wager that next time the downtime cycle comes around, there ain't gonna be anyone staying home.
I personally like to reward downtime activity. I have played with a lot of DMs who
dont which has always made me question the purpose of including downtime to begin with.
The guy who gets detailed: that's what the pub is for, or email, or some other out-of-session means of communication.
Fair enough that's what I prefer as well.
Well, if there's nothing to find, they don't find it, I guess, is an option. The world can't really be as dangerous as random encounter tables make it out to be. You spend a few minutes describing how cold they get wandering around, looking for trouble and not finding it. Maybe a survival check or two.
Sure. I'm not a big fan of "random encounter tables" so I'd happily tell my players up front that "The local area seems to have stabilized for the time." before having them wander around doing nothing and wasting
everyones time.
Of course, at low level, even fighting off a pack of wolves or capturing a 2nd level highwayman can give you a few xp. But a higher level character could reasonably run up against the 'problem' of literally nothing worth their time being around for a whole season, or years on end.
Which I suppose was part of my point. Some player may want to travel the world looking for that adventure.
I haven't run into this issue. Everyone has Backgrounds and they're tied into the setting. They from somewhere. They have goals that aren't related to what the group is doing. The down-time between adventures is perfect for that.
But isn't that really just adventuring by a different name? Instead of venturing out into the woods looking for trouble, you go looking for it at home? I don't think adventuring is all raiding tombs 24/7 and a good "adventure" can happen right in their home town...but then that's not
really downtime is it?
Moreover, see the post above about "You don't find adventure. Adventure finds you." Gandalf shows up with a quest when he shows on, on his schedule, not yours. There isn't always an adventure to be had.
Eh. I'm with a DM that's kinda like that. On a personal note: I'm not enjoying it. It feels a lot less like "We're rugged adventurers looking for excitement!" and more like "We're cashiers waiting for someone to come and order a BigMac." If we
literally can't do anything because nobody has asked us to do anything, that IMO is not being an adventurer.
Well that crosses off a lot of my questions then. I really wasn't clear from the OP.
They could pick up a Tools or Vehicles proficiency or something if they want, sure. Maybe an extended downtime and career change could lead to a second Background.
Okay, the question was mostly aimed at "Can the time be mechanically productive as well as story productive?" What I was hoping
not to hear was [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION]'s answer that "no matter what you do you can't fundamentally gain anything other than story." Because, lets me honest: I don't need a TTRPG group to come up with a creative story for what my PC does on their own. That's like, my other other hobby.
I think you're picturing a much more adversarial relationship between me and the players. I just say "Okay guys, you won. The bad guy is defeated and the town is safe. No obvious threats around right now. What are you doing to do with your new free time?" and the players understand this is an opportunity to pursue their individual character development.
Then I basically just say "Six months pass .. and you see the bat signal."
No, that's fine. I was mostly curious on the level of detail you were willing to get into. See [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] who will basically run a side-adventure for a secondary group of characters during the downtime if that's where people want to go.
I think I was pretty clear in the OP that this is exactly what I'm doing.
You don't give out any form of advancement when it doesn't involve killing stuff? I'm a little unclear on your answer.
Both are fine. It really doesn't effect anything. Downtime is an opportunity to have a different kind of fun, not homework.
If it doesn't affect anything, why do it?
On the contrary, the PCs are all split up during downtime, off pursuing their solo stuff. The wizard is off to the Tower of High Sorcery to take his Test; the barbarian is following a prophecy into the desert; the cleric is rehabilitating the shrine they just finished clearing of monsters; and the bard is returning a sword they found to its rightful owner.
What if they don't? What if they stick together, as a group, doing a group thing?
I guess if you think my running the campaign this way is a "jerk ultimatum" you can go play somewhere else then. My players seem to like it. Good communication and setting expectations ahead of time about how the campaign will function is always key (not just for this, but for anything).
Well I wasn't asking to play in your game now was I Captain Snippy-Pants? Thanks for taking the line completely out of context from the line
right before it. But hey yeah you went there so lets run with it: It
IS a pretty jerk move for the DM to say "Okay it's downtime time, you all split up, you all do you own things, none of you get to stick around each other because you all have to do you own things, on your own, alone, by yourself."
Yeah, that's kinda a jerk move. Because ya know, it's the player's call on what their character does,
NOT YOURS