D&D 5E Downtime: When, How, and How Much?

[Lanefan]

I would love to use downtime, but when my players arrive at a town with no pressing mater, they always, always look at me with a blank stare and say: ''what are we supposed to do now?''.

People likes to complain about ''railroads'', but it seems I have fallen upon the only table that loves being told where to go and who to talk to with large glowing signs like in modern video games.

Probably a situation due to young-ish age (from 24 yo to me at 29 yo as the DM) and a good mix of ADDH, short time to play etc etc. Anyway, to them time not adventuring = time wasted.

Yeah, as DM I get some of that too; and I see it in others in the game I play in. But in our case young age has little to do with it, as we all left 20-something behind far too long ago.

For my part, our system forces a few weeks of training on level-up; without that there'd rarely be any downtime at all. Even when I-as-DM make a point of telling them that the plot-based time pressure is in terms of years or decades rather than days or weeks they still want to be off and at 'em as soon as they possibly can.

As player, I can almost always find somethng to do with downtime; though whether it's something anyone else would want to see done is sometimes a very open question...

 

[Hriston]

I require three days downtime in order to level up (since starting 5e this year, I changed that to level 4+).

In addition, the party generally needs to do research, bleed off stress, maintain family ties and relationships, sell loot, shop, create potions, write scrolls, and attend to the details that I require of various classes which can only be done in downtime.

Plus collect news and rumors, which are hard to come by on the road.

Generally a minimum of ten days when they reach their 'home town', but periodically as much as thirty.

So generally do the players tell you they want to level up, do research, craft potions, gather info., etc., and you tell them how much time it will take? Is that how that works at your table?

 

[Hriston]

I assume that an adventure happens over a ‘season’ regardless of how long it actually takes and that the rest of the time Is spent attending to real life or training or stuff, I encourage PCs to have connections to family or some other social ties.
SO generally theres four seasons in a year but a longer set of interconnected adventures might be assumed to cover two seasons

I can’t quite make out what’s happening at the table from this description. Are you saying that you give the players the balance of the season in downtime after the adventure to use as they please? Or is it more that downtime activities are handwaived as having taken place sometime during the season?

 

[uzirath]

It depends on the needs of the story. Sometimes an adventure or set of adventures keep the party moving at a fast pace with very little downtime beyond occasional shopping stops. Other times, there will be plenty of downtime. We often handle activities during that time off-screen. People will email me with their goals for the time and I'll start the next session with an overview of how it went. Sometimes we'll go around the table for highlight scenes from each player.

 

[Hriston]

We actually have a lot of downtime, which is often used for research, trading, training, etc.

Also, we "winter" in towns mostly when we can, which is a bulk of our downtime. We also have it when we are on voyages which don't result in many random encounters.

In other campaigns, I've had downtime of up to five years as character built homes, had families, etc. before needing to pick up the sword again.

This seems fairly straightforward. I’m imagining the PCs roll into town for the winter, and the DM says, “The roads are impassable for the next three months. What would you like to spend your time doing while waiting for the thaw?” I assume the players declare various activities, and the DM adjudicates the result of their efforts. Yes?

As for the five years of downtime, who decided it was time to pick up the sword, the players or the DM?

 

[Zardnaar]

I use the Midgard setting optional rules. For each week that passes IRL the players get double that in downtime.

So if it takes you 4 sessions over 4 weeks once it's over the PCs get 2 months of downtime.

An exception would be if you wanted the next adventure to be hot on the heels of the last one.

 

[Hriston]

In my current campaign, the area they are in is covered in a dangerous miasma. In between adventures, characters require 11 days (a sacred number in the setting) to recover from exposure. During this time they're free to do whatever they need to in whatever settlement they decide to relax in, but they need to avoid further exposure and therefore must limit themselves to remaining in town.

This seems very similar to the one week long rest @iserith uses. Do you find it helps with adjudication when the PCs perform downtime activities in uniform chunks of time?

 

[Hriston]

I would love to use downtime, but when my players arrive at a town with no pressing mater, they always, always look at me with a blank stare and say: ''what are we supposed to do now?''.

People likes to complain about ''railroads'', but it seems I have fallen upon the only table that loves being told where to go and who to talk to with large glowing signs like in modern video games.

Probably a situation due to young-ish age (from 24 yo to me at 29 yo as the DM) and a good mix of ADDH, short time to play etc etc. Anyway, to them time not adventuring = time wasted.

When you describe the town to them, do you present them with a range of possible activities they could perform while they’re there, or does the onus fall on them to propose actions over which the DM may or may not have veto power?

 

[Fanaelialae]

This seems very similar to the one week long rest @iserith uses. Do you find it helps with adjudication when the PCs perform downtime activities in uniform chunks of time?

It technically is a week, since in that world a week is 11 days.

Personally, I haven't found it particularly useful in terms of adjudication. Rather, it is a long enough stretch of time to encourage various projects. One or two days is fine if you want to brew a few extra healing potions, but it's not really sufficient to do larger projects. While a character probably isn't going to build a home or whatnot in 11 days, they can get a decent chunk of work done such that they feel like they're making real progress towards that goal. I find that shorter time periods discourage the more grandiose planning that makes downtime really worth it (IMO).

 

[Hriston]

I usually allow quite a bit of leeway on downtime depending on how much the players want to spend compared with how urgent events they have stakes in are advancing in the background. In my classic modules campaign, the characters wintered after defeating the slavelords before heading off to other adventures.

When you say you allow “leeway”, do you mean the players propose a certain amount of downtime and then you either allow it or limit it in some way, perhaps by exerting external pressure in-game?