D&D 5E How Much Downtime Do You See in Campaigns?

[Hexmage-EN]

So I'm looking at the magic item crafting rules and seeing that it takes a PC somewhere in the neighborhood of five years to make a single Very Rare magic item. In the experience of those here, do many campaigns have weeks, months, years, or even decades of downtime? It seems to me that most published campaigns at least assume very little downtime.

 

[Oofta]

I do a home campaign, downtime can go anywhere from a week to a year or more between chapters.

But I've noticed that most published campaigns don't do that. I pattern mine more after novels like The Dresden Files where everything is going okay, perfecting new skills, recuperating from the events of the last book and then everything goes sideways for a few days. Gives people a more grounded (well as grounded as D&D can be) sense of growth. You didn't just go from being a newb to a hero of the realm overnight, there was a lot of off-screen time spent training and researching.

Pacing is whatever makes sense for you, your group and the campaign.

 

[aco175]

I tend to have little downtime. The players seem to think that they need to be doing something unless I say 'You have been in town resting for a week...'

 

[Legatus Legionis]

.

 

[iserith]

Very little in my current campaign because downtime just isn't part of the program.

In my next campaign, downtime will happen every time the PCs take a long rest.

So, it varies by campaign.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Our downtime ranges from a couple days up to six months (so far). We "winter" in towns for 4-5 months typically, enjoying our gains, learning skills, researching spells, etc.

In prior games as a DM, I've had over 5 years a few times, and once a span of over 20 years as the characters all settled down, until their children were grown enough to carry on the mantle of heroism.

 

[Campbell]

It's plentiful. Generally at least a couple of weeks between conflicts, although it can extend to a couple of years. I do not tend to run long form adventures or dungeon crawls. A given conflict might end up with maybe 3 or 4 encounters and that includes social encounters, generally not lasting more than 2 sessions at most. I focus just as much on downtime as adventuring.

 

[ccs]

There's almost never any serious amount of downtime in my campaigns.

 

[Shiroiken]

Depends on the campaign. My fsirst campaign had story arcs that had a few months break in between. My last campaign had a lot of downtime, because players chose which character to play (their others used downtime). My current one has bursts of downtime, but usually only in the week or two category.

 

[Umbran]

Much of what I have seen is akin to the published adventures, with continuous storylines over short time periods, and not months or years worth of breaks of downtime.