Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Distracted DM" data-source="post: 9850390" data-attributes="member: 6894926">I keep track of time as the GM because I like to let the players know how much time has passed in game. It's also why I push downtime activities.Just today, a player pointed out "hey, how long has it been since I took that 9-month loan from that dangerous bank?" Check the calendar... oh yup, looks like 3 days ago it went overdue. The player never had the intention of repaying it, so we knew that a few days didn't really matter (if it had, I would've been more forgiving if it's something that the character would have kept remember/kept track of in-world). So it was time for collectors to come a-callin'.I also like making magic items that're time-reliant. The most advanced, which I probably wouldn't do again, was some moon-related items that recharged and/or were usable during certain phases of the moons. Did they get used? Yes. Did the players always ask me, rather than checking the available calendar themselves? Also yes. BUT it was always a nice reminder that time was passing.Our Age of Worms game, levels 1-18, took 2+ years of in-game time. That's much more pleasing to my verisimilitude than the entire saga happening over a month or two.OK now that I've addressed the good feelings of time-keeping, with regards to PRESSURE of time... that's a different thing. Red Hand of Doom, one of my most successful and favorite adventures, occurs over about a month, levels 5-12/13. That adventure has a running doom clock. Was it great? Yes. Did it mean that downtime went out the window, and the wizard was constantly pressed to not be scribing new spells they found? Also yes. If I were to do RHoD again in future, I think I'd expand the doom clock, add in some impassable/dangerous winter, and make it happen over a year or two.. mostly so there's some downtime opportunity.The other thing I've found is that players can be TOO keyed up on conserving time. I scarred them a bit with a few doomsday clocks, and that trained them to value time a little too much. They never opted for downtime, they were always trying to get the next thing going, they'd forgo long rests if they thought there wouldn't be some big scary fight soon, etc. I had to break them of that a bit by just saying "OK, now's a good time for downtime. Take 3 weeks." That worked out and now we're in a good balance.</blockquote>

Verification