D&D 5E New L&L When Adventurers Aren’t Adventuring

[Tovec]

It seems to be the mechanics that they are talking about here is less "downtime" and more "most of the time" the characters are doing a certain thing. They have goals and motives that are not related to risking their lives on a daily basis. All the best campaigns and DnD-adjacent stories I've ever experienced revolve around these "downtime" events. The character should care more about building their castle, creating their organization or otherwise advancing their goals. The ways they advance them probably relate to combat, the article said something about helping out a lord in order to secure your land. That seems like what adventurer's are outside of risking their lives and what I think the game play should be by default, not on the fringe.

 

[Grydan]

While I'm in agreement with the general positive response this is getting, there is one line that did give me pause.

If a dragon rampages through town while the characters are away, things are more interesting if the player characters have lost friends and the tavern they purchased, renovated, and operated profitably.

While this is true, it also highlights the fact that at a glance it's far wiser for a character to spend their downtime and gold on things that travel with them (like knowledge, or more gold) than on things that are left behind and can be arbitrarily taken away.

I mean, sure, my character would be rather upset if you burned down his tavern and killed his friends, but I as the player am also going to be rather frustrated with my DM for taking my investments away from me when across the table from me, Bob's character has spent his time and money on things that the DM can only take away by killing his character, something that generally isn't simply handwaved, but interacts with things like HP, AC, and saves.

Either the benefit needs to be correspondingly stronger to offset the risk (in which case in campaigns where the DM doesn't show interest in taking away such investments they become the more favoured option), or there needs to be some equivalent plot protection in place for possessions, so that they can't just be taken away without a single roll.

 

[Squidmaster]

I feel like they are going in the right direction with downtime rules. It's great not to have to come up with them as the DM, and having them as a part of the core game encourages some DM's to create a more robust game than they might otherwise.

 

[Blackwarder]

One thing to remember is that campaign mechanics should go hand in hand with world building and economic models.

For me the best part about D&D is world building and exploring and developing the world together, I hope D&DNext comes with robust rules and guidelines to build such worlds and suit them to our needs. ACKS did it best.

Warder

 

[MarkB]

While this is true, it also highlights the fact that at a glance it's far wiser for a character to spend their downtime and gold on things that travel with them (like knowledge, or more gold) than on things that are left behind and can be arbitrarily taken away.

I mean, sure, my character would be rather upset if you burned down his tavern and killed his friends, but I as the player am also going to be rather frustrated with my DM for taking my investments away from me when across the table from me, Bob's character has spent his time and money on things that the DM can only take away by killing his character, something that generally isn't simply handwaved, but interacts with things like HP, AC, and saves.

Either the benefit needs to be correspondingly stronger to offset the risk (in which case in campaigns where the DM doesn't show interest in taking away such investments they become the more favoured option), or there needs to be some equivalent plot protection in place for possessions, so that they can't just be taken away without a single roll.

I think it just has to be a matter of balancing the negative with some positive. Yes, maybe that dragon attack hurts some of the PC's friends and associates one week, but on another occasion his allies and renovations back in town help hold off a bandit incursion which would have gutted the place without their presence, garnering him and his associates greater respect and more customers.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

What the heck is going on here? I can only access the fist page of this thread, every attempt to access any other page brings me right back here. Well, hopefully that will straighten itself out later. And I still can't put spaces between lines when I want to do a new paragraph. ... Most of the article I like, but there are a few things that I find a bit worrisome. There's always the possibility that half the party wants to do downtime stuff while the rest want to adventure. Possibly because the time requirements don't match up. I also found the statement that some dinky border town will have a mage's guild with a library in it very metagamey. And why isn't that sort of thing being done by the temple of the knowledge god? Finally, we're back to DM vs. player again with the smirking suggestion that a dragon should destroy the PC's tavern while they're out of town. (That probably wasn't how Mike intended the suggestion to go down, but that's what lept off the page at me!)

 

[pemerton]

my character would be rather upset if you burned down his tavern and killed his friends, but I as the player am also going to be rather frustrated with my DM for taking my investments away from me when across the table from me, Bob's character has spent his time and money on things that the DM can only take away by killing his character, something that generally isn't simply handwaved, but interacts with things like HP, AC, and saves.

Mearls does describe it as a situation in which:

the player characters have lost friends and the tavern they purchased, renovated, and operated profitably.​

That is, he's envisaging a situation in which all the PCs are hit. He doesn't seem to be anticipating a differential burden based on GM fiat.

That said, this is an area where there are things to be learned from other contemporary games about how to mechanically mediate and ration the GM's ability to drop these sorts of bombshells that opeate outside the normal action resolution framework.

 

[Ruzak]

As is now, we have two players very much into role playing, and they think about this stuff anyway. The other two are more into the game aspect, and I think mechanics with benefits would appeal to them as well. I like the sound of this.

 

[Nymrohd]

I like how Next is adding rules support for non-combat encounters on a broader level at base. For one, it might mean that the next generation of D&D games will have a gamist foundation for including such activities (and imo CRPGs are far and away our best ambassadors and recruiters).

As for those who wonder why people are not adventuring, I think the idea that adventure hooks pop up constantly with no downtime strains credulity. Unless your characters are in some massive campaign arc, they should have frequent downtime. Having run several high-to-epic campaigns, that downtime could even take years until a hook that requires your 15+ level help arises.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Some players and groups will undoubtedly want really finely detailed rules on building a stronghold (including the floor-plan maps) or running a nation, such that it's a mini-game in itself. I can certainly see there being some sort of sliding scale of complexity on such things. I've had some familiarity with Pathfinder's kingdom building rules, I'd be curious to see how 5e might handle such advanced rules.