iserith
Magic Wordsmith
There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, of course, but damn is it boring when there's no dramatic conflict (i.e. in a dungeon-crawl). It also eats up a ton of time, if not whole sessions.
I'm not sure what to do about this, but in the future, I'll probably frame town visits in the past tense. "The party spent a few days recuperating in town. What did you do during that time?"
Agreed. In my current campaign, I've implemented something of a "town stuff" mini-game that I think is working pretty well so far. We basically boiled down the general tasks you can do in town for a given day (or part of a day) to just a few - Carouse, Get Services (includes Recruit), Supply, Gather Information. Players choose which task their characters undertake individually and where to undertake it. (Sometimes they'll team up if they want to Help.) The locations offer trade-offs and usually have a cost, but you get a tangible benefit for your trouble if you succeed in your effort. It keeps things tight and we establish a few details here and there that add up into a fleshed out town pretty quickly. ( [MENTION=6801219]Lanliss[/MENTION] has already seen some of that for his character based on his choices. He's got a bad relationship with the owner of the livery and the local thieves' guild.)