What do your heroes do when they're not adventuring?

[mmadsen]

One of its interesting features of the Pendragon game -- besides its mechanics for personality traits -- is its concept of a Winter Phase. Knights adventure and quest throughout the Spring, Summer, and Fall, but in Winter they return to their castles for an "off season".

What would make for a good Winter Phase in D&D?

In Pendragon, the Winter Phase comprises nine steps:

1. Perform Solo -- Participate in a solo scenario, maybe administering your own estate, serving your lord in some manner (escorting someone, border patrol, etc.), starting (or continuing) a romance, challenging all who pass a particular bridge (for "love of battle"), etc.
2. Experience Check Rolls -- Characters improve between adventures.
3. Aging -- Pendragon campaigns don't squeeze dozens of adventures into a year or two.
4. Check Economic Circumstances -- Pay cost of living and collect income.
5. Stable Rolls -- Horses age and injure themselves, and they're very important to a knight.
6. Family Rolls -- There are rules for marriage, children, and family events (births, deaths, marriages, scandals).
7. Training and Practice -- Players can direct some of their characters' progress.
8. Compute Glory
9. Add Glory Bonus Points

Some of those steps are very game-mechanic-specific (Experience Check Rolls, Training and Practice, Compute Glory, and Add Glory Bonus Points) and would probably get rolled up into one D&D step: Level Up. Others would carry over quite easily: Perform Solo, Aging, Stable Rolls, and Family Rolls. Either they'd use the same rules (Stable Rolls and Family Rolls), or they'd use D&D equivalents (Aging). The solo scenarios are obviously quite open ended. Checking Economic Circumstances might take some work, but you can start with the Upkeeps rules.

So, what do your heroes do in their off time now, and what could they be doing? What solo scenarios do you recommend?

 

[Crothian]

I really enjoy downtime and showing that the characters need not adventure all the time. I've had characters go back home and start familes, build temples, persue researching goals, the list goes on and on. It's always up to the characters what they want to do.

As for solos, it dependsd on what they want to dop. I'm more then willing to solo anyone through anything if we have the time. However, more then likely it's done through e-mail or during game time.

 

[takyris]

The characters in my campaign tend to drink.

As the DM, I usually hit them with something nasty and then say, "Six months pass" in the e-mail after the adventure. This gives them ample character time to deal with the fact that their favorite NPC has just died/gone evil/married the villain and that the madman they just killed died saying that he was "the first of millions...."

I'm a big fan of season finales that allow time to pass. Not so much with the cliffhangers. (Um, and I run campaigns like television series, which, yeah, is pretty geeky)

-Tacky

 

[Mr Fidgit]

I'm a big fan of season finales that allow time to pass. Not so much with the cliffhangers. (Um, and I run campaigns like television series, which, yeah, is pretty geeky)

i don't think that's too geeky. anyone raised on television should recognize that kind of episodic storytelling is perfectly valid

i've never really put 'down time' in my games, although i know i should....

 

[La Bete]

i certainly encourage down time - in many of my games, the weather is simply too inclement to travel during winter - which can lead to cool time-pressures as in "we have to finish up clearing up this mine in two or three days, otherwise we wont be able to make it back through the pass in time.."

Activities?

Making stuff (not just magic items)
Training
Research
Plotting
Scheming

and of course, Drinking and Wenching!

 

[Stone Angel]

In my past campaigns we never really thought about downtime. However after RttToEE which took two years game time(6months real time) it really made me think about the winter months and downtime. In our new campaign we started in the early fall so winter is approaching very rapidly. I have informed the characters that adventuring in the winter will be harsh and difficult, but since the base of the campaign is a large city, so adv. oppurtunities will come around. By the way what company prints Pendragon any way.

 

[Tonguez]

In my current campaign the PCs are leaders of their village (new settlement in a newly discovered island) so the whole game basically consist of them looking after the villagers, growing and harvesting crops, dealing with the native (gnomes, goblins, an ogre family) etc - adventures happen when they can get to them (or when the Giant lizard eats a hunting party) and the PCs go and deal to it.

In other campaigns my PCs have always gone home during downtime - to study and train, pray, maintain families and estates, make stuff, engage in politics etc etc.

Generally I rule that for each 'adventure' a month passes, sometimes more, sometimes less

I also always have a festival each 'off season' in which the PCs can pit themselves in test of combat, skill and wit (from which PCs gain bonus influence points)

 

[barsoomcore]

(Um, and I run campaigns like television series, which, yeah, is pretty geeky)

Hey, share the geeky...

I do exactly the same. I even call them seasons. Barsoom right now is on Season Three. It's kind of fun because it lets you build things up and as the season finale nears players get more and more nervous because they start thinking, "If my character's going to die, he'll probably die in the last episode of the season."

Good stuff.

No real downtime on Barsoom. It's just one thrilling bit of derring-do after another.

 

[arwink]

Drinking seems to be a popular choice.

Apart from the magic item creation and building maintenance required in downtime, the most popular use has been drinking and wenching. Some players have set about trying to set up their own arcane orders, brewing businesses or families, but it is usually kept in the background.

The last campaign involved very little downtime at all, certainly a small fraction of previous campaigns, so I'm trying to rectify that in my current one.

 

[Mulkhoran]

Hmm............

Most of Mulkhoran's downtime is spent quietly recruiting.

Someday, he will have an army. And then, they will *all* pay................

Seriously, I try to raise armies. I don't know if that qualifies as downtime, though...........