Personally, I like having a lot of "dead" time for the PCs. They "rest" a week in town after their last grand adventure where several characters nearly died... etc. reflecting the emotional aspect of dealing with the stresses of adventuring. Most of my players love the "down" time where they get to do a bit more roleplaying as they do "town" stuff...whether it be good doing (Cleric of Pelor), or finding time to learn a craft (several of the players...), to wooing and conning old rich men into diabolical schemes (don't ask), to whatever...here is where the party makes friends, connections, builds resources and support for their heroic exploits.
In my most recent game session, the group had escorted poor Young Esther Red to another town to work for her Aunt Mary (sheperdess). Meanwhile, the warlock and pally (don't ask) has begun their con game and is going around town blessing people and charging gold for protection wards. They managed to come across Peter the Pumpkin Farmer, whose pumpkins were getting eaten by his neighbor's sheep. They started "casting" ritual protection wards and engraving various "magical" symbols all over Peter's fences and started to rebuild the fence to prevent the sheep from coming over. The the Warlock started casting at-will spells to "knock unconscious" the neighbor's sheep. For the life of them, they could not add 1 and 1 and realize that the neighbor was Aunt Mary...Young Red's aunt..whom she is now working for. This is the mayhem the Players get themselves into while they are in town...heh. Which...well, will lead to further adventure as when they return from their next quest, Peter would have actually practiced some dark magic and transformed his pumpkins into sheep eating monstrosities... How will the PCs cover this up while saving Young Esther Red once again (she's going to probably protect her aunt's sheep with her glorious hand axe).
But, if you're Players don't like downtime and only want fight fight fight, then, well, give em' fight fight fight.
Fox
