What does time mean in DnD? I get some things like short rest can mean an actual rest irl translating to a 5 minute break and a long one can translate into a full meal break of 30 minutes to an hour irl time but it baffles me when I read things like it takes days to build a house or something. Especially when its under downtime activities. How does that translate irl? does that mean literal weeks and do downtime activities happen in a play session? I can't imagine people coming together to simply tell stories of them watching the hunky dwarf staff building their underground mansion.
does downtime mean something we do when we aren't together in a session and its kind of like a passive thing we just imagine happening to our characters while we live our actually real life lives?
It takes as long as your DM says it takes. If you tell your DM "We want to spend the next 3 weeks renovating our newly acquired tavern" they may have you make a few rolls and say "Three weeks pass and you now have a newly renovated tavern"
There is no fixed ratio of time passing in game to time passing out of game; a round in combat is about 6 seconds, but that can take maybe a minute for a party of three martial characters fighting one monster, or an hour for a party of six spellcasters fighting a horde.
Downtime activity is stuff you do that isn't adventuring; researching spells, crafting items, socialising in town, building a stronghold. It's stuff your character does with their downtime. It can be resolved in session, or outside of the session, or both.
You can also turn "downtime activities" into side quests.
"OK, you've hired a crew to renovate your tavern, and you all take a week off to relax at the beach. While they're working, your crew finds a strange walled-off subbasement. All of you are now ex-mercenaries and current tavern renovation specialists using the THUG stat block. Clear out this basement."
EDIT: And when the regular PCs get back, depending on how everything went, the renovation crew can try to negotiate a hazardous duty bonus. :)
While I think it somewhat neat that your group might actually take a 5 min break or a 30m-1h meal during short and long rests, that isn't required by the rules.
Most of the time, my group just says "we take a short/long rest", then takes a few seconds to reset all their abilities and such, and we continue on.
For downtime activities, if we have a set amount of time, I just say "I spend *time* doing *activity*." We would probably record the time spent on the activity if we don't finish it, so when we get back to it we know about how much time should be remaining to finish the project.
Alternatively, if we don't have a time limit of sorts to do whatever we want, then I typically just say "I do this, this, and this." and let the DM determine how much time each activity will take, typically going from the DMG or XGtE.
Either way, all of this takes the amount of IRL time needed to determine what gets done in what amount of time. i.e. a few minutes, usually, to get through the whole group.
Just to echo what has already been said: their does not need to be any time correlation between the game and IRL. You can do 5 years of downtime in game as it takes to say "5 years later" IRL.
A short rest is 1 hour (of in game time, IRL it can be as short as the time needed to say "You take a short rest") and a long rest is 8 hours (excluding racial abilities that say otherwise)
Downtime is separate form short and long rests. Its often handled as something that is done between sessions. Its pretty much any time where your character has one or more full days in a row where they are not adventuring.
If there is a specific thing you want your character to do during downtime, talk to your DM about it for the next time there is a break in the adventure.
What does time mean in DnD? I get some things like short rest can mean an actual rest irl translating to a 5 minute break and a long one can translate into a full meal break of 30 minutes to an hour irl time
There's no particular relation between "IRL" time and game time. A "short rest" in-game is about an hour of resting (e.g. a lunch break) and a "long rest" in-game is 8 hours (e.g. going to sleep for the night). Neither necessarily correspond to breaks for the players, since updating stat sheets/refreshing or picking spells/etc still counts as playing, to me.
Rounds of combat are technically 6 seconds long, but usually take much more than 6 seconds to resolve. D&D playing goes at the speed of plot - crucial things that take a lot of thought take a lot of player time (even if they're fast in-character) and things that take little thought for the players are fast to go through (no matter how long they take for the characters).
but it baffles me when I read things like it takes days to build a house or something. Especially when its under downtime activities. How does that translate irl? does that mean literal weeks and do downtime activities happen in a play session? I can't imagine people coming together to simply tell stories of them watching the hunky dwarf staff building their underground mansion.
That's how long it takes the characters to do things. That doesn't require the players to spend any particular amount of time doing things. After an adventure is over if the players have no particular pressing timeline one of them might decide "ok, that adventure really inspired my character to learn about goblins so my character is going to spend the next year learning the Goblin language" and the other players chime in with what their characters spend a year doing, and then you move on. Depending on how involved the discussion of these things are, it might take just 5-10 minutes of IRL time to go around the table and have everyone describe what their characters spend a year doing, or that might be something to describe when the players break between sessions. But there's no reason for it to take any particular amount of IRL time.
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What does time mean in DnD? I get some things like short rest can mean an actual rest irl translating to a 5 minute break and a long one can translate into a full meal break of 30 minutes to an hour irl time but it baffles me when I read things like it takes days to build a house or something. Especially when its under downtime activities. How does that translate irl? does that mean literal weeks and do downtime activities happen in a play session? I can't imagine people coming together to simply tell stories of them watching the hunky dwarf staff building their underground mansion.
does downtime mean something we do when we aren't together in a session and its kind of like a passive thing we just imagine happening to our characters while we live our actually real life lives?
It takes as long as your DM says it takes. If you tell your DM "We want to spend the next 3 weeks renovating our newly acquired tavern" they may have you make a few rolls and say "Three weeks pass and you now have a newly renovated tavern"
There is no fixed ratio of time passing in game to time passing out of game; a round in combat is about 6 seconds, but that can take maybe a minute for a party of three martial characters fighting one monster, or an hour for a party of six spellcasters fighting a horde.
Downtime activity is stuff you do that isn't adventuring; researching spells, crafting items, socialising in town, building a stronghold. It's stuff your character does with their downtime. It can be resolved in session, or outside of the session, or both.
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You can also turn "downtime activities" into side quests.
"OK, you've hired a crew to renovate your tavern, and you all take a week off to relax at the beach. While they're working, your crew finds a strange walled-off subbasement. All of you are now ex-mercenaries and current tavern renovation specialists using the THUG stat block. Clear out this basement."
EDIT: And when the regular PCs get back, depending on how everything went, the renovation crew can try to negotiate a hazardous duty bonus. :)
While I think it somewhat neat that your group might actually take a 5 min break or a 30m-1h meal during short and long rests, that isn't required by the rules.
Most of the time, my group just says "we take a short/long rest", then takes a few seconds to reset all their abilities and such, and we continue on.
For downtime activities, if we have a set amount of time, I just say "I spend *time* doing *activity*." We would probably record the time spent on the activity if we don't finish it, so when we get back to it we know about how much time should be remaining to finish the project.
Alternatively, if we don't have a time limit of sorts to do whatever we want, then I typically just say "I do this, this, and this." and let the DM determine how much time each activity will take, typically going from the DMG or XGtE.
Either way, all of this takes the amount of IRL time needed to determine what gets done in what amount of time. i.e. a few minutes, usually, to get through the whole group.
Just to echo what has already been said: their does not need to be any time correlation between the game and IRL. You can do 5 years of downtime in game as it takes to say "5 years later" IRL.
A short rest is 1 hour (of in game time, IRL it can be as short as the time needed to say "You take a short rest") and a long rest is 8 hours (excluding racial abilities that say otherwise)
Downtime is separate form short and long rests. Its often handled as something that is done between sessions. Its pretty much any time where your character has one or more full days in a row where they are not adventuring.
If there is a specific thing you want your character to do during downtime, talk to your DM about it for the next time there is a break in the adventure.
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There's no particular relation between "IRL" time and game time. A "short rest" in-game is about an hour of resting (e.g. a lunch break) and a "long rest" in-game is 8 hours (e.g. going to sleep for the night). Neither necessarily correspond to breaks for the players, since updating stat sheets/refreshing or picking spells/etc still counts as playing, to me.
Rounds of combat are technically 6 seconds long, but usually take much more than 6 seconds to resolve. D&D playing goes at the speed of plot - crucial things that take a lot of thought take a lot of player time (even if they're fast in-character) and things that take little thought for the players are fast to go through (no matter how long they take for the characters).
That's how long it takes the characters to do things. That doesn't require the players to spend any particular amount of time doing things. After an adventure is over if the players have no particular pressing timeline one of them might decide "ok, that adventure really inspired my character to learn about goblins so my character is going to spend the next year learning the Goblin language" and the other players chime in with what their characters spend a year doing, and then you move on. Depending on how involved the discussion of these things are, it might take just 5-10 minutes of IRL time to go around the table and have everyone describe what their characters spend a year doing, or that might be something to describe when the players break between sessions. But there's no reason for it to take any particular amount of IRL time.