I’ve been doing some research, and while most sources seem to agree that the conventional method (5 downtime days per 2 hours) doesn’t work very well, nobody can seem to agree on what the solution should be.  To make it even more confusing, some people add aging, the passage of time, and leveling up into the mix.

So what do you do?  What has worked, and what hasn’t?  Do you use a sliding scale, or a set number?  How do you connect downtime to the other elements of the campaign?  I’m really at a loss here!

Sorry, I meant distribute.  I’ve been reading Pride and Prejudice, so I’ve been using somewhat archaic terms without meaning to!

I’m not entirely sure what you mean when you say “5 downtime days per 2 hours.” Per 2 hours of what?

The thing is that in D&D it could take 3-4 sessions, each session lasting 3-4 hours, just to do one adventuring day. And then three days of travel or downtime could go by in a few minutes of narration.

Additionally, some tables run the mega campaigns in which the party faces one singular major threat the entire time and then the campaign often ends there, so there is no downtime at all. In other campaigns people run smaller adventures and assume that anywhere between weeks or even years pass in between adventures.

The point is that there is no “right way” to do it. It really all depends on the opinions of the people in your group. If your table wants downtime to be important than make it that way. If your group wants to skip downtime and just gogogo the whole time then skip it. I would ask your players what they think, it’s their opinions that matter more than anything random internet strangers might tell you.

FWIW, my group does a series of smaller adventures that range anywhere between unconnected to interconnected, and the downtime is determined by the DM. The DM says “it has been X days/weeks/months since your encounter with....” That length of time is generally determined by:

• How much time the DM needs to have reasonably passed for logical reasons.
• What season it is currently and the season in which the next adventure is set to take place.
• What activities the players say they want their characters to do during that downtime and how long those activities will take to accomplish.

Like, if it will take a minimum of 3 months for the villain to hatch their next dastardly scheme after their last defeat, then the party will have possibly had around 3-4 months of downtime. (Unless a different thing pops up in the meantime in which case the party is jumping from fire to fire and back again.)

If it is mid spring and the DM wants the next adventure to take place during the cold, dreary days of late autumn then it will have been 7ish months of downtime.

If the players want their characters to work together to craft a Magic Item that will take 5&1/2 months to complete, then the party will take around 5&1/2 months of downtime.

I hope that helps.

First of all, sorry for being so unclear!  Our first session in my homebrew world is tomorrow, so I’m very tired from world building, map making, etc.  I live with several severe autoimmune disorders, so even following the guidelines of “don’t prepare too much”, it has been a very long (six or eight weeks), very tiring process.  

Second, I meant five downtime days per two hours at the table, like in AL.

I can’t sit at the table very long— two and a half or three hours, on good days— so I’m not sure how to handle downtime amounts.  My players love immersion and role play.  They always talk to my NPCs, purchase items they need, obtain info on whatever they’re expecting to face, make plans, learn about each other in character, and so on.  We all enjoy this, and have a ton of fun.  I don’t want to discourage this behavior by cutting it short if I can avoid it.  I want to make sure the story doesn’t completely stagnate, though. 

I want the campaign to stretch over a longer period of in-game time.  I don’t have a seasonal timeline at the moment, although it sounds like that would be a great idea!

 Since our sessions are shorter, and my players never just charge off into the fog, we don’t get as much story accomplished as most games do in a session.  I’ve been wondering if giving out more downtime would allow them to enjoy the world during the week (on our discord server), and work on the actual plot while at the table.  Would this be a good strategy, or would it cause problems?  My problem-solving brain is very tired!

The only problems that I've seen crop up through downtime is the DM (me in this instance) giving out a large chunk of downtime and then allowing the players to spend sessions doing nothing but RP. A session of RP without story movement isn't a bad thing but issues start to crop up when you have multiple sessions without story movement in a row.

Ok, it sounds like your confusing what the players are doing at the table, that immersive role play stuff with "downtime" or "things done between adventures."  For AL and the mechanical systems in the PHB and DMG, those are mechanical systems through which characters can gain income, craft items, etc.  Sometimes those acts can be role played to a degree if the table wants to.

The stuff your players are doing isn't downtime as presented in the manuals.  It seems that they really prefer immersive roleplaying as their play style.  It sounds like there's some dissonance from what you expect of them and what you're allowing them at the table.  There isn't a "well we did your adventure for two hours so we now get ten hours of our immersive role-playing" standard.  It comes down to the DM actually intervening saying "we need to move on" or have NPCs give them hints to get them on their way.  As the DM it's your perogative to say I feel we're spending too much time interacting with the supporting cast in this adventure and not enough time adventuring, and then figure out how you and the players can better accommodate each others interests.  

I'll also hit my refrain, don't plan too much in terms of story arcs.  Outline it rough, but especially when you have a group who'd perhaps literally miss the forrest for the trees, you're setting goals which you may not get to, and it's probably better to develop a mode where you and the rest of the table meet each other half way instead of laying down the law of game tempo or caving into the desire to interact with every sentient passerby. 

Okay, I think we’ve gotten a bit mixed up here.  Let me give this one more try.

I’m looking for thoughts and ideas on how much downtime to dispense, and how often to do it, in a slow moving sandbox game like ours.  Should I err on the side of more, or less?

Our gaming style is not the problem.  Yes, we’re spending lots of time on role play, but we are still moving the story forward, albeit more slowly than most games do, and that’s fine.  We’re having fun.

I added some description of our play style and activities to put things into perspective.  

I did get confused about activities in my earlier replies; as I said, I’m very tired.

I have already established that if I say we need to move on, we move on, and finish any unresolved business via Discord.  

And finally, my plot is very vague, which I did on purpose.  I know that I can’t, and shouldn’t, railroad my players.  I am tired from world building because I am very sick, not because I’m planning everything to the nth detail.  It has taken me a very long time because I have been pacing myself and taking breaks.

I just want ideas on how to manage giving downtime to my players, because I worry that I’ll either give them too much, and age the PCs to death, or not enough, so they won’t be able to get any downtime activity in a reasonable amount of time.

Once again, I’m sorry for the confusion.  Can anyone help with my (intended) original question?

To give you some perspective, the group I am currently DMing has been meeting on their current adventure every week since late October, and each session runs around 3ish hours long. We have missed around 3-4 sessions because of life. So they means the group has spent approximately 60ish hours at the table.

Using the ration you described would result in 150 days (or 5ish months) of downtime.

That same 60 hours has converted to around 4&1/2 days in game time.

If you and your group feel that it is appropriate for an adventurer to have 1 month off for every 1 day of work, then use that ratio you mentioned. (And change their job title from “adventurers” to “congresspersons.”)

Here’s the real question, what would be the purpose of such downtime? What are they doing while on vacation? That’s what downtime essentially is, vacation time. If the players have stuff their characters want to accomplish with their downtime, like crafting, etc., then give them as much as they want. If an adventurer takes downtime and neverever goes adventuring again that’s called retirement. If that’s what the players want then go for it. If the players have nothing their characters wish to accomplish during downtime then why give them any at all?

As I said previously, you are asking the wrong people. Don’t ask us, ask your players how much downtime they want.

The only possible issue I could think of would be training for new skills, tool proficiencies, languages and such, since characters can use down time for those activities. Not that you should or shouldn’t allow it, but it is an optional rule. Just be aware that if you give them weeks of down time between going out on adventures, some might want to use that time to train. 
This isn’t good or bad, more like something to think about so if a player asks for it, you’re ready with an answer. 
Rules are in xanathar’s. Along with a pile of other downtime suggestions.

"Awarding" downtime is something that is very typical of Adventurers League but not so common in a homebrew campaign.

The reason for this is the modular nature of AL. You can play different 4 hour modules every week, with different people, and advance your character independent of any other. Each level you earn awards a certain amount of downtime that an AL character can spend on various activities.

However, this isn't how most real world campaigns work. If the characters have something that they want to spend some days doing - resting, perhaps earning some coin doing a mundane job, researching, copying spells etc - then the characters take that time off from their current adventure and hang around in town or wherever pursuing these other activities. This is done organically and as part of the ongoing campaign. There is no specified amount of downtime allocated to the characters based on hours played since it doesn't make sense in the context of a continuous ongoing campaign with the same group of characters. A campaign doesn't have the possible gaps that a typical AL character played through a set of discrete modules might have.

As an example, I am running a party through a combination of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Tales from the Yawning Portal with all the content stitched together into a campaign of sorts - I am in the process of adding an underlying recurring element related to the Red Wizard of Thay. However, the party has purchased a house in Saltmarsh and when their current adventure ends they then return home, typically to rest and recover a bit and sometimes to pursue some interests other than adventuring. This is "downtime" in the classic sense. Time the characters spend on different activities other than adventuring. It isn't "awarded", it simply happens when the characters decide to do something other than adventure for a while.

So in terms of "awarding" downtime ... if you are running an AL style game with one session modules that could be separated by arbitrary lengths of time then you could give the players downtime and allow them to spend it ... but this is usually not the approach used in most ongoing campaigns which may be why there is some confusion on the topic.

I second what David42 is saying. I don’t have down down at all at my table. The players indicate what they want to do. Sometimes the result is narrated, sometimes it’s RP’d, sometimes it becomes it’s own side adventure, sometimes the result is skill based, and often their is an opportunity cost (the world moves on). All of this depends on individual and collective moods plus in and out of game context, but there is no formula. 

Thank you guys, you’ve given me a lot to think about.  My group meets today, so I’ll discuss the subject with them before we start.  It hadn’t even occurred to me that downtime was an abstraction for modular AL games.  The game we’re playing is almost completely homebrew, so we can do whatever we want.  Personally, I think it sounds fun to resolve some downtime activities at the table, but obviously I’ll have to talk to my players and see what they want.

Thank you all so much!  This is exactly what I was looking for.

I don’t pace out downtime as such, at least not in a 2 hours for 5 days kind of way, and I know many players who would hate that.

The way I handle downtime is to tell my players at the end of the session before, 

“Right you have a few days in town/city at hone to do anything you want to do. Have a think and if you can let me know between sessions what you want to do/achieve”. 

Sometimes that list will simply be a list of stuff a player wants to buy, components for spells, ink and parchment to write in my spell book, a crossbow/long sword/plate armor. 
Sometimes the tinkerer in the party will want to build one of the long list of things they have thought up, and sometimes a player will decide their character spends the time drinking, fighting or other such fun. I once had a player tell the rest of the party, right I’m off to spend some coin, come find me when your ready to head off, he found a casino that also had female “entertainment” and told me he spent the 4 days gambling and spending away the money they made from the adventure on women, wine and having fun. We did a mini game to represent his gambling (I refused to roleplay out the other, but did give a narration describing the various people he met, and painting a picture for the table without giving details). 

Based on the list the players give me I then weave in any plot hooks, information or interactions that I want to give them the chance to find/have them overhear. Then I go through each player in turn. That might take me 30 mins or the players may go off on tangents and start hunting down information etc that expands it out and ends up taking a session or 2. 

The thing to be aware of, downtime sessions tend to be very single player focussed so in a party of 4-5 at any time the majority of your players will be simply an audience so try and spilt your focus from player to player. For this reason some players hate downtime, I have had players tell me they won’t be attending downtime sessions because they find them so dull, or my players turn up understanding that it will be more relaxed and a social session, with more out of game banter jokes and conversation. For me this is the purpose of downtime, it’s a session, usually after an intense period if story/combat, where i as DM can relax a little, spend time with my mates talking about stuff without being the guy that pulls everyone into the game. I can have a drink or 2 (I never drink and DM, my players can but I find I have too many balls to juggle) and I can just relax a bit more. 

I have also run downtime entirely remotely with some groups, via email or discord chat, they tell me what they want to do, I tell them what to roll, I then spend 10 mins next session telling everyone what they achieved/bought/sold during downtime and game continues. 

I don't know what this downtime is of which you speak. In my sandbox-style adventure, I'm always giving them new quest hooks as they finish a quest. And so generally they run off immediately to start another quest. The most downtime they've gotten in a month or two of game time (about a year of real world time) is a few shopping days when they visit a new city.

That said, I baaically let my players do whatever they want, so if they wanted downtime, they would have it. I just make sure they do not want it.

I think downtime can be interesting for character development, and I'm trying to make a little more space for it by introducing travel delays. But if the formula is 5 days per 2 hours of gameplay, I recommend not interpreting that as 5 days of downtime for every 2 hours of gameplay. It probably takes 4 - 20 hours of gameplay to get through a self-contained adventure / dungeon. Finish the dungeon and then give them a month of downtime, if that's your ratio. And of course that doesn't mean 30 1-on-1 RP sessions with each character. Each character might have 1-3 short NPC encounters, and spend most of the time training, crafting, doing faction work for reputation, earning gold, in arcane research, or learning languages or tool proficiencies. They just make one die roll for the period and you tell them the outcome.

Quote from pavilionaire >>

I don't know what this downtime is of which you speak. In my sandbox-style adventure, I'm always giving them new quest hooks as they finish a quest. And so generally they run off immediately to start another quest. The most downtime they've gotten in a month or two of game time (about a year of real world time) is a few shopping days when they visit a new city.

That said, I baaically let my players do whatever they want, so if they wanted downtime, they would have it. I just make sure they do not want it.

I think downtime can be interesting for character development, and I'm trying to make a little more space for it by introducing travel delays. But if the formula is 5 days per 2 hours of gameplay, I recommend not interpreting that as 5 days of downtime for every 2 hours of gameplay. It probably takes 4 - 20 hours of gameplay to get through a self-contained adventure / dungeon. Finish the dungeon and then give them a month of downtime, if that's your ratio. And of course that doesn't mean 30 1-on-1 RP sessions with each character. Each character might have 1-3 short NPC encounters, and spend most of the time training, crafting, doing faction work for reputation, earning gold, in arcane research, or learning languages or tool proficiencies. They just make one die roll for the period and you tell them the outcome.

 Even if you handwave it downtime can be really good for some classes, for instance artificers/tinkerers get a period of time to devote to building some invention the player has come up with. It also allows a nice story beat, realistically adventurers won’t be questions every min of every day. It also allows the learning of new languages etc. 

I usually just let my players know how long between last session and next session the week of the session(we play monthly because of kids and scheduling) and ask them if there is anything they did or want to do with that time to let me know, then I go from there. Nobody has used downtime to gain a language or work on a proficiency or anything like that in 2+ years of playing. Maybe I should mention it to them again, or maybe just let them not gain much from their downtime.