Today and tomorrow I will start two campaigns, for the first time, using xanathar rules.
Xanathar's Downtime is clearly a lot better than the previous one, still, in my opinion it's poorly implemented, as many previous downtime activities don't have a direct translation to any proposed in Xanathar and other's are forgoteen in Xanathar.
Having that said, after reading all Downtime activities, I concluded that the best idea would be to include Xanathar's Downtime + managing business activities from de Dungeon Master's Guide ("building a stronghold" and "running a business").
Still, I would like to hear your opinion.
Would you add the downtime activity that forces players to train to gain levels (poll included)? Is there any downtime activitie that you would add from the sourcebooks? Is there any dowtime that you would substract from the ones that I have choosen? Maybe you consider that running a business is out of the spirit of an standard D&D campaign (the second campaign I'm starting is lost mine, the first one is homebrew but focused in adventure and tribal politics). From the properties list in the DMs guide wich one would you consider a business? The player's handbook says that players can survive in the wilderness like they are practicing a profession, but practicing a profession seems to be overwriten by working in Xanathar. Would you still keep the option of surviving in the wilderness (keeping poor lifesytle for eveyone unless you have proficiency in survival in wich case it would be comfortable)?
A bit of twist into left field, but I think Matt Colville has an interesting twist on downtime activities.
Now ... his approach requires a lot more DM work, and a lot more game play. I would even speculate that it's not practical unless you're playing with people that you hang out with all the time - or if you're playing an online game and can set up one-on-one DM/Player sessions on Discord or something, but it's definitely an interesting twist on downtime.
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1) Players, in my experience, get into D&D for the adventure. Make sure that, whatever you do with downtime, that adventuring is both the primary activity and also their primary source of income. I played in a game where my paladin had to move cargo at the docks and sleep in a flophouse and I hated it.
2) One meta-gamed activity I've included in my game is journaling. Players get some bonus XP for keeping a journal from their character's perspective. (I also include writing letters home to loved ones and other related things in this.) My intent for it is to give more voice and development to the characters than may be found through play at the table. In practice, few of my players actually do the journaling; the one who does it most reliably only does session recap, no character development.
There is no downtime in my campaign for leveling as I use milestones. Which happen after players do enough in their world.
So leveling up happens usually at the end of a session where it's time to level them up so they can do that on their own time outside of the game.
Now my players own a town. The downtime there is them talking to the NPCs and letting them know what they want them to do. Then I take that info and write it later that week on the progress. There's also no travel time since they own airships. Things can happen during travel but it's rare.
But do what you want to do because you're writing it all and creating what they want. How much the players so depends on how much work you're willing to put into it.
The downtime activities I include in game are completely reactive to the players in my game. If I tell them they’ve got a few days before their contact can travel to meet them, and ask what they want to do with their downtime, I may have one player who says they want to find a tavern and gamble. So I say “What are you wanting to wager over the course of these few days?” When I have that number, we enact the XGE optional rule of gambling and narrate the results. Another player says they want to look for low level work using their proficiency with a set of artisan’s tools. So I send them to an NPC shop owner, have them interact and make a persuasion check to contract as temp help. Then have them make a check or two using their tools, and earn them a couple gp and a friendly contact with the shop owner, and maybe a customer they served during that time. Another player wants to research something. Assuming the information would be available in town, a successful check might yield a specific answer if they had a specific question, or maybe just advantage on a future intelligence check related to what they researched.
I’ve always liked the idea of downtime for self-improvement; learning a new language, gaining a new skill proficiency, trying to bump up a stat. Especially if those goals are driven by in-game motivations, like “we’ve been working with so many gnomes, I think my character would work to learn gnomish to better interact with all of them.” But those things would take a lot more downtime than players usually get in an active story arc. So while I’d work with them to make that happen if possible over a longer campaign, most of the stuff I’ve been exposed to is published hardcover adventures where that doesn’t come up.
If they’re wanting to buy real estate, or start a business, I’ll probably work with them between games to make sure they understand how we’ll handle them not being around, what kind of perpetual financial investment that will require and all that. Then we’d have some fun interviewing NPCs to manage the shop while traveling, and we’ll roll for profitability every so often, using the published tables as references.
I haven't offered any downtime activities because our adventure hasn't had any downtime. But my druid has started working on dragonscale armor, using a summoned elemental, so I just went with it. I gave him a time frame for completion and left it up to him to keep figure out when he has enough time to summon his elemental, build a forge, and let it work.
My rogue is starting to figure out that he can modify his crossbow bolts after a shopkeep offered him some explosive tipped arrows. He's been dipping his bolts in a poison he found from a scorpion-lobster creature, and is enjoying that.
My sorcerer is learning how to train and care for a giant goat she procured after successfully escorting a herd of them across the plains.
And my bard-barian is spending time learning how to play a horn he purchased in town, and how to compose his own songs.
My warlock spends his downtime staring up at the night sky, contemplating the distant dark star he was born under, wondering if it is his god.
I generally do not plan for downtime. My players will say can we have some city time? And then we have city time. I have 3 different floor plans drawn up for different taverns. I have gambling tables. I have an arena with pre-made npc's for them to fight. Pretty much just make up everything else up on the fly.
I don't force down time on my players. There is only one "rule". If they want to multiclass or something... then they should've done something to build up to it. Beyond that it all happens naturally. If you build an interesting world that your players want to interact with. Then they will come with their own ideas of starting shops. Which obviously means they have to get the deed for it, merchant contacts etc That is part of so called down time. Same when they want to craft or tinker or doing outright research into stuff. Or them wanting to do a bar run the night before leaving and running into some NPC's that can teach/inform/aid them in some way.
In general giving your players options for downtime activity will cause them to spend time on deciding what to do with downtime, leading to bookkeeping and other types of boring play, particularly at low levels (downtime activity doesn't scale well with level), so I don't recommend any actual rules for downtime. Just ask people in general what they're doing, resolve boring stuff with a die roll or just have it autosucceed, and upgrade interesting stuff to actual adventure status.
Hi, fellow DMs.
Today and tomorrow I will start two campaigns, for the first time, using xanathar rules.
Xanathar's Downtime is clearly a lot better than the previous one, still, in my opinion it's poorly implemented, as many previous downtime activities don't have a direct translation to any proposed in Xanathar and other's are forgoteen in Xanathar.
Having that said, after reading all Downtime activities, I concluded that the best idea would be to include Xanathar's Downtime + managing business activities from de Dungeon Master's Guide ("building a stronghold" and "running a business").
Still, I would like to hear your opinion.
Would you add the downtime activity that forces players to train to gain levels (poll included)?
Is there any downtime activitie that you would add from the sourcebooks?
Is there any dowtime that you would substract from the ones that I have choosen? Maybe you consider that running a business is out of the spirit of an standard D&D campaign (the second campaign I'm starting is lost mine, the first one is homebrew but focused in adventure and tribal politics).
From the properties list in the DMs guide wich one would you consider a business?
The player's handbook says that players can survive in the wilderness like they are practicing a profession, but practicing a profession seems to be overwriten by working in Xanathar. Would you still keep the option of surviving in the wilderness (keeping poor lifesytle for eveyone unless you have proficiency in survival in wich case it would be comfortable)?
Thanks for help.
A bit of twist into left field, but I think Matt Colville has an interesting twist on downtime activities.
Now ... his approach requires a lot more DM work, and a lot more game play. I would even speculate that it's not practical unless you're playing with people that you hang out with all the time - or if you're playing an online game and can set up one-on-one DM/Player sessions on Discord or something, but it's definitely an interesting twist on downtime.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Two things:
1) Players, in my experience, get into D&D for the adventure. Make sure that, whatever you do with downtime, that adventuring is both the primary activity and also their primary source of income. I played in a game where my paladin had to move cargo at the docks and sleep in a flophouse and I hated it.
2) One meta-gamed activity I've included in my game is journaling. Players get some bonus XP for keeping a journal from their character's perspective. (I also include writing letters home to loved ones and other related things in this.) My intent for it is to give more voice and development to the characters than may be found through play at the table. In practice, few of my players actually do the journaling; the one who does it most reliably only does session recap, no character development.
There is no downtime in my campaign for leveling as I use milestones. Which happen after players do enough in their world.
So leveling up happens usually at the end of a session where it's time to level them up so they can do that on their own time outside of the game.
Now my players own a town. The downtime there is them talking to the NPCs and letting them know what they want them to do. Then I take that info and write it later that week on the progress. There's also no travel time since they own airships. Things can happen during travel but it's rare.
But do what you want to do because you're writing it all and creating what they want. How much the players so depends on how much work you're willing to put into it.
The downtime activities I include in game are completely reactive to the players in my game. If I tell them they’ve got a few days before their contact can travel to meet them, and ask what they want to do with their downtime, I may have one player who says they want to find a tavern and gamble. So I say “What are you wanting to wager over the course of these few days?” When I have that number, we enact the XGE optional rule of gambling and narrate the results. Another player says they want to look for low level work using their proficiency with a set of artisan’s tools. So I send them to an NPC shop owner, have them interact and make a persuasion check to contract as temp help. Then have them make a check or two using their tools, and earn them a couple gp and a friendly contact with the shop owner, and maybe a customer they served during that time. Another player wants to research something. Assuming the information would be available in town, a successful check might yield a specific answer if they had a specific question, or maybe just advantage on a future intelligence check related to what they researched.
I’ve always liked the idea of downtime for self-improvement; learning a new language, gaining a new skill proficiency, trying to bump up a stat. Especially if those goals are driven by in-game motivations, like “we’ve been working with so many gnomes, I think my character would work to learn gnomish to better interact with all of them.” But those things would take a lot more downtime than players usually get in an active story arc. So while I’d work with them to make that happen if possible over a longer campaign, most of the stuff I’ve been exposed to is published hardcover adventures where that doesn’t come up.
If they’re wanting to buy real estate, or start a business, I’ll probably work with them between games to make sure they understand how we’ll handle them not being around, what kind of perpetual financial investment that will require and all that. Then we’d have some fun interviewing NPCs to manage the shop while traveling, and we’ll roll for profitability every so often, using the published tables as references.
But no, I don’t make them train for level ups.
I haven't offered any downtime activities because our adventure hasn't had any downtime. But my druid has started working on dragonscale armor, using a summoned elemental, so I just went with it. I gave him a time frame for completion and left it up to him to keep figure out when he has enough time to summon his elemental, build a forge, and let it work.
My rogue is starting to figure out that he can modify his crossbow bolts after a shopkeep offered him some explosive tipped arrows. He's been dipping his bolts in a poison he found from a scorpion-lobster creature, and is enjoying that.
My sorcerer is learning how to train and care for a giant goat she procured after successfully escorting a herd of them across the plains.
And my bard-barian is spending time learning how to play a horn he purchased in town, and how to compose his own songs.
My warlock spends his downtime staring up at the night sky, contemplating the distant dark star he was born under, wondering if it is his god.
I generally do not plan for downtime. My players will say can we have some city time? And then we have city time. I have 3 different floor plans drawn up for different taverns. I have gambling tables. I have an arena with pre-made npc's for them to fight. Pretty much just make up everything else up on the fly.
I don't force down time on my players. There is only one "rule". If they want to multiclass or something... then they should've done something to build up to it. Beyond that it all happens naturally. If you build an interesting world that your players want to interact with. Then they will come with their own ideas of starting shops. Which obviously means they have to get the deed for it, merchant contacts etc That is part of so called down time. Same when they want to craft or tinker or doing outright research into stuff. Or them wanting to do a bar run the night before leaving and running into some NPC's that can teach/inform/aid them in some way.
In general giving your players options for downtime activity will cause them to spend time on deciding what to do with downtime, leading to bookkeeping and other types of boring play, particularly at low levels (downtime activity doesn't scale well with level), so I don't recommend any actual rules for downtime. Just ask people in general what they're doing, resolve boring stuff with a die roll or just have it autosucceed, and upgrade interesting stuff to actual adventure status.
Interesting, what do you mean when you say that it scales bad? Not enough gold at high levels?
The ratio of gold to time does not vary significantly by level. 5-10 gp/day is quite a bit at level 1, nothing at level 15.