I have played with two kinds of DM, neither of which I particularly liked in this regard.
The first creates a lengthy story and engineers events to go from one plot point to the next without break. Occasionally long term projects were possible, but only if you could manage to get NPCs to do the project while you managed it.
The second "encourages" downtime but wants to play through every minute of it. This results in a day or two of downtime before the DM gets tired and wants to move on to something more significant to the story.
Personally, I try to leave spaces for significant downtime, usually letting the players decide exactly how long. Typically this means about a season, which is long enough to pick up a language or otherwise develop your character a bit. I'll have them roll to see how well it went and then ask them to narrate the results. Depending on the group, some or all of this can be away from the table.
Side note about player schedules vs downtime. When one player can't make it for an extended period, it's common to remove their character from the story for a bit. When they come back, it would be reasonable to consider that time as downtime. Though if your other characters aren't taking downtime, a year's worth of sessions might be a month or less in game time.
Ask yourself this. If one of your players told you that they were too busy to play, if they had a good reason, what would you do with their character? I'm looking to set a fairly fast pace, I'm interested in heroic actions and fantastic adventures. That is after all, what D&D does best, it's a heroic fantasy game. I'm not going to play their character for them, I'm not going to let anyone else play them, since they might not like the results. I hope the player will come back, but life doesn't always allow for that.
Xanathar's gives rules for training and downtime. I generally don't use them. They take weeks, they cost a huge amount, and that's not what I'm looking for.
If my players want to set up a nice home for themselves, that's fine with me. If they want to spend more than a month doing it, there's something wrong. It's probably that they don't like my play style. Take note: "Choosing a comfortable lifestyle means that you can afford nicer clothing and can easily maintain your equipment. You live in a small cottage in a middle-class neighborhood." 60 gold a month lets them rent that small cottage. If the player characters need more than that?
When you DM, you get to decide for yourself.
Each to there own but I run campaigns that encompass years not months or weeks, that consist of periods of high tension time dependant quests followed by an opportunity to experience the outcome of completing those quests. I create a world and sandbox to play in and in all the campaigns I have run over many years my players have always commented the pressure becomes more exciting if it is punctuated by moments to breathe.
Take my current campaign, the party are trying to work out who is behind a series of hired bandit attacks on a town, while also investigating a cult and dealing with a Chuul infestation. But they have loved that in the middle of this I gave them a week of game time and told them to tell me what they wanted to do with it. My artificer has been asking me for time in a forge to make stuff, my satyr wanted to go to the various libraries to research 3 specific subjects, Minotaur just did an inn crawl, rogue and fighter brother and sister spent the week with the sister teaching her brother Thieves cant and how to use thieves tools (he wants to multi class in rogue in 2 levels time, this is probably 5 months of real time, but narratively it makes sense). He doesn’t have proficiency yet but he will now have a chance in game of understanding thievs cant with an int check, and can assist in lock picking.
None of this important story narriative could have happened if I had just bundled them from one action scene to another. The best fantasy books have long periods of downtime in them. My players loved it, that week ended up taking 2 sessions to run through, that’s about 5 hours, they didn’t get bored, didn’t get frustrated, they listened to each other characters experiences. It also gave me a chance, through interactions with npcs, to breathe more life into my game and it served an important narriative point.
The Bbeg at this tier is working with a trapped aboleth swapping learning from the Aboleth with helping to free it, he takes townsfolk to the Aboleth, gets them enslaved and then returns them back into town where he then uses a potion to stop them being freed of the enslave. So during downtime various NPCs had there personalities shift, I roleplayed them slightly differently, or they forgot a conversation they had had previously (pre and post enslavement and potion taking). I am building a very slow build invasion of the body snatchers type theme where, for reasons they don’t understand, the party will slowly be ostracised and the bbeg will be there only friend. They are his contingency plan for when he is done with the Aboleth but he wants them paranoid and easier to manipulate. So far it has started to work.
I hope, that when we are working together to tell a story, my players will be interested in it. I tell them "Your character gets one month worth of downtime between sessions if you wish, and no more." And they chose to take more anyway, then I have failed somehow. I want to know what the problem is.
Thing is this doesn’t feel like a shared storytelling experience, it feels like the DM telling players what they should want to do. As a player I might tell you I want to spend 6 months experimenting and tinkering in my lab to make an underwater ship. I have designs, ideas, but I need the time to forge and build the parts required. That is going to take months, but once it is built I then intend to take it into the water plane to hunt a kraken. My character doesn’t like magic, he is a practical scientific brain who would rather use a mechanical solution then a magical one if it is available. I have now given you a story thread to weave once said submarine is built. The 6 months downtime may take 5 mins, you may handwave it and say after experimentation and testing you build it. Or you might make it a skills challenge. But you have a chance now to work with ke and the players to craft a portion of story around my characters ability. Maybe the sub fails and I have to rely on magic to survive. Who knows what will happen.
By telling me I only have a month max you are taking away my agency as a player to have my character do interesting things that develop him.
I should know better. Every single thing I do is overly restrictive. Nobody like my games, nobody want me to play in theirs. I'm really never right about anything except by mistake.
I should know better. Every single thing I do is overly restrictive. Nobody like my games, nobody want me to play in theirs. I'm really never right about anything except by mistake.
You seem to judge yourself and your DMing pretty harshly. You also appear to get pretty down on yourself too. You seem like a nice, person with a good heart, you probably don’t need to be nearly so self critical.
Whenever newer DMs ask for advice, I usually give everyone the same five “personal top tips.” I have no idea how much experience you may or may not have. This is by no means my disparaging your DMing, or your degrees of knowledge, skill, or experience, even highly experienced DMs who’s opinions I seek out on occasion have commented to me they found some of the following advice beneficial. Maybe you will too.
Two of my “top tips” are more technical in nature. They are objectively useful for helping DMs to keep sessions flowing so they don’t get bogged down with minutia. The added benefit of those two is they also help DMs develop proficiency with RAW.
Reread chapters 7, 9, and 10 of the PHB, the vast majority of rules that you will use almost every session are in those three chapters.
During sessions, if you don’t know a rule and can’t find it in about a minute, stop looking. Make a ruling, let everyone know that’s what you’re doing, and that you’ll look up actual RAW before the next session. Then be sure you do as it will not only help you learn, it will give them even more reason to trust you next time, because there will always be a next time.
Over a fairly brief period of time they can help even a brand-spanking-new DM go from “non-proficient” to “twice proficiency.”
Two of my top tips are pieces of attitudinal advice for DMs. One can help DMs not be as harsh on themselves as you appear to be at times. The other is the only yardstick that matters when a DM wants (or needs) to get an honest assessment of themselves as a DM.
It’s okay to make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. That’s the best way to learn how to avoid those mistakes again in future. The only difference between the least knowledgeable DM and the most knowledgeable is the number of “learning opportunities” they have had.
If you are ever find yourself questioning whether or not you are a good DM, just look around your table. If everyone is having fun, even if you’re not strictly following the rules, you’re doing it right. (When it comes to knowing if you’re a “good” DM, this is the only metric that matters.)
The fifth tip is what I have referred to for a few years now as “the best advice I can give any DM.” (It’s even in my sigline.)
I have never once doubted the truth behind that statement, that is not until now. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that to be a gimongous pile of particularly awesome advice.
However, I now believe I have good cause to add a new, sixth personal top tip. (This may in fact be the best advice I have ever given anyone in regards to possibly anything ever.)
Have fun. 😊 Don’t sweat the small stuff. (Everything else is small stuff.)
I truly hope some of that [action]help:helps[/item].
So I would like to point out to everyone that not all campaigns are the same, and not all groups of players are the same, and a DM who runs Campaign A can run it better/worse than another DM running the same campaign.
I am sure that there must be players out there who wouldn’t enjoy the campaign I run, which has basically zero downtime. It’s a huge sandbox world, with everything pre-planned, where the key NPCs and BBEG are moving along a time-matrix that dictates where they are and what they are doing at any point in the game (which has to be modified by player actions). The characters could stop and try learning a language, but the land they’ve found themselves in is corrupted, the people twisted, and the world is doomed if they don’t act. They are always being hunted. They managed to spend a week in a town, but whilst there they burned down a mansion (dungeon), freed a library from a magical calamity that froze it (dungeon), saved some kids from an annis hag, fought in a fencing competition, went a day out of the town to destroy a magical obelisk and fought some epic combats, all the while picking up clues about where to go and what to do next. They had time to shop, they had time to do some drinking etc, but nothing I’d really call downtime. At the end of their time there they raided the local garrison and then got out of town by hiring the local pirates.
This all took less than 1 week of game time, and this is how I run a campaign, and my players love it.
This might not be for you, and that’s ok.
I don’t see the point in downtime that just turns into “I learn a language,” but I do appreciate downtime that serves a story need, e.g. “We’re snowed in for winter.” If armies need to crawl around the world at 8 miles per day, then you need weeks just for the army to get from city A to city B. If your wizard needs to construct a magical item, that can take a long time and so the other players get to do stuff too. And as mentioned previously, setting up a base is cool.
You also might be running a game that says “This is a game that will take years to play out.” If that’s the case you aren’t running a hectic thriller; you’re running what’s more akin to a saga.
Mission Impossible is a fun film to watch. Bond films are fun films to watch. The Lord of the Rings is fun to watch (Frodo’s journey takes just 6 months in total). These are akin to the stop-working-and-die games.
Legends of the Fall is fun to watch. The Last Samurai is fun to watch. These are more akin to games with big downtime.
Maybe next time I launch a campaign, it will be about a fantasy detective agency that takes one major case a year. But both are fun!
I should know better. Every single thing I do is overly restrictive. Nobody like my games, nobody want me to play in theirs. I'm really never right about anything except by mistake.
I don't know you, but I have seen you post quite happily that people won't have you in their games because you refuse to play characters with ability scores below 10. I think that as a player you might find that you enjoy things more if you abandon that kind of idea. I played alongside a guy whose cleric had Str 7, Con 8, Int 17 and Wis 18 (all rolled naturally) and he was a great character, and we had great fun with him. When I look for new players, they have to understand that it's my table, my rules: any player who starts out with something like "I won't play a character who I don't feel is powerful enough" has already misunderstood my game. It's a privilege to be invited to a table, and I really think you'd have no problem playing a character with Wisdom 9. Free yourself up a bit to participate and go with the flow a bit more.
If "nobody likes your games" then ask yourself why. Are you running the campaign for the players to have the best time, or running it along preconceptions of what you think should be fun for them? The DM's role is ultimately to give the players the best experience you can, not insist that they fit into a design you already have. My players enjoy a break-neck pace. If they didn't, and were constantly trying to do downtime stuff, I'd probably have adapted it for them. This only goes so far though: I've also ended a campaign in the middle after 18 months because all a player wanted was downtime, a second said he didn't care about combat, and a third was being a pain in the butt. I run games with about 50% combat, so it just wasn't meshing. That's ok too; sometimes the players just won't want what you can provide.
but in my opinion downtime gives the character opportunity to create bonds with NPC, getting known within a region/town, can practice proficiencys or learn a new one.
creating items, spells, potions and what so ever. To do that in game during a session would take a massive amount of time if one follow the rules strictly.
if we take it to the real world, i could ask you how often does it happen a group of ten creatures or people attack you just outside the city you currently are in? It just doesnt happen and even of it did i is like once in a decade.
DnD is a heroic fantasy game and it should provide action, but as i see it action does not simply fall right into your knees every day so why should it be like that in DnD?
sure it should happen more fequently but sometimes players need to search for that action that they want, and using downtime for that purpose is perfect. Like researching books for ruins that could hold treasure for the brave enough to venture there. Or whatever.
Dysthymia is defined as a low mood occurring for at least two years, along with at least two other symptoms of depression.
Examples of symptoms include lost interest in normal activities, hopelessness, low self-esteem, low appetite, low energy, sleep changes, and poor concentration.
Treatments include medications and talk therapy.
I was apparently born this way. Oddly enough, I have a high appetite, and so far, none of the treatments have been able to help me. It's been around 3 decades now that I've been trying to DM.
A note about the scores thing. I am absolutely certain that some of my scores are under 10, but I'm no good at judging things. I don't think it's fun to have a character like myself in a game. I have never liked random rolls, even after I made a poll about that and found out that fully half and probably more like random rolls. Almost every post was discussing some variation of using random rolls. I prefer that everyone use Point Buy, and the downside to that is that the characters end up bland. I'm just going to have to admit that the random rolls is the best system over all, it's the most popular, and I'll try it for my own characters and see what I get. I can always choose to raise my scores after play starts. That's why they have ASI's after all.
I should know better. Every single thing I do is overly restrictive. Nobody like my games, nobody want me to play in theirs. I'm really never right about anything except by mistake.
Ok an apology I was not having a go I was trying to present a perspective. As i have said in the past I never intend to tell someone they are doing there fun wrong. If your players and campaigns work the way you run them great. I was trying to present a different perspective. I have a feeling we may not work well together as player DM either way, but that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make one of us good and the other bad, it just means as DM and as player we are excited and interested in different things. That is great.
Thank you. I'm going back over my own game and trying to remove all the restrictions in place, and just advise people about what I want to see. It's not easy to rewrite a campaign setting that I've been trying to set up since I was in high school, but it has to be done. I accept your apology, and I wish you well.
I feel like Sanvael is making a really good point, but it isn't quiet getting across. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'mma have a go at it.
Some games are Epics, while some are Adventures. These terms get confusing when talking about modern D&D, but it's REALLY important to recognize the difference. Epics are long, sprawling adventures with huge swaths of time swept under the rug because the exciting stuff didn't happen during them.
When considering Epics, think of the Odyssey and Lord of the Rings. In the Odyssey, Odysseus spends two years on Circe's island, mostly off screen. He wasn't a vegetable during this time. He had downtime, but downtime is boring for the audience. Next look at the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, where weeks will pass between chapters. Frodo puts on the ring and is stabbed by a Ring Wraith on October 6th. On October 13th they cross the Mitheithel bridge. On October 18th, Glorfindel finds the party. October 20th, Frodo gets to Rivendell. He wakes up again on October 24th finally with his wits about him. Over the span of 18 days the party has five encounters, and not all of them combat encounters. This means that at minimum, our players have 13 days of downtime (except Frodo). Then on the 25th, the Fellowship of the Ring is formed. Then it takes two months for them to set out on their adventure. The Fellowship of the ring LEAVES ON CHRISTMAS when they formed just before Halloween. They have tons of downtime, but the distance traveled is so vast, with so many twists and turns, that it can't be action day after day. The only part of LotR that is that way is when Merry and Pippen get kidnapped by Orcs, so Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli eat lembas bread to run all day, sleep for a few hours, and run all day again for a few weeks. That's it! Besides that, there's downtime. Our best example of it is when Sam asks Gollum to fetch some rabbits to cook. Sure, Frodo doesn't get any downtime, but everyone else does.
When thinking of Adventures, think of Atalanta, Alice in Wonderland, or theMitchells Vs. the Machines. The whole thing is done in a week, and there isn't time for downtime. Atalanta has to hunt down a boar, so she meets the supporting cast and goes out to kill a boar. She deals the first blow, weakens it, and her friend then kills it. Mission complete. There's then a bunch of time between that and her Golden Apple Boyfriend story, but those two Adventures aren't connected. They involve the same person, but they aren't the same story. Heck, Atalanta's Boyfriend story isn't even her story, it's the boyfriend's and involves her. Or else there is Alice in Wonderland where she needs to get home, but to figure out how, she needs to meet some wild people and have an adventure. Through the Looking Glass takes place later, but she hasn't had her mind on how to survive Wonderland the whole time. There's a time jump, not downtime. The Mitchells vs. the Machines takes place over a couple days and involves them driving across the country to save the world (just in case you needed an example of a larger scale threat for an Adventure to contrast with the Odyssey where Odysseus just needs to get his bum behind home to maintain the status quo and possibly not be in the top ten worst dads of Greek myth.).
Tomb of Annihilation at a friend's table is played like an Adventure. Each day matters, and what happens then matters. Tomb of Annihilation at Adventurer's League is played like an Epic. Players can change from session to session and you get days worth of downtime for each session you play. Adventurer's League forces in Downtime if you want it at the cost of 1 day spent in session earns you 1 day of downtime... so if the session covers 10 days, you get 10 days of downtime. I feel like sometimes its different and it's just 10 days of downtime per session, so don't quote me on that, but in general, downtime is just part of book keeping in Adventurer's League. In AL, the basic idea of Downtime is that your character spends 8hrs adventuring, 8hrs resting, and 8hrs downtime-ing (while everyone avoids the effects of exhaustion). You just decide what that downtime was after the fact.
Where things get confusing is where people try to talk about Epic Play, or Epic Adventures. Epic Play is an old term (and I think it's still referenced in the DMG when you get to boons) for play past Level 20. I'm going to tell you to ignore that, especially here on DDB where you can't even use boons. It's virtually non-existent and only exists to confuse you here. Meanwhile Epic Adventures is either an AL term for using huge numbers of people, several DM's for one event, and coordinators who DM the DM's, or is used to say, "My really cool game" which is flippant use of the words Epic and Adventure.
So now you should ask yourself if you want to use downtime, and how you want to implement it. In an Epic, I'd suggest the AL method of "Time passes where you can do stuff. Each session earns you n days and once you add up enough, you can tell me how you spent it." while for Adventures, I'd suggest scheduling out time for downtime and playing through it at the table.
I once kind of twisted a friend's arm until I got him to read the Lord of the Rings. Not really a nice thing to do with a friend, but I was certain that he'd love them. We had very similar tastes. When he finished, he didn't like the books at all. I was crushed. I'd been so sure. So why not?
"It's reeeeeeely long. It's boring. They go into way too much detail about the Hobbits, and most of the book is about Frodo. I've seen the plot before, maybe a couple of times, so there wasn't anything really new to make it interesting. There were cool characters, like Gandalf, and Aragon, but they didn't go into much detail about them until way on. Aragon goes to become the King, and he gets to rule the most powerful nation in the world, he gets absolutely everything he could ever have wanted and more. The whole story is about Frodo, but it's a trick. Frodo fails in the end. The true hero of the story is Frodo's overly loyal sidekick, Sam, the most boring and ordinary character in the story. In the end, everyone you care about sails off into the sunset, leaving Sam, two hobbits we still don't care about and what happens to them is never talked about at all. Sam gets to be the mayor, get gets a wife he loves, and a couple of kids. The end."
A few years later when the movies came out, he commented that he was glad he'd read the books, because the movies were a bit more interesting and easier to understand.
I loved those books, and I thought the movies were fantastic. I've purchased movies from Amazon, and the Kindle version of the book as well. I like to think a DM should aspire to run things about the same way, but in a less grandiose manner. It's pretty clear the story ends up going all the way from first level to 20th. I've purchased the extended versions a couple of times now because I chanced computes and needed them in a new format. It takes 12 hours to watch the whole thing. I've done it once, and now I only watch one per day at maybe once every couple months. It's a wonderful story after all, but I first read the book in my early teens, and I've got the story pretty much down by now.
I've only ever been up to Tier 1 myself. Not as in a game as a player, I've never run a game that got past that myself. Not in 5th edition. I've spent the majority of my time in older editions, and while I have run other games that got fairly high "level" they weren't in D&D. I'm left with vague memories of D&D games long ago that went past the early levels, and that's about it for D&D.
I will have an over-arching story in mind, I have a vague idea how it would go, but I don't want to force people onto it. That would be the Epic part. I want them to be interested enough to follow the story themselves without my pushing them. I will pick one of them, it's kind of favoritism, but I think my players will be willing to trust me enough to be willing to believe I'll get around to one of them next and that all the characters in the story get equal attention. I give them all a few details about the adventure I have in mind, and I let them do as they like. I haven't gotten to try things out. At this point I have only one person who has expressed any interest at all in playing my game, and they are using the character they created in another game. I have other people who have said that my game sounds great, but none of them have made a character yet. The only other one was my Significant Other, who didn't like the character I made for her.
So please everyone, how many in game days should pass before I can be reasonably sure they have no interest in that particular adventure?
Before you get there talk to them first. Give them an idea of the adventure you are going to run (without significant details) and get their opinion if they want to play that or not. If the answer is not then work with them to find a happy medium but don't tear up your adventure just adjust it so everyone, especially you, is having fun.
I once kind of twisted a friend's arm until I got him to read the Lord of the Rings. Not really a nice thing to do with a friend, but I was certain that he'd love them. We had very similar tastes. When he finished, he didn't like the books at all. I was crushed. I'd been so sure. So why not?
"It's reeeeeeely long. It's boring. They go into way too much detail about the Hobbits, and most of the book is about Frodo. I've seen the plot before, maybe a couple of times, so there wasn't anything really new to make it interesting. There were cool characters, like Gandalf, and Aragon, but they didn't go into much detail about them until way on. Aragon goes to become the King, and he gets to rule the most powerful nation in the world, he gets absolutely everything he could ever have wanted and more. The whole story is about Frodo, but it's a trick. Frodo fails in the end. The true hero of the story is Frodo's overly loyal sidekick, Sam, the most boring and ordinary character in the story. In the end, everyone you care about sails off into the sunset, leaving Sam, two hobbits we still don't care about and what happens to them is never talked about at all. Sam gets to be the mayor, get gets a wife he loves, and a couple of kids. The end."
A few years later when the movies came out, he commented that he was glad he'd read the books, because the movies were a bit more interesting and easier to understand.
I loved those books, and I thought the movies were fantastic. I've purchased movies from Amazon, and the Kindle version of the book as well. I like to think a DM should aspire to run things about the same way, but in a less grandiose manner. It's pretty clear the story ends up going all the way from first level to 20th. I've purchased the extended versions a couple of times now because I chanced computes and needed them in a new format. It takes 12 hours to watch the whole thing. I've done it once, and now I only watch one per day at maybe once every couple months. It's a wonderful story after all, but I first read the book in my early teens, and I've got the story pretty much down by now.
I've only ever been up to Tier 1 myself. Not as in a game as a player, I've never run a game that got past that myself. Not in 5th edition. I've spent the majority of my time in older editions, and while I have run other games that got fairly high "level" they weren't in D&D. I'm left with vague memories of D&D games long ago that went past the early levels, and that's about it for D&D.
I will have an over-arching story in mind, I have a vague idea how it would go, but I don't want to force people onto it. That would be the Epic part. I want them to be interested enough to follow the story themselves without my pushing them. I will pick one of them, it's kind of favoritism, but I think my players will be willing to trust me enough to be willing to believe I'll get around to one of them next and that all the characters in the story get equal attention. I give them all a few details about the adventure I have in mind, and I let them do as they like. I haven't gotten to try things out. At this point I have only one person who has expressed any interest at all in playing my game, and they are using the character they created in another game. I have other people who have said that my game sounds great, but none of them have made a character yet. The only other one was my Significant Other, who didn't like the character I made for her.
So please everyone, how many in game days should pass before I can be reasonably sure they have no interest in that particular adventure?
Ok this has gone off topic, but I have been you, I have a setting I prepared and spent years on convinced it would be epic, a story that was mapped out and a bbeg that was compelling and amazing. A world that was detailed and organized and fully mapped, 3 months into playing I realised my players where hating it. Every effort they made to go off piste I dragged them back, I was so invested in my story I was subconsciously forcing them to discover how cool it was. So I took a big decision and scrapped everything, not the game, the players where loving there characters, I just locked away all my notes and ran some sessions just based on what the players wanted to do. I let stories grow organically and then, in time I found a way to shape my original ideas and present them as opportunities in different ways.
I can’t remember who it was, might have been Matt colville the angry dm, dungeon dudes. But someone said that if you are that invested and that involved in a story and want to see the players play it out a particular way then you don’t have a DnD adventure, you have a novel and you should write it. Have the characters take the clues you want, act how you want and do what you want. If you want a DnD adventure then accept that you bbeg might not interest them at all, your end of the world event might feel less exciting or important then finding out what that creepy kid is doing, if every time the players go off track and our response is, nothing to see here, you are railroading them. Yes it can be frustrating, I have had so many great plot ideas get thrown in the bin by players who had a better idea, but do me I have learnt the real joy as a dm is the improv, making it seem to the players I had anticipated there every move and then shaping the ideas I have around them as they become appropriate and I include published campaigns in this, I ran out of the abyss for my party, despite the first half largely railroading them to the various checkpoints my party still managed to go off course in a remarkable way making me hit the key plot points of that campaign in unique and interesting ways.
Again this is one approach, despite what some may say I know players who love being railroaded through a story to an extent.
So please everyone, how many in game days should pass before I can be reasonably sure they have no interest in that particular adventure?
🍎 ≠ 🍊
That’s like asking how many nights in a row someone has to sleep before you know they have no interest in television, or how many meals someone has to consume before you know they have no interest in going to a museum.
A character’s desire for downtime has nothing to do with a player’s disinterest in any one specific adventure. When players don’t want to do an adventure the don’t suddenly start having their characters start doing personal projects like training or crafting. When players don’t like an adventure they typically do one of three things:
They whine, *****, and complain. (The direct approach.)
They have their characters go start trouble somewhere. (The indirect passive aggressive approach.)
They leave the campaign. (Avoidance.)
If characters want time off to train, or craft, or nest, that means their players are invested in that character and your world.
Remember a little bit ago when I made that joke about people mixing up “characters” with “players” and vice versa? This is exactly the type of thing I was talking about. Don’t confuse what a PC says and does, with what the player really thinks or how they actually feel.
In the campaign I am currently DMing, one of the PCs murdered a perfectly innocent, nice, sweet young woman who genuinely needed help because that character was dead convinced she was the BBE trying to trick him. Chopped her face off with a coal shovel. Those are blunt, he basically turned her face into a combination of gory pulp and pink mist. Is that character’s player disinterested? Actually he is the one most invested in the campaign, and most enjoying the story. The others kept joking about trying to trigger the volcano to erupt and wipe out the entire town, 250-300ish men, women, and children. Is it because they are disinterested? Actually it’s because they were frustrated at having a hard time figuring out who exactly the villain is. But they kept following leads and started to realize they couldn’t figure it out because there isn’t one specific villain at all, but a whole network of people who seemed to all be involved and double-triple-sextuplet crossing each other, and now they are starting to hear about a mysterious “him.” Now they are trying to get to the bottom of whoever the mysterious “him” might be….
I dunno, “him”might, maybe, possibly be the evil sorcerer mofo with the half-octopus face that the cult was worshiping. The one who popped in, after they killed almost 20 cultists, casually *****smacked a couple of the party, took over a 136 points of damage in a single round from their combined counter attack, mocked them, and then teleported away? 🤷♂️ That was on day 2 of the adventure. Now it’s day 6/7 and they haven’t asked single question about him since that fight. But they have however killed the town doctor (twice), the village priest, the chief of Reeves, an innocent girl, and about a half dozen various mooks and minions. 🤦♂️ 🤣😂🤣
I dunno, “him”might, maybe, possibly be the evil sorcerer mofo with the half-octopus face that the cult was worshiping. The one who popped in, after they killed almost 20 cultists, casually *****smacked a couple of the party, took over a 136 points of damage in a single round from their combined counter attack, mocked them, and then teleported away? 🤷♂️ That was on day 2 of the adventure. Now it’s day 6/7 and they haven’t asked single question about him since that fight. But they have however killed the town doctor (twice), the village priest, the chief of Reeves, an innocent girl, and about a half dozen various mooks and minions. 🤦♂️ 🤣😂🤣
If your players are confused about their enemy when you don't think they should be, the events you find important and the ones they found memorable are not the same. This is especially true if the events were in an early session, when players are typically most interested in remembering their character's abilities and figuring out who their character is.
I dunno, “him”might, maybe, possibly be the evil sorcerer mofo with the half-octopus face that the cult was worshiping. The one who popped in, after they killed almost 20 cultists, casually *****smacked a couple of the party, took over a 136 points of damage in a single round from their combined counter attack, mocked them, and then teleported away? 🤷♂️ That was on day 2 of the adventure. Now it’s day 6/7 and they haven’t asked single question about him since that fight. But they have however killed the town doctor (twice), the village priest, the chief of Reeves, an innocent girl, and about a half dozen various mooks and minions. 🤦♂️ 🤣😂🤣
If your players are confused about their enemy when you don't think they should be, the events you find important and the ones they found memorable are not the same. This is especially true if the events were in an early session, when players are typically most interested in remembering their character's abilities and figuring out who their character is.
Thank you, yes. I appreciate that. However, I said it was day 2, not “an early session.” It’s now about midday on day 6, but we play (almost) every Wednesday evening and this particular story started in, like, September of last year. By the time they had dispatched the cult it was several months in. One of them is playing a character she has played previously, another is our main GM sporting one of his NPCs, and another one is also a DM and almost as good on RAW as I am and probably the most tactical one in the group. And I include a list of campaigns notes for them in the “Description” field of the campaign page. If the hit the campaign button on their character sheets those notes are right at the top including an NPC quick reference and a list of the clues they uncovered.
Additionally, they have even presented evidence of the cult to the mayor, actually brought the mayor and some reeves down into the caverns to hunt for the cult. They have even mentioned the tentacle-faced villainous guy to the mayor too. But haven’t done anything to track that individual down. I think the mayor and his wife are their next suspects.
Actually, the mayor, his wife, the Doc, the Chief, the Captain and the priest are (or were) all involved to some degree or other. So they aren’t really wrong.
But I have pointed out multiple times that their mission was observe and report and that they are under absolute no obligation to fight anything that doesn’t directly attack them. So far the only two things that have directly attacked them were a giant cave monster type thing, and squidface. If they would stop killing everyone who could give them more information that might help. But they keep jumping to conclusions. I designed this campaign like the game Clue, but Cthulhu inspired. So… (and I can’t believe this hasn’t occurred to me befor now) “Cluethulhu.” 🤣😂🤣
The second "encourages" downtime but wants to play through every minute of it. This results in a day or two of downtime before the DM gets tired and wants to move on to something more significant to the story.
Some of this may be player driven. If I give the PCs some potential downtime (i.e. there are no obvious fires raging), I'm still going to ask them what they want to do, and an awful lot of the time what someone wants to do is pull on a dangling plot thread, aborting downtime unless you make it so those threads are not currently possible to pull on.
The second "encourages" downtime but wants to play through every minute of it. This results in a day or two of downtime before the DM gets tired and wants to move on to something more significant to the story.
Some of this may be player driven. If I give the PCs some potential downtime (i.e. there are no obvious fires raging), I'm still going to ask them what they want to do, and an awful lot of the time what someone wants to do is pull on a dangling plot thread, aborting downtime unless you make it so those threads are not currently possible to pull on.
I don't mind that, it's a different sort of problem. There are no ongoing threats to deal with so "what do you do this morning?" "while he's doing that, what are you up to?" etc for a day or two of in game time, until the DM (and the players by that point) are tired of it and the next bit of plot gets triggered. If a player decides they're going to do something that would be boring to role play, something interesting has to happen to them to interrupt. There's no concept of time that isn't part of the game at the table.
I do everything in session, I might give my players a heads up that there is downtime coming up and to think about what they want to do, but we run it all in session. I have had downtime in the past take just 30 mins at the start of a session as players do very simple things, and I have had downtime take 2-3 entire sessions as characters do various things in and around town.
Yeah, I try to do downtime between sessions, in DM/Player mini sessions (vi Text or IM) this allows the game to keep moving along in the primary game and not keep people waiting around on others to finish up their tasks.
Just recently getting back to the game, but as a DM of old, I found these mini sessions very helpful in keeping the role players happy, without bogging down the the fully-attended table sessions. In our case they were usually in person, sometimes over the phone. In person play involved those who were available on that day.
The (very) basic guidelines: When a party voluntarily splits up at a town, city, rendezvous point, etc., this time is spent gathering information, role-playing the making of a special item, or the gathering/purchasing of supplies, special ingredients, or one's consultation with one's contact/patron/overlord. . . X amount of game world time is allotted to this; it's up to the players involved to get (their character) back in time to continue with the primary campaign. No side adventure that could build experience levels is allowed. If an established or random encounter, or whatnot kills or somehow removes the character from active play, that player may need a replacement character, in order to continue with the main campaign. This does of course require the presence and cooperation of the DM, or their surrogate, if any.
Make it clear to the player that their character can die on one of these side trips, but will not gain (any) experience level advantage over the others in the main party. The primary purpose of these side trips is to give the role player the chance to add to their character's story, without bogging down play during the big game. As long as the "I'm here for the combat, the loot, and the nachos." people understand that they lose no game advantage by not attending, and that they didn't have to sit around being bored by role play on their time, I found that they are generally fine with it.
While I can't really understand what the appeal is in learning languages or tool proficiencies as part of a system that says "You spend X days and Y gold doing this, and then you can add it to your character sheet," they do exist in the core rules as things for characters to do, and not all campaigns are for everyone.
My campaigns tend to be heart-pounding, constant danger, time-sensitive missions to save the world, starting at level 1. But that style of gameplay isn't for everyone. My current players aren't interested in romances, setting up businesses, or settling down in the world but I've had players before who have. However, I guess that when I have run 'downtime' stuff, generally it turns into a series of sub-quests. If you're taking over that wizard tower as a base, there's going to be a demon trapped in the basement that needs banishing, the ghost of a former owner will haunt it, the peasants will refuse to pay their tithes and so on.
The things that I really do understand players wanting to do is set up a home base for their character - essentially they get to play DM a little as they choose colour schemes, set magical wards and traps, recruit NPCs as hirelings etc. - and creating magical items or researching new spells. Downtime is an opportunity for the players to let their characters imprint into the lore of the world and the setting. It gives them a footing, so they aren't permanently having to sleep at the inn.
In terms of things like training for feats and other combat usable abilities, that's a strict no-no.
As a DM, and a player, I like both fast, time-sensitive action [been known to use a chess clock], and the story building behind role play. If I know in advance that the table in question is all action, get it done, update your sheets, get ready to rumble, go, as a player I'll toss together a generic warrior and wade into battle. That warrior might have a name, if the warrior lives long enough. As a DM, I won't bother much with creating or following any cohesive lore beyond who hates who the most, and provide answers to the question, "Where's the loot?".
If, as a player, I know that the DM has put a lot of effort into creating a well-sorted environment to play in, then I'm happy to meld with the story as we go along. As a DM, I like giving the role players time to share in the story line. Can some role players get carried away? Let's just say that I do cringe when I see a player drag out thirty pages of notes, and take a deep breath before they start. One may have to establish role play time limits. Example: "Your character has 15 minutes of active role play this session, including any replies you get from PCs and NPCs. You the player have 5 minutes of behind the scenes explanations for your character's actions." Stick with the time limit, or don't bother using it at all. A time clock that may sometimes be ignored will always be ignored.
Still comes down to this, character downtime, well- spent by the players and DM[s] can add fun for the role players, and help make the main game smoother, and faster paced for the Paladin of the Whirring Blades, nameless gunfighter hero, and the murder hobo alike.
I have played with two kinds of DM, neither of which I particularly liked in this regard.
The first creates a lengthy story and engineers events to go from one plot point to the next without break. Occasionally long term projects were possible, but only if you could manage to get NPCs to do the project while you managed it.
The second "encourages" downtime but wants to play through every minute of it. This results in a day or two of downtime before the DM gets tired and wants to move on to something more significant to the story.
Personally, I try to leave spaces for significant downtime, usually letting the players decide exactly how long. Typically this means about a season, which is long enough to pick up a language or otherwise develop your character a bit. I'll have them roll to see how well it went and then ask them to narrate the results. Depending on the group, some or all of this can be away from the table.
Side note about player schedules vs downtime. When one player can't make it for an extended period, it's common to remove their character from the story for a bit. When they come back, it would be reasonable to consider that time as downtime. Though if your other characters aren't taking downtime, a year's worth of sessions might be a month or less in game time.
Each to there own but I run campaigns that encompass years not months or weeks, that consist of periods of high tension time dependant quests followed by an opportunity to experience the outcome of completing those quests. I create a world and sandbox to play in and in all the campaigns I have run over many years my players have always commented the pressure becomes more exciting if it is punctuated by moments to breathe.
Take my current campaign, the party are trying to work out who is behind a series of hired bandit attacks on a town, while also investigating a cult and dealing with a Chuul infestation. But they have loved that in the middle of this I gave them a week of game time and told them to tell me what they wanted to do with it. My artificer has been asking me for time in a forge to make stuff, my satyr wanted to go to the various libraries to research 3 specific subjects, Minotaur just did an inn crawl, rogue and fighter brother and sister spent the week with the sister teaching her brother Thieves cant and how to use thieves tools (he wants to multi class in rogue in 2 levels time, this is probably 5 months of real time, but narratively it makes sense). He doesn’t have proficiency yet but he will now have a chance in game of understanding thievs cant with an int check, and can assist in lock picking.
None of this important story narriative could have happened if I had just bundled them from one action scene to another. The best fantasy books have long periods of downtime in them. My players loved it, that week ended up taking 2 sessions to run through, that’s about 5 hours, they didn’t get bored, didn’t get frustrated, they listened to each other characters experiences. It also gave me a chance, through interactions with npcs, to breathe more life into my game and it served an important narriative point.
The Bbeg at this tier is working with a trapped aboleth swapping learning from the Aboleth with helping to free it, he takes townsfolk to the Aboleth, gets them enslaved and then returns them back into town where he then uses a potion to stop them being freed of the enslave. So during downtime various NPCs had there personalities shift, I roleplayed them slightly differently, or they forgot a conversation they had had previously (pre and post enslavement and potion taking). I am building a very slow build invasion of the body snatchers type theme where, for reasons they don’t understand, the party will slowly be ostracised and the bbeg will be there only friend. They are his contingency plan for when he is done with the Aboleth but he wants them paranoid and easier to manipulate. So far it has started to work.
Thing is this doesn’t feel like a shared storytelling experience, it feels like the DM telling players what they should want to do. As a player I might tell you I want to spend 6 months experimenting and tinkering in my lab to make an underwater ship. I have designs, ideas, but I need the time to forge and build the parts required. That is going to take months, but once it is built I then intend to take it into the water plane to hunt a kraken. My character doesn’t like magic, he is a practical scientific brain who would rather use a mechanical solution then a magical one if it is available. I have now given you a story thread to weave once said submarine is built. The 6 months downtime may take 5 mins, you may handwave it and say after experimentation and testing you build it. Or you might make it a skills challenge. But you have a chance now to work with ke and the players to craft a portion of story around my characters ability. Maybe the sub fails and I have to rely on magic to survive. Who knows what will happen.
By telling me I only have a month max you are taking away my agency as a player to have my character do interesting things that develop him.
I should know better. Every single thing I do is overly restrictive. Nobody like my games, nobody want me to play in theirs. I'm really never right about anything except by mistake.
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You seem to judge yourself and your DMing pretty harshly. You also appear to get pretty down on yourself too. You seem like a nice, person with a good heart, you probably don’t need to be nearly so self critical.
Whenever newer DMs ask for advice, I usually give everyone the same five “personal top tips.” I have no idea how much experience you may or may not have. This is by no means my disparaging your DMing, or your degrees of knowledge, skill, or experience, even highly experienced DMs who’s opinions I seek out on occasion have commented to me they found some of the following advice beneficial. Maybe you will too.
Two of my “top tips” are more technical in nature. They are objectively useful for helping DMs to keep sessions flowing so they don’t get bogged down with minutia. The added benefit of those two is they also help DMs develop proficiency with RAW.
Over a fairly brief period of time they can help even a brand-spanking-new DM go from “non-proficient” to “twice proficiency.”
Two of my top tips are pieces of attitudinal advice for DMs. One can help DMs not be as harsh on themselves as you appear to be at times. The other is the only yardstick that matters when a DM wants (or needs) to get an honest assessment of themselves as a DM.
The fifth tip is what I have referred to for a few years now as “the best advice I can give any DM.” (It’s even in my sigline.)
I have never once doubted the truth behind that statement, that is not until now. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that to be a gimongous pile of particularly awesome advice.
However, I now believe I have good cause to add a new, sixth personal top tip. (This may in fact be the best advice I have ever given anyone in regards to possibly anything ever.)
I truly hope some of that [action]help:helps[/item].
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So I would like to point out to everyone that not all campaigns are the same, and not all groups of players are the same, and a DM who runs Campaign A can run it better/worse than another DM running the same campaign.
I am sure that there must be players out there who wouldn’t enjoy the campaign I run, which has basically zero downtime. It’s a huge sandbox world, with everything pre-planned, where the key NPCs and BBEG are moving along a time-matrix that dictates where they are and what they are doing at any point in the game (which has to be modified by player actions). The characters could stop and try learning a language, but the land they’ve found themselves in is corrupted, the people twisted, and the world is doomed if they don’t act. They are always being hunted. They managed to spend a week in a town, but whilst there they burned down a mansion (dungeon), freed a library from a magical calamity that froze it (dungeon), saved some kids from an annis hag, fought in a fencing competition, went a day out of the town to destroy a magical obelisk and fought some epic combats, all the while picking up clues about where to go and what to do next. They had time to shop, they had time to do some drinking etc, but nothing I’d really call downtime. At the end of their time there they raided the local garrison and then got out of town by hiring the local pirates.
This all took less than 1 week of game time, and this is how I run a campaign, and my players love it.
This might not be for you, and that’s ok.
I don’t see the point in downtime that just turns into “I learn a language,” but I do appreciate downtime that serves a story need, e.g. “We’re snowed in for winter.” If armies need to crawl around the world at 8 miles per day, then you need weeks just for the army to get from city A to city B. If your wizard needs to construct a magical item, that can take a long time and so the other players get to do stuff too. And as mentioned previously, setting up a base is cool.
You also might be running a game that says “This is a game that will take years to play out.” If that’s the case you aren’t running a hectic thriller; you’re running what’s more akin to a saga.
Mission Impossible is a fun film to watch. Bond films are fun films to watch. The Lord of the Rings is fun to watch (Frodo’s journey takes just 6 months in total). These are akin to the stop-working-and-die games.
Legends of the Fall is fun to watch. The Last Samurai is fun to watch. These are more akin to games with big downtime.
Maybe next time I launch a campaign, it will be about a fantasy detective agency that takes one major case a year. But both are fun!
I don't know you, but I have seen you post quite happily that people won't have you in their games because you refuse to play characters with ability scores below 10. I think that as a player you might find that you enjoy things more if you abandon that kind of idea. I played alongside a guy whose cleric had Str 7, Con 8, Int 17 and Wis 18 (all rolled naturally) and he was a great character, and we had great fun with him. When I look for new players, they have to understand that it's my table, my rules: any player who starts out with something like "I won't play a character who I don't feel is powerful enough" has already misunderstood my game. It's a privilege to be invited to a table, and I really think you'd have no problem playing a character with Wisdom 9. Free yourself up a bit to participate and go with the flow a bit more.
If "nobody likes your games" then ask yourself why. Are you running the campaign for the players to have the best time, or running it along preconceptions of what you think should be fun for them? The DM's role is ultimately to give the players the best experience you can, not insist that they fit into a design you already have. My players enjoy a break-neck pace. If they didn't, and were constantly trying to do downtime stuff, I'd probably have adapted it for them. This only goes so far though: I've also ended a campaign in the middle after 18 months because all a player wanted was downtime, a second said he didn't care about combat, and a third was being a pain in the butt. I run games with about 50% combat, so it just wasn't meshing. That's ok too; sometimes the players just won't want what you can provide.
I may be wrong
but in my opinion downtime gives the character opportunity to create bonds with NPC, getting known within a region/town, can practice proficiencys or learn a new one.
creating items, spells, potions and what so ever. To do that in game during a session would take a massive amount of time if one follow the rules strictly.
if we take it to the real world, i could ask you how often does it happen a group of ten creatures or people attack you just outside the city you currently are in? It just doesnt happen and even of it did i is like once in a decade.
DnD is a heroic fantasy game and it should provide action, but as i see it action does not simply fall right into your knees every day so why should it be like that in DnD?
sure it should happen more fequently but sometimes players need to search for that action that they want, and using downtime for that purpose is perfect. Like researching books for ruins that could hold treasure for the brave enough to venture there. Or whatever.
but as i said, i may be wrong.
I suffer from a condition called Dysthymia,
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Ok an apology I was not having a go I was trying to present a perspective. As i have said in the past I never intend to tell someone they are doing there fun wrong. If your players and campaigns work the way you run them great. I was trying to present a different perspective. I have a feeling we may not work well together as player DM either way, but that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make one of us good and the other bad, it just means as DM and as player we are excited and interested in different things. That is great.
Thank you. I'm going back over my own game and trying to remove all the restrictions in place, and just advise people about what I want to see. It's not easy to rewrite a campaign setting that I've been trying to set up since I was in high school, but it has to be done. I accept your apology, and I wish you well.
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I feel like Sanvael is making a really good point, but it isn't quiet getting across. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'mma have a go at it.
Some games are Epics, while some are Adventures. These terms get confusing when talking about modern D&D, but it's REALLY important to recognize the difference. Epics are long, sprawling adventures with huge swaths of time swept under the rug because the exciting stuff didn't happen during them.
When considering Epics, think of the Odyssey and Lord of the Rings. In the Odyssey, Odysseus spends two years on Circe's island, mostly off screen. He wasn't a vegetable during this time. He had downtime, but downtime is boring for the audience. Next look at the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, where weeks will pass between chapters. Frodo puts on the ring and is stabbed by a Ring Wraith on October 6th. On October 13th they cross the Mitheithel bridge. On October 18th, Glorfindel finds the party. October 20th, Frodo gets to Rivendell. He wakes up again on October 24th finally with his wits about him. Over the span of 18 days the party has five encounters, and not all of them combat encounters. This means that at minimum, our players have 13 days of downtime (except Frodo). Then on the 25th, the Fellowship of the Ring is formed. Then it takes two months for them to set out on their adventure. The Fellowship of the ring LEAVES ON CHRISTMAS when they formed just before Halloween. They have tons of downtime, but the distance traveled is so vast, with so many twists and turns, that it can't be action day after day. The only part of LotR that is that way is when Merry and Pippen get kidnapped by Orcs, so Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli eat lembas bread to run all day, sleep for a few hours, and run all day again for a few weeks. That's it! Besides that, there's downtime. Our best example of it is when Sam asks Gollum to fetch some rabbits to cook. Sure, Frodo doesn't get any downtime, but everyone else does.
When thinking of Adventures, think of Atalanta, Alice in Wonderland, or the Mitchells Vs. the Machines. The whole thing is done in a week, and there isn't time for downtime. Atalanta has to hunt down a boar, so she meets the supporting cast and goes out to kill a boar. She deals the first blow, weakens it, and her friend then kills it. Mission complete. There's then a bunch of time between that and her Golden Apple Boyfriend story, but those two Adventures aren't connected. They involve the same person, but they aren't the same story. Heck, Atalanta's Boyfriend story isn't even her story, it's the boyfriend's and involves her. Or else there is Alice in Wonderland where she needs to get home, but to figure out how, she needs to meet some wild people and have an adventure. Through the Looking Glass takes place later, but she hasn't had her mind on how to survive Wonderland the whole time. There's a time jump, not downtime. The Mitchells vs. the Machines takes place over a couple days and involves them driving across the country to save the world (just in case you needed an example of a larger scale threat for an Adventure to contrast with the Odyssey where Odysseus just needs to get his bum behind home to maintain the status quo and possibly not be in the top ten worst dads of Greek myth.).
Tomb of Annihilation at a friend's table is played like an Adventure. Each day matters, and what happens then matters. Tomb of Annihilation at Adventurer's League is played like an Epic. Players can change from session to session and you get days worth of downtime for each session you play. Adventurer's League forces in Downtime if you want it at the cost of 1 day spent in session earns you 1 day of downtime... so if the session covers 10 days, you get 10 days of downtime. I feel like sometimes its different and it's just 10 days of downtime per session, so don't quote me on that, but in general, downtime is just part of book keeping in Adventurer's League. In AL, the basic idea of Downtime is that your character spends 8hrs adventuring, 8hrs resting, and 8hrs downtime-ing (while everyone avoids the effects of exhaustion). You just decide what that downtime was after the fact.
Where things get confusing is where people try to talk about Epic Play, or Epic Adventures. Epic Play is an old term (and I think it's still referenced in the DMG when you get to boons) for play past Level 20. I'm going to tell you to ignore that, especially here on DDB where you can't even use boons. It's virtually non-existent and only exists to confuse you here. Meanwhile Epic Adventures is either an AL term for using huge numbers of people, several DM's for one event, and coordinators who DM the DM's, or is used to say, "My really cool game" which is flippant use of the words Epic and Adventure.
So now you should ask yourself if you want to use downtime, and how you want to implement it. In an Epic, I'd suggest the AL method of "Time passes where you can do stuff. Each session earns you n days and once you add up enough, you can tell me how you spent it." while for Adventures, I'd suggest scheduling out time for downtime and playing through it at the table.
I once kind of twisted a friend's arm until I got him to read the Lord of the Rings. Not really a nice thing to do with a friend, but I was certain that he'd love them. We had very similar tastes. When he finished, he didn't like the books at all. I was crushed. I'd been so sure. So why not?
"It's reeeeeeely long. It's boring. They go into way too much detail about the Hobbits, and most of the book is about Frodo. I've seen the plot before, maybe a couple of times, so there wasn't anything really new to make it interesting. There were cool characters, like Gandalf, and Aragon, but they didn't go into much detail about them until way on. Aragon goes to become the King, and he gets to rule the most powerful nation in the world, he gets absolutely everything he could ever have wanted and more. The whole story is about Frodo, but it's a trick. Frodo fails in the end. The true hero of the story is Frodo's overly loyal sidekick, Sam, the most boring and ordinary character in the story. In the end, everyone you care about sails off into the sunset, leaving Sam, two hobbits we still don't care about and what happens to them is never talked about at all. Sam gets to be the mayor, get gets a wife he loves, and a couple of kids. The end."
A few years later when the movies came out, he commented that he was glad he'd read the books, because the movies were a bit more interesting and easier to understand.
I loved those books, and I thought the movies were fantastic. I've purchased movies from Amazon, and the Kindle version of the book as well. I like to think a DM should aspire to run things about the same way, but in a less grandiose manner. It's pretty clear the story ends up going all the way from first level to 20th. I've purchased the extended versions a couple of times now because I chanced computes and needed them in a new format. It takes 12 hours to watch the whole thing. I've done it once, and now I only watch one per day at maybe once every couple months. It's a wonderful story after all, but I first read the book in my early teens, and I've got the story pretty much down by now.
I've only ever been up to Tier 1 myself. Not as in a game as a player, I've never run a game that got past that myself. Not in 5th edition. I've spent the majority of my time in older editions, and while I have run other games that got fairly high "level" they weren't in D&D. I'm left with vague memories of D&D games long ago that went past the early levels, and that's about it for D&D.
I will have an over-arching story in mind, I have a vague idea how it would go, but I don't want to force people onto it. That would be the Epic part. I want them to be interested enough to follow the story themselves without my pushing them. I will pick one of them, it's kind of favoritism, but I think my players will be willing to trust me enough to be willing to believe I'll get around to one of them next and that all the characters in the story get equal attention. I give them all a few details about the adventure I have in mind, and I let them do as they like. I haven't gotten to try things out. At this point I have only one person who has expressed any interest at all in playing my game, and they are using the character they created in another game. I have other people who have said that my game sounds great, but none of them have made a character yet. The only other one was my Significant Other, who didn't like the character I made for her.
So please everyone, how many in game days should pass before I can be reasonably sure they have no interest in that particular adventure?
<Insert clever signature here>
Before you get there talk to them first. Give them an idea of the adventure you are going to run (without significant details) and get their opinion if they want to play that or not. If the answer is not then work with them to find a happy medium but don't tear up your adventure just adjust it so everyone, especially you, is having fun.
Ok this has gone off topic, but I have been you, I have a setting I prepared and spent years on convinced it would be epic, a story that was mapped out and a bbeg that was compelling and amazing. A world that was detailed and organized and fully mapped, 3 months into playing I realised my players where hating it. Every effort they made to go off piste I dragged them back, I was so invested in my story I was subconsciously forcing them to discover how cool it was. So I took a big decision and scrapped everything, not the game, the players where loving there characters, I just locked away all my notes and ran some sessions just based on what the players wanted to do. I let stories grow organically and then, in time I found a way to shape my original ideas and present them as opportunities in different ways.
I can’t remember who it was, might have been Matt colville the angry dm, dungeon dudes. But someone said that if you are that invested and that involved in a story and want to see the players play it out a particular way then you don’t have a DnD adventure, you have a novel and you should write it. Have the characters take the clues you want, act how you want and do what you want. If you want a DnD adventure then accept that you bbeg might not interest them at all, your end of the world event might feel less exciting or important then finding out what that creepy kid is doing, if every time the players go off track and our response is, nothing to see here, you are railroading them. Yes it can be frustrating, I have had so many great plot ideas get thrown in the bin by players who had a better idea, but do me I have learnt the real joy as a dm is the improv, making it seem to the players I had anticipated there every move and then shaping the ideas I have around them as they become appropriate and I include published campaigns in this, I ran out of the abyss for my party, despite the first half largely railroading them to the various checkpoints my party still managed to go off course in a remarkable way making me hit the key plot points of that campaign in unique and interesting ways.
Again this is one approach, despite what some may say I know players who love being railroaded through a story to an extent.
🍎 ≠ 🍊
That’s like asking how many nights in a row someone has to sleep before you know they have no interest in television, or how many meals someone has to consume before you know they have no interest in going to a museum.
A character’s desire for downtime has nothing to do with a player’s disinterest in any one specific adventure. When players don’t want to do an adventure the don’t suddenly start having their characters start doing personal projects like training or crafting. When players don’t like an adventure they typically do one of three things:
If characters want time off to train, or craft, or nest, that means their players are invested in that character and your world.
Remember a little bit ago when I made that joke about people mixing up “characters” with “players” and vice versa? This is exactly the type of thing I was talking about. Don’t confuse what a PC says and does, with what the player really thinks or how they actually feel.
In the campaign I am currently DMing, one of the PCs murdered a perfectly innocent, nice, sweet young woman who genuinely needed help because that character was dead convinced she was the BBE trying to trick him. Chopped her face off with a coal shovel. Those are blunt, he basically turned her face into a combination of gory pulp and pink mist. Is that character’s player disinterested? Actually he is the one most invested in the campaign, and most enjoying the story.
The others kept joking about trying to trigger the volcano to erupt and wipe out the entire town, 250-300ish men, women, and children. Is it because they are disinterested? Actually it’s because they were frustrated at having a hard time figuring out who exactly the villain is. But they kept following leads and started to realize they couldn’t figure it out because there isn’t one specific villain at all, but a whole network of people who seemed to all be involved and double-triple-sextuplet crossing each other, and now they are starting to hear about a mysterious “him.” Now they are trying to get to the bottom of whoever the mysterious “him” might be….
I dunno, “him”might, maybe, possibly be the evil sorcerer mofo with the half-octopus face that the cult was worshiping. The one who popped in, after they killed almost 20 cultists, casually *****smacked a couple of the party, took over a 136 points of damage in a single round from their combined counter attack, mocked them, and then teleported away? 🤷♂️ That was on day 2 of the adventure. Now it’s day 6/7 and they haven’t asked single question about him since that fight. But they have however killed the town doctor (twice), the village priest, the chief of Reeves, an innocent girl, and about a half dozen various mooks and minions. 🤦♂️ 🤣😂🤣
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If your players are confused about their enemy when you don't think they should be, the events you find important and the ones they found memorable are not the same. This is especially true if the events were in an early session, when players are typically most interested in remembering their character's abilities and figuring out who their character is.
Thank you, yes. I appreciate that. However, I said it was day 2, not “an early session.” It’s now about midday on day 6, but we play (almost) every Wednesday evening and this particular story started in, like, September of last year. By the time they had dispatched the cult it was several months in. One of them is playing a character she has played previously, another is our main GM sporting one of his NPCs, and another one is also a DM and almost as good on RAW as I am and probably the most tactical one in the group. And I include a list of campaigns notes for them in the “Description” field of the campaign page. If the hit the campaign button on their character sheets those notes are right at the top including an NPC quick reference and a list of the clues they uncovered.
Additionally, they have even presented evidence of the cult to the mayor, actually brought the mayor and some reeves down into the caverns to hunt for the cult. They have even mentioned the tentacle-faced villainous guy to the mayor too. But haven’t done anything to track that individual down. I think the mayor and his wife are their next suspects.
Actually, the mayor, his wife, the Doc, the Chief, the Captain and the priest are (or were) all involved to some degree or other. So they aren’t really wrong.
But I have pointed out multiple times that their mission was observe and report and that they are under absolute no obligation to fight anything that doesn’t directly attack them. So far the only two things that have directly attacked them were a giant cave monster type thing, and squidface. If they would stop killing everyone who could give them more information that might help. But they keep jumping to conclusions. I designed this campaign like the game Clue, but Cthulhu inspired. So… (and I can’t believe this hasn’t occurred to me befor now) “Cluethulhu.” 🤣😂🤣
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Some of this may be player driven. If I give the PCs some potential downtime (i.e. there are no obvious fires raging), I'm still going to ask them what they want to do, and an awful lot of the time what someone wants to do is pull on a dangling plot thread, aborting downtime unless you make it so those threads are not currently possible to pull on.
I don't mind that, it's a different sort of problem. There are no ongoing threats to deal with so "what do you do this morning?" "while he's doing that, what are you up to?" etc for a day or two of in game time, until the DM (and the players by that point) are tired of it and the next bit of plot gets triggered. If a player decides they're going to do something that would be boring to role play, something interesting has to happen to them to interrupt. There's no concept of time that isn't part of the game at the table.
Just recently getting back to the game, but as a DM of old, I found these mini sessions very helpful in keeping the role players happy, without bogging down the the fully-attended table sessions. In our case they were usually in person, sometimes over the phone. In person play involved those who were available on that day.
The (very) basic guidelines: When a party voluntarily splits up at a town, city, rendezvous point, etc., this time is spent gathering information, role-playing the making of a special item, or the gathering/purchasing of supplies, special ingredients, or one's consultation with one's contact/patron/overlord. . . X amount of game world time is allotted to this; it's up to the players involved to get (their character) back in time to continue with the primary campaign. No side adventure that could build experience levels is allowed. If an established or random encounter, or whatnot kills or somehow removes the character from active play, that player may need a replacement character, in order to continue with the main campaign. This does of course require the presence and cooperation of the DM, or their surrogate, if any.
Make it clear to the player that their character can die on one of these side trips, but will not gain (any) experience level advantage over the others in the main party. The primary purpose of these side trips is to give the role player the chance to add to their character's story, without bogging down play during the big game. As long as the "I'm here for the combat, the loot, and the nachos." people understand that they lose no game advantage by not attending, and that they didn't have to sit around being bored by role play on their time, I found that they are generally fine with it.
As a DM, and a player, I like both fast, time-sensitive action [been known to use a chess clock], and the story building behind role play. If I know in advance that the table in question is all action, get it done, update your sheets, get ready to rumble, go, as a player I'll toss together a generic warrior and wade into battle. That warrior might have a name, if the warrior lives long enough. As a DM, I won't bother much with creating or following any cohesive lore beyond who hates who the most, and provide answers to the question, "Where's the loot?".
If, as a player, I know that the DM has put a lot of effort into creating a well-sorted environment to play in, then I'm happy to meld with the story as we go along. As a DM, I like giving the role players time to share in the story line. Can some role players get carried away? Let's just say that I do cringe when I see a player drag out thirty pages of notes, and take a deep breath before they start. One may have to establish role play time limits. Example: "Your character has 15 minutes of active role play this session, including any replies you get from PCs and NPCs. You the player have 5 minutes of behind the scenes explanations for your character's actions." Stick with the time limit, or don't bother using it at all. A time clock that may sometimes be ignored will always be ignored.
Still comes down to this, character downtime, well- spent by the players and DM[s] can add fun for the role players, and help make the main game smoother, and faster paced for the Paladin of the Whirring Blades, nameless gunfighter hero, and the murder hobo alike.
Edit: changes in ( )