I'm dming a group of entirely new players and I, myself, am a fairly new DM (played as a teen and am very much not a teen now). We're often only able to get together once a month which can make continuity, relationship building, experiencing character growth, and overall player investment a bit challenging. Im tossing around the idea of running some off-table downtime using the forum feature in our Roll20 campaign but I'm not sure if that's a good approach, how it might be managed, and how to both explain it to my players, and guide them along. We're playing a modified mashup of Phandelver and Icespire Peak with a heavy leaning on unique story elements from their various character backgrounds. Any ideas or tips would be much appreciated!
Can you explain what you mean by downtime? I’m asking because there are rules for downtime activities that are supposed to happen if the characters are just hanging around in town for a bit. Do you mean that kind of thing, or more free form role playing that n character kind of thing?
You can use something like the adventures league down time rules. Essentially players accumulate time as a reward for adventures that they can spend doing things like shopping, crafting, earning gold etc.... They do the rolling off the table and use it to generate short stories that they can share as either flash backs or chatter. It gives players something to talk about and gets allot of the crunch off the table. I wouldn't worry specifically about when they did it just that they balanced it with the time they earned.
So for example the party may go to a church and the player may want to expend a favour. You'd then prompt them to share the story of how the earned the favor, they should explain what they did as well as any complications and that story would be constructed off the rolls from the xanathar's religious service rules.
Can you explain what you mean by downtime? I’m asking because there are rules for downtime activities that are supposed to happen if the characters are just hanging around in town for a bit. Do you mean that kind of thing, or more free form role playing that n character kind of thing?
A little of both, really, but probably more downtime activities at first than role play. I've read the sections in the sourcebooks, but I have the impression from the materials and from some of the videos I've watched that people usually run at-table downtime sessions. I think both myself and the party would be reluctant to do partial or whole downtime sessions at-table given that we only meet about 1/month. I'm wondering if it might work to occasionally run downtime stuff (even simple shopping excursions and research time) off-table through forum posts and private DMs. If anyone has done that, some tips would be very much appreciated!
They do the rolling off the table and use it to generate short stories that they can share as either flash backs or chatter. It gives players something to talk about and gets allot of the crunch off the table.
Yes! This is what I'm hoping to do. And you feel it integrates well doing all of this off-table? I would love to see them being able to get back together from time to time and share a bit of what they've been up to while they were between quests. Even just a few times at major turning points. I'm hoping that it can help shift some of the shopping needs off-table to make sessions more efficient. I'm thinking that they may even take time to split up and ask around about things they need answers to and such (as needed) outside of the session and come back to share. All run through forum posts and private DMs.
Been doing this kind of thing for a long time. In fact so long ago that our group's players started by doing off-table downtime activities over the phone, with the DM (often me) rolling an occasional die as needed. Eventually we switched to doing it by email, and now we do it over Discord and private messages. If a downtime activity/action provoked a fight, or some similar event that would involve other PCs, then we would stop, holding off until we rejoined at the table. When everyone is on the same page, it works just fine.
With one group that I spend time with these days, at least one player insists that all of their play happen at the table, including all downtime shopping, etc.. Because of this, even though myself and others manage to get most of our downtime activities taken care of between table sessions, we still wait for that one player to get their stuff done at that table. This definitely causes some minor friction as, even aside from that downtime stuff, that particular player tends to take up more face time at the table than the rest of us do. I am not the DM there, and happen to be the newbie of the group, so I put up with that particular game play inequity.
When I was in the middle of my own modified LMoP+DoIP campaign, I had a small "plot point" planned where one of my players would run into one of the NPCs from their backstory whilst visiting Neverwinter. But that player couldn't make it to that session, and I didn't want to lose this interaction. So, I messaged her, and role-played it through text messages.
It went great! She got to have a fun and ironically emotional encounter with her character's best friend, without delaying, canceling, or postponing the main session.
If you can find/create a dedicated downtime "chat room" (a Discord server would be a great option), then it would be possible to regularly have remote role-play without having to align everyone's schedules. Again, a Discord server would be fantastic, as you can create dedicated *channels for each character and throw in a digital dice rolling bot. By all means, go for it!
(* If you're unfamiliar with Discord, you can create a private server, and create channels within that server. A channel is often a group messaging room or a voice chat room that is dedicated to a single topic. You can add or remove individual members of the server to and from individual channels. You could have a text channel for each character, and a general one for the whole table.)
Hello everyone,
I'm dming a group of entirely new players and I, myself, am a fairly new DM (played as a teen and am very much not a teen now). We're often only able to get together once a month which can make continuity, relationship building, experiencing character growth, and overall player investment a bit challenging. Im tossing around the idea of running some off-table downtime using the forum feature in our Roll20 campaign but I'm not sure if that's a good approach, how it might be managed, and how to both explain it to my players, and guide them along. We're playing a modified mashup of Phandelver and Icespire Peak with a heavy leaning on unique story elements from their various character backgrounds. Any ideas or tips would be much appreciated!
Can you explain what you mean by downtime? I’m asking because there are rules for downtime activities that are supposed to happen if the characters are just hanging around in town for a bit. Do you mean that kind of thing, or more free form role playing that n character kind of thing?
You can use something like the adventures league down time rules. Essentially players accumulate time as a reward for adventures that they can spend doing things like shopping, crafting, earning gold etc.... They do the rolling off the table and use it to generate short stories that they can share as either flash backs or chatter. It gives players something to talk about and gets allot of the crunch off the table. I wouldn't worry specifically about when they did it just that they balanced it with the time they earned.
So for example the party may go to a church and the player may want to expend a favour. You'd then prompt them to share the story of how the earned the favor, they should explain what they did as well as any complications and that story would be constructed off the rolls from the xanathar's religious service rules.
A little of both, really, but probably more downtime activities at first than role play. I've read the sections in the sourcebooks, but I have the impression from the materials and from some of the videos I've watched that people usually run at-table downtime sessions. I think both myself and the party would be reluctant to do partial or whole downtime sessions at-table given that we only meet about 1/month. I'm wondering if it might work to occasionally run downtime stuff (even simple shopping excursions and research time) off-table through forum posts and private DMs. If anyone has done that, some tips would be very much appreciated!
Yes! This is what I'm hoping to do. And you feel it integrates well doing all of this off-table? I would love to see them being able to get back together from time to time and share a bit of what they've been up to while they were between quests. Even just a few times at major turning points. I'm hoping that it can help shift some of the shopping needs off-table to make sessions more efficient. I'm thinking that they may even take time to split up and ask around about things they need answers to and such (as needed) outside of the session and come back to share. All run through forum posts and private DMs.
Been doing this kind of thing for a long time. In fact so long ago that our group's players started by doing off-table downtime activities over the phone, with the DM (often me) rolling an occasional die as needed. Eventually we switched to doing it by email, and now we do it over Discord and private messages. If a downtime activity/action provoked a fight, or some similar event that would involve other PCs, then we would stop, holding off until we rejoined at the table. When everyone is on the same page, it works just fine.
With one group that I spend time with these days, at least one player insists that all of their play happen at the table, including all downtime shopping, etc.. Because of this, even though myself and others manage to get most of our downtime activities taken care of between table sessions, we still wait for that one player to get their stuff done at that table. This definitely causes some minor friction as, even aside from that downtime stuff, that particular player tends to take up more face time at the table than the rest of us do. I am not the DM there, and happen to be the newbie of the group, so I put up with that particular game play inequity.
When I was in the middle of my own modified LMoP+DoIP campaign, I had a small "plot point" planned where one of my players would run into one of the NPCs from their backstory whilst visiting Neverwinter. But that player couldn't make it to that session, and I didn't want to lose this interaction. So, I messaged her, and role-played it through text messages.
It went great! She got to have a fun and ironically emotional encounter with her character's best friend, without delaying, canceling, or postponing the main session.
If you can find/create a dedicated downtime "chat room" (a Discord server would be a great option), then it would be possible to regularly have remote role-play without having to align everyone's schedules. Again, a Discord server would be fantastic, as you can create dedicated *channels for each character and throw in a digital dice rolling bot. By all means, go for it!
(* If you're unfamiliar with Discord, you can create a private server, and create channels within that server. A channel is often a group messaging room or a voice chat room that is dedicated to a single topic. You can add or remove individual members of the server to and from individual channels. You could have a text channel for each character, and a general one for the whole table.)
This is all really helpful. I haven't used Discord yet but I know its very popular in VTT circles. I'll check it out!