The End of Down Time

My covid-19 quarantine ends at midnight tonight (about 2 hours from time of writing), so I'm back to work tomorrow. We had a pretty good day. Played some emulated console games with son #2 after I finished teaching my online classes. Ordered delivery fried chicken for dinner. Rewatched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings with the boys. Scheduled my Star Wars RPG session for this coming Sunday. All in all, a pretty good day. 

So, since I've been talking about my actual down time, why not discuss D&D down time a bit after all? 

I don't have much in the way of downtime activity in my West Marches games. Magic-Users can, per Holmes Basic, create a scroll given a week's time and a bit of gold. I rule that to 1 week per game session, but the scroll-crafting can only be done in town. So the past several sessions in White Plume Mountain haven't allowed the characters to replace scrolls used. But once they get back to town, that's one way they can spend their time/money. Also, those that don't have magical weapons or armor can commission +1 items (only) from Rupert the Town Mage or Sister Clarion, the town Matriarch (technically, they could also go to Toutates the Priest [druid] as well, but so far no one has). But each of these NPCs can only work on one item at a time, and it takes several game weeks (sessions) for the item to be completed. Once PCs reach Name level, they could then do these projects themselves. 

So not much for down time rules in my current game. 

In one of the 5E play-by-post games I am in, though, there are some rather extensive rules for down time.

First of all, it's also West Marches style (and the inspiration for me to want to run a WM game myself), but in the more traditional sense that there are multiple parties all exploring different areas simultaneously. But since it's play by post, it's slow and erratic. And while an adventure may take only a couple of days of in-game time, it can take literal years of real time to play out. My longest running character in the game (we're allowed multiples as long as they join different groups) is only on his second adventure after 5 years of actual real world play. But he is 8th level on the verge of 9th in that time...

Anyway, as Gygax would say, YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT or something to that effect. The GM does take careful records of time spent by each party, how many days/hours have passed, how many rations we've expended, etc. And how many days of real world time have passed since each expedition sets out to when it arrives back in town. 

But as mentioned, each party's progress can't really be tied together in one big calendar in this game. If an expedition that covers a day or two in-game time takes a year or more to play out, while another group can cover four or five game-days in the same amount of time, but both parties end up back in town at the same real-world time and switch party members, things won't add up. 

So the GM decided that he just wouldn't worry about that part. But when players asked to spend downtime days for stuff (5E allows for item crafting, earning money with professional skills, learning a new tool proficiency or language, etc), he came up with the following:

*The number of real world days that pass while in the Marches equals the number of downtime days the character has to spend while in town. They must still spend any gold required for the training desired. 

That seemed to work OK. My oldest PC in the game traded in some of his hard won gold and a lot of that downtime to learn some new languages and tool proficiencies. 

But some people weren't going to use those downtime days, so the GM came up with the following:

*You may convert downtime days to XP at the rate of 3XP per 'day' spent. 

This led to a few problems in that one of the players (or maybe two) were trying to keep track of all the members' XP totals for them, with big complicated charts. But the player(s) started assuming that all downtime days were being converted to XP, so when my PC, for example, spent quite a few days on learning stuff, it messed up the charts. Also, there were questions of when these bonus XP amounts should be added, who was adding what when, etc. It got to be a mess.

So recently, after discussion with all the players, the GM has decided to get rid of tracking the downtime days. If PCs return to town and want to do some downtime activity, they can just declare it and spend the gold needed for training (or supplies). Not sure how he's handling profession skills...none of my characters have bothered with that sort of thing. 

Long story short, 5E has some interesting rules for managing down time, but unless strict time records for the campaign are kept (or there's only one party in the campaign), they can be a hassle!