How is it that any ability that allows a player to benefit from downtime always warps the campaign around it?
>>98139400Warps around it in which way? As in the DM now has to accommodate down time to allow your feat to have value or like what my DM does where if you take crafting, there is never time to craft so don't take crafting.
>>98139400>playing post 1991 dnd
>>98139427>DM now has to accommodate down timeWhat does the DM have to do with anything? Downtime happens whenever the players choose.
>>98139400Have you tried not playing D&D?
>>98139487The DM can just say "no" for any number of reasons.
I always wonder how other peoples' tables find room for downtime on the scale of days or weeks. When my groups' DMs run games, the metaplot is followed at basically a breakneck pace without the ability to dilly-dally and the entire campaign is usually started and finished in a matter of in-game weeksAre you guys all just running sandboxes?
>>98139703Some people naively believe that a system shouldn't just snap in half because you didn't plan around every single paragraph in the rulebook
>>98139428DND always had downtime activities tourist.
>>98139728>playing post 1991 dnd
>>98139703You can literally just choose not to follow the "metaplot" or whatever the fuck. It's not a video game. And if that results in the death of some scrimblos then so be it.
>>98139823Your skin is brown lol
>>98139400>downtime and uptime feed into each other>this is somehow a bad thing
>>98139400What was the equivalent during 2E?
>>98139400Because you're here to play a game, and if the optimal way to succeed in the game is to basically fast forward until you have a big advantage, either the game isn't well-designed or the player is forgetting the point of the game is to actually play it.
>>98139874>anon can't comprehend his inferiorityMany such cases
>>98140308>malding brownkek
>>98139400Because it tends to be heavily dependent on what the GM permits, based on available downtime if nothing else, and if it didn't significantly affect the campaign it wouldn't be much worth bothering with.
>>98139400>give humans a little downtime>they eventually start building shit like this
>>98139428>>98139728>>98139823>playing Do Not Disturb instead of Dungeons & Dragons
>>98139703When I ran an evil campaign (D&D 3.5e), players took 5-14 days to reach places on the map and even if they spent time at the place, downtime was extremely important because gathering info on locals, talking to them, getting to know the place isn't just a 15 minute conversation with a drunk guy in a tavern.Also some stuff I let players do:>craft arrows>forage for food>brew potions/poisons/drugs>write spell scrolls>make/set traps>produce/pack rations>map and scout around a camp (if they needed to stay at the spot)>training pets>repairing equipmentThe next campaign I'm playing to go into the scavenging/crafting system even more as they're gonna be playing sailors and they'll need to control and/or maintain a small ship on long voyages. I also wanna implement Diablo type grid inventory. It worked well in a couple of oneshots I did when I tested it out.
>>98139400What fucking games are you (obviously not) playing incorrectly where characters don't benefit from their downtime?
>>98139400Downtime abilities is when the players suddenly remember they are playing a roleplaying game and have agency to actually do stuff and influence the world. It's weird. The closest thing I can compare it to is my kid skipping school to go to the library.
>>98139400I've played multiple games with downtime mechanics and none of it was particularly warping. Maybe don't have downtime mechanics that are exponentially more rewarding than active game time mechanics?
>Crafting magic items warps the gameNo it really doesn't. This stupid meme of "omg a wizard can do all spells at all time as a free action and literally become god it breaks the game" meme about 3.5e needs to end. First of all, half the adventures in the game REQUIRE you to have access to a bunch of spells, which is annoying as is. However, Craft Wondrous Item does not break the game at all. Yes, if you have downtime to craft your own items and inflate your wealth by level at the cost of a lot of XP, it is a very powerful feat. However, it does not "warp" campaign the way that spells like Magnificent Mansion, Zone of Truth, Teleport, and Scrying do. Those spells genuinely fuck up campaigns, although some of them really require those spells to be able to have decent pacing, with Teleport being the most prominent example there. People need to stop acting like versatility achievable with great time investment is "breaking the game" unless you literally just don't want the PCs to be able to succeed or do anything outside of your narrow railroad.>okay guys there's a vampire cult killing people in this city>okay instead of fighting them I'm going to spend 25 days crafting a Rod of the Sun and let another 200 people dieIt's absolutely stupid. Yes, you CAN choose that path but it's a bad idea in most cases. Yes downtime is good, and downtime to craft special magic items to combat a threat, if it makes sense, is absolute kino and in fact is a great way of the characters engaging with the game, very flavorful and fitting to fantasy. I see no problems with PCs doing this, if it is viable to do so.I've run D&D among many other systems for over 2 decades so I'm not just talking out of my ass either.
>>98139400in my experience the moment a decently intelligent player is given free time and crafting skills they just start making bombs until they can blow up just about anything
>>98139872Sure, but if the BBEG is introduced from the start and the DM presents a heavy railroad to defeat him and stop the world-ending event, from quite early on, that downtime broadly does not exist. Taking a few weeks to make a magical item would require you to be able to craft and afford it from the start of the campaign and finish it a bit before the final encounter sequences. The games I play in lately strictly do not exist in-setting long enough to do that. I assume based on the broader Internet that many campaigns go like this, but DMs don't have so heavy-handed a story they want to tell, and this is a table problem, but that's why I asked what other peoples' experiences are like>>98140525Sounds like my kind of game, Anon. I hope I get to play that kind of DnD myself some day, because as it stands my only hope is to be the one running it
>>98140770>at the cost of a lot of XPYou get the XP back.
>>98139400Free time is such a precious resources with so much shit to do.The one time in the last 4 years that we stopped for a month in game so that we could craft some shit, the DM had to convince us that as far as our characters knew that would be a good moment for that, otherwise we might have spent another 3 years just dungeon crawling, doing politics, fighting shit, etc.
>>98141151>would have spent another 3 years playing the gameWhat a tragedy that would've been
>>98140770>if you have downtime to craft your own items and inflate your wealth by level at the cost of a lot of XPThe issue with crafting in 3.X is that XP rewards scale with character level rather than being fixed. The XP consumed to craft is usually quickly made up by the increased XP gain from being a level or 2 below the rest of the party. With a single character sacrificing a single level, the entire party ends up well ahead of wealth power curve.
>>98141162I really wanted that Belt of Battle.Shit has saved my character's ass quite a few times since.
>>98140069At high level casters (10+ if I remember correctly) could make all the shit, but it wasn't guaranteed to work and you had to hunt down cool ass magical ingredients (like you want to make a flying carpet well you have to go to far away Fuckoffistan to get magical silk from the Sultan's Magical Mulberry Grove. He normally is not one to share his stock without a favor.) so it was still an adventure.
>>98139703You gloss over it. GM says "You have X amount of downtime, how do you want to spend it?" If it takes actual interaction we can focus on that, otherwise stuff like crafting with stuff you already have can be glossed over.Also, if the pacing is a problem that's a you thing. I'm in several games that for one reason or another have been going for 2+ years at this point.
>>98141237>You gloss over it. GM says "You have X amount of downtime, how do you want to spend it?"One of the biggest issues with that is that not all classes benefit equally or near equally from downtime. Casters often benefit greatly from downtime as it allows the to create items and research new spells while more mundane classes end up twiddling their thumbs rather than doing anything beneficial.
>>98139487No it doesn't, unless players want to derail a campaign.>characters were hired as caravan guards>no uhh ackshually we take downtime to craft items>caravan leaves without themOr any other of gazillion plausible scenarios where characters aren't acting in a vacuum where only they are the prime movers.
>>98141237I think you misunderstood my post. I explained myself better in the reply to my other (You)s, but I don't mean "how do you even use all that time", I mean how conceivably do you even obtain any time in the first place, let alone enough to spend on that kind of thing? I find my games always have a plot-based time pressure that is far too intense to spend dicking around for even a few in-game days, let alone weeks. I can't remember the last time I played a game where anyone could actually craft anything, be it a direct DnD derivative or 40k RPG or what-have-youAs I said in my other post, I assume this is just a table problem and we aren't really playing good games where player choices matter (and thus we don't get time to choose to do anything), but it's still sad that this experience is almost foreign to me. In any case my next character's going to be Chaotic Evil and if my choices still don't matter then I'm just gonna stop bothering with coming up with backstories and go back to playing blank slates and doing comfy buildfag rollplaying again
>>98139400How is it that this is completely false in any good game?
>>98139703Why the fuck aren't you running a sandbox?
>>98141536Why does your game have rails?
>>98142983That's the plan, but if I've ever played in one I don't think I've noticed it or else the GM pivoted away very very quickly when he saw the lack of agency expressed by the table
Wow, imagine inviting people to a game who don't actually want to play a game. I'm sure nothing bad at all would happen as a result of this decision, and if it did, it surely would be impossible to predict.
>>98142983NTA, but we (>>98141151) are playing a sandbox, but there's always so much shit going on that's either of direct interest to one of the PCs or to the party as a whole.The world is full of interesting places, people, things, and events, and it never stops moving forward, so the FOMO, or just actual necessity, is real.>>98141447When we had our month long downtime, only the dedicated crafting specialist spent the month in his office, the rest of the party went to investigate, prepare, go make alliances, cause trouble, or in the case of the bard, do a public performance so sick it literal demigods contacted him after.Also, work. The rest of the party spent a good week or so gathering funds.It was pretty good seeing my character's spell slots not being used nearly solely for combat for one.That's also when I figured out that Imbue with Spell Ability + Divine Insight is a really, really good combination to support the party during downtime.
>>98139400How would this break the game? There are far more NPCs than players in the world, any of whom can also have this feat.
>>98139631Not of the game master wants to have a game last. Abundant use of "No" kills campaigns quicker than girlfriend players and work shcedules.
>>98139823item creation is noted in the OD&D rulebook. Please actually play games.
>>98141536So? You can do it. Not a video game.
>>98139427>>98139703>>98140251>>98140352>it's not broken because I don't let the player use itlol
>>98143873I don't know how you got that out of my post there, the second (You) of yours. It was an honest question, couldn't have been framed much more clearly, and still half of the replies were still the same insincere angsty gotcha!-tier Twitter responseI don't automatically assume that the OP's stuff about downtime breaking the game is actually part of the calculus for the games I played in which the GMs ran it that way. I'd be shocked if they gave it that much thought to begin with: here's a story I made, I expect you to play it because I've scripted basically everything already and put in all this work, now I insist you have fun. Seems to be the most common spin on playing TTRPGs that I've seen, beyond pure beer and pretzels nonsense gaming (which I have not played, but I've heard of, and I don't understand why people even bother with a pretense of gaming when the whole point is to hang out and drink, but c'est la vie)
>>98139703>Are you guys all just running sandboxes?No, just more authentic worlds. Important events rarely move quickly. Many impactful actions/events/happenings in real life history have at least several weeks of build up, most of them years and decades.And when a big event happens, it usually isn't over in two days. Wars last for months or years, sieges for longer. Troops march for days and weeks. If there's some council meeting, they can discuss and argue for days just to not come to any conclusion and then it has to be adjourned yet again. And after a big event happens, the consequences can take anything from days to decades to centuries to manifest. Change takes time.Just look at the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a very recent, IRL example. It was closed in March and we already have June. Not saying you should accurately simulate this shit in your games but if the players solve a quest, it's totally fine to give them a week or a month of downtime until the ripple effects of that quest being done manifest and you don't have to immediately present them with a new hook once one thing is resolved. Let the players, the characters and the world jus breathe a little inbetween.
>>98143961One game example could be:A town is suffering under a local tyrant, let's just say an evil vampire. The heroic PCs decide the first action is to gather intel on how to defeat him (they might not even know he's a vampire yet) so a week of downtime can already be sprinkled in where they just live in said town and immerse themselves into the populace and listen for rumours and try to get a general vibe.They get a few hooks and you then can run several smaller quests with a very active and fast pace that cumulate into a big showdown against the vampire with basically no downtime inbetween.But after it's done and he is defeated: The town decides to hold elections for the first time and elect a mayor. An interim government is put into place while the people organise the election. This takes weeks if not months and your players have the choice to stay in the town and have a little downtime. They can see the populace recover and prosper again and participate in its liberation. The players get the chance to spend all that money the got while questing and might even found a permanent base in this town they're now respected in and might actively try to influence the election.And then you hit them with another hook that leads into a fast paced adventure again. It's a push and pull / inhale exhale kinda thing between fast pace and weeks of downtime.
>>98143975>The heroic PCs decide the first action is to gather intel on how to defeat him>tfw my two most recently ended campaigns would not even have enough agency to let players come to this conclusion themselves and act upon it meaningfullyWelpNow the real problem, how the fuck do I talk to this particular DM about this when the last time I asked him about how his brew for his name game was going he was already talking about being done with the worldbuilding and now working on "designing encounters" (we have not played a single session, even a session 0)
>>98144047>name gameNew game*, derp
>>98139703>You get an invitation for Lady Advancetheplotia for the next friday's ball. 5 days left, how does the party spend them?Players CAN choose to infiltrate Advancetheplotia's manor earlier, but it gives them the option to reasonably have downtime too. Simple as.
>>98141447>Only casters can craft itemsDogshit system desu.
>>98143925What's the point of playing a game where everything has already been scripted?
>>98139872And that's when the GM drops the Necromantic horde upon the kingdom and kills you later because you decided that your own random whim was more important then stopping the Lich's summoning efforts.
>>98148495Why do you get so pissed off when the players make decisions? Why did you invite them?
>>98148495Okay? Better luck next time. Still not following the rails though.
>>98148495If it's so important to you that the story goes how you intend, why don't you write a book instead of playing a cooperative game?
>>98139703Metaplot? What's that?
