Slowing Down The Adventure

[Der_DWSage]

This is largely inspired by the fact that I've binged on the Angry GM's rants after missing a few of them, but one in particular resonated with me. The idea of slowing down a party of adventurers (http://theangrygm.com/hitting-the-rest-button/), and forcing them to more closely explore the towns and cities that they come across, by greatly expanding the amount of time it takes to rest and recover spells, HP, and other daily abilities. In this case, five days of non-strenuous activity. Bedrest is required for recovering from more debilitating things, such as poison, stat damage, and other such things.

I'm not talking about nerfing mages or 'bringing back the feel of 2e' here, or anything else like that. Just...slowing down the helter-skelter adventure, and letting PCs walk around towns for a little while. Breathe in the fresh air. Maybe have a little psuedo-adventure where they find out that Jed, the guy that sold them a +2 sword last week, is actually an aspiring Bard and would really appreciate some lessons from the party about how to protect himself and make a living by singing. Or maybe they find a cafe they particularly like, and the Fighter learns how to bake because he finds he likes the smell of fresh bread much more appealing than fresh blood. Heck, maybe let them flex their Profession(Whatever) muscles a little bit.

I'm aware that much of it can be skipped by just hitting the OOC 'we wait a week' button. But a week of rest requires more commitment than the typical 'We take a night's rest,' and there's far more opportunity for (non-combat) interruption. Not to mention that if you play with D&D encounter expectations, and have something closer to 4 encounters a week (Relevant, if you ever go through Paizo's Kingmaker Adventure Path) there's a lot more stress over 'not using up all my spells' and whatnot.

I don't suppose anyone's experimented with this kind of thing, have they? Good experiences, bad experiences? I'm seriously considering it for whenever I want a campaign to be more social, and less hack-n-slash.

[John Longarrow]

Easiest way to do so is by NOT RUSHING THE PARTY.

If you give them an adventure, they finish it and return to where ever they are based, you can let things go nice and slow while they try to find out what it is they want to do next. Likewise environmental factors can slow down a party (Can't head to the abandoned dwarven mines yet, the valley is snowed in) and social actions that keep them in town (Invitation by fair bard to party spell caster to come see their performance this friday).

In all the only thing that keeps most parties running ragged is the feeling they have to finish something up or something bad will happen (Demons overrun the land, monsters get reinforcements, dungeon gets cleared by someone else). In a lot of object driven adventures you can build in a fair amount of down time as the players wait other things to occur.

[NichG]

Incentives are powerful things. When I've been in games that had a large crafting component, 'lets take a month of downtime' was not an uncommon suggestion.

So an idea would be, try to make it so that character advancement is more strongly concentrated into the downtime elements of the game. Then of course you have the problem that the balance might shift towards unreasonably long downtimes, like it did in the crafting-heavy games I mentioned. So what you can do is make it so that there's diminishing returns for focusing too much on one or the other aspect.

An example might be something like, you gain regular level-up XP on adventures as per normal. However, each character level, you can gain a certain number of extra permanent perks via downtime-type actions - maybe something like an extra feat every five levels and an extra 2 skill points per level in things associated with your actions/explorations during these low-intensity segments. These can be stored up and 'cashed in' at need, and if you exceed your slots you can choose to retain your current bonus or replace it. So that makes room for 'I spend a few weeks learning enough of the local language to get by' and things like that which make sense, but are generally hampered by the leveling system.

IME, most players will not want to sacrifice the chance to get free permanent buffs, and a few extra skill points or the occasional feat won't be game-breaking.

[Crake]

I think it really comes down to whether your players are the sorts of people who would enjoy roleplaying out what my table has come to call "houses and humans". My group is usually split down the middle about it, so i reserve the houses and humans roleplay for between sessions, either via voice chat or IM.

[NichG]

I think it really comes down to whether your players are the sorts of people who would enjoy roleplaying out what my table has come to call "houses and humans". My group is usually split down the middle about it, so i reserve the houses and humans roleplay for between sessions, either via voice chat or IM.

This is a point that I guess I thought didn't need to be made, but maybe it actually does need to be: it's important to not be boring.

If you're going to do these low-intensity things, you have to put in as much effort to make them interesting and engaging as you do for any dungeon crawl or combat. This shouldn't be 'I'm tired of DMing, so can you guys just haggle with this merchant for the next hour?'.

[Fizban]

It's so dependent upon the adventure, players, and characters that I find it difficult to classify as a thing that needs effort to do. Some adventures are on a time limit and don't want you to dally, some have lavishly detailed towns (and some hilariously do both at cross-purposes), some players expect to fight endlessly without even sleeping and some have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the dungeon. I'd say the most important factor is the campaign one: if you're running a multi-stage campaign arc, the players are going to expect they need to keep moving to stop the bad stuff and probably won't stop to look around as much. If you're sandboxing they'll hang around anywhere they find interesting. If you're running disjointed adventures with gaps in-between I'd expect less exploration as they fast forward downtime, but if the next adventure happens to involve exploring an interesting town instead of a dungeon then there you go. Assuming your players aren't particularly divided along some lines like combat/non-combat, they'll go where the interesting stuff is.

[Itsjustsoup.com]

I just interrupt my players. Whenever I need something that I know I want to add some spice to the game I say okay you guys rest for the week, at noon of the first day of your rest a small girl comes into the tavern looking around frantically. She makes eyes with (one of the characters) and darts towards him as if she was looking for him specifically, when she gets close, you she looks a little bit like you…

In other words I do to them what they do to me interrupt the plot so many times you have a good story or plot idea the players railroaded sometimes they want to rest and I'm going to railroad it. I'm going to railroaded with something interesting.

[yellowrocket]

Mine do the opposite. They get lost in helping the little people of the world. One went looking for the cheapest inn. Found it and was surprised by the image I painted for them. The one room with a fire pit in the middle and few food offerings. He decided to help him clean up the place and found a job as a vet for the blacksmith/public stable manager using his healing magic and calm animals spells. That's after fighting a wyrmling dragon that may or may not have had a thing to do with the earthquake that rocked the city.

Two of them spent half an hour getting to know the farmer. They were taking about who he was what he grew, if he had kids. The works.