Time increments; 'turns' and 'actions' outside of combat initiative

[Zhorn]

So something I've been looking at is to get a bit more mechanical in terms of time taken for character actions outside of combat scenarios. The idea is to use it for determining how often to check for random encounters, wandering monsters, region events, ticking clocks...
or just getting a clock to point the players at when they wake up at 7am, fight an owlbear, then talk about making camp for a long rest at 9:30am... True story

Generally I'm just setting out a pace for how much time paces between changing circumstances and asking players what their characters do next.

For a physical prop time tracker I've printed off one of the following so everyone can see the progress of time and to help track when to have things happen
Image was causing issues, here's the reddit link instead
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/9iu127/i_made_a_time_tracker_oc/

Using default rules from the core books, these would be the common time increments:
6 seconds: one round/turn, standard combat pace
1 minute
10 minutes
1 hour: one short rest
8 hours: one long rest, or one standard workday
1 day (24 hours standard)
1 week (7 days standard, 10 days in some popular settings like Forgotten Realms)
1 month (30 days standard)
1 year (365 days standard, 12 months plus 5 holidays)

From here, I want to set up a turn pace for the following
Skills
Dungeon crawling
Urban/carousing pace
Wilderness/underdark travel
Overland Travel

Clearly anything of a full day length or greater is just downtime pace, so we'll try to limit this to the more reasonable increments for in-play timing.
Is there any official recommendations for these in the core books that I've missed, or suggestions from previous editions or similar systems that would work well. Or suggestions from your own home games you've been using.

[Kane0]

Time periods I tend to use are:

'What are you doing' (player's actions): 1 minute
Dungeon-crawling 'turn': 10 or 15 minutes
Downtime: 1 week increments
Dangerous travel: event/roll per 1 hour
Safe travel: event/roll per 8 hours

The last two corresponding nicely to rest times.

[PhoenixPhyre]

My ideas:

1 minute: a full (isolated) combat, including the aftermath (regrouping, grabbing obvious loot off the bodies, checking to make sure they're actually dead, etc). Transitioning between non-adjacent rooms carefully (ie checking the hallway for traps). Simple social interactions (talking to a guard without significant complications). Searching an almost-bare room cursorily. Disabling a complex trap.

10 minutes: searching an average room thoroughly but not exhaustively (tossing things, but not taking everything apart). Clearing an empty building (ie one without fights) of average size or an empty wing of a dungeon (estimate 5 rooms with associated hallways), but not doing a thorough investigation. Deciphering simple runes or mechanisms or puzzles. Conducting a simple ritual (more than just a ritual spell).

1 hour: searching a wing/building thoroughly but not exhaustively. Clearing (but not searching) 3-4 wings (including travel time between wings). Deciphering average runes or mechanisms or puzzles. Conducting an average ritual. Minimum travel unit between locations that I'd worry about.

[Greywander]

AngryGM has an interesting article on hacking time in D&D (https://theangrygm.com/hacking-time-in-dnd/). You can probably draw some inspiration from there.

[Zhorn]

I won't deny AngryGM has some good ideas to share, but reading through his articles can be a major slog at times with everything buried 6 feet deep in a wall of text and attitude. It's his gimmick, but so many times I look at it and think "just get to the point already"

But back on topic.
Another big part of this is to give meaning to the 'take 10' or 'take 20' concepts from previous editions for checks. It time isn't being tracked in any meaningful way or there are no consequences for taking longer to make a difficult task definitely achievable, then such concepts just don't fit into play as they eliminate the meaning and need for rolls.

There was a moment in our game last night, the DM was calling for rolls on something they were setting as a given for our story to progress. We're looking for a shrine out in the wilderness, we know it is nearby, marked down on a map and everything, but were being blocked by a series of back perception checks. Everyone rolled bad, so the DM kept calling for additional rolls until someone succeeded.
No passage of time.
No encounter triggers.
Just keep rolling till someone succeeds.

Without a system of time keeping I'd have gone with a fail forwards model, but that's more of an improv thing and not really a system you can just hand over note for to another DM to try out. Setting up a time system like mentioned above has that goal in mind, something that is compatible with the base rules, systemized mechanics that can be plugged into the game. Be it using a time wheel like I linked in my initial post, or checkmarks on a piece of paper, make it so either failed rolls progress the passage of time towards consequences (time running out for daylight, torches, ticking clocks) or crossing over checkpoints of when to roll for encounters and/or events.

[Kane0]

Very similar time management discussed here:
https://youtu.be/uuJNIVcvHZ4

[Zhorn]

Very similar time management discussed here:
https://youtu.be/uuJNIVcvHZ4

Nice recommendation.
would still need a tweak to use in 5e, but the general concepts being fairly system agnostic it would be minimal.

Thinking 10min dungeon crawl pace is a good pick. This is not to say doing anything cost 10min, just that that's the time increment that the dungeon state is updated and checked against. Wandering monsters, environmental hazards, etc. Players can attempt multiple things in a single dungeon turn so long as they're quick/successful enough. Say the wizard say's they'll ritual cast identify, that adds 10min onto the casting time , 1 action + 10min = Completes on the NEXT turn.

1min as a 'skill check speed' sound like a good pick. Roll a check for picking a lock, using athletics to shove a stuck door, quickly investigate the the door for a hidden trap, arcana to decipher the purpose of a magic glyph, etc, that'll take 1min to make the roll.
Fail the roll? Don't roll again, just rule it as you can choose to keep trying, and if their passive would meet the check DC then they get it done in 10min if they stick at it ('take 10' takes 10 times as long, 1 whole dungeon turn). Extend out to 20min for a 'take 20' (2 whole dungeon turns).

Might need to divide checks/activities into what would fit into the check check range for dungeon crawling speed vs what would be the longer checks for non-dungeon settings.
Example; foraging would be a 1 hour check? or a 10min check? Inclined to think as a 10min check, with taking 10 being 100min, and taking 20 being 200min. Though hour increments would be cleaner. Fail the roll means a 1 hour forage turns into a 10 hours scrounge all day to yield a passive level of success, while a take 20 has you splitting the effort over a couple of days (if allowing time to rest and they chose to stick at it despite their struggles) to get the 20hours.
Not sure. Thoughts?
Or maybe deconstruct the taking 10 and 20 into the minimum rolls needed? say you failed you roll but only need to roll a 7 to get a success with you modifiers, then it would work out as a 'taking 7' for seven increments of time? Might be getting a bit too nitty gritty.

[PhoenixPhyre]

1min as a 'skill check speed' sound like a good pick. Roll a check for picking a lock, using athletics to shove a stuck door, quickly investigate the the door for a hidden trap, arcana to decipher the purpose of a magic glyph, etc, that'll take 1min to make the roll.
Fail the roll? Don't roll again, just rule it as you can choose to keep trying, and if their passive would meet the check DC then they get it done in 10min if they stick at it ('take 10' takes 10 times as long, 1 whole dungeon turn). Extend out to 20min for a 'take 20' (2 whole dungeon turns).


There's already a rule for this--if you take 10x as long as normal, you succeed if success is possible. So "take 20" is a 10 minute thing if "normal" is a 1 minute thing (which I think is about right).

[Zhorn]

There's already a rule for this--if you take 10x as long as normal, you succeed if success is possible. So "take 20" is a 10 minute thing if "normal" is a 1 minute thing (which I think is about right).
Yes? Sorry if I wasn't clear that was what I was referencing back in post #5.
It's not 'officially' a rule in 5e as they replaced the concept with passive scores (just without the reference to the time aspect), but it is still usable as it does essential the same thing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yes? Sorry if I wasn't clear that was what I was referencing back in post #5.
It's not 'officially' a rule in 5e as they replaced the concept with passive scores (just without the reference to the time aspect), but it is still usable as it does essential the same thing.

It's a rule, not just passives.

DMG 237, right under the picture. It says that due checks that can be made repeatedly and are possible, you should assume they automatically succeed by taking 10x normal time. Not 20x.

[Yakk]

A flexible version of that rule:

Repeated attempts: If after failing at something the task becomes no harder and the task is possible, repeated attempts can be made. Use the initial roll and divide how much you missed the target DC by 2 (min 1). That is how many additional attempts it takes to succeed at the task.

So if it is a DC 25 task and you rolled a 17, the difference is 8 -- so after 4 more attempts you succeed.

You could also use this on the other end; for every 2 full points you beat the DC by, the time it takes is reduced by 10% (to a minimum of 10%).

So a DC 10 lockpicking (1 minute) takes 1 action if you roll a 28 or higher.

[Zhorn]

It's a rule, not just passives.

DMG 237, right under the picture. It says that due checks that can be made repeatedly and are possible, you should assume they automatically succeed by taking 10x normal time.

I stand corrected. I was looking in the PHB where it only spoke of passive checks (passive perception etc)

[MaxWilson]

So something I've been looking at is to get a bit more mechanical in terms of time taken for character actions outside of combat scenarios. The idea is to use it for determining how often to check for random encounters, wandering monsters, region events, ticking clocks...
or just getting a clock to point the players at when they wake up at 7am, fight an owlbear, then talk about making camp for a long rest at 9:30am... True story

Generally I'm just setting out a pace for how much time paces between changing circumstances and asking players what their characters do next.

For a physical prop time tracker I've printed off one of the following so everyone can see the progress of time and to help track when to have things happen
Image was causing issues, here's the reddit link instead
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/9iu127/i_made_a_time_tracker_oc/

Using default rules from the core books, these would be the common time increments:
6 seconds: one round/turn, standard combat pace
1 minute
10 minutes
1 hour: one short rest
8 hours: one long rest, or one standard workday
1 day (24 hours standard)
1 week (7 days standard, 10 days in some popular settings like Forgotten Realms)
1 month (30 days standard)
1 year (365 days standard, 12 months plus 5 holidays)

From here, I want to set up a turn pace for the following
Skills
Dungeon crawling
Urban/carousing pace
Wilderness/underdark travel
Overland Travel

Clearly anything of a full day length or greater is just downtime pace, so we'll try to limit this to the more reasonable increments for in-play timing.
Is there any official recommendations for these in the core books that I've missed, or suggestions from previous editions or similar systems that would work well. Or suggestions from your own home games you've been using.

One additional kind of turn that might be worth mentioning is a metagame turn, for things that have durations that aren't naturally measured in minutes so much as... maybe call it cognitive effort?

For example, there's no physical reason why getting a family of six ready for church on Sunday morning should take longer than about 30 minutes, right? All you've got to do is shower, put on clothes and shoes, and walk out the door. But somehow it's possible for you to wake up at 7am, and still wind up walking in five minutes late for church at 10:30am. Where did all the time go? (Adapt example as appropriate to your life and situation, but I'm sure you've had similar experiences on some level.)

Conversely, if a demonic overlord has kidnapped Hero Bob's little sister to use as a sacrifice in a demon-summoning ritual, there might be no particular reason why he couldn't have it done six hours after the kidnapping. But it might take five days anyway, just because there's no rush--and yet it doesn't really add anything to the game (IMO) for the DM to randomly roll a time between six hours and five days and then be counting down a randomly-generated clock that the players have no way of knowing about and couldn't affect even if they did know it, especially if the heroes are unavoidably going to take at least 24 hours to get to the prison where she's held. You don't want that random roll to be the single biggest determinant of whether they succeed or fail.

So... if there's no particular reason why she couldn't be dead in six hours, and no particular reason why she couldn't still be alive in five days, why not tie that uncertainty to something useful, like time passing at the metagame layer (real life)? I am a hardcore simulationist in most ways, and most of the time I utterly loathe the idea of real life affecting gameplay--but over time I've found myself softening on the timing issue, especially when the simulation genuinely has no opinion on how long something "ought" to take or last. If the DM simply says to the players, "We've got five hours to play, and it just so happens that the demonic overlord is in exactly enough of a rush to sacrifice her that she dies at the end of this game session if you haven't rescued her by then (or after a week, whichever is shorter)," then that means that she dies after five real-time hours of interesting events have occurred--and the players will feel a psychological tension the whole time.

I've experimented some with applying metagame turns in other ways as well, not just for kidnapping deadlines. E.g. you're exploring a dungeon, and every ten real-time minutes (or so) the DM moves one of the offscreen groups of monsters from one room to an adjacent room. Or every twenty minutes 1d4 goblins get added to the throne room, and there's a 10% chance a star spawn mangler gets added as well. You don't have to tell players you're doing this, but when they're sitting around arguing with each other about the best course of action, it doesn't hurt to ostentatiously roll the dice in front of them, then say "hmmm," and make a note to yourself and/or toss another few miniatures in a cup.

You could even combine this with the metagame resting rules that some people like to use to prevent 5-minute work days, a la "If you want to go to sleep for the night (long rest), the game is done for tonight. If you find yourself so bored with sitting around doing nothing that you get out of bed and start doing stuff, then play resumes but also clearly you haven't long rested yet. If you want to take a short rest, then everybody including the DM gets a half-hour break from the game."

Just some ideas for you to consider...

[Asisreo1]

This might not precisely answer your question, but here's the relevant passage from the PHB.



In situations where keeping track of the passage of time is important, the DM determines the time a task requires. The DM might use a different time scale depending on the context of the situation at hand. In a dungeon environment, the adventurers' movement happens on a scale of minutes. It takes them about a minute to creep down a long hallway, another minute to check for traps on the door at the end of the hall, and a good ten minutes to search the chamber beyond for anything interesting or valuable.

In a city or wilderness, a scale of hours is often more appropriate. Adventurers eager to reach the lonely tower at the heart of the forest hurry across those fifteen miles in just under four hours' time.

For long journeys, a scale of days works best. Following the road from Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep, the adventurers spend four uneventful days before a goblin ambush interrupts their journey.

In combat and other fast-paced situations, the game relies on rounds, a 6-second span of time.

So its mostly up to the DM exactly how much time passes, though it gives a few examples on how you would track time when its important.

Personally, I almost always default to a minute unless their task can be explicitly done as an action or its obviously quick. Reading a 3-word message obviously gets done instantaneously but using a portcullis' winch or picking a lock takes about a minute each.

Interestingly, searching an area for anything interesting or valuable apparently takes about 10 minutes, which is good to know.

[Tanarii]

I won't deny AngryGM has some good ideas to share, but reading through his articles can be a major slog at times with everything buried 6 feet deep in a wall of text and attitude. It's his gimmick, but so many times I look at it and think "just get to the point already"

The two key takeaways are:
1) 5e already has break points for tracking time, mostly because of rounds, spell durations, and rests. They are 6 sec, 1 min, 10 min, 1 hr, 8 hrs, 24 hrs.

2) time only matters if the players can easily feel it pass, and there are consequences for it passing.


(I like Angry but if he's wrong, his Schtick makes it a drag to read to figure out where he fell down. When he's right on the money it can be entertaining tho.)

[Zhorn]

If it at all help, I'm trying to steer away for the "make it up as you go" model for this, trying to hammer down a more set structure that will rely less on the precise narrative situation.
The video kane0 link in post #6 has a perfect example of what I'm looking at at the 3:39 mark with the Sequence of Play Per Turn.

Establish what every player is doing within a given round
resolve things that completed within that round
apply things that happen between each round

It's just a matter of locking down the timeframes used for rounds in different settings, and the timing on things that restrict them to existing on longer turns.
Such as the case with Teleportation Circle or Leomund's Tiny Hut with their 1 minute cast times. You CAN cast them in combat, but it'll take 10 turns to complete, and each turn has something the other creatures (be they allies or opponents) are doing.