Skipping ingame Time

[Cilvyn]

Hey people,

In my campaign i would like to skip like 1 year in game time. I would like to tell the players what happens in meantime without railroading their characters and without forcing them into situations.
Can I still have them have some influence in the game by rolling dies or RP simple situations? I would like to hear if someone has some xp with it, and what i should do.

[Tempest Fennac]

I'd recommend letting them decide, but it might be a better idea to avoid skipping a year ingame. Why do you want to do that?

[Quietus]

I haven't got a lot of experience with it, personally, but it does seem to me that it would work best with characters who either have a use for large amounts of downtime (read : craft skills), or characters who are well enough fleshed out to have RP goals they can take after. My druidess, for instance, is currently working to restore a swamp to the way it once was, before two armies destroyed it by fighting in it. She'd spend that year using as many of her spell slots as required for Plant Growth (overgrowth) and Purify Water (remove blood, guts, and other crap that's choking everything) so that the ecosystem can recover itself. She's well enough developed to have things she would *do* in a year's time, rather than "I sit in a tavern and drink/play songs, keeping the status quo in cash income".

[valadil]

Let them decide, but not in game time. Just send an email to everyone asking what they want to accomplish with a year of free time for their characters.

[shadzar]

I never did large time skips for a few reasons:

XP loss and downtime for characters. What are they doing and why did the party want to wait a year before continuing adventuring?
While this in previous editions could be because of healing time for severely injured characters, what is going on with this year for them?

How many new magic items do they have that the party has created in their downtime?

How many levels did they gain in that time?

Most importantly, why do you want to skip a year ahead?

[MickJay]

Purify Water (remove blood, guts, and other crap that's choking everything) so that the ecosystem can recover itself.

Well, she might want to remove the iron armor/weapons and other such stuff that was left there, but blood and guts make for a great fertilizer

What I don't really get is how the druids get a lot of spells that, while they're strongly linked with nature, actually do stuff that's not natural (like creating tons of plants in a few seconds). I mean, conflict and destruction it brings are all part of nature; if anything, they are more harmful to humans/humanoids than they are to nature as whole. Druid might want to clear up some of the debris, perhaps sow some seeds of plants that were destroyed (but isn't that already interfering with natural course of things?), but re-creating whole area to the state as it was before? Where's the room for evolution in that? In a devastated swampland, stronger and more resilient plants would survive, or they'd be the first to re-occupy the area (and that would be natural).


Um, topic, yes. A downtime is a good way to mark an end of a campaign or a story, players get an opportunity to pursue some activity, spend some of their wealth, rest, have fun, study, craft etc. It can be used to explain why someone is taking a level in a new class, or gets some fancy new feat next time they level up and so on. In some cases it gives a good opportunity to re-visit the areas they were active in the last time so the players can see that the good (or evil) they caused has long-term consequences and it also gives time for new plot hooks involving old contacts, friends or enemies to develop (there's nothing like finding ruins of a town the PCs saved earlier to get them going again).

In any case, I'd let the players decide what their characters did during that time and drop some plot hooks for them to pursue once the year is over; some letter with request for help, some rumours and so on. Bonus points if you give differnt sort of information to different players, while they all still point to the same situation they should go on solving next. Even better when they don't realize that from the start (or at all), then they'll think that you actually offering them a choice of adventures (or at least that the adventure is important and there's a lot of things going on).

[Cilvyn]

Well the city is overrun by zombies, and it will take ingame time to create an underground society. But that is totaly not part of the main plot and it will prolly take alot of sessions fighting useless bunshes of zombie minions (4.0) and stuff.. so i rather keep it intresting and let them play again when the underground society is finished. Meanwhile they ofcors slaughter alot of zombies and gain a level or 2. I think it will become booring if i let them play the whole thing out.. but i want them to have a oppertunity to make decissions like choosing sides ( they are somethimes capable of doing thing wich seems totally stupid or radicle) so they should be aloud to make choises.

Crafting and stuff sounds good..:)

[shadzar]

So you just want to remove the player interaction with the creation of the underground movement that is preparing to reclaim the city from the zombie invasion?

[Tempest Fennac]

I agree with shadzar; the PCs could go on diplomatic missions to get more assistance; that would avoid repetative fights while giving them something to do in game time.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Spend a session to run through the time period. No rolls, no detailed interaction; just ask them what they want to do, tell them what happens and what others do. It shouldn't take more than 2 hours, really.

[Devils_Advocate]

It might be best to let the players take the initiative with skipping forward and deciding how far to skip.

Say they're resting in the newly established underground base. You can say "I don't have anything planned to happen soon in-game, so do you guys want to skip forward in time?" And if they still want to play out some transactions or discussions or exploration, you can let them do that. But if they want to skip forward over days to months, you can allow that, too, and just ask them what they do in the intervening time.

The point being, to avoid railroading, let the players decide that they're beginning a series of routine activities whose details can safely be skipped over. After enough "So what do you do next?" with no plot hooks to follow, they will eventually commit their PCs to some indefinite and skippable course of action. Just give them the opportunity to finish up anything more involved that they want to do first.

[Talya]

My bunch of ne'er-do-well, scurvy brigand pirates is about to skip a year of game time after finishing a major quest arch in my PbP campaign metaplot. They all seem to be firmly on board with the whole "Arrr! We be pirates!" thing, so it's mostly an excuse to advance them all from levels 5 to 7 (or maybe even 8), give them some more wealth to work with, and move on to the much more difficult challenges with the continuing plot.

[RavKal]

Only time I've done it involved teleporting the party THROUGH time, because that removes them from the stream....if they're physically there, they can impact lives of people, so you're in a tricky position.

[shadzar]

'Nother question...

Since the possibility exists for the party to join either side, what happens should the party side with the zombies prior to the completion of the underground society, or if they wanted to and they have already skipped ahead in time and can no longer make that choice?

I am not saying it won't work, but make sure your party doesn't want to take part in that years worth of time, and know what went on during it that you can tell them of the changes, and even what they did, if they were stuck in this city the entire time as things went on around them.

Morbidly curious as to how it all works out.

[mr.fizzypop]

Maybe just split it up into every few months instead of a year. Whenever something exiting happens or the PCs are needed, the characters play, otherwise you could just skip the rest. It'd be kind of like a TV show, where the viewers only see the interesting stuff, while the boring parts are skipped.