Time Saved is Content Gained

Need me one of them light-up floaty things

For some reason this week, I have been thinking about savings time. Can’t figure out why, but I’m going to enjoy the new, later sunset while I ruminate. 

Daily Savings 

One great way to consume more content while we play is to keep your next action queued up. 

Once you discharge your action for a Round or Turn, immediately start thinking about your next one. That way when it comes around to you again, you can tell us what your figure is doing right away. 

If each player does this, we can shave seconds or minutes off of each gameplay loop, and this time adds up as the night unravels. 

Weekly Savings 

Another good idea is for the several players to communicate during the first part of the RL week and come up with questions they want their players to have answers to when they reconvene. This gives the Ref a chance either to research or to plan what those answers are. 

Obviously there will be some info each figure will seek, and many times this info will be secret. Submit these questions to the Ref separately of course. 

Some of these questions will have immediate resolutions because they will be things the characters will already know (but the players and Ref may yet not know.) Some will require offscreen acts from the figures, or even a quest for the correct sage. Finally, some will form the basis of further onscreen adventures for the whole party. 

Installing Disease Procedures

Once you've got a calendar and the players are used to switching their characters in and out for whatever reasons, you can institute disease rules. I really don't know whether I'm going to use these long term or not but I want to test them out with my guys in the coming weeks.

On the Calends, each player checks disease for each of his PCs and NPCs. One check a month is fine. If they come up sick, there was probably some incubation period.

A Mild illness lasts 1d3 weeks. It precludes adventuring and fighting in wars, but not other activities.
A Severe illness precludes all activities. It lasts 1d2 weeks and taxes the patient 50% of his Hit Points, which will then recover normally. It is followed by 1d2 weeks as Mild.
A Terminal illness lasts 1d12 days, then demands a Save vs. Poison each morning, or die. Effects of a Terminal disease are permanent until healed through magic or something similarly fantastic.

If at any time STR, or DEX reach 0, the character is in a coma at zero Hit Points.
If at any time INT or CON reach 0, the character is dead.
If at any time WIS reaches zero, the character cannot receive meaningful sensory information.
If at any time CHA reaches zero, the character has lost the ability to communicate whatsoever.

Cure Disease can fix almost any disease. A hedge wizard, witch, druid or priest may have knowledge that will help a character or even cure them. These services come at a price. 

Running Downtime

Once the several players get the hang of it, downtime is as satisfying as open expedition season is. As a reminder, here is the world calendar. 

Orange is Harvest, Yellow is Haven, Pink is Holiday, Blue is Open, Green is Sunday and Purple is War. 

During Harvest and on Sunday, every injured character heals a hit point and disease-like conditions progress. They may also hear rumors. No action is permitted. 

During Holidays, hit points and conditions progress; the players may hear rumors; and they will interact with townsfolk. This means they can have safe, in-town adventures and advance subplots. Merchants will have their best stuff and enough money to buy the most valuable items from players. It is also the best time and place to recruit henchmen and specialists and to disseminate information (true or false.)

During War, players will hear revelations but not of a personal nature, for any and all couriers will be carrying military information. An exception to this is if a PC is called to his lord’s Court to join the war council or diplomatic effort. 

During Haven, the weather is too bad to go on expeditions. Players can do anything except proper dungeon or hex adventuring. This is the time for romance, politics, and the deaths of characters in the story, PC and NPC alike. The characters can also write scrolls and make other magic items. 

During Open season, the players can do anything including adventure, but are still bound by the structure of Sundays and the allure of Holiday festivals.

One job of the Referee (or alternatively the calendarian) is to let the table know what seasons are coming. Letting the players know will help them better plan their character’s activities. 

Don’t be afraid to run some downtime events away from the table, especially one-on-one events. Use texts, calls, emails or in-person visits. 

Downtime is great because the Referee really gets to hand the world over to the players. “What is your character doing?” is a much more open-ended question thence. 

If Haven (especially) is coming up, give the players plenty of notice, preferably at the end of the session prior to the season change. 

When downtime comes, remind the several players what the possible game activities are. Then ask someone to offer his character’s course of action. Once the players get the hang of it, they will have lists ready to go for each of their characters. 

When you give them advance warning and then again when the calendar changes, the Ref will recapitulate as follows. 

Frame the story so far. 

Clarify story hooks. 

Define downtime options again. Here are some you can mention:

• Build a Stronghold
• Craft Items
• Gain Renown (perhaps throw money around, suck up to the Lord, or undertake public works.)
• Practice a Profession
• Recuperate 
• Research
• Perform Sacred Rites
• Plan a Heist
• Run a Business
• Seek Romance
• Sell Magic Items or Valuables 
• Sow Rumors
• Squander
• Train Retainers
• Train to Your Next Level

Such downtime activities help tie characters to the story.

The season will change again of course, but you will find, more and more, the players want their characters to do more than just kill the orc and take his pie. 

HENCH FOR NO MAN!

When your PC is unable to join in the adventure, send his henchmen instead. Make one the captain of the troupe and play that one as if he was a PC proper. 

Allow him to earn XP at the PC rate rather than at the henchman’s customary half-rate. The other henchmen gain XP as normal ,and each of them gain treasure at the henchman rate, captain included. 

This option should not be available for any hirelings your character may employ, no matter how skilled. 

On Time

Gary famously said that you can’t have a meaningful campaign without strict timekeeping. He had his reasons and they were good reasons: an open table with up to 50 players playing in the same campaign world, dropping in and out as their schedule permitted. He has to keep strict time to keep the events of the campaign world straight for all of them! 

Even if your campaign has different pressures and challenges than his early campaigns did, you will benefit from strict timekeeping as well. 

In my campaign, we observe several time periods. 

The Round is one minute long. This is good for fights, chases, holding your breath, beating the clock. 

The Turn is ten minutes. This is good for exploration and problem-solving, torches and wandering monsters.

The Day is good for overland travel. It measures off healing, spell recovery, and brewing a potion among other things. 

The week is good for spells and spell research. In my game, there are quite a few weeks during which adventuring is quite impossible, due to festivals, harvests, wars, diseases, bad omens, terrible weather, and simply healing up. Characters can spend some of those weeks doing other things like courting maidens and writing scrolls, for instance.

The season is helpful in the same way weeks are. 

The year is very important because characters age and the state of the world at large will change. Favorite NPCs will die. PCs will retire and die. Babies who were born will come of age, and become potential PCs or helpful NPCs themselves. 

I keep a calendar for this reason, with regular events and chances for unusual ones. There are “blue” weeks which are good for adventuring; “yellow” weeks which are good for town events; and “red” weeks and days, where characters are all going to be indisposed. 

For in-game time, once into the dungeon and out again is usually one day, but sometimes longer if the several characters camp out somewhere. 

No one moves or works on Sundays, Christian or not. Exertion is forbidden across Aluvia. There are other days when activity is strictly prohibited for religious reasons as well. 

I’ve tried renaming the weekdays and months. It’s unnecessarily complicated. Saying January and Tuesday is much easier on the brain and doesn’t break verisimilitude. 

NEXT TIME: Character Age and Aging 

Cellphones and Dragons

Not like this. 

 “Make a perception check.”

You look at your phone and your referee just sent you this text. 

“Wut”

“Have your man make a perception check.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“We’re headed out to the dungeon and I want to know if you see something.”

“What? Now?”

“Just do it.”

“I thought we weren’t playing until Thursday? We were going to go to the dungeon.”

“Yeah. No. This is better. When we get together on Thursday you will already be at the dungeon. If you live through this.”

“Live through what?”

“Just make a perception check.”

Overland travel might actually be better handled away from the table. Might. Might not. But there are times when you do want to handle yourself away from the table. Downtime and travel are important to the game but tedious time sinks when you’re playing. 

This technique could also inject interest and drama. Why am I rolling perception? Is there a set piece developing? The anticipation is it’s own reward. 

Using the cellphone at the table:

Obviously don’t be doing Draft Kings or Tinder. But use it for game stuff. This is good. This works. 

Maybe you’re speaking in a language only one other PC knows. This happened to me when my son and I happened to be playing dwarfs a few years back. We would tell jokes to each other and laugh and the other players were out of the loop. Granted this can get old if you’re doing it all the time and for no good reason, but a little here and there can add to the experience. 

This can also substitute for the Ref passing you a note for your man or God forbid pulling you away from the table for a minute while the other players sit and make dice towers. 

A third reason to use your phone is to grab hints from online. What’s the terminal speed of a falling elf? What should I name this sword (name generators are a great tool)? 

I’m sure there are other reasons too. But the key is to use the tools you have to advance the game experience.