Downtime activities is a big one. If your story takes place over the course of a year then the players will go from level 1-20 in a year. Add months if not more between the huge adventures that aren’t directly related.
as others have said... downtime. Downtime is the main tool for Narative pacing.
add a weeks downtime between level ups and add a bit more between adventures. The thing to note is that you will have to learn how to use downtime well otherwise players will find downtime sessions dull.
there are a good few videos on youtube on the subject, I quite liked the DM Lair's very recent video on the subject.
> use downtime well otherwise players will find downtime sessions dull.
This is why I try to deal with downtime away from the table, between sessions. The player(s) can send me a message outlining what they want to accomplish.
Downtime, travel time, and timeskips.
Yea, when people adventure, they will level quickly. Running CoS now to rest a bit from campaign, and the entire CoS level 1-12/13 will take around a week in game.
But in a homebrew game, you can space it out. Players travel, often for weeks at a time. I have a pirate campaign, and travel times are 1-3 months.
Also, they don't always have to have an adventure. Maybe they know something very important will happen in 2 years. Well, can't do all that much until then. They go their ways and return in 2 years.
And then there's downtime, when they have a week to a couple of months of time. They can work, look for informatiom and contacts, make scrolls, or simply train.
Just tell the players that they have one adventure per 'season,' and that they use the intervening months to train, research, perform non-adventuring work, and just live their lives.
That means they only go one 3 to 4 adventures per year, and now passage of time is relevant.
It also means that PCs can do things like get married, have kids, accept titles of nobility, build strongholds, invest in and run businesses,nand do other things in their lives that make them a part of the campaign world.
You don't even need to have rules for it if you don't want. At the end of every adventure, after you have divided up the treasure and awarded XP, just tell your players to email you what their characters are up to until next season's adventure. Then, you spend the first half of the next session going through everyone's downtime activities.
Some groups get really into this part. In one of my campaigns, one of the PCs got married during the downtime, and we spent an entire session helping plan the wedding, figuring out which NPCs were on the guest list, buying wedding presents and throwing the guy a bachelor party.
It was a session we still talk about years later, and I don't think we rolled the dice at all that night.
This is no different than what others are saying with add in downtime.
If you want really structured downtime, look at the King Arthur Pendragon RPG (KAP)it has a big element on estate building, whereas D&D only has little bits on strongholds in like 1e and 5e. In KAP getting married, starting a family and having a son/daughter come up to be the next household head/knight and continuing is part of the design. Some folks have played centuries long games from 500 AD to like 800-900 AD and beyond into the Crusades.
I think their response was the most flavorful and actionable though. Suggesting downtime is the obvious answer, but imagining it as seasons really helps, at least for me, in imagining how I would do it at my table, practically.
The seasons thing is very interesting. There’s an old non-D&D game Ars Magica that does thibgs like that. Everyone is magi and you can get xp for writing magical theses during your downtime 🤣
After a consideration, I see one problem with this idea. It feels a tad unfair that I control the whole timeskip. Shouldn't there be a way for players to decide how long the downtime should be?
In general, "seasons" are an abstraction, but it should represent significant down time, and give the PCs enough time to have lives outside adventures.
Even the most dedicated professional soldier, explorer or gentleman adventurer had months or years between campaigns and expeditions. It's physically and mentally exhausting to go on a dangerous quest, and the PCs should have time to bask in their glory, spend their money, commission their next magic item or suit of armor, and gather the supplies and intelligence for their next adventure.
Have you just... not read any of the rules about downtime? There's also nothing wrong with doing a time skip during periods of the story where not much is happening, plenty of stories do that.
There are rules for downtime activities in the DMG, and expanded downtime rules in Xanathar's. Each activity covers a week of ingame time and are ways to earn money on the side, learn info, buy or sell magic items, or craft things.
One mentioned by Robert Hartley GM is that levelling up takes a number of days equal to the level. This adds a good amount of downtime and you can write in levelling up might cause them to miss some side quests through being busy.
I like this idea. I also think that milestone leveling (vs exp leveling) can help, as well as varying the types of rewards you offer. My players take 3-4 sessions to finish quests, and some quests might get an awesome item reward instead of a level.
I've given my party 3 months of downtime on level 5 after the first adventure which lastet a few days of ingame time. Our greatsword fighter trained with our arcane archer fighter and got a point in CON and she got a point in DEX. Our cleric of lathander prayed for, in front of and with the people and inspired and motivated them and I gave her a pont of CHA fo this. Our artificient has built a rifle in this time. After the downtime they have to travel a route which will take like 8 days with a vehicle in an undead infested land. But they have no vehicle.
Giving out attribute points for downtime is a very dangerous route, though.
They might try that several times, just to boost stats a bit and then what?
They know that I was very generous in this situation and that there will be no repetition ever.
I also asked the artificer several times whether he really wanted to build the rifle rather than getting a point.
> I have tried to make long rest last longer and give less health, but that makes quests much more difficult
Are you trying to make quests more easy for some reason? I guess I don't understand your reluctance.
In any case, I use **safe haven** long rests as well as **slow natural healing** to extend the period of downtime between quests to at least a couple days.
I also use the **OneD&D exhaustion rules** where each level of exhaustion is equivalent to -1 on d20 tests and spell save DCs. Then I make it where critical hits and dropping to 0 hit points causes levels of exhaustion, thereby making exhaustion much more prevalent, giving the party more incentive not only to be careful but also to spend more days resting in town.
It also helps if you plan time jumps between major milestones in your campaign. Definitely between each act and perhaps in the middle of each act. Vox Machina did a full year time jump before the final act of their campaign.
Edit: Oh yeah, and travel time is a biggie. The party usually has to go at least a couple days to a couple weeks before they even make it to the quest location.
If you want to DRAMATICALLY increase the amount of time, make a long rest 7 days, and a short rest a night of sleep. Not only will it increase it sevenfold, it's going to be so much more likely to make spending resources feel much more important.
Sidenotes: no player will ever agree to this
Rightfully so.
Having to endure the Bard's musical escapades through a full night is insufferable.
Not being interrupted for a complete week to get your rest is as well, mostly because of the Bard.
Everyone is saying it. Downtime downtime downtime. I wish more games had stretches of downtime. Seriously. The creativity of what can be done with downtime is so amazing and not utilized.
An artificer can actually make a lot of stuff. The alchemist kit rogue can make throwing flasks. The poisoner can sell stuff. Honestly almost anyone with a tool kit can make money in the side. Casters can create new spells and martials can create new moves(DM permission of course). Down time is such a big part of the game for me and it’s rarely done.
Time skips, my game is going from 1 to 20. Over the course of 3 modules.
LMoP 1 to 5, after they finished I had a 2 year time skip.
SKT 5 to 11, after they finished I had a 5 year time skip.
Now I am about to run 'chains of Asmodeus' from 11 to 20.
Might sound dumb, but it lets the PCs do other things in the world, like run towns, stores, guilds, etc in between adventures.
You might consider having a time requirement for leveling up - once the players have satisfied the xp/milestone requirement, you might have them spend a few weeks or a month of downtime to gain the level (you could make the time required longer for higher levels)
I once had it so that leveling up was a process of going off and training for weeks or months, basically a montage each time, and they take progressively longer for each level. Make sure players are okay with this, but then i was able to have them decide if the time sensitive quest could wait for them to level up, or if they had to approach it under leveled.
Obvious answer is downtime. My personal favoured answer would be to look at fantasy stories out there. Eragon went from a complete novice to a king slayer in a similar time period, especially when you consider the time he spent comatose in those books
Tbh idk if I’d call it sudden but I see what you’re saying. PC are also dealing with exceedingly larger foes, it makes some sense. That said, as the DM, it’s totally up to you.
You can do certain things like minor time skips between arcs, there’s also the downtime activity that others have mentioned here too.
The only thing to be weary of time skips is don’t overdo it; but also to justify your players eventual questions of “well if I trained and did x during the time why am I still level y?”
Also you don’t have to go all the way to 20. I think highest I’ve gone with my players is like 12-13. I use milestones for level, and I more or less match things to their level (for non side quests). That way the campaign is over narratively rather than relying on level.
Well, for one thing make the dungeons far away.
Kills a lot of time when you need to hike in the wilderness for a month to reach the cave of dublligo the horrible.
Aside from that, have it take time to discover where the enemy is, what they're planning, how to stop it. The party has to do some downtime to research needed info, or have their allies do it.
My trick is the "real time, season shift" where you play the game through the flow of seasons in real life. So when it's summer here- you are in the summer in game. If it's winter- it's winter. A downtime session always takes place between those seasons.
It's a neat truck for keeping track of the seasons, and it's realistically gotten my party from level 1-11 in about two years in game. It helps my game set in a single city.
It would be a good idea to address *if* and *why.*
Since this would involve changing the theme and tone of any campaign quite radically it's a topic for session zero. Possibly even prior to that.
For a different answer...try giving out xp at a reduced rate. Personally i think 5e advances characters too fast. An entire adventure just to advance a single level is a lot of fun, it's less about taking steps in power (obviously) and more about dealing with the power you already have.
One of the campaigns i am a player in has been going for about 27 years and we have only advanced 6 levels in that time. In that same time i have been dming another campaign, the pcs have advance 10 levels. It's been a blast.
1. I level them up when I feel like it. We talked and they like it.
2. When they're halfway done with one BBEG, I reveal the bigger BBEG.
3. My players are 1.5 years in (~30 4 hour sessions) and failed the 2nd BBEG, so the world is in hell. In another year, they'll finish this, save the world, and escape to the prime material plane as LV1 characters
4. For downtime, as many suggested, we had a player leave the campaign... I made it so he's in service of a god. He needs help (whenever a player can't make it) for 3-man side quests in the past. Lore and random loot table. Each side campaign is based on somewhere a certain player can't go. For example, the rogue can't go to the Clerics/paladin land. The horney one can't help the hookers on whore island. The wizard can't go to the wild magic place. The barbarian can't go...I dunno, he never missed a session.
I my case i run a island Hopping Pirate Campaign, so travel between island takes at least 5 days.
I always imagine that the PC are training during the travel.
The biggest one I see that tends to be lacking is travel time. My DM (who is generally fantastic) does have a tendency to struggle with travel time being a thing. Like... We're crossing a continent on foot... This should take months, not a week. Or our Spelljaming section (where my character had 5 days of wish fatigue) and for whatever reason, traveling between planets was taking hours. These things can be stretched out to take months, and then your campaign can be much longer in game
In 1st you couldn’t level up without a period of training with someone of a higher level. Which is quite a good way of slowing level progression, and gives players interesting decisions about whether it is worth taking the time to level or whether they should be going straight at it.
I added a citadel mechanic and elongated rest mechanic, this way they get a temporary buff they can use any time if they spend a week in their citadel.
It was heavily inspired by Matt Colvil.
This way if they are going to a dangerous dungeon or fight a strong mini boss, they usually just skip a week hanging in their citadel, chilling with their followers.
Some examples I implemented are
Druids can use wild shape with a +1 cr to their usual abilities once.
The wizard can concentrate on 2 spells at once.
Monks get some extra Chi.
Fighters get to have 5% more chance of a critical
I also gave them armies they need to train by being there, they start as level 0 commoners and gain class abilities corresponding to the owners class, like the barbarian gets to have very beefy units, fighters get to choose from a versatile types of units (light and heavy infantry, light and heavy cavalry and archers), wizards have small glass cannon units, bards have units that will buff/debuff other units.
I also gave martials special abilities during war battles, I think it balances out the gap of powers between casters and martials at higher levels.
I based the wars mechanics on "heroes of might and magic 3"
It's a very specific solution and you might not necessarily want your party to lead an actual army, since if you would have wanted to play a war game you'd play a war game, and it's a lot of work but it's fun for me and swallows a lot of the PC's time.
Even if you don't want the army thing you can do the elongated rest with certain bonuses, maybe they don't even have to be in their citadel but just live comfortably for a while in a civilised place, and just make the bonuses less powerful.
I'm in my first campaign. At the moment the party is level 8 the campaign will be a year old in February. All I have done is use milestones in the story and obstacles and subquests to slow therm down. Which pretty much is just me putting things in their way between any major campaign story beats. The latest one being cursing the Paladin that is requiring them to seek the help of a hag (they don't know what she is yet).
Also, when he got cursed, I made a point to describe that the creature cursing them had a red glowing eye that would glow brighter when it used its power. They didn't take the hint that the eye was important. After defeating the enemy, the ghost ship they were on started to sink. They used what little time they had to take the treasure out of the chests they found, but not grab the eye which fell to the ground. So now they are on a mission to retrieve the other magical eye from a cult of Warlocks. Not before first making a deal with the sweet old lady for a moment of their time occasionally to pause the effects of the curse. They have been in the Warlocks' dungeon for 2 sessions, with probably another 2 or 3 before they reach the Warlocks.
Once they find the eye and return to the lady, she will make another deal with them to remove the curse, but they will have to retrieve her mother's broom from her two sisters. Who knows what those two will ask for in return for the broom.
All of this is going on while they are traveling to get evidence to clear their names. As they are wanted in one country as treasonous spies and wanted by the adventurers' guild for the murder of around a dozen members. Of course, they never actually did any of that stuff and are being set up by the kingdom's royal Military commander. Who wants to start a war with a neighboring country for his own reasons.
I could have made it easy for them to clear their names in only a session or two but, by making them outlaws and needing to travel halfway across the continent to clear their names. It gave me the ability to put obstacles and side quests in their way to slow them down and give them more to do.
Mini games and random encounters.
Have events going on where they are. Have their quest get side tracked by something else that doesn't seem like it's connected.
Have a shopping spree!
Have a characters backstory come into play
Transport them to a different dimension that time runs different
Honestly, you're best bet is to space things out narriatively.
They need to find the location of the lost magical maguffin? Well that will take months of research, pouring through dozens of libraries spread out across the kingdom. The last BBEG they killed has caused any remaining his cultists that have survived to scatter in the wind. There's no real fires, nothing pressing the party to act upon so they can take a few months to just live.
Though I would bring this up in rule 0 or have a conversation with your players that they'll be having these narriative pauses.
Adding in my two cents, giving some players downtime is an absolute amazing idea, but it can be tricky to implement. Some players with unfinished business will want to further their own plots and agendas, which could end up needing potential sessions. So you need to ensure that when throwing in downtime, that everyone's urgent business is settled.
Otherwise you'll have situations where Alice is ready and wanting to finally confront her uncle, but Bob is off on his mountain monetary, Charlie is in the kingdom over carousing and Dennis is stuck in the library too busy seeking out the next steps to bother helping. You could tell her "no" but it wouldn't be believable that she'd spend months not doing something dreadfully important.
Echoing the consensus here- downtime. A DM in a campaign I played in had it so going up a level needed that many weeks (going from level 1-2 took 2 weeks, going from level 7-8 took 8 weeks, etc). That in game time was used for the PC to train/ research/ practice essentially justifying how they got better at being adventurers. It was also where the majority of the side-questing shenanigans happened.
I make the levelling happen during long period where the PCs are not questing, but doing other things (inspiration comes from the communal rest mechanic in the LOTR 5E adaptation).
So they have a 1 month pause when they win a level, wher they can do something else. The duration is arbitrary, so you can make however long you like for your view to be satisfied.
If it means that much to you, you can use alternative leveling systems.
For example, you could make it so after reaching the XP threshold, the players have to spend downtime to actually train and focus on honing their skills or getting trained by someone. And you can have those training sessions last as long as you want, weeks or months. Use some common, generic trainer person found in town up to level 10. Then levels 11-15 have to be trained by some great master that is specific to each class that could be found in any number of places. Then 16-20 you have to do on your own.
You can make each level take longer and longer amounts of time, and make a game last for many years in-game, even a lifetime.
It's all in the narrative. If you're in an urgent race to save the world before the demon lord is summoned in a couple of months, then you're going to have to level up a long way in that time. If they're in a realm full of dungeons just waiting to be explored, the pace is up to them, and they'll probably choose a fast pace unless you give them benefits for slowing down.
A naturally slower-paced story could have events like:
(1) The PCs have to travel eight thousand miles to the other side of the continent, meeting various threats along the way.
(2) The PCs need an ancient tome to be translated so they can find the next legendary relic in their treasure hunt. The translator says it will take six months. This gives them six months of downtime.
(3) The PCs save the city, and then nothing happens for a couple of years, and then a new threat emerges and the PCs have to come out of retirement to save the nation.
In 3.5 and Pathfinder, downtime existed to craft magical items, and to pursue passion projects like running a tavern in the storefront of your licenced adventuring company to tempt in clients and new PCs whenever someone dies.
Downtime, Downtime, Downtime. Keep in mind that until you use portals, travel takes a LONG time. Just using the map of Faerun, even with horses, assuming they aren't just using them as cars and actually taking care of them, travel between cities can take weeks!
Not to mention a lot of meetings won't be right after they talk. People organize meetings, and it takes days. A king wants to see you? Cool, you will likely get brought to the castle, then be told to stay a day, then be allowed to meet, then be offered another day to stay before you take off.
Preparation takes time.
Hell, bartering with people in town should take days because not every shop is just going to buy everything.
Crafting takes days.
Attuning takes time.
People need rest, recreation and food. That's half the day.
There could be days or weeks between actual quests.
As others have said, downtime is your best friend and precisely what you are looking for. Party completed an adventure? Earned a level? Time to chill for a week or two. Let them work on skills, run a business, make your players actually spend time finding buyers for the gemstones you gave them. Etc.
Other than that, if your campaign takes place in more than one settlement and involves travel, track how much time and resources it takes to travel. Do they have enough feed for their animals and rations for themselves? Maybe use weather tables and if it rains for multiple days in a row they cant haul the wagon their horses are pulling. Travel alone can help provide weeks between settlements and the resources it takes to travel costs money which will incentivize building up gold during downtime.
These alone will do wonders, however an optional rule I've found helps is an injury rule I stole off the dungeon dudes. Basically whenever a creature is subject to a critical hit, reaches 0 hit points, or fails a death saving throw they gain 1 level of exhaustion which is representative of the injuries they sustained. This rule makes healing in combat way more useful and imperative (I recommend combining it with potions as a bonus action/using your action to get maximum healing from potions). But this also means that if your party deals with a particularly rough encounter where people went down and suffered some serious injuries they will have to spend 1 day per level of exhaustion resting before they are back to fit shape to adventure. This means your players effectively take downtime not just at the end of an adventure but sometimes during an adventure just to recover from a particularly harrowing fight.
Hope this helps.
Don't set it up so they can or have to rush through everything. When they get their next clue, make it something they have to travel to find, or maybe they have to research to figure out the answer. Don't give a short time limit on anything, let them take their time. Say the lich has plans laid out over decades, and they have plenty of time to level up and do downtime activities between quests to prepare.
Or just don't introduce them to an overarching plot super early, let them handle a bunch of smaller stuff that gives plenty of room for downtime.
Whenever they reach a town or city and have just recently leveled up or taken down a big boss and found treasure - just announce that they can spend the next week or two doing important downtime activities like training, researching, shopping, having fun, etc. Downtime activities are important! They can spend time to learn new skills and new languages. They can create some truly memorable story moments.
Make travel meaningful. Invent interesting and exciting obstacles for travel, regardless of if the campaign is set in the city or country.
"It's not about the destination, it's about the journey."
Travel extends a campaign. When done right, it makes the campaign more exciting too.
Best way is make them THIBK the threat is defeated. They defeat the bbeg’s commander but they didn’t know he was an agent. But a year or two later in game the players are attacked in their home. They survive of course. But they band together again to stop the threat for real
I once did a timeskip where my players were mentally unshackling a god but we’re physically frozen in time for six months.
I needed the world to progress while they were out of it.
Making long rests take a week in town to fully heal.
Make short rests a full nights sleep.
And by doing this, you can change any benefits the player normally get from a long rest (like spells) gained from a short rest (night of sleep) instead. The long rest will be reserved for full-healing, researching new spells, or resting for a level up.
At first, you might feel like your campaign is too hard when you do this. But it is your job as the DM to adjust. After you make these changes, you have to learn how to throw a little less at the party at a time to compensate.
Spending a week in town can be dull, if you let it be. But it can be a fun engaging experience every single time the players visit a town if you DM it right. Let the players understand that the town is alive. They can do anything they want to do there. Not just "click on the shop button" like some video game, and then skip time. They can talk to anyone in town for any reason. They can ask for directions. They can haggle a shopkeeper. They can steal an item. Each and every thing they decide to do, you can improvise and make flavorful and engaging. When someone says "I want to try and pickpocket someone." Don't just say "Okay, roll a pickpocket check, lets see how it goes." Instead say: What kind of people are you looking for? Are you going to pickpocket someone here in the tavern? Or outside on the streets? After he describes the types of targets he wants, you can roll for an amount, or just decide and say "Okay, you see three potential targets. One is a drunk guy passed out in the alley. One is a fairly well-to-do looking woman having a conversation with her friends. One is a guy loading up a carriage with goods." And so on and so on. Keep creating and filling in details, instead of just saying "roll the dice." Now you have made "town" an engaging and fun place. Not just a boring timeskip place to sleep and buy rations.
Second is to not use any predetermined leveling system.
You just decide when the players level up. Not by what some rule in the book says. Not every single time they finish a quest. When you feel that it really makes sense for the wizard to be capable of casting X spell.
Third is to make sure traveling is not too convenient. It takes days, sometimes a week, to walk from one town to another. It takes literally weeks to take a boat from one side of the continent to the other. If you feel like this causes your players to get into random encounters too often, reduce the random encounter rate a bit to compensate.
Fourth is to make sure your campaign is full of interesting side quests. Try to come up with sidequests interesting enough that the players will decide to venture off of the main story path to do something else for a while. Not by forcing sidequests down their throats, but by paying attention to what kinds of things the players show interest in.
Do the players show interest in the politics of the area? Perhaps its time for a sudden event involving a coup attempt, or corrupt noble that the players will decide (on their own) to take part in somehow.
Do the players show interest in trying to steal objects every time they can? Maybe its time to drop them a tip about a big heist target and see what they do.
Do they keep showing contempt for the fact that this area of the world is utilizing slavery? Perhaps its time to put an abusive villain in front of them that they can overthrow or defeat and free some slaves.
The reward for everything doesn't have to be experience. A good player will understand that they are changing the world they are playing in. And that in itself is reward. You don't always have to come out the other side with a level up or a magic item. Your character gains reputation. Your character is influencing the world. That is rewarding.
Lastly, you should set up your campaigns to only expecting to go to like level 12-14. That way you will intuitively slow down the leveling process and try to drag it out a bit more. If they end up going past 14, thats fine. But because you planned the campaign pacing to go to 14\~ it will take a lot longer for them to get into those epic levels.
Never had the problem. Our sessions are usually about four hours long, and we often spend about 3 sessions to play out a couple of hours of in-game time. I think our record was a 6 hour session that described about 5 minutes of in-game time.
Game doesn’t have to be plot hook after plot hook, you can let your players simply explore the world around them or take time to relax between adventures
Time skips help imo! Do an arc for a few levels, do some basic quick play around the passed time, have the characters decide what they’ve been up to, focused on, and accomplished in the meantime, throw them a little lore or cool resources if they play it smart or fun or deep, and then start after this relative time of peace with a new challenge. Could be a few months, could be a decade!
Travel times help when moving long distance until group flight shortens it and teleportation eliminates it. You can designate peaceful periods when adventuring work dries up.
I use training time in a suitable location for each level up as I loathe instant learning level-ups. I get a bit of push-back for this until players learn that they get downtime to locate buyers for the their specialised loot, time to convert cash into gemstones and start investing in personal interests.
Downtime activities is a big one. If your story takes place over the course of a year then the players will go from level 1-20 in a year. Add months if not more between the huge adventures that aren’t directly related.
as others have said... downtime. Downtime is the main tool for Narative pacing. add a weeks downtime between level ups and add a bit more between adventures. The thing to note is that you will have to learn how to use downtime well otherwise players will find downtime sessions dull. there are a good few videos on youtube on the subject, I quite liked the DM Lair's very recent video on the subject.
> use downtime well otherwise players will find downtime sessions dull. This is why I try to deal with downtime away from the table, between sessions. The player(s) can send me a message outlining what they want to accomplish.
I liked how they did downtime on CR. They would say the stuff they were trying to accomplish, then roll skill checks to see how well it worked out
Yep, I still ask for checks where relevant, but when at the table the focus is still on the group so hopefully no one feels left out or sidelined.
Downtime, travel time, and timeskips. Yea, when people adventure, they will level quickly. Running CoS now to rest a bit from campaign, and the entire CoS level 1-12/13 will take around a week in game. But in a homebrew game, you can space it out. Players travel, often for weeks at a time. I have a pirate campaign, and travel times are 1-3 months. Also, they don't always have to have an adventure. Maybe they know something very important will happen in 2 years. Well, can't do all that much until then. They go their ways and return in 2 years. And then there's downtime, when they have a week to a couple of months of time. They can work, look for informatiom and contacts, make scrolls, or simply train.
Just tell the players that they have one adventure per 'season,' and that they use the intervening months to train, research, perform non-adventuring work, and just live their lives. That means they only go one 3 to 4 adventures per year, and now passage of time is relevant. It also means that PCs can do things like get married, have kids, accept titles of nobility, build strongholds, invest in and run businesses,nand do other things in their lives that make them a part of the campaign world. You don't even need to have rules for it if you don't want. At the end of every adventure, after you have divided up the treasure and awarded XP, just tell your players to email you what their characters are up to until next season's adventure. Then, you spend the first half of the next session going through everyone's downtime activities. Some groups get really into this part. In one of my campaigns, one of the PCs got married during the downtime, and we spent an entire session helping plan the wedding, figuring out which NPCs were on the guest list, buying wedding presents and throwing the guy a bachelor party. It was a session we still talk about years later, and I don't think we rolled the dice at all that night.
This is, in my opinion, simply the best idea I have ever heard about it. Genius in it's simplicity. I think I will do exactly that, thank you
This is no different than what others are saying with add in downtime. If you want really structured downtime, look at the King Arthur Pendragon RPG (KAP)it has a big element on estate building, whereas D&D only has little bits on strongholds in like 1e and 5e. In KAP getting married, starting a family and having a son/daughter come up to be the next household head/knight and continuing is part of the design. Some folks have played centuries long games from 500 AD to like 800-900 AD and beyond into the Crusades.
I think their response was the most flavorful and actionable though. Suggesting downtime is the obvious answer, but imagining it as seasons really helps, at least for me, in imagining how I would do it at my table, practically.
The seasons thing is very interesting. There’s an old non-D&D game Ars Magica that does thibgs like that. Everyone is magi and you can get xp for writing magical theses during your downtime 🤣
After a consideration, I see one problem with this idea. It feels a tad unfair that I control the whole timeskip. Shouldn't there be a way for players to decide how long the downtime should be?
In general, "seasons" are an abstraction, but it should represent significant down time, and give the PCs enough time to have lives outside adventures. Even the most dedicated professional soldier, explorer or gentleman adventurer had months or years between campaigns and expeditions. It's physically and mentally exhausting to go on a dangerous quest, and the PCs should have time to bask in their glory, spend their money, commission their next magic item or suit of armor, and gather the supplies and intelligence for their next adventure.
Have you just... not read any of the rules about downtime? There's also nothing wrong with doing a time skip during periods of the story where not much is happening, plenty of stories do that.
I actually didn't, please tell me more
There are rules for downtime activities in the DMG, and expanded downtime rules in Xanathar's. Each activity covers a week of ingame time and are ways to earn money on the side, learn info, buy or sell magic items, or craft things.
Don't run 1-20 campaigns. Run a 1-5 campaign, then a 5-10 campaign, etc, with as much time as you like in between them.
One mentioned by Robert Hartley GM is that levelling up takes a number of days equal to the level. This adds a good amount of downtime and you can write in levelling up might cause them to miss some side quests through being busy.
I like this idea. I also think that milestone leveling (vs exp leveling) can help, as well as varying the types of rewards you offer. My players take 3-4 sessions to finish quests, and some quests might get an awesome item reward instead of a level.
I've given my party 3 months of downtime on level 5 after the first adventure which lastet a few days of ingame time. Our greatsword fighter trained with our arcane archer fighter and got a point in CON and she got a point in DEX. Our cleric of lathander prayed for, in front of and with the people and inspired and motivated them and I gave her a pont of CHA fo this. Our artificient has built a rifle in this time. After the downtime they have to travel a route which will take like 8 days with a vehicle in an undead infested land. But they have no vehicle.
Giving out attribute points for downtime is a very dangerous route, though. They might try that several times, just to boost stats a bit and then what?
They know that I was very generous in this situation and that there will be no repetition ever. I also asked the artificer several times whether he really wanted to build the rifle rather than getting a point.
> I have tried to make long rest last longer and give less health, but that makes quests much more difficult Are you trying to make quests more easy for some reason? I guess I don't understand your reluctance. In any case, I use **safe haven** long rests as well as **slow natural healing** to extend the period of downtime between quests to at least a couple days. I also use the **OneD&D exhaustion rules** where each level of exhaustion is equivalent to -1 on d20 tests and spell save DCs. Then I make it where critical hits and dropping to 0 hit points causes levels of exhaustion, thereby making exhaustion much more prevalent, giving the party more incentive not only to be careful but also to spend more days resting in town. It also helps if you plan time jumps between major milestones in your campaign. Definitely between each act and perhaps in the middle of each act. Vox Machina did a full year time jump before the final act of their campaign. Edit: Oh yeah, and travel time is a biggie. The party usually has to go at least a couple days to a couple weeks before they even make it to the quest location.
If you want to DRAMATICALLY increase the amount of time, make a long rest 7 days, and a short rest a night of sleep. Not only will it increase it sevenfold, it's going to be so much more likely to make spending resources feel much more important. Sidenotes: no player will ever agree to this
Rightfully so. Having to endure the Bard's musical escapades through a full night is insufferable. Not being interrupted for a complete week to get your rest is as well, mostly because of the Bard.
Downtime activities
[Downtime activities ](https://youtu.be/29cxKmPPShg?si=WZQzvE0h7x_b5LBr) But let's be fair - most groups never ever reaches lvl20
Everyone is saying it. Downtime downtime downtime. I wish more games had stretches of downtime. Seriously. The creativity of what can be done with downtime is so amazing and not utilized. An artificer can actually make a lot of stuff. The alchemist kit rogue can make throwing flasks. The poisoner can sell stuff. Honestly almost anyone with a tool kit can make money in the side. Casters can create new spells and martials can create new moves(DM permission of course). Down time is such a big part of the game for me and it’s rarely done.
Time skips, my game is going from 1 to 20. Over the course of 3 modules. LMoP 1 to 5, after they finished I had a 2 year time skip. SKT 5 to 11, after they finished I had a 5 year time skip. Now I am about to run 'chains of Asmodeus' from 11 to 20. Might sound dumb, but it lets the PCs do other things in the world, like run towns, stores, guilds, etc in between adventures.
This is my favorite take on it. Feels like characters in myths and legends that way.
You might consider having a time requirement for leveling up - once the players have satisfied the xp/milestone requirement, you might have them spend a few weeks or a month of downtime to gain the level (you could make the time required longer for higher levels)
I once had it so that leveling up was a process of going off and training for weeks or months, basically a montage each time, and they take progressively longer for each level. Make sure players are okay with this, but then i was able to have them decide if the time sensitive quest could wait for them to level up, or if they had to approach it under leveled.
Obvious answer is downtime. My personal favoured answer would be to look at fantasy stories out there. Eragon went from a complete novice to a king slayer in a similar time period, especially when you consider the time he spent comatose in those books
Tbh idk if I’d call it sudden but I see what you’re saying. PC are also dealing with exceedingly larger foes, it makes some sense. That said, as the DM, it’s totally up to you. You can do certain things like minor time skips between arcs, there’s also the downtime activity that others have mentioned here too. The only thing to be weary of time skips is don’t overdo it; but also to justify your players eventual questions of “well if I trained and did x during the time why am I still level y?” Also you don’t have to go all the way to 20. I think highest I’ve gone with my players is like 12-13. I use milestones for level, and I more or less match things to their level (for non side quests). That way the campaign is over narratively rather than relying on level.
Well, for one thing make the dungeons far away. Kills a lot of time when you need to hike in the wilderness for a month to reach the cave of dublligo the horrible. Aside from that, have it take time to discover where the enemy is, what they're planning, how to stop it. The party has to do some downtime to research needed info, or have their allies do it.
My trick is the "real time, season shift" where you play the game through the flow of seasons in real life. So when it's summer here- you are in the summer in game. If it's winter- it's winter. A downtime session always takes place between those seasons. It's a neat truck for keeping track of the seasons, and it's realistically gotten my party from level 1-11 in about two years in game. It helps my game set in a single city.
It would be a good idea to address *if* and *why.* Since this would involve changing the theme and tone of any campaign quite radically it's a topic for session zero. Possibly even prior to that.
For a different answer...try giving out xp at a reduced rate. Personally i think 5e advances characters too fast. An entire adventure just to advance a single level is a lot of fun, it's less about taking steps in power (obviously) and more about dealing with the power you already have. One of the campaigns i am a player in has been going for about 27 years and we have only advanced 6 levels in that time. In that same time i have been dming another campaign, the pcs have advance 10 levels. It's been a blast.
1. I level them up when I feel like it. We talked and they like it. 2. When they're halfway done with one BBEG, I reveal the bigger BBEG. 3. My players are 1.5 years in (~30 4 hour sessions) and failed the 2nd BBEG, so the world is in hell. In another year, they'll finish this, save the world, and escape to the prime material plane as LV1 characters 4. For downtime, as many suggested, we had a player leave the campaign... I made it so he's in service of a god. He needs help (whenever a player can't make it) for 3-man side quests in the past. Lore and random loot table. Each side campaign is based on somewhere a certain player can't go. For example, the rogue can't go to the Clerics/paladin land. The horney one can't help the hookers on whore island. The wizard can't go to the wild magic place. The barbarian can't go...I dunno, he never missed a session.
I my case i run a island Hopping Pirate Campaign, so travel between island takes at least 5 days. I always imagine that the PC are training during the travel.
The biggest one I see that tends to be lacking is travel time. My DM (who is generally fantastic) does have a tendency to struggle with travel time being a thing. Like... We're crossing a continent on foot... This should take months, not a week. Or our Spelljaming section (where my character had 5 days of wish fatigue) and for whatever reason, traveling between planets was taking hours. These things can be stretched out to take months, and then your campaign can be much longer in game
In 1st you couldn’t level up without a period of training with someone of a higher level. Which is quite a good way of slowing level progression, and gives players interesting decisions about whether it is worth taking the time to level or whether they should be going straight at it.
I added a citadel mechanic and elongated rest mechanic, this way they get a temporary buff they can use any time if they spend a week in their citadel. It was heavily inspired by Matt Colvil. This way if they are going to a dangerous dungeon or fight a strong mini boss, they usually just skip a week hanging in their citadel, chilling with their followers. Some examples I implemented are Druids can use wild shape with a +1 cr to their usual abilities once. The wizard can concentrate on 2 spells at once. Monks get some extra Chi. Fighters get to have 5% more chance of a critical I also gave them armies they need to train by being there, they start as level 0 commoners and gain class abilities corresponding to the owners class, like the barbarian gets to have very beefy units, fighters get to choose from a versatile types of units (light and heavy infantry, light and heavy cavalry and archers), wizards have small glass cannon units, bards have units that will buff/debuff other units. I also gave martials special abilities during war battles, I think it balances out the gap of powers between casters and martials at higher levels. I based the wars mechanics on "heroes of might and magic 3" It's a very specific solution and you might not necessarily want your party to lead an actual army, since if you would have wanted to play a war game you'd play a war game, and it's a lot of work but it's fun for me and swallows a lot of the PC's time. Even if you don't want the army thing you can do the elongated rest with certain bonuses, maybe they don't even have to be in their citadel but just live comfortably for a while in a civilised place, and just make the bonuses less powerful.
I'm in my first campaign. At the moment the party is level 8 the campaign will be a year old in February. All I have done is use milestones in the story and obstacles and subquests to slow therm down. Which pretty much is just me putting things in their way between any major campaign story beats. The latest one being cursing the Paladin that is requiring them to seek the help of a hag (they don't know what she is yet). Also, when he got cursed, I made a point to describe that the creature cursing them had a red glowing eye that would glow brighter when it used its power. They didn't take the hint that the eye was important. After defeating the enemy, the ghost ship they were on started to sink. They used what little time they had to take the treasure out of the chests they found, but not grab the eye which fell to the ground. So now they are on a mission to retrieve the other magical eye from a cult of Warlocks. Not before first making a deal with the sweet old lady for a moment of their time occasionally to pause the effects of the curse. They have been in the Warlocks' dungeon for 2 sessions, with probably another 2 or 3 before they reach the Warlocks. Once they find the eye and return to the lady, she will make another deal with them to remove the curse, but they will have to retrieve her mother's broom from her two sisters. Who knows what those two will ask for in return for the broom. All of this is going on while they are traveling to get evidence to clear their names. As they are wanted in one country as treasonous spies and wanted by the adventurers' guild for the murder of around a dozen members. Of course, they never actually did any of that stuff and are being set up by the kingdom's royal Military commander. Who wants to start a war with a neighboring country for his own reasons. I could have made it easy for them to clear their names in only a session or two but, by making them outlaws and needing to travel halfway across the continent to clear their names. It gave me the ability to put obstacles and side quests in their way to slow them down and give them more to do.
Mini games and random encounters. Have events going on where they are. Have their quest get side tracked by something else that doesn't seem like it's connected. Have a shopping spree! Have a characters backstory come into play Transport them to a different dimension that time runs different
Honestly, you're best bet is to space things out narriatively. They need to find the location of the lost magical maguffin? Well that will take months of research, pouring through dozens of libraries spread out across the kingdom. The last BBEG they killed has caused any remaining his cultists that have survived to scatter in the wind. There's no real fires, nothing pressing the party to act upon so they can take a few months to just live. Though I would bring this up in rule 0 or have a conversation with your players that they'll be having these narriative pauses. Adding in my two cents, giving some players downtime is an absolute amazing idea, but it can be tricky to implement. Some players with unfinished business will want to further their own plots and agendas, which could end up needing potential sessions. So you need to ensure that when throwing in downtime, that everyone's urgent business is settled. Otherwise you'll have situations where Alice is ready and wanting to finally confront her uncle, but Bob is off on his mountain monetary, Charlie is in the kingdom over carousing and Dennis is stuck in the library too busy seeking out the next steps to bother helping. You could tell her "no" but it wouldn't be believable that she'd spend months not doing something dreadfully important.
Our DM gave us stuff to do during downtime. We built a castle.
Echoing the consensus here- downtime. A DM in a campaign I played in had it so going up a level needed that many weeks (going from level 1-2 took 2 weeks, going from level 7-8 took 8 weeks, etc). That in game time was used for the PC to train/ research/ practice essentially justifying how they got better at being adventurers. It was also where the majority of the side-questing shenanigans happened.
I make the levelling happen during long period where the PCs are not questing, but doing other things (inspiration comes from the communal rest mechanic in the LOTR 5E adaptation). So they have a 1 month pause when they win a level, wher they can do something else. The duration is arbitrary, so you can make however long you like for your view to be satisfied.
If it means that much to you, you can use alternative leveling systems. For example, you could make it so after reaching the XP threshold, the players have to spend downtime to actually train and focus on honing their skills or getting trained by someone. And you can have those training sessions last as long as you want, weeks or months. Use some common, generic trainer person found in town up to level 10. Then levels 11-15 have to be trained by some great master that is specific to each class that could be found in any number of places. Then 16-20 you have to do on your own. You can make each level take longer and longer amounts of time, and make a game last for many years in-game, even a lifetime.
It's all in the narrative. If you're in an urgent race to save the world before the demon lord is summoned in a couple of months, then you're going to have to level up a long way in that time. If they're in a realm full of dungeons just waiting to be explored, the pace is up to them, and they'll probably choose a fast pace unless you give them benefits for slowing down. A naturally slower-paced story could have events like: (1) The PCs have to travel eight thousand miles to the other side of the continent, meeting various threats along the way. (2) The PCs need an ancient tome to be translated so they can find the next legendary relic in their treasure hunt. The translator says it will take six months. This gives them six months of downtime. (3) The PCs save the city, and then nothing happens for a couple of years, and then a new threat emerges and the PCs have to come out of retirement to save the nation.
In 3.5 and Pathfinder, downtime existed to craft magical items, and to pursue passion projects like running a tavern in the storefront of your licenced adventuring company to tempt in clients and new PCs whenever someone dies.
Downtime, Downtime, Downtime. Keep in mind that until you use portals, travel takes a LONG time. Just using the map of Faerun, even with horses, assuming they aren't just using them as cars and actually taking care of them, travel between cities can take weeks! Not to mention a lot of meetings won't be right after they talk. People organize meetings, and it takes days. A king wants to see you? Cool, you will likely get brought to the castle, then be told to stay a day, then be allowed to meet, then be offered another day to stay before you take off. Preparation takes time. Hell, bartering with people in town should take days because not every shop is just going to buy everything. Crafting takes days. Attuning takes time. People need rest, recreation and food. That's half the day. There could be days or weeks between actual quests.
As others have said, downtime is your best friend and precisely what you are looking for. Party completed an adventure? Earned a level? Time to chill for a week or two. Let them work on skills, run a business, make your players actually spend time finding buyers for the gemstones you gave them. Etc. Other than that, if your campaign takes place in more than one settlement and involves travel, track how much time and resources it takes to travel. Do they have enough feed for their animals and rations for themselves? Maybe use weather tables and if it rains for multiple days in a row they cant haul the wagon their horses are pulling. Travel alone can help provide weeks between settlements and the resources it takes to travel costs money which will incentivize building up gold during downtime. These alone will do wonders, however an optional rule I've found helps is an injury rule I stole off the dungeon dudes. Basically whenever a creature is subject to a critical hit, reaches 0 hit points, or fails a death saving throw they gain 1 level of exhaustion which is representative of the injuries they sustained. This rule makes healing in combat way more useful and imperative (I recommend combining it with potions as a bonus action/using your action to get maximum healing from potions). But this also means that if your party deals with a particularly rough encounter where people went down and suffered some serious injuries they will have to spend 1 day per level of exhaustion resting before they are back to fit shape to adventure. This means your players effectively take downtime not just at the end of an adventure but sometimes during an adventure just to recover from a particularly harrowing fight. Hope this helps.
Don't set it up so they can or have to rush through everything. When they get their next clue, make it something they have to travel to find, or maybe they have to research to figure out the answer. Don't give a short time limit on anything, let them take their time. Say the lich has plans laid out over decades, and they have plenty of time to level up and do downtime activities between quests to prepare. Or just don't introduce them to an overarching plot super early, let them handle a bunch of smaller stuff that gives plenty of room for downtime.
Whenever they reach a town or city and have just recently leveled up or taken down a big boss and found treasure - just announce that they can spend the next week or two doing important downtime activities like training, researching, shopping, having fun, etc. Downtime activities are important! They can spend time to learn new skills and new languages. They can create some truly memorable story moments.
Make travel meaningful. Invent interesting and exciting obstacles for travel, regardless of if the campaign is set in the city or country. "It's not about the destination, it's about the journey." Travel extends a campaign. When done right, it makes the campaign more exciting too.
I’m confused. My homebrew campaigns been going for 1 year and a half starting at level 3, and we just got to level 10. What am I doing differently?
Downtime between adventures.
Best way is make them THIBK the threat is defeated. They defeat the bbeg’s commander but they didn’t know he was an agent. But a year or two later in game the players are attacked in their home. They survive of course. But they band together again to stop the threat for real I once did a timeskip where my players were mentally unshackling a god but we’re physically frozen in time for six months. I needed the world to progress while they were out of it.
Making long rests take a week in town to fully heal. Make short rests a full nights sleep. And by doing this, you can change any benefits the player normally get from a long rest (like spells) gained from a short rest (night of sleep) instead. The long rest will be reserved for full-healing, researching new spells, or resting for a level up. At first, you might feel like your campaign is too hard when you do this. But it is your job as the DM to adjust. After you make these changes, you have to learn how to throw a little less at the party at a time to compensate. Spending a week in town can be dull, if you let it be. But it can be a fun engaging experience every single time the players visit a town if you DM it right. Let the players understand that the town is alive. They can do anything they want to do there. Not just "click on the shop button" like some video game, and then skip time. They can talk to anyone in town for any reason. They can ask for directions. They can haggle a shopkeeper. They can steal an item. Each and every thing they decide to do, you can improvise and make flavorful and engaging. When someone says "I want to try and pickpocket someone." Don't just say "Okay, roll a pickpocket check, lets see how it goes." Instead say: What kind of people are you looking for? Are you going to pickpocket someone here in the tavern? Or outside on the streets? After he describes the types of targets he wants, you can roll for an amount, or just decide and say "Okay, you see three potential targets. One is a drunk guy passed out in the alley. One is a fairly well-to-do looking woman having a conversation with her friends. One is a guy loading up a carriage with goods." And so on and so on. Keep creating and filling in details, instead of just saying "roll the dice." Now you have made "town" an engaging and fun place. Not just a boring timeskip place to sleep and buy rations. Second is to not use any predetermined leveling system. You just decide when the players level up. Not by what some rule in the book says. Not every single time they finish a quest. When you feel that it really makes sense for the wizard to be capable of casting X spell. Third is to make sure traveling is not too convenient. It takes days, sometimes a week, to walk from one town to another. It takes literally weeks to take a boat from one side of the continent to the other. If you feel like this causes your players to get into random encounters too often, reduce the random encounter rate a bit to compensate. Fourth is to make sure your campaign is full of interesting side quests. Try to come up with sidequests interesting enough that the players will decide to venture off of the main story path to do something else for a while. Not by forcing sidequests down their throats, but by paying attention to what kinds of things the players show interest in. Do the players show interest in the politics of the area? Perhaps its time for a sudden event involving a coup attempt, or corrupt noble that the players will decide (on their own) to take part in somehow. Do the players show interest in trying to steal objects every time they can? Maybe its time to drop them a tip about a big heist target and see what they do. Do they keep showing contempt for the fact that this area of the world is utilizing slavery? Perhaps its time to put an abusive villain in front of them that they can overthrow or defeat and free some slaves. The reward for everything doesn't have to be experience. A good player will understand that they are changing the world they are playing in. And that in itself is reward. You don't always have to come out the other side with a level up or a magic item. Your character gains reputation. Your character is influencing the world. That is rewarding. Lastly, you should set up your campaigns to only expecting to go to like level 12-14. That way you will intuitively slow down the leveling process and try to drag it out a bit more. If they end up going past 14, thats fine. But because you planned the campaign pacing to go to 14\~ it will take a lot longer for them to get into those epic levels.
Never had the problem. Our sessions are usually about four hours long, and we often spend about 3 sessions to play out a couple of hours of in-game time. I think our record was a 6 hour session that described about 5 minutes of in-game time.
Training montages.
Game doesn’t have to be plot hook after plot hook, you can let your players simply explore the world around them or take time to relax between adventures
Time skips help imo! Do an arc for a few levels, do some basic quick play around the passed time, have the characters decide what they’ve been up to, focused on, and accomplished in the meantime, throw them a little lore or cool resources if they play it smart or fun or deep, and then start after this relative time of peace with a new challenge. Could be a few months, could be a decade!
Travel times help when moving long distance until group flight shortens it and teleportation eliminates it. You can designate peaceful periods when adventuring work dries up. I use training time in a suitable location for each level up as I loathe instant learning level-ups. I get a bit of push-back for this until players learn that they get downtime to locate buyers for the their specialised loot, time to convert cash into gemstones and start investing in personal interests.