Pacing D&D Downtime Sessions by Zooming In

Downtime Sessions

Downtime in our D&D games can help us and our players to develop their characters. Through downtime, players can lean into backstory elements, personal goals, and character development. They can spend days tracking down a former relative. They can craft personalized items over weeks or months. Character might spend years building their own stronghold, shop, or tavern. If we incorporate downtime in our game, we allow our players narrative breathing room. In the span of days, weeks, months, or even longer, characters can develop in ways that cannot be captured in the minute detail of adventure. We can use downtime to deepen the players involvement in the fiction of their characters.

But if the resolution of downtime takes too much of our valuable game time, the engagement of everyone at the table might drop. Players want to see their characters do awesome stuff. They want to use their character’s abilities. They might be interested in developing their characters personal story arc, but they probably wouldn’t be playing D&D if they didn’t also want to beat up on fantastical monsters.

Even in downtime sessions, we can do both. We can give players the necessary in-game time to develop their characters while seizing on opportunities of adventure when they present themselves. We can zoom in to improve the pacing of our session.

The Purpose of Downtime in D&D

We can find explanations of downtime in many published Dungeons & Dragons books. Here is an overview of the relevant sections:

The Players Handbook contains an overview of possible activities on page 187.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide goes into more detail about the purpose of downtime in our D&D games and provides more example activities (pg. 127-131).
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything introduces rivals, and expands and updates the existing rules for downtime resolution (pg. 123-134).

Two useful tips regarding the purpose of downtime stand out. We can use downtime to control the pace of the story, and to involve the characters in the fiction of the world.

D&D Downtime: Controlling the pace of the story

The DMG tells us to use downtime to prevent characters “from gaining too much power too quickly.” We should not take this to mean that we insert downtime sessions into our regular games in order to extend the time players spend with their characters at one level. Players would grow to hate downtime. Instead of thinking of real world time, we should consider the pace of the story.

The fiction of our campaign might function best when we can think in terms of years rather than days or weeks. If an evil overlord is threatening a kingdom for generations, it might be fun to explore such a time frame. We could follow the characters as they begin to fight the minions of the overlord at low levels, but then spend years of downtime working in a normal profession. The characters might marry and have children. We might want to emulate the pacing of Lord of the Rings in our campaign. If that fits the tone of our campaign, we should make heavy use of downtime.

D&D Downtime: Involving the characters in the world

Downtime can help us involve the characters in the world. Over days, weeks, or months the characters can build their own attachments to the game world. We can allow these attachments to develop organically in downtime sessions. Our rogue might spend a few days on a heist with the local thieves’ guild. The scholar might spend a week losing herself in the ancient archives. The longer periods of time establish the characters as parts of the world they inhabit. And they will naturally draw players deeper into the fiction. But they can also serve as little adventure seeds to zoom in to downtime.

The Thin Veil Between Downtime and Adventure in D&D

Downtime is slow. No matter how we run downtime during our sessions, its narrative mode is designed to zoom out from the fast pace of adventure. Adventure includes the thrill of combat, traps, and hazards. Moment-to-moment decisions decide over life and death. How can we bridge that sharp divide? How can we blur the line between adventure and downtime?

Crossing the line

“Keep that adventure out of my downtime!”, might be a logical impulse. But we can introduce adventure into our downtime to keep players on their toes. When downtime includes opportunities for adventure, it becomes less separated from the rest of our game. When a session can freely oscillate between downtime resolution and adventure, we can keep the pace of the game exciting. In such a session, we might cover multiple months of in-game time. But we can intersperse the resolution of downtime with action-filled adventure.

Zooming In

We can think of one of our DM tools as zooming in and out of the timeline of the campaign. We zoom out to describe how a character develops a recipe for a magical item. The druid might spend days researching at the library, consulting with the local elders, and conducting small experiments. All of that activity might come down to a single Arcana check. But then the character might have to try to acquire a magical ingredient for the item. They might track down an owlbear blessed by a goddess of moonlight to harvest its feathers.

At that moment in the fiction we can zoom in and run a small adventure. We reconnect with our characters after a couple of weeks of downtime have passed. Together, they are trotting through the rainy forest. The moon shines bright as they hear the enchanting scream of the moon-touched owlbear. Look, we’re in an adventure!

Involving all the Characters

Downtime is mostly focused on individual character development. While the party might decide to build a stronghold together, they will also pursue personal goals. When we are doing regular downtime resolution, we might go around the table, hear each player’s intent, ask for any necessary rolls, and narrate the outcome. But sometimes, we want to zoom in. And when we do so, we want all of the characters there to be part of the action.

In that instance, we can help players involve their characters in the ongoing story. Even though the quest is for the downtime activity of the druid, the cleric that follows the moon goddess might be more interested once she hears of the moon-touched nature of the owlbear. Once the beast is slain, the cleric might discover omens from her deity in the remains of the owlbear. We can plan for these things in advance, if we know the characters well. Or we can come up with individual adventure hooks at the table, together with the players, as we draw each character into the story.

Opportunities for Collaborative Storytelling

We can also try to involve our players in more collaborative story telling. As we zoom in, we might ask them directly, what would motivate their characters in this scenario. We can hand over more narrative power in these moments of downtime, than we might be comfortable with in the main story arc of our campaign. We can tell our players that they can look beyond their character in these moments.

One player might suggest that their half-orc bard has distant family in those woods. Even though we had no idea that the bard had family, much less in these woods, we can run with it. The player will light up when they discover that the moon-touched owlbear is threatening the tribal hunting grounds of their long lost family. Suddenly, when we zoom in, we discover more than the breeze of excitement that combat can bring to our games. We zoom into a moment of drama, filled with character development. While this is good practice in any session we run, it is especially useful in downtime.

Why Downtime If You Can Have Adventure?

When we zoom in to the timeline of our adventure, downtime can become indistinguishable from adventure. Downtime is used to control the pace of the story, and to involve the characters in the world. These are noble goals, but they do not change the attention economy at our table. We want to provide an engaging experience. That requires us to keep an eye on the pacing of the session. Downtime can slow down the pace. In fact, it might have to in order to achieve the wanted effects. But when we, as dungeon masters, sense the attention of our players whither, we can zoom in to any dramatic moment during downtime. Be it combat, exploration, or social interaction. Any interesting moment during downtime poses an opportunity for a zoom-in.

Such moments might not take more than thirty minutes to resolve. We can come up with them while keeping in mind the larger framework of downtime. Thinking of these scenes as moments in a character montage can help us keep an eye on the clock while resolving these zoomed in moments. Or these scenes might spiral out of control into entirely unforeseen territory. Let them. The stories that develop organically at the table are the ones we remember most.

D&D Downtime Session Pacing

Downtime can be an amazing tool to let players develop their characters apart from the abilities on their character sheets. Downtime also allows us to control the pacing of the overarching campaign narrative. We can use downtime to let characters engrain themselves in the fiction of our world. But we also need to be aware of the engagement of our players by keeping an eye on the pace of the game. We can grab everyone’s attention by zooming in to a dramatic moment during downtime. Most often this might be a combat scene. Rolling initiative can be a useful tool to create a sense of danger and excitement. When we zoom in, we cross the line between downtime and adventure. By involving all the characters in the scene, and making use of collaborative story telling, we can instill downtime with a sense of adventure.