Trying to make downtime fun and relevant part of a session.
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A lot of useful ideas in there!
For aesthetic reasons, I like downtime to advance a complete season, so most of my downtime rules are, “what could you reasonably attempt in town this season?” And then have a 2d6 roll with tiers of success. Paying large sums of gold unlocks some specific actions like commissioning constructions or magic items, still with a chance of failure/complication.
Tying actions to specific NPCs in town is a cool idea that I might develop. You want enchanting? Gotta be on speaking terms with the enchanter just to get in the door!
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Yea! Seasonal downtime is very cool, too! I’d approach it the same way as described in the post—just increase the duration. That means I’d need to come up with appropriate actions. Maybe things shift more often to a more trivial or easy state this way.
Alternatively, saying you get like 3 downtime actions per season sounds fun, though it’s a bit more rolling; I’d have to make sure players are okay with that.
100%! Unless you’re aiming for a hands-off approach—because one might be focused just on the wilderness or dungeon part of the game—I always prefer making things sticky. Ideally, everything has either a (meaningful) choice or a consequence in the game.
This conversation reminds me that one of the core tools I’d like to include in my setting is a big list of about 20 wanderers (enough for large variety, and some repitition).
It would also be interesting to see who visits a settlment during a season of downtime, allowing for some more rare opportunities.
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I have an old draft about pedlars in Dolmenwood and why there should be more wandering NPCs. I still haven’t quite cracked recurring, non-static characters yet. haha
I’m positive they’d be a welcome addition to most dungeon games, especially if they have their own goals, secrets, and benefits.
“Why do we keep running into this elven smith wandering dungeons?”
“Shut up and get your blades sharpened, don’t question good luck!”
And maybe the smith mentions that if they find any unrusted sword shards, to bring them to her. Just because, you know?
Feels fun.