Hey-dee-ho!

I have want to hear about how you use time in your storytelling, and how you move time along - if you want to jump a month, a year or more - in your games.

So to be clear, I'm not talking about timing within a session or of crucial events necessarily, that (sometimes, usually?) depend on player actions and choices.

Perhaps an example would be in order. So, I ran a campaign a few years back (found here ), wherein most sessions happened straight after one another, perhaps a few hours or days had gone by if they were travelling between sessions. However, at one point they found a person of note they had been looking for - or at least one of the players had been looking for. In meeting with this person, they were convinced to stay for a while for various reasons. During this time, a few months I believe, that they remained with this person and the organisation she ran. I gave the players some XP and we narrated what they did over those months, what they learned and what they did. I could of course have spent sessions running them through missions and tests, but I decided against that (after having consulted with the players). The feeling was that this was a sidetrack, and important one, but not equally interesting for everyone, and not directly tied into their quest(s) and the main plot-lines. They had already allied themselves with this organisation, yet staying a while made sense (due to events in the campaign), but we all agreed that spending several sessions on one planet, in one system, lying low and learning new stuff wasn't the best way to spend out limited game-time (remembering the fact the interest can wane for one or more players if they are not invested properly).

This type of time-jump can be convenient (and constructive and generative) for several reasons, and it gives the opportunity to tell stories over longer time-spans. These intermissions can be solved in several ways of course, one is just a simple "and time went by, screen wipe", to "here's a bunch of XP, and tell me what you did in this time", to "tell me what you did, make a skill challenge check, here's some XP".

Is this something anyone of you have done? Do regularly? If so, how do you do it?

I have this notion of playing my current campaign over two or three decades, where the players started a few months after Order 66, play around, do stuff, then at some fitting plot-point, I let them settle down or lie low, or whatever, and let a few years go by (either they spend this time together, or they spend it apart, doing "their own thing"), until they meet up again - randomly or by design - to play more, this time we're 10 years BBY, things are at its worst in the galaxy. Then, after a few more months of play (real life time, not necessarily in-game time), we have a similar "fellowship phase" (TOR) or "Live between adventures/Carousing" (Conan 2d20) event, a time-jump yet again, moving closer to Rebels or the original trilogy, and then, we jump to sometime after RotJ ... it gives us the opportunity to visit different eras of play, and create a saga of sorts.

In these time-jumps I've had the idea that players could make new characters (if they have good reasons, either as a replacement, or as a temporary character for a series of adventures in the new time-frame, before their original character returns later), or even adjust or remake their character in a new specialisation (potentially switching career entirely) if that would make sense given time that has gone by and other circumstances that the players introduce and want their characters to experience and choose to do. With the right type of players, I could also jump back in time, before the first sessions and play flash-backs, where for instance the former padawan player remakes her pathfinder/padawan survivor, into a lower XP Padawan from the Jedi career. This jump back in time though, isn't something I'm considering with my current group. Not yet at least.

It requires dedicated players, and a consistent, yet open-ended, campaign and story.

Thoughts`? Experiences?

I use time as in movies. Screen wipe and we jump scenes.

Sometimes I let them do some goofy stuff in between sessions and roll for it, mostly for fun or a few credits, gambling, women, side jobs, crafting. For example after finishing a story arc and jumping an appropriate amount of time, just to warm up.

However I don't give out xp for "offscreen" time, that's exactly the opposite of what you should give xp for, which is game time.

I rarely time jump, but if the PCs have been active during that time jump I sometimes give them some XP, depending on the size and content of the time jump.

A lot of it comes down to your XP philosophy. I award XP to the character, and sometimes the player. My style is 15 XP per character per session, with 0-2 bonuses (split across the party) of 5 XP if a character was particularly integral, was particularly clever, or something of the like. Even if something failed, but was particularly creative, clever, good roleplaying, or interesting, I'll give the XP bonus. Dice can be mean.

I generally judge downtime to be worth about 15 XP per "session" that would have been played out. In your case, that would probably be 0 XP as it doesn't sound like there were really any "sessions" involved (oftentimes because something is too drawn-out). In those situations, I generally give an amount of XP considered appropriate to the circumstances.

So: PCs spend a month waiting for their ship to be retrofitted: 0 XP
Or: PCs spend a month training resistance fighters on Garos IV: 15 XP
And finally: PCs spend a month running various jobs for X, but they aren't ones we actually want to wade through and instead just handwave: 45 XP for three "sessions"

5 hours ago, Rimsen said:

I use time as in movies. Screen wipe and we jump scenes.

Sometimes I let them do some goofy stuff in between sessions and roll for it, mostly for fun or a few credits, gambling, women, side jobs, crafting. For example after finishing a story arc and jumping an appropriate amount of time, just to warm up.

However I don't give out xp for "offscreen" time, that's exactly the opposite of what you should give xp for, which is game time.

"Time as in movies" works within sessions, and between session when on a mission or adventure that is still ongoing. I'm aiming at a perspective that is more like "time as in between movies", whether 10 years between I and II, the 19 between III and IV, or shorter intervals, like 5 or 4 years, set between a series of adventures or missions (mini-campaigns if you will).

Interesting perspective on the XP thing. I guess I'm not that dogmatic about it. I think the story, whether in game-time or overall narrative story progression, may warrant XP. Depending contribution and enjoyment - for everyone involved.

5 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I rarely time jump, but if the PCs have been active during that time jump I sometimes give them some XP, depending on the size and content of the time jump.

A lot of it comes down to your XP philosophy. I award XP to the character, and sometimes the player. My style is 15 XP per character per session, with 0-2 bonuses (split across the party) of 5 XP if a character was particularly integral, was particularly clever, or something of the like. Even if something failed, but was particularly creative, clever, good roleplaying, or interesting, I'll give the XP bonus. Dice can be mean.

I generally judge downtime to be worth about 15 XP per "session" that would have been played out. In your case, that would probably be 0 XP as it doesn't sound like there were really any "sessions" involved (oftentimes because something is too drawn-out). In those situations, I generally give an amount of XP considered appropriate to the circumstances.

So: PCs spend a month waiting for their ship to be retrofitted: 0 XP
Or: PCs spend a month training resistance fighters on Garos IV: 15 XP
And finally: PCs spend a month running various jobs for X, but they aren't ones we actually want to wade through and instead just handwave: 45 XP for three "sessions"

I rarely make the time jumps too, but I'd like to play more with it, to create more of a far reaching saga-like story.

The point of the post was not to focus on the XP part of it, yet I recognise the issue. I was more thinking of how you involve and include the players in it, how one would tell the story and justify it within the confines of the campaign and gaming structure.

As for your examples, it is the "training resistance fighters" that would be the goal of progressing the story outside and between the game sessions, with input from and choices made by the players. XP rewards aren't key here, it is the story progression, and what the players may be able to obtain or change, that matters, but won't overshadow what they can obtain or change as part of dramatic role-playing filled game-time sessions.

Thank you both for your input though. ☺️

I'd generally either call for a single check from each PC to abstract what happens, or more likely just hand-wave it.

Especially because the dice can decide to really screw you over, sending you scrambling when something happens that shouldn't have. I tend to shy away from abstracted dice rolls with significant consequences.

Personally, I have no qualms about down-time periods in my campaigns. In my current effort, we had a 5 month down-time period between the 1st and 2nd act, which allowed us to re-focus the scope and arcs pretty effectively going into Act 2. There will probably be a similar time-skip between Acts 2 & 3, too, as the PC crew lays low on a world beyond the Rim to let troubles cool off. Now, I don't think I handed out any bonus XP during the first down-time, but I might very well do so the second time around to illustrate character development and preparations (read: Jedi training) going into Act 3.

9 hours ago, Jegergryte said:

Is this something anyone of you have done? Do regularly? If so, how do you do it?

Whatever meets the story needs. I've run campaigns where the entire thing happened over a period of only a few weeks (Saga edition, level 1-15 in a ridiculously short span), but also where the players have a "business" and the interesting jobs are weeks, months, or years apart. The former was an adrenaline-rush, but I had more fun with the latter, as I was able to take more time to set the stage, build up a pool of valued NPCs, and it felt like the players reacted as if the stakes were higher once everything started coming together.

I use time jumps as appropriate and I feel like this is a tricky issue sometimes. Ideally I want to not waste anyone's time, to include mine, with stuff that is not narratively worthy. I find that some players really want to get into the nitty gritty of things and want to build a base or lavish time on crafting or even just small talk with NPCs.

As for the XP thing, I have this real dislike of the pavlovian end of the session XP reward. I feel like XP should be a story tool like any other thing that affects the character so I generally let the player distribute XP to their character with oversight from me. They just explain that they feel their character would have gotten better at something and if I find the explanation to work then they just give their character that increase. I have a cap on the XP depending on the campaign so they know what their progress looks like between neophyte and master.

Time jumps can be fun if you split the party during the "offscreen" time. Work with them to come up with what they are doing between the major events. The fun will be when the party regroups and they share the fun things they did while they were away. And in the meantime, you can sprinkle in to parts of the game the not-so-fun things they might have done.

So while they were apart, the Smuggler might have wooed a beautiful noble, but he also scored the ire of a powerful rival to the noble's house. This noble was betrothed to the scion of the house and now they have bounty hunters after them.

I've done both, and generally found that having the time skips to reflect "downtime" works better for most campaigns. It not only provides the PCs a chance to recuperate from the previous adventure, but also to provide an explanation for why certain traits are either improved upon or added to a character's repertoire without them having necessarily done something to reflect those traits in the previous adventures (namely, they did training/studying during the downtime).

I know that it's a common criticism of level-based RPGs like D&D that it seems the PCs go "zeroes to heroes" at a very rapid pace, but I think a large part of that issue comes from many campaigns using those systems don't really provide much in the way of time skips between adventures, and instead generally go from one adventure to the next. I fully enjoy Critical Role, especially the second campaign, but I don't think it's been much more than a year in-game from where the Mighty Nein started, and now they're 13th level and are vastly more powerful than when they first met in an inn.

And while it's not explicitly level-based, Savage Worlds can have a similar issue, where you can have PCs go from Novice to Legendary in a short amount of time if the GM doesn't include time-skips to account for "non-adventure time." I think the East Texas University supplement was right to explicitly point out that an intended campaign framework had the PCs start as Novice Freshmen but only "level up" to the next tier at the end of the college year, figuring that the PCs would be spending time attending classes and generally living the college experience rather than constantly getting roped into one adventure after another.

While it's not something that's ever really reflected in game mechanics of any RPG, being constantly thrust into high-danger life-or-death situations is going to take a heavy psychological toll on even the most stalwart of individuals. One of the (many) contributing factors to PTSD is that the person has been stuck in "fight or flight" mode for prolonged stretches of time without having an opportunity to decompress, and I'd imagine a similar thing would happen to PCs in an RPG if they simply go from one adventure to another without any time in between hair-raising escapades. Now that doesn't mean you have to role-play through the downtime, unless one or more players has something critical they'd like to delve into (and would be interesting for the GM and most of the group), but there probably should be some amount of downtime so that the characters get that chance to decompress after what was most likely a very hazardous situation, to say nothing of tending to any injuries (hit point loss or wounds or physical stress or whatever damage condition mechanic your RPG of choice uses) that they most likely picked up during that adventure.

To the OP's question "Yes" and at the same time a resounding "NO!"

The concept that the OP is describing is called "Downtime" and it's been around RPG's for decades now.

For me I run a pretty tight chronology and keep track of time consistently. A leads to B, which gets us to C . . . you get the idea. Downtime is very rare in this campaign.

However, one possible exception would be hyperspace travel. In my campaign traveling from location to location takes time. Good Astrogation rolls can cut down the total trip time . . . but the time spent in hyperspace can be anywhere from a couple of hours to several days depending on the distance travelled.

What I don't do is Role Play each hour in hyperspace. (So dull). But as the PC's are spending (on average) a week for each trip between worlds, I'll ask the players what their characters are doing (if anything of import) and we resolve those in short order. Generally nothing of import happens so we just skip to the next destination.

(And there are times when we'll RP out some important scenes during hyperspace, but it's rare).

On second thought, I use downtime usually for most Hyperspace trips. It's been an important concept because the PC's all picked up light sabers and have been working on upgrades and training during the last couple of months (IRL) during hyperspace trips to do crafting and building checks.

So yeah, I use downtime for long travel times, but time is so tightly controlled by me that it's an important factor for the PC's (whether they realize it or not!).

On 10/19/2020 at 7:55 PM, Mark Caliber said:

The concept that the OP is describing is called "Downtime" and it's been around RPG's for decades now.

Sure. But why leave it at such basic and arbitrary level? There are several games out there that makes use of "downtime" to continue the story, letting the characters, world, and story, grow. Conan 2d20 has this, Fria Ligan's games (like Mutant Year Zero) has integrated it even more into some of their campaigns - as well as in the basic running of the game. TOR has fashioned a similar mechanic. I guess you could say that there there is a distinction between "normal downtime" (i.e. hyperspace travel, overland travel, screen wipes) and "narrative downtime" or "story downtime", the latter (potentially) serving a more important purpose for the overall story, or history of the group and campaign. The Expanse RPG has fashioned the Interlude, which is something in between, as it is often used on long journeys. It is perhaps a bit more setting specific, but still of interest.

I mean, sure, I'm not suggesting that people should change their way of running games, to stop hand-waving downtime, but I'm considering ways to do that in my games, in a more developed and exciting way to create a more epic story, that spans many years, where players can do and learn more in between the "adventuring phase" (to borrow TOR's term), and get a hand in shaping the narrative, introducing characters, and succeed and/or fail at things they set out to do as part of their "carousing" (to borrow Conan's term), with interesting and exciting results that can continue to shape the story as they meet up again. This could be new gear, change (or add) obligation, change motivation, new or changed duty, changed morality.

If that doesn't sound interesting to you and your group, that's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that it something I want to do, and I was hoping on some input from the community. How to fashion a set of guidelines, and potential mechanics, to make time-jumps (not time travel!) a part of the game, and more than a "mere" screen wipe. Admittedly, this isn't necessarily for every group of players. Or for every kind of story, most definitely not.

I'll have to fashion something I guess, to show what I mean.

Here's what I think you're looking for, tell me if I'm on the wrong track:

On a larger scale:

In the movies, we see them do some stuff (ep. IV), then a couple years later we see them do more stuff (ep. V), and then a couple years later we see them do yet more stuff and complete the story (ep. VI).

I'd quantify each movie as a campaign arc, with "downtime" in between. During that "downtime" the characters aren't actually inactive, just not doing the super-interesting stuff that is covered in the game sessions (before all the EU and Nu-Canon adding stuff). So you give them a decent chunk of XP, and skip to the next campaign arc with a crawl to set the stage. After that arc, another time jump with more XP, another opening crawl, and you finish the campaign with a final arc.

I don't think there's a good way to set "rules" or "mechanics" on this given how fluid it is.

If you're looking on a smaller scale, I'd have it fall into three basic categories:

Sleepy-time: The characters aren't doing much of anything. Laying low, soaking in bacta, waiting for something to happen, etc. Just skip it, don't bother with XP or anything. If it's a long enough time, maybe give them some XP. It's really too fluid to set precise mechanics or rules.

Cue montage! AKA narrative-active offscreen time: The characters are doing something to accomplish a specific goal (preparation, negotiation, etc.) but it'd take a long time to play out and/or is not interesting. Either just take something as a given or make an abstracted roll, depending on the situation. I shy away from abstracted rolls when something is more-or-less a given or where it can really screw something up because I don't like entrusting the story to a single entreaty of the pernicious, capricious dice gods. I prefer the opportunity to allow the PCs to act and adapt to circumstances and failed rolls. In some cases, however, it is necessary, in which case I would err on the side of consequence-less checks. Award XP as appropriate, but some XP should be awarded since they were active during this time.

And stuff was done: The characters did what would have been multiple sessions, but you decided to skip them for whatever reason. Describe what happened (or brief them on the current state of things, depending on your style), and award them XP for the sessions (possibly other rewards as well, depending on the circumstances). Better to leave this up to the storyteller whether or not it affects the story, though consequence-less dice rolls may be appropriate.

Consequence-less: Where Failure is lack of good, not a presence of bad. In other words, the status quo doesn't change.
Example of consequence-less: Rolling to look for loot. On Failure, something good doesn't happen (no change in status quo).
Example of consequence-laden: Rolling to grab someone before they fall off a cliff. On Failure, something bad happens (change in status quo).

I have the opposite problem with my campaign.

The PC's are literally in the middle of a galaxy spanning galactic WAR that is active on so many fronts that the PC's literally are jumping from one problem to the next.

Most of the time that the PC's arrive back at their base, their coordinator is having them turn around to race out to deal with the latest emergency!

The last time "Stitches" (the team medic) had any meaningful downtime, was when she was gunned down by a crew served weapons system and spent three days in a Bacta tank.

The rest of the crew spent those days refitting their ship in preparations for the next mission . . . Stitches was literally pulled out of the tank and drip dried herself onto the crew's ship in time for the scheduled departure while suffering from Bacta Amnesia*.

In the respect of having "downtime" in the traditional sense, that's not a thing in my Star Wars RPG! (Nope. Not at ALL).

I do like the downtime rules for D&D 5E and if you're looking for a framework or reference on dealing with downtime, check out the PHB and (better) the DMG.

* I invented 'Bacta Amnesia so don't go chasing that down either. (However the Player running Stitches ran with it beautifully and to good comedic effect. I think the highlight was when "Duster" the NPC assisting Stitches with her 'recovery' had the following conversation

Duster: "Don't worry about the amnesia. It'll go away eventually. I've gone through this plenty of times."

Stitches: "Oh really? How often."

Duster: "Uh, I can't remember. But trust me. You'll be okay!"

).