My Life As A Gamer: Time, Downtime, And The Campaign (Part One)

(Citing the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition (AD&D1e) Player's Handbook (PHB) and Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) as needed.)

The big difference between how AD&D1e is designed to be played and how RPGs is in the handling of time and time-keeping.

DMG p. 37, "TIME IN THE CAMPAIGN", has long been mocked as being unworkable. The #BROSR has proven over the last few years that not only is it workable, but that a strict accounting for time and time-keeping is a cornerstone upon which a successful campaign builds itself- just as Gygax said it does.

Time is one resource that remains scarce and strict enforcement of its accounting is what separates AD&D1e from its lackluster successors.

It is time that makes the Aging rules have their teeth, breaks up One True Party groups of murderhobos, allows players to swap characters or to step away without worry of being left behind.

This series will look at time, time-keeping, and the action away from the table--downtime--that is part-and-parcel of proper play.

How It Works

Time in the campaign is a matter of tracking when things happen, how long it takes, and mapping that to a campaign calendar. Certain players will recall this in practice as "time jail", wherein their character is "locked down" (i.e. unavailable to play) and either they do not play at the table or they play another character- and most choose to make and play other characters.

Time away from the table passes at a given ratio of one day in real life to one day in the campaign; this is the means by which time spent at the table is recovered. The DM puts down a Start Date and and an End Date for those characters, during which time they cannot be played or otherwise employed.

Your man gets wounded or sick? Downtime until recovered. Your man levels up? Downtime until he completes training. Your man creates an item or a spell? Downtime until it's complete. Goes on a long journey? Downtime until he arrives. You get the idea.

Recovery from wounds or illness I handled last Friday, so I'll refer you there for details, and instead I'll get to Leveling Up below and other common actions over the week.

Experience & Leveling up

Your man does not automatically gain levels in his Class or Classes when he meets the XP threshold to do so. (DMG p. 86) All that meeting this requirement does is indicate that he is eligible to do so. He must take time away from field operations to engage in a training regime to receive that benefit. This takes time.

The Dungeon Master (DM) will grade your performance every time he awards your man Experience Points. (ibid) This running assessment returns when you decide to take your man in to train to level up.

The result of this final assessment is the amount of time in weeks that your man must spend in downtime. If there is no higher-level character of that Class available to train him, the DM will tell you if you can train on your own or not.

If so, the time required is doubled and if not your man's Class level is frozen until he can find a tutor. At Name Level, this prohibition is removed and your man may self-train to level-up.

This training time is not free. The cost, in Gold Pieces per week, is 1500 multiplied by your man's current level (e.g. Fighter going from 1st to 2nd pays 1500 GP per week). Name Level characters vary from this baseline according to Class, and Bards get a special cut-out as deserving of how rare they are, how difficult it is to become one, and therefore how hard developing as one will be. (ibid).

Training costs are an abstraction; they account for all of the resources required for your man to receive the necessary training and benefit from it as intended, so no nit-picking is necessary or desirable.

Failure to train for any reason freezes your man's ability to gain Experience Points for that Class; he is hard-capped. (ibid) Yes, this is yet another way that multi-class demi-humans are limited compared to Men.

Commentary

The struggle for training will be the ability to pay for it. So long as the player performs his Class role (or Class roles, for multi-classed characters) to satisfaction, his training time will be be measured in one week, maybe two if he must self-train until he hits Name Level. As most players play on a weekly basis, this will not inconvenience them much if at all.

Because this is not how "role-playing" is understood by most, the DM should take the time to frame the expectation properly up front when bringing new players on board. After that it is on the player to do his best to play his man's Class(es), and as they were told up front what was expected they have no cause for complaint if they find training time to be three or four weeks.

This alone will serve as a Push mechanism to drive players to keep their characters active in the field. Bring in the expense involved in making spells, making items, raising and maintaining armies (see yesterday's post), raising and maintaining strongholds and domains, maintaining Henchmen, and the dynamics of AD&D1e being a wargame organically emerge to overwhelm any Theater Kid faggotry about Storytelling bullshit.

This will become as obvious as a brick to the face before this series is concluded. Logistics, like gravity, doesn't care how special you think you are- and time is the most vital resource that logistics must address.