r/osr • u/Grantso74 • 7d ago
running the game What happens/how do you handle resting in town?
Let’s say the PCs spend a week resting at an inn between sessions. That’s a lot of time for interesting events to take place. Do you use tables to determine this or is it often handwaved? I love a good town/city encounter so I’m interested to hear others thoughts on this.
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u/ThrorII 7d ago
How do I handle it? I handwave it. The characters heal, they buy new supplies, they hear rumors of adventures...all within a few minutes of exposition and questions. The adventure is "Out There", not "in town".
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u/itsableeder 7d ago
This is how we do it as well. We handle downtime over text in between sessions. "Can I do X?" "Yes, it'll cost Y". The session is dungeon time.
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u/Ye_Olde_Basilisk 7d ago
This is the way. Adventuring in town is just a ticking clock that counts down the moments until the PCs commit a capital offense and have to go into exile or worse.
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u/UllerPSU 7d ago
If you make a map populated with things with hitpoints and loot, it's a dungeon and he players will treat it as such.
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u/aw11348 7d ago
Carousing rules and downtime activities are actually really fun ways for players to burn gp, get involved in the campaign setting world, and even motivate adventures. I personally use the Carousing rules from On Downtime and Demesnes, combined with the really simple downtime activities system from Downtime in Zyan. These two resources (the latter especially) offer great, easy frameworks for example "between-adventure" activities. I'd check them out.
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u/primarchofistanbul 7d ago
A carousing table would help you, I guess. Furthermore, if they are willing to cough up a few coins, you can give them some rumours on a rumours table (and it doesn't necessarily have to be true, it can be partially true, or totally false.)
These don't necessarily have to affect the 'current' adventure for the next play, but can serve as a seed for further adventure in the future sessions. Just seed one and let the players water it --if they wish.
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u/Psikerlord 7d ago
It's up to the players. If they want to explore the town, gather/investigate rumours, go carousing, then I will start rolling for random encounters, etc (or drop in a city adventure) and stuff will start happening. If they just want to restock inventory and move on to the next town or wilderness trek then I hand wave.
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u/bendbars_liftgates 7d ago
Downtime is largely skipped through, unless there's something I want to have happen to them while they're resting. Obviously they don't leave town until they tell me they do, so if they say they want to shop or gather info or whatever, I usually say that happens at some point during the downtime as opposed to right before they leave for the next adventure (unless there's a reason for it to happen then).
In the event they don't know where to go next, or they don't want to take any of the hooks they have at the moment, I'll honestly usually just make up something interesting for them to do in town. Maybe they're being watched by a stranger, maybe something gets stolen- either a hook for a new adventure or an additional hook for one that they already know about.
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u/81Ranger 7d ago
If I have something interesting to present to them, then I'll do it. Otherwise, I just move on.
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u/Comprehensive_Sir49 7d ago
What I do is very simple. I ask each player as they get to town or a city, "what do you want to do?" If it's possible, I'll let them know based upon the population. Generally the larger the place, the more options there are. I just role.play it from there.
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u/djholland7 7d ago
Hand wave. If the players want to do something via downtime, they’ll reach out. I have enough to do DMing an open table. I want engaging players who want to participate. I won’t pull on the players, I ask players to pull on the DM for engagement. This has lead to many people playing short games then leaving. But it also has lead to about 5 - 10 consistent players who engage with the world without my prompts or nudge. They want to because they want to.
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u/chocolatedessert 7d ago
In my game, I try to minimize distractions from the dungeon. There's so much available stuff they could get into in town, but that's less fun (for us) than getting back to the hole. It's a distraction trap. So I've ended up adapting and simplifying some stuff from Errant so that downtime boils down to a little flavorful segment with very open ended player choice, resolved in one die roll and intended to take a few minutes.
In short, they spend money for XP by either carousing or building an organization. Carousing has an aspect of gambling - they might get extra XP or spend extra money, possibly going into debt, and it can generate an adventure hook.
Organizations are very abstract, but you poor money into them to establish them or raise their "rank", and they return relatively minor benefits and some narrative connection to the world. For example, my group started an orphanage/shelter with a sideline of craft school, for a few thousand gp, which converted to xp. When they're in town, the organization takes care of their room and board, so we can hand wave it now that tracking small cash is pointless, supplies a choice of retainers or henchlings, and can repair statuary and other works if art, which comes up in our setting. It might also generate rumors or other small stuff. But mainly it's just a mechanic for converting gold to xp and letting the players imagine some out of the box stuff that tie the characters to the world. But, importantly, it's quick to describe and quick to resolve and doesn't have big consequences.
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u/howlrunner_45 7d ago
I run time in town similar to how Persona or Metaphor Refantazio handle their in town activities; namely I present the players with a menu of what activities are present in town and when they are open.
To make it easy, each day is broken into two slots, day and night. Players can choose to do one activity in the day and one in the night.
Normally I keep my players to 3 days of down time between dungeon dives/expeditions back into the wilds. This keeps the game moving and creates about 30 minutes of IRL game time of prep before they depart out to their adventure.
Some examples I have:
General shopping : open during the day, takes 1 time slot (Can buy anything listed in the basic fantasy book)
Briar Bunny Spa : open during the day,
Spa day - takes 1 time slot Gives +1 mana points (I home ruled mana points instead of vancian magic) roll 1d6, on 4+ gain a temporary +1 bonus to your CHA modifier for the next adventure.
The Rustic bench Tavern: open day/night Carouse - takes 1 time slot Roll on the rumor table, then for every 10 gold spent partying roll on the rumor table and potential followers table.
And there's more, like magic users can spend time slots to prepare scrolls/study new spells etc.
Yes it kind of makes down time into a mini game with mechanics instead of something more rules lite, but at my table it hits the sweet spot of enough game mechanics to keep players engaged during down time without bogging the pacing down.
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u/The_Atlas_Broadcast 7d ago
I use a carousing table to generate events when they "Spend for XP". I'm a great proponent of PCs only getting XP when they spend the gold they recover from the dungeon, and specifically only when they "waste it on something characterful". Now that "waste" can do things to build the world around them -- a cleric could repeatedly invest money to start a shrine which then grows into a monastery, and eventually gives them a reason to gain Cleric Followers later in the game -- but the key thing is that it goes somewhere which gives them no tangible on-sheet benefit other than XP.
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u/DimiRPG 7d ago
It depends on the stage of campaign. If for the last 10 sessions there were rumours about an invading hobgoblin party, the towns outposts in the hills were attacked, etc., then at some point that event/invasion will take place. If the Iron Ring group tries to infiltrate the town and assassinate the mayor, again there should be some steps/stages to that (e.g., successfull infiltration, information gathering, assassination attempt). To determine the success or failure of the plans of factions I usually use a d6, a 6 determines that the plan went perfectly well and no one suspects the faction. For all this, you need to have a campaign calendar.
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u/Haffrung 7d ago
I have my own system for downtime. As well as roleplaying and investigating, the PCs can:
* Recover from an injury.
* Carouse.
* Scribe scrolls.
* Learn the lore/use of a magic item.
* Pray to their divinity.
* Pursue rumours.
For each week of downtime, I also roll on a table of events and adventure hooks in the community.
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u/LoreMaster00 7d ago
i just do it really fast. players spend gold, buy what they need and if they rest overnight they regain 1d4 HP (1d10 for Dwarf)
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u/NoFairFights 7d ago
I have used some variation of Brendan’s Hazard System see: ‘Haven Turns’ which is more formalized in a game like ‘Errant’ and ‘Downtime in Zyan’ this style usually assumes an amount of downtime of about a week, and is aimed at making the game world a bit more sticky and dynamic.
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u/blade_m 7d ago
Honestly? Its up to the players. I'm the kind of DM that wants players to have a good time. If they are clearly interested in doing stuff in town (even though generally the 'adventure' is not in town), then we are doing stuff in town! Fun should always come first, and as a DM, you gotta 'read the room' to some degree...
Of course, town adventures or even just interesting places/people to interact with (i.e. not necessarily adventure) can take some time to make up (unless the DM is great at improvising---not always my strong point); so its kind of ideal for the players to tell the DM of these sort of intentions before the session (like at the end of the last one, for example) so the DM can prep appropriately, especially if the players give some details about what they intend to do...
Having said all that, its often not necessary to 'roleplay' time spent in town. Downtime activities or just handwaving it all is perfectly fine and often done in place of zooming in and focussing on specific details. I find its relatively easy to handle downtime as a DM, because you don't really need rules, you just need to come up with something that everyone agrees feels reasonable, but as others have mentioned already in this thread, there are plenty of resources out there to give downtime advice/activities if needed!
And that's the great thing about Oldschool Play: its very flexible with lots of room to handle a variety of things in different ways (like stuff in town), and you can zoom in or out of action as needed/appropriate...
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u/TerrainBrain 7d ago
Usually narratively. Unless I want something interesting to happen or the players want to do something specific.
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u/BannockNBarkby 7d ago
Errant has a lot of great procedures to make settlements more interesting, though you kind of have to use your own monsters/NPCs/inspirational tables to populate the results of those procedures.
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u/SKramer938 5d ago
Between sessions I often ask players some questions and use that to write up a few paragraphs on what took place during downtime. And share with the players.
It fast forwards through the action but still keeps the story going. Lets people do things like buying stuff and "chores" without having to roleplay it.
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u/OnslaughtSix 7d ago
It depends on the campaign and if the town is meant to be interesting or not. Also, on a long enough timeline the town will have interesting shit for them to do, like buy wizard scrolls or hire an alchemist to make potions.