Downtime as an Emergent Emotional Hook

Fantasy roleplaying is best when it is about defending the home of the characters.

    This point has been hammered home repeatedly for me in the last week or two, totally by chance. It began as I started to consider the fact that my players had created reasons for their characters to care about the “hub town” that started our D&D campaign. Small comments and jokes, shallow systems and ideas, repeated scenes that have led to the heroes of the campaigns finding hopeful love in the town. Now I have power as the GM to tie the characters to the place, not by attacking it and inflicting pain on the players by way of their characters, but by revealing the grave powers that threaten their adopted home and giving them ways to fight back against those threats. Ways to increase the security of their home. Deepen the characters’ place in the community, not just emerge as its saviors or rulers.

    When I started the campaign I barely even knew what downtime could mean in modern D&D, and in fact was told it often doesn’t matter or should be skipped just because it doesn’t fit into the narrative of the game’s current play style and the way adventures are written. But I think I stumbled into the way to make Downtime or Bastions or Domain Play or just building house as a money-sink decoration-toy matter. It’s not by contriving a system where the PCs have to find a trainer to level up or get to craft some items or any of that. It’s by giving the characters emotional connections in the town. Showing how their heroic actions and sacrifices are directly contributing to the safety and survival of those they care about. Giving them ways to choose to increase the security of their home. Make it their choice to do it, or to leave their home vulnerable. Remind them that when they leave the town to go on a long journey they will worry about their partner or family back home, but they are undertaking this quest to make them safer in the long run.

    While these ideas were already bouncing around in my head, they were further reinforced by reading the first part of this series ondeconstructing a Pathfinder Adventure Path by MagicJMS, and the related comments and rankings of Paizo’s APs by Tarondor. Both of these really reinforce and focus on the idea that the most vital tool for making these published campaigns sing is giving the PCs time and reason to care about the place where they live. Cut out the parts that interfere with this objective, rewrite NPC stories, and do what you can to tie the PCs directly to the village/town/city. Give them reasons to love the people who live there and reasons to stick around.

    Finally, this was all crystallized by the inimitable Quinn of QuinnsQuest when he released his video on Stonetop. Just an absolute masterclass on showing what makes a game special and the lessons that can be learned from a transcendent gaming experience. His heartfelt and impassioned points on the common issues that make fantasy RPGs feel shallow really rung true for me, and were echoed by the creator of Stonetop several times throughout the video. I don’t think I could say it any better than Quinn did, so I’ll let his work speak for itself.

    I don’t think it’s impossible for my D&D 5.5E game to reach a similar level of emotional resonance for me and my players, even if my players never think of it in the same way. That’s not meant as a dig at my players, just a natural outcome of the time and mental energy we spend on the games. I’m living and breathing this stuff 24/7. I write a blog about my thoughts on gaming, and not even with the expectation that anyone will actually read it or care what I have to say. I do it for me, and all the better if others find some value in my words.

    I plan to strive for these emotional hooks through narratively important downtime beats and offering my players the chance to build their own homes among the community they are already working to save. Between adventures they will have time to go on dates, help with repairs if the town is damaged, participate in festivals and funerals, spend time honing their skills, and build defenses. They can build a Bastion with some mechanical procedures and benefits, or just have a home with no impact on gameplay. All of this can be accomplished with a couple minutes of conversation in a session. Low stakes, small comments and questions. Keeping the focus on adventuring with beer and pretzels escapist fantasy, but laying the foundation of characters who grew to be a part of the community. None of this was planned at the start of the campaign, and I think that will make it all the better as an emergent part of the game’s shared story.

This post was different from my normal work on this blog. I wrote all this out as a stream of consciousness once I finished Quinn's video on Stonetop and all these ideas that had been rattling my mind around suddenly crystallized for me. I feel like I'm mostly repeating Quinn's point, but it's something I was already trying to articulate for my own game and I wanted to share for other people who normally just play these games to have some dumb fun with their friends.