DCC Misc Post 2: Downtime and City Life

Preface

As the DCC campaign is currently on a small break while I am on a work trip for a month, I figured I would talk about how I handle downtime and city or town life. The characters in game are also getting a sort of break in the form of a 6 month span of downtime before something happens to the town of Eng. The players' ideas for that period are currently filtering in to my Discord DMs so writing this seemed like the perfect way to get a break in between figuring out ArcCollector for work.

Some background info that should be pointed out is the fact that, unless there is some type of active pushing of a storyline going on, there is normally a 1-6 month gap in universe between my adventures. I picked this up from old AD&D campaigns where it was strongly encouraged that the groups would have to leave and resupply for some time before going back to mega dungeons and such. Also it's just nice to do that because then the party actually gets to roleplay some of the age-related parts of life.

Downtime

In my opinion, downtime and city/town life are two different cans of worms; I will usually resolve them at the same time but I handle them very differently. Downtime is what the characters are working on as a hobby. It could be studying a spell for a wizard or elf or maybe sparring as warrior. Either way, I normally will allow downtime to affect their character sheet in some way whereas life affects their roleplay in some way.

I tend to equate some type of boon to every ~6 months of downtime cumulatively. Using the example from above, the wizard or elf studies a spell and is able to learn that spell the next time he or she levels up instead of rolling randomly or requiring a scroll. If he or she studies the same spell for another 6 months of downtime, maybe they actually straight up learn the spell. The same would go for stats; training the same thing will increase it in some way for 6 months but you're going to get better bonuses if you go on a quest to improve a stat in some way. This, coincidentally, leads me to my next point.

City and Town Life

This portion between adventures is where all the juicy roleplay and plot hooks come from. The first thing I ask is who they have befriended or gotten to know. Think back to a normal 6 month period (not one involving a certain obnoxious disease) and how many people you meet on a regular basis. Of those, you will probably at least become cordial with one or two individuals. That's what I want from my players. I use it to flesh out my towns and cities because, with 8 characters, that's a lot of people to meet and gather info on. It can be anything from a bread baker they go to every morning to a potential love interest they have struck up with. Anything helps. Especially when you need people to kidnap.

The second life question I will ask them is how involved they would like to be in their communities. The weekly DCC group currently is in the small town of Eng and John the Archivist is a member of their Parliament and, because of this, has taken an active role in helping to grow the town directly... also an active role in converting people to Shigazilnizthrub. If you're playing a city based group, someone could join any level of bureaucracy that they'd like from a neighborhood council to attempting to become a noble. If the players don't want to become super active, that's totally fine but don't forget to add in some flavor for what happens when they aren't a part of it. This could be increased taxes, laws about how many individuals can live in a home, laws about dumping chamber pots in the streets, anything like that! It should just be a sentence or two to make the area feel more alive.

The last question I will ask is what they want to quest for. One of our characters, Grom the Dwarf, currently has a cursed sword that kills plant life around him so he has elected to live away from the town so as to not disrupt crop growth. He asked if there's any way he can reforge it so as to not have that curse and that is a wonderful opportunity for a quest. The rest of the party will likely profit and they will get a badass magical sword that doesn't kill all their plant based food. Honestly just ask the question, your players will likely provide you with something to help you out.

Art from Goodman Games and Russ Nicholson