Downtime and “””Stronghold Management”””

 When designing a downtime procedure for a long-running campaign, you want to know how involved you want the procedure to be. I’ve run campaigns where domain management is the main activity, even published a zine with rules along those lines, and seen people recommend still other books on the topic. But if you want downtime and “stronghold building” to be a complement to the main element of play, whether that’s dungeoneering or anything else, I’d recommend something simple and flexible. What I’m about to set out isn’t groundbreaking, but I don’t recall seeing it laid out simply before, and so I can use this post as a full and sufficiently helpful suggestion for anyone seeking simple downtime procedures.

Home Base

Downtime takes place in a settlement or staffed fortification of some kind. It’s safe enough that PCs can spend weeks there, and the DM establishes a cost of living, a ruler, a challenger, and random event table for it.

Cost of living: abstracted, how much does someone have to spend to live there each month? It’s nice to have multiple tiers so players can choose to spend extra cash and be seen as rich. If you have carousing rules, consider gating carousing behind one of the tiers.

Ruler: helps characterize the base. Maybe this is the PCs? Otherwise, it’s the person they talk to when they want something to happen in the settlement.

Challenger: the person best positioned to take power. A disunity that can facilitate all sorts of PC scheming, or ruin things when they have a good thing going.

Random Event Table: Let there be a 50% chance each week of a random event. If the settlement is small, maybe the table is word of monster encounters nearby, general rumors, or passing travelers with skills or items to trade. In bigger towns, you might just have a list of factions and an “event” is just the start of some big effort by a particular faction. This is the part that needs to be customized to your campaign. If it’s a dungeon game, most results should have a bearing on the dungeon or the party’s dungeoneering capabilities. In my weekly game, I got about a year of real life time out of listing out every interesting complication I could think of relating to the PCs’ construction project and putting them in a random order. If you restock hexes or something, that can go on the event table.

Procedure

Every month, have each PC decide their standard of living, paying the cost of living up front. Have them pay any monthly costs, like personnel.

Every week, check for a random event. Report news of it, plus the completion of anything the PCs were waiting for that wraps up now. Then, have the players outline what each PC is going to do that week. It can be multiple things, but try to avoid going day by day.

Partway through the week, the DM may surprise the players with an event they held back. Decide which actions the PCs take that week will get immediate response or resolution, and if any will need longer, schedule it out— make a note for a future week and announce it when you announce news of random events. You can even resolve a PC action right away, then later introduce a complication or unforeseen result. Players will think it’s wizard.

Thus ends the basic procedure.

Projects

Sometimes the PCs are trying to do something that will take a long time. You tell them how long they expect it to take, in weeks. Some projects, like crafting something or training, are active, and require the PC to engage in the project as a primary task. Others are passive, like overseeing a construction project, and don’t seize all of a PC’s time that week.

The cost of projects are basically just what you eyeball them. When it makes sense, make sure the cost is by week or month rather than for the whole project, so that delays make the project cost more. When assessing cost, I like to make it feel like money gained from adventuring is a lot— successful dungeoneers should be able to commission a cool clubhouse to hang out in!!!

As time goes on, look out for measuring stick costs. How much does an unskilled laborer costs to hire each month (check your cost of living notes)?  How much does a small house cost? What restrictions and taxes come up a lot?

Record-Keeping

Besides your settlement notes, the party should naturally develop a sheet with all their monthly expenses and their holdings. Despite the procedure being very simple, it’s surprisingly robust and makes the operation of the party’s capital “feel real”, because they have a simplified ledger and are encouraged to be creative, yet always keeping costs and goals in mind.

Should You Be A Wet Blanket For No Reason?

No. Don’t create excessive and complicated taxes or busybody rulers to chase the PCs away. Don’t make the bank take some

wild portion of everything stored there. Don’t force them to waste their gold to gain any XP from it. Design your game so that successful PCs have as much money as you think successful PCs should have, and let them try to use that money in creative ways. You will never need a “gold sink” again.