Last night’s DM’s Deep Dive with @SlyFlourish has me thinking about subsystems. They become real when they show up in adventures. 4E had lots of adventures with skill challenges… And the early ones were often problematic. So, that design carried forward. But, at least it meant everyone grasped the concept. They were an obvious part of the mix to everyone playing the edition. You knew what they did and could improve them.

— Alphastream – Fully Vaccinated And Masked (@Alphastream) April 14, 2021

Now, here’s my point: a subsystem dies when it isn’t used. Downtime is an amazing 5E rules subsystem. Now think through the published WotC adventures… do they use downtime? Nope! And that’s a huge miss by WotC, because it’s an awesome tool that every adventure designer and DM should be using. Rules subsystems can’t just be in a book. They need to appear in official adventures.

— Alphastream – Fully Vaccinated And Masked (@Alphastream) April 14, 2021

5E Designers: get some downtime in your longer adventures. Campaigns will be better for it.

— Alphastream – Fully Vaccinated And Masked (@Alphastream) April 14, 2021

I was having fun with downtime as a way for characters to increase their skills using the training rules (which I expanded). Every time we play, characters earn 1 workweek of downtime. Makes it easy to track. That’s a cool idea. I dig it!

— Alphastream – Fully Vaccinated And Masked (@Alphastream) April 14, 2021

I know I mentioned this yesterday, but there’s explicit reference to downtime in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book.

Not enough, and I totally agree with your thread, but at least one person in WoTC remembered them 🙂 I had forgotten about that! Yay!

— Alphastream – Fully Vaccinated And Masked (@Alphastream) April 15, 2021