Between rest and the next crisis

When skipping ahead is necessary, when detailing is better – and how to balance the two.

The dilemma every long-running campaign game master knows.

Three years of real-world gameplay. A story that, within the game world, has already spanned several years. The characters are no longer wandering adventurers – they are political figures, city leaders, business managers, people with fame and personal goals that go beyond simply “killing the monster of the day.”

The game master, who painstakingly built this campaign, begins planning the next cycle. The demonic invasion has been defeated. The city needs rebuilding. The soldiers need training. The projects need management. And, honestly, nobody wants to spend three sessions describing how each plank was put in place.

The solution seems obvious: punctual timeskips . Advance two weeks, resolve the reconstruction with a skill roll and a generic description, and move on to the next adventure.

But then a player raises their hand. “I don’t like timeskips. It breaks the rhythm. Why don’t we turn the reconstruction into missions? Why don’t we go after giants who can help raise the walls? Why don’t we make this a complete adventure?”

The game master hesitates. He understands the argument – ​​the post-climax is important, the consequences must be felt. But he also imagines the scene: an entire session where one player goes looking for competitors for a coliseum, while the other three just stare at the ceiling. Where’s the value in that?

This true story – posted on r/rpg_brasil – summarizes a dilemma that spans RPG systems, styles, and decades. Long campaigns inevitably run into the problem of dead time that isn’t really dead : periods of calm, management, training, and rebuilding. And the burning question is: skip them or go into detail?

The answer, like almost everything in RPGs, is “it depends.” But, more importantly: there is an elegant middle ground that respects both the game master who wants pace and the player who wants depth. This article is a map to find it.

Why time becomes a problem (and how other systems have tried to solve it)

The heart of the conflict lies in the clash of two time scales that every RPG needs to manage:

• Micro scale : the six-second combat, the tense five-minute dialogue, the trap that triggers in the blink of an eye. It’s the RPG’s natural playground – everything is interesting there, everything is played out in real time.
• Macro scale : the weeks of travel, the months of training, the years of building a kingdom. This is where the game often stumbles, because nobody wants to narrate 30 days of carpentry.

The game master’s desire is legitimate: to skip the boring part and get to the next point of tension. But the player’s fear is also legitimate: a poorly executed time skip can make the world seem empty, as if the characters had pressed “pause” while the story waited for them.

Several systems have already attempted partial solutions:

D&D 5e (Xanathar’s Guide) offers individual Downtime activities: training, carousing, crafting, research. Each activity is resolved with one or two rolls and a note on the character sheet. The problem? They are essentially solitary – there is no interaction between the characters during the period, and the result rarely generates new adventure hooks.

Pathfinder has robust kingdom-building systems and random downtime events, but they are resource-intensive. They require a “side table” of administration that can be as time-consuming as a normal adventure. For many groups, it becomes work.

Blades in the Dark (and its derivatives Forged in the Dark) has, in my opinion, the most elegant approach. The game structures each “mission” (score) followed by a fixed Downtime phase : rewards, stress reduction, Downtime actions (a maximum of two per character), and finally, an Entanglement roll that introduces a complication based on the group’s fame (Heat). The result is that the time between missions is procedural, fast, and full of consequences . The world doesn’t pause – it reacts.

OSR in general tends towards pure narrative montage: “You spend three weeks training and drinking in the tavern. Roll 1d6 to see what happened.” It’s simple, but it can be too shallow for players who want to feel the weight of time.

None of these systems are perfect for every game. But they all teach something: the passage of time doesn’t have to be a monolith . You can choose different levels of granularity depending on the stage of the campaign.

The two warring schools of thought (and why they’re both right)

Before proposing hybrid solutions, let’s honestly look at both sides of the table.

The immersionist’s trench: “never skip anything”

The player who resists the timeskip usually has good reasons. For him:

• Each day lived generates attachment. Skipping the rebuilding phase is like watching a movie that cuts from the wounded hero to him already healed, without showing the scarring. Recovery, fatigue, small daily victories and defeats – all of this builds character.
• The post-climax is where the emotional fallout resides. Defeating the lich is thrilling, but burying fallen allies, dealing with refugees, negotiating with factions that took advantage of the chaos – that’s real drama .
• “Administrative” tasks can become adventure hooks. Rebuilding the city attracts looters. Searching for competitors for a coliseum reveals a conspiracy between the guilds. Training soldiers can expose an enemy infiltrator.

The risk, of course, is that the game will drown in minutiae. Entire sessions where one player monopolizes attention while the others wait. The campaign stretches on for months without advancing the main plot. And the overwhelmed game master begins to avoid “administration” sessions – which leads to the other extreme.

The pragmatist’s trench: “skip anything that isn’t an adventure”

The master who bets on the timeskip also has solid arguments:

• Not everything is interesting in gameplay. Building a coliseum involves bureaucracy, negotiation, and waiting. None of that is as fun as rolling initiative. Solving things with a Charisma roll and a results table is more honest.
• Timeskipping preserves the pace. You finish an arc, advance the timeline by one minute of narration, and begin the next. Players who dislike long pauses will be satisfied because the action never dies.
• It allows for real-time control. A campaign that lasts three years of actual gameplay needs timeskips. You can’t detail every single day. If you try, the story will never reach the next major event.

The risk, however, is that the world will seem artificial. The characters spend three months training, but nothing happened during that time? No faction made a move? No old enemy took advantage of the calm? The player who complains about the timeskip feels exactly that: a sense that the world paused, waiting for the heroes to return.

Both sides have a point. The solution is not to choose one, but to build a bridge .

The practical hybrid: procedural downtime with active consequences.

The central idea that works at every table I’ve witnessed is this: treat downtime as a mini-game with clear rules, not as a narrative void . It has a beginning, middle, and end. It produces tangible results. And, most importantly, it doesn’t stop the world .

Let’s detail the components.

The downtime phase in stages

Inspired by Blades in the Dark, but adapted to any system, you can structure the post-mission period in four steps:

1. Rewards and progression : XP, items, reputation, money. That’s quick – a note on the character sheet.
2. Individual Activities : Each player chooses two to three activities from a standard list (train, work, build, research, recruit, party). Each activity is resolved with an attribute roll and produces an immediate result (XP gain, money, an item, a clue).
3. Downtime events : After the activities, scroll through a table to see if anything unexpected happened during the period. It could be something small (an acquaintance showed up in town) or something big (a natural disaster).
4. Faction Clocks : Finally, update the secret (or open) progress of the factions. This shows that the world hasn’t stopped.

Each of these steps, when well designed, takes a maximum of 20 minutes in total for a group of 4-5 players.

The clock of factions: the world doesn’t pause.

This point directly addresses the criticism from the immersion-focused player. Create a list of relevant factions for the campaign – it could be three, it could be six. At the end of each downtime period (which could be a week, a month, a season), roll 1d6 for each faction:

If you want more granularity, use 1d10 or 1d20. The important thing is that, when the characters emerge from the timeskip, the game master can say: “While you were rebuilding the city, the thieves’ guild expanded its control over the eastern district. And there are rumors that the defeated necromancer left behind a disciple.” The player who complained about the timeskip now sees that time has truly passed .

Downtime event tables (ready to use)

You don’t need to invent everything. Use or adapt these common tables from OSR and Pathfinder games. Roll 1d20 at the end of each downtime period (or whenever a character does something noteworthy).

These tables solve two problems at once: they add narrative texture to downtime and create future hooks without turning each event into a full session.

Personal goals as the heart of downtime

Let’s return to the original post. The game master mentions that each character has their own hobbies and businesses – one wants to build a coliseum, another to manage a business, a third to train soldiers. This is the richest raw material for a well-done downtime.

Resolution in a circle: short, shared scenes

The worst thing that can happen during a downtime is for a player to describe, alone, for forty minutes, how they searched for competitors for the coliseum while the other three watch. The best thing is to turn that into a short cutscene wheel .

Here’s how it works: in a session dedicated to downtime (or in the first thirty minutes of a regular session), go from player to player. Each one describes a scene representative of their period – a maximum of five minutes. The scene should include:

• What is the character trying to do?
• A relevant attribute roll (the GM sets the DC).
• The immediate result of the scrolling.

Examples:

• Warrior training recruits : “I spend my mornings in the fort’s courtyard. I want to teach the soldiers how to maintain formation against larger enemies.” Strength or Charisma roll, DC 12. Success: The soldiers gain +1 morale in the next battle. Failure: Two recruits are injured and training is delayed.
• A rogue running an illegal business : “I’m going to the back alleys to see how the smuggling is going. I want to make sure no informant from the guard has infiltrated.” Dexterity or Cunning roll, DC 14. Success: the business yields 50 extra coins. Failure: a henchman is arrested, and the rogue has to pay the bail.
• Wizard researching in the library : “I spend my nights in the guild archives. I want to find clues about the next artifact.” Intelligence roll, DC 13. Success: discovers a concrete clue. Failure: triggers a magical alarm and attracts unwanted attention.

The other players watch each scene, but the time is short enough that it doesn’t get boring. And often, the scenes generate comments, jokes, or collaborative ideas – “while you’re in the library, my rogue might be trying to steal a book too”.

Hourglass for long-term goals

For large projects – such as building a coliseum, founding a guild, or training an army – use a progress clock , borrowed from Blades in the Dark. Draw a circle divided into 4, 6, 8, or 12 segments. During each downtime period, the player can spend an action to fill one or more segments, depending on the success of a roll:

• Critical failure: no segment.
• Normal failure: 1 segment (but something goes wrong).
• Normal success: 1 segment.
• Critical success: 2 segments.

When the clock is full, the project is complete. Between the segments, the master introduces small complications that maintain interest.

Example of the Colosseum:

• 6-segment clock.
• First downtime: player rolls Charisma to “negotiate with the mayor for the land”. Success: 1 segment. The mayor demands that a tax collection be done first (small optional mission).
• Second downtime: rolling to “recruit architects”. Critical success: 2 segments. The architects bring an innovative project, but it costs twice as much.
• Third downtime: rolls to “find competitors”. Failure: 1 segment, but one of the competitors is a fugitive criminal – if discovered, the event may be canceled.
• Fourth downtime: final scroll to “finish construction”. Success: clock full. The coliseum is ready.

The player who wanted a “mission instead of a timeskip” got mini-events and decisions at each stage. The game master who wanted speed only needed to spend a few rolls and notes, not entire sessions.

When does an individual activity warrant a full session?

The answer is: rarely . An activity deserves to become a full session if, and only if:

1. It actively involves all the characters (or at least most of them).
2. It presents a real risk of failure with dramatic consequences.
3. It advances the main plot or an important personal arc.

Example: searching for competitors for the coliseum doesn’t warrant a session. But if, during the search, the group discovers that one of the competitors is a former enemy general in disguise, and this leads to a sabotage plot involving the entire group – now that’s an adventure.

The golden rule: if the activity can be resolved by a single character with one or two rolls, don’t turn the session around . If it forces the entire group to act together, consider turning it around.

The role of the teacher: five questions to calibrate the focus.

Many game masters feel anxious when deciding what to detail and what to skip. A simple tool is to ask yourself five questions before each downtime period:

1. Is this routine or exceptional? Training soldiers every week is routine – deal with it quickly. Training for a one-off tournament against the enemy champion is exceptional – it deserves an extended scene.
2. Does this involve risk? Building a wall is low risk – simple roll. Negotiating with a hostile faction is high risk – it can turn into a detailed social scene.
3. Does this matter to the main plot? If so, allow more time. If not, resolve it in one sentence.
4. Will all the players enjoy watching? If the activity is so specific that only one player participates, keep it short. If it sparks general interest (for example, a public trial where everyone needs to testify), it can lead to a collective scene.
5. How much real-time time do I want to spend on this? That’s the most practical question. If the session is already long, timeskip. If the group is energetic, focus on details.

There’s no magic formula, but this mental filter helps to avoid both the tedium of excessive detail and the emptiness of a lazy timeskip.

Two real-life cases (inspired by a Reddit post)

To illustrate how to apply all of this, let’s reconstruct the two main conflicts mentioned by the master.

Case 1: The reconstruction of the city after the demonic invasion.

Context: The heroes defeated the demonic army, but the city is in ruins. The game master wants to skip the reconstruction. A player wants to turn this into a quest: to find friendly giants to help raise the walls.

Hybrid solution:

• Create a rebuild clock with 8 segments. Each segment represents one week of work.
• Each player contributes one downtime activity per week (they can do different things each week, but the group decides together how many weeks it will take).
• Use the event table every two weeks (roll 1d20). This keeps the period alive.
• The player’s idea of ​​”hunting giants” isn’t ignored. Turn it into an optional short mission : if the group wants, they can interrupt downtime to go after the giants. If they succeed, they gain a bonus of +2 automatically filled segments and advantage on subsequent reconstruction rolls.
• At the end of the clock, the city is rebuilt – and the unfolding of events has generated at least two future hooks (e.g., an ancient tunnel has been discovered, a rival guild wants to collect a toll).

Result: the game master didn’t spend three sessions describing masonry. The player earned their “mission” in the form of an optional detour. And the world didn’t freeze over.

Case 2: The organization of the Colosseum

Context: A character wants to build a coliseum and organize competitions. The game master dreads an hour-long session where the player spends their time searching for competitors while everyone else yawns.

Hybrid solution:

• 4-segment clock for “event organization”.
• During each downtime, the player spends one action to advance the clock. Rolls are resolved in 2 minutes each.
• The other players simultaneously perform their own downtime activities (training, researching, etc.) in short scenes.
• When the clock fills up, the event happens. That’s when it can turn into a mini-adventure if the group wants to participate in the competitions. But if the group isn’t interested, resolve it with an audience roll and a paragraph of narration.

The player who wanted a “mission” got their share – they could roleplay to find competitors, negotiate with suppliers, and deal with unforeseen events. But all in minutes, not hours. And the rest of the group wasn’t left out.

Conclusion: Time is a resource, not an enemy.

Long campaigns are wonderful because they allow characters to experience change. They build legacies, see the impact of their actions, grow old, gain and lose allies. But this arc of years within the game cannot be treated as a straight line where each day has the same importance.

The secret isn’t choosing between “never skipping” and “skipping everything.” The secret is adjusting the granularity according to what’s at stake.

• Days of travel without events: skip them.
• Weeks of routine training: solve with a scroll and a paragraph.
• Months of building something grand: use clocks and downtime events.
• The rare moment when a character decides to do something risky and solitary: give them a short scene, but not a whole runtime episode.
• And when the whole group wants to experience a crucial week of political negotiations, tournament competitions, or the opening of the Colosseum: then, make it a complete adventure.

The original poster isn’t wrong in wanting timeskips. The player isn’t wrong in wanting depth. What’s lacking isn’t agreement, but structure – a framework of social rules and mechanics that transforms the passage of time into something the whole group plays together, even when they’re doing separate things.

Ultimately, the question isn’t “to skip or not to skip?”. The question is: “What are we losing if we skip? What are we gaining if we go into detail?” And the answer, session by session, will define the pace of your campaign.

Because in RPGs, time is a resource like any other: you spend it where it matters, speed things up where it doesn’t, and never let the players feel like it was wasted.

This article was inspired by the discussion in the post “How to deal with long time lapses in a campaign?” on r/rpg_brasil. The solutions presented combine elements from Blades in the Dark, Pathfinder, OSR, and homegrown practices from groups that faced the same dilemma.