Downtime | Running the Game 

the best is when your players say they want to do something that you planned to happen anyway

"So, what did everyone do on their own adventures?" "I became a duke and got a cool new shield!" "I started a new elf civilization in the forest!" ... "I accidentally released an ancient evil when trying to release a different ancient evil."

When Matt mentioned arcades: “Don’t cite the deep magic to me, witch! I was there when it was written!”

That “You what.” was really relatable. I feel that way a lot when my players decide to do things.

"You did what?" Oh man, those are the best D&D moments. I love this game.

I know it's random, but I genuinely love watching your videos purely because of the constant smiling. You genuinely make everything feel like childlike wonder, and I can't tell you how much that is appreciated.

12:48 "We may be almost done with this video!" *12 more minutes left*

Listening to that "The Dominator" story just has me gobsmacked. No wonder everyone hates wizards lmao

It's important to me, Matt. Downtime I find is very underappreciated. Recently, in a one-on-one game my little brother DMs for me, one of my characters developed over a period of downtime. He's a Goliath ranger with a very sheltered upbringing and the civilised world was new to him, it's complexity and politics agitated and stressed him out. He became overbeared with the crulity of the world, and was close to hanging up his bow and going home to his clan. That was until we came upon a floating city. I don't know where it came from, but in character I realised that the Goliath wanted to learn how to woodwork. Using the books, we found out it would take roughly 250 days to gain proficiency. Throughout the downtime he really mellowed out, learning how to deal with the intensity of the world. Now on a new quest whenever he's stressed, he sits down and begins crafting a small wooden objects. Makes it less taxing on me playing the character. Tldr: Stressed Goliath mellows out after downtime.

I see your old DM's Black Company reference. Edit: my suspicions are confirmed literally a minute later.

i've been running storm king's thunder for a few months, and it's been like 75% downtime lol

My group speed ran Curse of Strahd and it took us a year.

The “Waterdeep heist “ adventure is not really a heist at all! If anything, it’s a downtime adventure that gives the players a project (their own tavern) and encourages them to align themselves with different city faction, each and every one of which present different ambitions and avenues to grow

When Matt says "We may be almost done with this video" at 12:50 and there's still 11min to go

"... I realize, many of you hate twitch." It's nice to be recognized.

20:10 Holy moly, is that an Adventure Lookup plug in 2019? I'm flashing back to the early days of Running the Game

Next book: "Downtime & B plots"

Matt is so right, as a DM side quests are so fun. My favorite was after a lost battle with a necromancer, the one dead party member was brought back to life managed to escape using dimension door, stole a horse, then failed a bunch of stealth does an other dimension jumping off the horse to avoid the enemies into a barn then in a last stand burns the barn with a whole bunch of enemies still inside killing them all. This was an afternoon on facebook chat that won't forget, it was so cool

My D&D campaign is heavily inspired by these videos, and it makes me happy to find I’m starting to get ahead of the curve. One player missed the last session when all the players got captured and jailed in a mine. Due to the plan they enacted to escape, they had to leave that player behind in the torture masters cell. The players kept apologising to me and wondering how to explain it it the player. I immediately told them to stop, and not even think about telling the player. The story isn’t over, it’s a story that happens without you, and if he lives or dies will depend on him, not you. You’ll also only know when we get to the next group session. He’ll either turn up with a new character or not. The tension and excitement for that game went from regret to super excitement.

Matt, the quality is through the roof. The little effects and cuts really add a load of flavour.

Improv: Yes, and DMing: Yes, but

"... melted my friend, Dave's, war elephant." :D :D :D That was another great video. Thank you.

“Dominator” Yep... “Taken” YEP *Black Company intensifies*

"We started playing D&D right then and there, in chat. We got *no* work done that day." Employees of the year, right here ;) That's such a great story, and this video is really getting me thinking about my own game - especially as my group has to contend with time zones, schedules, and other commitments.

Making stealth rolls while playing D&D at work - it's always tough to tell if your stealth is in game or IRL

"Well,... I completed the ritual, and..." Nothing good EVER follows that statement. EVER. But it's probably awesome more than 80% of the time anyways.

As much as I've enjoyed learning about how to DM through this series, maybe the best gift this channel has given me was learning about the Black Company novels.

I felt my back pop when you had to define "Arcade" for the kids.

Would love to see MCDM release modules with all those writers you're working with. Loved old modules way more than WotC's current releases (which are good).

When I played as a teenager all our missions were player motivated. Someone wanted to build a coluseum but needed gold so we killed a dragon and sold it's skin. Someone wanted to be the advisor to a king so we planed to insert that character into the royal court and then killed the sitting advisor. Our DM never had to plan anything in advance.

"It shouldn't be about the DM's approval. It should be about the player's commitment.... Make the decision. We'll figure it out as we go." (My best takeaway from this. That statement announces a great DM. I believe that statement is the heart and soul of DND.)

This is easily one of my favorite aspects of running D&D just on play by post in Discord. Splitting the party, solo adventures, personal goals, all so much easier to do than at a table. Great video.

I have to say ive ingested over 57 videos of yours in 15 days, and damn sir, well done. Your presentation, commentary, insight, attitude, mannerisms, all top notch. Well done and as a DM, thank you.

This really help me recontextualize what I've been missing since AD&D, a personal player-GM relationship that has eroded slowly over time. I miss running that stuff and have consistantly "failed" to bring it back except for the occasional really invested player.

Every single time Matt talks about his DM Brad, it makes me so happy. I want to thank that guy for contributing to Matt, and therefore all of us. Thank you Brad!

I love that you explained "arcade."

Yay, I just caught myself wishing Matt would post.

For the longest time I was trying to figure out how to get my old group together to play D&D. We have all moved all around the country and some even out of the country so getting together in one place is next to impossible. But with this it may actually be possible to get together for one weekend every couple of months to run a proper adventure and then spend all the time in between on individual "sidequests". Thank you! I will give this a shot!

It couldn't be Matt Colville's most important video without him saying "the video is almost done" when there's still 50% remaining. By the way, I love this. When I DM I vastly prefer running the game for characters with their own goals than creating my own adventure from scratch. Yeah, there are villains and dangers in the world, but you will get so much more out of the game if you *want* something.

This is so useful. I find myself naturally running more modular adventures. Now I know there's a great benefit to them, and it works perfectly with how I would like my games to be. Thank you very much!

15:20 might be the best piece of d&d advice I've ever heard.

Wow, this video is so well polished. I live the increased level of production that you have acquired due to the Kickstarters and patreon. I also enjoyed your failing forward analogy with the rescue mission, which I think would be aided if you had narrative dice in your new sci-fi RPG. Tldr: nice video. Narrative dice are good.

Having watched pretty much all 86 of your running the game videos, this probably *is* the most important one I've seen so far. I love the idea of downtime, but have often been frustrated with how to integrate it properly into my game sessions, under the mistaken assumption that basically everything significant in the campaign should happen during said sessions. From the bottom of my nerdy heart, thank you for making this video, because I think this has the potential to revolutionize my games.

Damn, this video is insanely good. I find myself returning to it without fail from time to time to keep it fresh in my memory. Good job, Matt.

I don't know if it's the most important video he's done, but it's a favorite for me. It's a little validating to want that kind of pacing back. Makes me nostalgic.

Matt is like the Budha of tabletop rpgs. "Here's something I did, but you can do it whatever way it suits you"

This was and is important to me. It absolutely changed the way my friends and I play D&D.

I love this. Back when I ran my Westmarches campaign, there were a couple players who were constantly going off on their own. We just did it all on one one one chats, because I had a rule at the time that actual adventures required 3 to 6 players. But doing it over chat worked great! I was able to go about my life and just text through the app whenever I had time to further the adventure. It did get a little too time consuming at some points with the constant texting so I recommend turning off notifications for that so that you can choose when you get to it rather that feeling obligated to check your phone whenever there is a text.

What a nice birthday present, a Colville video!

I needed this topic! It's indubitably important! As always thank you so much for your content. I am a prolific game master due to your advice and encouragement!

Thanks for the video! I too think it is super important to switch the driver of the campaign between World driven or player driven (what you seem to indicate as Modules vs West marches games). Its very true that you need both. Playing only Campaign driven can be very high stakes and leave players always running and not having the time to flesh out their character. Playing only Player driven are not as epic and require the character to want something (that reason alone can cause the end of a campaign). Campaign driven is when the story happens to the player.in the sense that the person "who wants something badly but has difficulty getting it" is the big evil villain of the story. The player organize, react and choose how they want to stop it and suffer the consequences of failure often indirectly (think Frodo being compelled by the story to act or John in Die Hard). Inactivity has a cost. These are very well suited for group play as they can easily motivate multiple people at the time. Player driven is when the character are the one who "want something badly and have difficulty getting it". Their choices ARE the driver. They deal with obstacles and setback and the end goal is more about getting a reward than not suffering a consequence (think bilbo in the hobbit or Indiana jones). Inactivity has little cost, but activity has possibility of great rewards! These are well suited for one on one or small group as they need a good synchronicity of ambition (gold, power, love etc...). Sometimes that is when you go from on player goal to another with the other ones tagging along to help. Because of the differences with my way of doing it, I find your way of organizing your thoughts about the same roleplaying game concepts very interesting. For me downtime is, by definition, the events between major milestone that you don't want (or maybe shouldn't) play through. For that reason, this video felt like it was only about one on one, which is fine. I often play one on one, and they are a powerful tool in our game master tool box. I had a discussion with my Matt about it and it is a fun subject ! Whoever read this far I salute you and wish you the best! Yes, yes you! -Chris -Chris

I want to give Matt a million thanks. This is the spark of life both I and my table needed. I run a group of about 10 who have all started characters working on their own ambitions, independent of one another. The players have shown interest in teaming up, and doing more of a traditional campaign for this setting, so I have been able to take these side quests they have asked for and seed them with hooks and links to the larger narratives I have building in the back. This video, dare I say, is must see for all new players and DMs.

Matt Colville is one of two channels where I actually did "ring the bell" on RU-vid, out of the 100 or so I'm subscribed to!

A somewhat related complaint I’ve had for a long time about D&D and the mega-adventure style of play is that the level progression happens really quickly in world. That is to say, I’ve seen campaigns go from level one to ten in just a few months of in-game time. Meaning that the PCs go from struggling with kobolds and goblins to fighting beholders and dragons in about the time it takes to do a semester of school. I feel like incorporating downtime and having a series of shorter adventures may help preserve credulity and prevent that super rapid rise in power. It would also give the PCs a chance to have a life of their own outside side of adventuring.

Wow returning to this video after the "How long should an Adventure be?" video helped me get even more out of this video than I did when I first saw it. The point that we should run modules instead of big adventures is a good idea, and this video helps illustrate the cool things you can do with that style!

Most excellent. This is some great advice. Thanks.

Your TIMING IS IMPECCABLE! LIterally my party is doing downtime tomorrow and I was looking for things for them to do!

For anyone stoked about these concepts (open-ended downtime, character ambition, complex and variable failure states) I gotta HIGHLY recommend reading and playing Blades in the Dark

I've already watched this four times. Glorious video, Matt. Thank you for the constant inspiration for myself and any other tabletop players.

Lord of the Rings Online is my beyond-the-table itch scratcher. - - I have not used a pre-written module or setting since before Drizzt got his first book. - - I ran a downtime session for a friend's paladin as he was visiting me in the hospital. We had no books, no character sheets, and no dice, but it was fun, and has influenced the game at the table. - - Great video, and thank you. And yes, I learned something, and we all know that this... this is all we have. Peace to you.

Another great video Matt. My favorite is always, "You can try, just tell me what you are doing?"

Matt at 12:47 - "We may be almost done with this video" The Video: Goes on for another 10 minutes. Classic Matt!

Re-watching this "Running the Game" series again, after so many years. Coleville's contributions to the hobby are among the greatest, in my opinion. Absolute gold. Thank you, sir.

Matt, I cannot thank you enough for this series! I'm still in the early part of them but between this and Critical Roll you all have helped me get off to a great start with a game I am designing for my kids and their friend. I have used the basics of the D&D system and written the rest and created a new game world that is what I am hoping to be rich and intricate that encourages their imaginations. It's an environment/world that I have been thinking about for a long time but was really nervous about running it. Now, with all of this study, I feel like I am equipped to design the system, the play order and the wild, unique world and I can introduce them to the world of table top gaming. Its thrilling to be able to create this and bring my children into it with their imaginations to play, thank you for helping me with this! (they are 10 and 14 and their friend is 11 and her dad plays in my game too!)

4:00 That’s Twice now that Matt has literally made me fall on the floor laughing 🤣 This instance has to do with the Campaign Diary Ballisantrax Dreams, which I recently listened to, & the way some members of the community were critiquing the episode of the Chain for “advertising Kingdoms & Warfare” (as if people who create a product wouldn’t want to make use of it 😏

"You did what?" 😂😂😂 i laughed out loud

Thanks a million for this Matt! You are truly a river unto your people. Will be watching the shenanigans tonight for sure.

I love downtime adventures (henceforth called side quests ;) ) and I'm so glad to see you talking about them. I've been DMing for a long time and I find this series every bit as useful, entertaining, and just plain wholesome as a new DM would. Even when you're covering things I already know, you often give me new angles to think about them from - or sometimes (like the politics series) it's something I've grasped intuitively but never put into words, and your doing so allows me to more rigorously explore and tinker with ideas once they move from intuition to knowledge. You are a gift to this hobby, and if there is a Hall of fame for it then you shouldn't just be in it, they should put your smiling face on the door.

What a great video and the editing/effects are amazing! I love that "The Dominator" story worked out so well for your DM, I can only imagine the glee Brad felt, when Dave had to tell the group what he did xD Also, to be honest, I've actually never considered doing downtime stuff away from the table (which might stem from the fact that my groups tend to play long epics and downtime happens at the table) but I'll definitely have to keep it in mind for my next game!

I know it's going to be a good day when Uncle Matt uploads a video.

OMG this solves sooooo many problems that I had anticipated for a pair of players! Thank you!!!!

You're right Matt, this has been the most influential and important of your videos for me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. This helped kindle my love for dm-ing as it gave me the missing link of my puzzle. The info you gave me in this video made it all come together. Thank you once more, for shining the light on the game i love so much.

4:03 - A+

Matt at 12:47 : We may be almost done with the video

This has been very inspirational for me!! Thank you for this gem!

Fantastic video Matt! I've always run side-quests with my players, and they have been some of the most memorable moments for my players. Letting the assassin off the leash, letting the ranger go scouting into the harsh snowy mountains, so many possibilities. And players really appreciate the extra undivided attention, especially if you run with a group on the larger side.

There's a major factor you missed here: It's important for the players to INFORM the other players about their offtime adventures. Imagine if that Ghoul came back and told no one he saved her, she was just given to a temple to be healed and she had no idea how she got there. That's whats going on in my own campaign. A character goes off on their own adventures and refuses to tell anyone what they do. And it's really annoying.

Colville at 7 in the morning? Sounds great!

This is my favourite video of this series so far. Also, the 1on1 with Gertz was probably the only P&P Stream I completely watched. The promise of chain solo-stories fills me with warm, toe-wiggly anticipation.

MATT! Hope you had a Happy Holiday season. I just bought both your books and just want to thank you for being such a good and positive influence in the community. Cheers!

When I'm DMing, I try to build the entire capaign around my character's motivations, so that every session, every story arc is as personal as Matt describes here. It isn't necessary for the group to separate for the characters to have interesting character arcs. Just let them all quest for whatever that one character wants! That's how I like to run d&d. (P.S: sorry about my english)

I've been running a campaign for the last 3 years with friends. For the first 2 years we played short self contained quests that I'd occasionally pepper with details of my overarching plot. About a year ago I threw the culmination of these details at my party in a final session and then took a 3 month break from DMing. I've picked up again and we're back to playing regularly, only now they have one set goal, to correct the fallout from the big session before the break. In the 3 month break I found it hard to get players to participate in downtime. I had certain players try to learn new languages and one took the time to multiclass from fighter into paladin, but everyone else seemed happy to just pass a year in game keeping the status quo. I'll admit I was kind of disappointed, I thoughy they would be more invested. I'm planning on doing something similar soon, but with a new perspective from this video

You truly have a great insight in what makes our adventures work and exciting. From a player perspective: We need ambition and commitment in our characters and claim the world as ours too! Very well done sir! My mind is expanded, many thanks.

My friends and I did the same thing as young players back in the 80's and have still to this day. Awesome that you bring awareness to this. Great video Matt!

My internal monologue: "Why does this sound so familiar?" "Oh yeah, Patreon!"

First baby! Let’s hear about some downtime!

Thank you for this video, Matt. You have many amazing videos for DMs (and players) but I think this might be one of my favorites.

Running the game made me want to become a DM and taught me how to do it but, and more importantly, these videos accompanied me for 2 months while I was commuting to work, cleaning the house, even shopping, and they never disappointed me. A friend of mine let me borrow Strongholds & Followers and that was also a great read, filled with inspiration and wondrous content. I had my first session (a mild success) and I want to have more, being right in the middle of the process of creating my entire homebrew world and having a blast while at it. So I just wanted to leave my thanks here too - after having clicked all the 85 videos before this to officially Like them, since I had forgotten to do so :) Thank you for sharing this!

I love how much your group(s) borrow from Black Company.

Arekaed... What is this Arekaed you speak off old sage! ;P

You're one of my favorite D&D youtube channels! I love your topics and the passion you have when you talk about D&D ideas!

Over the past few months I have watched every single Running the Game video and I've gotta' say, this stuff has helped my campaign and my first time DMing immensely. There are even some great nuggets of info in here regarding making video games which I do as well :) thanks for all your work Matt!

12:46/23:11 "We may be almost done with this video, because I don't know what else to tell you (...)" Great joke, sir!

I've never played, but I am super interested in being a GM. I remember first time I EVER seen dnd; I was deployed over seas and my corpsman and a few of our com Marines were playing. As an infantry Marine I didn't get much downtime on deployment, but I was half sleeping half listening, and before long I started actually getting it. Crazy fucks playing DND on deployment, but I got it as their way of coping with everything. I never played then (no chance I would have the time). But, now that I am home I think I could use some DND...

Great video. Thank you for your insight and energy. Keep up the good work!

Wow, The production value of this video leveled up! I remember this style of play but had mostly forgot about it. Thank you for the reminder.

"We may be almost done with this video" 13 minutes into a 23 minute video :)

Algorithm Make this video important

Thanks for the wrapup at the end there. Really helps me pull together my thoughts on the video after tracking your very helpful rambling for 20-odd minutes and intermittently pausing to take notes! XD

Nothing encourages me to be a better DM more than Colville's videos. Thanks Matt.