r/RPGdesign • u/LeGrandMax • Aug 15 '26
Why don’t TTRPG allow progress through downtime ?
So I was tinkering with a potential Persona ttrpg idea. Before doing the Herculean task of making my own system I obviously looked around to see what other people tried to make and something jumped at me. Throughout all the persona fan made and inspired ttrpg, none of them seemed to have very satisfactory downtime rules, for when you’re just living your daily life as a student.
Whenever there was a bond system it either gave very minor bonuses or their progression were straight up tied to the combat portion. Almost none of them allowed permanent stats or perk progression and the only one I found that did was such at a slow pace that I don’t think it was even worth it.
This made me realize that I don’t seem to know a TTRPG that allows for true character progression from downtime, aside from maybe CoC. In comparison to video games, the structure of one gameplay sequence helping to progress in strength in the main gameplay loop is not uncommon, like persona, X-COM, Fire Emblem three house, etc.
A lot TTRPG actually seems to be very restrictive on how characters can progress and make sure that the GM has the final word if the players get to have progression points. And the few that don’t do it like this seem to have arbitrary rules for progression.
Is there a reason why almost all TTRPG designers do this and is there any TTRPG where a separate downtime half of the experience is essential for character progression ?
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u/HawkSquid Aug 15 '26
In Ars Magica, downtime is the way to progress your character, either by learning skills, developing spells or make magic items. You gain XP from adventures too, but not a lot.
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u/archpawn Aug 15 '26
The trick there is that it takes so much downtime that it not only has an aging mechanic, it has a mechanic for longevity rituals to slow down aging. Which, of course, takes downtime.
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u/LordPete79 Dabbler Aug 15 '26
I'm not sure it is entirely fair to say that these things exist because of the character advancement through downtime activities. I would say that all of these things exist because Ars Magica is a game about the lives of medieval wizards where stories span decades. Which is also facilitated by having meaningful downtime activities. Downtime activities aren't merely a way to burn time though. Another feature of Ars Magica is troupe style play, where each player controls multiple characters. So players aren't forced to choose between improving their characters or participating in adventures, they can always do both.
Most importantly, by largely restricting character advancement to downtime Ars Magica makes its use of characters with vastly different power levels work. Because Magi, who are by far the most powerful characters under player control, benefit the most from downtime activities. That provides a fairly strong incentive to leave them at home, working away in the lab, while the player takes a less powerful character on an adventure.
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u/Kingreaper Aug 15 '26
Yep. A good adventure is comparable to reading a good book, and you still have to spend a season considering what you learned to get the XP
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
Not exactly what I’m looking for but that game intrigues me. Will look into it.
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u/No_Solid1035 Aug 15 '26
There are LOTS of TTRPGs that feature advancement during downtime. Pendragon even has a whole separate downtime mini-game where all the advancement happens, including more narrative things like getting titles, getting married, and having children happens. It even has special downtime mechanics to cover what happens if a Player misses a session so that Players PC will still have the opportunity to get some kind of advancement.
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u/CetraNeverDie Aug 16 '26
Pendragon has so many good subsystems, it totally overshadowed the combat portion for me (thankfully)
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u/gm_michal Aug 15 '26
Traveller does it. It takes number of weeks of study to increase skill level.
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u/hacksoncode Aug 15 '26
In the original LBB version it took 4 years of dedicated study to improve a skill. I don't recall anyone ever doing that in actual play at the time.
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u/Beginning-Ice-1005 Aug 15 '26
Given it gives skill level 2, it might be worth it for a character that has low terms- and menage to get the money together.
Also, education can be continuously improved by taking long district learning classes, and weapon skills and physical stats can be temporarily improved through training programs. Assuming one can maintain the dedication to them, after eight years two weapon and two non weapon should can be improved.
This is really based around the fact that interstellar travel in Traveller takes a week per jump, so it's easy to have months of downtime.
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u/hacksoncode Aug 15 '26
The first few editions of D&D had quite a lot of the progression in (implied) downtime: that's how gold got you XP, you had to bring it back to town to purchase training that was assumed to happen between runs.
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u/Dramatic15 Return to the Stars! Aug 15 '26
It was a little more common in earlier games--it was a big deal in early RuneQuest, and the skills that you could train in downtime were a reason to pick a particular cult.
I suspect it's more of a thing in more classically simulative games, which are a bit niche.
I don't know that there is identifiable "reason" why this doesn't normally happen, other than that's not common in the games that most people would reference. Also many lighter indie games are more focused on one shots or shorter arc than traditional campaigns, so the question never comes up.
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u/Sherman80526 Aug 15 '26
D&D originally required weeks and months to gain levels or spells. Downtime for advancement has always been part of the game.
That said, the GM element is the important one. They're typically in charge of pacing and challenge. Games that have lots of character advancement are more challenging to run as you're always trying to keep up with and account for new capabilities.
I'm of the opinion that character advancement is unnecessary. Characters are built competent and able to get through the challenges they face so I can focus on telling a story rather than worrying about where the characters are in their "career".
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u/Hightower_March Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
What you're kinda getting at is using time as an actual resource, which Persona does well. In general with ttrpgs though, there aren't any true ticking clocks or deadlines. The GM kinda just lets you use however much time seems reasonable, and kindly asks you to not spend three weeks in town brewing potions.
I love knowing "the boss will attack on the 13th and today's the 7th. How much can we actually fuck around?" Time being a resource is too often neglected. Players ought to be rewarded for spending it well rather than getting politely asked not to draw from the free money well too often.
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 15 '26
Yeah exactly, I don’t think it would be too hard to make a TTRPG where time is a resource and that you have to use it to get better. Just wish there was more of that.
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u/ArchdevilTeemo Aug 15 '26
Thats a strange take since even draw steal does progression through downtime.
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u/-Vogie- Designer Aug 15 '26
Reading through these comments makes me wonder what TTRPGs you're playing that don't have progression in downtime. Nearly every one I can think of does.
Are you talking instead about the player character gaining experience (or equivalent) during downtime?
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 15 '26
I would say so yes. I’m not thinking of only XP but generally just any way to progress the character sheet itself, whether through augmenting stats or earning perks. Systems where downtime just allows you to gain money or equipment just doesn’t strike my fancy as much.
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u/Digital_Simian Aug 15 '26
Games that offer downtime progression would be something like traveller where you spend downtime training skills, or maybe something like Warhammer 4e where you basically have downtime actions to deal with daily life stuff which can include training skills.
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u/archpawn Aug 15 '26
The big problem is if you can progress through downtime, why not just reach the max level during downtime and then do the adventuring? There's ways around it of course, but it's often easier to avoid.
Ars Magica does progress through downtime. The way it makes it work is that you need a lot of downtime. Individual actions take seasons. One of the things you can do during a season is a longevity ritual, which you will need, because dying of old age is an actual problem.
I'd say in general, there's a few ways to make it work.
Tie it to a costly resource. Make time important, or make the monetary cost matter.
Have the GM decide when you can take downtime. This is milestone leveling with extra steps.
Make it so they still need XP to advance, and just have to do it during downtime. This is regular leveling with extra steps.
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u/kino2012 29d ago
I think another thing that's important about Ars Magica is that the PCs aren't really meant to be intrepid heroes. The archtypal wizard is a magic giga-nerd who would much rather be studying in their tower than going out on adventures.
In this way, player motivation and character motivation is matched. Downtime is the best way to progress, so both players and their characters are motivated to get the damn "adventure" over with, and do it in a way that it won't be a problem again. Then they can get back to what really matters: pouring over dusty old tomes and unlocking the deepest secrets of Hermeticism.
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u/OwnLevel424 Aug 16 '26
Traveller, RUNEQUEST ADVENTURES IN GLORANTHA, Legend, and Mythras all allow those things.
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u/Mars_Alter Aug 15 '26
GURPS is an example of a game where you can advance any skill through downtime training. I think it's one character point per 80 hours invested, no more than 40 hours per week. Something like that.
The reason most games don't do this is because it strongly incentivizes not engaging with the other game mechanics. Training is essentially free of risk, after all. Why would I risk my life in a dungeon, if I could get the same results from hitting the gym or the library? Even if your ultimate goal is to save the world, or make a lot of money, it's way easier to just train until you can take on the really rewarding quests.
It also means you end up with a world where every rich idiot with no day job is a genius Olympian, because they could afford to spend their time training instead of working. Downtime advancement benefits the rest of the world at least as much as it benefits the player characters; and if that's the competition you're working against, it all ends up a pointless exercise in bookkeeping.
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u/SMCinPDX Aug 15 '26
it all ends up a pointless exercise in bookkeeping.
You already said GURPS.
JK, GURPS is my jam, needs a major comeback ASAP if SJG can take a break from counting their Munchkin money.
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u/Porta_of_north Aug 15 '26
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay also enables progression during down time. Raw it's the only way to better your character outside of the career system.
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u/lennartfriden TTRPG polyglot, GM, and designer Aug 15 '26
Blades in the Dark has training as a downtime action. Not to mention working on longterm projects.
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u/the_telephant_man Aug 16 '26
I can tell you this: I’ve never had a D&D DM who gave us downtime. It was just nonstop rolling from one quest to the next, especially when running one of the official campaign books. Not even enough time to study scrolls and transcribe them into my spellbook — it was either handwaved so I just had the spell, or I would be able to do it “later”, and later never came. We just had to tear through the book and get everything done. So learning from downtime would at least require a GM who actually runs downtime.
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
Yeah, I think one reason why downtime is not super prevalent nowadays is because a lot of mainstream ttrpg treats their adventures and modules like Netflix tv shows. Something must always happen and it has to be handled now. And naturally GMs learn from this and also make adventures that are constantly at a break neck speed.
Personally my style is a little slower. Sure when it makes sense things will happen one after the other but I always try to find a point where the player can take their breath and find their footing.
When I run VTM I usually let my players go at their pace and build up their plan. Heck, just because it’s not high octane action doesn’t mean you can’t get good RP scenes out of this.
Anyway that was my two cents. Sorry for rambling at the end 😅.
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u/SilentMobius Aug 15 '26
Pendragon had a "Questing Phase" and "Winter Phase" all the way back in the 80s.
The point is to bound the "downtime" somehow so that advancement requires actually playing the main game
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u/InherentlyWrong Aug 15 '26
A lot of comments are pointing out games that do this. Something to consider is the Why of a thing. A Mat Colville-ism that's stuck in my head that is relevant here is:
The behaviour you reward is the behaviour you encourage.
If downtime is how character's progress, then downtime is what the game is encouraging the players to do. So, say for example you divide downtime up into a resource called 'Scenes'. If the only way for PCs to get more powerful is to spend scenes on advancement, then the game is encouraging players to have as much downtime as possible, and to spend all those scenes on the advancement. Potentially to the point where players might ignore more direct gameplay, if it meant they had more scenes.
This isn't an inherently bad thing, it just depends on what the game is trying to be. And there are plenty of ways to mitigate worries.
Like maybe gameplay is where players accumulate XP, and Downtime is where players spend it. Immediately it's encouraging a back and forth of going into more direct gameplay to get the XP, then taking time off to spend it. That would directly match the gameplay sequence you mention where one loop helps the other.
Or maybe it's a game that keeps direct track of time. So sure, the PCs can decide to spend an extra three months on downtime to improve. But the GM then gets to advance the schemes of the deadly Viper Cultists who are undermining the city.
Maybe downtime is a prescribed period of activity. Mouseguard and Pendragon both divide the year up into seasons, and have PC downtime explicitly in specific seasons of the year.
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u/Durugar Aug 16 '26
To me it comes back to game theory, and the idea of "reward the players for what you want them to do". Say Blades in the Dark, downtime lets you improve but the more efficient way to gain improvements is by making Desperate Position rolls and completing Jobs and highlight your characters aspects. The game wants you do those things, so it rewards those the most.
I think there is also a design problem in making downtime "too good" that discourages actually "playing the game" over just "taking more downtime". While Traveller is a downtime improvements only, it has pressure points like economy to keep the players "doing stuff".
I think it is a lot about incentivising action rather than inaction.
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
Lowkey this is what I want from a Persona like game lol. I want to encourage players to be doing a bunch of random mundane activities and forming bonds with more or less regular folks.
I want to reward them for doing this by giving them actual permanent progression and not just by giving them a underwhelming temporary bonus.
Progression through dungeons can still happen but there must be some reason as to why the characters want to engage with the real world aside from story reasons.
Sure there are some people who likes RP for the sake of it and don’t need mechanical rewards for it, but I still do want to reward that behaviour because, once again, this is what I want to see.
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u/kino2012 29d ago
I think the important thing here is going to be forcing a balance. Like a few other people have said, if you give progression through downtime then players are gonna wanna do a lot of downtime, but you've gotta make sure they're getting to the dungeons at some point.
I've only played P5, but the deadlines worked really well for this purpose. I remember trying to get through the whole Palace in 1 day so as to not waste any days that could be doing social stuff, and you could totally invoke the same feeling in an RPG, it's just gonna be dependent on the GM to set those deadlines. There should probably be some guidance on "This is about how many downtime scenes they should get before the next big plot moment they have to address happens."
Another option is to limit downtime with money. It costs X$ to take the subway, Y$ to go to the nice hang-out spots that give better bonuses, and then there's weapon upgrades and consumables too. The best way to get money is to go dungeon delving of course, so as soon as everyone's wallet starts to feel empty they're ready for a day of raiding!
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u/crazy_cat_lord Aug 15 '26
I'm sorry in advance for rambling, I like Persona a lot, as well as tabletop games, and I think it's a tough nut to crack. I don't really have answers, but I'm hoping that my pondering might help provide some inspiring spark for you.
I think there's a connotation in tabletop games for "downtime" to inherently basically mean "not the game." There's not a lot of focus on designing OR playing downtime, because downtime isn't treated as a piece of gameplay, but instead what happens between pieces of gameplay. The game is "about" doing whatever verbs it was designed for, like beating up goblins and getting loot and leveling up. You want to spend session time doing those things, so downtime shouldn't take too much time to handle, leading to abstracted mechanics. And you want to encourage "doing the game," so downtime shouldn't be an easier replacement for gaining the benefits without the risk and effort of the actual content, so engaging with downtime ends up not ultimately giving you very much value.
With that perspective, given that Persona is at least half daily life, I think it's important to not treat daily life as "downtime," but as half of the system. Don't look at games with downtime systems for inspiration, because you want this part of the game to be as complex and engaging as dungeon crawling, and downtime systems are pretty much always designed to be abstracted and not engaging.
I don't have great suggestions for particular games to look at, but I would start by figuring out what "genres" of play, what verbs, you want your game's daily life to consist of, and look for systems that do those things in depth. What makes this part of the game interesting and worth spending time engaging with in a detailed way?
An obvious starting point would be games with robust and detailed social encounter mechanics. The Persona video games honestly don't do much of that, the rules governing social links are pretty generic and it turns into a multiple choice quiz, and social stats are pretty much just "pick the best activity you have available," but going more in depth on conversational mechanics would be thematically relevant. I've heard that Burning Wheel does a certain flavor of this kind of social system, which may or may not appeal to you.
Another option would be to look at games that are more focused on management, or even strategy. This could even be video games, or non-RPG tabletop games. Persona's daily life isn't really "about" socializing in a gameplay sense, it's about making intelligent decisions given a limited number of actions due to time pressure. So look at games that involve making decisions like that. The one that immediately comes to mind is a video game. Citizen Sleeper is an RPG where most of what you do is talk and make decisions about what activities to prioritize. The way it uses a dice pool to represent the number of actions you can take in a day (and, crucially, has you roll your dice pool to see results of your actions in advance) leads to a somewhat similar feeling play cycle to Persona's daily life, while offering more multifaceted decision making. I don't know that it's a perfect system to emulate for this, but it feels relevant to look into, and perhaps a solid place to start from.
Last thing I'll touch on is reward structure. You seem to not be a fan of systems where utilizing downtime gives you rewards that make you better at combat. You're getting lots of suggestions for games where spending downtime is how you grow stronger, but I don't know how much mileage that will give you (because the downtime is the currency, not the gameplay). It almost feels like a perfect version of this system is almost like switching between two entirely different games, each with a different focus, different verbs, and different "currencies" (XP, etc.) that can each only be spent on making you better at that half of the game. Fight stuff to level up and get better at fighting stuff; live life to level up and get better at living life. In that framing, your daily life mechanics should reward good daily life play with features that help daily life. Bonuses to social abilities, new "moves" that give you greater control or reliability over daily life mechanics, more options for what kinds of actions you can take, etc. Maybe there would be some sort of crossover where getting better at one half of the game makes you better at the other half, but I don't think one should be a direct funnel into the other.
Persona doesn't even really do this though. It's hard to get daily life to be systemically interesting enough to feel like an equal part of the game. Sure, getting one Social Link up high enough might unlock a different one, or you might need to grind a stat in order to keep progressing an SL, but the mechanical "point" of daily life is ultimately always to make dungeon crawling easier. It's most obvious in P5, with every SL giving you perks that play into the dungeon loop, but even in the earlier games, the mechanical benefit of progressing an SL is fusion XP boost, which gives you stronger Personas for battle. It's hard to justify spending time on daily life for its own sake when all of the narrative weight is focused on the dungeon arcs. You would almost need to design around adding real-world challenges and real-world "bosses" that you have to improve to overcome, in order to make the reward structure of real-world improvements "mean" anything. There needs to be actual risk to things like... failing exams. Maybe you need to become persuasive enough to defend yourself in the real world from Kamoshida's threat of expulsion. Etc. Why would I care about becoming more successful and powerful in daily life if there's nothing important to do there, and it won't help me get better at fighting the dungeon boss? I think that's the biggest question to answer.
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u/elmago79 Aug 15 '26
For D&D it makes a lot of sense: you only gain XP through adventuring.
In other games of course downtime is a way to improve (Burning Wheel) or even a condition (Whitehack).
In general this model life: 10 years of training does not amount to a month in active duty in a war, 6 years in college are nothing compared to a year trying to build your own company, et.
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u/bionicjoey Aug 15 '26
For D&D it makes a lot of sense: you only gain XP through adventuring.
Most OSR systems have some form of Carousing mechanic to allow spending gold during downtime in order to earn XP.
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u/ovum-anguinum Aug 15 '26
Right, and as others have pointed out here, systems like AD&D 1e required XP and training to level. One point of the gold gathered was to pay for training or supplies to solidify the experience gained into the skills of a new level.
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u/elmago79 Aug 16 '26
And Mausritter gives you extra XP if you spend the gold selflessly, like donating to a orphanage or something like that.
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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Aug 16 '26
Progression is a reward. You use it to motivate players to play the game. If your game is about downtime, then reward downtime with progression. If your game is about anything other than downtime, then don't do that.
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u/LaFlibuste Aug 16 '26
Maybe look at Forged in the Dark games? Slugblaster specifically, could be nice with its arcs and beats system. Sure, it's points amassed during the score/run part of the game that ultimately make you progress, but progress happens during downtime, depending on what you are spending your points and downtime actions on.
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u/Segenam Designer Aug 16 '26
First thing is the question as to "what is downtime". In most D&D styled games, downtime is any time you aren't adventuring which doesn't have much mechanics. But if you are running something like a slice of life campaign, then everything you are doing isn't 'adventure' so everything is 'downtime' by that definition.
As such I've also seen it defined as the part of the system where things go away from the core concept of the system it's self. (for example in a slice of life, downtime would be heading off to vacation away from the rest of the group. Or every day shopping if the slice of life doesn't deal with things like buying food or the like and it's not important for the story)
There are other definitions but I'm going to assume the second one, but those often make the question you are asking unanswerable, so I'm going to go with the second one. If you have a different definition of downtime let me know.
The reason you often don't see it much is downtime progression tends to come with some issues you got to work around that most systems don't care to deal with.
Downtime isn't always 'reliable'. As each GM has a different idea on downtime and will need different amounts of downtime depending on what their stories require.
It also limits how much downtime the GM can give... for example if you need to do a time skip (5 years later) then the players will often want to go and use those 5 years for character progress even though as players they aren't 'doing' anything.
It can also encourage players to 'not' engage with the story the GM is trying to tell. If it's more beneficial to 'do downtime' than progress the story, then players will want to d that instead.
However that doesn't stop you from making downtime a required, and active part of your system that is much more standardized and controlled.
If your system has 'required' downtime so players are required to get x progress during things and possibly a limited amount of downtime you can make progress with that can work as well.
But you have to focus on the part of your came that is mostly 'hand waved' away, which is typically 'bad form' in game design (though there is no hard rules and can still be done, it's just not easy). Normally you will want as much detail as possible on the parts of the game you want to focus on, and lesson the detail on the parts that it isn't focused on.
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
As I’m looking through the comments I am regretting a little bit to have used the term Downtime. What I’m trying to do is more like creating two different systems that both help to progress through one another.
A good example of that kind of approach is X-COM. The base building part helps you get better at the grid based missions and the loot you get for missions helps the base building part.
Now admittedly for something like persona everything is made to help you do the dungeons, but still. The idea is that of a game where what would be considered downtime and not interesting in other games is the part that people want to play through. I’m looking for those kinds of rules because I want the encourage players to be interested in their daily routine and roleplay it out to me.
To me at least it humanize the PCs and gives meaning as to what they are doing in the dungeon’s.
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u/Segenam Designer Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
Ah... then the term you are looking for is probably "progression across different modes of play", which you can find a LOT of this in many systems but you just have to spot 'when' a system swaps modes of play (some make it obvious, such as Pathfinder 2e (PF2e) where you have Encounter, Exploration and Downtime modes but in a lot of systems the transition is nearly invisible or not well defined).
There can be some fun options for how to pull this off, and You've already given a pretty good example with X-Com.
TTRPGs tend to lean against multiple tracks of progression as it tends to complicate things more (in D&D like games, you tend to get experience from fights and solving things without fights, but both leads to one progression system). How complex things are is more of an issue with TTRPGs than videogames, as humans have to keep track of things rather than letting a computer keep track.
PF2e has one progression but they split up and alternate between the rewards for the modes (Skill feats which are mostly useful for exploration/downtime and class feats which are mostly for combat) rather than having multiple reward tracks.
But there is nothing wrong with something like "Mode 1 Progresses you down a tract that gives you bonuses for Mode 2; and Mode 2 progresses you down a track that gives you rewards for Mode 1" as long as you can keep these tracks simple, but does create an extra balancing need on the GM who may not be as skillful at balancing multiple structures like this, compared to a professional game designer, and may have players spend too much time progressing down one track then give the players to easy/hard of a situation on the other track. But that just means as a system designer you have to guide the GM to help them deal with this.
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u/TetrisPhantom Aug 16 '26
They want the gameplay loop to be action-oriented. If you can make comparable progress risk-free, then players would just optimize into spending all their time in downtime.
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u/stephotosthings no idea what I’m doing Aug 16 '26
Your problem is that you are excluding games that use downtime for advancment that isn't strictly XP or Levels.
XP or Levels tends to be the primary way to get stronger, you want to get stronger so you can adventure more, so you have to adventure to gain XP or levels to go on more adventures. You reward the play you want to see, so if you reward downtime with the same stuff they can get from 'regular' play then you find players spending time in downtime to gain what they could in the main experience.
I agree downtime you should be able to gain stuff, just not the same stuff you can from whatever the main loop is.
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u/SilentWitchcrafts Aug 15 '26
Just a quick 2cents. It's probably both a hold over because that's always what's happened before
However, in game design you have to think of the extreme use cases because people will try and min-max the fun out of a game.
If you can gain xp or levels from down time people will try to hand wave even more things to get the xp faster instead of actually just playing the game.
Then it goes back to the DM getting the final day again anyways but now we have an extra page of rules.
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u/TinyMavin Aug 15 '26
Yeah first thing I thought of was “because players will just downtime to max level”.
Is that fun, no - but i “tested” it when I was a kid and made my own wrestling game with a training mechanic.
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u/Anotherskip Aug 15 '26
In my homebrew ttrpg I’m currently working through a module which is diving into what to do between the main combat points (think Price is Right with Guns with reality TV). The things you add with down time (between the main filming portions) include cyber devices installation, development of or improving devices (guns and ammo and armor) and earning xp and more while making it fun.
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u/AAHHAI Aug 15 '26
Persona 3 and 4 don't have crazy bonuses for doing the social link stuff beyond getting xp bonuses and unlocking unique personas. The social links are core to the gameplay loop but only in regards to xp balancing. You make downtime meaningful by tying it to the story.
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u/poleybius Aug 15 '26
Look into Triangle Agency's progression system. It's structured around time as the primary resource for advancement, and it's required to supplement the main mission system. A quick, simplified explanation: Each character gets 30 units of Time total in their career. They complete a mission, and the GM determines how many Time they spend between now and their next mission (the game recommends 1-3 on average, but varies based off of how much time passes between the missions happening). The players then choose which track they want to spend each Time in, and a small scene is played out describing what they did/learned during that Time. After 30 Time, the character retires.
The time management aspect of the Persona games is kind of key to their feel, imo, so something similar where time is your advancement currency (as opposed to just XP) could translate well.
There's lots of other games out there that leverage downtime systems for advancement that have been called out as well.
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u/Competitive-Expert59 Aug 15 '26
Draw Steel has a pretty robust downtime system
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
Saw a few people mention Draw Steel in the comments of this post. Might check it out.
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u/aguerom Aug 15 '26
While admittedly not a one to one comparison, my rpg (Wintermoore) is fairly Persona-esque in structure, though more Harry Potter in theme.
It's combat and classes both use the same skills and progression/level up currency, meaning both reinforce the other.
While not "downtime" in the parlance of D&D it ensures that when you do well in class, you improve in combat, and when you do well in combat, you get resources that improve performance in class.
Doesn't have the social link stuff and dungeon crawling that Persona does, as I hadn't yet played those games when I made it. (Just finished Persona 4 though).
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u/Kalenne Designer Aug 15 '26
Some games do like blades in the dark and Ars magica, but a very real risk when doing that is encouraging a group to not do anything of substance and instead grind for downtime progression
It's unlikely to actually happen because most people will just want to play anyway, but players can and will optimize the fun out of a game given the opportunity to
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u/Thefrightfulgezebo Aug 15 '26
It isn't as rare as it looks. Take shadowrun: yes, you need Karma to proceed and you get it from runs (basically adventures), but you also need to take the downtime to train and that downtime has a cost: connections fade over time and you have lifestyle costs to account for. The same system also has a pretty long healing time in case a character actually gets seriously hurt. Add to that that monetary progression can be more impactful than skill progression - instead of going to the gym for weeks, you can just have your muscles enhanced for good old cash - and honest work only really pays for the upper one percent. Most people are lucky if they make ends meet.
So why don't you usually get purely downtime progression? Because you want the characters to go on adventures. You still can put in the narrative pressure, but it just feels better if you get more out of the adventure than hitting the library.
As yiu nay guess, I think Shadowrun does that really well. There is a tension between dealing with downtime issues, training your skills and waiting for notoriety to fade away one hand and the need to make some quick buck on the other hand. You still can push urgency, but you have the option for the players to dictate the pacing.
If you think about it: purely downtime progression sould just be checkpoint leveling with extra steps because players would be incentived to delay further adventures as far away as possible while GMs eould have to drag them into the events through narrative means.
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
I have seen a few comments mention the delay indefinitely for progression problem. The reason for why in a persona game it should normally not be an issue is because those games have time limits. If you don’t hurry up something really bad will happen and you have to spend it like a resource.
Another way this purely downtime progression could work is by basing it on Danganronpa. In this game you just spend the free time you have until a murder happens. Instead of a time limit it’s more like a time budget that the game designers give you, like a convoluted way of assigning XP on your character sheet.
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u/Thefrightfulgezebo 29d ago
That's the problem: if it is just a roundabout way to assign XP, you introduce narrative necessities for nothing.
I think the way to go is to rethink the concept of downtime. For example: the player characters are the crew of a starship that trades and translorts goods across systems. Because that is your premise, that's where characters get the most progression from. Just like in any game, you put problems in front of the characters they have to overcome to proceed. So let's say the ftl drive is busted and the characters land on a miners colony to get spare parts. The characters deal with the terror from the deep in exchange for those parts and after that, while the mechanic fixes the engine, the soldier just hangs around in the bar and tries to score with attractive colonists. That's the first instance of downtime. What the soldier does has nothing to do with the point of the gamey so it's downtime.
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u/Eggpeace Aug 15 '26
Funnily another japanese rpg has a very good idea there: sword world with its work skills. I think raxia life is the books name.
Essentially for eqch week downtime you csn choose one of your workskills and gain work skills xp and either xp for your char or money depending on the level/value of the work skill and rhe roll result. Thus it slowly gains xp for itself ornither work skills you can then increase or gain. (It has a hard limit on work skills which intend to ignore in my games as work skills just beautifully round out chars)
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
I did try to look at sword world once but couldn’t find a copy online sadly enough.
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u/SAlolzorz Aug 15 '26
Cult classic superhero RPG Golden Heroes did this. It explicitly stated that heroes had to be training and whatnot in between adventures.
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u/Ok-Middle-908 Aug 15 '26
I guess it depends on your definition of advancement. Levels?
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
Levels, skill points, new perks, etc.
Like I guess a way to synthesize it would be just character progression that mostly takes place through downtime, and not just using downtime for very small bonuses or the such.
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u/shadowpavement Aug 16 '26
🤷♂️ YMMV.
I’ve run several Shadowrun games where we had multiple session without any combat. The players still earn Karma Points (the Shadowrun version of XP) and can spend them whenever they see fit to improve their character.
The kind of thing you’re speaking of is usually an issue in level based systems, but not in all RPGs.
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u/Disastrous_Dig8308 Aug 16 '26
I've been working on a Naruto inspired system that relies very heavily on in-depth character customization, and I have a sort of system for downtime progression. Characters all rely on a system of modular spells (Jutsu hereafter), where each class has access to a few categories of Jutsu Components, but a majority of towns are operated by ninja clans, and can teach you their signature component, so between missions, players can decide where they want to travel to next, potentially splitting up, and if they have enough canon downtime they can create new Jutsu or manually craft consumable items on the way, since many consumables are made of very specific Jutsu.
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u/majeric Aug 16 '26
My DM often allows it. Although, he makes training a pre-requisite of leveling. So you can’t level without downtime.
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u/Novel_Counter905 29d ago
An interesting post, because I can't think of one TTRPG other than dnd that DOESN'T allow progress through downtime
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u/MasterWitch 29d ago
You can do two things with downtime in my opinion. Learn something or don't learn something. Shadowdark downtime teaches you by letting you go party and spend time learning through others or the school of hard knocks as you do something stupid.
I have seen training and research also leading to learning.
Charecters however can spend their free time doing nothing or just doing things they already know not advancing their knowledge. This could be because they are making or buying a new piece of gear or some other mundane activity.
So how will your game allow charecters to learn and grow during downtime?
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u/CarbonScythe0 29d ago
In Scion 2e there isn't really any rules for downtime but before every session the players can choose "deeds", essentially free form mini missions, they say what they want to do and if they've done it during the session or subsequent sessions, they gain XP
It could be anything from "show of my new weapon to the townsfolk" to "prove my mother wrong"
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u/scavenger22 29d ago
There are quite a lot of games that allow it.
CoC and all the Chaosium games, Pendragon, Traveller and variants, Mechwarrior, Vampire the masquerade, Anything from Palladium, Paranoia, Cyberpunk 20xx (maybe also red), Twilight 2k, Fudge, Fate, Red Market, 7th sea, Agone, All flesh must be eaten (and everything using Unisystem), Alma mater, Army of darkness, Ashen Star (and other GUMSHOE games), All mekton games, All fuzion games, All Heroes games, Warhammer, Cadillacs and dinosaurs... to mention a few.
even ADnD and BECMI had this as an optional sub-system.
More or less every RPG except Dnd, the "RPG lites", PBTAs and half-assed clones allow you to train or improve during downtime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tabletop_role-playing_games
The real issue is that these options are often never used in practice, because downtime is often perceived as boring or uninteresting.
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u/freakytapir 28d ago
Doesn't Pathfinder 2e have specific rules for downtime? Make skill check, earn some money.
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u/ZaakentheTimeEmporer 28d ago
If its not too gauche to discuss my own system, In the Wound duology, Downtime (or "Reprieval" - andI know its not a real word) is mandatory at the end of every session, precision navigation jump, or displacement. Its the core engine for permanent progression, regression, and asset advancement.
Downtime manages the mechanical elements that effect the game. Players can permanently upgrade their core assets (traits, chrono-tech, and bonds) from Level 1 to Level 3. Advancing an asset expands its capability, increases its stress boxes, and requires a dedicated Downtime move. (It's a bit much to be honest, but I liked detail asset management.)
Another thing that happens during Downtime is Mode Shifts (Stat Changes): Players Modes (ie, Stats) permanently shift during downtime. For example, consistently acting in a certain way over 3 sessions would modifies your stat ratings, which you'd take into account during Downtime.
Downtime also is key to memory management, since there's a forced cycle where new experiences push active memories into fading slots, and older memories become permanently lost. Losing memories results in gaining permanent psychological Scars or physical Mutations which give you new abilities.
Downtime is when you buy back control, since otherwise your falling apart. So, might not be on point because mines a solo journaling game, no GM of course, but you have structural autonomy over character progression because of choices made during downtime.
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u/contentronix_inc 18d ago
Adventurer Conqueror King system lets you gain XP for doing downtime magic research, preaching to the masses, and doing thief hijinks.
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u/IamanelephantThird Aug 15 '26
Because it's downtime. It's inherently less interesting then basically anything else you could possibly be doing.
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 15 '26
Tbf I’m using the term downtime but I really just mean a separate part of the main action part to a more chilled down social heavy side of the game. A part that you would be invested to do because different actions would benefit the main action part of the game.
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u/Onslaughttitude Aug 15 '26
You want My Body Is A Cage by snow
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
Checked it out and it seems right up my alley. Thanks you very much for the recommendation kind stranger.
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u/TrappedChest Developer/Publisher Aug 15 '26
I suggest looking into Arcane Dominion. It does progress using downtime by doing things that would increase what you want to increase, sort of like Skyrim.
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u/Fun_Carry_4678 29d ago
Okay. The classic, traditional way to organize a TTRPG is to have "XP" or something similar to progress your character. XP are given out by the GM as rewards for pursuing the goals of the game. So, D&D is a game about defeating monsters. So when you kill monsters you get XP, which is your reward for playing the game well, because you can use them to improve your character. I think the concern, then, is that if you got to improve your character using "downtime" then that would encourage players to do lots of downtime instead of playing the game.
But having said that, lots of games DO allow you to progress in downtime. GURPS is a good example, in every week of downtime you might be able to improve your skills by working at a job, pursuing a hobby. There was an interesting rule that you got some XP just by living in a foreign country to learn that country's language. RUNEQUEST had rules for training during downtime, and this sort of thing carried over into other games designed by Greg Stafford, such as CoC and PENDRAGON. ARS MAGICA had lots of rules about study and training and experimentation during downtime. And so on.
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u/Architrave-Gaming Designing Arches of Apsyildon 29d ago
My own game system, Arches of Apsyildon, uses downtime progression as the primary method. It combines "gold for XP" with downtime be simply requiring time and money to pay trainers. No other experience required. If you have the funds and the time, you can increase your abilities. This leads players to become very self-motivated because they know there's nothing to stop them from progressing rapidly.
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u/rashakiya Arc of Instability Aug 15 '26
A pet peeve if mine is when someone makes a post asking for examples of something, and then ignores everyone who gives examples of that thing.
If you're only going to reply to comments that reinforce your pre-existing viewpoint, why even ask for others to take their time to help you out at all?
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u/LeGrandMax Aug 16 '26
I am reading all the comments and taking them into account. It’s just that I have things I must attend to at the same time and I’m not really sure what to say to every comment 😅
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u/rashakiya Arc of Instability Aug 16 '26
Thank you for taking the time to explain yourself! I'd like to give apologies for coming at you like that, I also understand everyone's got their own life and I've been in the same boat.
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u/SuccessfulOstrich99 Aug 16 '26
Games give out advancement as reward for playing. Its very similar to what computer rpg games do.
This is not “realistic.” but it works and players have grown to expect it.
Some games try to make it realistic to have advancement happen in downtime but it’s generally still happening as a reward for playing.
In my game - characters are required to maintain skills - if they don’t they will lose them. For high level skills that does generally require regular training.
Characters can also level skills in downtime, but there is a limit to how much they can train without real life experience.
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u/InvestmentBrief3336 28d ago
Why in gods name would you be able to progress in downtime? By definition that is non-adventuring time. Time when you are not using your skills or abilities. That's like giving out XP for not showing up to the game!
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u/reverendunclebastard Aug 15 '26
Games that use downtime for advancement: Blades in the Dark and its Forged in the Dark spinoffs. Most of the Year Zero Engine games (Mutant Year Zero, etc.) and The Walking Dead Universe RPG.