Your Paladin Has PTSD and a Mortgage: The Case for Downtime
When the dice stop rolling, the real questions begin
The Unspoken Bargain
We always fade to black. When the dungeon is cleared, the tyrant slain, the village saved, and the loot divvied up, we sheathe our swords and retreat from the table. Characters go inert. Frozen mid-stride in a pose of imagined triumph. Their fates—until the next session—become Schrödingerian: undefined, unspoken, unresolved.
But we all know what happens. Or at least, we act like we do.
The bard drinks their weight in mead and debauchery. The rogue vanishes into vice and velvet shadows. The warlock cuts a new deal with something older than sin. "Hookers and blow" becomes the shorthand—vulgar, dismissive, and yet somehow comforting. A cultural joke that shoves a velvet curtain over the abyss of downtime.
It's funny because it's ridiculous, and it's ridiculous because we never stop to think about it.
But what if this silence conceals something more profound than character development? What if our unwillingness to explore these spaces reflects our deeper discomfort with examining the fundamental premises of the games we play—and by extension, the systems we inhabit?
The Colored Ribbons of Digital Valor
Napoleon Bonaparte reportedly observed that "a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon." His cynical insight captures something essential about human motivation—our willingness to pursue symbols of achievement and status, even at tremendous personal cost.
Every time our characters level up, every time they acquire a new magic item or add zeros to their gold count, we're accepting our own colored ribbons. We're buying into a specific vision of progress and success that has troubling real-world parallels:
- Accumulation as virtue: Our characters' worth is measured by what they own and control
- Violence as solution: Complex problems are reduced to combat encounters with clearcut enemies
- Extraction as progress: Resources are taken from environments and communities without true consideration of consequences
- Power as freedom: The ultimate goal is to become powerful enough to be unconstrained by normal limitations
When we joke about our characters spending their downtime on "hookers and blow," we're not just avoiding narrative complexity—we're sidestepping the uncomfortable questions about what our characters' wealth and power actually represent.
The joke isn't just shorthand for debauchery; it's a defense mechanism against confronting what our power fantasies actually mean.
The Economy of Adventure
Traditional RPGs operate on an economic model that would make the most ruthless capitalist blush: identify resource-rich area, extract value through force, convert that value to personal power, repeat on larger scale.
Consider the standard dungeon crawl:
- Enter a space that belongs to someone else
- Kill its inhabitants
- Take their possessions
- Use those possessions to become stronger
- Find a bigger dungeon with wealthier inhabitants
It's colonialism as entertainment, imperialism as weekend activity. And when the adventure ends, we don't want to think too hard about what our characters do with their blood money.
In these games where players often function as the equivalent of hedge fund managers with swords: driven by extraction, guided by risk-reward math, and shielded from accountability by narrative framing. Characters accumulate resources without necessarily creating value within their world.
Beyond the Power Fantasy
What would happen if we lingered between sessions? Not just in terms of mechanics, but as players? What if the cleric opened a food pantry? What if the rogue discovered they liked painting? What if the fighter realized they couldn't go back to their old hometown after what they've seen?
These aren't just opportunities for character development—they're chances to reimagine what progress in an RPG might look like.
Some indie TTRPG systems have already begun exploring alternatives to the traditional power accumulation model:
- Fellowship inverts the traditional formula by focusing on communities rather than individual heroes
- Wanderhome eliminates combat entirely, focusing instead on personal growth and connection
- Dream Askew creates cooperative storytelling where characters' vulnerabilities are as important as their strengths
These games suggest different ways of thinking about character motivation and development—ones that don't end with a pile of gold and nowhere meaningful to spend it.
The Heresy of Downtime
To suggest that the spaces between adventures might be more meaningful than the adventures themselves is tabletop heresy. It challenges the foundational premise that RPGs are fundamentally about power fantasy fulfillment.
But that's precisely why it's worth exploring. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the most radical act in gaming isn't creating a more inclusive dungeon—it's questioning why we're building dungeons at all.
When we open the door to thoughtful downtime, we invite ourselves to question not just what our characters would do when not adventuring, but why they adventure in the first place. We create space to imagine different kinds of games—ones that might better reflect the values we want to embody in the world outside the game.
Listening to the Silence
The paladin who drinks because the screams haven't stopped. The druid who wanders further from town, unable to bear the press of people anymore. The wizard who can't remember the names of the villagers they supposedly saved.
These aren't just more nuanced character developments—they're windows into the contradictions of the power fantasies we've built our games around.
What if we created campaigns where:
- Wealth accumulation was problematized rather than celebrated
- Success was measured by community wellbeing instead of personal power
- Character development focused on emotional growth rather than combat prowess
- Downtime wasn't an afterthought but the point
Some players will resist this reimagining. "It's just a game," they'll say. "We play to escape reality, not confront it."
But perhaps the most meaningful escape isn't into simplistic power fantasies, but into spaces where we can imagine truly different ways of being and relating—alternatives to the very systems that constrain us in real life.
The Courage to Listen
After the dungeon, the story isn't over. It's just gone quiet.
Do you have the courage to listen to what happens next?
To linger in that uncomfortable silence where your character might question the very premises that have defined their existence? To explore what happens when the power fantasy falters and something more complex emerges in its place?
The most radical campaign you might ever play could be the one where you finally ask what happens when the adventure stops and the mirror doesn't.
SIDEBAR: Starting the Conversation
Practical ways to explore meaningful downtime in your campaign:
- Dedicated downtime sessions - Alternate between adventure and character-focused sessions
- Consequence journals - Have players write reflections from their characters' perspectives
- Community impact tracking - Create systems for measuring how adventures affect local communities
- Value-based advancement - Reward character growth that aligns with explicitly stated values
- Collaborative world healing - Design campaigns around restoration rather than conquest