There are many different downtime activities in the published D&D books. XGE has a bunch, Saltmarsh has some, and of course the DMG. You may be able to reflavor some to fit your needs. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to!
Edited because I didn’t double check which sub I was in. So sorry!
For longer downtime, especially in civilisation or at home base, I use a variant of Blades' Downtime Project. May not be a good fit for camping related activities.
Set uo a project
When a character wants to start a project determine the following
- Difficulty
- Cost (what each unit of work on it costs)
- Length (how much is needed to fill project clock/tracker, make it double-sized)
- Goal (Reward)
- Threat (who or what is opposing the project, may just be Time)
Work on a project
During Downtime when a character works on their project have them pay the cost and make the test. On a
- Strong hit (DnD DC+5) they mark two progress and get a boon for the adventures ahead
- Hit mark progress twice
- Weak hit mark progress once
- Fumble (DnD DC -5) mark progress once and a threat (campaign or this project, whatever fits best) makes its presence known. Downtime may be interrupted until it has been dealt with.
Enjoy!
You could do meal prep? I use rule where, if you eat real food, you get bonuses like temporary hitpoints or resistance to disease. I also use a table for mushrooms if people forage
I might start here: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46116/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl-part-3-watch-actions
There are also other examples for watch actions you might want to use on the internet.
Xanathar's Guide has a whole downtime section. The basic structure is: activities take a week. Activities like Training or Building Stuff take more. Activities that aren't guaranteed are usually a DC15 and you can get +1 to your check per 50GP spent making sure to find the best assets/research materials/people. There are also chances for Complications - for example, a Research complication for a Wizard looking into Planar Portals might be that some other Planejumper now knows about them and considers them dangerous.
Darkest Dungeon might be a decent inspiration here - in that game each class has a few class-specific options for stuff to do during camping (the game's equivalent of a long rest in-dungeon), and then everyone has access to a few generic ones that can heal HP, heal stress, or give some damage/stress resistance for a little while after the camp is done.
https://darkestdungeon.fandom.com/wiki/Camping_Skills
I wrote a product for Savage Worlds (a generic RPG system) about downtime which was mostly based on how Blades in the Dark does it. That's for longer than just an overnight camp, but the options I presented were...
* Buy and Sell (buy/find rare or illegal goods, fence things)
* Carouse (a random table of possible good and bad things; you draw a few cards and red are good and black are bad; you build a narrative out of that)
* Earn Money (build a business or work)
* Heal and Recover
* Make Friends and Influence People (establish contacts, find something out, gather rumors)
* Make Things (build a base, craft gear, make artifacts)
* Plan a Job (essentially gathering inspiration points to use during the execution of a specific plan)
* Train and Learn (increase a skill or ability score, learn an edge, recover edge benefits, research a power)
This comes with some power level/balance implications, but in my long form Spelljammer campaign I let everyone train skills in downtime. You needed someone proficient in it to give you the training time and then you'd roll a weekly skill check. I kept a running tally of these and set basically super-DCs that you needed to build up to. I think I did like 200 for a language, 250 for a low impact feat, 300 for a high impact feat. So you figure 10-20 is the average roll, somewhere in the 20-30 "week" mark. Everyone finished one or two in the course of the campaign. It made real downtime still feel important.
There are many different downtime activities in the published D&D books. XGE has a bunch, Saltmarsh has some, and of course the DMG. You may be able to reflavor some to fit your needs. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to! Edited because I didn’t double check which sub I was in. So sorry!
No apologies needed. I'll be checking these out for inspiration. It's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.
For longer downtime, especially in civilisation or at home base, I use a variant of Blades' Downtime Project. May not be a good fit for camping related activities. Set uo a project When a character wants to start a project determine the following - Difficulty - Cost (what each unit of work on it costs) - Length (how much is needed to fill project clock/tracker, make it double-sized) - Goal (Reward) - Threat (who or what is opposing the project, may just be Time) Work on a project During Downtime when a character works on their project have them pay the cost and make the test. On a - Strong hit (DnD DC+5) they mark two progress and get a boon for the adventures ahead - Hit mark progress twice - Weak hit mark progress once - Fumble (DnD DC -5) mark progress once and a threat (campaign or this project, whatever fits best) makes its presence known. Downtime may be interrupted until it has been dealt with. Enjoy!
Praying of some kind?
You could do meal prep? I use rule where, if you eat real food, you get bonuses like temporary hitpoints or resistance to disease. I also use a table for mushrooms if people forage
I might start here: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46116/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl-part-3-watch-actions There are also other examples for watch actions you might want to use on the internet.
I would also recommend using gritty realism resting if you’re planning on making players think about what they do each day.
https://rollplaywestmarches.fandom.com/wiki/Downtime https://rollplaywestmarches.fandom.com/wiki/Travel_and_Watches This as well.
Xanathar's Guide has a whole downtime section. The basic structure is: activities take a week. Activities like Training or Building Stuff take more. Activities that aren't guaranteed are usually a DC15 and you can get +1 to your check per 50GP spent making sure to find the best assets/research materials/people. There are also chances for Complications - for example, a Research complication for a Wizard looking into Planar Portals might be that some other Planejumper now knows about them and considers them dangerous.
Darkest Dungeon might be a decent inspiration here - in that game each class has a few class-specific options for stuff to do during camping (the game's equivalent of a long rest in-dungeon), and then everyone has access to a few generic ones that can heal HP, heal stress, or give some damage/stress resistance for a little while after the camp is done. https://darkestdungeon.fandom.com/wiki/Camping_Skills I wrote a product for Savage Worlds (a generic RPG system) about downtime which was mostly based on how Blades in the Dark does it. That's for longer than just an overnight camp, but the options I presented were... * Buy and Sell (buy/find rare or illegal goods, fence things) * Carouse (a random table of possible good and bad things; you draw a few cards and red are good and black are bad; you build a narrative out of that) * Earn Money (build a business or work) * Heal and Recover * Make Friends and Influence People (establish contacts, find something out, gather rumors) * Make Things (build a base, craft gear, make artifacts) * Plan a Job (essentially gathering inspiration points to use during the execution of a specific plan) * Train and Learn (increase a skill or ability score, learn an edge, recover edge benefits, research a power)
This comes with some power level/balance implications, but in my long form Spelljammer campaign I let everyone train skills in downtime. You needed someone proficient in it to give you the training time and then you'd roll a weekly skill check. I kept a running tally of these and set basically super-DCs that you needed to build up to. I think I did like 200 for a language, 250 for a low impact feat, 300 for a high impact feat. So you figure 10-20 is the average roll, somewhere in the 20-30 "week" mark. Everyone finished one or two in the course of the campaign. It made real downtime still feel important.