Interstitial play system #
The interstitial play system is built to help GMs run downtime and travel in DnD games by that prioritizes player agency and meaningful choices in games that are focused on role playing, character growth, and collective world building. The system works especially well for character-driven stories The core system has three interrelated mechanics:
- Activities during downtime and travel.
- Inspiration and adversity tokens.
- Collective map making.
Philosophy #
The interstitial play system is designed to give space for the things that happen between the major plot events of a game. It can be used to offer a breather in the moments between action scenes, give players agency and opportunity to follow their curiosity, interests, explore, focus on deepening relationships or reflect and focus on their own growth.
Goals #
- Provides ways to uncover new things about the world:
- Meet a new person / group.
- Deepen a relationship.
- Learn something new.
- Meaningful and impactful—choices that players make have positive or negative effects later on in the game.
- Prompts creativity and allows everyone at the table to appreciate the beauty of the world and learn more about each other.
Design principles #
- Fun! It should flow with the rest of gameplay.
- Meaningfully adds to the world—drives the story in an interesting way and offers opportunities for character growth.
- Co-creative—preserves and enhances player agency.
- Provides meaningful and useful limits.
Activities #
Activities are meant to provide a structure to support storytelling and character growth during interstitial moments of a campaign—they offer opportunities for the GM to hand over narrative control of the story to players so that they may enhance their character’s abilities, deepen relationships between characters, or explore aspects of the world that interest them.
Downtime #
Downtime is meant to represent the times when adventurers are staying in one place—often at home—and taking care of everyday life. In storytelling terms, these are the interstitial moments between major plot elements or action sequences.
Base rule #
Players can make skill checks of increasing difficulty, starting at DC 5, increases by 5 with each activity. Skill checks can support various activities that drive the plot forward, build relationships, grow skills, improve or create new tools, etc.
#
| Activity | Description |
|---|---|
| Crafting | Make progress on crafting new tools, improving or enchanting existing tools, or creating new spells. |
| Research / mystery | Make progress on a research project. |
| Study / academics | Make progress on learning a new skill, spell, feat, or ability. |
| Community | Establish a new connection or strengthen existing relationships in the local community. May add a new location to the city map when making a new connection. |
| Academia / politics | Gain or lose influence in the Multiversity. May add a new location to the campus map when it makes sense. |
| Labwork | Make progress on group crafting or research projects that can provide benefits on travel or when doing fieldwork. |
| Rest | “This is the last activity roll of a downtime period and must be DC 25 or below. |
| Removes at least 1 adversity token on a successful check.” |
Travel #
A round of travel doesn’t have a specific distance or length of time—instead you can adjust how many rounds of travel you want the table to run through based on what works best for the flow of your story. As a DM, you can adjust the pacing by deciding how long you spend on the scenes for each activity roll. Making each round last longer and taking more time on each scene can create a more relaxed and pastoral mood. Shortening the distance a round represents and increasing the number of rounds needed to complete a journey can make travel feel more urgent because players may have to make more tradeoffs to rush their travel to arrive on time.
Base rules #
| Pace | Description |
|---|---|
| Normal travel | Start at DC 10, each subsequent roll increases by 10. Available activities are limited depending on resources available. |
| Stop for a day | Start at DC 10, each subsequent roll increases by 5. |
| Stopping for more than 1 day* | “Start at DC 10 - x until the starting DC is 5, each subsequent roll increases by 5. |
- The GM may allow the party to use downtime DCs if the party is stopping somewhere that is familiar to them.” | | Rushing | Start with one DC 10 community roll, DC increases by 10 but all checks must be rolled with disadvantage. But the party is able to make more progress towards their end goal.|
Travel activities #
| Activity | Description |
|---|---|
| Rush | Move faster, but at the expense of all other activities. Limited crafting Crafting is limited to things that you would reasonably have tools available for during travel (e.g. you probably don’t have access to a smithy, but you might still be able to work on creating a spell). |
| Explore / research | “Allows players to add a resource or feature to the map in the area the party is traveling through. Successful roll allows a specific addition. A failed roll allows the player to add an interesting feature of note (eg something notable but not of immediate value).” |
| Study / academics | Make progress on learning a new skill, spell, feat, or ability. The character must have the resources they need with them (eg a book, spell scroll, or potion making kit). |
| Community / Relationships | On a success, allows player to add a town or other social resource (eg town, blacksmith, shop) to the map. |
| Academia / politics | Allows adding something like a library, center of learning, or something of civic importance to the map. |
| Fieldwork | Make progress towards a group project. |
| Rest | “Describe something beautiful about the location you are in as you take time to rest. This must be the last activity roll of a downtime period and be DC 30 or below to provide any benefit. Remove at least 1 stress token and add 1 inspiration token at the GM’s discretion.” |
Rounds of activity #
A round of activity can represent an amount of time (eg a day, a week, a month), distance travelled, or any other marker of progress—and what a round represents can change based on what makes sense for your story and game. if you’re running a leisurely game, you can stretch out the scenes for every activity, focusing on the details and allowing scenes to breathe. Or you can run many short scenes like an action-packed montage that represents constant driving progress. If you want to make your party feel the pressure an looming deadline, you can force your players to run many rounds of activity and force your players to choose to constantly rush as they travel to represent having to make tradeoffs to avoid a catastrophe.
Inspiration and adversity tokens #
This replaces and expands the traditional inspiration point that DnD has.
Gaining tokens #
- Inspiration tokens
- Gain an inspiration token the first time you fail an activity check during downtime—this represents learning from failure.
- Gain an inspiration token if you succeed on more than 5 activity rolls in a single period of downtime or travel.
- At the GM’s discretion—because doing cool shit deserves rewards.
- Adversity tokens
- Gain an adversity token if you would like to reroll a failed activity check—this represents the stress of having to try repeatedly.
- Gain an adversity token if you fail three or more times in a single time period—this represents getting dejected from repeated failure.
- Gain a stress token and an inspiration token if you fail by more than 15 in a downtime roll.
Inspiration tokens #
Like normal DnD inspiration points, inspiration tokens can be used to reward players for making choices that are true to their character. They’ve also been expanded to represent the positive impact of making good choices as well as how failure can often provide the motivation that fuels growth.
Uses #
- Advantage on any single skill check—this includes an activity roll during downtime.
- Automatic success on any activity roll that is DC 30 or lower during travel.
Adversity tokens #
Adversity tokens represent the stress that a character experiences and have negative effects as players accrue more stress.
Effects #
- Players take disadvantage on one skill check for every two adversity tokens.
- At 5 adversity tokens, a player will take on one point of exhaustion that can only be removed by removing adversity tokens.
Removing adversity tokens #
- Resting removes at least one token (see activities section for DC for success).
- At least two tokens can be removed when another player or character successfully provides support through a relationship roll—like in real life, we can ease each other’s pain by offering and receiving support.
Map making #
- GM starts by making general features (eg coastlines, landmarks, known towns)—if this is an area that is familiar to one or more of the player characters, have them contribute some important locations and landmarks as well.
- Players add landmarks and features to the map based on their activity rolls.
- Only add general info to the area nearby when characters are rushing or crafting. This map making system is not about creating a complete map of the world but rather is a reflection of the focus of the players’ attention. There will always be things about a place that is not reflected on the map. Just like in the real world, maps are as much a reflection of the priorities and politics of the mapmaker as they are of the world itself.
Preparing for and running a session #
Running a session with the interstitial play system can be a lot easier for the GM because almost every aspect of a session can be co-created with the players at your table. While the GM may be creating the world and setting the larger goal of a session (such as getting from point A to B), the system leans on players to articulate what is important to them, call for scenes, and decide on how they want to achieve those goals.
Setting goals #
The main reason the interstitial play system can be a lot easier for the GM is that every part of the session can be co-created with your players in the moment. If you’re running a session where your players need to travel from one town to another, you can decide how many rounds it ought to take between towns, whether you want the game to feel more leisurely or stressful—adjusting based on if they have to reach there by a deadline—and let your players decide what they want to focus on, how they want to travel, and even decide if they have any secondary goals. For my first play test, I decided to run a prequel one-shot for a player in my home game—we decided to run a game where her character was going on a journey with her mentor to discover her familiar. Together we decided to run a game where her character travelled around their home island, visiting a number of towns and spiritually significant locations in search of a spiritual guide. During play, the character decided to also focus on studying to learn new spells and craft and enchant a new quarterstaff.
Letting go of the wheel #
Giving this much control to players can feel daunting—especially for a GM who is more used to planning every scene. But I’ve found that handing over more narrative control to your players can help reinforce the fact that GM and players are actually on the same side and rooting for each other and allows folks to feel more invested in and feel ownership over the world you create together and telling a good story.
Preparing your map #
Prepare a basic map of your location on a giant whiteboard or a sheet of paper—I like using a grid-ruled easel pad and different Sharpie colors. You don’t need to add a bunch of details—in fact it’s best to keep your maps simple with a lot of space for people to add their own details during play. For locations your party hasn’t been to before, keep the details to the general geography and common landmarks and details that are immediately apparent. Make sure there’s plenty of space for you and the players to draw and add more details as you play. If your session takes place during downtime in a city, your players can focus their activities on finding and adding new people and resources to the map of the town. You may find that by embracing serendipity and giving lots of space to discover and uncover the world, your table will build a richer more diverse world.
Focus on how you want your players to feel #
Rather than focusing on the scenes that may happen or all the story points that happen throughout a session, the most powerful tool the system provides for the GM is deciding how a session feels. Do your players need some downtime after a stressful chapter? Or do you want to build growing tension as they approach a critical encounter? Or are you telling a relaxed pastoral story of wonder and joy? The system is designed to give you different levers to set the pacing and focus of the story—by slowing down focusing on the intricate details of a scene you can help make the world feel expansive and full of wonder. Counterintuitively, giving fewer decision points will can help a session feel more relaxed while giving more decision points can be stressful. A session where you allow everyone to take their time with every scene and describe the small details may feel like a scene from My Neighbor Totoro. Conversely, a session where you force your players to make many decisions in a short amount of time can feel hectic and anxious as if there is a looming disaster.
Making failure meaningful #
You’ll notice that failure in this system doesn’t mean that nothing happens. Within the inspiration and adversity system, failure offers many storytelling opportunities. They can improve a player’s chances of success next time, a mechanical way to reflect learning from failure. Or they can also opportunities for serendipity where you can uncover something that may not be immediately useful but is nonetheless worthwhile and interesting.
Inspirations #
A few sources provided a lot of inspiration for this system: