Quote Originally Posted by Reevh View Post
My last campaign had a constant sense of impending doom, and we always felt like we were under time pressure to do something. Often, when we were faced with multiple threats and handled one, the other threat would progress. The result was that we never felt like we had the ability to have downtime more than a night here and there. We made the most of those nights, of course, but it's not like we could take a few weeks or a month to do something.

And you know what? It was fine. We all loved the campaign. Perhaps the next campaign will be less pressing and we'll have more downtime to play around with, but that doesn't have to be how all campaigns go.

Now, if you want to reassure your players that if they take some time off, it's not the end of the world, here's something you can do. In my last campaign, we players were up in the North dealing with a massive threat. We knew there was also a threat to the South of the city, but we determined the one to the north was more pressing, so that's where we went, certain that the southern threat would be devastating.

When we got back to the city, it had indeed been attacked by a ****ing ancient dragon with an army of undead, and we weren't there to deal with the threat. But it's a big city, and turns out we weren't the only potential heroes. The city's military stepped up, as did my character's aunt and cousin and sister, and more importantly a powerful noble that no one realized was a heavyweight spellcaster blew the dragon's head up (Psychic Scream kill). It turns out that even when we weren't there, there were others able to step up and do their part.

Now in this particular campaign it later turned out that the noble lady who blew up the dragon's head was actually the BBEG, but we didn't know it yet at the time.
This is really close to what I think they're feeling on the other side of the screen. I think the big thing for me is that they've expressed the desire to build a castle and make their mark, so I feel guilty when they don't think they'll get the fruits of their labor.