Our final mode of play for Hundred Dungeons is Recuperation, which incorporates rest, downtime, and wealth management. If you haven’t already looked over the rules posted previously, here’s a brief index of what we’ve shared:
The Wild (wilderness exploration)
The Dark (dungeon exploration)
Recuperation (resting and downtime)
RECUPERATION
When the pressing danger of adventure subsides, characters need to rest and spend time furthering their personal goals. Recuperation is a realm of play with no set time scale. It begins when the party isn’t immediately entering another realm of play.
STRUCTURE
Recuperation is largely freeform, but there are four parts that should be addressed, normally in order:
Storage
Rest
Downtime
Experience
STORAGE
During Recuperation, players will often need to sort through acquired items, treasure, and materials. All three may be stored in a secure place chosen by the party (or a character who took it). Keep a Storage list and add any of these things to it as they get stored. They don’t count toward any character’s load, and can be accessed during Recuperation or at other times the GM sees as reasonable.
Add any weapons, armor, or gear that aren’t stored to a character’s load slots. Materials that aren’t stored are converted to trade goods for purchasing equipment later.
Treasure is handled separately. These valuables can’t be offloaded in bulk to most shops or merchants — they wouldn’t have the inventory to accommodate such incredible value. Instead, treasure that isn’t stored is invested to further the character’s goals and favored causes.
To invest treasure, the player declares a cause: a local temple to their deity, a thieves’ guild, a village or kingdom whose coffers they’d like to fill — or in some cases a personal project, like building a stronghold. Record the share of treasure invested in the cause. The GM notes and describes any progress or improvements to that cause in the narrative.
At the end of Recuperation, characters who invested gain 1 XP for every 500 gp they invest in a cause. The NPCs who benefit from these investments almost always receive them with respect and gratitude.
REST
Characters gain the benefit of a long rest for each day they spend in Recuperation. The only limit on these days comes from the scenario: are there quests they need to pursue, or NPCs they need to help? If not, narrate the interlude of Recuperation as whatever period of time the players choose.
A long rest lasts 8 hours. Most types of creatures must spend that time sleeping. At the end of a long rest, you replenish most spells and exploits (exceptions are noted in those particular descriptions), and you may spend hit dice to heal.
You can spend multiple hit dice in a pool or spend them one at a time. Roll each die spent, add your Constitution score, and heal that much condition. After spending hit dice, you replenish dice equal to your renown minus any hours you refrained from sleep during the rest (for example, if you were on watch or spent time studying).
A short rest lasts 1 hour and typically doesn’t occur during Recuperation — but might if the party is short on time. At the end of a short rest, you only replenish exploits and spells that specify so. You can spend hit dice to heal, but don’t replenish any.
Rests are rare outside of Recuperation. Long rests are only possible in a safe, comfortable place. Short rests require that the risk of encountering enemies or harm is mitigated, but where possible can extend the span of an adventuring day when a long rest is impossible.
DOWNTIME
With the length of the Recuperation determined by number of rests, players may declare how they spend their time not resting. Downtime tasks between adventures might be brief or elaborate, depending on the character. They might choose to perform one or more of the tasks described below, costing 1 gold per day from your storage.
Downtime is usually filled with description and flexible scenes of roleplay. The GM and players both may frame these scenes. The goal is to make the characters’ personal lives and concerns come alive for the group. The player narrates the opening scene of their task, after which they can briefly roleplay with the GM and other players as the task is resolved.
Contacts provided as part of these activities are generally NPCs with their own agendas and ties to the world. They take the form of traits such as Kedna, Irreverent Thief or Taggen the Cheated Merchant. Like all traits in the game, these can be invoked by turning over inspiration to the GM.
Carouse: Engage in dedicated revelry at a public or private establishment. When you’ve finished carousing, roll a d20, then roll a second d20 and subtract the second result from the first. You lose or gain that much gold, depending on whether the number is negative or positive. The GM provides 1d4 contacts, each with a 75% chance of being friendly.
Convalesce: Ability score penalties, hit point maximum, and negative conditions are removed as you relax and care for yourself. You replenish 1 extra hit die for each day spent this way.
Craft: Each day you spend crafting adds progress to an item you wish to create. You must have an applicable skill to craft. If the item is nonmagical, each day of crafting costs 1 silver of materials and adds 10 silver of cumulative progress. When the progress meets or exceeds the value of the item you’re crafting, it is complete. You can start and stop crafting work for a single item if its value is high.
Research: Spend time poring over ancient texts or collections of evidence to gain information. You can research hidden lore, NPC contacts, enemy weaknesses, even specific areas or nearby sites. At the end of your task, you gain one piece of information or one contact for each day of research.
Service: Perform tasks on behalf of an NPC or organization in order to obtain a favor. The GM determines a contact and the nature of the favor you win, based on that contact’s goals.
Train: Reach out to a contact with more experience, and roleplay a scene in which you push yourself and unlock new exploits in your class. Before you can gain a level from XP you’ve earned, you must perform this task.
Work: Spend time earning money with your skill set to support yourself. The work must be worthy of your station. At the end of working, you earn back any gold you spent on this task, plus your renown in gold.
EXPERIENCE
During this final step of Recuperation, the GM and players discuss the events since the last Recuperation, awarding 1 XP to each character for each of the following they achieved:
Completed a Major Quest OR a number of Minor Quests equal to your renown
Deepened your relationship with one or more player characters
Invested in causes (1 XP per 500 g)
The total experience gained from these criteria is awarded at once. You gain a new level when you’ve gained experience equal to that level (or the total levels you’ll have if you gain a level in a second or third class). Then clear your experience. You don’t gain multiple levels from one instance of receiving experience.
ITEMS AND EQUIPMENT
Characters rely on gear to stay supplied, navigate dangerous environments, and engage with hostile forces. Items mundane and magical abound, and can be discovered, collected, equipped, and expended as part of activities that further the characters’ goals.
COINS AND TREASURE
Wealth in Hundred Dungeons takes the following forms:
Treasure: Gems, art objects, and coins that figure prominently among both treasure hoards and dealings between rich polities and factions. Their value is measured in gold (sometimes abbreviated as “g”).
Trade Goods: The most common form of payment and wages (includes bags of salt, iron bars, livestock, and more). Their value is measured in silver (sometimes abbreviated as “s”).
Gear: Equipment, weapons, and armor that are used in expeditions and ventures. They can be converted to trade goods outside of adventure.
During Recuperation, treasure is either stored or invested in causes for XP. Gear is equipped, stored, or converted to trade goods at half its market value.
Although an actual exchange of coins for items is rare, the value of trade goods and treasure is always measured in silver coins for ease. In writing, Trade Goods (40 s) would mean 40 silver coins’ worth of trade goods.
To common folk, a silver coin is three days’ wages for unskilled work. What does it buy? Not much — two dozen eggs. A couple beers.
Folk who are better off keep gold coins (worth 100 silver) for large exchanges and monetary dealings between polities, but that sort of transaction is rare between individuals. One gold would pay a knight’s wages for two days, or a month’s rent for a comfortable house.
When should coins matter? When you have to carry them out of a hostile environment, of course. Otherwise, they’re just another type of treasure. Common folk are paid in and subsist on trade goods, not gold.
With all this in mind, be prepared to use silver and gold as a representation of buying power more than a literal sack of coins being dispersed among local businesses.
One hundred coins, gold or silver, take up 1 load slot. Moving large amounts of them is cumbersome.
LOAD
All items have a number of load slots they fill. Record each item and its load on separate lines of your character sheet, with the exception of trifles (see below).
Trifles are very small items that you can pack in groups, such as coins, gems, ammunition, or rings. Anything that can be held in the palm of the hand is a trifle. Up to 100 identical trifles can fill a single load slot, but different items like arrows and coins must be carried in separate slots, no matter how many you have.
Generally, an item’s load is a number from 1 to 4. A good rule of thumb is that load roughly corresponds to how many hands an item takes to easily lift.
In a previous version of this article, armor and weapons were listed here. For ease of reference, those lists have been moved to the post on Gear, Tools, and Containers.
NEXT TIME
In Hundred Dungeons, gear is meant to be useful and relevant through the full range of levels. We’ll explore adventuring gear more fully in a later post!
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Hundred Dungeons is created and written by Graham Ward © 2023
Permission granted to copy for personal use only.
