Dnd 5e Progress Clocks for Tracking Plots

"Without the adventurers, what does the villain do?"

A question I often asked myself in between sessions of my many campaigns that I have run over the years. It has taken me quite some time to really get it right. Especially in homebrew, it can be a challenge to know when and how to escalate the stakes to keep pressure on the plot and the players. 

Tick tock goes the Progress Clock

Once again, I found a way to utilize John Harper's incredibly well designed game, Blades in the Dark. Wherein, there is a mechanical system called "Progress Clocks". Within the context of Blades clocks serve a variety of purposes, but their main functions is to track the progression of something happening in the fiction.

In the small scale you might use a 4 part clock to track characters scaling a mountain or building, or perhaps a 6 segment clock for chasing down a villain through the streets of the city. The more minute to minute clocks have had their uses, but I've found the tool to be particularly useful in tracking the efforts of a villain or antagonistic faction.

Villainous Intent and Goals

To begin you will need to know what your antagonist wants, what their primary goal is. In this example, I'm going to use a classic nefarious cult who wants to summon their evil deity to conquer the world. With that being the primary goal, you then need to determine the steps that need to be taken to achieve that goal and also how difficult each step will be. I decided that the cult first needs to uncover the remains of an avatar of the evil deity, bring them to a specific location, and then complete a ritual involving dark magic. 

The benefit of this process is that you actually don't need to sweat the small stuff until it is relevant in your story! The exact details of the ritual aren't important right now, not until they get to that step and the heroes attempt to intervene. Laying out the example in a table, it would look something like this:

As the DM or GM, you can decide the rate of progression for this antagonistic faction. The clock can tick down once a day, once a week, once a month, or whenever the heroes have downtime. In this case, I'd probably set it relatively urgent, and have it progress once per day. 

However, the heroes will have opportunities to intervene and should they do so, the progress clocks will either halt, or end entirely depending on the extent of their intervention.

Hints and Rumors

I do want to make a side note for this progress clock tracking. Make sure the players have opportunities to learn that a plot is even occurring in the first place. Of course, this whole process could be hidden from the players and they may need to work to discover it. But it would be a little unfair for them to never hear about the cults activities, and suddenly an ancient eldritch horror is released upon the world. I might talk about hints and rumors in the future, but for the time being I'll keep this simple.

A Flexible Framework

What I really like about this system is its flexibility. I can be utilized in a wide variety of situations, for varying effect. Finishing the example, if the heroes only made it in time to stop the deity from being unleashed, I might show them a progress clock that is tracked in rounds. 

"At the end of 4 rounds, the evil god will be released!"

Hopefully that will put some fear in their hearts. This system can even be used during downtime to track training progression or working towards building a thieves guild. Props to John Harper once again because I am simply repurposing it in my own way.