Sometimes, you just have to let the world get into trouble without you…
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Yesterday, I took the day off (actually, this was back in April 2018 – this post has sat around unfinished for quite a while, I’;m probably due to do it again!)

This morning (April 2018 again), I was reflecting on how much I enjoyed setting aside the stresses and strains of daily life and just enjoying myself, and how rejuvenating it had been, and how much I had needed it without having realized it.

And then, as is my wont, I thought about those notions in the context of an RPG.

When was the last time that you built a day off into your character’s lives?

The Day Off

The Sabbath used to be about religion. People were excused from work to attend religious services – and some of those lasted all day. What leisure time existed was reserved for the rich and politically affluent.

The rise of the middle class in the 19th century England required better-educated citizens in many occupations, creating heightened literacy and wealth, and the concept of leisure time began to spread downwards through the social strata. Greater ease of travel and a heightened sense of community created things to do, and the nine-hour workday became increasingly common; the 1874 Factory Act limited the working week to 56 1/2 hours, and began integrating a system of annual vacations into the working lives of citizens, starting with white-collar workers and spreading into the working classes. Hundreds of seaside resorts emerged through the combination of affordable accommodations and inexpensive railway fares.

At the same time, religious prohibitions against secular activities on Sundays began to fade in stridance.

By the late Victorian era, a leisure industry existed in all British cities, and the pattern was being copied across Western Europe and North America, providing regularly-scheduled entertainment of suitable length and convenient locations at inexpensive prices, including sporting events, music halls, and popular theater.

The roots of everything we consider ‘normal life’ can be traced back to these developments. As these activities became an integrated element of the economy, it caused irreversible social changes. First, it created an industry that profited from giving the citizens more leisure time, and that would lobby government. Second, it created a demand for greater wages at all levels of society, and a recognition that an improved standard of living was both achievable and attainable. This also created a demand for upward social mobility. And third, it became possible for the government to shift to a broader-based taxation system and increase both the funds available for public expenditure and the disposable income of its subjects.

Half-day Saturdays

In the US, this social transition took place over the years 1894 to 1915, though antecedents in the upper classes and white-collar workers extended back to the middle of the century. Employers began, voluntarily or otherwise, to reduce the working hours required of the workforce, in particular instituting half-day Saturdays. This gave both mid-level supervisors and the workers increased leisure time. Other types of workplaces were forced to follow suit. Vacations became regularly offered, though these were usually unpaid.

Some historians suggest that the increased monotony of factory work (as compared to the never-ending list of different chores associated with a more rural existence) also created or enhanced a deeper need and desire for time away from the workplace; they suggest that productivity improved with a happier workforce, benefiting both business and workers.

I can’t argue with the “deeper need,” because that is a commonly-recognized phenomenon even today, but my personal impression is that every such change had to be forced on the business world, and any such associated benefits were only recognized after the fact.

Other factors were undoubtedly at play, and contributing to the social movement – electrification made the streets safer at night, while improved health made leisure activities more accessible.

Public Holidays

In 1871, the Bank Holiday Act gave English workers a few paid holidays each year, but even at the end of the 19th century, most people had no paid holidays except bank holidays, and not everyone got those days. Nevertheless, the principle was established.

But there were a few other antecedents of note. The founding of modern Australia is commemorated every year on January 26, and this date was made a public holiday within the state of New South Wales (the original colony) as early as 1836. The country itself didn’t exist until Federation in 1901, after 34 years of negotiation between the independent settlements.

Independence Day in the US (July 4th) became an (unpaid until 1938) Federal Holiday in 1870. It had been recognized as a State Holiday in Massachusetts since 1781. The same Act of Congress also recognized New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day; in 1880, George Washington’s Birthday was added.

From these beginnings, the granting of public holidays has become widespread, as has the practice of these being paid days for non-casual staff. These days, public holidays are almost considered a “civil right” by most people.

The 40-hour week

Following World War 2, the US became the social leader of the world in many respects; policies were enacted there before anywhere else and began to spread globally as an international standard, though there remained some national differences.

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which granted overtime to all employees who worked more than 44 hours in a calendar week. Two years later, the Act was amended to reduce the working week to 40 hours.

Demand for an 8-hour working day was a catalyzing force in labor movements throughout the western world even before the War. It’s fair to describe the US as simply the first domino; with each country that adopted the standard, the pressure on the others to follow suit only increased. The Commonwealth Arbitration Court approved the 40-hour week in Australia beginning January 1, 1948, after decades of union agitation on the subject (and on working conditions generally), for example. (It is worth noting that skilled workers of various types had won themselves the 40-hour week in Australia and New Zealand in the 1840s and 1850s)!

The working week has been reduced to 38 hours in many countries since; in some professions, the 36-hour week is now the standard. However, some of these reductions exclude lunch breaks, whereas the 38- and 40- hour weeks usually incorporate a fixed time-frame for lunch.

Rostered Days Off and Flex-time

In the 1970s, the concept of the Rostered Day Off became important. This permits an employee to work additional hours over their minimum requirement and accumulate the extra time over a standard period (usually 4 weeks) to recoup as paid days off. Because employers needed to be sure that critical work functions were carried out, these days off needed to be controlled by a roster, and there were occasionally other restrictions – some employers resisted RDOs after public holidays, for example, and there was often a restriction on the number of RDOs that an employee could accumulate. Other employers were more generous.

Flex-time, or Flexible hours, was an evolution of the RDO industrial conditions that gave the employee additional flexibility in their working hours, dividing the working day into core hours, when all employees had to be present, and non-core hours to either side of that daily requirement; the employee, to meet their required working hours, had to work some of these, but could choose to work late, work early, or split the required non-core hours on both sides.

In some cases, employers offered one of these as part of the pay-and-conditions entitlements, in some cases they offered both, and in some cases they offered neither. Quite often, reductions or caps in overtime pay were traded in industrial award negotiations for these entitlements.

Work Harder, Get Ahead

In the 80s and 90s, Japanese Management Techniques began to infiltrate western work places, often against strong resistance by industrial unions. The concept that working harder and longer gave you a competitive advantage when the time came for promotions and pay rises was a key attribute of these management techniques, if often unstated. At the same time, “stress” was becoming a key word in workplaces across the western world. In time, the term began to fade in favor of a broader one, “Work-Life Balance”.

But It’s An Adventure, It’s Exciting

While military forces may be on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (and such calls are more likely to occur when the unit is deployed or in a training cycle), the concept of down-time existed during the American Civil War. Soldiers have time to read and write letters, read books, participate in group recreations like watching films or live entertainment, and so on.

In many ways, the military life is representative of the circumstances of adventurers in an RPG. The adventure could start at any time, and is no respecter of time off; instead, an adventure is like a mission, with “time off” occurring after one “mission” and before the next.

Nevertheless, the psychological benefits of down-time are a well-established principle within the military.

But They’re Adventurers, They’d get used to it

To disprove this notion, the easiest approach is to look at the Ambulance Service, and especially at Burnout and suicide/depression rates. Nearly 90% of emergency service staff have experienced stress, low mood, or some form of mental distress. The same occurs in other emergency services such as firemen and police, medical dispatchers and emergency line operators, and so on.

That number will only have risen with the additional demands placed on them by the global pandemic.

Symptoms that arise with distressing frequency are PTSD-related, cardiac episodes, overeating & obesity, sleep disorders, and emotional dysfunction. On the job, fatigue and a reduced capacity for decision-making are common – which we often characterize as burnout.

61% of male ambulance personnel will be eligible for medical retirement below the age of 40, and 39% more will experience this by the age of 44, seventeen percent more again by the age of 49. Interestingly, women seem far more resilient in this respect (or find medical retirement less accessible) by a factor of 10.

Despite bring eligible, there is a great tendency for such workers to soldier on. Statistics show that none of those eligible claimed such retirement at less than 40, and only 2, 4, and 16% in the subsequent age bands.

There is a distinct peak of forced early retirement on medical grounds at 10-14 years of service, and 15-19 years is almost as high. If you get through that nine-year span still within the profession, your chances of avoiding forced retirement improve substantially.

Emergency personnel report having suicidal thoughts twice as often as other professions. Some of that differential may be due to a greater awareness of the dangers of such thoughts and hence a greater willingness to report them, and a reduction of the resulting stigma, but most of it has to actually derive from a higher incidence of mental and emotional disorders.

Despite these numbers, Health Care Practitioners in general are only 15th on the list of suicide rates, and Health Care Support staff are 17th, according to one major study by the CDC – 12.5 and 11.9 cases per 100,000 workers. Number one on this list are construction and mineral extraction workers, at 52.1 cases per 100,000. At least part of the reason has to be that these have ready access to the means, but a far greater part must be a willingness to admit a problem and seek help on the part of the medical profession.

Like adventurers, these professions involve acute stress and life-or-death decisions on a regular basis. In many ways, EMT personnel are directly comparable to adventurers – but we also have to factor in the military-like factors, which would only amplify the effects.

So The Characters Need A Day Off. What’s The Big Deal?

There are two problems to be solved: (1) simulating the need for a day off without interfering with the players freedom to play their characters, and (2) writing a day-off adventure that is nevertheless interesting, because the whole concept runs counter to what many players desire from their games.

Problem 1: Simulating The Need

The Solution is two-fold: one, placing the challenge before the player; and two, tonal nuancing.

Placing The Challenge

Simply tell the player that it’s been a long time since [character] had a break (it’s better if you can be specific) and perhaps they are starting to feel a little shopworn – and then let the player choose how to incorporate that into the way they play the character.

Tonal Nuancing

At the same time, you want to give the player something that he can play off of in expressing the weariness of the character. So ramp up the irritation level (from a character point of view) of the encounters and situations that you’re throwing at them. The notion being that things that they would normally take in their stride loom larger when you don’t have the energy to respond.

Problem 2: Writing A Day-Off Adventure

Everyone has a different idea of what a day off entails. For some characters, it might be relaxing with a good scroll (or with a naughty one!); for others it might be a day without deep moral and philosophical questions to worry about, when they can simply go completely hog-wild. Some play sports, some sleep in, some exercise, others laze and sub-bake. This is something that you will need to determine for each PC in consultation with the player.

Once you know what the “requirements” are, you can build encounters around them. Take our would-be reader: He decides to take the day off over breakfast (interacting with the waitress), comes across a book that he would enjoy reading, bargains for it, buys it, sets up a comfortable chair in a sunny spot, reads all morning save when he is interrupted by someone who wants to know what he’s reading, and so on. You can fill a day without once mentioning what’s actually in the book, content-wise!

Sometimes, you have an expectation of one type of leisure activity only for circumstances to dragoon you into another. You intend to go shopping, encounter a rather arrogant chess-player, decide to take him down a peg or two, and end up playing chess with the guy all day. That’s the equivalent of intending to read a book but getting caught up watching something on TV that you either didn’t know was on, or that you didn’t expect to find interesting.

Leisure-oriented plots may be a qualitatively-different type of roleplaying activity, and it might take you a while to wrap your head around them and what you can do to make them interesting, but you will get the hang of them.

And then something surprising will happen: you will find that your other encounters and plots improve as well. You’ve stretched your literary “muscles” in a new direction, but that direction has aspects and attributes in common with other types of encounters – and strengthening those “muscles” enhances your capabilities in those common areas.

Sometimes, the characters in your games need to let their hair down a little, too.