Countdowns can also be used to track long-term events during a campaign; you could count down toward a nation being overthrown, the death of a powerful mage, or another momentous event that might take more than a few sessions to come to fruition.

While you can use a die for long-term countdowns, it’s often easier to make a countdown track to record progress across multiple sessions. To do so, decide how far out the event should be (usually between 4 and 12 ticks) and, on a piece of paper, create small boxes for each tick. Starting from the first and working towards the last, write some events that may occur along the way that foreshadow the final event. These steps can alternate between softer and harder moves to give a sense of variety and growing tension. Adding unique events throughout the story ensures the countdown is always present during play, even if the final result is many sessions away.

Advancing a Long-Term Countdown

During a short rest, you should generally tick a relevant long-term countdown once. During a long rest, you should generally tick down a relevant long-term countdown twice.

When you tick the countdown, let the consequences ripple down to the PCs, building tension as events unfold. Often, you can reveal this progression through something the PCs witness, such as the banner of a rival leader recently hung on the castle or conversations in the marketplace about the strange lights NPCs saw in the sky last night. Other times, you might cinematically cut away to a scene the PCs are unaware of, narrating the events to the players. This is best done when the characters know about the events surrounding the countdown so players aren’t asked to completely ignore out-of-character knowledge.