Character Development Between Sessions?

An idea has been forming in my head. A lot of what players know about their characters is what happens during game sessions. But that isn't what makes a character. What makes a character is what they do in between fighting dragons and sorting through their loot. What do they do on their downtime? Study magic? Flirt with barmaids? Go on a hunting trip? So what comes to my mind is a new system where players could possibly make a certain number of rolls every day in between sessions to flesh out their character's downtime. For example, maybe a player wants to go on a hunting trip. They would roll hunting, roll bartering for selling their skins, and roll for flirting with the barmaids after getting their new-found cash. The GM would read about what they had done over that day, examine their rolls, and then tell them what happened, all out of game.  It's just an early idea, but what do you guys think? Are there better ways of handling this?

Moved to Off-Topic - Gauss

I would just narrate it. If you're talking about D&D 4e, you only make rolls in dramatic situations. What you suggest don't qualify on those grounds, thus whatever happens is just a function of the collaborative fiction of the DM and players (maybe like a montage twice around the table). In these transition scenes, rather than be about unrelated matters, I recommend they still have a dramatic question (e.g. "Will we find out what Ragnar has against gnomes?" for a character exploration scene) and/or set up future action scenes (this can range from shopping scenes to hiring henchmen or talking to NPCs related to the next adventure location or situation). Heroic fantasy games really are about the heroism and the fantasy. The mundane is not necessarily something I'd want to see in the movie - so it hits the cutting room floor.

In general, I'd recommend using the campaign forum for this, making the between-session stuff play-by-post. Or, if you or your players don't like play-by-post, you could summarize the between-session things at the beginning of each session. Ask each player what their character has been up to since the last session.

+1 and +1 to what Headhunter Jones and Brian both said. The only thing I would add is to have the occasional game session where the expectation for the evening is not combat focused but  exploration or  socially focused.  A king's banquette, an opera on opening night, a fox hunt, murder mystery weekend, a grand festival celebrating a seasonal change, a wedding, funeral of a close friend,  the character's being guests of honor at any gala event, etc... all make for some dramatic situations that should be role played out as a group.  Sure a skill challenge might be incorporated into some of those and others unexpected enemies might decide to crash the party but let the interaction between the players and the npc's be the rememberable fun things that happen that game night.

The campaign forum would be great, but is there any capacity to make rolls on the forum?  The whole point behind this is to flesh out the mundane details of a character without having to spend any time in game doing it. Players could make their rolls at any point in between sessions - there would be no need for meeting together until the next session where I would summarize what happened during that week.  It's not intended to be exciting, dramatic, or anything like that. This would simply be used when the characters just got back from a dungeon and have some time to themselves. There's no intention for it to be anything other than a filler for characters to gather information, resources, skills, and create a more interesting, well rounded character without having the group to meet together.

The chat log during on the game table page keeps a record of all your rolls so the players could go into the table and make the roll noting what it was for.

Dily Hevly said: The campaign forum would be great, but is there any capacity to make rolls on the forum? Why require the players to make rolls for pure roleplay (rather than "roll" play)?

Players make rolls for pure roleplay all the time - because combat is roleplay. Roleplaying is just making a choice your character would also make given context. That can mean attacking an orc or engaging in in-character interaction with another character. You can make rolls for non-combat too, but those rolls have to be made for the resolution of a dramatic conflict. Having a chat with a mate isn't going to qualify. Nor would shopping or hunting even (unless the shopping or hunting involved trolls or lava or both). Mundane situations, day to day stuff, scenes without a dramatic conflict are not time to make rolls. The PCs just succeed at whatever action they've taken, given time and the ability to retry. This is true of D&D in general, but it's especially true of D&D 4e. The game is a model for heroic fantasy adventuring. If you're not heroic fantasy adventuring, the game mechanics simply do not come into play. When to make rolls comes down to a few things: The situation is not mundane and is within your established capabilities. There is a dramatic conflict/opposition to your goal - something at stake to gain or lose. Failure can be as interesting as success. If those conditions are met, the game mechanics come into play. Otherwise, they go away until they are needed again.

This is most useful for a game like birthright for 2e where adventures happen every few months. I'd use the campaign log from the dice roller. type the stuff in chat and it's saved. especially in a game like traveller it's not so much what the pcs were involved in as in what the news service reports happened on nearby planets of the campaign. Use a book like heroes for tomorrow or yesterday by Task force games. Good idea.

Yeah, I've done it for the past week. It's turned out really well. The players just tell me what they're doing for the day and roll on it. I give them the summary when they're done, along with any rumors or interesting things they saw or heard while they were going about the day. It creates deeper characters, and you can develop a lot more story now that you have more than just a few hours of play to do so.

What are we talking about? DnD? I'm just gotting to guess your playing DnD I think you need to step back and ask what you and your players want out of a RPG system/game. If you want characters development between dungeon jumps. I'm thinking your playing the wrong system and you should check out Amber or Penedragon. There are alot of people who think you can shoe horn odd and end rules into the D20 system and it'll work. And in some way they work Mutant and Mastermind being the best exsample of that. But in the end All DnD version are combat system based around combat, you should take a look at other systems and see if there's one that fits better for what your looking for.

Doing a homebrew system. No hiccups as of yet!