(Adapted from “Downtimes at GSO High” from the Greensboro, NC LARP community)
Although a large amount of player interaction happens at our monthly game, players have ample opportunities to advance plots and storylines between games with the Downtime system. Between each game, you will have the chance to submit Downtime Actions (or simply “Downtimes”) to represent your character’s activities between games. Want to follow up on that rumor about the Prince? Want to figure out if the new Kindred in town is who they say they are? Want to learn the first dot of a discipline? Downtimes are how you can accomplish this.
A Downtime is an action performed between games and adjudicated by Storytellers. Players can have their characters perform a wide variety of things with a Downtime.
Each month, Storytellers will post a form for Downtime submissions in the public Discord, and they will say when Downtimes are due. Fill the form out and submit it before the due date to have your Downtimes counted.
There are a lot of options available to you. Here is a list of what you can put in your Downtimes.
Every character starts with three Downtimes. There are a lot of ways to get more though.
If your character has at least one dot in the Computers skill, you get an extra downtime. See below for more info on the special actions you can take with this downtime.
If you character has one dot in a Science skill, you get an extra Downtime, but it must be relevant to your Science specialty (e.g., if you have Science (Chemistry), you can use the Downtime action to make an explosive, but you cannot use it to frame another character for an explosion). If you get another Science specialization to three dots, you get another Downtime related to that specialization, and if you get a third Science specialization to 5 dots you get another Downtime related to that specialty.
There are also rituals (e.g., Soul of the Homunculus) and techniques (e.g., Quick Hands, Quick Work) that grant additional Downtimes.
If your character has at least one dot in the Computers skill, your character gets an additional downtime that can be used in one of three ways. It can be used as a normal Downtime, just like any of the three your character starts with. It can also be used to Observe or Cancel.
If you choose to Observe with your Computers Downtime, your character is spending time tracking the target PC’s online activity and presence. STs will tell you about one Downtime performed by the target PC, and the target PC will have no knowledge of your Observation.
If you choose to Cancel with your Computers Downtime, your character is spending time using technology to create problems for another PC. STs will not resolve one Downtime submitted by the target character, but you won’t know which one of their Downtimes are affected. The targeted PC will know that they were Canceled, but they will not know who Canceled them.
If a player uses their Computers Downtime action to Observe or Cancel, that action cannot be Observed by another player. If the player chooses to use the action as a normal Downtime action, it can be Observed.
Example: Alice uses her Computers Downtime action to Observe Bob. Bob uses his Computers Downtime to Investigate Alice. Alice's action cannot be Observed, but Bob's can be Observed.
No, but they look similar on the surface, because they are both used to accomplish things between games. They are also submitted to STs at the same time using the same form, but they are not the same.
If there are 25 players, and each of them have four Downtimes, that would mean there are up to 100 Downtimes that STs need to process. As the number of players goes up and as players start to spend more and more XP, the number of Downtimes to process scales quickly, and the number of Influences on the field makes the numbers climb even faster. To make this process efficient and fair, Downtimes will be processed at the same time as Influences, and they will all be processed in the following order:
Computer Cancels are listed before other Downtimes to be sure that Cancels have an impact on the game, and Computer Observe actions are last to make sure there is a wide range of things to Observe. Getting your Downtimes in early does not ensure that you avoid Cancels.
Downtimes will be resolved over the course of a few weeks, but all players will get their Downtime results back at the same time (more or less) by email about 24 hours before that month’s game starts. The same is true of Influences.
The Crafts skill can be used with a Downtime action to make a work of art. It might even be Artisan or even Masterwork. You can also use two of your Downtime actions to temporarily boost your Resources by one for the month.
The Performance skill can be used with two Downtimes to temporarily increase your Fame by 1 for a month.
The Herd background can be used in lieu of a Feed action to enter game at full Blood Points.