Downtimes

A downtime is the one month period between games, where your character interacts with the game world through a series of activities which you decide upon and then send to us via our online system (if you have not been given a URL and password for it, please get in touch). We then process all the downtimes and will get back to you by email shortly before the next game to tell you what happened to your character. As such, it is important that we get downtimes in promptly - there is a deadline of two weeks before the game, and downtimes received after this point may not get processed. There are a number of things you need to tell us, which represents what things that your character may be doing:

• Using Influence - Using your contacts you make things happen in the world
• Personal Actions - What your character actually does personally during the four week period
• Learn and Improve - You can spend experience points (XP) to improve you abilities, sometimes this will also take up some of your four week time from Personal Actions.

Don’t worry if you’re new to all this, we are always happy to go through any rules with you and explain exactly how it works, email us, or grab us before a game.

Influences

Your character knows people who can get things done in a particular field, called an Influence. The higher your level of influence the more you can accomplish. Unless you are actively prevented from contacting anyone in a given downtime, presumably by a third party, then you can use your influences - they represent people you know who owe your favours, or that you have blackmail material on, or something else. Regardless, if your character can reasonably be assumed to be able to speak on the phone, you may use your influences - it does not take any appreciable amount of time out of your month. You can find out more about exactly what you can do with your influences here.

Personal Actions

These are activities your character undertakes personally such as meetings, following people etc. You can only undertake one “action” per week. Night-to-night things like personal grooming, basic feeding, shopping, paying the bills and so on don’t count as actions - you can assume a certain amount of normal spare time, just like real life.

Some actions will take longer than a week. If you run out of weeks, perhaps because the refs think that the first action you’ve noted down would take two or three weeks, then later actions will not happen: if you are unsure how long something might take, then, please ask us. We won’t always tell you, as your character may not be reasonably expected to know how long some activities might take. In game, as in life, you have to prioritise your activities.

Usually you will get four weeks in a downtime. However, some factors can increase or decrease this time.

For every dot in the Retainer background you gain a “task” which functions more or less like an extra week in your month as your ghoul does things for you.  As with your own weeks, if the first task in your downtime is judged to be long or complex, other tasks more moved down, and may not get accomplished.  This applies even if you have multiple ghouls - if you set one to doing a 2 week task, then another may be required to help, or simply become distracted or jealous when you focus your attention on the first ghoul’s efforts.  (This is not entirely realistic, we admit, but we feel it is a situation where game balance it required ahead of realism.)

Obviously, there are certain tasks they cannot accomplish such as study for you, and they may be more likely to get hurt or caught doing particularly risky actions. Still, they are an extra pair of competent and loyal hands.

For each dot of Path/Humaity rating below 6, you lose a week. So a rating 5 character only has 3 weeks per month, a rating 4 character 2 weeks, and so on. This represents your character’s increasing descent into insanity as they fall to the Beast. This means that low humanity characters find it harder to, and in extreme cases cannot, improve or learn new skills, but low rating characters are allowed to spend time to increase their Path/Humanity rating, even if they have no weeks available - see below.

Don’t worry, you’re not going to have to keep track of all this yourself. Our downtime system will do it for you.

Spending XP

Learning new skills and powers has a time cost as well as an XP cost. XP costs are listed here.

• Influences: One week for levels 1-4, and 2 weeks for level 5.
• Attributes or Abilities: Number of weeks equal to the new rating you will have. This training can be split up over several downtimes, and the weeks do not have to be consecutive, but your XP is spent straight away and you only get the rating once the training is done.
• Increasing a Disciple, Virtue or Path of Enlightenment rating: Twice your new rating in weeks without interruption - the weeks spent on this must be consecutive. If you are interrupted, then you lose half the weeks you have accumulated to that point. You can attend court, use your influences and live a low-key life, but nothing else. It is, however, possible for you to raise your humanity/path even though at very low levels of those there would be no free weeks in your month - to go from rating 1 to 2 takes 2 full months of downtime, and rating 2 to 3 takes a further month. (Plus, obviously, the requisite XP.)
• Thaumaturgical or Necromantic Path rank: One and half times the new rating in weeks, rounding up. As above, this time must be consecutive and cannot be interrupted.
• New Thaumaturgic or Necromantic Ritual: A number of uninterrupted weeks equal to the level of the ritual.
• Willpower: One week per level of new rating. Again, this time must be consecutive and cannot be interrupted.
• Increasing a background takes a variable amount of time, depending on the background and level, and your character’s personal circumstances - ask us.

We will attempt to be generous when considering how outside events interrupt you learning new skills. Minor upheavals will make no difference. Major upheavals include: serious injury, specific action by another player with the intent to disrupt you, torpor or the destruction of your haven.