Being some waffling about Things People Do In Downtime and how to categorise them / hopefully give some insight into how at least one ref has previously thought about and dealt with downtimes. Please note that all references to 'the refs' or 'we' should be read as 'this is what I,
ChessyPig, think and do' - the other refs might actually be less rubbish than me :-).
Random Information About Character / Character's Life
I like information, it filters into my background processing of things and sometimes it provides somewhere to hang a plot hook or reminds me of something that needed to go out. I would like it if everyone submitted downtimes with lots of things in this category, as long as they didn't expect huge responses in return, because then less things would be forgotten. The refs are likely to forget about the existance of characters not submitting downtimes. People shouldn't be afraid to flag things 'this does not need a response' - if there is anything nifty or hilarious to be added the refs will provide a response anyway (and if any consequences are due the refs will apply those anyway too), and it will stop the refs having to go 'argh is there a hidden meaning in this?' or conversely missing things which people did expect to have concrete results.
Heads-Up / Warnings of Future Actions
These are *really* useful. If you know in advance that you want to:
- Do a ritual, any ritual
- Talk to a certain NPC
- Interact with a certain faction (especially via taking a bunch of people from the interactive to storm into their base)
- Attempt a rite which hasn't previously been done / isn't very strictly defined
- Perform some mechanical action in an unusual way / on an unusual target
- Basically do anything that might possibly require some monsters / a ref call
we would like to know about it in advance so we can discuss it at the refmeet, plan to have kit and people ready at an appropriate moment, etc etc
This lets us go 'argh no', 'that will go wrong and your character would know this', 'you need the following extra stuff before you can expect to succeed at that' and so forth as well.
It is ALWAYS reasonable to ask 'is this a good idea?' or even 'I want to achieve something vaguely like this, how would I go about it?'. The answer might be 'you have no idea, try it and see' or 'you have no idea, try gathering more relevant information / asking people with relevant skills' though.
Mechanical Actions
If you want to use a skill / do ANYTHING that there are game mechanics for in downtime, and you have an appropriate skill, please quote what skill you are using, what level you have it at, etc etc. This saves us looking it up on your character sheet, which probably isn't up to date anyway...
XP spending and character sheets
Keeping character sheets up to date in the current way of doing things is an often-neglected chore, and even having an up to date character sheet isn't as useful as having an up to date statblock which then also has to be maintained. It would be really nice if we could have some kind of automatic system which people could add to, which would generate statblocks. (Ideally it would provide XP spending reports where you have to enter your XP with the reason you earnt it, for us to check, and flag up skills that need specific circumstances to train, allowing us to suppress those warnings on a per-character basis (i.e. if you're a Brotherhood mage we don't need to care when you get basic mage skills).)
Failing that, don't be surprised if we ask you things like 'um, do you have that spell?' or 'what level of Blue Lore do you have?' even if you sent us the information in an email last week buried in the middle of your character sheet. While sending your whole character sheet every week should be useful, in practice mostly it just gets ignored.
Spell Research
You do this by telling us the following:
- What effect you are looking for, including any similar effects you'd be happy to settle for
- What libraries you are looking in to see if someone else has already researched it
- What facilities you are using to learn and/or research it
- What your level is in any Lore that might be relevant
- Any other relevant skills / contacts / items you might be using
The response will probably be one of:
- That is fine and in a library, have the spell this week
- That is fine but not in a library, here is the one-week flawed version, you can get the full version next week
- That would be fine with these minor changes (esp. 'this drawback' for black), combined with one of the above, is that okay?
- There is no way that will ever be fine, because of these reasons, you might want to think about these vaguely similar effects / angles of attack on that problem instead
- We are still waiting for the spell balancing cabal to get back to us, please poke them with big pointy sticks if you want your spell
- That would be fine at a higher level / in a different colour (and is in a library | and would have to be researched) but you can't have it at your level / in the colour you wanted / in any of your colours, would you settle for these vaguely similar lower-level effects / the effect in one of your other colours?
Potion Research
You do this by telling us the following:
- What effect you are looking for, including any similar effects you'd be happy to settle for
- What you are trying to use to achieve it (just the standard components? some exotic component? some conditioned base?)
- What facilities you are using to learn and/or research it
- What your level is in any skill that might be relevant
- Any other relevant skills / contacts / items you might be using
The response will probably be one of:
- That has actually been done before and written up, feel free to use it straight away, this is the component combination if you didn't specify one
- That is fine, here is the flawed one-week version, next week you can use the full version, this is the component combination if you didn't specify one
- That would be fine with these minor changes, combined with one of the above, is that okay?
- There is no way that will ever be fine, because of these reasons, you might want to think about these vaguely similar effects / angles of attack on that problem instead
- That would be fine at a higher level / with different components but you can't have it at your level / with the components to hand, would you settle for these vaguely similar effects / please go and look for an exotic or conditioned base with some relevance?
- We are still arguing about this effect, sorry, we'll get back to you eventually.
Obtaining Rites
You do this by telling us the following:
- What effect you are looking for, including any similar effects you'd be happy to settle for
- Where you are looking for it (library? talking to particular people? praying? performing some kind of ceremony?)
- What you are doing / have done in support of it (recent deeds you think are of relevance)
- What your level is in any skill that might be relevant (especially what miracle you think it should hang off!)
- Any other relevant skills / contacts / items you might be using
The response will probably be one of:
- You find something / someone detailing how to do this, or have a vision revealing how to do this
- You are told (in person, in writing, or by direct religious experience) that you need to do some specific thing to earn the rite
- You are told (in person, in writing, or by direct religious experience) that such a rite would be inappropriate, for these reasons, although these similar things might be a better way of going about it
- Your character would know that such a request would be inappropriate (because the rite is inappropriate / because you are not yet in enough favour with your god or your church for that / because you don't have the right miracle for that)
- You are told (in person, in writing, or by direct religious experience) that such a rite is available but it relies on a miracle you don't have access to yet, these vaugely similar things might be available to you with appropriate service
- You are told (in person, in writing, or by direct religious experience) that such a rite is not available to you because you are not in enough favour with your god / your church yet, you should ask again later when you've done something to prove yourself
We will also occasionally just hand out rites when we think of something amusing / relevant, but people should feel free to ask for rites in the same way that they would ask for spell or potion research.
Information Gathering
Interacting with NPCs
Interacting with PCs