Writing downtime is clearly a technique which is difficult to discuss as a player base. I still consider myself very new to this game compared to most of the players, and sometimes unsure if I’m “doing it wrong.” Writing downtime has many “adjustable parameters”, and it is hard to gauge when you have pitched these at the right level. It has crossed my mind a few times to ask “Am I being too simple/complex/detailed/vague”, but I find it particularly hard to express this in plain text without it sounding like a complaint. To clarify, at this point, I am very thankful to the refs for all the effort they put into downtime, planning uptime and everything else. I very rarely get through my downtime without something between a chuckle and maniacal laughter, and almost always find I have a lot of new angles to consider before the interactive, just when I thought I had covered every eventuality. So in short, I am very happy with my downtime response.
I do, however, wonder if I occasionally fail at downtime submission. The largest uncertainty for me is mentioned in the “writing downtime” guide in the main website:
What is reasonable. This is a fantasy world, and as such you would expect to be able to do things you couldn’t necessarily do in the real world. The question is, what is it reasonable to expect a character to be able to do? It’s a bit pointless to continually submit downtimes above the level where the character would know that the chances of success are zero. On the other hand, can persistence result in achieving an unlikely outcome?
Complexity. As a rule, I try not to include “contingency plans” in my downtime, because this would make them very long and boring. However, in my view, almost anything you do above going to a guild and buying a potion/alchemical will rely on a bit of luck. Or possibly more accurately, not being unlucky. I have very begrudgingly submitted downtimes where almost I have spent a lot of time coming up with a plan that is as constrained as possible without my characters needing to react to anything that happens, and it could only possibly fail if eg. That nameless NPC does something *really* stupid, and due to Murphy’s Law this is of course exactly what happens. The question is, how strong is Murphy’s Law in the tt-verse? Should we assume that if something can fail, it will fail? Or if you try the same thing again next week is there a chance it will work?
Curiosity makes me wonder what fraction of downtime is successful overall. This will of course vary by ref, and by player, due to the wide range of adjustable parameters mentioned above, and is something that it is not really possible to discuss publicly. I have heard of people doing fantastic things in downtime, which have resulted in lots of interesting plot and had large knock-on effects on others. I am also aware that people have had very good plans that would have similarly interesting results that were not successful. I will admit (again, this is an objective observation, not a complaint. I love downtime, hate plain text!) that my downtimes which are not either very straightforward buying or selling, or following directly a piece of plot, are at the most partially successful. This is possibly a feature of my downtime technique, possibly something that is expected of the system.
Hmm, that was supposed to be a lot shorter. Once again, thanks to the refs for everything; please don’t think I’m suggesting you do anything differently. This is just an open invitation for people to comment as much or as little as they feel they can, and perhaps to give the less experienced players a better idea of what it is reasonable to expect out of downtime.
I try to be brief, succinct and effective in communicating my downtime. This may be because I'm me. To try something in downtime I see as a one shot effort. If it doesn't work, then it's not going to work. I don't want the refs to worry about every single aspect of law enforcement in Grantabrugge when responding to a militia downtime (for example). However, if I put a speculative action in, I try and include some conditional cases, so that the refs have an idea where I'm heading. This is probably sensible and obvious, but I thought I'd point it out. On the other hand, I come to TT from London, and clearly have no idea of what's going on or whether what I do is appropriate. Cheers --Darktachyon :)
From Valtiel:
We like downtimes which are short and easy to read. If you want to write a lot, then go ahead, but please summarise it in bullet point format at the top or bottom of the downtime, and then we'll reply to that bit. If you just have a passion for writing then please write a gossip article for us. Doing one thing in downtime means you'll do it pretty well. Doing lots of things in downtimes mean that you do them all a lot less well. If you try to do far too many things you run out of time.
If you try to do something completely unreasonable in downtime we will tell you why it's completely unreasonable and probably suggest something you could do instead. But don't worry about doing this, it's not a problem for us and we understand that sometimes it's hard to know what is possible and what isn't.
However, do not think you can sneak something unreasonable past us by mentioning it in the middle of ten paragraphs of densely written flavour text. This is known as "cold iron arrowhead syndrome", after someone at Durham who did exactly this to obtain three cold-iron arrowheads in downtime. We will notice sooner or later and we will be pissed. Nobody has tried to do this for a long time, thankfully.
We prefer rites, rituals, duels, conversations with named NPCs, and frankly a lot of other things to be done in the Wessex Arms in uptime. We appreciate that some of these can't reasonably be done in the bar - big showy rites to Sordan while his worship was still illegal, for example - but for a lot of things, the bar is the place to do it. You'll get better results that way. Really. We can always provide a reason or excuse for you to do something in the bar even if there's no obvious reason to want to do so. Failing "actually in the bar", some things can be done outside the bar in uptime.
Spreading rumours in downtime gets them either in the Gossip or in everyone else's downtime, usually in a slightly mangled form. It works. Writing gossip articles, either from neutral NPCs or from your own characters, will usually get them into the Gossip, especially if it's a slow news week. Sometimes there is a charge to get an article in the gossip if it's blatantly biased. Sometimes gossip articles are the victims of cruel and unusual editing.
When REPLYING to a downtime response that we sent you, (for example, if we sent you "That's great, but where exactly are you getting your thirteen virginal sacrifices from?" and you need to answer) make sure you click "reply all" so that it goes to tt-refs rather than just to the ref who sent it.