Because having this at the head is probably helpful:
This Article is player opinion, not ref rulings
Tea of Ref
What is Downtime?
So, CUTT is a system with a downtime mechanic. This means that the world keeps ticking when the game isn't running: trade ships enter and leave the docks, the chimerical chemistry of an alchemist's workshop hisses and bubbles happily from dawn until dusk, the policeman walks his beat and the rubbish gets taken away on time.
Every character that has been played for at least 30 minutes in the interactive or linear in a given week gets the option of submitting a downtime for that week. The downtime is a text description of what the character gets up to: an alchemist can make potions and blow their own eyebrows off, a mage can research new spells and a warrior can train against the best in the hopes of being crowned the strongest fighter in the city. Importantly, it's what the character does other than eat, sleep, bathe and do whatever it is they do to make a living - there's maybe between two and five hours a day available, and it's hard to do much in a fantasy setting once the sun has gone down.
What does a "good" downtime look like?
- A good downtime is Short.
- The refs get downtimes from most PCs each week, and a fair few players have more than one character on the go at a time. With 30 or so members in the society (a guess, but a likely one), that's between 30 and 50 downtime submissions each week.
- A good downtime says What you are doing.
- Kind of obvious. What is the character up to, in broad strokes? Are they extorting money out of a trader with a shameful past? Trying to pry the secrets out of a mysterious magical amulet? Travelling to Durholme to ask an old friend for a favour?
- A good downtime says How you plan to do what you are doing.
- If you plan on researching a new potion of Swog Summoning, it would help the refs to write a response if they knew you are a level 8 Alchemist, and harvested the scent gland from a Swog on last week's linear. That sort of thing should be on the refwiki, but don't assume that everyone knows everything. If you want the refs to take account of your shiny flangeitem of doodad, remind them you're using it. Equally, if you're a nefarious sort, try to think about the character's approach to the problem. "I break into the Temple of Justice" and "I steal a Temple of Justice uniform from the Laundresses Guild and just walk in the door with the morning shift" are two different approaches to the same problem, and may generate different results.
- A good downtime is Detailed, but only where it matters.
- That your character is wearing a Temple of Justice uniform while wandering around the Temple of Justice is an important detail. That your character is wearing Hello Kitty knickers isn't. That you bribed the guard is relevant, but that you paid the bribe with money stolen from a beggar's bowl at three in the morning the previous day isn't.
- A good downtime Gets to the point.
- Nobody actually cares that you took a course in gemcutting, or that you fed your cat this morning. Broad strokes, people.
- A good downtime can be Summarised in a sentence
- What are you doing? Are you balancing the pendulum in the clock of the Temple of Morvana so it doesn't quite tick in time? Are you contributing to a moonshot, organised by another PC? Are you trying to find evidence to prove that the Mayor sleeps with demons? No matter what you're trying to do, if it doesn't fit into a sentence, you may be trying to do too much.
What should I expect from my downtime?
Largely? A result. Some of my most interesting downtime returns have been of the form "You succeed." Sometimes the refs will tell you exactly what result your efforts have, other times they'll just mention that your action had an effect. Something minor that I've been tinkering with on and off more or less since my character entered play caused an NPC to come look for me by name recently. Big things I keep trying have had minimal effects. Just because you keep banging your head on a brick wall, it ain't necessarily going to fall down.
Summary
Flavour is good, but tell the refs what you want to do, and how you want to do it, and leave it at that. Most of my downtimes are about ten to fifteen lines long at most, and a large amount of that is fluff and story rather than actual mechanical actions I expect the refs to rule on. Say what you're spending your XP on, who's teaching you if it's relevant, and the one or two things you plan to do in the week. Give the refs time to write awesome plot for the bar.